by L. J. Greene
Leo. Leo and Michael. Leo fucking Michael. There was no other word for it. Leo rubbing his privates all over the boy’s face as though marking him with scent like an animal. Leo slapping at him ’til he turned over and got into position. Leo rutting into the rebounding body underneath him, his expression fierce and concentrated, like it wasn’t even a pleasure to him but just a means to victory. His hand around the throat, choking the kid—it made my stomach turn to watch it.
I turned away, unable to watch him finishing. I rested my forehead, clammy and hot, against the cool marble of the pillar, until the film ran out. Cresswickham came around to reset the projector, and I made myself as small as I could. The way he careened about told me he was probably too far-gone to notice me anyway. It took him a few tries to situate the reel, and then he collapsed back on his sofa to watch it.
This one showed a couple going at it like dogs on the four-poster bed in Leo’s room. Leo was on top, of course; the other had his head down so I couldn’t see the face. There was no sound again, but I knew exactly what noises they were making, could hear it in my head: harsh breathing, grunting, some urging on. Yes, I knew exactly what they sounded like. Leo lifted his partner up to his knees with an arm hooked around his throat and yes—yes, it was—it was me.
Me, gagging for air in Leo’s chokehold and taking his brutal ravishing. He was more punishing now than he’d been in our early days. More punishing since I’d moved into the mansion.
Since someone had started filming it.
I shook my swimming head to clear it, but I stayed watching it unfold like I didn’t already know what was going to happen. The events were still clear in my mind; it was during one of our cozy periods. I’d come to Leo’s room straight after we went up to bed. I’d been happy because my downstairs had decided to cooperate. As I stared now, I could see how thick and full my cock looked, leaping and bobbing as I jerked around like a buoy in a storm.
Cresswickham sat forward in his seat, as mesmerized as I was by the show. In the film, I bucked as Leo finished in me. I tugged at my shirt collar, remembering how hard he’d throttled me that night. On screen my hands, which had been pulling and beating at his arm, went slack even as he kept up the chokehold, and although I was here, alive and breathing, I felt a rush of panic at the sight. But he let me go, and I fell forward on the bed, coughing, heaving in great lungfuls of air.
And now I could see what I hadn’t seen before: the way Leo’s face changed and softened as he beheld me, wheezing and groaning underneath him. He cleaned me up with a handkerchief, as had become his custom, but was quick about it, and then hoisted me up by the hips until I was kneeling on all fours again. I was still catching my breath, resting my face on my forearm, as he wriggled down behind me and put his mouth where his cock had been. It had been soothing and slow, the way he dined on me, and intimate above all things. The camera caught it on my face when I looked up: desperate, despairing love.
I flushed in the present. Was I really so obvious?
When Leo turned me over, Cresswickham stood up. I had to move further around the pillar to see what I already knew was coming, but my curiosity was afire now. Leo nosed around in my crotch before he sucked down my prick, and I arched on the bed underneath him. The way my mouth opened made me cringe; I’d been whining and pleading for my climax. My balls ached in concert with the image. It had been the first erection I’d been able to hold with him for days, and it felt like a fire pouring through me when I’d spilled in his mouth. It hadn’t taken long, and he was perfunctory about it—or so I’d thought. It felt mechanical, but I could see his face better now that my sight wasn’t blurred with the relief and thankfulness I’d felt at the time.
It was a dead ringer for the look I’d had: love.
I was lucky I was too surprised to make a sound. Cresswickham was getting closer and closer to the screen, his whiskey still clutched in one hand but sloshing around in the glass as he trembled. I could smell the whiskey from where I was, sharp and pungent. From my vantage point the images played over his back, distorted.
Cresswickham’s nose was just about pressed into the screen where I relaxed on the bed, my hands reaching out for Leo. And Leo—I remembered this now—he rubbed his face into the palm of my hand. My skin prickled at the memory. He smiled, his eyes half-closed, and nuzzled at me like a cat.
Cresswickham ducked away, clutching at his head as though struck by one of his sister’s sudden migraines. He took a few steps to the left, so the moving pictures slid off him and back on to the screen: Leo crawling over me and leaning in to kiss me. It was tender in a way I hadn’t appreciated at the time. His hand brushed my hair away from my face as though he wanted me laid bare to his eyes. He cupped my cheek and kissed me again with something approaching reverence.
The sound of cracking glass made me jump out of my skin. Cresswickham had thrown his tumbler straight at the fireplace, and splintered shards gleamed red on the carpet, reflecting the firelight.
I stayed still and quiet behind the pillar. The film played on although Cresswickham refused to watch. I saw Leo kissing me until I tiredly pushed him away and got off the bed. I pulled on my dressing gown, and the way I stood seemed to deliberately position the elaborate RC insignia on the breast pocket towards the camera. From the angle the camera must have been situated behind the enormous bronze-framed mirror on the wall above the dresser. It had always seemed a strange, overpowering addition to the room.
Now I understood its true purpose.
In the film, I looked straight at the mirror—at the camera—and seemed troubled. Leo wrapped his arms around me from behind and kissed the side of my neck, the side with the bruises and marks on it. He snuggled into me, whispering to me and sucking at my earlobe and jollying away my frown until at last I smiled, and said something back to him. I remembered exactly what it was, what he’d been questioning me about, and my response.
Yeah. Yeah, I love you.
I moved out of the camera’s view, and I knew I’d left the room. Like a watchful ghost, now I could observe Leo pulling on a pair of pajama pants. He turned suddenly as another figure dashed into frame from the opposite side of the room. Lord Cresswickham, shoving and shouting at him. Leo shrugged and sat on the edge of the bed, smoothing down the rumpled covers. He looked up at Cresswickham with an insolent smile.
He said something, lifting his eyebrow in an invitation, and the Englishman backhanded him. Leo raised a hand to his mouth, testing for blood, and made some comment—I knew what it would be, the tone if not the phrasing. Something designed to be cutting and witty and withering. He got himself slapped again, three times back and forth, but there was no force behind it. It was a show of power, not of strength. As soon as it was done, Cresswickham left the room.
Mancini strolled to the mirror. He patted at his mouth and felt along his cheekbone. I knew well enough that Cresswickham’s blows had left no noticeable marks. Satisfied, Leo set to fixing his hair in the mirror, watching his reflection. After that, he stooped to busy himself with something on the dresser. When his face returned into view he stared directly into the camera. He held up a yellow envelope, on which I recognized, scrawled in his erratic handwriting, my name and that day’s date. In his other hand, he held up a soiled handkerchief and, in front of the camera, stuffed it into and sealed the envelope. He held it straight again towards the camera as though proving there were no tricks, and I felt like his obsidian gaze was burning two holes into the projector screen.
With a final frantic rattle the film ran out. Over by the fireplace, Cresswickham collapsed to the floor.
Chapter 36
Lord Cresswickham was still breathing, though it was causing him some difficulty. I stood over him, watching him spasm every few breaths and listening to the clatter of his lungs. I found myself screwing my fingers into a velvet pillow with no recollection of how it got from the love seat into my hands. How I wished I could press it down over that face.
I plumped the pillow up again as b
est I could, and set it down before turning my back on the Englishman so I could think. It was stuffy and overheated in the room, though the fire was not lit, and though I wore only pajama pants and a robe I’d pulled on from my closet. RC, announced the pocket square over my heart, and I wanted to burn it from my breast.
My first course of action was clear enough. I pulled the reel from the projector, dropped it into the fireplace, and lit it with one of the long matches kept for kindling. It flamed up immediately and the film stank as it burned, more than I expected. I had to drag Cresswickham clear of the billowing smoke. Somehow it seemed to empty into the room as much as it went up the chimney. After that it seemed a lousy thing to do to leave the man on the floor surrounded by the shards of his own glass, so I heaved him back up onto the sofa.
My bourbon forgotten, I made my way back up to the foyer. The house seemed even more silent than usual and the back of my neck tingled as I hiked up the grand staircase. Surely someone was watching me? I paused halfway up and looked around. I saw the gleam of the chandelier in moonlight, and the same light reflecting off the shining floor, but there was no movement.
As I reached the landing I could’ve sworn I saw the door leading to Alice’s wing closing the last inch of the way. I blinked and looked again, but I couldn’t be sure. There was no scent this time, hovering around like a ghost outside her wing. I looked over my shoulder several times as I walked down the opposite hallway, but I saw no more movement.
I paused outside Leo’s room, but I didn’t mean to wake him. I tried gently twisting the knob, but it was locked. I considered the wall space between his door and Cresswickham’s, much further along the corridor. It seemed to me there was an abundance of wall on the outside that was not matched for space on the inside. I paced out the edge of Leo’s room from memory, and then the smaller space of the bathroom. There was still a ways to go to the Englishman’s door.
Yes. The room verging off the other side of Leo’s bathroom would have the space needed here; it could be several feet wide, in fact. Cresswickham’s quarters were expansive, but did not, as far as I could remember, extend on this side. They expanded out to the corner of the house so that he had views of the estate to the north and west. But on this side, towards Leo’s rooms, there was enough space for a sizable hidden room, not accessible from the corridor, but from Leo’s room—and probably accessible from inside Cresswickham’s quarters as well. It would explain how he entered the room from the opposite side to my exit on the film.
I’d’ve bet my eyeteeth it would never cross the Cresswickham’s mind to lock his bedroom door.
I was right. I tried his doorknob, and it turned free and open. I pushed the door ajar, my heart booming in my ears. Should I chance it?
Well, I hadn’t come that far to give up, and I wasn’t going to risk losing any more opportunities like I had with the yellow envelope. I slipped inside and glanced around. Empty. I went straight to the wall I figured must be directly adjacent to the hidden room. It was covered with built-in bookshelves, floor to ceiling, stacked with faded old books on Greek art. For a moment I had visions of a secret entrance that could be sprung by pulling down on a book. Short of tugging on every book along that wall—and there were hundreds of them—there didn’t seem any way to test my theory. Besides, I reasoned, there would be tracks worn in the carpet, or some other sign.
No. If there was an entrance from this side, it was not from the bedroom. The walk-through wardrobe and the bathroom were still beyond, and who knew what else.
I steeled my nerves and opened the door to the walk-through. I could hear no sounds, but the fact that I had no lock on Leo’s whereabouts was worrying. Still, if I came nose to nose with him, I’d have the upper hand. I was the one being filmed, after all. He’d have a hard time explaining that away.
The wardrobe was filled with beautifully tailored suits, silk neckties, and the reek of leather from belts and shoes. There was something else, too. Lemon and vetiver and dank moss. The same smell I’d caught haunting the landing before Alice’s wing. I caught sight through the shadows of a collection of ascots and scarves, and felt a wave of nausea. I remembered the polka-dotted cravat Cresswickham had stuffed into my mouth to keep me quiet at the Chateau. It had been scented with the same cologne.
I paused to open a few of the drawers. There were tie pins, money clips that cost more than the cash they could hold, more cufflinks than I’d ever had shirts in my life. Tucked to the back of one velvet-lined drawer, my fingers landed on a dull and grimy five-pointed star. It was caked with grease and fluff on the front, a sharp contrast to the rest of Cresswickham’s well-maintained trinkets. On the reverse there’d been a name engraved in the middle, but it was obliterated with deep, vicious gouges.
It made me uneasy, like it was some holy relic my mundane hands should never have held. I dropped it into my breast pocket and walked on to the bathroom. The sight of the huge copper tub filled me with revenant disgust from the last time I’d seen it: bathing Leo for Cresswickham’s pleasure. Had they filmed that, too? Probably. Probably they had.
At first glance, there seemed to be no exits from the bathroom, but then I realized the Japanese screen in the back corner hid what I was looking for: a second door. I tried the knob, just as gingerly as I had from Leo’s side, and again it was locked. I clenched my fists and thought about punching a hole through the screen. But there must be a key, after all.
A key.
I rushed to the silver dish where I’d been told to place my cufflinks, and the key I remembered lay there still, unassuming and innocent. My luck was coming back! The key fit perfectly into the lock on the door and turned. The lock was well-oiled and well-maintained, and gave only the smallest click of sound. The door swung open on smooth hinges.
The room inside was not a room, but a thin corridor. I could see it leading immediately to the right, down the wall past the walk-through robe on Cresswickham’s side. Further than a few feet I could not see; it was pitch-black, and there was no light switch. My hand touched a rope rail as I groped on the wall, and I realized it was intended to lead travelers through the blackness.
My heart quailed at the thought of finding a monster at the center of the labyrinth. “You already found the monsters,” I told myself aloud, and it made me feel better to hear a voice, even if it was just my own. “They roam free ’round here.”
I gripped the railing with my right hand and entered the darkness. I left the door wide open to give a little light, but I was swallowed up by blackness soon enough, and held my left arm out in front. My fingertips tingled, but touched nothing. I went slowly to give my eyes a chance to adjust, and to avoid bumbling headlong into an unseen trap. About halfway down, I started to imagine someone waiting for me, silent and lurking; that I would find them by touch alone, my fingers pressing in unexpectedly to a shoulder or a soft belly or a face.
The booze gave me strange hallucinations sometimes. If I lost my head I might bolt, and if I bolted I might run headlong into a wall and daze myself or break my nose, leave a bloody trail for others to find.
I had to keep my cool. I shoved my left hand back in my pocket and closed it around the metal key, clutched at it until the jagged teeth bit into my palm and shot pain up my arm. It helped. My right hand was sweating on the rope, but I stretched out my cramped fingers and re-gripped. One foot in front of the other, just like it’s been all your life, I told myself.
My eyes came good enough that I saw the wall in front of me before I collided with it. It demanded I turn left, then after several feet I turned right again, then left—it seemed to last forever. It could only have been a very small distance, though, winding around the inconvenient bones of the house like a vein leading to its dark heart.
I abruptly stepped into a larger space and found myself looking at Leo’s bedroom through a dull window, six feet across and lit only by the dim light from Leo’s room. His rumpled, empty bed was the central feature, and I could see, if I got close to the window and
looked down, his dresser underneath. I’d been right: I was looking through from the other side of the mirror.
Suddenly, Leo loomed into view before me, and I stumbled backwards in surprise. I crashed into something, and fell over amidst the sound of cracking glass and clanging metal. When I managed to pick myself up, the light was enough to show me I’d just destroyed a film camera. Something on it had pierced my shoulder and I could feel a warm seepage down my shirtsleeve.
At the window, Leo was staring straight towards me, startled and unmoving. I noticed small details in that moment: the way his shirt was open down to the last two buttons, as though he'd been undressing for bed, the untidy flop of his hair into his eyebrows. Then he turned towards his bathroom door, and I did what my instincts told me to do. I ran.
I thundered into the walls on each turn of the corridor, bashing my head and my face, spraining my wrist on one outstretched arm, and when I made it to the door, I slammed it shut and locked it with shaking fingers. I was dripping blood from the wound on my shoulder, but I ignored it for now and set off sprinting again, through the wardrobe, into the bedroom, and out the door—
Only to see Leo waiting for me, leaning against the wall like he had all the time in the world. His shirt was buttoned and tucked in.
His eyes were flint. “Hello, Rabbit. What have you been up to?”
Chapter 37
The nickname had never been more apt. I hared it back into the room, and meant to slam the door on him, but he was just as quick, and had mastery of himself where I had none. He shoved the door open and backed me into the bookshelves.
