by KJ Charles
Oh, what the hell. “You sodding know there is.”
Kim’s throat moved in a swallow. He had a fine-boned throat with a hollow at the base; he’d groaned, before, when Will had licked it. He didn’t say anything for a long second, in which Will wanted to move and didn’t quite dare, and when he did, his eyes flicked away from Will’s face. “I stayed away.”
“I noticed.”
“You deserve more than I have to offer.”
“I know.”
“God’s sake, Will. Haven’t you learned your lesson yet?”
He hadn’t. He was beginning to wonder if he ever would. But he knew how to make everything feel simple and obvious again, if only temporarily, so he said, “The door’s locked.”
It was what they’d said before, to mark out a space for themselves in the maelstrom of last November. No guilt, no thought of anyone else, no obligation, just a little place in time.
The look on Kim’s face showed he remembered. “Damn you.”
“Same to you.”
He wasn’t sure who moved first. It didn’t matter. They rose and came together in silence, kissing with an intensity that pulled the marrow from Will’s bones. Kim was kissing him hard, his long fingers in Will’s hair, Will’s hand round his lean arse. His mouth was hot and hungry, and Will kissed him ferociously in return, almost angrily, with a knot of need and frustration and fearful desire roiling in his gut.
After a few frantic moments, Will pulled away. They’d crashed down on the sofa at some point, Kim underneath, Will over him with one leg on the floor for balance.
“What do you want?”
“You,” Kim said. “In my mouth, if we’re doing this. I have thought about you fucking my mouth on a near-nightly basis since November.”
“Same.” Will started undoing his buttons, watching Kim watch him. “I keep thinking about the way you look when you suck me. The way you sound.”
“How do I sound?”
“Desperate.”
“That’s about right,” Kim said, as Will knelt over him.
Kim’s lips came round his stand. Will rocked forwards, hearing Kim’s little strangled grunt, felt his prick rub against lips and tongue. He groaned. Kim moaned agreement.
“Christ, I love this,” Will rasped. Kim’s arms were above his head. Will trapped the slender wrists, watching his own tanned hands with their calluses and scars and fight-thickened knuckles, rough and ugly against Kim’s smooth skin. Kim arched under him and Will thrust a little harder into his mouth, and again, finding a slow rhythm that set Kim rocking under him. He’d be stiff as a post, Will knew.
“I love watching you do this,” he whispered. “Knowing you love it. Knowing it’s making you hard.”
Kim made an urgent noise. Will leaned in, just a little harder, prick rubbing deliciously against the roof of Kim’s mouth. He was on the back foot with Kim most of the time, what with his wealth and class and brains and limitless capacity to lie, but in these moments when he was bare and raw, exposing the desires Will knew shamed him for all the bravado, the balance tipped.
It flooded Will with an urgent tenderness. He pulled back, dragging his prick from Kim’s receptive mouth, holding his hands down still.
Kim moved underneath him, a slow undulation of the hips. He was still entirely dressed. Will let go with one hand and shifted back, unfastening Kim’s trousers and freeing his erection, stiff and leaking. It was slimmer than Will’s own, not intimidating in size, hot to his touch as he wrapped his fingers round it. He stared down.
“Will?”
“Can I—” He didn’t know how to voice this, which was ridiculous, because he had no trouble with the words when Kim was doing it. “Do you like being sucked off?”
“Don’t be kind to me, Will.”
“I’m not. I want to make you beg.”
“Oh. Well, then.”
That sounded like a yes. Will leaned down and tentatively put his mouth on the prick he held.
He hadn’t done this in a long while but it was like riding a bicycle: you were unlikely to forget. He explored a little with his tongue, feeling the smoothness of the head and the ridged shaft. Kim inhaled sharply, but stayed quiet, for once. Will licked around it, put his mouth over it, claiming the end, and Kim’s hips jerked.
“Mph?”
“Don’t mind me,” Kim said, rather breathily. “Carry on. Oh God. You could use your hand if you wanted.”
Will slid his hand up and down, finding a rhythm. There was a musky, organic taste in his mouth, from the viscous stuff that came before you spent, but other than that it was easy enough. He wouldn’t say he found it particularly arousing as an act, not in the way Kim did, but his own cock was hanging heavy as he moved, and Kim’s moans were enough to keep any man going. “God. So good. Christ, you can do what you want with me. Christ Jesus, Will.”
Will’s toes were curling. He tried sucking, rather than just moving his mouth up and down, and Kim convulsed against the sofa. “God, yes. Please. No, stop, I’m going to come.”
Will moved his head away, enjoying the anguished and frankly dramatic noise Kim made. He crawled up to kiss him again, tasting both Kim and himself from Kim’s mouth, letting his hips rest over Kim’s. Their lengths rubbed together. Kim mewled in his mouth like a baby.
“God. That.”
Will moved his hand down and met Kim’s. Their fingers interlocked around both cocks, breathing hard, moving not quite in synchronisation but very nearly. The feeling of Kim, hot and hard and smooth, the shift of skin and flesh, the sound of his breath.
Kim shifted his head and his lips closed on Will’s ear, sending a shuddering wave through his nerves. He gasped aloud. Kim dragged his teeth over the lobe, traced his tongue around the folds of flesh, sucking and licking until Will was squirming with the ridiculous pleasure of it, rubbing up against the body under him. “Jesus. Kim.”
“You are beautiful,” Kim rasped. “So beautiful. My God.”
“Come with me,” Will whispered. “Oh God, I can’t—”
He bucked, unable to hold back, his spend hitting hand and belly. Kim groaned in Will’s ear, bit the lobe again, and buried his face in the crook of Will’s neck, gasping as he came.
After that, there was a very long silence.
Will didn’t want to move. Their hands were still locked over both pricks, free arms around each other’s necks, Kim’s hair in his face. It wasn’t exactly comfortable but it was comfort, of a sort Will hadn’t realised he needed.
At last Kim let out a long, warm breath against Will’s skin. “Well, that confirms that.”
“What?”
“My inability to see you without something like this happening.”
“You didn’t want this?”
“Of course I did. Painfully. I hoped that you wouldn’t.”
Will blinked. “Uh...why?”
“For all the reasons that come swarming when the door is unlocked, of course. I did hope I’d make an effort not to cause you harm, but apparently I’m not capable of that.”
“This wasn’t harm.”
“You say that now.”
Will considered that. “If there’s a nasty surprise waiting around the corner, you might warn a chap.”
“When isn’t there? Ugh. Will you promise me something?”
“What?”
“Promise first.”
“Like hell. I’m not buying a pig in a poke from you.”
Kim gave a huff of amusement. “Fine. Promise me, if you decide this was a mistake, if Mary-Alice gets in touch to say she’s divorced or you’ve just had enough—promise me you’ll say so there and then?”
“Excuse me? Seeing that you didn’t even bother to tell me this was over—”
“It wasn’t over.” Kim stated the words like an axiom. “Not for me. I’d have left it alone if you had the common sense to move on. Or if I had a scrap of decency, of course.”
Will twisted round. “What? Why would you say that?”
&nbs
p; “Because I know myself. It’s more than you do.”
Will couldn’t really argue. He’d had a bare-bones account of Kim’s wartime shame that had led to the death of his younger brother. He knew from experience the shitty things Kim was capable of, and he was aware they sprang from a streak of warped, quixotic honour that was probably more destructive, certainly self-destructive, than simple amorality could ever be.
He was also spending his life in an effort at atonement, and when Will had been kidnapped, Kim had scoured the country for six days to find him, saved his life, and made sure his kidnapper came to a protracted and unpleasant end.
“Rubbish,” he said. “Firstly, stop talking as if you did anything but what I wanted. Secondly—well, you’re a slippery bastard, granted. You’ve made plenty of mistakes and done a lot of bad things and told an incredible number of lies. You’re an utter shit. Sorry, what was I saying? I got carried away.”
Kim choked. Will leaned in and kissed him, putting a gentle hand to his face. “Look, this part is all right, isn’t it? You and me, here, door locked—that works, even if it’s a mess outside.”
“I don’t want to bring the mess in,” Kim said, a little stifled.
“Then don’t.” Will shifted so they lay together, squashed on the sofa, his arm tight round the slim shoulders. Kim leaned into him, hiding his face, and Will stroked his fine hair with the quiet compulsion he’d feel for a cat on his lap. His heart was painfully tender in his breast.
All his tangles were tugging tighter, and he couldn’t blame anyone but himself.
Chapter Seven
Will arrived at the High-Low Club around half past nine on Saturday. The band was in full swing. A waiter escorted him to a side table and brought him a pint of beer with the resigned expression of one who didn’t expect much of a tip, and Will sipped it as he looked casually around. Mrs. Skyrme’s office was lit. As he watched, someone moved between a lamp and the blind, casting a momentary shadow on the slats.
It only took a few moments for one of the club’s hostesses to say hello, an over-painted young woman with weary eyes. She introduced herself as Cynthia, paid him a couple of insincere compliments, took him for a dance, and then plunged into the subject that was really on her mind: where his lady friend from last time got that beautiful dress. Will dredged up everything he could remember about the subject of fashion, ordered a bottle of champagne with an internal wince at the cost, assured Cynthia it was fine for her friend Doris to join them, and managed to play his part in an animated conversation, interspersed with more dances.
He was pretty sure this was how men were meant to behave in night-clubs: flirting with women who were being paid to do it, splashing his cash. He felt like a bloody idiot, but at least he had something to think about that wasn’t Kim.
He danced, drank champagne, and chatted to the girls. There was no sign of Mrs. Skyrme or Fuller. Beaumont was moving around a set of tables on the other side of the dance floor; Will tried not to look at him. He just kept a smile on his face and let the clock tick.
He and Doris returned to the table together after an energetic foxtrot. They sat, and Will poured out the last of the bottle.
“Shall I order more?” Doris said, unsurprisingly. Doubtless she got a cut; quite possibly her job depended on sales. Mrs. Skyrme would make a lot of her legitimate profits this way.
Will made a unilateral decision that Kim would be paying him back for this one. “Go on, then.”
She gave him a wide professional smile. “You’re a gent. Here, Bob!”
Will handed over the notes without obvious wincing, and glanced at his watch. It was five past ten; he had ten minutes before Phoebe’s arrival.
“Tell me about yourself,” he suggested to Doris.
“What, me? Nothing to tell.”
“How’d you get into this line of work?”
Doris bridled. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Look, I don’t mind,” Will said. “You’re great girls and I’m having a good time with you. I wanted a drink and a dance with someone pretty and I’ve got double what I bargained for.” Cynthia giggled, but Doris’s eyes were wary. Will added, “Just dancing, no funny business, you needn’t think that. I’m from the Midlands and it’s a bit lonely in London, that’s all.”
“You poor lamb,” Cynthia said, going motherly.
“It is lonely,” Doris said. “I’m from Selly Oak myself.”
Will hadn’t needed telling that, from her vowels, but he expressed gratification at meeting a countrywoman anyway. “So what’s it like to work here?” he asked. “Bit more fun than a shop floor, or are you always wearing out your shoes?”
“Shoes!” Doris said with feeling. “Bane of my life, they are. It’s—well, it’s not so bad.” Her eyes flicked to the side as she said that. “You don’t half go home tired sometimes, but the pay’s good. The Mrs. is—”
“Fair,” Cynthia said over her, quickly. “Never takes the tips and lets us mind our own business as long as the customers are happy. There’s a lot to be grateful for, Dorrie, and worse places to work.”
“I expect so,” Will said. “What about that fellow Fuller? Can’t say I took to him.”
If he’d never met Fuller, he’d have learned all he needed from the girls’ reaction. They both stiffened, faces flattening into neutral, the responses of people who expected to have their answers used against them.
“The Mrs. relies on him ever so,” Doris said. “Oooh, here’s the champagne. You pour. Talking of shoes, Cynnie—”
That was the subject very firmly changed. Will accepted another unwanted glass of fizzy muck and sat back, rather than press them for answers they didn’t feel safe to give.
It was near quarter past now, Kim was due to arrive at the back door any moment, where Beaumont would let him in, and there was still no sign of Phoebe. She was often late, but surely she wouldn’t let them down tonight? Ought Will cause some sort of ruckus and draw all eyes his way if her promised diversion didn’t materialise? And how the devil would he do that?
“I might just visit the gents,” he said, rising, and at that moment realised he needn’t have worried. Phoebe’s arrival was impossible to miss.
The party crashed in like a wave, making enough noise to be heard over the band, especially since one of them appeared to have a hunting horn. It was a gaggle of young people about thirty strong, dressed with a startling combination of Bohemianism, extravagance, and grime. The men were mostly in tailcoats, some in lounge suits or exaggerated Oxford bags. Most of the women’s hemlines barely skimmed their knees; all of their dresses dipped extremely low at the front, or even lower at the back. It was a radiant mass of bare flesh, sequins, fringes, bright colours, shining fabrics, painted faces, except that some of them looked as though they’d been rolling in the gutter, with streaks of dirt up bare arms, on white shirt fronts and waistcoats, across cheeks and costly fabric. A few had ripped hems, or bedraggled trouser legs.
Next to him Cynthia sucked in a long breath. “Those won’t be worn twice.”
Doris nodded agreement without looking round. They both watched the newcomers with appalled envy, lost in the spectacle of so much glory thrown so casually away.
The Bright Young People gathered in the middle of the dance floor, tightened up into a group, then darted away in all directions like starlings scattering, leaving only Phoebe standing, tall and slender in a shimmering blue dress, face lit with glee.
“God,” Will said involuntarily.
The newcomers were everywhere, chattering and shouting, accosting people with what seemed to be demands. Some of them were diving under tables, others shouting at the band. One of them attempted to wrest away the clarinet-player’s clarinet. Several waiters were remonstrating with them. Mrs. Skyrme emerged from the office and hurried down the stairs as Fuller started to sprint down from the top balcony.
Will tore his eyes from the spectacle, looked the other way as casually as possible and saw a waiter—or, rathe
r, a man in a waiter’s jacket, slim and dark-haired—emerge from the depths of the room behind Mrs. Skyrme, and set off up the stairs with a tray. Unmistakable to Will, unobtrusive to, he hoped, anyone else. Kim looked quite as though he was meant to be there, as long as the people who hired the staff didn’t see his face.
Will forced his attention back to the dance floor in case anyone followed his gaze. He would much rather have watched Kim’s progress along the balcony, watched him sidle up to the office and try the door. Had Mrs. Skyrme locked it? If she had, would Kim be able to deal with it?
He’d find out, damn it. Will forced himself to concentrate, and saw Phoebe was talking to Mrs. Skyrme, hands fluttering. He could almost hear the word ‘darling’. A man in Oxford bags had climbed on a table despite the mass of material flapping round his legs, and seemed to be examining one of the columns holding up the balcony. The people sitting at the table seemed to accept this with remarkable equilibrium. The same sort of thing was going on across the entire dance floor, while some of the new revellers charged up the stairs.
“What the blazes are they doing?” he asked aloud.
“Treasure hunt, I bet,” Doris said. “It’s the newest craze. They look for a clue, then when they find it, they go to the next location. They go on all night. Don’t use language like that.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“I could see you thinking,” she told him, and her painted face cracked into an entirely real smile.
On the dance floor, Fuller’s mouth was clamped into a far less convincing expression of goodwill, while the set of his shoulders suggested he wanted to start throwing people out by main force. He gestured at the band-leader, who made a few gestures of his own and changed the tempo of the music to something more sedate. That would doubtless calm the new arrivals down a bit. Admirable management, but not in Will’s interests.
He glanced up to the balcony again. There was no sign of Kim in his waiter’s garb, so presumably he’d got into the office by whatever means. The trick now was to ensure Mrs. Skyrme and Fuller stayed out of it for long enough that he could do whatever needed doing.
