by Harper Fox
“The walls cut me off from you and Tamsie, last time I tried that.”
“Build ’em differently this time. I’ll deal with the monsters, I swear. You do think it was Alice who came creeping around that Launceston school today, don’t you?”
“Yeah. Not sure I’d ever have got it without you, but yes.”
“Right. I can find grounds—solid, boring, everyday reasons—to talk to David. I’ll be subtle. I can start by finding out why there were armed guards at the gate of that school of his. Take it from there.”
“Gid, you’re gonna have to be careful. He was freaked out all the way about Alice last time we met him. Scared and full of threats.”
“I know, and I haven’t forgotten that he wanted to add Tamsyn to his collection of so-called gifted kids. That’s where you come in.”
Lee wriggled his hips. “Oh? I do have a job, do I, in this new regime of yours?”
“You do. Excuse me turning into Victorian papa, but here it is. Stay at home and mind our kid, or take a summer job on one of the yachts where you can bring her along with you.”
“What? I can’t just... retire.”
“Not retirement. A sabbatical.” Fires of resistance rose in Lee’s eyes, and Gideon began a slow burn of his own. What was the point of all the loving protection in the world, if Lee wouldn’t consent to be protected? “Look, I don’t care how you do it. Cancel your clients. Put your TV work on hold. Anything that connects you to all of that, just... stop it. Stop.”
His growl of authority startled them both. Would have brought an answering roar from Lee any other day. Who do you think you’re ordering around, Mr Policeman bloody Badger? Gideon should have been alarmed at the sudden surrender in the wide green gaze fixed on his. Instead relief swept him, and a rushing sense of power. Was he—just for once, here and now when it really mattered—about to win an argument with this man?
He had to. A fresh stain of scarlet had appeared on Lee’s upper lip. “Just stop,” Gideon repeated, the growl mitigated now by tenderness and a kind of fearful pride. “I don’t care how you do it. Sit in a deckchair in the garden. Have naps. Give yourself a break, sweetheart, or all of this is gonna break you, and I can’t bear that.” He bent down to kiss him, words rasping in his throat. “For God’s sake, Lee, please. You’re still bleeding.”
***
The admonition must have worked, or something was working at any rate. Morning came, as lovely a moorland daybreak as ever had cheered the heart of a copper getting ready for his daily rounds. Lee was having a pleasant dream. Gideon, much to his surprise, found himself in it with him.
He felt capable of anything today. The world lay before him like a series of problems that longed to be solved. David and Alice Rawle, Rufus Pendower, monsters in the Launceston schools... All these would tumble like ninepins if he hit them right. There was nothing that couldn’t be done by a local bobby with determination and energy to spare.
Such strange energies! They ran through Gideon like soft fire. He sat down on the window seat, uniform cap in hand. Lee, stretched out on his front in the bed, was also lying blissfully on top of a vividly detailed dream image of Gideon himself.
They were on the clifftop near Drift. Dropping his cap, Gideon bit back a bark of laughter at the weird double vision: that he could be here in his bedroom, neatly buttoned and ready for the day, and at the same time flat on his back on the sunny turf, knees drawn up, in a state of such absolute abandoned sensuality. A pale moon rode in the blue sky, only a little way past first quarter. It was safe to growl a little, show his teeth. Lee pinned him down: spoke deep into his mind. All right, love. Yes, show me that. Let me see.
What the hell did that mean? Shivering, Gideon pulled away. He had no right to be watching, and if eavesdroppers heard no good of themselves, what would become of feckless souls who looked into their lovers’ dreams? A long time ago, Lee had offered a changing-room metaphor to describe how his gifts worked: even if someone left the door open, he didn’t have to peer inside. Would struggle not to, but...
Depends on who’s in the changing room, Gid.
He smiled at the memory. He’d been Lee’s irresistible temptation then, so it seemed only fair that now the tables were turned. Lee was behind the open door, defences down, laid deliciously bare. The soft-fire energies surged again, something to do with the growl and the gleam of pointed teeth, an urge to push and pounce. I’ll show you.
Yes. Let me have it.
Lee groaned and grabbed at the pillow. One fist closed on the cotton, and Gideon felt it like a clench around his balls. Gasping, sitting forward, he checked that the bedroom door was shut. Although the room was drenched in sunlight, he’d just heard his watch beep six o’clock: early hours, even in the busy Tyack-Frayne household, and no chance of interruption from his kid or the dog. Morning shift at Bodmin station didn’t start till eight, but there was backlogged paperwork to tackle. He had time.
Still he had no business here. Or if he did, if Lee was working up his morning glory in a sexy dream about him, Gideon should clamber into bed and make it an honest reality. Nothing Lee liked more than a tussle with his copper in full uniform while he himself lay naked as day. Gideon shivered with laughter. He’d have given a month’s pay for a photo of the two of them last time they’d done it that way, Lee perched elegantly on the edge of the bed, wearing Gid’s cap at a jaunty angle and nothing else, while Gideon knelt between his thighs, hoping the come stains would sponge off his best dress pants.
The memory swept him past a point of no return. He unzipped, and Lee writhed on the bed. The duvet was tangled around his thighs, exposing his backside, as powerfully erotic a sight to Gideon now as it had been in the first days of their love. Muscles bunched as he thrust down. He let go of the pillow with one hand and reached beneath himself. Too much for Gideon, who surged like a wild Atlantic wave into the dream, shuddered and grabbed at his cock and climaxed with a broken-off yell. He caught Lee up in the rush and the break of it, the wave’s beautiful death.
Lee’s movements quickened. He gave a grinding wail. Gideon knew it so well, dearly loved to be its cause. His gentle, quiet-spoken husband, almost beside himself with pleasure, letting loose that animal sound as he went over—Mr Tiger indeed, blazing through all of his stripes... “Gideon,” he rasped afterwards, voice a raw shadow. “Oh, Gideon. Gid...”
Steadying himself against the window frame, Gideon got to his feet. The room was swaying around him. The window seat was a favourite spot for lovemaking: one of them had left a box of tissues there, and he quickly mopped up. Fastened his zip with clumsy, tingling fingers. By the time Lee raised his head, he was back in his skin. He could—just feasibly—have walked into the room five seconds ago, to give Lee a kiss before leaving. They’d omitted that ritual only once in all their time together, on the day when Gideon had run onto Alan Tremethick’s knife-blade in Bodmin, and almost put himself beyond the reach of that sweet mouth forever.
It was odd: he’d scarcely thought about Tremethick in four years, not to the extent of recalling his name. He’d persisted in his refusal to press charges, so presumably the poor bastard had vanished back into the world he’d come from, that swamp of drugs and desperation. Another line he’d failed to follow up on, a darkness he’d set aside in favour of life and light with Lee... “Morning,” he said, cheerfully casual. “Got a peck on the cheek for your old man, before he goes off down the tin mines?”
Lee emitted a faint snort. “Old man?” he echoed incredulously, propping himself on his elbows. “You’re an untamed force of nature, you are, even in my...” He looked up at Gideon, a sudden blush painting him from collarbones to the roots of his hair. “In my dreams. Oh.”
“Oh?” One more effort of evasion was probably worthwhile, and Gideon leaned innocently in for his kiss, hoping his own colour wasn’t too high. “Dreaming of me, were you?”
“Yeah, only I... I really thought you were here.” Lee shifted his hips and coloured more deeply still. “Oh,
great. Like a bloody teenager. It’s been years since I did that.”
“Well, nothing wrong with it, is there?”
“No, apart from the bedlinen.” He planted a thoughtful kiss on Gideon’s mouth, as if tasting and testing the flavour of his words. “Are you on the dawn patrol, handsome?”
“Nope. Just going in early to catch up on some admin.”
“Will it wait?”
“For you? Forever.”
“Good. I’ll fix you some breakfast.”
***
A working breakfast, Gideon reckoned. These were regular events in Chy Lowen, one of the many reasons why it remained a house of joy. If school or behaviour issues were involved, Tamsyn would be upright and serious in her booster seat, Isolde perched beside her, like a hairy secretary ready to take notes. Sometimes Zeke and Eleanor would be there too, the twins in their high chairs. The big square kitchen with its scrubbed-pine table became a boardroom, a space for voicing concerns before they could burrow their way underground.
Just Lee and Gideon today. Silence still drifted from upstairs. Tamsyn at rest spread ripples of quiet around herself, expanding rings of peace. Every home should have one, Gideon reflected, reaching back into her serenity. Dream on, sweetheart.
The boardroom had certain rules: that food should be respected, and the time to eat it, no matter how urgent the business in hand, and so Gideon made appreciative short work of his fry-up and toast. Lee took his usual seat opposite and ate too, from time to time glancing up at him. Even after five years, Gideon could struggle to read his expression, and this morning’s was an enigmatic mixture of amusement and reproof. Add in a strong dash of embarrassment and remembered pleasure... “All right,” Gideon said at last, harpooning a mushroom on his fork and proffering it across the table like an olive branch. “What’s bothering you?”
Lee leaned forward. He bit the mushroom off the fork, speared a remaining tomato for Gid in return and held it out. “I ought to put you over my knee.”
Gideon choked on the tomato. He grabbed a napkin and pressed it to his mouth. “God almighty,” he complained, coughing. “I’m due on duty in half an hour. Do you want to send me in there with my cock like a telegraph pole?”
“Tough luck if it is. What do you mean by muscling into my dreams?”
Gideon gave a second’s thought to playing confused. A carnal, rosy heat had risen into his face, though, and Lee could see through him, front to back and out the other side. “Sorry,” he growled. “I just walked in, and you were dreaming, moving your hips and making such nice sounds. I sat down to watch you. I suppose that was bad enough. But then something happened. I was in there with you. I was inside.”
“Not the first time that’s happened. We’ve shared dream-space, visions. This was different.”
“Yeah. I felt like I was in charge of it somehow. I... pushed.” Suddenly the wrongness of that stung Gideon like a whip. “God, I’m sorry! I’d never normally have done that. What was I thinking?”
Resting his chin on one hand, Lee surveyed him. “I shouldn’t think you were thinking at all. Pass me the calendar, would you?”
Gideon reached behind him to unhook it from the wall, almost too distracted to wonder why Lee wanted it now. “What’s up? Did I double-book something?”
“No. Just want to check...” Lee ran a finger over the page, crowded with Tamsyn’s after-school activities and social obligations as well as Gideon’s late shifts, his own cold-read clients and the phases of the moon. Whatever he was looking for, finding it made his expression soften and a strange, bright compassion replace the half-hearted anger in his gaze. “Never mind. Forget about it, sweetheart.”
“I can’t. I crossed a line. I—”
“Hush.” Lee pushed out of his chair. He padded around the end of the table and to Gideon’s astonishment hitched himself onto his lap. He ran a hand over Gideon’s hair, searching, soothing. “It doesn’t matter, big man. Everything’s okay. No need to worry.”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely. Look, it wasn’t all bad, was it? Clearly.”
“Okay.” A reluctant chuckle rumbled out of Gideon’s throat. “We didn’t half make each other come!”
“Like wildfire. Are your uniform pants decent?”
“Yeah, just about. You’re shivering, though. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Nothing.” Lee rubbed his face against Gideon’s, something feverish in the contact, an unshaven rasp of skin to skin. “I’m a bit tired, that’s all. I tell you what—I am gonna do as you told me last night. I will take a break.”
Startled, Gideon held him. He’d been expecting much more of a fight. “Really? Am I becoming an overbearing brute of a husband?”
“No. You’re just right about this. You do know why I’ve been pushing so hard, don’t you?”
“Because that idiot Dave Rawle said you were... battery-packing for Tamsyn, boosting her signal or some such nonsense. You told me yesterday in the car.”
“I just about remember that part. I’m not sure it was entirely nonsense, not for a while. I’ve had time to think since, though, and... if she ever was using me like that, she’s stopped.”
“Did you talk to her about it?”
“Well, we never talked about her starting, so... No, she’s just worked it out, like everything else she does that might be a problem for us. The dads can’t cope, so she switches whatever gift it is off. Are we repressing her?”
“I don’t think so. I reckon she looks around and sees what all the other kids are doing or not doing, and she wants to fit in, so she regulates herself. Then we enforce certain things for her at home, like bedtime and vegetables and not floating the dog, so that’s her framework here.” Gideon shifted slightly, holding Lee harder, giving him the faintest comforting rock. “I tell you what. Your uncle Dave was full of opinions about gifted children in Cornwall, wasn’t he? I will find a reason to see him. And if he knows anything that might be useful to us about what the kids can do, I’ll have it out of the bastard.”
Lee sat up, as far as he could in the loving cage of Gideon’s embrace. His eyes were dark with trouble. “You can’t go throwing your weight around with him, Gid. You know you can’t.”
Gideon considered this. Yes, on one level he was perfectly aware that he couldn’t track Rawle down and frighten the truth out of him. On another it seemed so easy. Rawle had come here, sat in the kitchen chair Lee had vacated. A kind of shadow-shape of him was still left in the air. If he tried, Gideon could recall with eerie precision the scent of his aftershave, the underlying hormonal tang of his anger and fear. As for the frightening, all he would have to do was let go a nuance of self-control, unfasten a binding here and here, and...
“Gideon!”
Lee was bolt upright, hands braced on his shoulders. Gideon could barely read his expression—the mix of love in it, laughter and stark fear. He smiled up helplessly in return. “What’s the matter?”
“You. You were just about to tell me how you planned to interview Dave Rawle. Quietly and legitimately, in the course of police business.”
“Oh. Right. Well, I never did find out what banner he’s running that school of his under. Even private academies have to answer to the government’s inspectorate. I bet Lawrence might be interested in an unregistered educational establishment right in the middle of her turf.”
“You don’t know that he’s unregistered.”
“True enough, but finding out might be a job for Lawrence’s finest sergeant. You know—the guy with the Queen’s medal.”
Lee’s brow creased. He tilted his head a fraction. “Wow. I never thought I’d hear you mention that again.”
Gideon hadn’t thought he could. He’d been proud of the honour, but the process of travelling to London and standing in a gilded ceremony room had been a mortification. And the more he’d thought about it, the more it had seemed irrational to pin upon him awards and decorations for doing his barest duty. The medal, and all further reference t
o it, had been best tucked into his sock drawer and forgotten. “Yeah,” he said, puzzled himself by the lapse. “But you mentioned my weight. Throwing it about, I mean, and I don’t mean to do that, but... if I do have any weight with Lawrence, maybe that’s part of it. Maybe it can help me get things done.”
He liked the sound of his own voice saying that. Confidence rushed through him, a bounce like the wind off the sea. He put a tender hand around the back of Lee’s neck and drew him in for a kiss. “Worth my weight in brass, I am. No, forget that—fourteen stone of solid Cornish gold. And you, my handsome, are going to lay back and let me get on with it. Sit in your deckchair in the orchard and watch the apples grow. Right?”
“Wrong,” Lee informed him smartly, fixing a powerful grip on his collar. “I’m getting our kid up and ready for school, and then I’m recording an end piece for the show to make up for yesterday’s disaster. After that, though, I...” He relaxed a little, a surrendering movement that brought his brow gently against Gideon’s. “I’m going to cancel off my clients, and that house-cleansing job I had lined up in Liskeard.”
“Really?”
“Yes. I do listen to you, you know. Jory Stark wants that boat of his fixed up over in St Wylloe. I might take that on, if it won’t sink our boat—our financial one, I mean.”
“We’ll be fine. That’s a great gig for you, love. You’ll be out in the sun all day, and you could work your own hours.”
“Yeah. I’ll fit it around Tamsie’s school, and she can come with me in the holidays.”
That was great. A hush fell in the sunny kitchen, warm with the summertime whisper of the wind, the voice of the orchard and the moor. Gideon listened to it, and to the outside edge of his lover’s thoughts, the places where the changing-room door always stood welcoming wide. They were a happily married couple starting in on their fifth year, both of them pleased to have found and solved a problem. Unable to help himself, impelled by the new, soft fire, Gid pushed deeper. “God almighty, Lee. What’s wrong?”
