Half Moon Chambers (14 page)

"Here. I took this flat because I got the two turret
rooms
. I often sit in here and watch the night."

"Don't you sleep well?"

"Card-carrying insomniac." Our eyes met,
this
time in recognition. He was still holding my
hand
. "Takes one to know one, right?"

"Just since my accident. I used to crash out
like
... Well, the way you knocked me out tonight."

It was the nearest I could get to thanking him
for
the sweetest, hottest fuck I'd ever known. I
hoped
he could fill in the gaps. His pupils
dilated
--
message received and understood, I guessed,
and
he gave my hand a squeeze and let me go. "Sit
down
. Have you ever tried absinthe? Not the
synthetic
they sell over here. The real thing."

"The real thing's illegal." And it wasn't the
time
--
I was on my way out. I opened my mouth to
tell
him, but he'd disappeared into the living
room
's shadows. Giving it up for the moment, I
looked
around me. The second turret room was
larger
, a circle big enough to contain an ornate
sofa
and an easy chair. Both were upholstered in
faded
green velvet. To my inexpert eye they
looked
French, and altogether the little scene was
baroque
, a shabbily beautiful garret that could
have
been poised above the streets of Paris, not my
grim
old town.

My back did hurt. It was tough, because for
once
I hadn't brought my knockout painkillers with
me
. I subsided onto the edge of the armchair. That
and
the sofa were turned to give a view out through
another
of the great round windows. I could see
from
the zenith of the blue-black heavens right
down
to the cobbles below. The street was almost
empty
now, the city poised in its pre-dawn hiatus
before
the Saturday world rolled in, the lorries
with
fresh fish, fruit and veg for the market stalls.

It was the very heart of the night.

Rowan pushed back the curtain. He took care
not
to startle me this time, and I was at once
touched
and annoyed. I didn't need coddling. He
was
holding a tray, a little silver one set with two
small
glasses which somehow caught rainbows in
their
crystal from the dull light outside. There was
a
bottle too, its label indistinct. He took a seat on
the
sofa opposite me and put the tray down on the
wide
ledge beneath the window. "So bust me," he
said
. "Or you could try it. Drink it slow. It's not
particularly
strong, just... potent."

I looked at him, wondering about his
distinction
between strength and potency. He was
naked
from the waist up, his movements small and
graceful
as he uncorked the bottle and poured
cloudy
green-gold liquid into each of the glasses.

He was bloody lovely.

I sat forward. My head was spinning. The
night
wasn't over, and I wanted to make us quits,
and
I didn't want either of us thinking it had just
been
the absinthe. "Rowan," I said, my voice like
a
stranger's in my ears. "Don't move for a second.
Just..."

I got down and knelt in front of him. I heard
and
ignored his faint gasp. The sofa was a good
height
for me, and I was hurting anyway
--
this
wouldn
't make it worse. I grasped his knees and
pushed
them wide apart.

"Vince, what are you... Oh, God."

"Be quiet. Let me see you." The pyjamas
were
drawstring and opened when I tugged. He
was
soft with astonishment but it only took a kiss
to
his belly, a couple of burrowing tongue-swipes
into
the silky crease beneath his hipbones, and his
cock
surged up, pulsing hotly against my cheek.

"Yes," I whispered, leaning in and ignoring a
bright
splash of pain to make a quick dive for his
balls
. I closed my lips round each of them as far
as
I could, aided by his shuddery upward thrust, then
when
I couldn't bear that angle any more, sat back
on
my heels. "Let me suck you. Let me do
something
good for you."

"You already did. You were so good. You
don
't have to
--
"

"
Please.
" I cupped him, feeling him damp and
pulsating
where my mouth had been. "Let me."

I took him in. I was still good for this. Damn
good
, actually
--
Jack had been a big lad, and
importunate
too, not always giving me a lot of
preparation
time. He'd kept me in practice. Rowan
would
be easy by contrast... or so I thought until he
groaned
, grasped my shoulders, swelled and
lengthened
in my mouth. I sat back. "Wow."

"What is it?"

"Look at the size of you."

"Oh." He flushed up rosily, blood darkening
his
face just as it was painting his long straight
shaft
. "I thought you'd seen all that, back when we
were
..."

"I was distracted then." I dipped back down.

My concentration was perfect now. I opened wide,
welcoming
the push at the back of my throat. Oh,
he
was nothing like Jack, who liked to lie back and
enjoy
my services with lordly detachment: he
stroked
my hair, reached down my back and held
me
. I shivered, losing my rhythm of sucking and
withdrawal
, as he pulled up the dressing gown and
caressed
my arse. "Lovely backside," he
whispered
, in the same barely audible rasp with
which
I'd thought I'd heard him admire my smile.

"Don't stop. Oh, my God."

I couldn't have stopped, not if the
angel
Gabriel had come down and called time. I loved
the
feel of him filling me. I squeezed his balls and
bore
down hard, tears blinding me in the fight not
to
gag. I would never get the chance to let him fuck
me
--
our worlds were too separate, a thorned
barricade
between them that would spring up with
oncoming
dawn
--
but I could have this. He was
breathing
harshly now. I clamped my free hand to
his
thigh to steady myself. His muscles were
locked
like iron against his instinct to thrust up at
me
and I gave him my abandonment in answer to
his
restraint, engulfing his shaft to the root again
and
again, crushing him with tongue and lips until
he
stiffened and grated out my name. There was an
instant
for both of us, a shared thought of pulling
back
--
he recoiled, or tried to
--
but desire ripped
through
me, a need to have him come down my
throat
as intense as his to do it, and we were there,
clutching
one another frantically. He near drowned
me
in his spill. I hung on for him, for jet after hot
jet
, and at last he softened, freeing my airway so I
could
breathe.

I knelt trembling and gasping at his feet. His
brow
was pressed to the top of my skull. He was
pressing
hot kisses to the short-cropped hair of my
crown
. His hands gathered up the fabric of my
robe
, lifting, stroking the skin beneath.

He was very close to my scars. I tensed,
trying
to get my head up. I didn't like to be touched
there
. The skin was at once hypersensitive and
weirdly
numb, as if it belonged to someone else. I
hated
how they looked and how they made me feel,
the
pain and the dragging disgrace that attached to
them
. "Don't," I muttered, flinching. "Not there."

"I'm sorry." He kissed me again, on the side
of
the neck this time, but he didn't let me go. "Is
this
from your accident?"

"Yeah. Leave it, Rowan. It's ugly."

"No, it's just... Jesus, it must hurt." His finger
traced
the long vertical incision where I'd been cut
open
. The touch made me feel at once sick and
hungry
, as if I could dissolve beneath his caress
and
either die or be made whole. "This was from
the
surgery, right? And this
--
bloody hell, this
looks
like..."

I could tell him. I could tell him here and
now
, resting my brow on his thigh, or I never
would
. No-one beyond my doctors, my colleagues
and
my immediate family knew. I'd been
commended
for my sacrifice
--
had gone down in
the
line of duty, but shame burned me up every
time
I thought about that night. I remembered it one
way
, and Jack had remembered it different. Jack
had
to be right, of course. I'd been facedown on the
concrete
, blind with blood loss, dying, so of
course
his sworn version of events was better than
mine
. I wanted to believe that. Wanted to believe
that
what Jack and I had, that bond forged and
hammered
tight on the anvil of all our shared
dangerous
days, would never have permitted him
to
see me gunned down and then turn tail and run.

"It's a bullet hole," I said hoarsely, closing my
eyes
in the soft cotton of Rowan's pyjama trousers.

"I was shot."

He lifted me carefully. "Sit in the armchair.
It'll be easier for you than the sofa." I thought about
arguing
, but he was right: the chair's worn velvet
embraced
me. I was even able to draw my knees
up
to my chest the way I wanted, to curl up and
tuck
my feet under me. He handed me one of the
little
crystal glasses and I took it gingerly,
uncertain
of my grip. "There," he said. "Slow,
remember
?"

He sat back down opposite me. He hadn't
refastened
his pyjama cord and I could see the V of
his
skinny belly, the places I'd kissed to arouse
him
. I could taste his come. Sucking him off had
made
me hard, but that had subsided thoroughly. I
took
a sip from the glass, expecting it to taste like
sherry
, or something my gran would palm off on
me
at Christmas. A kind of golden explosion hit the
root
of my tongue, and I choked, clamping a hand
to
my mouth. Aniseed and nameless herbal vapours
rose
into my sinuses. I coughed, and just had time
to
set the glass down before a violent sneeze shook
me
. "Jesus fucking Christ."