by Harper Fox
For love, or for such a grand prime-of-life erection? Silver didn’t stop to find out. One thing he knew: they were both too old for a fall, not without the other standing ready. Good times ahead if they were lucky, but these days they’d break, not bounce. He guided George’s cock into his mouth, heard with satisfaction his deep, rough-edged groan. Put his arms around him and rubbed the satiny skin beneath his T-shirt, telling him with the flats of his palms that everything would be all right, a mute caressing signal in the dark. Oh, and there was the signal by way of return, clumsy hands stroking his hair, absurdly tender. Silver pulled back, making him gasp. “Listen,” he said, wiping his mouth. “You’re a sweetheart, and you could probably fuck a cobweb without breaking it if you had to. But it’s okay to go down my throat.”
Ah, he’d been close. Silver just barely got to him in time. Opened up and let him ram himself comfortably, powerfully deep, the cut-off to his airway scarcely costing him a breath, instantly melting to a hot rush. He thrust in Silver’s embrace, one yell shaking a little more plaster dust down from the oaks. Probably sending up starlings from the real ones outside, Silver thought, and he saw them like the first touch of a dream. He swallowed again and again, and then when George was quivering with aftermath in his embrace, let go of his spent shaft. Laid his head on the warm belly. “Oh, no.”
Quick worried movement, hands pushing back his head to examine his face. “What’s wrong?”
“Not again. Can’t keep my eyes open. What the fuck is the matter with me?”
“You’re just tired, Sil. You’ve been living, like, five lives for a normal guy’s one. And I know what a hardarse you are, but Lenny Price fucked you over. You’re shocked and you’re still hurt. Come here, you lovely guy. Come with me.”
Chapter Fourteen
Lenny bangs Silver in the basement. George and Silver sleep off an afternoon fuck, tangled limb to limb in a narrow camp bed. Maybe Silver was right, and good memories could be laid like a bandage over bad. God, I hoped so. I’d have taken out each painful hour of his life if I could, patched and mended and traded new for old.
He was snoring gently, head pillowed on my chest. Drooling a bit, now I came to look. I stopped a heave of laughter before it could roll up through my body and disturb him. So elegant when awake, he slept like something hit hard by a car. My T-shirt was hitched up beneath my armpits, so I used the hem to dab at his mouth. Least I could do, seeing as some of the mess was my own half-dry come. I kissed his brow. “Silver.”
I hadn’t meant to wake him, but he surfaced straight away, eyes wide. “Is everything all right?”
“It’s all fine. Stand down, soldier.”
He rolled up to lean over me, fear and disorientation fading. “Can I tell you something? It’s gonna sound weird, and I don’t want to embarrass you.”
“Uh-oh.”
“You’re the only guy I’ve ever been with outside of work who hasn’t made a crack about not having to pay for it now, or talked about money in one way or another. You haven’t even mentioned it.”
“Oh. Er, right. Should I have?”
“No. Never. These guys were boyfriends.”
I frowned. “Boyfriends? In that case it was just bloody rude of them.”
“You get that, don’t you? It’s obvious. But I’ve looked all my life for someone kind and civilised enough to know it without being told.”
I tried for a worldly, urbane nod. But slowly it was dawning upon me that I must be a boyfriend too. That he thought about me that way. Confused pleasure overwhelmed me, and then the outrageous idea that I could be the kind and civilised someone at the end of his long road. “Probably I’m just old-fashioned,” I said, feeling the ghost of a childhood stammer try to come back to haunt me. “About manners and stuff, I mean. Or maybe I’m just old.”
“I’m older than you. And I never was looking for some fit young trophy to hang on my arm. Speaking of arms, though, you’d better give me that one back.”
I shifted a little to release him. The arm he wanted was the one with his elegant Dior wristwatch attached. He glanced at the gleaming dial. “Oh, man, I slept for ages. I’ve got to go.”
My stomach dropped. Stupid of me to think this would end in any other way. “Right,” I said, hurriedly disentangling. “Er, look. It’s not for me to say, but are you in any fit state to cope with clients?”
“I dunno.” He rolled over me and lithely onto his feet, paused long enough to flash me his devastating grin. “I hope it won’t come to that. I’ve got a job interview.”
“Oh.” I tried to work this out. And down through my sleep-drenched calculations the penny dropped. “Oh.”
He was looking under the bed for his socks. “Do you remember the thing you asked for in the hospital?” he asked, emerging flushed and bright-eyed. “Or rather... you didn’t ask, which was what made it so perfect. But you might have done, if you’d been five years old instead of fifty. The thing you might’ve wanted.”
My mouth had dried out. “Not to have to share you. But I didn’t mean—”
“Never mind what you meant. What if I might want it too? What if I might not want to be shared?”
“Oh, Silver. Whoa. You’re still reacting to Lenny. Don’t make any sudden moves.”
“There’s nothing sudden about this. It’s security work, bodyguarding diplomats and the like. They’ve been headhunting me. I’ve been meaning to move over for a while.”
He found his socks. I watched him flop into the old velvet chair to put them on, the one from my mum’s house that had followed me through two marriages and into this strange new world. That and the chess set were all I’d really wanted with me in the empty house. They felt like seeds, or ideas, or the key notes to one of Melchior’s symphonies. Silver’s new job sounded ideal, and would give me something I’d coached myself so hard not to want that my bones ached with yearning to get it. Promptly I tried to sabotage the deal. “Don’t you think that... you know, when you feel better again, stronger, and you come back from a job—”
“I’ll feel empty again?”
“Yes. As an... As an upturned cup.”
“It’s hard to know. The job’s with a branch of my old outfit, so I’ll be taking my ambassadors into some of the hairiest corners of creation. Plenty of danger to wear out my demons for me, just... no sex. I’d be away a lot, but I could maybe get a place near here for when I’m home.”
“Don’t do that, Sil—not unless you want to, I mean. This is a big house. Move in here for a while, if you like. I could be waiting, when you come back from the difficult jobs, the ones that empty you out. We could play chess.”
Silver dropped the shoe he’d been about to put on. He came back to the bed, and he crouched at my feet and looked up at me smiling, and all my fears turned to dust. “I would love that,” he said. “You’d fill me up, wouldn’t you? Right to the brim. I would love it.”
Too much. Too sweet, too good. I made one last try at destruction. “People will wonder what on earth you’re doing with someone like me. Handsome Aaron Silver with Fatty Fenchurch.”
He tried and failed to repress a snort of laughter. “Fatty Fenchurch? Are you kidding me? Where did that one come from?”
“Oh, you know. School. But it had a certain ring to it, and it stuck.”
“Well, unstick it now. People are more damn likely to wonder what respected architect and town-planner George is doing with a retired whore.”
“Whore, from the same root as dear,” I said, cupping his face between my hands. “Do we care what people think, Sil?”
“If I get to be with you? Never. Not a solitary fuck.” He reached up and hauled me into his arms.
***
People. I stood in the porch of the house in Pleasant Gardens, and I felt them all around me: here in the city, out through the suburbs and into the green counties beyond. Further, over oceans, hidden by stupendous curved horizons. Laughing and fighting and fucking up the planet, beautiful and deadly, working out what it
meant to be human and alive on a world with limited resources.
If I closed my eyes, I could feel the heat from the solar panels I’d install on every rooftop here, anticipate the roar of the generator bank I wanted to build down the road. I could feel it all failing, and Crispin Heath and his generation paying the price. I could feel a last-minute worldwide catch being made, and all being somehow, miraculously, finally well. And reaching out to meet and entwine with all these possibilities, I could feel the couple of good decades Sil and I might have ahead. I tightened my fists in my pockets, trying to hold on to the idea.
The garden gate creaked. No good standing about with closed eyes, not in times like these. Not with such sights to see as Silver, pausing in the gateway to wave goodbye. My urban fox, off about his business in the city streets. He was coming back, he’d said, to tell me about his interview and spend his first night in our den, but I knew I’d never tame him. Pain and happiness seized me, the pang of both as pure as the afternoon sky. I took my hands out of my pockets, opened them up like birds’ wings and blew him a flying kiss. He mimed a catch, a drop, a hurried hunt among the daisies. Stood up straight again, fanning himself with relief. Found it. Tucked it inside his breast pocket, as near as he could to his heart. Waved to me, and was gone.
About the Author
Harper Fox has become a well-loved go-to author for fans of M/M romance. Here you’ll find immersive tales of excitement, magic, drama, all underpinned by the ordinary processes of love, hope and loss in an imperfect world.
Harper has garnered critical acclaim for novels such as Scrap Metal, Brothers of the Wild North Sea, Seven Summer Nights and The Salisbury Key. She is also creator of the enduringly popular Tyack & Frayne mystery series. Many of her ebooks are also available in paperback and audio format. You can find news of her current projects and full backlist at her website, www.harperfox.net.
A northerner at heart, Harper has returned to her native Northumberland after a spell in Cornwall. She travels between the two as often as she can, and feels she has a home in both magical kingdoms. She is married to Jane, and enslaved by three cats.