I put the painful roil in my gut down to the copious amounts of scones and jam I’d consumed throughout my afternoon at the hippie-fest.
Lights out. Showtime. The band hit the stage, and I caught the lead singer’s opening vocal in what I hoped was the first of many epic shots.
Of course, hope was a four-letter word. Shooting bands was one of my favourite ways to earn a crust, but gigs like this, dark and smoky, were a bugger to photograph. The sensible side of me knew I’d be lucky to get ten decent shots out of every hundred, but that didn’t stop the thrill in my veins that came with embracing the job I loved.
I took a few snaps of the band head-on, then changed my lens and stepped to the side, focussing on the bass player, who had a presence I wanted to capture. With her lustrous hair and milky skin, this chick was entrancing. She owned the stage, and I got a little lost in her until a change in tempo roused me. The band slid seamlessly from a stomping anthem into something gentler in cadence, and I moved on.
The band played through their set as I shot the stage from every possible angle, and then headed upstairs to the balcony to get an aerial view. On my way, I took in the crowd and the electric atmosphere. I knew the band’s drummer from the summers I’d spent in Porthkennack, and dug the EPs he’d sent me over the past few years, but I’d never seen them live, which I regretted now that I saw how awesome they were. The grungy bass and funky guitars made me almost wish I’d left my camera at home, that I was rocking out in the mosh pit with the hard-core fans, then I caught the redheaded chick in a shot that made my night, and everything was as it should be.
The gig flew by. I filled one memory card and was halfway through a second when a hand on my shoulder blasted my tunnel vision. I jumped a mile, half stumbled out of my crouch, and collided face-first with a hard, wood-scented chest.
“Shit.” And thank fuck for neck straps. I’d dropped cameras before, and there was nothing more depressing than seeing an expensive Canon smashed on the ground.
Strong hands steadied me. “Sorry, mate. Didn’t mean to scare ya.”
Kim. Of course it was. As his melodic brogue reached me, even over the pounding music, I let myself imagine that I’d recognise it anywhere.
Idiot. I got my bearings and tried to let my sensible inner voice calm me into someone remotely like the cool dude I liked to kid myself I could be. Trouble was, I wasn’t cool, never had been, and I met Kim’s twinkling gaze with a noise that was suspiciously like a giggle. Nice one, numbnuts.
Kim appeared unfazed, though he waited until I’d gathered my equilibrium, then offered me a beer. “Cheeky one on the job?”
He didn’t have to ask twice. I took the bottle and downed half of it in one go. “Cheers. It’s fucking boiling up here.”
“Yeah, I thought you looked a little parched.” Kim drank from a bottle of water with a smirk that made me forget about the camera around my neck and the band tearing up the stage below. “And happy, which makes sense.”
“Makes sense?”
“Aye. No offence, but I could tell the jam shit wasn’t your bag. Had you pegged for an artist . . . a designer, or a sculptor maybe, when I first saw you, but the camera fits. It suits you.”
“Suits me?” In the back of my mind, I was aware how thick I was likely coming across, but my ability to string a sentence together seemed to evaporate more with every second I stared at Kim, at his messy hair and warm eyes, at the artfully tatty T-shirt stretched across his lean chest. Dear God, he was something else.
Kim chuckled. “Trust me. I’ve been watching you dart about this place since I got here, and it’s probably the coolest shit I’ve ever seen. Last photo I took, I chopped my pa’s head off.”
I didn’t see how that made me cool, but I took the compliment. Coming from Kim, it felt more sincere than anything I’d heard in a while. “Trust me, there’ll be plenty of shots where I’ve decapitated people. Shit happens.”
Kim smiled, but said nothing as I refocussed and snapped the last few angles I’d had on my list. When I was done, I half expected him to be gone, but found him behind me again. “So this is what you do?” he asked.
“Some days.” I reclaimed my now-warm beer and took a healthy swig. “When I’m lucky.”
“What do you do the rest of the time?”
“Editing, some design work. Anything that keeps me out of trouble.”
“Trouble? You don’t look the type.”
Kim leaned closer, eyebrow raised. I absorbed the scent of fresh-cut wood, and covered the dizzying effect it had on me with a snort. “Tell that to my stepmum. Everyone always told her my brother Gaz would give her the most grief, but I smashed that shit out of the water.”
“I’m intrigued.”
“Yeah?” I studied Kim, tried to gauge if his bright eyes and open stance were really the flirtation I wanted them to be. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything.”
Okay. My brain failed me for a moment. Most of my anecdotes from the past involved heavy drinking and the hooliganism that inevitably followed, but I had other stories too, tales of being caught with my pants down by my elderly grandmother, furtively exploring the anatomy of the summer help from the neighbouring farm. Did Kim seriously want to hear those? The rational voice inside me said no, until Kim edged closer, his thigh touched mine, his wayward hair brushed my cheek, and the air shifted.
“I’ve been watching you all night,” he said.
“Really?” I swallowed thickly. “What did you see?”
“Enough.”
“Enough for what?”
“Enough to know that I want to see more.”
I tightened my grip on my beer bottle. Felt the warmth of the glass seep into my palm. “Like what?”
In answer, Kim plucked the bottle from my hand and set it on a nearby ledge. “Everything.”
We pushed our way through the crowded venue. Kim’s hand was hot at the base of my spine, and I felt him behind me with every nerve in my body. It crossed my mind to make for the nearest exit, catch a cab back to my Porthkennack flat, and screw his brains out in the comfort of my bedroom, but I couldn’t wait.
I led him downstairs and backstage. Around us, the band’s road crew were hard at work, packing up equipment and untangling wires, but they paid us no heed as we slipped past them to the storage rooms below the performance area. I tried one door, then another, and another, until I found the prop room I was looking for—the only room that locked from the inside.
Kim kicked the door shut behind us. We stared at each other. Above us, the thudding bass of the show’s after-party kept tempo with the blood rushing in my ears, and then Kim moved—a blur in the dim light—and pinned me against the door, and the surrounding noise dulled to a low roar.
It had been months since I’d kissed someone. I’d had a few fucks since my life had imploded, but they’d been just that—fucks—no kissing or lingering eye contact. No connection. Nothing like the heat that sluiced through me the moment Kim’s lips touched mine.
I fell into his kiss with a crazed hunger that he matched with every clash of teeth and plundering swipe of his tongue. Lips, jaw, neck. I shoved my hand into his silk-soft hair and tugged as he bit down on my collarbone.
“Fuck.” I threw my head back.
Kim pressed himself against me, his hard, sinuous muscles digging into my bones. “I’ve been thinking about this all day.”
I couldn’t deny I’d done the same. I slid my hands under his T-shirt and roamed the smooth skin of his back. “Yeah? What else did we do in your dirty daydreams?”
Kim dropped to his knees and unbuckled my belt. “This.”
My head hit the door with a dull thud. Kim yanked my jeans down, then my boxers, and shot me an evil smirk as my dick sprang loose, giving away how much I wanted his mouth on me. “Do it,” I whispered. “Show me.”
Kim closed his lips around my cock and sucked me down deep. He moaned around me and met my gaze with a dark stare that made my knees tremble
as I clenched my fists. Fuck, it felt good. I couldn’t recall the last decent blowjob I’d had, and certainly none in recent memory held a candle to what Kim was doing to me.
I groaned, glad I’d had the foresight to hustle him to a place no one but him would hear me. The last time I’d been down here had been to gather wooden farm animals for my brother Nicky’s A-level drama production. In a distant place in my mind, it felt comforting to know nothing had changed here in the decade since.
A shift in pace brought me back to the present. Kim had slowed his movements and tugged my balls, and now he pulled off with a wet slurp. “I want to fuck you.”
My heart raced. I hadn’t been with anyone for a while, but it had been even longer since I’d last bottomed. Rich—my ex—had been a totally inflexible top, and I’d been through a phase of rebellion when we’d finally split for good, fucking anyone who’d been willing. It had been cold and clinical—getting off, then getting gone. I’d sworn I’d never go back to how it had been with Rich . . . never give myself to anyone like that, body, mind, soul, whatever. But the vow escaped my conscious thought as I fumbled for my wallet. I wanted Kim. Wanted him all over me, inside me, deep and brutal. I wanted him now.
I pushed a condom and a sachet of lube into his hands. “Do it.”
“You sure?”
“Fuck yeah.” In case he needed convincing, I turned, placed my palms flat on the door, and widened my stance. For an aching moment, nothing happened. Then I heard the zipper on Kim’s jeans and the tear of the condom wrapper, and I closed my eyes.
Kim made short work of getting me ready. It had been a while for me, but he seemed to sense that I didn’t need a gentle touch, that I craved the burn and stretch of his dick inside me.
He withdrew his fingers and pressed the blunt head of his cock against my hole. My eyes watered. He felt big, really big, and my body resisted, fought him, until he slipped past the mutinous muscle and slid home, slow and smooth, like we’d done this a thousand times over.
I panted out short, sharp breaths. Heat flooded my face and sweat trickled down my back. It hurt, but, fuck, it was good—better than good. I’d forgotten how the push and pull of a man’s cock inside me could be so consuming.
Kim pressed in until he could go no further. Then he rubbed my back and squeezed my shoulder. “Okay?”
“Yeah.” It came out as a strangled groan, but the sentiment apparently reached Kim all the same. He dug his nails into the sensitive flesh above my hip bone, and withdrew enough so he could slam back in with a jarring thrust that drove the breath from my lungs.
He growled and did it again, and again, setting a rhythm that erased all coherent thought from my mind. The dark, dusty storeroom and the noise from above faded away, and my world narrowed to the brutal dig of his cock, and his gravelly grunts and groans.
Damn, he was good at this. I almost wished that I could see him, watch his muscles bunch and constrict, absorb the snarl I imagined his full lips forming with every thrust of his hips, but there was something about getting fucked from behind, raw and rough, hands on the peeling paint of a door, or the cool concrete of an industrial wall. Something primal, and sordid, in all the right ways.
Shame it wasn’t going to last for long.
Kim leaned over me and bit my shoulder blade. I cried out, and the first stirrings of orgasm burned in my belly. I found my dick and matched Kim’s movements as my eyes rolled, and my sweaty hand slipped on the door.
I gasped. “You’re gonna make me come.”
“Shit, yeah. Do it. I’m close.”
Kim pulsed and swelled inside me. The sensation blew my mind, and my balls tightened to that painful point of thrilling agony, those dragged-out moments before coming when I was sure that I’d combust before I shot my load. “Harder.”
“Jesus.” Kim pulled on my hips and shoved my head down with his other hand, bending me in half. The change in angle led his cock to that magic bundle of nerves that made me scream. I buried my face in the crook of my elbow and came like a motherfucking train.
“Oh God, fuck.” I shuddered and spilled into my hand. It felt like it would never stop. Behind me, I was dimly aware of Kim growling out a few choice words of his own, too lost in the shot of warmth soothing me from the inside out, and the crashing rush of the hottest climax I’d had in years.
It seemed like I’d just blinked, and then Kim was easing out of me and gently coaxing me upright. He kissed the back of my neck and smoothed my sweat-damped hair out of my eyes. “All right?”
I moaned, better than all right, but incapable of intelligible speech. Kim chuckled and fumbled around. Fabric touched my hand, my back, and my legs, cleaning me up, then he spun me and pressed his forehead to mine.
“Your daydreams next time, eh?”
“Next time . . .”
Fuck’s sake. If there was one thing worse than editing reams of photos, it was editing them when my mind was elsewhere, like the weather, the lunch I’d forgotten to eat, or the crazy-hot fuck I’d had at the weekend. Next time. Yeah. Nice theory. Shame Kim and I had stumbled out of the gig venue, dazed and slightly awkward, without figuring when—or if—that would really happen. I’d been halfway home before I realised we hadn’t even exchanged numbers, an oversight that was bothering me more than I cared to admit.
Irritated, I glared at my computer screen. In my distraction I’d thrown a random textured filter over the current image I was working on, instead of reducing the background noise. I sighed and undid the action. The statuesque chick from Moon-Hot Monkey Paste was rocking the film grain, but it would probably take every trick in the book to make her look bad. The woman was beautiful.
I worked on the gig shots for most of the afternoon. The redhead caught my eye several times, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I spent most of my time scanning the crowd shots for Kim and his wild mop of dark hair. His lean shoulders and arresting smile. The venue had been dark and smoky, but Kim possessed a grin that brightened any room he walked into . . . in my head, at least. The only room I’d taken him into had been a fucking broom cupboard.
It was early evening by the time my phone pulled me out of my editing-induced coma. I glanced at the screen, saw my stepmother staring back at me, and scowled. Fucking Gaz setting her up on FaceTime. There was no escaping her now. With that in mind, I accepted the call, since it was safer than risking her showing up on my doorstep.
And obviously she asked me if I was all right. She always did, and my answer was always the same.
“Course I am.” I hauled myself off the sofa and stretched out the kinks in my spine. “Did you need me for something?”
“Dinner,” she said. “Your brothers are coming. I thought it would be nice if you joined us too.”
I rolled my eyes, glad I had my face turned away from the screen. Of course my darling brothers were home for dinner. They both lived in cottages on the bloody farm. It was only me, the perpetual black sheep, who refused to reside any further into the family bosom. “I dunno. Do you mean tonight? I’ve got a load of work still to do.”
“You can take a break, can’t you? Come on, Jasper. We haven’t seen you all week.”
I refrained from pointing out that I’d seen her for breakfast five days ago, and had spent the whole of my Saturday at that stupid crusty festival. Such logic would be lost on my wonderful stepmother. If she wanted me home for dinner, I’d be home for dinner. It was easier that way. Besides, I hadn’t looked in my fridge for days, preferring the company of my coffee machine and the bottle of Grouse I kept in my living room. Thursday night was pie night on the farm, and now I thought about it, there wasn’t much I wanted more.
Except a rematch with Kim.
“Jasper . . .”
I let my stepmum drown out the voice in my head and searched the detritus around me for some jeans. “All right, all right, I’m coming. I’ll be there in a bit, okay?”
“Seven o’clock,” she retorted. “Don’t be late, or your dad will have you
out on feed duty.”
I was late, but somehow still the first of my siblings to arrive. Tardiness was in the Manning genes. The dogs met me in the yard, smothering me like they hadn’t seen a human for months, and I found my stepmother in the kitchen, who wasn’t much better.
“Oh, Jasper,” she said, after squeezing the life out of me. “You’re so pale. You look like you haven’t seen the sun.”
She was more right than she knew. Today had been the first day all week I’d crawled out of my bed before 2 p.m., but she didn’t need to know that. So what if I was a night owl? There was more to life than milking cows at the arse crack of dawn.
“I’m fine, Ma.” I wriggled out of her embrace and swiped a bit of bread from the counter. “Where are the others?”
Laura Manning stared me down a moment, before the oven timer distracted her. “Nicolas is up the fields with Dad, and Gavin got caught up on the motorway. He said to start without him.”
Gaz hadn’t answered to “Gavin” in years. I hid my smirk with another bit of bread. Laura almost always addressed us by our full names, no matter our ages or the context of the conversation. “What’s he on the motorway for? Where’s he been?”
“Sourcing furniture for the barn.”
“Yeah?” For as long as I could remember, the biggest barn on the farm had been derelict, too vast and draughty for the small collection of animals my family kept alongside their arable operation, and too beat-up to store equipment of any value. Then Gaz had taken over the commercial side of the business and decided the barn would be the perfect venue for his latest harebrained scheme: an organic canteen, serving up the delights Laura and Nicky’s wife, Francesca, cooked up from surplus produce. I’d figured the grand plans as pie-in-the-sky at first, but after years of false starts and procrastination, things had begun to move along in recent months and the barn had started to grow into something humans could inhabit. “What kind of furniture is he looking for?”
Junkyard Heart (Porthkennack Book 7) Page 2