“Why would I like that?”
“You tell me, Jasper.”
Jasper. Goddamn. I’d spent my whole life trying to convince people to overlook my full name, but Red had a way of wrapping her tongue around it that made me briefly forget Kim’s ominous silence.
Briefly, because there was no forgetting Kim when he was suddenly in front of me, his gaze as intense as it had ever been. More so. “Are you drunk?”
I winced guiltily. “A little. Sorry, I was halfway here before I figured it might be a problem for you, and by then—” I waved my hand vaguely. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. My problems aren’t yours.”
“What if I want them to be?”
“Why would you want that?”
“Why not?”
“Dear God.” Red laughed. “You’ve met your evasive match there, Kim. No wonder you’ve been pissing in circles for weeks.”
That she seemed to know enough about Kim and me to make that judgement seemed oddly normal. And it was reassuring to know that Kim’s habitual deflection wasn’t all about me.
But I didn’t look at Red. Couldn’t, because I had eyes just for Kim as I took his face in my hands and kissed him, really kissed him, falling into him the way I should’ve been falling all along. Falling into his arms. Falling in love. Because I could love him, and he could love me, if only we’d both stop sitting down at the foot of the hill.
Kim let out a surprised grunt, but didn’t resist as I backed him against the trailer’s thin wall. And I didn’t stop my assault on his mouth, even when lips that weren’t Kim’s brushed a soft kiss to the back of my neck.
Red’s touch was fleeting, and thrilling. I didn’t notice where she went, but I smelled her sweet, feminine scent mingling with the lingering incense smoke, and with Kim’s unique essence of wood, paint, and ink.
If I’d been mildly drunk before, I was intoxicated now. I craved Kim’s skin against mine, and I fumbled clumsily with his T-shirt, yanking it over his head like we were alone. He returned the favour and his chest hit mine. I closed my eyes, wading through the quagmire of complication we’d created between us, chasing the healthy oblivion that was a world away from our shared demons.
The solitude I’d spent years craving was a distant memory as I gently swiped Kim’s legs from under him and lowered him to the floor. The heat from the log burner reached my face, and déjà vu skirted around the edge of my conscious thoughts, taking me back to when I’d met Kim, to that hazy day at the festival I’d fought tooth and nail to avoid. I’d been a different man since that day, like Kim’s touch had set me on a path I’d desperately needed to travel, perhaps my own recovery of sorts.
Could he taste the wine on my tongue? Alarmed by the thought, I pulled back, but Kim restrained me, holding me tight against him, his kiss fierce and demanding, his long legs wrapped around my waist like a cage.
And I knew then that I wasn’t getting off this train.
I slowly opened my eyes. Kim’s gaze was searching. Frightened. “Don’t go.”
“I won’t. I’m right here, I promise.”
For a moment I feared he hadn’t heard me, but then Red’s lips brushed my neck again, and the lightness of her touch seemed to reach Kim’s face.
“Beautiful boys,” she whispered. And I sensed her ghosting around us and settle on the couch. Her presence was comforting . . . reassuring where perhaps many people would’ve found it intrusive. I looked at her and she smiled, and the heat between Kim and me cast a glow about the room that even the brightest flame couldn’t match.
I moved so my body covered Kim completely, and kissed him, absorbing his quiet moan like it was my own, and sliding my tongue against his. His slender legs tightened around me, and he tugged me impossibly closer, tilting his head so our kiss deepened.
But I couldn’t resist a glance at Red. Beside us on the couch, she shifted, leaning back, her hourglass body a picture of relaxation. Somewhere along the line she’d lost Kim’s T-shirt, leaving her in just her shorts, and the kind of bra I’d dreamed about as a conflicted teenaged boy.
She flashed me a wink that made my cock harder, and then Kim moaned, bringing my attention back to him. He loosened his legs around me, and let them fall open, his intentions suddenly clear, and it was this that finally shocked me, despite having sensed from the beginning that he was a versatile lover.
I stripped us both of jeans, socks, and underwear, and lay over him once more, pressing us together like I’d never been gone. His dick was as hard as mine—harder—and the temptation to straddle him and sink down on his cock was strong, but I didn’t. Instead, I moved over him, nudged his legs wider apart, and pushed them back to his chest. Condoms and lube appeared like magic, pressed into my palm by a hand I barely noticed as Kim sank his teeth into my neck.
He broke away with a growl. “Fuck me.”
I didn’t need telling twice. I rolled a condom on and lubed up, my eyes drifting to Red, who was watching us with a hooded expression I couldn’t entirely read. It felt almost natural to ask her to join us, though in what capacity, I didn’t quite know.
Like she’d heard my errant, rambling thought, Red shook her head with another devilish wink, her message, for once, clear. This isn’t about me.
And it wasn’t. It was all about Kim, and me, and Red—about all of us, perhaps. Maybe. Who the fuck knew?
Not me, but as I slid slowly inside Kim, it didn’t seem to matter. It was obvious that Red was getting off on seeing us together, and there was nothing in her gaze but a heated kindness that made everything right, filling the gaps in the foundations Kim and I had fudged since we’d met.
I looked down at him. His head was thrown back, his eyes closed, apparently already lost to me fucking him. My heart skipped a beat. Christ, he was stunning. I cupped his jaw in my hand and thrust into him, a ragged groan escaping me. How had I not dreamed of this . . . of the tight, wet heat of him clamped around me? Of his blunt nails digging into my hips? What the fuck had we been doing all this time when we could’ve been doing this?
“Jas.”
Kim tensed and I quickened my pace, arching my back as his heels drove me deeper into him. He cried out and warmth pulsed between us, coating our stomachs. His body clamped tighter around me, and I knew I was about to become beautifully and wonderfully undone.
I mourned the loss of the magic that sealed us together, even as release rushed up on me, searing through me until I was devoid of all else. I dropped my head and groaned, seizing up and shuddering as I came.
Still groaning, I dug my teeth into Kim’s chest, and I lost myself to his embrace, sweat and come mingling, our breathing so laboured I couldn’t tell where his ended and mine began. I was suddenly profoundly tired, wrecked, but conversely too wired to close my eyes, and too enchanted by Kim to reclaim the hold he had on me. And so we stared at each other, unblinking, chests heaving, until Red placed a warm flannel on the back of my neck.
“Clean up. He’s not going anywhere.”
I took her word for it and briefly detached myself to clean us up and ditch the condom. When I returned, I found him as I’d left him, smiling and drowsy, what little un-inked skin he had stained with an entrancing flush.
Drawn to him, I lay down beside him, dragging a gentle kiss over his jaw. “You okay?”
Kim hummed. “I’m wrecked.”
The echo of my own sentiment made me grin. The floor of his trailer was surprisingly comfortable, and I couldn’t imagine ever moving.
Red draped a blanket over us. I forced myself to look away from Kim and saw that she was dressed again.
“Don’t go.” She seemed surprised. I held out my hand. “Stay.”
The conflict in her eyes was clear to see, and Kim, who’d said very little since I’d stumbled into his home, finally stirred. “Let her go, Jas.”
Whether it was the way he said my name—the low tone that made me shiver—or something in his eyes that only she could see, I had no idea, but the standof
f was brief. Red shook her head gently at me and left the room, and then she came back with more blankets and put another log in the burner. I wanted her to look at me again, but she didn’t. She kissed Kim’s cheek and left, and then Kim and I fell asleep, tangled warmly together like we’d lain like this a thousand times over.
The tickle of sunlight on my face woke me the next morning. My hips hurt from being curled on the floor, and my shoulder was bent at an odd angle, but Christ, Kim’s arms around my waist felt good.
It seemed criminal to move, but curiosity got the better of me. I shifted slowly onto my back and found Kim fast asleep. For a fleeting moment, it slipped my mind that the empty space behind him meant something. I touched his face, recalling the ethereal strain in him the night before when he’d come. I’d never seen anything more gorgeous.
As entranced as I was, Kim’s peaceful silence set my attention drifting, and now I remembered Red, and the rueful hope in her eyes as she’d watched Kim and me add a primal brick to our foundations.
Carefully, I disentangled myself from Kim’s addictive embrace and glanced around. A scrawled note by the burner caught my eye, and I reached over Kim to snag it. The note smelled of Red, though her handwriting was almost as illegible as my own. Squinting, I could just about make out the words:
Boys,
I’m hitting the road, and I won’t be back anytime soon.
Be good. Be kind. And thank you. Your love is beautiful, and I’ve learned more from you than you’ll ever know.
Lena xx
There was a cryptic message in there somewhere, but Kim stirring kept me from brooding over it. He opened his eyes, and I handed him the note immediately. “Lena’s gone.”
He nodded, still blinking away sleep. “I thought she might.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He sat up slowly. “She kept telling me that she was waiting for the moment when she knew I didn’t need her anymore.”
“But you’ll always need her.”
I believed that as much as Kim, maybe more, but he shook his head. “Something changed between us when I met you. It’s like this—” he gestured between us “—whatever it is, has set her free.”
Could matters of the heart be so kind? Unwelcome, Rich’s belligerence when he’d been caught flashed into my mind. The cynic in me had sought strength from it, vindication, but as Kim’s theory sank in, I realised that perhaps I wasn’t as emotionally jaded as I liked to believe.
Kim lay down again, tugging me with him. “I like sleeping on the floor. Makes me feel young.”
“Young? I feel fucking crippled. You’re gonna have to show me your bed one of these days.”
“It’s over there.” Kim jerked his head at the couch. “Pulls out to a tasty king-size when I remember to do it.”
I frowned. “So what’s in the back, then?”
“A mess, mainly, but it’s where I do painting and stuff—canvas, not wood. Ink designs that never make it to skin. I’ve got some of Brix’s work in there, and Calum’s.”
Calum. I’d heard the name a few times. If my memory served me right, he was Brix’s boyfriend. “Can I see?”
“See what? A bunch of old paintings and a pile of tarpaulin?”
“Yes.”
“You’re fucking weird.” But Kim got up anyway, grumbling, and led me to where the back of the trailer merged with the extension.
The space was brighter than I’d imagined, helped along by the stark white walls and large windows I hadn’t seen before as they were on the opposite side to the orchard entrance. I looked out over the miles of fields. In the distance, I could see Belly Acre Farm, and beyond that, the moody blue sea, shimmering on the horizon above Porthkennack’s cliffs. The view was stunning, inspiring, and only the insatiable desire to see Kim’s artwork tore me away.
And fuck, what artwork. There wasn’t as much as he’d led me to believe, just a handful of abstract paintings that had his block-like signature, but they were all stunning—full of tempestuous colour and chaos. One in particular drew me in to the point that Kim waved his hand in front of my face.
“Have it, if you like,” he said. “It’ll only end up on the bonfire.”
“On the bonfire?”
“I burn all my paintings.”
I opened my mouth. Shut it again. “Why?”
Kim shrugged. “They don’t come from a good place.”
My heart ached for him as I imagined the cloud of distress lurking behind each piece. Art therapy? Maybe. Whatever it was, the paintings would haunt me long after Kim had burned them on his fire.
“Don’t go,” Kim whispered.
The echo of Kim’s plea the previous night brought me back to the present, but his expression was playful now, devoid of the fear that had lanced my chest then. “Huh?”
Kim smiled. “My old man says I have the attention span of a drunk fish, but you take the piss, mate.”
It was an accusation I’d faced before, though it wasn’t entirely accurate. My attention span was fine; I just seldom focussed where I should. “Are you working today?”
“Yes, and a couple of appointments at the studio too.”
“How many days do you work there?”
“A couple, give or take, depending on how much I’ve got on in the workshop.”
I thought of the ever-growing list of work my family was demanding from him. “I’m surprised you have any spare time at all, to be honest.”
Kim grimaced. “I haven’t, really. I only took yesterday off because I thought Lena was going to leave.”
“And you were right.”
“First time for everything, eh? Are you hungry? I’ve got to get to the workshop by eight if I’ve got any hope of staying on schedule, but I’ve got time for a buttie.”
Eight? I checked my phone and saw it was barely seven. Damn. It had been a long while since I’d been awake and functioning so early in the day, and beyond being hungry, I was bloody starved, a typical hangover from a Manning family dinner. “Tell you what, I’ll stay for breakfast if you let me cook. I can’t remember when I last ate a hot meal that hadn’t been cooked for me by someone else.”
“That’s kinda sad, bro. What do you live on?”
“You don’t want to know.” And by the disapproval already brewing in Kim’s expression, I’d said more than enough already.
I sequestered myself in Kim’s tiny kitchen and set about buttering bread and frying bacon while he took a shower. A fruitless search for HP sauce took me to the fridge, where an envelope balanced precariously behind a Bob Marley magnet caught my eye. It had my name on it. Intrigued, I reached for it, but as Kim’s footsteps sounded behind me, I stuffed it in my pocket. I’d recognised the scrawl as Red’s, and something told me she’d left the envelope separate from her goodbye note for a reason.
A reason that seemed suddenly unimportant as Kim wove his long, warm arms around me. “Watcha cooking?”
“Bacon. That all right? You said you wanted a buttie.”
“Can’t go wrong with a bacon sarnie, mate. Did you find the ketchup?”
“No, but to be fair, I was looking for HP.”
Kim pulled a face. “You like that shit? Why? You ain’t northern.”
“Southerners eat brown sauce too.”
“Not this one.”
Fair enough. Kim retrieved the sauces while I loaded thickly buttered farmhouse bread with crispy bacon. Breakfast of champions, and gone far too soon. We polished them off in moments.
I offered to wash up, but Kim shook his head. “Fuck that. I’ll do it later. What are you doing now? Are you driving home, or into town?”
My wobble-bike adventure came flooding back. “Actually, do you think I could cadge a lift? I kinda cycled here last night.”
“Cycled?” Kim peered out of the window. “On what? I can’t see a bike.”
Shit. I couldn’t quite recall where I’d dumped Gaz’s bike, a fact that Kim, despite knowing what had led me to be so careless, seemed to find hil
arious.
We searched the outskirts of the commune together, eventually discovering the bike upside down in a ditch.
“It’s got a flat tyre,” Kim said. “You won’t be able to ride it anywhere.”
“I didn’t do much riding last night. It was more of a barely balanced scoot.”
Kim chuckled. “I’ve got some tyres at the shop. I’ll bring a couple home later if you’re okay leaving it here?”
I couldn’t imagine that Gaz would be missing it, so I left it by Kim’s front door and clambered into the pink Fiat to cadge a lift into town. Kim didn’t say much on the drive and we were practically on my doorstep before I remembered I’d never told him where I lived.
Kim shrugged when I said as much. “It’s a small town. Everyone knew when a fit bloke moved into number twelve.”
“‘Fit’?” I scoffed. “Speak for yourself.”
“I do.” Kim backed the Fiat into a space that was hardly big enough for a go-kart. “Where’s your car?”
Fuck’s sake. It was exactly where I’d left it at the farm. I admitted my idiocy with a groan and covered my face with my hands. Kim laughed. “Booze makes you scatty, eh?”
“Not especially. I’m as much of a knobhead without it.”
Kim laughed harder. “Do you want me to run you back there?”
“Nah. I don’t need it. I’ll get it later.”
“Fair enough.” Kim put the Fiat in gear and his hand hovered over the handbrake. “So . . .”
“So.” I made no move to get out of the car. Kim and I had made no verbal commitment to each other from this point on, but I couldn’t let him go without knowing when I’d see him again.
“Do you wanna come over later?”
Relief poured through me, seeping from my brain into every nerve. I turned to Kim and smiled. “‘Later’?”
He shrugged. “I’ve got a crazy day, but I’ve got to come home sometime, right? Would be fucking ace if you were there . . . I mean, if you haven’t got shit to do of your own.”
Junkyard Heart (Porthkennack Book 7) Page 10