by Alexis Hall
I leaned over the side of the bed, like I was a little kid again, checking for monsters. Nik told me he would pull the duvet over his head and hide. But, me, I always had to look. There were no monsters under Caspian’s bed. Not even normal things like fluff or hair. What there was, though, was a battered cardboard box, which I dragged out by one of the flaps.
It was full of books like the one I’d found on the floor, all of them tatty and yellowing, with fairly cheesy cover art. Barring a few classics like Verne and Wells, it was mostly the sort of sci-fi I checked out of after three pages of “Grand Mardok Ooler Thon Thistlethwaite was sitting at his Steinway grand, while the gardleflumps gambolled majestically around the anterior viewport of his nebula class star destroyer.” Though some I recognized by being told a lot I should read them: Asimov, Russ, Vonarburg, Bradbury, Heinlein, Bujold, Engh, Le Guin.
I nosed through in search of any more mysterious dedications but came up empty. And finally put the box back where I’d found it. I’d already spent enough time going Sam Spade on Caspian’s belongings. Downbelow Station, however, seemed fair game, since it had just been lying there. And I desperately needed something to stop my brain eating itself with unanswerable questions.
So I made myself a little nest and snuggled down to read. There weren’t any gardleflumps but it was sufficiently dense that Caspian’s arrival felt like reprieve. I heard the door open and close, and then the sound of the shower.
Waiting for him in his bed was weirdly nervous-making, not least because I couldn’t guarantee the first words out of my mouth wouldn’t be Are you a serial killer or a bigamist and, if not, what the fuck is that locked door about? Which I didn’t think was the best way to initiate that conversation.
Finally, Caspian came into the room, hair damp and raven-sleek, a few drops of water still clinging tantalizingly to his neck and shoulders. He was naked except for the sexy billionaire pants he favored (and I favored too because they framed some of his best bits so very nicely) and he blushed a little when he saw what I was reading.
“I didn’t realize I’d left that out,” he said.
“I wouldn’t have taken you for a sci-fi buff.”
“My father was.” He climbed into bed beside me and gently coaxed the book from my hands. “This was one of his favorites.”
“It’s, uh, really serious. I’m not sure I have a clue what’s going on.”
I felt a bit like the we-both-reached-for-the-gun scene in Chicago: my voice was saying things, but they didn’t seem to have anything to do with me. Though if I was doing an unconvincing impression of myself, Caspian showed no sign of it. “It’s probably best to skip the history chapters at the beginning.”
“Why are they there, then?” Like, for example, the locked door in your apartment?
“I’m sorry, I don’t know.” For all his casual act, he touched that tatty paperback with such care as he put it back in the box. “I just know this story so well it feels less like reading. And more like…visiting old friends.”
Oh fuck. That was adorable.
And reminded me pretty sharply that Caspian was a human being, not a puzzle I was trying to solve in thirty seconds or less. There’d be plenty of time to ask him about his living arrangements.
Especially now I actually had access to them. Which was a big step for both of us. Even if it had only happened because it would have been majorly harsh to pack me back off to One Hyde Park when I was half naked and covered in come.
Anyway, I didn’t want to argue with him. I wanted to do cuddly post-sexing things with him. Afterglow not after-row. And, besides, immediate demands for explanations and no-holds-barred access to all the areas of the property was what a detective did during a murder inquiry. It wasn’t how a guest behaved.
At least, not a guest who wanted to be invited back.
“Caspian?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“I’m about to kiss you. Is that okay?”
He looked a little bewildered but nodded.
I leaned over. He was very still indeed, his hands curled in his lap. I let my breath brush his lips but, at the last moment, I reared up and kissed his nose instead.
He gave a startled laugh, lashes flickering. “What was that for?”
“You do it to me all the time.”
“Your nose invites me. But I meant the kiss.” He paused. “Regardless of locale.” He’d gone all cool and dry, which made me think he was secretly amused. That, and the hint of a smile in the curve of his mouth.
“I did it because I like you.”
“You like me?” he repeated, as if he wasn’t quite sure what to do with the information. “Well, that’s very flattering, thank you.”
He seemed determined not to meet my gaze just then. And I was hopelessly charmed by the way he could be so sophisticated—so full of sexual aggression and refined cruelty—and yet undone by the tiniest of tender gestures.
So I took him gently by the wrist and kissed his fingers too, surprised by the way they trembled against my lips. “Yes, it is. I mean, you already know I admire you. Am slightly intimidated by you sometimes. Fancy the living shit out of you. Can’t keep my hands off you. Want to be with you and please you and make you happy.” I inched a little closer over the expanse of bed. Enough that I could get a sense of him: his shape, his warmth, the rhythm of his breathing. “But when you talk to me, when you tell me what you’re thinking and what matters to you…I remember how much I like you as well.”
There was a long silence.
Then: “Go to sleep, Arden. It’s getting late.”
“Okay.”
I was on the edge of dropping off when I felt his hand close around mine in the secret darkness under the covers. I gave his fingers a drowsy squeeze.
“I like you too,” he whispered.
I waited a second or two.
Then: “Go to sleep, Caspian. It’s getting late.”
He laughed at that, his sweet, soft laugh, and it was almost prize enough to guard me from further sleepless speculation about the damn door.
* * *
I awoke a few hours later to an empty bed. Knowing what I did of Caspian’s habits, it shouldn’t have been a surprise.
But, somehow, it was. And it hurt.
I told myself this didn’t mean anything. That it didn’t diminish what we’d shared or the fact I was here.
Except it did mean something. It meant…I was spending my night alone. And suddenly, out of nowhere, I was lying there with my head full of that fucking photo. The one I’d seen in Milieu before I’d run away to Scotland: Caspian and his ex-boyfriend, Nathaniel Whateveritwas, at some fancy event together. It’d been taken long after they’d broken up, and quite a bit before he’d met me…but I wasn’t doing the best job of being rational about it. I mean, it wasn’t so much that the photo existed. It was how good they’d looked in it. Like they were meant to be together, Nathaniel’s hand curled so naturally around Caspian’s elbow.
When he would barely let me touch him at all.
Toga-ing myself in the sheet, I went to look for Caspian. He was in the living room, wrapped in a dressing gown and watching the gray-gold dawn as it broke across the city.
The way the window framed him reminded me of the first time I’d come to his office. I’d been furious then but still the sight of him there had touched at me somehow. He’d seemed at once so remote and so beautiful—a cold-eyed tiger in his corporate cage—and I’d yearned to both gentle and unleash him.
Part of me still yearned to do that.
But the rest of me just felt rejected.
Because it was all very well to stand around looking dramatically lonely when you were, in fact, lonely.
But I was right here.
Right. The Fuck. Here.
I perched on the arm of a chair. “What’s wrong?”
He glanced my way—his eyes all velvet-dark against navy cashmere—and gave me a faint smile. “I’m sorry. I’m a light sleeper and I’m not used to s
haring a bed.”
“What about when you were with Nathaniel?”
Fuck, why had I said that? The words clattered between us like a frying pan I’d dropped. He didn’t flinch but a kind of awful stillness settled over him. And I knew I’d gone too far, pushed too hard. Broken nearly every rule in the how not to make yourself look like a jealous, insecure harpy (while not-quite dating a billionaire) book. He would probably never let me get even this close again.
“I’m sorry,” I blurted out. “I’m tired. I don’t know where that came from.”
“Go back to bed, Arden.” He didn’t say it in a nasty way but that was almost worse. As if I was on the other side of the glass with the rest of the world.
“You could come with me?” I didn’t know what else to do so I tried a minxy look. “We don’t have to sleep.”
He shook his head.
“Can I stay, then?” Wow. That was just pathetic. I felt like a broken traffic light, flicking back and forth at random between signals. In my case: needy, flirty, and pushy.
“It’s really not necessary.”
“I want to.” I joined him at the window, watching the silver towers with their fleeting golden crowns.
If I could manage to shut up for five seconds, maybe he’d relax. Put his arm around me. Draw me in close. Let me snuggle. I wasn’t a morning person but if this was what life with Caspian meant…I was game to try.
Then my mouth happened. “Why don’t you trust me?”
There was a brief hesitation and then, with devastating patience, “I do trust you. If I didn’t, you wouldn’t be here.”
“And where exactly is here, Caspian?” My brain was screaming at me to stop. But I didn’t. Couldn’t. And I had no idea if this was coming from my better self or my worst. “In your bed but not in your arms? In your body but not in your heart?”
Oh what was the fuck was I expecting? For music to swell and lightning to flash from the sky as Caspian pulled me into a fierce embrace. Covered my mouth with his and—between deep, desperate kisses—told me in a voice hoarse with passion how much I meant to him. How much he needed me. The light in his dark, the balm of his soul, the jam in his doughnut. Whatever.
He was frowning. “We fucked in my office—which would have been entirely against my better judgment, had you not so comprehensively overthrown it. And now you’re staying in a place where only I stay. What more do you want? What more can I give you?”
“How about the truth? Why can’t you be with me like you were with Nathaniel? How come you can’t sleep at night? What’s”—and the words rushed out before I could stop them—“with the locked door?”
“The locked door?”
“Yes.” I pointed wildly. “The one over there.”
“It’s…it’s not important.”
I made a sound. It wasn’t a very dignified sound. Honestly, it was kind of a scream.
“I just meant,” he said quickly, “it’s a room I don’t use anymore.”
“Why? What’s in there? Your fucking guitar collection?”
He’d gone horribly pale. “No.”
“When were you last there?”
“With Nathaniel.”
“Show me.” I felt like this lurching fleshmonster of a person, sewn together from anger and hurt and confusion. “Show me.”
His eyes met mine in the glass, wavery blue shadows that revealed absolutely nothing. I might as well have tried to fish the moon from its reflection in a pond. “As you wish.”
He crossed the room to the table where he’d left his keys. Picked them up and tossed them to me. Of course I missed them and had to go scrabbling around on the ground. But I got them, minus five to personal dignity, and bolted for the door before Caspian could change his mind.
He followed me silently into the corridor, arms folded tightly across his chest, leaving me to try all the keys as if I was a contestant on the world’s shittiest game show. Finally, though, I found the right one and pushed the door open.
And stepped like Alice into a kinky wonderland.
Chapter 12
I mean holy shit. We were talking the real deal, the full shebang: a lavishly furnished, luxury bondage dungeon complete with four-poster bed and implements hanging on the wall. God. So many implements. Cuffs, crops, spreaders, floggers, stuff I didn’t even recognize, gleaming softly in the mellow light. Everything was dark leather and dark wood, occasionally relieved by accents of burgundy and gold, opulent and forbidding and sexy as hell. And some of the furniture in there I couldn’t even look at for fear of insta-blushing. I hadn’t quite realized how many ways there existed to immobilize and expose someone.
Though, let’s be clear, I was up for all of them.
“Oh my God.” I spun back to Caspian. “I always guessed what you were into, but this is amazing.”
“It was built a long time ago.”
He sounded slightly distant. I guess he was worried I was going to freak out. And I could sort of see why, since a room like this suggested a commitment to BDSM that went way beyond a little bit of spanking and begging. Maybe I should have been scared, or at least a little bit apprehensive, but I wasn’t. I just wasn’t. I trusted Caspian. And I wanted to explore this with him. As much for my sake as for his.
“You know, you didn’t have to hide your naughty sex room from me,” I said.
“I wasn’t hiding it. I told you, I don’t come here anymore.” He wasn’t lying about that. The air smelled stale, and nearly every flat surface had accumulated a faint patina of dust. “I keep meaning to have it dismantled, but it seems unduly mortifying to hire someone for the task.”
“You must have hired someone to build it,” I pointed out.
“I…actually, that wasn’t me.”
Nathaniel? Except that seemed incredibly unlikely, given what Caspian had told me of their relationship. “So you tripped, fell, and landed on your very own home dungeon?”
“It was a gift. From…a mentor of sorts.”
We were getting off track. I went further into the room, running my fingers through the tails of a row of floggers, before perching on the edge of…well…I wasn’t sure what it was. Like, if a chair and a chaise and saddle had a threesome and covered the resulting offspring in dark purple velvet. One of those. Though it was only when I was sitting on it that I discovered it also had stirrups. And reins. Oh my.
“But”—I gave Caspian my best come bonk me on your outrageous furniture look—“we can still play, can’t we?”
He didn’t seem at all enticed, despite my blandishments. “No.”
“What? Why?”
“Because I didn’t want to bring you here in the first place.”
“You brought Nathaniel.”
Caspian made a convulsive gesture, his fingers opening and closing impatiently. “This isn’t about him.”
“How can it not be?” I cried. “When he got everything and I get compromises. When you can’t even spend a full night with me? How long did you make him wait before you let him stay with you? Or before you let him touch you?”
“It was different, Arden. I was different.” He gazed at me, almost pleadingly. “I’m trying to learn from my mistakes with him, so I can be better with you.”
“So…you won’t let me have fun in your sex dungeon as a mark of special favor?”
He glanced round sharply, almost as if he didn’t quite recognize where he was. Then said, in a strange, rough voice, “Can’t you understand? I don’t like being here.”
“Because it reminds you of Nathaniel?”
“Yes, but not in the way you think.” He took a step across the threshold, but almost immediately retreated, fine tremors running through his body. “All you see right now is a tawdry fantasy. What I see is the room where I hurt someone I loved.”
He’d said something like this to me in Kinlochbervie. At the time I’d been a bit too preoccupied with everything going on between us to get caught up in specifics about someone else. But I was finally starting to get
it: if I wanted to understand Caspian, I would also have to understand Nathaniel.
“What did you do?” I asked. “Push him too far? Ignore his safeword?”
“It was always too far. Every single time.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh Arden.” Caspian put a shaky hand briefly to his eyes. I wasn’t sure, but I thought he might have been blinking back tears. “I was twenty-three when I met Nathaniel. The attraction between us was instant, and powerful. He was a light, when I thought only darkness existed. I’d never dreamed someone like him, so good and so unswerving in that goodness, could love someone as sullied as me.”
This was everything I’d been asking for. Truth. Openness. And it was fucking awful. Not so much the idea that Caspian had once been in love with Nathaniel. I knew that already. But the reality of it? Right in my face? Ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch. “Sounds great.”
“I was very…lost back then. Very twisted by the choices I’d made. I believed that love and pain were inextricable.” He swept an arm out to encompass the room. “Nathaniel didn’t want any of this. But he suffered it for me.”
“Wow,” I drawled out, in a voice I didn’t quite recognize, “must’ve been hot.”
He glanced over at me, visibly startled. “What the— Why would you say that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I don’t like hearing about how amazing and wonderful your ex is.”
“For God’s sake, you asked. Insisted even.”
I winced. “Yes, but…I didn’t realize how crap it would be. And, for the record, I think it’s really fucked up to submit to someone in order to prove you’re the better person.”
“It was what I thought I needed. So he gave it to me.”
“And how did that work out for you?”
“You know it didn’t.”
I swung my feet onto the…whatever it was I was sitting on. Ended up sprawled out and arched up like I was at the world’s lewdest psychologist. So much for looking cool and nonchalant as jealousy gnawed on my liver like Prometheus’s eagle. “Couldn’t he take it?”
“Actually,” said Caspian, very softly. “I couldn’t. He made me see this for what it truly was: cruelty from cruelty, and pain from pain. And it became unbearable, subjecting him to such…such debasements. I had to let him go. I didn’t deserve to be with him.”