Logic told me it would’ve been easier for him to take my number if he’d just wanted to check up on me, but then I remembered the state I’d been in, and wanted to die that he’d seen so clearly that I had been too fucked up to recite my own phone number.
Perignon55: u hungry?
I blinked. Seriously? That’s what he wanted to ask me?
Lucky: a bit. y?
Perignon55: i’ll be done in a bit. u wanna eat?
Lucky: eat what?
Perignon55: food
So he really wasn’t talking about his cock then. I chewed on my lip and tapped out a reply that quickly led to arranging to meet him in Dalston, close to the flat where we’d first met. And then he was gone, leaving me to stare at the screen and wonder if I’d been dropped into another world.
But I didn’t have time to ponder it long. I’d washed up at work, taking advantage of the shitty shower in the staffroom, but I still needed to put myself back together after a day hunched over a Range Rover. Tame my hair and find some clothes he hadn’t seen me in before. Jesus. How was this my life?
An hour later, I leaned against the wall of a closed cafe, drumming my fingers on my thigh as I resisted the urge to smoke. I didn’t know what direction Dom would be coming from, if he’d be driving or on foot, and keeping watch for him, tracking every face that could be his, was enough to give me a headache.
“Lucky?”
I jerked left. Somehow, he’d managed to sneak up on me, and was lurking in the shadows with his usual designer cap pulled low on his face. “We can go to a hotel if you want?” I blurted.
Dom met my gaze with a flat stare. “This isn’t like that.”
“I meant so you don’t have to hide.”
He nodded, and warmth crept into his unreadable expression. “Maybe next time.”
My heart jumped. “Next time?”
Dom said nothing. Just glanced both ways up the street and pointed to a hole in the wall place I’d never been in. “My mate reckons that place is quiet.”
It looked like walking salmonella, but I shrugged. Anywhere with Dom was a fucking gift.
We slipped into the Turkish place and claimed two seats at the back, half-hidden by a chintzy curtain. Dom relaxed a little as a waiter took a drink order without looking at us, but tension rippled through me as I asked for tap water. I had a fiver in my pocket I’d found on the floor at work, and a tenner I’d taken from my stash under Jamila’s bed, but it wasn’t nearly enough to buy us both dinner.
Dom kicked me under the table. “Are you freaking out about money?”
“What makes you say that?”
“I’m rich, Lucky—I can’t deny it—but it hasn’t always been like this. I know what it’s like to have nothing.”
“Uh-huh.”
Dom cocked his head sideways. “You don’t believe me?”
“How can I believe what you say when I don’t know anything about you?”
Dom shrugged and trailed the tip of his right index finger around the rim of his glass. He seemed uncomfortable, but that was kind of his baseline, and despite craving his weird brand of company so badly, I wasn’t in the mood to go easy on him. After all, he was here because he wanted to be, right? Unless he’d figured that two paid hook ups was enough and I was ready to start doing him for free.
I swallowed thickly. Even though I was totally at peace with trading sex for cash on Grindr, there was a part of me that wished it hadn’t been with Dom. That our odd nearly friendship wasn’t clouded by suspicion and doubt. Shadowed by question marks over each other’s motives…because as my mind played devil’s advocate, it occurred to me that he might’ve been doing the exact same thing.
My fingers twitched as I fought the urge to close them around his wrist. I didn’t get him, but I didn’t understand myself too well right now either. Did that mean something?
Fucked if I know.
I pulled a menu closer for something to do, and the prices turned out to be more affordable than I’d feared. If I got something for a couple of quid, I might be able to buy Dom something decent after all. “Do you know what any of this shit is?”
“Hmm?” Dom blinked. “What?”
I tapped the menu. “The food.”
Dom glanced down at his menu, frowning in a way that somehow eased the lines of dismay from his gorgeous face. “I’ve had Turkish stuff before. There’s a place in Islington the team—uh, we, sometimes go after work.”
I ignored the slip—and how it made me feel—and leaned across the table. “You’re right about me flipping my lid over money, but only because I wanted to buy you dinner. What’s this one? If it’s cheap and nice, I’ll have it.”
“You don’t have to buy me dinner, Lucky.”
I pointed at the two-quid dish again. “What is it?”
Rolling his eyes, Dom turned his gaze back to the menu. “It’s a flatbread, with chicken and spinach. I reckon you can eat more than that, though. How about we get a bunch of them and split the bill? That okay with you?”
I loved him for not waving his wealth in my face. By his own admission, he was rich, but perhaps he was richer still in the things that mattered.
Or maybe I was delirious with hunger. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten something that wasn’t cereal, or a stolen banana.
“It’s fine by me,” I said. “I don’t eat much anyway.”
“Why not?”
Dom’s gaze was genuinely curious, so I shrugged and flexed my lanky arms. “There ain’t much of me to feed.”
“The size of you doesn’t mean anything. I mean, you’re slim, but you look pretty strong, and you need fuel for that shit.”
“You think I look strong?”
Dom nodded. “Yes. Even if I hadn’t seen you—uh—before, I can tell by the way you carry yourself, the way you move. You don’t have to be a tank to be hench.”
“Hench?” I nearly spat water across the table. “I can hand-on-heart promise you that no one has ever called me that.”
“So?”
“So…” I searched for a coherent sentence. “Most people think I’m a girl ’cause I’m skinny and I rock the long hair.”
Dom snorted. “I’ve known plenty of women stronger than me.”
“I didn’t say I thought being weak equated with being female.”
“Good, because I like your hair.”
“Why?”
But I didn’t get an answer because Dom got up to order our food at the service counter, and when he came back, the moment had passed.
He’d also brought olives and bread with him. I picked out three green ones and shoved them into my mouth, offering him the leftover weird purple ones.
“You don’t like the black ones?”
I pulled a face. “Nah. They taste like arse.”
“That right?”
“Well, not good arse, obviously, but they’re still rank.”
Dom popped one in his mouth, his dark eyes gleaming with a challenge I couldn’t quite decipher. So I stuffed myself with bread until his leg nudged mine under the table.
“I want to ask you if you’re feeling better than last time I saw you, but I’m wondering if you might tell me to do one.”
I relinquished the bread I was clutching like a starving man and pictured myself as he’d last seen me, slumped over a table, and sweating for all the wrong reasons. Shame washed over me, but it didn’t last—didn’t stand a chance in the face of Dom’s suddenly gentle frown. “I didn’t feel well last time we saw each other.”
“But you’re all right now?”
I nodded. No one looking at my life was ever gonna say I was doing all right, but the desire to spill my guts to Dom was non-existent. “How about you? You told me some stuff that day that I don’t think you meant to. How are you doing with that? Or is that why we’re here? So you can check I’m not going to out you?”
“Are you going to out me?”
“Who the fuck to? I don’t know anyone who knows you.”
<
br /> For a brief moment, a ghost of a smile changed Dom’s whole face. “Can I take that as a no?”
“If you like.”
“I do like, but it’s not why I wanted to meet you.”
“You wanna hook up again?”
“That’s not why either—I told you that outside.”
He had, but I was saved from admitting I’d hoped for something different by the arrival of our food. True to his word, Dom had ordered three variations of the cheap-as-chips flatbread. Chicken and spinach, lamb and spiced onions, and some kind of vegetable shit I didn’t recognise.
I pushed that one towards Dom.
He laughed. “Picky eater?”
“No…I just don’t eat unidentified orange stuff.”
“Fair enough.” Dom claimed the vegetables and pushed the chicken and spinach plate my way.
There was far more to the cheap dish than I’d anticipated, but I dug in, and didn’t look at Dom again until I’d hoovered up three bulging rolls of stuffed flatbread.
His amusement was clear. “Thought you said you don’t eat much?”
I reached across the table to sample the lamb flatbread. “I don’t—doesn’t mean I can’t.”
“Why would you—” Dom stopped and shook his head slightly. “Never mind. It’s not my business. Eat as much you like, okay? We can always get more.”
Sweet, but once my initial crazed hunger had worn off, I quickly found myself full. I polished off the chicken plate and admitted defeat, sitting back in my seat while Dom ate his supper with considerably more dignity.
He caught me watching him. “Do you want a beer or something?”
A beer sounded awesome, but I was doing my best to stay clearheaded for work, and I’d restricted myself to smoking weed to take the edge off the lingering yuckiness from my drone binge. “Nah. I’m good. What do you want to do after this?”
Dom wiped his hands on a paper napkin. “I hadn’t really thought about it. To be honest, I wasn’t sure we’d both show up.”
“Why would I not show up?”
Silence, then it clicked in my shambolic brain: Dom hadn’t been sure if he was enough to entice me on his own…if it really had been all about the money. It being the mind-bending chemistry we shared whenever we touched, from a brush of knees under the table, to fuck-hot blowjobs…and to the soul-searching kiss I couldn’t keep out of my thoughts. He doesn’t know if it’s real.
Fuck this.
I pulled my crumpled money from my pocket and tossed it on the table. “Come with me.”
“What?”
“Let’s go.”
Dom didn’t strike me as a man who put up with being bossed around, but he rose with me from the table anyway, and dropped a twenty on top of my money. His hand hovered, like he wanted to give me some change, but I pre-empted that shit by shoving my chair back and booting it out of the restaurant.
He followed me—I hadn’t left him much choice—but kept his distance once we were outside, and my hasty plan suddenly grew gaping holes. “Look,” I said. “We can go to that flat and I can blow you again, or we can do something else—whatever you want—I just—”
Suddenly, he was right in front of me…close enough for me to pull him even further into my personal space if I hadn’t been categorically certain he’d evade my touch. “Just what?”
I shrugged, shoving my hands into my pockets. “I don’t want to leave you.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t think you’ve got what you came for.”
“I don’t know what I came for.”
His tone was flat, but conflict raged in his liquid eyes, and I believed him. He wanted me in some capacity, but he didn’t know what. Did he want to fuck me? Probably, but it wasn’t enough. And whatever I’d given him tonight wasn’t enough either.
Dom
Lucky’s face fell like life was draining out of him. Alarmed, I stepped closer, and gripped his arms. “What’s the matter?”
He laughed, bitter, and devoid of any humour. “What’s the matter with you? You don’t know why you came, and yet you’re still here? What the fuck?”
I had no answer for him that made any sense. I’d given him my number because I’d been genuinely worried about him. Answered his message because he’d sparked a light in me I couldn’t ignore. And now he was right here in front of me, up in my face on a Dalston pavement, I had no idea what to do with him. So take him back to that flat, screw him, and forget all about him. But the cold-hearted devil on my shoulder couldn’t feel what I was feeling—the lightness in my heart that warred with fear and so very nearly won…or the current thrumming where my fingers were wrapped, vice-like, around his slender wrists.
Whatever happened next, I would never forget Lucky.
“I—” My grip tightened of its own volition. “I don’t know what to do.”
Lucky stared at me. “Do you know what you want?”
“Yes.”
“Is it something we can do here in the street? Or do we need to find cover?”
I couldn’t find the words to tell him that everything we did had to be behind closed doors.
Shaking my head, I let go of his wrists. “I need to go.”
“No.”
“I have to.” I stepped back.
Lucky grabbed my arm. “No.”
I had nothing.
For a long moment, he glowered at me, and then he let go and jerked his head up the road. “I’m going to the flat to see if it’s empty. Follow me if you want, or piss off back to your castle. I don’t care anymore.”
That he’d cared in the first place was news to me, then I remembered his kiss and tracked his retreating back until it disappeared around the corner, waiting only a millisecond before I followed him.
I walked ten paces behind him with no idea if he knew I was there or not. He didn’t look back, and I didn’t call out, even when he stuck a fat spliff in his mouth and lit it with no apparent care as to who smelled the herbal smoke drifting in his wake. Damn it, Lucky. Every rule I’d ever lived by screamed at me to turn around and chip back to my car, boot it out of the all-night car park, and block his number from ever contacting me again. Burning him ran the risk of him fucking me right back if he ever found out who I was, but I was screwed in that respect anyway. I’d come too far to turn back unscathed. Whether I liked it or not, Lucky had left his mark on me.
The grotty building appeared in front of me. Head down, I hurried to the exterior door and slipped inside, trailing the echoing footsteps up the stairs to the front door I remembered from the very first time.
It was ajar. I pushed inside and shut it behind me, cloaking myself in darkness, my heart thumping like a fucking horror film. “Lucky?”
He appeared in the bedroom doorway. “I’m here.”
“Is anyone else?”
“No…but I don’t know for how long.”
I stepped up to the doorway, unsure of my actions until I closed the distance between us, and took Lucky in my arms, kissing him.
He let out a surprised gasp, but I swallowed it down, crushing our lips together as I backed him into the cracked wood of the doorframe.
It creaked, as though it might split, and the sound echoed the crack in my soul as everything I’d denied myself my whole fucking life poured out of me and into the kiss I was forcing on Lucky until he responded.
And when he did respond, it caught me off guard.
His hands hit my chest and he shoved me. I thought at first he was trying to get me off him, but then he lunged at me, throwing me against the other side of the doorframe, and kissed me like I should’ve been kissing him all along.
I let my head collide with the wood, relishing the sting against my scalp as it zipped through me and joined the cacophony of sensations battling for dominance. My hands found their way to Lucky, sliding under his coat. One came to rest on his protruding ribs; the other cupped his elegant neck. I moaned into his mouth and tentatively let my tongue loose.
I
t slipped past Lucky’s dry lips and found liquid velvet. I groaned again and any control I may’ve had was instantly gone. Whatever he wanted, or needed from me, was his.
I was his.
Too soon, he pulled back, panting, eyes watering with the need to breathe. “Fuck,” he said. “I knew you needed that, but I didn’t think you’d do it.”
I hadn’t thought I’d do it either, but, fuck, I couldn’t undo it now. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” Lucky growled. “Just promise me you didn’t do it because you felt sorry for me, or because of some fucked-up Grindr kink.”
“Grindr?” Since I’d deleted the app from my phone, I hadn’t given it a second thought—hadn’t had time when my thoughts had been so consumed with Lucky. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
Lucky glared hard before his expression softened. “Sorry. I’m messed up, okay? My life’s a pile of shit, and having someone like you kiss me just because you want to doesn’t make any fucking sense.”
“Someone like me?”
Lucky said nothing. Just knocked his head on my shoulder then took another step back. “We should go. I don’t know how long my friend will be gone and I need to fix her lock before we leave.”
“Fix her—?”
But I stopped myself before I became a robot who just asked bonehead questions, and trailed Lucky as he left the bedroom doorway and went to the front door. I couldn’t see anything wrong with the lock, but he did something with a wire that made it click, and motioned for me to get the fuck out.
Outside, reality hit me like a black cloud, and Lucky didn’t seem surprised when I made tracks to leave. His grin was almost a sneer. “Take care, Dom. Call me next time you need a top up.”
He was gone before I could answer.
Nine
Dom
“Call me next time you need a top up.”
I replayed Lucky’s departing words for the thousandth time, but a week had passed since that night, and I still had no idea what he’d meant.
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