“Yeah, for a photo shoot in my hometown.”
“Cancel it,” Vlad said.
Sebastian, who up until this point had been successfully ignoring Vlad, turned to him. “Excuse me?”
He had expected Vlad to avoid his eyes after what had happened last night, but he met Sebastian’s gaze dead on. “Cancel it,” he repeated. “My contact in the police just called. One of the arrested men talked. Apparently his friends are planning something big for today.”
Sebastian frowned. “Why today?”
“It’s National Coming Out Day, Seb,” Luke reminded him.
“Oh,” Sebastian said softly. “That completely slipped my mind.” He looked at Vlad. “Did the guy say what exactly those lunatics were planning?”
Vlad shook his head. “He only knows that they will attack two public LGBT figures today. After the attack on you failed, you’re an obvious choice. Those kinds of cults tend to get fixated on things.”
“How many people know you have a photo shoot today?” Luke said.
Sebastian pursed his lips. “It’s public knowledge. There’s no point in keeping it secret anyway, because most of the shooting is done in public places.”
“You’ll have to cancel it,” Luke said with a frown.
“I can’t,” Sebastian said.
Vlad scoffed. “Quit being a stubborn little idiot—”
“I really can’t,” Sebastian said, glaring at him. “I signed a contract. The magazine won’t delay the shoot. They have deadlines they have to meet.” He looked at Luke. “Don’t worry, the agency is going to send a bodyguard for me.”
The intercom buzzed. “That’s probably him,” Sebastian said, and went to answer it.
It took a good ten minutes before Luke’s security downstairs gave an all clear and the bodyguard was allowed to come up to the flat.
“Do you know if he’s any good?” Vlad said suddenly while they all waited in the living room.
Surprised that Vlad cared at all, Sebastian shrugged. “Never met him.”
Vlad gave him a hard look. “Let me get this straight: you’re trusting a man you’ve never seen before with your life, a man you don’t even know the credentials of. Do you know how many amateurs become bodyguards to make a quick buck?”
Feeling his face turn warm, Sebastian glowered at him. How did Vlad always manage to make him feel stupid so easily?
“The agency wouldn’t hire an amateur,” he said stiffly.
“Fine,” Vlad said. “Let’s test it.” Clad in all black as usual, he strode to the lift and took a position beside it.
As if on cue, a few moments later, the lift doors slid open.
The second the bodyguard stepped across the threshold, Vlad had him in a chokehold with his gun pressing violently into the man’s temple. The guy was even bigger than Vlad, but it didn’t seem to help him at all, and Vlad shoved him away.
“That’s your professional bodyguard?” Vlad said with disgust.
Sebastian scowled at the stranger. “I was cheering you on,” he told him sulkily. “Now I have to put up with that guy’s gloating.”
“Sebastian, looks like Vlad is right,” Luke said reluctantly. “This bloke is clearly not very good. No offence,” he added with a glance at the stranger, who seemed to be torn between looking sheepish and pissed off.
Sebastian sighed. “What do you suggest I do? I don’t have time to find another bodyguard.”
Luke smiled apologetically. “There’s always Vlad.”
“No,” Sebastian and Vlad said together before glaring at each other.
Luke went to the couch, picked up his discarded book, and said, “Vlad, I’m lending you to Sebastian. And before you protest, Roman gave me permission to lend you out as long as I stay at home, and I have no intention to move from this couch anytime soon. If you have any issues with it, take them up with Roman.” Luke smiled serenely before turning to his book.
Sebastian didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Luke obviously thought he was doing him a favor, and Sebastian couldn’t exactly tell him why it was anything but.
With a sigh, he dismissed the bodyguard the agency had sent, picked up his car keys, and strode toward the lift.
Sebastian felt rather than heard Vlad follow him, Vlad’s big body putting him on edge rather than making him feel safe. His skin still felt too hot, his muscles jittery, and his thoughts foggier than he would have liked.
God, it was going to be a long day.
Chapter 12
Sebastian’s hometown turned out to be a small seaside town. A cold breeze blew in Vlad’s face as he stood a few feet away from where the photographer had set up his equipment. The shingle beach was abandoned as far as Vlad could see, but he remained alert, his gaze scanning the beach and avoiding settling for too long on the photo shoot that was taking place a few feet away.
But he still couldn’t help looking.
He gathered from what he had overheard that this part of the photo shoot was supposed to capture the man Sebastian was now. Apparently that required skinny trousers, Gucci jackets, Saint Laurent velvet boots, and smoldering looks into the camera. Vlad had had to hold his tongue, because all those outfits were very impractical for the setting. He hadn’t said anything. He had come to the conclusion that the less he talked to Sebastian, the better. It felt like every time they talked—quarreled—they had somehow ended up all over each other’s personal space, which was something Vlad was determined to avoid after what happened last night.
He pressed his lips together and scanned the length of the beach again.
He wasn’t going to think about what had happened. If Vlad could bleach his brain, he would. But at least he was good at compartmentalizing. He wasn’t going to spend the day thinking about things he shouldn’t be thinking about—things that shouldn’t have happened. He was a professional.
“Part your lips a little, love,” the photographer said, and Vlad’s gaze snapped to the model again.
Sebastian was lounging on a big rock, his long, dark hair swept back by the breeze, his pale fingers pulling the collar of his black turtleneck up over his chin. The contrast between his snow-white skin, dark hair, dark eyes, dark fabric, and red, bitten lips was incredible. Vlad was no photographer or artist, but even he could see how beautiful the…the shot was.
“Perfect,” the photographer said. “You’re gorgeous, love.”
Sebastian smiled at him. “You’re a flatterer, Matt, but it isn’t going to work.”
The photographer laughed. “You can’t blame a bloke for trying. Maybe one day I’ll wear you down and you’ll agree to go on a date with me.”
Vlad sneered. And that man was a professional?
“Maybe I would have if you weren’t happily married,” Sebastian said with a snort.
“Come on, Alisa and I are a modern, open-minded couple,” Matt said, grinning. “She’d ask to watch. Hell, she’d want to join us.”
Sebastian shook his head, getting to his feet. “Sorry, but you know my rules, Matt: I don’t get involved with taken people. It gets too complicated.” His dark eyes flicked to Vlad. “I always ask if they’re single. Sometimes they lie, but there’s nothing I can do about that.”
Vlad pursed his lips and looked away, for the first time truly considering that maybe Sebastian really hadn’t known that Nina had been taken.
“All right, our work here is done. We should move to your old school before it rains,” Matt said, his tone becoming professional again after being turned down.
Matt, Sebastian, and the stylist chatted amiably as they headed toward the town. Vlad trailed after them silently, watching their surroundings.
The town was small and picturesque, the type of place where everyone likely knew everyone else’s business. Vlad looked at Sebastian and tried to imagine him being out and proud in a town like this.
It seemed he wasn’t the only one thinking that.
“We don’t want to focus too much on homophobia in small towns,” Matt sai
d as they walked toward Sebastian’s sixth form college. “We would like for our message to be positive. So we decided to focus on the time right after you decided not to hide who you are and forced people to accept your sexuality.”
“But I’ve never hidden my sexuality,” Sebastian said with a small frown.
The stylist nodded. “We know. He means the time after your homophobic classmates bullied your boyfriend into—” She cut herself off, looking uncomfortable.
“Killing himself,” Sebastian finished for her softly.
“Yes,” she said, swallowing. “You told us that after that you became more defiant and bold with your clothes. We want to replicate that, obviously with designer clothes, but as close to the seventeen-year-old you as we can.”
Sebastian nodded, but Vlad noticed that he looked rather uncomfortable and tense. The tension in his shoulders seemed to grow when they entered his old school.
“We will have an empty classroom to ourselves,” Matt said.
Sebastian said nothing, his eyes flickering all over the school’s corridors, his face paler than usual. He clearly didn’t have good memories of this place.
“The PE teacher said it was okay if we shoot in the gym too,” the stylist said. “A very helpful man, about your age, said he knew you in school. Mr. Fletcher was—”
Sebastian’s head whipped toward her. “Sorry, what? Mr. Fletcher?”
Did his voice sound a little strained?
The stylist nodded. “Yeah, the PE teacher. I think his name is Mike. Did you know him?”
“Yeah,” Sebastian said after a short pause, looking the other way. “Yeah. I knew him.”
Vlad frowned at his back, wondering.
The second part of the photo shoot was completely different from the first. Gone were the fancy designer jackets and trousers. Now Sebastian was decked in jeans and patterned shirts that practically screamed flamboyant. But that wasn’t what made Vlad stare. Sebastian wore eyeliner and nail polish.
Catching Vlad’s stare, Sebastian raised his brows, determination and challenge on his face. “What?” he said, cocking his hip against the desk while the other two men argued about the setting and lighting. “A problem?”
He was picking a fight, Vlad realized, watching Sebastian with narrowed eyes. Something had put Sebastian on edge. Maybe it was the surroundings—it didn’t take a genius to guess that Sebastian had been bullied here—but Vlad had a gut feeling it wasn’t just that.
“Not really,” Vlad said. “But if you looked like that in school, no wonder you were bullied. That’s practically an invitation.” He couldn’t imagine a schoolboy wearing eyeliner and nail polish in Russia.
Sebastian chuckled humorlessly. “I had been picked on well before I started wearing nail polish. This”—he waved a hand over himself— “was just a big fuck you to the assholes who bullied Bill, nothing more.”
Vlad stared at him. There was something he didn’t get. “You’re bi,” he said. “Why didn’t you just date girls? You could have avoided all of that.”
“Even if I dated only girls, it wouldn’t have made me straight,” Sebastian replied. “It doesn’t work like that. Even if I someday meet a wonderful woman, marry her, and stay with her for the rest of my life, it won’t change the fact that I’m bisexual. I actually prefer men to women. Why would I hide who I am and be satisfied with pretending to be something I’m not? It’s the principle of the thing.”
“Principle of the thing,” Vlad repeated. “I don’t know if that’s stupidly idealistic or just stupid.”
Sebastian’s lips twitched. “Thank you.”
“That wasn’t a compliment.”
“It’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
Vlad shook his head. “If you were in Russia, that would have gotten you beaten up or arrested; maybe worse if you were unlucky.”
Sebastian gave a crooked smile. “Unfortunately, homophobia isn’t limited to Russia,” he said. “But yeah, growing up in that kind of environment couldn’t have been easy for you.”
Vlad stiffened. “What is that supposed to mean?”
Sebastian licked his lips and opened his mouth—
“Love, we’re ready for you!” Matt called out and Sebastian walked away without a second glance at him.
Vlad didn’t watch the shoot. There was only so much of Sebastian making bedroom eyes at the camera he could take. Feeling agitated, Vlad left the classroom to have a smoke in the corridor.
“You’re not suppos—whoa, easy there, mate!” The newcomer was staring wide-eyed at Vlad’s gun. “Trigger-happy much?”
Vlad swept his gaze over the man. He was tall and muscular—of a similar build to Vlad, actually, except the guy was perhaps a few years younger than Vlad.
“Who are you?”
“I’m the PE teacher, Mike Fletcher. I really don’t appreciate your pointing that thing at me, mate.”
Right. The PE teacher the stylist had mentioned. Vlad lowered his gun but didn’t holster it.
The man relaxed. “So what’s the deal here?”
Vlad glanced back into the classroom where the shoot was still going on. Nothing had happened while he had been distracted.
Fletcher sucked a sharp breath in.
Vlad looked back at him and found the guy staring at Sebastian. Vlad pursed his lips, annoyance flaring inside him. There was something about that stare that he didn’t like.
“You know the model?” Vlad said.
Fletcher’s eyes snapped back to Vlad, his hand flying up to rub his nose and an ugly flush creeping up his neck. “We were in the same class. Not that we were friends or anything.” He snorted smugly. “We weren’t exactly in the same social circle, if you get what I mean.”
Vlad didn’t say anything, and the guy went on, speaking fast, as though he’d been dying to talk to someone about it, “He looked nothing like that back then. Was a pale little thing, all eyes and lips, and a flaming faggot to boot. You know he’s a poofter, right? We all knew that back in school. Everyone knew he was gagging for cock. Begged to suck mine, ya know? I mean, I’m no homo, but I felt sorry for him and let him a couple of times.”
“Really,” Vlad said without any inflection, feeling his grip on the gun tighten. He loosened it and holstered his gun.
“Yeah. Obviously it didn’t mean anything for me. But then he got into his dumb little head that I was a poof like him. Had to teach him a lesson.” Fletcher chuckled before sneering. “Except that faggot was too much of a slut. A few months later, I caught him sucking some loser’s cock. Fucking whore.”
Vlad made a noncommittal noise. “What did you do?”
Fletcher grinned mischievously. “I took a picture of them and emailed it to everyone in school. You should have seen the reaction; it was priceless.” Fletcher chortled. “After that everyone knew what a cockslut he was.”
Vlad stared at the guy. The thing was, Fletcher wasn’t calling Sebastian anything Vlad hadn’t called him, but hearing it from this man...he didn’t fucking like it.
Only I can do it. I.
Shoving the ridiculous thought away, Vlad said coldly, “Is there a reason you’re telling this story to a total stranger?”
Fletcher’s laugh cut off at his tone. For the first time, he looked a little uncertain. “Well, he’s a celebrity these days. It’s not like everyone doesn’t already know he’s a poof, right? Just setting some facts straight here. He was a nobody everyone laughed at back then.” He patted Vlad on the shoulder like they were best bros. “And hey, you’re Russian, you must get it. I wish we had laws against faggots like you do in Russia. If we did, people like him wouldn’t be all high and mighty now.”
Vlad stared at that bitter, pathetic man, and thought: Am I just like him?
“Nice to see you, too, Mike,” Sebastian said softly, making them both turn their heads.
Sebastian looked very calm, very beautiful and very untouchable. “How is your wife? Heard she’s pregnant with your fourth. Congratulations.
It mustn’t be easy to provide for such a big family.” Sebastian smiled serenely.
Vlad wanted to bruise his petty, sassy mouth with his.
Fletcher glowered at Sebastian, muttered something uncomfortably, and stalked away.
Sebastian kept smiling, but when Vlad looked closely, he could see how pale and shaken he really was, his lips trembling and his dark eyes looking anywhere but at Vlad. He seemed mortified. He was probably mortified that Vlad had heard the story of his humiliation.
It would be so easy to humiliate him further, to get back at him for everything he’d done to Vlad: for making him look and for making him want.
“Come on, just say it,” Sebastian murmured without looking at him. “Say what a slut and desperate loser I am.”
“You done there?” Vlad said. When Sebastian looked at him with confusion, he clarified, “The shoot?”
“Almost,” Sebastian replied, his shoulders losing their tension a little. “They need a couple of shots in the gym.”
Vlad glanced into the classroom. The photographer and the stylist were arguing about something, deeply engrossed in their conversation.
He looked back at Sebastian.
Their gazes locked.
Vlad’s mouth dried up. He was suddenly acutely aware that this was the first time since last night they had truly looked at each other without any other distractions.
“About last night,” Sebastian said.
Vlad wanted to leave. He wanted to be anywhere but there.
He didn’t. He wouldn’t give Sebastian the satisfaction of knowing that he could fluster him so easily.
“What about it?” he said, looking Sebastian in the eye. He decided he didn’t like the eyeliner. The guy’s eyes were startlingly big as it was; with the eyeliner they looked ridiculous. How had Fletcher described him? Yes, all eyes and lips.
“Let’s just forget about last night, okay?” Sebastian said, shoving his hand into the pocket of his jeans. His lips twisted into a grimace. “It was the worst mistake in my life, which says something, considering…” He gestured in the direction Fletcher had gone.
Vlad stared at him, thrown off balance. He had expected Sebastian to taunt him, mock him, or maybe even try to seduce him again. He had thought he would be the one who would need to insist that last night had been a mistake. He certainly hadn’t expected that Sebastian would want to forget it ever happened.
Just a Bit Wicked (Straight Guys Book 7) Page 8