He went out into the hotel grounds. Even though it was raining, he was desperate for fresh air. Without really thinking about where he was going, he headed for the woods. Someone called after him but he ignored them. He just wanted to be away from everybody. When he was sure he could not be seen he stopped and punched a nearby tree as hard as he could.
'Ouch,' a voice said, milliseconds before he did. The pain was excruciating. He clasped his hand and leaned against the tree he had clouted, gasping "fuck, fuck, fuck," under his breath. His knuckles were bloody and had begun to throb.
'Let's look at that.' Lex gently took his hand and examined the torn skin on his knuckles. 'You're bleeding.'
With the pain, the anger had dissipated. Rob laughed deprecatingly. 'I should know I'll never win a bout with a tree.'
'Families suck, don't they?'
'You heard our little drama?'
'I was checking out and heard it all. I had no idea your family was so entertaining.' He was standing very close, still holding Rob's hand.
'When are you leaving?'
'I'm being picked up in half an hour.' He lifted Rob's wounded hand to his lips and brushed them softly against the broken skin. 'Come back inside. I'll get you cleaned up.'
Rob pulled Lex down to kiss his lips. He wanted him more than he had wanted anyone, ever. He knew it for sure and embraced the knowledge with the hunger of a man denied sustenance for too long. The dark horizon beckoned beguilingly to him. He shuddered with delicious anticipation at the image of him and Lex, sprawled sated and entwined on rumpled sheets.
'I'm definitely coming to New York,' he said. 'I don't care how I do it. I'm coming.'
'I knew you would,' Lex said, his eyes shining. They rested against the tree, Lex pinning him against the bark with his weight, his tongue working its way into Rob's mouth again. Their lust was rampant, unapologetic, their faces damp with rain and moisture from their roving tongues. Lex slid his hand between their bodies and palmed Rob's cock. He mumbled approvingly against Rob's lips as he felt it pulse in response to his manipulation. Rob weakened at the sensation but he wasn't in a position to return the compliment. One hand hurt too much and the other was trapped behind his back.
'We need to clean up that hand before I come in my pants just from kissing you,' Lex gasped when they finally broke free.
'Good idea.'
In the Reception area, Rob saw Geri looking around, wondering where he had gone. He sneaked past her and went with Lex into the men's cloakroom. As soon as the door was closed and they had checked no-one else was in there, Lex pulled him close and kissed him again. Rob felt the delicious indistinct thrill of their erections vying for dominance against the other as their tongues thrashed the inside of their mouths.
'Some lousy nurse I am,' Lex panted when they broke free again. He went to the basin and ran some warm water. He examined Rob's hand again. 'You've only grazed it. Still needs washing though. This might sting a bit,' he said as the water washed over Rob's skinned knuckles.
It hardly stung at all. Rob was more aware of the minimal amount of time they had left. It was running out like sand through an hourglass.
Lex lifted his hand from the water and wrapped it in one of the white hand towels. Rob turned his face up to him again, tacitly inviting him to kiss his lips. Lex did not disappoint. He fell into the kiss like a drowning man, pushing Rob against the tiled wall and steaming up his glasses.
'You're one hot fucking bastard,' he rasped in Rob's ear. 'How am I going to cope with this hard-on all the way back to Manhattan?'
The outer door opening stalled any response Rob might have made. They jumped apart as Christopher walked in.
'Oh! There you are.' He frowned at Rob's wrapped hand. 'What happened?'
'I punched a tree.' Rob whipped off his glasses and polished them on a paper towel so that Christopher could not see any residual condensation.
'Ah. Better than punching a family member, I suppose.' He looked doubtfully at Lex, judiciously washing his hands. 'Uh, Geri said she'll take you home. It's probably not a good idea for you to drive right now. She's in Reception, waiting for you.'
'Okay, thanks.' There was an awkward pause. He wanted Christopher to leave so he could say one more goodbye to Lex. 'Tell her I'll be out in a moment.'
'Right.' He cast another look at Lex, now painstakingly drying his hands, before departing.
'If you really want to shock them, you could do the obvious,' Lex said when the door had closed. 'After all, it would get all the upsets out of the way at once.'
Rob knew exactly what he meant, but he had always prided himself on not giving in to impulsive gestures, even after a few too many glasses of wine. He turned and looked at his reflection in the mirror. A gay man? He didn't look like one. He just looked like himself. Lex stood close behind him, slipping his arms around his waist. Their eyes met in the mirror and their bodies pressed close together. As Lex kissed his neck Rob knew he wanted him just as much right then as he had the previous day. With that knowledge came a frisson of daring which he hadn't experienced before. He could only imagine it being similar to that of a bungee-jumper or parachutist, just before they committed themselves to that leap of fate. He shivered with anticipation.
'Was that a bad shudder or a good one?' Lex asked, watching him closely.
'That was good,' Rob said, nodding slowly. 'That was damned, damned good. Let's do this.'
After sharing one last heated kiss, they walked hand in hand into the foyer.
'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,' Rob whispered.
'Thelma and Louise,' Lex replied.
Outside the door, a uniformed chauffeur was waiting by the long black Mercedes.
'Your ride?' Rob asked.
'Yes.'
Rob's heart was beating fast, yet everything seemed to be happening in slow motion. Geri was by the door with Christopher, and from a distance he could hear his mother's voice, demanding that coffee be served in the lounge. She was flanked by Sara and Sandy. They all stopped and looked towards him, no doubt hoping he would apologise for his behaviour before he left.
Instead, he turned to Lex. 'Thank you for last night. It was wonderful.'
'My pleasure.' Lex smiled down at him, his eyes sparkling. He drew Rob into his arms and kissed him tenderly on the lips again. They stood swaying in the middle of the Reception area, their arms wrapped around each other. Time, noise and awareness of anything else except for each other faded to nothing.
'I'll miss you,' Lex said when the kiss ended.
'It won't be for long.' Rob kissed him one final time, slowly and lingeringly. 'Have a safe trip back.' They broke reluctantly apart and with a final "goodbye," Lex walked out the door.
Rob watched him go for a moment before turning to Sara, Sandy and his mother. He flipped a casual finger at them and left as well.
'Let's go,' he muttered to Geri, hoping she would follow. He could hear her rapid footsteps as she tried to keep up with him.
He didn't speak again until they were inside her car, heading towards the entrance.
'So who are you, and what have you done with my brother?' She asked jokingly.
He stared bleakly out of the window and did not reply. His mind was full of Lex, driving in the opposite direction towards Heathrow.
Geri drove him back to her house "because I don't suppose for one minute you have anything as practical as antiseptic and cotton wool," then spent the next four hours trying to cheer him up. They dissected the disastrous lunch for Simon, who listened with glee because he loved to hear about a family that was worse than his own. He lay with his head on Geri's lap and sighed contentedly.
'I'm so glad I was here, working out class assignments for my little buggers and eating out of date sausage rolls,' he sighed.
'It gets better. I should think Mother is still in a dead faint over your man snog, Rob. You should have seen her face!'
Simon blinked and looked up. 'Huh, have I missed something?'
Geri pluck
ed gently at his beard. 'Oh yeah, Rob's gay.'
'Since when? No-one tells me anything,' Simon grumbled.
'Hush, you. Being gay is for life, not just for Mardi Gras. He's got himself a wealthy Italian lover.'
'He's from New York,' Rob corrected her.
'Finally a bit of information! This is the guy you're visiting in the summer?'
'If I can organise it.'
He remembered that the Audi was still at the hotel. Later that night and after a few cups of strong black coffee, he asked Geri to drop him back there so he could drive carefully home. He wanted to be on his own for a while, and not talk about Lex at all. What had happened with him happened so suddenly, he wasn't sure what he remembered was real or imagination. The lust in the man's eyes had been real. The taste of cognac on his breath and the weight of his body had been real. And the yawning sense of emptiness he felt inside was definitely real.
And then he had gone, leaving Rob reeling on his own. Help me, he thought as he mentally rocked from side to side, desperately trying to regain his balance. I'm going to fall.
Yet he had already fallen. He had known it even before Lex had kissed him.
The thought tore him to shreds. Immediately he began thinking about how to get round the problem, but then gave himself a big slap around the head.
Last week you didn't know he existed. This is crazy, so calm down and move on.
It was the right thing to do, but it didn't feel like it.
Why? What the hell was wrong with him?
As he drove back to his lonely flat, it hit him like a bolt from the blue. The movies had been right all along. It didn't just happen in books or in the over-active minds of teenaged girls, brainwashed by years of watching Disney movies and reading cheap romantic fiction. This is what it feels like, he thought. And it feels like shit warmed up.
He was in love with Lexington Black.
CHAPTER 6 - Come Fly With Me
The fallout over his big reveal wasn't as intense as he had expected. No doubt there were a lot of conversations about it that he had not been party to, but he didn't care. His heart felt light because as Lex had said, all the shocks were now out of the way. He even told Paul, who shrugged and said he wondered as much, as he was so like his father had been. The guys in the garage didn't say a lot either. A lot of shrugging, "whatever floats your boat," and one off-colour remark about being careful bending over a car engine, and it was business as usual.
Lex was the only person he could really talk to about his feelings. Over the weeks, their emails had become longer, more personal, with Rob telling him things he had never talked about with anyone else apart from Geri. Things like his guilt over Sandy, and how terrified he was about his new sexual status. He admitted he had made his fair share of off-colour jokes about queers, never once thinking he might be one of them. How had he not known?
Lex's replies were comforting and gave him strength. Rob was a product of his upbringing. His mother had suppressed his natural instincts, encouraging his union with Sandy, using passive-aggressive techniques to ensure he toed the line. Possibly she already knew what he was and could not face it. Lex's own parents were similar. His mother had died when he was sixteen, and he hadn't spoken to his father for five years after Lex stepped out and told him he was gay.
Then the old man had become ill, and in his vulnerable state had reached out to his only child. Lex could have rejected him but he did not, as aware as his father was that they only had each other. He wouldn't be the first heir to a multi-million dollar fortune forced to eat a lot of crow in order to gain approval and love from his parents. He just wished his father could just accept him as he was, without asking him with wearisome regularity if he had found a wife yet.
Since that first night, Rob had seesawed between feeling as hot as hell and plain, cold panic. Each night in bed he would download erotic novels onto his e-reader and feast on sexy images. He was hungry for knowledge and gratification. Lex was 3,000 miles away but even if he wasn't, Rob had no idea what to expect from him. All he knew was what other people did, and get his kicks from that. He found he was excited by the beautiful male bodies on his computer screen. The hairy guys didn't do it for him but the dark haired, suave guys did. The guys who wore suits, were well-groomed, who knew their way around a wine bottle label.
Guys like Lexington Black.
Lex was a top, all the way. Rob couldn't imagine him being subservient to anyone, yet the thought of him submitting was the most exciting thing of all. He didn't need pornography once he had that scenario in his head. All he had to do was close his eyes and imagine Lex crouching on the bed, possibly tied to it so he was totally helpless, and he was sprung.
At the weekends he went up to Camden a few times with Geri, ostensibly to see her old university friends, but they would always end up at a gay club, with Geri pointing out handsome men for Rob to flirt with.
And he did flirt. He even snogged a few. Once, he allowed someone to suck him off in the bowels of the nightclub, but it wasn't the same. It just made him feel empty inside.
Four weeks after Lex's departure, he was dozing in bed when the phone jarred him awake. He was expecting Lex to call in response to the email he had sent the day before, saying he was going to try to get to New York in the summer. The garage was busy and he was in the middle of upgrading their accounting system. There never seemed to be a good time to get away, even though the temptation was to drop everything and get on the first flight to Manhattan.
He leapt out of bed and dived for the phone.
'Rob! Sorry to wake you.' It was Paul, the last person he expected to hear from on Saturday morning. Paul practically lived in the garage but he didn't expect anyone else to. 'Could you come in for a while this morning?'
'Sure. Is everything okay?'
'Yes and no.' Paul hesitated. 'Just get here as soon as you can, will you?'
Rob was about to ask why when the line went dead. Immediately, he was uneasy. If Paul was about to sack him, he would do it at the weekend, and save them both the embarrassment of doing it in front of his other employees.
All kinds of thoughts raced around his head as he drove to the garage. If Paul had a problem with something he had done, he would just say it at the time, but if he could no longer keep him on as an employee, for whatever reason, that was different. By the time he reached the garage, he had convinced himself that he was about to become unemployed.
As he walked in, trying not to panic, Paul's face was strained. He looked to be in a state of shock.
Rob sat on one of the plastic chairs on the other side of Paul's desk and waited.
'Rob, I have no idea what to say. To be frank, I haven't a clue how to handle this situation.'
'There's been a complaint?'
'No. Nothing like that at all.' He pushed a letter over to Rob. 'I think you've done your job rather too well.'
******
'Say that again.' Geri was curled up on the sofa, Simon's head resting against her shoulder. He was fast asleep.
Rob nursed a large glass of Cabernet Sauvignon. He had folded himself into the second-hand leather armchair opposite them. The initial shock had been replaced by hot anticipation.
'I'm going to New York for a month. Lex has offered me some time out to write my novel. And he's given Paul a cheque for $250,000 for the inconvenience.'
'Right. So he's bought you.'
'He hasn't bought me, Geri. I'm not some male version of Pretty Woman.'
'Sounds like you are.'
'I'm not.'
'Okay, you're not.' Pause. 'But you are, really.'
'I'm not getting the money, Paul is. He's still in shock.'
'So he wants you in New York to work on your novel. What's in it for him?'
'The pleasure of my company in his bed,' Rob replied lightly.
Geri pursed her lips. 'Am I the only person seeing how wrong this is? You'd be a ... rent-boy!'
'For a month, to kick-start my writing career. Where's the h
arm in that?'
'No, no, this is bullshit! How could you piss away your self-respect like this? He's using you and you're using him. It sucks, Rob. Really sucks.'
'I think that's part of the deal,' Simon murmured, and received a thump in return.
'I thought you were asleep. Don't you think he's selling himself?'
Simon languidly swung his legs off the couch. 'Why shouldn't he go? It isn't as if he has anything to stay for, apart from our superlative company, my sweet.'
She dodged away from his kiss. 'This is insane. I just wish ... I just wish I could convince you not to do it. I don't want you to get hurt!'
'So I might get hurt. Then I'll get over it and do something else. I'm doing this, Geri, whether you like it or not.'
He held out his arms for a hug and she fell into them, squeezing him tightly.
The next day, he told Paul he was going to take up Lex's offer.
'Good,' Paul said. 'Go and have a break. The wife will stand in until you get back. If you want to come back, that is.'
'Of course I'm coming back.' Rob could not imagine doing anything different. Paul was smiling sympathetically, almost as if he knew already.
******
On the night before he was due to fly out, he tidied the flat and checked his suitcase. At the last minute he decided to pack his 3 meter wind-ripper. It was an old power kite with a string system that wasn't too complicated. He left his paperwork to go and retrieve it from under the bed. He was a big kid at heart, and the thought of driving to a deserted beach and testing his stamina with that bad boy gave him a frisson of pleasure. If Lex was with him, the pleasure would be doubled.
With the kite duly stowed in his suitcase, replacing his fraying tweed jacket (so not New York, Geri had warned him,) he went back to his paperwork. He removed the plank of wood resting over two storage boxes that doubled as his coffee table in order to get his passport. Having located it, he then looked at all the old papers he had thrown into the box when he had first moved in.
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