Winter Knights

by Harper Fox

  “I was wrong.” Oh, I’d been so bloody wrong; it wasn’t brain chemistry that was trying to break my heart and rip angel’s wings out through my unworthy hide at this moment. “I’d never do anything I thought was going to hurt you, inside or out.”

  “Sweetheart. Do it, then. Touch me like you were going to.”

  I spread him carefully with my thumbs. Scrupulously clean, my Piers, but I’d kept him too busy for a wash and I moaned in pleasure at the taste of him, thrilling and real here at his core. I ran my tongue round the edge of his tightly puckered hole, and when he didn’t flinch, I grew bolder and pressed inward. He gasped and I did it again, deeper this time, shifting quickly to stay with him when he pushed his backside up, the movement so eager and hungry it almost triggered me to climax. “Stop,” he said. “You’ve got to stop.”

  Adherence to our new rules was clearly going to kill me. Well, it would just have to. I sat up immediately, my heart pounding. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes. But I don’t want to come like this. I want to come with you inside me.”

  That nearly did it for me too. I waited, breathing deep, picturing the hairs that flourished in my thesis tutor’s ears until the frantic throb at the root of my cock died down. “Yes. God, yes. Can you reach into my rucksack from there?”

  “Just about. What for?”

  “I’m not the sort of boy who buys love beads without lube. Give it here.”

  I got him ready, as earnestly as Art had done for me but with a good deal less competence. I squeezed the tube so hard the stuff went everywhere, then my fingers shook so much that my efforts to get some inside him made him wince in discomfort, and that was a bloody awful advert for the main event… “Sorry,” I muttered, and to my surprise he reached back and stroked my thigh, the gesture warm and ordinary.

  “It’s okay. Just put some on you. You’re fine.”

  I couldn’t believe he was having to reassure me. I lay down behind him, feeling as if I’d been strung together out of Meccano and rusty wire. But then I curled around his back and everything somehow came right. My cockhead found his entrance of its own accord. He made a sound I’d never heard before, something between shock and welcome, and his hole gaped and fluttered. “Oh. You’re in me.”

  “Yes. Hurting?”

  “No. Yes, but I want it. Come on.”

  I wished I could have been two people and sucked his cock through this first struggle; I wished beautiful kindly Lance had been here. But it was just me and Piers. Oh, I knew him, though—I could reach round his hip and take his shaft in my hand the way I knew he loved, I could close a familiar grip on him in this wilderness. He grated out my name and relaxed in shocks around my in-thrust: tightened and yelled, and took my other hand and clamped it over his mouth. His tongue drove into my palm. I moved again and he sucked at my fingers, pushing his arse back to find me. His tightness became a hot, delicious clasp all the way up my cock. I leaned over him and kissed the tears from his eyelashes, withdrew an inch or two and began to fuck him in short, deep strokes.

  He let go my fingers and buried his face in my elbow, whole body stiffening sinewy taut in my arms. Blindly he flailed out one hand to clutch at the bedside table. I followed him over onto his front. My spine was on fire, my balls straining. He ground his cock into my hand, crushing my knuckles off the bed frame, and the pain was like golden skyrockets, blending with the start of my climax. “No!” I yelled, shuddering back off the brink—not until he was there, not until then, but thank God in that instant his shaft leapt in a way I knew and he shot to completion, convulsing wildly under me. I let my next thrust be my last. I was burning up, breaking apart. I drove deep into his flesh, muffling cries against his shoulder.

  “Gavin, love.”

  I jerked back to the surface. How much time had gone by? Tired old alarms tried to ring in my head. The edge of pain in Piers’ voice, the beginnings of the backlash on his conscience… Oh no. I didn’t think I could bear his regret over this. His cock was still wet and soft in my hand.

  “Gav, you awake?”

  “Yes. Yes, what is it?”

  “You’ve got to pull out of me, handsome.”

  “Oh!” Not his conscience hurting. Relief and remorse swept through me. “I’m so sorry.” I eased back and slithered free, costing him a deep, laughing groan. “Are you very sore?”

  “No more than I’d expect to be. No less than…” He struggled over onto his back and held out his arms for me. “No less than I’d want, after something so bloody beautiful. I didn’t know, Gav. I didn’t know how it could be.”

  We slept for hours. Then we woke, ordered enough room service to fell an ox and refuel us, and went at it again. All that day and all the Christmas night that followed, I was his and he was mine, in every way imagination could conjure and energy sustain. In the first light of Boxing Day, I lay on my back, pillows propped beneath my shoulders so I could watch, holding my legs back by the knee while Piers, frowning in concentration, very carefully inserted the love beads into my body, then jerked me off hard and pulled them back out, making me scream so loud the nice old lady in the room next door came tapping to see if I’d been killed. I lay buried under the duvet, choking on laughter, while Piers apologised profusely and explained he’d poured boiling water on his foot while making coffee.

  He found my other present to him, the serious one. I begged him not to open that one either, but he was suddenly far less inclined to obey and take notice of my whims, which was fine by me. We both sat and stared at the rose-gold ring in its box. If I’d have chosen a time for his first sight of it, I couldn’t have done better. The low winter sun just broaching the horizon made it gleam like fire. It was plain, but the best I could afford, a publisher’s advance having arrived just in time. Now, sitting in the wreckage of our bed, I couldn’t imagine how I’d dared.

  “You… You asked me out here to…”

  I could hardly bring myself to look at Piers. The hotel wasn’t a kind that provided fluffy dressing gowns, and he’d grabbed the bedspread for his run to the door. It was still draped round his shoulders. It was cheap, and a scary shade of orange, but still in its folds he looked like an exiled prince. I adored him. I wanted to lie down in front of him and tell him so. Instead I said, gruffly, “I thought about a civil partnership. I thought it might help fix things.”

  He picked up the jeweller’s box. “How about us…actually knowing one another, to help fix things?” He shook his head. “How about me not being scared to talk to you? And you telling me what it is that makes you work until you’re blind with headaches then crash out and have nightmares about your dad?”

  “Don’t. I asked you not to open it.”

  “Or me not being so crippled with indoctrination I can hardly see straight, let alone conduct a relationship.”

  “Piers…”

  “And yet despite all that you were willing to have a go.”

  I lost a breath. He was smiling, his face bright with an affection I hadn’t seen before. “What?”

  “You’d have had a crack at this-day-forward anyway.”

  “With you? Hell, yes.”

  “I remember this ring. I saw it three years ago in the Celtic goldsmith’s up near Hawick, didn’t I?”

  “Yes. I thought maybe one day…”

  “You must have been gutted last night. When I said I wouldn’t come.”

  I crawled over to him. He wrapped me in the awful bedspread too and we clung to one another. “With my dad,” I began without meaning to, “and the work, it’s all the same thing. I hate him. He’s a racist and a homophobe and every kind of bigot you can think of, but when Mam left he was all I had. I love him. I never want to see him again and I’d do anything to make the bastard proud, and short of learning to weld ships together I can’t. I’d die of joy if he picked up one of my books. I want to kill him. Last night when you didn’t come, I didn’t care if I lived or died.”

  I didn’t know if Piers even heard the end of this recital. I
finished it with my face pressed tight to his shoulder. It didn’t seem to matter. He was rocking me awkwardly, pressing kisses to the top of my head. “Forget the bloody partnership,” I managed at length. “Please just wear the ring.”

  Chapter Ten

  Whatever the ring symbolised, he wore it on his left hand, third finger, and it looked beautiful there. I was well positioned to look at it. I was letting him drive again. He crunched Gwen’s poor little Morris up through the ice with all his customary care, then once out on the long straight road that paralleled the wall, suddenly put his foot down and launched us off at high speed into the sunlight. I broke into startled laughter. “Piers de Val, you demon.”

  “Well, it’s quite fun, isn’t it?”

  “Driving? Yeah. I tried to tell you.”

  “Driving. Sex. Generally being alive. You do know I’m going to church in the village later?”

  “I’m not sure it’s Catholic.”

  “I’m not sure it matters.”

  I laid my hand on his thigh, settled back and sank into the joy of the ride. Every inch of my body was resonant with him. I had his handprint bruises on my butt, a mild rash where his five o’clock shadow had rasped my face. My muscles were stretched and pleasantly sore. Around the middle of the afternoon we had both unwillingly accepted the limitations of human flesh and surfaced for more food and a shower, sharing both. He had stood with me under the tepid water, suddenly cupped my face in his hands and told me he wanted to find and thank the men who had given me back to him.

  So we were on the road to Drift. The hotel bar stocked the brand of scotch Lance had served me, and after a brief argument sold me the bottle at a captive-audience price. I didn’t mind. It seemed a matter of urgency to me too now, to find Art and Lance and say thank you; I’d have gone about it sooner if not so overwhelmingly distracted.

  But we couldn’t find the village. We followed the road that should have led us there, then doubled back to see where we’d missed the turn. We quartered the area systematically, then increasingly at random, until eventually Piers pulled into a layby and switched the engine off. He took the map book I’d been squinting at and had a look for himself. Automatically I handed him his reading glasses from off the dash. I wondered why I’d ever wanted him to get laser surgery, or indeed to alter any aspect of his lovely self. He could have been a Celtic monk poring over the Lindisfarne Gospels. He’d have caused chaos in the monastery, I’d be willing to bet, his brethren wishing to God they’d never taken on that chastity vow…

  “What did you say they were called, Gav? Your rescue men?”

  It wasn’t a question I’d been expecting. How would that help with directions? “Art. Arthur and Lance.”

  “Arthur and Lance?”

  “I know. It freaked me out a bit when he told me.”

  Piers closed the map book. He turned in his seat and looked at me square on. “The hotel didn’t call them out to help you. Nor did the police, and nor did I. I’m not looking a gift horse in the mouth, sweetheart, but how the hell did they know?”

  My mouth dried a little. This query had been floating somewhere far off in the back of my mind since Piers and I had tumbled into bed together. I’d been glad of the firestorm that had kept it from coming any closer, and I didn’t welcome it now. “I don’t know. Maybe they were driving by, out patrolling or something, and just saw me.”

  “Yeah. That’s possible.”

  We shared a look which said plainly how bloody unlikely it was, and I shifted evasively, turning my attentions to the view beyond the windshield. The layby had been sited to give a grand vista out over Sewingshields hill, that vast and featureless mass in which I’d been a needle in a haystack, lost as surely as a clew dropped by a knitting shepherd. “So?” I asked roughly. “All I know is, they were there. You saw them too.”

  “To be honest, I didn’t see anyone at all.”

  “What? You followed their truck back to Drift.” Which has unaccountably gone missing too.

  “We followed a set of lights. By the time I’d made Gwen drive me off in a huff, then regretted it and made her turn round, we could just see them off in the distance. But there was no-one else out on the roads, so I thought it was a safe bet to go after them. After Drift they weren’t there anymore, so that was where you had to be.”

  “But in the morning when I came out of the house… They were there. They waved me off from the window.”

  “I wasn’t looking at the window, was I?”

  I smiled in spite of myself. That sexy, yearning little catch in his voice was new. It had been a whole two hours since our last round, and the Morris was probably big enough, but still we were on the public highway…

  “I didn’t mean to pry, but I saw in the bathroom… You’re getting through your prescription pretty fast. Has your head been very bad?”

  It took me a second to catch up. “For fuck’s sake, Piers. Hang on.” I pulled my mobile phone out of my back pocket. For once there was a strong signal, and I got a browser open and typed Drift village into the search engine. “Drift. There is a place called… Oh. It’s in Cornwall.” Piers had the grace to keep quiet, and I sat frowning, reaching desperately for ideas. “Wait. They must have come from somewhere. Hill rescue, Hadrian’s wall…” Relief swept through me. “Look, there’s a ranger station just down the road from here. You didn’t think I could possibly have somehow made all that up, did you?”

  “No. I don’t know what I was thinking, except…I worry about you sometimes.”

  I nodded. I could feel the spines and prickles of my old life trying to stand up and hurt the hand that was only stretched out to caress. It had finally dawned on me, though, what an infinite privilege it was to have someone who gave enough of a damn about me to make an unnecessary fuss. “I know. I’ll take better care.” I leaned across the handbrake and kissed him, startling the elderly couple who’d pulled up beside us to admire the view. “Let’s go down there and ask, though. They might be on duty today, or at least we could get some directions.”

  We found the station easily. It was the only building on a long bare stretch of road, and I recognised the colours of the couple of Land Rovers parked outside it. They looked much newer than Art’s, brightly liveried and free from dents. It was only when Piers pulled up close to the building that my last doubts died and my heart gave a half sweet, half painful lurch of recognition. “This is the place. Look over the door there.”

  “What is it?”

  I could barely make the lettering out myself. It had been crudely painted on—some joker with a brush, as Lance had said—and time had faded it, time and rain, to the ghost of itself, a skeleton. “Their team thought it was funny as well—their names, I mean. Lance told me someone wrote Camelot over the door.”

  “Oh, yeah. I see.” He switched off the engine. He’d lost some of his morning’s roses. “You know, I think I’ll let you go in on your own. I know what I said about thanking them, but I’m not sure I can stand there and shake hands with the guy who…” He paused, and then finished hoarsely, as if surprised by his own plain speech, “Who had you before I did.”

  I grabbed his hand, undid its grip on the brake. I’d never known him to display a flicker of jealousy in all our time together. Then, I’d never given him cause. We were both vulnerable now. “Don’t say that. You’ve always had me.”

  It was a bloody awful line—made me blush as soon as it was out—but its sincerity let me get away with it. He smiled and pulled me into a hard embrace. “Good. Go on in, then. I’ll wait.”

  The building was little more than a long wooden cabin. Jogging up the steps, I remembered what Lance had told me about the rescue service and their chronic lack of funding. It seemed crazy to me. The RAF fighter jets that thundered regularly overhead showed no signs of wear and tear. I thought about the price of a set of new carabiner clips, and what the lack of them had cost, and I shivered. Poor Art, having to bear such a weight on his conscience.

  There he was. Not
the man himself but a portrait photo, nicely framed, on the wall of the shadowy reception area. With Lance, of course. They had their arms around each other’s shoulders and were beaming broadly. Well, they were perfect poster-boys for the service. They even made the ghastly orange uniforms look good. I smiled involuntarily back at the photo. God, I hoped I would know how to conduct myself if they were on duty here today. A small-hours fling was one thing, but meeting your lovers by daylight in their office…

  “Can I help you?”

  I spun round. A weary-looking man was coming through from a back room, cradling a coffee mug between his hands. One of Art’s cave-rescue Knights, I guessed, from his strong, rangy build. “Yes,” I said, approaching the counter that separated the reception from the little office. “I’m trying to track down Arthur Green and Lance Whitley. I think they work here.”

  He set the mug down on the counter. He did it rather hard and some of the coffee slopped over the side. “You want Artie and Lance?”

  “Please. Are they on duty today?” I’d wondered about asking for an address, but the man had fixed me with such a grim look that I thought better of it. I hefted the bottle of scotch. “Maybe I could leave this here for them. They pulled me out of a cave a couple of nights ago, and I never got the chance to thank them properly.”

  “They…pulled you out of a cave? Rescued you?”

  “Yeah. It was up on Sewingshields hill. My name’s Gavin Lowden. Maybe they mentioned it, or logged the callout.”

  The ranger leaned his elbows on the counter top. He clasped his hands together. They were callused in the same way Art’s and Lance’s had been, and to my surprise they were shaking. “Has someone set you up to this?”

  “What?”

  “Is it some kind of sick bloody joke? Are you from the papers?”

  Apparently I was from Mars, or the depths of some hellish septic tank. I couldn’t begin to fathom the utter disgust on his face. “The papers? I don’t understand. I—”