by Helena Maeve
“You need to stop,” he muttered, voice dropping an octave.
A shiver raced down Ulysses’ spine. He fought for calm. “And why’s that?”
“Because I’m asking.” Robin smacked his bowed lips. “Nicely.”
“Didn’t sound like a request.”
The first inklings of an accent seeped into his voice—American rather than francophone. “Look, man, you lay off the junkie and we’ll leave you alone.”
“We?” Ulysses repeated.
Shakedowns were by no means uncommon in his line of work, but usually it was people in positions of authority who did the shaking. Robin wore denim checkered flannel. His wrist watch was plastic.
MI6 could at least send a couple of suits to make their feelings known.
Robin downed another swig of beer. “This is crap.”
Oh, no. We’re not changing the subject. Ulysses shifted forward in his seat. “Who told you he was a junkie?”
“Depressive, junkie… Same thing. He was suicidal, wasn’t he? Shot himself in the head…”
“With a gun that was never found?” Ulysses retorted, when what he really meant was maybe. Mister X’s preliminary autopsy report had made no mention of drugs in his system, but that was hardly definite. The locals had been quick to dispose of the evidence. “Don’t recall seeing you in my rear view before. How do you know what I’m looking for?”
In lieu of answer, Robin produced his iPhone. It might have been a coincidence—everyone and their mother seemed to have sold their souls to Apple these days—but the scratch on the back said otherwise. Robin quirked a smile. “Lifted it when you came in.”
Ulysses made to grab it, but Robin held it out of his reach, smirk broadening as he sat back in his seat.
“No, no. Finders’ keepers, see? You need to take better care of your things.”
A vein pulsed in Ulysses’ temple. “Stealing is a crime.”
Robin shrugged off the reminder. Something in the loose sprawl of his limbs suggested he didn’t care much for the law. “What do you care what went down with that guy, anyway? You’re not a cop.”
“What gave it away?”
He grinned, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “You’re not from around here. You’re not carrying… And you haven’t stopped staring at my mouth since I sat down.” His smile had dimmed by the time he finished speaking, as though he’d been winding down to that observation all along. “You’re not family, either.”
I’m being played. It was an unpleasant thought, but no more so than wasting his time chasing ghosts.
Ulysses took back his beer bottle. “You’re awfully sure of yourself.”
“Tell me I’m wrong.”
He had no idea. He’d noticed Robin when he’d come in—hard not to, when he was the youngest man in a bar patronized largely by the over-sixty crowd—but only in passing, without ulterior motive.
The stakes had changed the minute Robin had accosted him. Ulysses recognized the electric charge in the air, the hint of challenge. Desire and danger so often went hand in hand. Time was that cottaging was an integral part of any gay man’s social calendar.
Sex with strangers still cranked Ulysses’ engine.
He couldn’t help it. He wondered what Robin’ pale lips would look like wrapped around his cock. It had been months since he’d had anyone. He told himself there was no harm in fantasizing.
“You do this a lot?” he wondered lightly. “Threaten foreigners and steal their phones?”
Robin scoffed primly. “This isn’t stealing. It’s…borrowing. To make a point.”
“Which is?”
“I’m faster and I’m younger than you. Take the hint and lay off your little exposé.”
It was hard not to take issue with the dismissal. Ulysses tamped down his annoyance. “You left out the ‘or else’.”
“I mean it, man.”
“Please,” Ulysses scoffed, shamming confidence he did not feel. “I’ve been carjacked in Bangkok and jailed in Cairo. I’ve had secret service thugs break two of my fingers. I even taught at university—by far my toughest audience yet. Your…Artful Dodger antics are not that daunting.”
Never mind that he had no information about Mister X, or where to find his vanishing remains, or even if his death was worth looking into. In twenty-five years of print journalism, instinct still seemed as fickle and untrustworthy as ever.
“Why so interested, anyway? If you didn’t know him and you don’t know me…”
“Who says I don’t know you?”
Ah, there it is. Truth, at last.
The moment stretched between them, taut and fragile, piano wire thin. Ulysses rolled his shoulders, listening to his joints pop like ancient tree branches. “Did someone send you?”
“No.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Robin slid the phone along the table but kept his hand over the screen, fingers caging in the small device. “I know you were a big name ten years ago…before you were fired. I know your full name is Ulysses Alexander Leach, which is quite apropos if you think about it.”
The gibe was as old as Ulysses’ career. It had been brandished too often to preserve its sting.
“I know you’ve had an uphill climb since you followed the wrong lead and lost your job. You’re in debt up to your neck. Guess that explains why you’ve turned ambulance chaser after a respectable career as a political reporter… Did I forget anything?”
Ulysses tapped a fingertip against his glass. A summary of his very public downfall only reminded him of the need to make every minute count.
“A thief and a psychic,” he drawled. “Aren’t I lucky…”
Undaunted, Robin tipped forward. “I know you think there’s a story here, but there’s not. There’s just a dead fool who’s better off not making the front page of any newspaper.”
Of all the things Robin could have said to throw him off the scent, that was the least effective. “Seems to me he would’ve been better off alive. Don’t you think there’s some value in finding out what happened? Perhaps seeing the murderer brought to justice.”
“If by value you mean a bump in subscriptions to your magazine…” Robin slid a foot along his ankle, pressing damp khakis into contact with his skin. “I told you. He killed himself.”
Ulysses grimaced but didn’t flinch away. It went unnoticed.
“You’ve already asked one question,” Robin went on. “Ask the other.”
“I don’t—”
“How much do I charge—it’s what you’re wondering, isn’t it?”
Ignoring Robin’s wide mouth and soft gaze was something of a challenge when Robin seemed determined to be noticed. His eyes were very deep-set and very brown, with just a faint ring of gold around the pupil.
Ulysses had begun to doubt that he was all that young. It might have been a matter of seeing what he wanted to see—Robin’s cheeky smirk and fearless swagger rather than his rigid posture. The hint of a tattoo on the side of his neck. The chipped bit of flesh on the upper shell of his right ear.
Suddenly Ulysses was no longer certain that he was dealing with a mere messenger, but a paid agent—someone who could and would use force to persuade him if sweet talk didn’t get the job done.
“Do…men usually ask you that?” he wondered, aware that he was stalling. He suspected that Robin knew it, too.
Part of him couldn’t help feel slightly curious. What would make the SIS so nervous they’d set a honey trap and was it worth getting stung to find out?
Claudia had always said he should get his head examined.
“Some.”
“I don’t pay for sex,” he said.
Robin smirked. “And I’m not selling…but I am going to have a smoke. Outside. See if the rain’s let up.” He uncoiled his limbs and pushed away from the table with a sinuous movement. “If you want to join me…”
A wrecking ball swung inside Ulysses’ ribcage. He was partially relieved that Robin didn’t wait for confir
mation. The last time he’d picked someone up in a bar, he’d still been married, toeing the line between losing his wife and losing his job. At the time, he’d managed to convince himself he didn’t do it for the urge to scratch an itch.
He had no such excuses now.
Stop asking questions didn’t leave a lot of room for romance. It was the kind of warning Ulysses knew he should take back to Claudia.
He also knew that if he called her, she’d tell him to come back straight away. Start working on the latest installment of the MP expenses scandal, or the rise of extremism in Europe—or some comfortable, armchair piece about Snowden and WikiLeaks, and how terrible it was that governments could not be trusted.
Hell, there was a political crisis unfolding on home soil and he could be at the forefront, profiling the potential successors to the highest office in the land.
“Fuck.” Ulysses stood abruptly, chair legs screeching, and snatched phone and trench coat as he went.
Outside, the deluge had slowed to a drizzle. He spotted Robin a few feet away, his back to the stone wall of the pub.
“Just tell me one thing,” Ulysses bit out.
Robin fisted his collar with both hands and kissed him silent.
Chapter Two
Ulysses was no saint. The banked coals of his arousal flaring to life, he surged greedily into the kiss.
There had been lovers while he was on assignment before—Claudia allowed it as long as he brought back leads to advance the stories they were working on. She tolerated Callum, attaché to the Irish embassy and suspected member of the Republican Army. She turned a blind eye to Ignacio, Cuban-born billionaire who’d made his money dealing with the likes of Gaddafi.
An errand boy in a bar in France barely registered.
Yet the kiss was mind-numbingly good. Robin’s mouth was soft and sleek and pliant beneath Ulysses’, his cheek warm under his fingertips. He only went along with Ulysses’ hunger for a little while.
His breaths fanned across the shelf of Ulysses’ jaw as he seized Ulysses’ bottom lip between his and dug in gently, a muted promise. I can hurt you. He released it with a pop a second later, in favor of tracing the edge of Ulysses’ teeth with his tongue.
Ulysses swayed forward on legs that no longer felt like were his own and pressed both hands to the gritty wall.
“Wait.”
Robin mouthed at his jaw when he pulled away, tenderly scraping his tongue along Ulysses’ stubble and making it impossible to think. Ulysses scoured his memory, trying to remember the penalty for indecent exposure in France.
The country of lovers had a strong Catholic majority. They usually had small towns like Gatinau and Criel-sur-Mer locked down.
But that wasn’t what he asked when Robin pulled back to watch him through hooded eyes.
“Are you MI6?” Ulysses panted, struggling not to lean into the delicious pressure of Robin’s thigh between his legs.
“Do you want me to be?”
Ulysses considered his answer. “Not really.” MI6 would mean black bags, interrogations, threats. And Ulysses was too tired to even contemplate the paperwork involved in getting him out.
He didn’t let himself contemplate the alternative.
Robin smiled, grazing at the sallow dip of Ulysses’ measles-bitten cheek with a knuckle. “Turns you on, doesn’t it? Thinking you’re screwing the enemy?”
“I don’t have enemies.”
“Everyone has enemies,” scoffed Robin. “Especially people who dig up uncomfortable secrets… How much was the fine?”
Ulysses’ laugh was lost to the whoosh of the rain. “Which one?” he gasped.
This time, Robin fastened his lips to the pulse throbbing under the shelf of his jaw, sucking with purpose. Ulysses settled a tentative hand at his hip, fervently hoping for a bruise.
“Quarter million pounds. Libel’s…the new treason.”
Robin hummed against his neck but didn’t withdraw. He seemed only vaguely interested in conversation, which suited Ulysses just fine. His straining erection had more pressing needs. He was gratified when Robin tipped forward until there was no room left between them, squirming this way and that in a restless attempt to feel Ulysses’ hard-on against his.
Ulysses groaned. It had been too long since he’d woken to a lover’s dick nudging gently into his backside, or a mouth on his cock. Or a hand between his legs, stroking him out of dreams and into the best kind of mindless exhaustion there was.
“This is so wrong,” he confessed to the corner of Robin’s lips, kissing him roughly. The pub gutter gurgled beside them as it disgorged runoff onto the sidewalk at their feet.
Even if the rain had dialed back its efforts, Ulysses’ soaked shirt still stuck to his back like second skin.
Robin laughed. Every chafing, uncomfortable detail paled to the sharp sound of his glee.
Ulysses reached for his zipper, desperate to feel him.
Robin caught his hand. “You first.”
A flicker of uncertainty sparked in his gut. He’s setting me up. He’ll humiliate me somehow. But at the ripe age of fifty, there wasn’t much Ulysses hadn’t done, and recovered from, and tried again. Embarrassment wasn’t deadly. Nudity didn’t give him pause. He unbuckled his pants and pulled his zipper down with frantic, clumsy fingers. He made to draw out his cock, but Robin was quicker, sliding a deft hand into his underwear and curling his fist around him.
“Bloody hell…” Ulysses dropped his brow to Robin’s shoulder, dimly aware of the chuckle that rumbled through the other man’s ribcage. “Fuck, if you keep that up…”
“What?” Robin purred. “You’ll come?” He smelled of citrus and beer, and he was warmer than a furnace. Each slow, delicious stroke of his hand down Ulysses’ dick stripped away another layer of his sanity.
Ulysses was down to pittance in a matter of seconds. He would’ve been ashamed if he could still think. He tried to kiss Robin, to give something back, but his whole being was riveted to the careful drag of fingers around his length, pleasure building inside him with urgency he hadn’t felt in some time.
“You can come,” Robin told him. “It’s allowed.”
Of course it’s allowed.
Ulysses struggled to laugh it off, but that wicked avowal sent a zing of yearning into the pit of his stomach. What if it wasn’t? What if Ulysses had to beg and work for it? What if Robin decided to stop when he was right on the brink, hanging on by the skin of his teeth? What if—
Bliss rippled over his skin in waves, slowly at first, then faster and faster. Ulysses jerked forward, slicking Robin’s fist with his cum. His knees buckled, but somehow he didn’t fall. He was tightly held and comfortable despite the snug grip around his waist.
Robin nosed tenderly at the hinge of his jaw, stroking him slow and steady through the aftershocks. “So? What do you think?”
“Hmm?”
“Should I charge?”
Ulysses huffed out a breath, too tired to quip or laugh, too drained to put much effort into keeping up appearances. Without the quick burn of lust, better judgment was racing back in, picking at him the way a vulture might pick at carrion.
What was he doing, screwing around with strange men? This was how old geezers like him wound up dead in ditches—or worse. He started to pull away when Robin closed fingers around his elbow to keep him still.
“Easy there… Wouldn’t want you tripping and cracking that pretty head open.”
Wouldn’t we? Mistrust shot through Ulysses. He forced it down, smothered it under a thin layer of bravado. “Want to come back to my place?” he panted, bracing himself against Robin’s deceptively narrow chest. He had a feeling that if he got him out of those lumberjack clothes, he’d have a surprise. The steel in his biceps when he wrapped an arm around Ulysses’ waist alone was telling.
“Depends. What’s at your place?”
“Dry sheets. Plus,” Ulysses added coyly, “I could make it up to you.” Two could play this game. Ulysses had done it before—n
ot something he was proud of, but men were susceptible to confessing all sorts of things during pillow talk. And Robin was his only lead so far. The only sign that something more than tragic suicide-while-on-holiday was at work here.
Robin gave it a moment’s thought. “Yeah. All right.”
Grimacing at the mess in his underwear, Ulysses tucked himself back into his clothes, cock still throbbing with the intensity of his orgasm. He fumbled his car keys for a moment before he could figure out which button to press to unlock the Ford.
“Robin doesn’t sound French,” he mused, sliding behind the wheel.
“It’s not,” Robin confirmed, tight-lipped and quick to change the subject. “Sure you’re good to drive?”
“Got a bit of an ego, do you?” Ulysses keyed the engine and peeled away from the curb. The car rocked as they slid off the sidewalk.
“I just hope you’re better at driving than you are parking…”
“Everyone’s a critic.”
They drove in silence through the narrow streets of Criel-sur-Mer, the crowded frontage of squat houses offering the occasional glimpse of a roiling, black sea and a cloud streaked sky above it.
Heading back to the hotel and getting smashed wasn’t the worst idea. Ulysses had a feeling he’d already made up that quota when he followed Robin out of the pub and came all over his hand, but sobriety didn’t gel with one-night stands. He waited for contrition to strike now that the fun was over.
His conscience ought to have been working double-time to make him repent. And yet this was the first breakthrough he’d had in weeks. If it came with an orgasm, who was Ulysses to quibble?
“Can you step on it?” Robin muttered, squirming restlessly in his seat.
“Why? Don’t tell me you’re that eager for—”
“Just do it.” He turned, gazing out the rear window with a grim expression.
Ulysses flicked a glance at his mirrors, a cold shiver racing down his spine.
Sure enough, a dark sedan had materialized out of thin air behind them. Thanks to the filmy curtain of the newly resumed drizzle, he couldn’t see past the windshield.
“Do you have a problem with French people driving?”