by Alexis Hall
The plot. I had completely lost the plot. “Uh, what?”
He put a hand to the glass, the bones all ridging up beneath the whitening skin. “Stop playing games with me. Is it money? I’ll pay.”
“Oh Jesus.” Now I got it. “You think I’m blackmailing you?”
It was so…ugly. So beyond anything I would have thought or expected that, for a moment, I was numb. It felt like the moment after you cut yourself on something really sharp and you see the blood on your skin before you feel the pain. And then it hit me, all this bewilderment and shame and anger and hurt, and I burst helplessly into tears.
Through a silvery blur, I saw him turn away from the window. “What are you doing?”
“I’m”—I hiccoughed snottily—“c-crying, you arsehole.”
“Then please stop.”
“It’s not a conscious choice.” I scrubbed my sleeve across my face. My eyes were sticky and swollen, the velvet of my jacket making my skin sting. “How can you think these horrible things about me?”
The carpet smothered his footsteps as he crossed to where I was sitting and I tried not to notice how good he looked in motion, silent and effortlessly graceful, some glorious hunting beast. Probably coming to rip me to shreds.
He crouched down in front of me, the fabric of his suit tightening across the sleek muscles of his thighs, outlining them for me in all their strength and elegance. Like the chalk sketch of a murder victim except the deceased was my pride. He was just so beautiful. It was unfair. His eyes held mine in a cool, gray-blue forever. And then he told me, “I don’t know you.”
I tried to laugh but it clogged in my throat. “You don’t know me and prostitute blackmailer is where you went straight out of the gate? Is your glass half empty or what?”
“Why else would you come here?”
“God, because”—the truth exploded out of me—“I liked you and…and you made me feel really cheap, okay?”
“I know.” He rose to his feet and then he was off again, toward the window. It was weird—compelling, in one way, painful in another—how much stillness there was in him. And how much restlessness at the same time. It made every room feel like a cage. “My behavior…it was inappropriate.” He was silent a moment. “It was wrong.”
Was that what passed for a sorry in Caspian Hart Land? Except he seemed to be almost-sorry for completely the wrong thing. The one bit of this whole hideously humiliating business I definitely didn’t regret. “Wait. Are you talking about the blow job?”
“It’s not my usual practice.”
Oh shit, no. This was turning into an ever-deepening well of fail. The only thing worse than having enthusiastically gone down on someone who thought he had to pay me after was going down on someone insistently straight. Enshrined forever as some guy’s sleazy little secret. A pit stop at Queertown. “You mean you’re not gay?”
“No, I’m gay. But I don’t know what…happened to me. I shouldn’t have lost control like that. I could have hurt you.”
“Caspian”—his name slipped out of my mouth before I could stop it, the words of a magic spell, a curse or a blessing—“you did hurt me. You hurt me when you tried to buy me off or whatever it was you thought you were doing.”
“I was trying to apologize,” he snapped.
“You didn’t need to apologize. The fact that you thought you did offends me. And, actually,” I added, on a roll now, “you know what else offends me? You thinking I can’t take a bit of deep throating. I did excellent deep throating. I only gagged because you’ve got a big dick.”
His shoulders shifted. I must have been getting good at back reading because I thought maybe I’d embarrassed him. Though probably not in a bad way. I’d never a met a man who didn’t like having his bits admired. But I’d noticed this in Caspian before—the oddest touch of something almost like shyness.
That was when something else occurred to me. I mean, while it was pretty grim to have someone think you’d sleep with them on behalf of your college’s endowment, how much worse would it be the other way around? If your first assumption when somebody touched you was that it wasn’t you they wanted. Maybe it was one of the perils of being way too rich, but he was also way too attractive. Surely people were falling all over themselves to put his cock in their mouth?
I slipped out of the chair and followed him to the window. Rested my hand lightly on his back, feeling the heat and tightness of him through stupidhigh superfine. And he shuddered under my palm like an unbroken stallion.
“You didn’t do anything I wasn’t up for,” I told him.
He sighed. “I am sorry, Arden. I thought the donation would compensate for the way I’d treated you.”
“Well you thought wrong. Shoving your dick down my throat is okay. Even shoving your dick down my throat and never speaking to me again is okay. Shoving your dick down my throat, never speaking to me again, and starting an ‘oops, I’m sorry I shoved my dick down your throat’ scholarship in my name is seriously doubleplus unkay.”
Now that I was closer, his reflection was clear enough to show me nuances of expression: the slight softening of his lips, the hint of amusement. And I remembered that making him laugh was almost as satisfying as making him come.
“I wasn’t expecting anything,” I added. “It’s pretty fucking miraculous you’d want me at all. It’s not every day a boy gets to wrap his mouth round a gorgeous billionaire.”
“Arden, Arden.”
I adored it when he said my name. My memory was bliss-hazy but I thought he’d whispered it to me that night as well. Arden, Arden, oh, Arden the same way some people called out for God.
“Stop.”
“I loved being on my knees for you, being breathless for you. I loved everything we did. I didn’t want or need anything else. And it makes me really fucking sick to think you might regret me.”
He turned abruptly. Nothing between us now, between me and his beauty, his pale gray-blue eyes startling vivid against the dark profusion of his lashes. And oh those lashes, so unexpectedly opulent, the only touch of softness in his face. I thought of him stretched out beneath me, or beside me, lax with satisfaction, my fingertips finding all his secrets. It was, honestly, a little hard to picture. He wasn’t a man for quiescence. It was something I had uncomplicatedly liked about him. But, all the same, maybe lust-tamed he would let me.
“I don’t regret you. I…I…” His voice had gone hoarse, the words ragged, as if they’d had to tear themselves out of his throat. “I can’t stop thinking about you.”
“Seriously?” I hadn’t meant to come across quite that pathetic or uncertain, but it was the last thing I’d ever have expected him to say.
Caspian Hart couldn’t stop thinking about me? Me?
He must have meant it, though, because as I stood there staring at him blankly, he caught me by the lapels of my jacket and pulled me round so my back hit the window. My heart jumped and I couldn’t have told you whether it was excitement or fear. The glass was cold and solid behind me, but it seemed unreal just then, as though nothing held me but him.
“Oh God.” A low groan, frayed and frantic. He’d sounded like that with his cock in my mouth. “I can’t…I shouldn’t…oh God.”
“Yes,” I whispered. “Yes.”
You can. You should.
I reached out to draw him closer but he seized my wrists and pinned them over my head, stretching me out, making me helpless. His knee nudged my legs apart, slid up one thigh, brushed the groove of my groin as he leaned into me. He smelled far too good. Clean, expensive, undeniably aroused: skin and sex and that amazing cologne of his. Sweet and dark, just like him. And, oh, the way he touched me, restrained me, made me wait.
It was perfect. Perfect. Everything I wanted.
Whatever he’d claimed about his usual practices, he certainly knew how to please a boy like me.
I wriggled. Moaned. Let the sheer needy excitement of everything he did to me fill me up like fireflies, buzzing and dancing and shini
ng.
His lips were bare inches from mine. The heat of his breath brushing me in prelude.
I’d never been so sure of anything as I was at that moment. Him and me and the possibility of all the things he could do to me—the things we could do together. Romantic and tender and sexy and wicked. I met his wild eyes. Tried to control my shaky breath enough to beg. But all I managed was his name.
And then he covered my mouth with his.
Chapter 9
Truthfully, I’d always been kind of take it or leave it on kissing. I’d enjoyed it, of course, but in the way you enjoy canapés at a posh party. Very nice and everything, artful even, but wouldn’t some real food be better? It was hot on the dance floor—kissing, not canapés—tongues grinding like bodies, somebody’s fingers tangled in my hair, before we stumbled to their place, or mine, to finish things off. But mainly it was prelude to the good stuff.
Not with Caspian Hart, though.
It was a no-mercy kiss. A brutal claiming, full of teeth and desperate hunger, forcing my surrender to his will and his passion.
I strained toward him, opened to him, as if we were at the end of the journey, not the beginning. More than that, he made me forget there was a journey. There was only his mouth on mine, his hands holding me, his body pinning me. And just like that, everything I’d felt—listening to his voice on the phone, seeing those icy predator eyes of his, talking with him on the balcony, the woody-acrid scent of his cigarette, being on my knees for him—yes, everything I’d felt was real again.
And he kissed me like it was real for him too.
Attraction, symmetry, freedom, trust. Something a little bit magical, even if its bewitchments were on the hard-core side.
When he drew back, I felt taken and tender, mouth-fucked afresh.
His eyes held mine, dazed and wild, gleaming with all the light from the horizon at my back. “Arden, I—”
“Oh no.” I just about managed to catch my breath enough to speak. “I’ve had bad experiences with you and sentences that begin with my name.”
“Yes, I—” He had the grace to look faintly uneasy. “I can understand that. I know I’ve treated you badly. It was never my intent.”
I wriggled my hands, enjoying the way his tightened. “Kiss me again and I’ll forgive you.”
“God,” he muttered. “I really need to stop doing this.”
But he kissed me anyway. Slowly this time, conquering me by inches, seduction of a kind.
The kind I liked: thorough and deep and merciless.
He tasted of heat and coffee. I hadn’t liked nicotine, but if I had maybe it would have been like this. A smoky velvet kiss drawing me softly into danger, into addiction.
He was breathing hard after. A little flushed. A lock of hair had fallen like a wayward comma across one eye. If he hadn’t had me so deliciously trapped, I’d have pushed it back for him. “Arden—”
I gave him a look.
He closed his eyes briefly, a frown line crinkling at the top of his nose. Something else I would have loved to touch. Smooth away. “I have to tell you, I don’t do relationships.”
“Oh, that’s fine.” I hooked a leg across his hip. “Let’s just have sex.”
He let me go so abruptly I nearly toppled over. Saving myself only by slithering sideways over the glass like a smooshed insect. “I don’t do that either.”
My mouth fell open. “You don’t have sex?” The words bounced crazily off the walls and the polished floor. I’d accidentally used my interrobang voice.
But he only smiled his distant smile. “I don’t have casual sex.”
“Why not?”
“Because it sometimes leads me to forget myself.”
“Well, we don’t have to have casual sex.” I rubbed my wrist, my thumb lingering on the spot where his own had pressed. “We can have…smart-casual sex. Or formal sex.”
“I thought you didn’t like formal.”
Oh God. His teasing undid me almost as thoroughly as his savagery. Or perhaps it was knowing he was capable of both.
He’d retreated to his desk. If you could call that curve of edgeless glass a desk. Bare, of course, except for an equally sleek laptop, a phone, and a lamp. And a frighteningly futuristic-looking ergonomic chair: this del Toro monster of steel and black leather. I could imagine him sitting there against the darkening sky. His own little world, his own circle of light, as stark as the rest of his office.
“I would do formal for you,” I said.
He glanced away. “I would never want to make you do anything you didn’t want.”
“You never have.” I probably sounded pathetic, but since I’d just chased him to London, interrupted his meeting, and then burst into tears, it was a bit late in the day to be worrying about my dignity. “I don’t think you could. I think”—my mouth had gone dry—“if you wanted something, I’d want it too.”
“We can’t do this.” He braced his hips against the desk, hands on either side. It was a nonchalant pose, except for the tight grip of his fingers.
Even I could tell it was slightly mortifying how quickly I jumped on the fact that he went for “can’t do this” over “don’t want to do this.” I wasn’t quite enough of a dickhead to call him on it though. “Why not?”
“I’ve already explained.”
“But there’s an entire spectrum of behavior between relationship and casual sex.”
“I’m sure, but I’m quite a busy man, Arden, and I have neither the time nor the inclination to embark upon something both complicated and inevitably unsuccessful.”
And again with the half-empty glass. “How can you say that without even trying?”
He sighed, a finger stroking the crease between his eyes, as though it pained him slightly. “Because I know myself. I know what I’m capable of and I know what my life permits.”
“But what’s the point of”—I made a not-very-eloquent gesture—“any of this if you can’t…uh…have your wicked way with a cute boy you met at Oxford?”
He stepped away from the desk and crossed the room toward me. His shadow engulfed me but I wasn’t threatened by it. Up close, like this, with nothing sexual between us, the difference in our heights seemed more than usually ludicrous. He put his hands on my shoulders. I didn’t exactly feel infantilized by it—just physically small, which I didn’t mind. But I also had a sense he was trying to be fraternal, which I, well, did. People who fucked your mouth didn’t have the right to pretend they hadn’t.
“I think,” he murmured, “you underestimate my wickedness.”
And, just like that, my irritation was gone. I grinned up at him. “Oh I really hope I don’t.”
“You don’t know me.”
“Then let me.”
Yeah. That was deliberate. I was hoping he would remember the last time I’d said that to him. For a moment, he seemed to soften, his touch turning almost into a caress. It wouldn’t have taken much—just a hint of pressure—to send me to my knees again. I could have rested my head against his thigh and he could have run his fingers through my hair. I imagined his expression, open and at peace, like when he smoked.
But even as his hands made promises, his eyes were winter days, just ice and emptiness. And then he told me with terrible gentleness, “I’m saying no, Arden.”
Um, right.
Well.
Not really much I could say to that. At least, nothing that wouldn’t be pleading or sound creepy. There were names for people who didn’t take no for an answer, and I had no intention of being one.
Suddenly I wished he wasn’t this close. I didn’t want the heat of his hands or to see the silver filigree in his irises. But unless I started sliding across the window again, there was nowhere for me to go. “You kissed me.”
“I know. I…I’m not devoid of feeling. I’m just usually in better control of myself.” He glanced away. Frown back. Mouth to match: another tight line. “I don’t know why you…how you do that to me.”
I let out a sh
uddery breath. “So I’m not making it up. It’s there for you too? This is something.”
“It’s nothing I want. And I have to get back to my meeting.”
It shouldn’t have been a surprise. He’d done the same thing on the balcony, after all, just less kindly. But it still made my heart reel: the ease with which he could think one thing—feel one thing—and do another. That he could share even a small piece of my pleasure and still turn away.
That it could be nothing he wanted.
But then I had no idea what kind of life he lived. Maybe thrilling sexual connections were falling into his lap like summer apples. Or—more likely—gauche twenty-year-olds were a lot easier to find than breathtakingly beautiful billionaires. When I was gone, he would probably phone through to his Calvin Klein secretary and be all “bring me my coffee and unleash the boys.” And then twenty-four university students would come bounding in and fight to the death for the privilege of deep throating him. Talk about a new twist on The Hunger Games.
I had no idea what my face was doing. My eyes felt big though. And my mouth pouty. But whatever it was, it made him touch my cheek like he had on the balcony. “I’m sorry, Arden. I never wanted or meant to hurt you. On the contrary I…I like you very much. I think you’re…delightful.”
He’d gone a little pink along the top of his oh-so-defined cheekbones. It would have been adorable if he hadn’t been in the process of rejecting me. “Well, thanks. But that’s pretty scant consolation. I like you but I still don’t want you?”
“I don’t like the way you make me behave.”
“Caspian, your cock didn’t suck itself.”
“I’m very aware of that.” He sighed. “I shouldn’t—”
I knocked his hand away, the impulse sudden enough that I only realized what I’d done when the harsh slap of flesh against flesh resounded through the room. “Stop fucking regretting me, okay? You liked it. I know you did. So you might as well just fucking admit it.”
“I just did. I said I liked you.”
“And you liked what we did. You liked having me on my knees, choking on your—”