by Alexis Hall
“He was offering, you deranged bender.” Sebastian-Miles-Crispin-Whoever dabbed at his mouth. “Shitting Christ, my tooth. You don’t just hit people.”
I was almost glad I couldn’t see much of Caspian’s face because whatever it was doing made the other guy take a hasty step back. “For every rule,” he murmured, “there is a necessary exception. I suggest you leave before you induce me to make it a second time.”
My ex-date squared his shoulders, his upper-class armor snapping back into place—impressive, in a way, considering he was drooling blood. “You’ll be hearing from my family…and my family’s lawyer…and probably the police as well.”
As threats went, even I could see it was trying to do too much at once. But if I’d been on my own, I would still have been fucking terrified. My family had mice in the basement. His family—whoever they were—had a lawyer.
Caspian just handed over his business card. “I shall await your call.”
Tarquin-Robert-Hugo stood there for a second or two longer, radiating dissatisfaction. Then he turned without another word and strode off.
I didn’t see where he went.
I didn’t care.
I pushed myself upright on shaky legs—thank you, friend wall—and ran, thoughtless, heedless, frantic, into Caspian’s arms.
I wasn’t sure what I was expecting. Maybe that he would push me into a puddle as I deserved. But he just held me tight, whispering into my hair, “Oh, Arden, my Arden.” And then in quite a different tone, giving me a little shake, “What the hell is wrong with you? How could you be so stupid?”
“I’m sorry,” I wailed. “I…I didn’t think you were coming.”
“Well neither did I. But that’s no reason to fuck someone in an alley.”
“It was oral sex.”
“I think you’ll find that’s semantics.”
I tried to surreptitiously wipe my eyes on my sleeve. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Please don’t be angry. I didn’t want to be with him, not really, but I’d been leading him on all evening and I didn’t think he was going to stop and—”
That was when the tears came. Couldn’t I have one encounter with Caspian Hart where I didn’t cry?
He made an exasperated sound. “Would you…please don’t do that.”
“S-sorry.”
He reached out a hand. Maybe he was trying to comfort me. Or intending to hold me.
If so, it would have been nice.
Unfortunately, my body chose that moment to register its disapproval of that night’s particular cocktail: Shitty Times Up Against The Wall With A Twist. Misery, anxiety, shame, and fear, muddled with far too much alcohol and served long.
It felt briefly like I was turning inside out.
And then I was wretchedly sick.
In that intense, interminable, helplessly disgusting drunken way. Sobbing and heaving and shaking with the force of it.
Eventually I became aware that Caspian had an arm around me, keeping me steady against his body. And then he was pushing a soft, cotton handkerchief into my hand. And, oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck, I’d probably just thrown up on his shoes.
I opened my mouth to apologize but that just made my stomach decide that more of my innards wanted to be outards. The second wave was even worse than the first. Painful spasms of mortification and bile, when I was already weak from my previous adventure in Vomitlandia.
And when I was done—done again—I felt like lying down in the street, ideally to die.
Caspian sighed.
It was the most devastating noise I’d ever heard.
And absolutely the last thing I wanted from a man who had once maybe fancied me. Fancied me enough to put bits of himself into bits of me at any rate. You probably didn’t feel that way about boys who’d just regurgitated their guts all over you.
I mumbled another sorry. What the fuck else was I going to do?
He sighed again. “For God’s sake, stop apologizing.”
He would probably have stepped away from me—and I wouldn’t have blamed him—but the moment he moved, I wobbled pathetically, and he pulled me back to his side. It wasn’t a kindly hold. It was protective like Kevlar, which was to say: solid and impersonal. But I was feeling so fragile and hollowed out that it was just what I needed. A certainty of strength.
I turned into him, as though I could hide from everything—him, me, the whole damn universe—in the crook of his arm.
“Come along,” he said.
He tugged and I followed, stumbling as the world rocked around me. “Where are we going?”
“I’m taking you to bed.”
I was drunk enough for this idea to swing me effortlessly, and almost instantly, from the depths of shame to wild optimism. “I thought you’d never ask.”
“Where you will sleep.”
“Oh.” I peered up at him. Making my eyes as big as they could go.
He cleared his throat. “Alone.”
I flopped against his shoulder as he hustled me along. Vaguely aware we were on the street now. All gold and hazy.
“That’s your stern voice,” I told him. Because it was. “I love your stern voice.”
“Arden…”
“Thass your stern voice too. S’all sweet and shudder-making.” I moaned with longing, stumbling into him this time, trying to get even closer. “Makes me want to get on my knees for you. Feel your hands on me. Your teeth. Your cock inside me. Want to suffer for you and scream and beg and make you happy—”
“This is my annoyed voice, Arden. Because I am annoyed. It’s a wonder you’re not in hospital. Or at the police station.”
I smiled up at him. Floaty somehow. “But you rescued me.”
“I didn’t rescue you. I just…happened to be there.”
“In Pretty Woman, when Richard Gere comes to rescue Julia Roberts, she rescues him right back.”
“What in God’s name are you talking about?”
I was going to answer, I really was, but everything was spinning away from me. Darkness lapping at the corners of my eyes.
I felt weightless suddenly, and I thought I’d fallen.
But there was no ground. Only sky.
And warmth. Such deep warmth. Covering me. Holding me.
Then—
Nothing.
Chapter 13
My first thought on waking up was that I wished I hadn’t. Unconsciousness had been suiting me just fine.
Holy God.
Everything hurt. Literally everything. My stomach, my head, my throat. Even my fingernails were throbbing. I tried to open my eyes but my eyelashes had been replaced with needles and the light sliced right into the squishy bits of my face.
I would have groaned but it was absolutely beyond me.
Rolling over, I nudged my head under the pillow, finding some small solace in the darkness there.
Which was when it hit me: this wasn’t my bed. This wasn’t my room.
I had no fucking clue where I was.
Ahhhhhh.
I spread my arms. Then my legs. Didn’t even get close to the edge. The covers felt crisp and light and smooth against my skin, the way only really expensive stuff does. Certainly not like my budget duvet and inevitably unwashed sheets.
Against my skin?
Oh fuck. Nakedness.
I was naked.
What had I done?
I eased the pillow off my head. Unlocked my eyes. Tried not to whimper as the light came at me again, brighter and harder this time.
Gradually, though, my vision cleared and I managed to focus on a glass of water standing on the posh table thing next to the bed. It looked like just about the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Clear and cool and perfectly pure.
I groped for it, motor functions also somewhat compromised, and took a swallow. It settled a little uncomfortably in my stomach, but it tasted amazing. It tasted of nothing. Of clean. In the filth that was my mouth.
And left me feeling at least 20 percent alive.
Then I he
ard the rustle of a page turning. I had another go at looking and the middle distance resolved itself into a hotel suite. Not a room. A suite. A really posh one if the chandeliers were anything to go by. French doors led from the bedroom bit, where the ruin of Arden St. Ives was to be found, to the living area, where Caspian Hart was sitting on a purple damask sofa, reading the Times.
Images from last night hit me like shrapnel: being carried in his arms through the foyer of the Randolph Hotel, the press of his body against mine as I blundered through the streets, the alley behind the club, the boy I’d pulled—
God.
All disordered fragments.
And too many gaps.
“So you’re awake.” Caspian didn’t glance up from the paper. He seemed slightly more rumpled than usual without his tie and jacket, the sleeves of his shirt rolled up to show his forearms, all sinewy loveliness, flecked by dark hair. But even a little bit undone he was unassailable. Exquisite. A study in absolute assurance.
“Um.” It came out as a croak. “Yeah.”
The nakedness thing was rapidly becoming a big deal. Parts of my body I’d never previously considered—my elbows and knees and flanks—were getting prickly and self-conscious. “Look, uh, why are you…I mean…why am I…did we…”
He put down the paper. Turned the impossible blueness of his eyes on me. All ice this morning. “Arden, are you seriously asking if I fucked an inebriated child immediately after extricating him from a situation that would very likely have devolved into rape?”
Well at least he hadn’t been put off by the vomiting.
“I’m not a child,” I mumbled.
“Then stop acting like one.”
“I’m pretty sure that going clubbing and getting drunk are PEGI 18 activities.”
“Being immoderate, undisciplined, and incapable of taking care of yourself, however, are not.”
I tugged the covers up to my chin. “I can take care of myself. That guy wasn’t going to…going to do anything.”
“Considering how excised you were when you thought I’d offered your college a donation in exchange for a blow job, I’m somewhat surprised at your willingness to sexually barter yourself in an alley.”
“I wasn’t bartering.” I tugged at my hair, which felt awful and smelled worse. Clubs and smoke and sweat and other people’s hands. “I just…I just didn’t want him to fuck me.”
Caspian sighed. The sound felt familiar somehow. He rose with easy grace and came into the bedroom. There was something weirdly normal, even domestic about it, as if I were his lover and this a morning in our life.
Except none of that was true. This was a hotel room. He was Caspian Hart. And I was naked and ashamed.
He sat down on the edge of the bed. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you no means no?”
“I’m not an idiot or a psychopath. I was taught that at school, by my parents, by my own conscience. I would never—”
“I meant you.”
I flinched from the way he was looking at me. Sometimes his gentleness was the most terrifying thing of all. “I wasn’t saying no.”
“Did you want to have sex with him?”
“Well, no, but that’s not the point.”
“What was the point?”
“I…that way…I wasn’t…” I was way too hungover for this. “I was still in control, okay? It was still my choice.”
His mouth tightened but it seemed his annoyance wasn’t for me. For once. “I could kill that boy.”
“I’m okay. He was just…a bit…”
“Violence is not the only form of coercion, and coercion has no place in sex. And you shouldn’t do things you don’t want to do. Ever.”
“I know. It’s just…” I picked at the snowy white sheets. “I don’t want to be punished for liking sex. It’s not my fault the world is fucked up.”
Now it was his turn to glance away. “And I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“No offense, but that’s pretty ironic coming from the man who rejected me twice.”
“That was…I thought it was for the best.”
“And you know something else?” It was hard, after last night, to have much by way of credibility, but I was still the same person who’d been thrilled to suck him off on a balcony. Who’d chased him to London. Who’d hurt myself for his asking and my own pleasure. “Yes, last night wasn’t what I wanted. He was wrong and I was messed up and I’m glad nothing happened. But I know what I’m doing and I know what I like and sometimes”—it was even harder saying this shit to a man’s profile—“with the right person when it’s done in the right way…that can include…I guess…certain types of coercion.” Like your hands on my wrists, your voice on the phone.
I waited for him to get it. To understand. To admit the connection between us.
Instead he was silent for…well…basically ever. And then, “So you intimated last night.”
Not what I was looking, or hoping, for.
And…wait…I did what?
Sorting through last night’s memories was like peering into a stranger’s sock drawer.
And then: me, him, this bed, with its canopy and pristine sheets. He was trying to get me to drink water, exasperated with my drunkenness, my lack of caution, my lack of self-restraint. And I—oh God—I’d sprawled over his lap, offering myself up eagerly for any punishment he wished to bestow.
He hadn’t of course.
My arse clenched in shame.
“Why don’t you take a shower?” he asked, dismissal couched as a question. “You’ll probably feel better after.”
“Okay.” Like I was ever going to feel good again.
He disappeared into the living area, closing the doors behind him. There was a fluffy hotel dressing gown at the foot of the bed. I couldn’t help wondering if he’d worn it as I shambled over and struggled into it. Then shuffled miserably to the bathroom.
It was all shininess in there, hurting my eyes and making my head ache.
I curled up in the bottom of the bath and let the shower pound me. It was so typical that, after three years of student facilities, I wasn’t in any mood to appreciate the awesome on offer here. I’d missed really hot water and really clean baths. And hotels were exciting: all those little bottles of luxury shampoo and conditioner and body wash and moisturizer, jewel-bright in the gathering steam.
Right now, I was too depressed to even think about stealing them. I wished I could swirl away down the drain with the rest of the dirty water.
And I couldn’t help indulging myself with a mean little fantasy that, maybe one day, somehow, Caspian Hart would be vulnerable, exposed, and I would be the one choosing to be kind.
Except it would never happen. I was the faller-over and the fucker-upper, and he would never, ever be vulnerable to me.
And I owed him. I owed him big-time.
It was the hollowest feeling of all: gratitude to this man—this beautiful, cold, unexpectedly compassionate man—who didn’t want me.
I turned off the shower and toweled myself dry. Wrapped myself in the dressing gown again and went back to receive my third…fourth…fifth rejection from Caspian Hart.
He was sitting on the sofa again, his face turned toward the bow window, beyond which I could see the leafy boulevard of St. Giles and the intricate carvings of the Martyrs’ Memorial. It was a little odd to be parallel with the top of it. I’d eaten kebab-van chips on the steps often enough.
On the table in front of him was a properly impressive breakfast, complete with little baskets of pastries, racks of perfectly browned toast, those individual pots of jam I’d always found super tempting, and a collection of shiny cloches concealing what was probably full English deliciousness. I could smell bacon and while the spirit was definitely willing, the flesh was slightly dubious.
Caspian’s attention flicked from the picture-postcard vista to the decidedly less picture-postcard me.
“Um, hi.” I was all covered up, but there was something startlingly intimate about
damp hair and bare feet.
Even more so when his eyes lingered on me. “You look different.”
Try defenseless. Without my tight jeans and my engineered hair, my jackets and my jewelry. My armor of queerness and accessibility. “Thanks for last night. I’m really sorry for putting you to all this hassle.”
“It was nothing.”
“How did you even find me? Were you looking for me?”
“I…yes. You’d posted pictures of your activities on various social media platforms, so you weren’t exactly difficult to track. I arrived at the club just as you were leaving with your…with your swain.”
“You didn’t have to do all this though.” I gestured at the room. “I’d have been fine.”
He shrugged. “I didn’t feel comfortable leaving you alone.”
Oh wow. Way to make me feel even more of an unpleasant imposition. “Look, I should, um, go—”
“Sit down, Arden.”
The command crackled up my spine. And, for once, I resented it. He didn’t get to do that. Not now. “Where are my clothes?”
“I said sit down.”
I sat down mutinously. Fuck.
Then he went all quiet on me. There was water on the table, in one of those classy-looking misted bottles, and he leaned forward to pour me a glass. “You should keep drinking. And maybe try to eat something.”
“Right.” I didn’t want to be snapped at again and it was good advice. Only semi-mutinously, I took a sip of water. Wishing he would get on with it. Whatever it was.
But, for some reason, he still wasn’t saying anything. He was just sitting there, watching me, as unreadable and unreachable as ever.
Except, there was a tightness to his jaw, to his carefully positioned hands. And I wasn’t sure, but his foot was…not quite moving, but twitching as if he was trying very hard to keep it still. It was my first true glimpse of the restless boy he’d told me he used to be.
It softened me toward him.
Even if I was still confused and hurt and embarrassed and epically hungover.
“Arden,” he began.
“Still here. Sitting as ordered.”
“Arden, I want to fuck you.”
He wanted to…Gosh. Well. I hadn’t been expecting that.