by Alexis Hall
I wasn’t ready to loft it into the void just yet, so I emailed it to Nik instead, along with a !!!-heavy accounting of last night’s adventures. Within seconds, the reply came back: omg we know did you lose your phone?
My phone? Shit. It was still in the sitting room.
I found it with a bare blip of battery left and what looked like a “you made a racist joke, then took a long haul flight” number of notifications.
Turned out I was all over Instagram. Because @i_hate_ellery had something like 253k followers and had tagged @ardybaby a lot. As had a bunch of other people because apparently @ardybaby got around. Thankfully, I looked pretty adorable in an off-my-face kind of way.
I also had a long chain of Kik messages from Nik, charting a journey of bewilderment from “how’s it going?” to “REMEMBER TO DRINK LOTS OF WATER BEFORE YOU GO TO BED” via various pit stops at “are you okay?” “are you dead?” “wow, you’re having a night” and “who’s that girl?”
That girl, according to her feed, was currently sitting at the top of a rusty metal staircase that curled up the concrete, copper-pipe-strewn husk of a condemned building. In one hand she was holding a martini, in the other a sign that read IF U DON’T KNOW UR NOT INVITED.
Another text from Nik: you’re internet famous.
Only a little bit, I sent back modestly.
Though I had accumulated rather a lot of new followers. Despite my last post being my toenails when I’d done them up like ladybirds.
Oh well. At least nobody would be under any illusions about what they were getting.
What are you up to? I asked Nik. And received an impenetrable response about biomimetic materials.
What about you?
I didn’t say Waiting around for a billionaire to rock up and fuck me hard and nasty. But I was tempted.
Speaking of, I probably just had time for a nap and a self-delicious-making session before Caspian arrived.
The sushi showed up just before seven. All iced and packed up and completely exquisite. I hovered around like a 1950s housewife as an endless parade of brightly colored morsels were arranged on the dining room table. Enough to feed the five thousand some exceptionally extravagant fish.
They did try to tell me what everything was but the words whizzed by so fast—unagi, hamachi, amaebi, ikura, masago—that none of it really went in. Which left me to preside over a feast I had no clue about.
But hopefully it wouldn’t matter.
What would matter would be that I’d tried. And that we’d be sharing something.
I did nibble on a…pale, rice-balanced filament thingy while I was waiting. And, oh my God, it was delicious. Intense, but also weirdly delicate. Boom and then gone. Like a mouth orgasm.
I’d been to a Yo! Sushi in Oxford, where the food galloped past you on conveyor belts, the plates color-coded by price. I’d only ever dared try the green and blue dishes for fear of racking up an enormous fish bill, which meant I probably hadn’t got the best from my visit. But this was so totally not like that it was almost incomprehensible. The sheer difference wealth could make to the way you experienced something, even if that experience was commonly accessible, was frankly crazytown.
It took reserves of self-discipline I didn’t know I possessed to hold back a nomming frenzy. Some date it would be if Caspian turned up and I was all like “I made you some sushi but I eated it.”
I checked the time. Seven fifteen.
Caspian would be here any minute. Should have been here already. Maybe he’d got caught up at work? Or in traffic? There had to be some things even billionaires couldn’t control.
Maybe one last…wossname…while I waited?
Ngh. So good.
Okay. Right. Enough of that.
I sat down at a safe distance from the food and in sight of the door. Looking forward to the moment that Caspian Hart would walk through it.
And come to me.
Seven thirty.
Huh.
Well, it was London.
And he was a super-busy man.
I went to find my phone, just in case there were any messages.
Nope.
Hmm.
What if he’d said half seven? Or eight? Or tomorrow?
No, he’d said seven.
Could sushi get cold? Or warm? Or whatever.
Go off, it could definitely go off.
Great. After begging him to spend the night with me I was going to poison him with raw fish.
Maybe I should text him. Except that would look insanely clingy.
He was barely late.
Well, under an hour late. That probably counted as barely late for someone like him.
And if dinner was a bust, I’d just have to make sure dessert—i.e., me—was substantially satisfying.
Wow, seductively waiting for someone was boring.
I hit the study to retrieve my copy of Milieu, figuring paper still had the edge on machines when it came to being joyfully thrown aside as your lover arrived. Read an article about whether smoking jackets would ever be sexy again.
If nothing else, it inspired to me to reconsider my setup. It was fairly decadent, I thought. But there was always room for more.
Putting Milieu down, I opened the apartment app and cranked the heat right up. Then I took off all my clothes and arranged myself in what I hoped was an alluring fashion. One leg resting very carefully on the edge of the table, hands behind my head, my body all stretched out and slender. Best I could manage since I wasn’t exactly the gym bunny type and it…well, it showed. But I could be sexy in my own way, right?
Honestly, I felt pretty sexy sometimes. At least, when I was having sex and somebody was pounding into me, all sweat and skin and soul-deep groans.
Perched on a chair with my bum sticking and my bits dangling? Not so much.
Eight fifteen.
My eye fell on the tie and jacket he’d left that morning.
What if I…uh…accessorized? It would be one way of demonstrating I was absolutely and enthusiastically on board with the things he was into.
I approached the tie casually. As if I was underconfidently cruising it.
It was beautiful, like just about everything Caspian owned. Charvet from the label on the underside. A power tie. Dark gold silk with paler gold diagonal stripes. Gorgeous. This splash of bold color, such a contrast to his sober suit.
A moment or two and then I picked it up. Stroked it with my fingers. It was smooth and strong, gathering warmth against my skin like a living thing. Making me ache to be touched. For hands to pin me, hold me, and claim me.
I wouldn’t have worn the thing. Not in a million years. At least not in the conventional way. But I twined it experimentally round my wrist and, yep, it definitely looked good there. Felt good, too, sending this shiver of excitement through me, raising goose bumps all the way up my arms.
Which made me freshly aware of the awkward vulnerability of nakedness without context. I probably looked like a plucked chicken.
Hardly appealing.
But maybe he’d like the…exposure? My visible need to be wrapped up in something warm and protective. Like his body.
I sat back down, stole another piece of sushi, and set about tying my hands together. Weirdly enough, it wasn’t that difficult. Just required some supple wrist action, which I’d clearly honed over years of wanking. In a couple of minutes, I was secured and pulling the knots tight with my teeth.
Now all I needed was Caspian to show up and rescue me.
Or, for preference, take advantage of me.
While I was helpless and at his mercy. Utterly unable to resist whatever depravities he wished to indulge.
Oh poor me.
Tremble. Gasp.
God, I was getting hard just thinking about it.
Sushi and a boner. What more could a man want?
Chapter 25
It was nearly ten o’clock.
And I was still sitting there, naked and alone, surrounded by melting ice and r
uined sushi.
I’d tried calling—my wrists were bound but I still had my fingers and, for emergencies, my nose—but I’d gone straight to voice mail.
What if something had happened to him? How would I find out? It would be on the news, right? Billionaire Killed in Horrific Car Crash While Driving too Fast to Undisclosed Rendezvous. Sexual Distraction Suspected. Oh God.
Also, what was I going to do about my…predicament? I was pretty sure Bellerose wasn’t available for assisting with ill-advised acts of self-bondage.
I wriggled my hands back and forth and discovered I’d done a really good job of immobilizing myself. The more I tugged, the more my knots held. Which would have been great if I was making a rope ladder or escaping from prison down my bedsheets. But, right now, it was seriously non-ideal.
I’d have to wait for Caspian.
Who was very unlikely to actually be dead.
He…
He just wasn’t coming, was he? After everything I’d said this morning. After I’d fucking begged. And not in a hot, sexy, exciting way.
In a pathetic, awful, humiliating way.
And Caspian was what? Laughing at me? Bored of me?
But how could he have said everything that he’d said and done everything that he’d done…gone out of his way to be kind to me so many times…and leave me like this?
With nothing.
No word. No apology. Nothing.
I laid my head on the table. With an exaggerated gentleness meant to combat the desire to bash my stupid brains out.
Fuck. Fuck everything. And most of all fuck me. For being an idiot. As usual. What was I thinking? Sushi. Nakedness. Kinky accessories. Had I really let myself believe that he was going to turn up and gleefully ravish me? That, based on a handful of words, he would tear down all his walls, abandon everything that held him back, and just offer up his heart for me to cherish?
Of course he wouldn’t.
Not when it was infinitely easier to make a fool of me instead.
I sighed and sat up again, accidentally knocking Milieu onto the floor. Bugger.
Despite my best efforts, picking it up with my toes just wasn’t happening—it made me feel slightly bitter about all those movies where people escaped from jail cells or handcuffs or whatever by manipulating keys around with their feet.
Nothing for it but to slither out of my chair, get on my knees, and use my teeth. Which was embarrassing in a totally not into this way. Thank God nobody could see me. Although, if past history was anything to go by, this was exactly the moment Caspian would turn up.
But no.
Not even being facedown, arse up, and completely naked was enough to summon him tonight.
And that was when I saw him.
In photographic form. Staring at me from the “Beau Monde” section of Milieu: that stilled tiger look of his, elegant, powerful, and exquisitely dangerous, captured only for a moment.
And he was with someone. An unsullied angel of a man, a little taller and a little older than Caspian, copper-blond and heart-crushingly handsome.
Impossible to ignore the way they stood together. An easy familiarity of bodies. Not the awkward affection of two male friends—the “I’m not gay” elbow nudge or shoulder pat—but the way you moved when you already knew how to fit. When intimacy had sanded away all the rough edges of touching.
The picture was one of several comprising a double spread on the Royal Brampton & Harefield Hospital’s fund-raiser.
The caption read: Caspian Hart and Nathaniel Priest.
That was all.
Five words to make me dust.
I suddenly really very urgently wanted to be not naked and not tied up. My whole body felt weird, like a spider had crawled on me and then scuttled away into some dark corner, leaving me violated and twitchy. I pulled frantically at the tie, sweat gathering, sharp-edged somehow, under my arms and at the back of my neck.
I’d once got stuck on a balcony, halfway up a building, wearing only a towel because of a complicated series of misadventures involving a one-night stand, an ill-timed shower, a lecture someone else was late for, and a locked door. It had bagged me a mention in Oxford’s longest running gossip column—how was that for classy—and it had been funny. Even to me. I mean, I wasn’t so fragile in the self-esteem department I couldn’t be ridiculous.
But this.
This was just embarrassing and awful and…and—
And I was going to be sick.
I ran for the kitchen, since it was closest, and spluttered into the sink. But there was nothing to bring up. Just a burn at the back of my throat and in my eyes. Unshed tears and unrelieved nausea and the sound of my own sobbing breaths echoing against too much fucking marble.
When I was calm…calmer…I reviewed the situation.
Tried to think what MacGyver might do had he taken off all his clothes and tied himself up in a strange apartment with no hope of rescue.
And came up blank.
MacGyver would never have got himself into this mess in the first place. Talk about being your own worst enemy.
In the end, I sidled up to the knife block—which was probably hand-carved sapient pearwood or something—and very, very carefully manipulated a knife from it with my fingertips. Then I lowered myself equally carefully to the floor, trying to put as much distance between my body parts and the path of the blade as possible. Because dropping a knife that looked more like a katana on my foot or decapitating my own genitals with it would have been the cherry on my shit sundae of an evening.
Despite being what A&E visits were made of, it was surprisingly easy to slice through a tie with a carving knife. I got the edge of the blade under the fabric—pointing away from my big, long, blood-filled artery—and applied what pressure I could.
And then I was free.
Caspian’s tie reduced to ribbons and knots on the kitchen floor.
The first thing I did was put some clothes on. It was amazing how much worse things seemed when bits of you were flopping in the breeze. I checked my second phone and this time—oh this time—there was a message. I guess I’d missed its initial arrival because I’d been too busy trying to unself-bondage myself with the kitchenware.
I moved my thumb over the little envelope. This better be good. Better than good. It had better be fucking spectacular.
But all it said was, Working late.
I stared at it like it was the enigma code.
I was so done.
Pulling out my phone, I booked a last-minute ticket on the Sleeper. Unfortunately, I’d already missed the one that would get me all the way to Inverness, but Edinburgh was better than nothing.
And possessed the major advantage of not being here.
Which was absolutely what I needed.
I finished packing, which took less than five minutes, left the magazine, the second phone, and the remains of Caspian’s tie on the table with the spoiled and spoiling sushi, and left.
* * *
I was on the train a good twenty minutes before it pulled out of Euston. There’d been a few berths still available but they were expensive and, while they were a nice idea in principle, I’d always found them a little claustrophobic. The seats were fairly comfortable—about as comfortable as first class on a nonsleeper—so I took off my shoes and curled up under my coat.
Rested my head against the window.
Watched the darkness and the light slipping past.
It was seven hours to Edinburgh. I must have slept for some of it. The important thing was that I didn’t cry.
We were over the border when the sun rose. Misty gold and rumpled sky and Scotland’s indecorous beauty. So different from England’s neat patchwork.
Knife-twist in my battered heart: this longing for home.
We arrived pretty much on time, and even though you were allowed half an hour to collect yourself, I grabbed my bag and dashed across the platform in order to catch the 7:44 to Inverness. Four hours later, I was on another train, this
time bound for Lairg, and then a bus to Kinlochbervie.
I was travel-numbed, rattled, and weary.
But hey. It kept my mind off things.
Off—
Nononono. Don’t even think his name.
I sent a text to Hazel, letting her know I was coming. It was easier that way round because Mum had these spidey senses when it came to my mood and would probably have worried.
The bus finally arrived at the harbor and I limped out. Stared across the rough gray water toward the rough gray hills. The light was already fading. Seeping away in shades of silver.
Fuck. I’d been traveling for nearly eighteen hours. My body was one big ache. I should probably have asked Hazel to come get me in the car, but it was only a half hour walk.
We didn’t actually live in Kinlochbervie itself. We lived out in the wilds, near Oldshoremore Beg, in this converted crofter’s cottage called Oran na Mara. That meant Song of the Sea, which was a poetic way of saying wet and stormy. But as I’d promised Caspian, there was a great view.
I was trudging along the single track, wrapped in the deep silence of far-flung places, when I met Hazel coming the other way.
“Just thought you might want some company, love.” She threw an arm over my shoulders and pulled me in for a quick squeeze. Duration of squeeze was no marker of affection. She was the type of the person who did everything quickly: this rapid-fire woman, all flying hair and hands. “How’s things?”
“Fine.”
I wasn’t sure if I was glad to see her or not. Well, obviously I was. She was my mother’s girlfriend and I loved her. But I’d also been counting on having the next twenty minutes or so to plan my story. I had to come up with something between the truth and a massive, massive lie, since the truth included dispatches about my sex life from the frontline of adulthood no parent wanted to hear. Except I was a crappy liar at the best of times. And, honestly, right now, when even smiling seemed slightly beyond the scope of my physical and emotional energy, I wasn’t sure how convincing my happy face would be. Pathetic. I was pathetic
Pathetic pathetic pathetic.
Hazel reached for one of my bags and I knew better than to fight her for it. “You came six hundred and sixty miles because you’re fine?”