Incubus

by L. J. Greene

  “Stay away from me!” I shouted wildly, and he stopped and held up his hands.

  “You’re bleeding,” he pointed out.

  “I know what you’ve been doing!”

  “Of course you do. You’re a smart fellow; it was only a matter of time before you figured it out.”

  The instant confession caught me off guard. “So you admit that you and he—”

  “He, alone. Do you think I would ever do something like that if not under coercion? Where is Reggie, anyway? I don’t suppose you’d break into his room without feeling yourself safe enough.”

  He stepped closer to me, and I shrank against the books, turning my head away like a small animal who knows its death has come. But he didn’t rip my throat out, not literally, and not metaphorically. He unbuttoned my shirt instead, and eased it off my shoulders.

  “You’ll have to force me,” I spat out. “I won’t just let you, not willingly.”

  “Sweetheart, what are you gabbling about?” He prodded at my wounded shoulder, and I hissed. “You need patching up, don’t you? You’ve been in the wars.”

  “But you haven’t,” I said, and started giggling. Once I’d started, I couldn’t stop.

  He stared at me like he wasn’t sure what to do with me, and then said, “Go and sit on the bed.”

  God help me, I did as he told me. I sat and waited and giggled like a fool while he fetched a towel and a tin kit with some military insignia on the lid. Inside was a stash of medical supplies, bandages, iodine, scissors, a Swiss Army knife, and loose pills of all shapes and colors.

  “Take this,” he said, and pressed one of those pills into my mouth, a blue oval. I tried to pull away, spit it out, but he kept one hand clamped over my mouth and the other grasped the back of my neck. “Swallow,” he said, and then stonily, “Don’t make me make you.”

  I swallowed. After a moment or two, he took his hands away. He watched me closely, and gave a satisfied nod when I took in a deep, shuddering breath, and blew it out again. I felt my hysteria subside as I let him wipe away the blood from my shoulder and tend to me, passive and pliable under his hands.

  “There, now,” he said, when he’d wrapped my shoulder up. “We’ll have to keep an eye on that, but it wasn’t very deep. I believe the camera probably came off worse than you did from the sounds of it.”

  I glared at him, my tranquility receding at the mention of the camera. “You’re very calm about it all.”

  He shrugged. “I made my choices a long time ago, dear heart. You wouldn’t believe me if I pretended to be shocked and embarrassed, would you?”

  “No.”

  “There we are, then. Yes, you were filmed without your permission.”

  “And—and those handkerchiefs—”

  “Souvenirs, I’m afraid. To the highest bidder. I’m dreadfully sorry about it all, really I am. But it’s not as though you haven’t enjoyed it, is it?”

  I gawped at him, then said, “One more word, Mancini, and I might just break your jaw.”

  At that, he dropped the breezy act. “Alright,” he said. “Of course you’re sore about it. It was a lowdown thing to do, and I hated doing it. You think I want to share you with the world? Well, I don’t. I don’t like it any more than you do.”

  “You’ll forgive me for thinking you’re as full of horseshit as ever, Mancini. You’re as stuffed full of lies as a pillow with feathers, and they float through the air just as easy. ”

  He knelt down before me where I was seated on the bed and clasped my hands. “You must be patient with me. I’ve got by all my life on lies. I’ve had to. Nothing good has ever come from my telling the truth, only pain. And I didn’t want to cause you pain.” I’ve never seen an angel, but the look on him then was as close as I think I’ll ever get. “I tried to keep you safe. I tried to keep you hidden away, right from the start—but it’s my fault, all of this. My fault he found us, and my fault he worked it so he could collect you. Do you at least believe I’m sorry about that?”

  My heart’s not made of stone. I wavered. He saw it.

  “And when Reggie wanted to watch, didn’t I try to make you comfortable? I never strung it out, I always finished as soon as I could.”

  It’s no secret I’m a chump, but what he was saying also made sense. He had tried to hurry things along every time Cresswickham wanted a show. He had blindfolded me so I could pretend we were alone.

  He squeezed my hands. “You see? It’s true. I’m as much a prisoner as you are.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me before? I asked you to stop lying. You said you would.” My naïveté grated in my own ears.

  He opened my hands, palm up, and kissed them. “Because there wasn’t any point in both of us feeling humiliated. I wanted to save you from that, from feeling like you were putting on a show every time.”

  He busied himself kissing my hands again, and I looked thoughtfully at the back of his head. “That’s how you feel, is it? Like you’re putting on a show.”

  “My whole life is just for show,” he murmured, and then stood to pace the room. “It kills me to think you’re afraid of me, lover, but that’s what Reggie has done to us.”

  I stood as well, my shoulder aching. “Surely I can’t be the first,” I pointed out. “Not the first he’s brought here like this. Not the first to star in your stag films. Michael, I saw for myself in your room, and on film downstairs. And I’d bet Gabriel, too.”

  He stopped pacing and clutched at his shirtfront in a strange kneading motion. “Michael? You—you saw?” he asked.

  “I saw,” I said grimly.

  “What did you see?” he whispered.

  “I saw more than enough, though I couldn’t watch the whole thing. That poor kid, getting the screw of his life and then finding himself out on his ear. Yeah, that’s right,” I said at his expression. “Gabriel told me you laid him off.”

  “You and Gabriel,” Mancini said, “seem downright chummy these days.”

  “Leave Gabriel out of this,” I growled. “We’re talking about you. You and Michael, anyway.”

  “And you, too, I think,” he said softly. “You’re quite cut up about it, bunny.”

  “Of course I am!” I roared. I’d lost my cool completely, Mancini’s sedative sizzling away to nothing in my hot blood. “How do you think it felt to watch you with someone else like that? To know I’m just another—just another—”

  He came to me swiftly and placed one hand on my waist, the other on my cheek. “You’re not just another. No,” he went on over the top of me, as I protested, “No, you’re not. Maybe you’re not the only one who's been filmed. But you are the only one I’ve loved.”

  The flint in his eyes had gone, and they were on fire again. I’d challenge anyone to resist being looked at like he looked at me then.

  “Love,” I breathed. “Is that what this is? You said you loved Cresswickham once, and how foolish it seemed when it had passed over.”

  “Now I know better. Now I know that real love doesn’t pass on like a wildfire and leave only smoke and ashes behind it. Real love burns like the center of a star, white-hot and endless.” And he kissed me, just as heated as the star he was talking about. When he came up for air, he added: “I didn’t mean to fall in love with you, you know. But here I am, ablaze for you.”

  Pretty words and kisses will always seep past my defenses, and he knew it. If I’d had my wits about me, I’d’ve pointed out that stars die just as surely as we do.

  But I didn’t have my wits about me. I’d been badly shaken up by the events of the night, and I was willing and ready to take the easy route. Let whatever he’d doped me with rise up again and drown my common sense. Let my mind flow like water past the sharp-edged rocks all around me, pushing thoughts of danger deep under so I could enjoy the taste of his tongue in my mouth.

  “Where is Reggie?” he asked, after breaking off another kiss.

  “Downstairs. Passed out on the sofa in the viewing room. He was watching…” I couldn’t
say it, reproach rising again in my gut.

  “He likes to review the films before he sends them off,” Leo said quietly.

  “Sends them off?”

  He paused, but then nodded, as though remembering his promise to be truthful. “I’m sorry to tell you, but there are...collectors. Like him. Connoisseurs, they call themselves. They enjoy the violence. That’s why we came to Hollywood in the first place. Reggie was keen to find a producer. A distributor. And…stars for his shows.”

  It was maddening, the thought that reels of me taking that treatment were making the rounds. But one thing made me feel better. “He wasn’t best pleased with the latest film. He cracked it when you brought me off.”

  Leo gave a smirk. “Oh, he hated that. Yes. Came in and slapped me around afterwards. He wants me to deny my partners. Makes him feel better about himself.”

  “I’ll bet. Well, he threw his glass at the wall, and then he hit the deck himself. I guess the mickey must’ve got to him at last.”

  The smile faded from Leo’s eyes, though it stayed on his lips. “The viewing room, you said?”

  Chapter 38

  In my heart of hearts, I was hoping the Englishman had died quietly, choked on his own vomit, and I went along with Mancini to see if it had happened. But it was not to be. Cresswickham was as I’d left him, snoring fit to shake the house, the light from the pictureless camera still flickering over his body. Leo regarded him, expressionless, and then thumbed up the closed eyelids to check Cresswickham’s pupils.

  “Getting the right dose is tricky, you know,” he said, looking up at me. “One can’t just dump any old powder into a drink and expect it to do the job.” Somehow he seemed reproachful.

  “I guess not,” I said. “I guess you have it down to a fine art these days.”

  He narrowed his eyes at me. “Help me with him, will you?” he asked.

  It was reminiscent of my first night in the mansion, hobbling up the staircase with the unconscious aristocrat between us. “Old times,” I muttered, and Leo grunted a reply. Cresswickham was heavy, his head rolling indolently on his neck and his slippers scuffing along the carpet. He lost them both at different times, and I had to fetch them while Leo waited. I stuffed them in Cresswickham’s robe pockets, one each side.

  We tossed him on his bed, face-up. “What are we going to do about this?” I puffed.

  “Get him under the covers, I suppose,” Leo said.

  “I mean about all of this,” I said. “We can’t go on like this. I won’t perform for him anymore, Leo. I won’t. Surely you can’t mean to, either? We’ve gotta get away from this house.” We, I’d said. We, together. I wondered if he’d noticed.

  But Leo did not reply, focused as he was on rolling the Englishman around in a complicated plan to get him under the covers. “You’ve bled on the duvet here,” he said, standing back.

  “I’m ever so sorry, milord.”

  “Oh, bunny,” he sighed. “I’m just wondering how to explain it when he wakes up.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t call me that,” I snapped.

  He reached out to draw me closer to him and murmured, “There are so many things you don’t want me to call you, darling. Is your shoulder paining you?”

  “Heaving that great lump all the way upstairs didn’t help it. And having you grope at it—”

  “I’ll find you a painkiller.” He was as good as his word, scrabbling in the tin medical kit on the nightstand. “Here,” he said, holding out a small, pale-peach colored pill. “This should do the trick. Chew this down.”

  It tasted chalky and bitter, and I had no idea what it was. It worked right enough, though. I felt a sense of wellbeing wash through me, and the pain trickled all away.

  Leo was studying me. “Better?”

  “Better.”

  “Why don’t you come over here and lie down?” He petted the bed, the side Cresswickham was not taking up.

  I looked at the bed, at Cresswickham, and at Leo. “Are you thinking—”

  “Just come over here,” he purred. “Come here, sweetheart. Those particular pills can hit hard, make one woozy. You’re better off lying down for a moment.”

  I couldn’t look away from his burning-ember eyes once they’d locked on me, so I did as he told me, and came to the bed. I let him lie me down next to the Englishman, and he stroked my hair off my forehead once I’d settled. I kept trying to look at Cresswickham from the corner of my eye until Leo gave a light laugh.

  “He won’t wake, you know. Why, we could do anything we liked and he’d sleep right through it.” He stretched out next to me as if to show me that movement on the bed wouldn’t stir the sleeper next to us. “Anything,” he repeated. “Anything at all.” His hand slid over my chest.

  “Leo,” I whispered, and I wish I could say I meant to ask him to stop. But whatever it was I’d taken, it made the slightest touch feel like an intimate caress.

  “Really, when you think about it, it’s no more than he’s done to you unawares,” he pointed out, and kissed me. It was like a starburst of bliss coursing through every nerve in my body.

  “What did you give me?” I moaned. He drew his hand between my legs to cup me, and I was aching hard for him at once.

  “Just something for your pain, my love. Here, take off your pajamas.” He knelt up to untie the string at my waist, and the dip in the bed made Cresswickham roll slightly towards me. He looked guileless and peaceful in his sleep, his Titian curls falling forward on his brow.

  I reached out toward his face. His breath fluttered against my fingertips, invisible butterflies, and the sensation made me groan. Leo had rid me of my clothing by then, and when he tongued the tip of my cock I cried out, before snatching my hand back to cover my mouth.

  Mancini chuckled. “I told you. He won’t wake.” With that, he made a horrible noise in the back of his throat, working up a ball of phlegm. I watched him spit, with an accuracy born of practice, right at the Englishman’s cheek. It slid a slow path down his face.

  Cresswickham did not even flinch.

  “See?” Leo said. “He won’t wake. Touch him, if you like.”

  Lord Reginald Cresswickham, unconscious and unable to stop me from doing whatever I wanted. Something bitter rose in my throat, and for a moment I wanted to spit on him too, slap him, carve my initials into his forehead. Power, as they say, corrupts.

  But it was only a moment. I could no more touch that sleeping face than I could have killed a man.

  Leo took me right down, giving me the kind of suck job he hadn’t bothered with since we left the Chateau, and I arched up, plunging into his mouth. When he pulled up again, I quivered and mewled and demanded, but he was looking at Cresswickham.

  “Touch him,” he said again. “Kiss him or hurt him or whatever you’d like to do to him. Don’t hold back.”

  “I don’t want to do anything to him,” I said. There was a rolling inside me like a great ocean wave, a flotsam-strewn swell of lust and need and some weedy, unidentifiable tendril curling round my heart. “All I want is you,” I said. “I don’t want to hurt him.”

  He sat up again, a disbelieving smile crinkling his eyes. “Of course you do. He’s hurt you, hasn’t he?”

  “Oh, Leo,” I breathed. “No. No, I don’t want to.”

  His eyes were cold again. “What if I want you to?”

  It must have been the drug made me well up with tears. I’m not a crier by nature. “Please don’t make me.”

  “Oh, no, sweetheart. No, no. I’d never make you do anything you didn’t want to do. Will you spill for me? Will you empty yourself here, like this, on his bed, so I can remember that? Remember the smell of it and the sight—”

  “Yes,” I said. “Yes.” That I could do. But that was mean enough, Leo encouraging my climax while his lover—his keeper, and mine—lay unawares next to us. Mancini pulled down his trousers and rubbed himself against me with a liberal coating of spit to make the way smooth. I could see him sneaking glances to his left, wa
tching Cresswickham with a half-smile.

  I reached up to his face. “Don’t,” I said. “Don’t look at him. Look at me.”

  He kissed me fiercely for that, and redoubled his efforts until I erupted like a geyser, shouting so loud it should have roused the dead.

  But it did not rouse Cresswickham.

  Leo followed soon after, grinding into my softening flesh as though my very limpness excited him. I yelped once or twice as he leant too hard on my wounded shoulder, and he gasped out his sorries but kept on, relentless. He was looking into my eyes when he peaked triumphantly.

  “What are we doing?” I whispered afterwards.

  Leo rolled off me, and off the bed, and plucked at his shirt. It was wet all down the front. “We are soaking my best shirt,” he said with a laugh.

  I turned my head to look at him. “Is that going in an envelope, too?”

  Something flickered in his eyes. “No,” he said shortly, and went into the walk-through. I could hear him pushing around coat hangers.

  I looked to the side again, at Cresswickham. My enemy. He was powerless now, and Leo had been right: I could have done anything to him. I could have killed him, quickly and easily; a pillow over the face, like I’d wanted to do downstairs, or take up the Swiss Army knife from the first aid kit and push the blade neatly through his eyeball, into that barbarous brain of his.

  My thoughts scared me, then. I sat upright, my head spinning, and reached for a familiar handkerchief. Carefully, I wiped Leo’s spit off the man’s face.

  Mancini came back out with a new shirt on, and looked at me. “You’re not bleeding again, at least,” he said. “You should go back to your room.” No offers to clean me, not after my gibe. Still it irritated me, that he’d use me like he had and not even bother to wipe me down after his ride was through. I remembered Alice in the stables, brushing down her wet thoroughbred and turning away from my kiss.

  I gingerly lowered my legs to the floor.