Hard Tail (28 page)

I winced. It sounded all too much like what Pritchard had been doing to Matt. “And what’s the sentence for that? And what happens if
hopefully
doesn’t pan out?”

Kate took a deep breath. “It’s entirely likely you’ll just be fined. There is the possibility you could go to prison, but for a first offence, even if you’re charged with ABH—that’s assault occasioning actual bodily harm—”

“I know what it means, Kate. I just want to know if I’m going to be charged with it.”

She sighed. “Honestly, until we’ve heard from the police regarding the other party’s statement, we simply can’t speculate.”

Matt’s hand had crept into mine at the word
prison
, and now he spoke up. “What if someone told the police Ste—Pritchard has a history of violence?”

“They won’t,” I said firmly. “Not unless they really have to.”

Kate’s eyes had widened, and she leaned forward in her seat. “I really think—ow! Tim, did you just kick me?”

“Sorry—my foot slipped,” I said innocently, wiggling my bare toes at her as if in evidence.

Kate’s gaze tracked suspiciously from me to Matt, but she didn’t ask any more questions.

Chapter Twenty-One

The drive down to the police station in the centre of town was a nerve-jangling one. We took the BMW, as it turned out Kate had driven down in a brand-new two-seater MG. Seemed like I hadn’t been the only one making changes in my life. Matt gave the shiny red sports car a wistful glance as we passed it, and I started wondering about trade-ins.

Only for a moment, though, as I remembered I ought first to see if I’d be at liberty to drive the thing.

When we got to the police station, there was a frustrating wait to talk to someone who actually knew anything about the case. Eventually we were greeted by a young officer I didn’t recognise and whose name I was too nervous to catch. Did the fact that he called me “sir” mean I wasn’t going to be charged? Or was “sir”, in this instance, just police shorthand for “You violent scumbag”?

He took us to an interview room, where he opened up a file and briefly scanned its contents before looking up with a bland expression. “Right, Mr. Knight. We’ve spoken to Mr. Pritchard—apparently he became somewhat belligerent on being questioned—and we’re happy that the statement you gave us corresponds with the truth.”

If I hadn’t been sitting down, I’d have collapsed with relief. Matt, hovering in the corner as there were only three chairs, gave a huge grin.

“So there’s just the matter of the assault charge.”

My heart leapt back up into my mouth so fast my head spun.

“Will you be wishing to pursue the matter, sir?”

“I—what?” I croaked.

Kate rescued me. “He means, do you want to press charges against Mr. Pritchard?”

“I…” I could charge him? Get Prick-tard sent to jail?

“I think Mr. Knight would like a few moments to consider the matter,” Kate said smoothly.

“Right.” The officer stood up, glancing at his watch. “I’ll give you ten minutes and then look back in on you, all right?”

Kate stood too. “That’ll be fine. Thank you.”

As the door closed behind him, she sat again. I hadn’t got up in the first place, sincerely worried I might just fall down. “I think I just aged ten years,” I muttered.

“So, are you going to do it?” Kate asked.

I looked at Matt, who’d perched on the edge of the table next to me. “What do you think?”

“It’s your decision,” he said.

I nodded. “No, then.”

“No?” Kate’s head snapped round. “Why on earth not?”

“Because…because it’s not just about a fight in a car park,” I said. “Which, by the way, I won. If this goes to court, there’s a good chance a lot of other things are going to come out…” I faltered at the unfortunate choice of words, and Kate shot Matt a shrewd glance. “Anyway, maybe I got a few bruises, but Prick—I mean, Pritchard came off worse. It doesn’t seem right to get him fined or sent to jail or whatever as well.”

Matt squeezed my hand. I was pretty certain Kate noticed that too.

Stepping out of the police station into the sunshine was like climbing out of a black pit of despair into, well, the sunshine. “Thanks so much for coming down,” I told Kate. “Even though it turned out to be a bit of a wasted journey.”

“Don’t be silly. I got to meet Matt, so it certainly wasn’t wasted.”

I may possibly have been sporting a soppy grin at her words, as she gave me a fond and almost motherly smile. Matt just took a really good look at his trainers’ scuffed toes, and the tips of his ears turned red.

With Jay still in hospital—and with me guiltily aware I hadn’t visited him in days—I didn’t like to leave my phone off any longer, so I switched it back on. It rang almost immediately. “Sorry, I’d better get it. Just in case.”

It turned out it
was
Jay. Calling from his mobile, my phone told me. “Are you allowed to use mobile phones in a hospital?” I asked.

“I’m not in hospital anymore. They chucked me out yesterday. I’m at Mum and Dad’s. So what’s this I hear about your secret life of violent crime?”

What? “How did you—” I broke off and gave Kate a hard stare. For the first time this morning, she looked unsure of herself.

“Have you been telling everyone about what happened?” I demanded.

“I—well, I told your mum about the fight, and that you were arrested.”

“What?” I stared at her in disbelief. “Kate, of all the times to start talking to my mother…”

“I was so worried about you! It seemed you’d been acting totally out of character—I mean, for goodness’ sake,
fighting
. In the street! It was just so unlike you—I rang your mum up before I drove down to ask her what was going on, and when it turned out she didn’t know a thing about it all, I felt I couldn’t
not
tell her. She’s your mother, Tim. She cares about you.”

I groaned and put the phone back to my ear. “How bad is it?” I asked.

Jay laughed. “Put it this way—you’d better get your arse round here soon as, or Mum’s going to come looking for you. Trust me, you don’t want that!”

“We should do something to celebrate,” Matt said as we stood at the end of Jay’s drive and waved Kate off into the distance, a fast-moving little red dot.

“You mean, go for a drink or something? Get a bottle of champagne in?” I sighed. “You know what, after all the stress this morning, all I really feel like doing is going to bed.” I certainly didn’t feel like driving up to Winchester to explain myself, that was for sure.

“Bed works for me,” Matt said with a spring in his step and a leer in his tone.

Suddenly, all the tiredness seemed to drain away, leaving only lust in its wake. “Right. Bed,” I agreed, taking his hand.

We practically ran down the driveway and back into the house and barely got the front door shut before heading upstairs to the bedroom. Maybe it was just my imagination, but the room still seemed to smell of sex from our little morning glory session earlier.

“What do you want to do?” Matt asked, tearing off his shirt.

A thought occurred, and I burst out laughing in the middle of undoing my trousers. Matt stared at me. “Sorry,” I managed at last. “It’s just, I was about to say,
buggered if I know
!” Matt laughed helplessly, nearly falling over as he got out of his jeans. I slid my arms around his waist, marvelling anew at the warmth and smoothness of his skin. “Seriously,” I said when we’d both calmed down, “I haven’t got a bloody clue what I’m doing. But if you’d like to, um…” I swallowed. “If you’d like to er, top, I’d like that. A lot.”

“That’d…yeah.” Matt seemed to be having some trouble speaking. “Have you, um—did you and Adam—”

“
No
,” I interrupted. Grateful as I was to him for all kinds of reasons, I really didn’t want Adam intruding at a time like this. “But I’ve, er, experimented—on my own, I mean.” I’d never been more grateful to the friend of Kate’s who’d held an Ann Summers party and bullied her into buying a vibrator. If Kate had ever noticed it’d disappeared from her bottom drawer, she’d never mentioned it.

Most people seemed to rate the discovery of America pretty highly; I’d have to say that, for me, it paled into insignificance beside the discovery of my prostate. I hadn’t, however, invited Kate to explore this new territory with me. I was fairly sure that in her world, pegging was something that only happened to tents. Or, as it might be, clean laundry.

“Okay—we can take it slow.”

“Slow sounds good.” I got on with the business of getting naked, my hands shaking a little.

“Have you got any supplies?” Matt asked. “You know, condoms and lube?”

Shit. Why the hell hadn’t I thought of that? “I’ll see what I can find.” I sat on the bed and rummaged desperately through Jay’s bedside drawer—coming up trumps with a handful of condoms and a large tube of lube. “Olivia, you kinky devil.”

“You don’t know that,” Matt said with a grin. “And right now, it’s not her arse I want to be thinking about,” he added with a pointed look at me.

My mouth was suddenly dry. “Right,” I said hoarsely and stripped off my underwear.

I could have sworn Matt’s cock had grown again, now that we were only minutes away from him inserting it into a rather delicate part of me. Now we were so close, I was both excited and terrified. This was it—the final step. Once I’d let another bloke fuck me, all plausible deniability was right out of the window.

“Are you sure about this?” Matt asked softly. “We don’t have to…”

What the hell. I was in bed with the man I loved—plausible deniability had undoubtedly packed its bags a long time ago, and good riddance to it. “Yes,” I said firmly, suddenly more certain than I’d ever been in my life. “I’m sure. Matt, I…” It was still too soon to tell him I loved him. I knew that. “It means a lot to me, that it’s you,” I finished.

Matt drew in a deep, shuddering breath and blinked several times, fast. “It means a lot to me too,” he said.

He crawled over the bed, naked, his cock bobbing, and kissed me. I couldn’t get enough of him, his warmth, his vitality. I pulled him in close, wanting to feel every inch of him against me. Hands roamed over bodies, touching and teasing. When Matt squeezed some lube over his fingers and let one slide down my crack, I arched, willing him inside me. When he breached me, I cried out, it felt so good.

“Okay?” he whispered.

“Bloody okay,” I groaned.

He stretched me out slowly—much more slowly than I’d have had the patience for—and used his other hand to tease the rest of me, keeping me at full arousal. I tried to reciprocate but was mostly way too distracted by what his talented fingers were up to. When he crooked them inside me to press on my gland, I gasped. “Do it,” I urged him, unable to wait any longer.

“Do what?” Matt asked teasingly.

“Me. Do me,” I begged.

Matt sat back on his heels to suit up and slather on some more lube, and I watched him in a lust-filled daze. “How do you want me?” I managed to ask.

“You choose,” he said.

It wasn’t that easy—on the one hand, I wanted to be able to see his face, but on the other hand my deepest fantasy, the one I’d always wanked to when I’d had a few glasses of wine to lower my inhibitions, was being taken from behind. I hesitated—then shifted onto my knees, laying my head down on my arms.

Nothing happened. I raised my head to look back at Matt.

“Just—just give me a moment,” he said, looking incredibly hot and bothered. He took a few deep breaths, then shuffled forward to line himself up.

I could feel the blunt, rubber-clad head of him at my entrance. My hips pushed back without my conscious control as my body tried to impale itself on him. When he pushed forward, there was an incredible feeling of stretching, of invasion. I took a few short breaths.

“I’m not hurting you, am I?” Matt asked.

“No—no, I’m fine; don’t stop.” Which, okay, wasn’t as truthful as it might have been, but God, I really, really didn’t want him to stop.

He pushed forward, millimetre by millimetre. I felt overwhelmingly full, and each time I thought my body couldn’t possibly take any more of him, he moved again. As the tip of him passed over my prostate, I let out a low, deep groan.

“Okay?” he asked again.

“More than okay. So bloody okay I think I’m going to die from it.”

Matt chuckled, but I’d been serious.

He inched forward some more, and I felt his balls nestling against my arse. “That’s all of me,” he whispered. I felt light-headed, delirious with pleasure. It was everything I’d ever fantasized about and more. I didn’t just feel filled—for the first time in my life, I felt whole, complete.

And then he moved. Drawing back a few inches, Matt thrust back into me, his balls hitting my arse with an audible slap. I moaned into the pillow, the stimulation so good it was almost torture. He slammed into me again and again, punishing my prostate, drawing grunts and cries from me I’d probably be mortified to hear played back.

“God, that’s so good,” Matt gasped, his fingers digging into my hips with bruising force that only seemed to accentuate the pleasure. “Tim, I’m going to—”