If It Flies (8 page)

into bed.

And for the first time in months, Spencer slept like the

dead.

52

Chapter

fivE

here weren’t any visible bruises. If there had been, most

T
would’ve been covered by Spencer’s suit anyway, but he’d scrutinized himself, front and back, in the mirror on Saturday morning, on Sunday night, and again before he went to work.

By the time he dressed Monday morning, he wasn’t so much

paranoid about someone seeing a bruise as he was convinced

there should have been some kind of mark. Some sort of black

and blue graffiti proclaiming
Nick was here
. He certainly felt the remnants of Nick’s presence in the stiffness of his muscles and the barely-cooled burn on his skin. Sitting comfortably in his office chair was a challenge, though true to his word, Nick hadn’t left him unable to do so.

Yeah,
Nick was here
all right, but he hadn’t left a single mark. Even the scratches, the streaks running down his chest

and converging just above his cock, had mostly faded by

Sunday and were gone this morning.

Not a single scrap of evidence on Spencer’s body. No one

would possibly know.

No one, that is, except Percy. At least the smug son of

a bitch had had the decency to close Spencer’s office door

before he said anything.

“So.” Percy strolled across the room and deposited himself

in one of the leather chairs in front of Spencer’s desk. “Get

your money’s worth?”

Spencer’s cheeks burned. “You could say that.”

“You surprised me, mate.” Percy shook his head. “Of all

the guys there, I didn’t think Nick’d be your type.”

53

Something twisted in Spencer’s gut, and he told himself it

was
not
jealousy. “You’ve been with him?”

“Me?” Percy waved his hand and shook his head again.

“No, no. Nick is . . . yeah, he’s not
my
type. At al .”

“Really?”

“Entirely too full of himself.” Percy wrinkled his nose. “I

rent one of those guys, the only thing he’d better be full of

is
me
.”

There was no one on the planet who could be quite as

crude and to the point as Percy. Well, except maybe Nick.

“I don’t know.” Spencer leaned back in his chair, absently

turning a pen over and over between his fingers so he’d at

least look casual and unfazed by this whole thing. “I like his attitude. He’s feisty.” And while he’d never cared for these

discussions with Percy, his own remark had devolved this

conversation into a realm that made his skin crawl. Like he

was stooping to the level of the other guys who commented

behind their hands about the receptionist’s arse or that

courier’s tits. Reducing someone—
Nick
, of all people—to a slab of meat.

To someone who was bought, paid for, and used.

Does what it says on the tin.

And although Nick had put himself on the market to be

bought—at least for a few hours—that didn’t mean others

shouldn’t treat him with respect.

Respect.
Listen to you, Spencer. You’re still halfway on your
knees when it comes to him.

“Well, whatever turns your crank, Spence. You do look a

hell of a lot more relaxed. I keep saying, a good whore is the same for us as a weekend at a spa for the missus.”

Only your missus kicked you in the balls and walked away

with five of your millions and your favourite house in the
countryside.

54

“What about your Jamaican boy?”

“What about him? I do like some variety.” Percy grinned.

“If you’re only renting, you can use the whole range, right?”

Unless you found one that was damn near perfect on the

first attempt.

“Well, it worked for me,” Spencer said lamely. “But I’d

better get back to work. My private equity guys are chomping

on the bit about this reverse merger
salto mortale
while swinging from the chandelier and paying-no-tax bullshit.”

He glanced at the pile of files on his desk, the print-outs and the agreements and the whole history of his current case.

Guess who’d be working seventy or eighty hours to get that

particular mess straightened out? “I’d, um, better get to it.”

Percy stood. “Sure. Ping me if you need to unwind. Things

are kinda slow this month for me.”

Hence dropping in on him. “Will do.”

Sometimes it felt like Percy was trying to push his

buttons, goad him into a reaction. When they’d first met,

Spencer had been convinced that Percy was flirting with

him, way before he knew that Percy swung every which way.

Too bad they had absolutely no chemistry at all; never mind

how unprofessional it would have been, or how weird it was

knowing that Percy’s main kink seemed to be dark skin.

He leaned forwards and pulled the chair closer to the

desk, opened the folder at the first Post-it. He was more

focused than last week, as if his brain had relaxed over the

weekend, unsnarled. To stay engaged with his work, he only

had to remember Nick’s disapproving stare and his relentless

demand to focus on the here and now. Being not so bloody

exhausted helped, too, because after Friday, he’d spent the

rest of the weekend sleeping or doing very little. Granted, he 55

might have jerked off more than usual. But that had helped,

too.After a productive few hours, he checked his phone. He’d

texted Nick earlier, and lo and behold, a response.

Meet Friday after midnight
. No question mark, so it

somehow felt more clandestine, like two spies agreeing on

something dangerous.

Friday,
Spencer texted back, hesitated, then added,
All
night?

Twelve hundred,
came the answer.

I’ll throw in breakfast?

A few minutes later, Nick responded,
See you Friday
.

No comment on the breakfast invite, but Spencer figured

they’d work that out when the time came. Nick had probably

already made a decision one way or another, and discussion

wasn’t necessary. Typical.

Maybe they’d discussed all they’d needed to discuss, but

that didn’t mean Spencer’s mind was devoid of questions. Not

that he punched any of them into his mobile phone for Nick

to resolve. They just swirled around inside his brain while he worked. Tried to work. Made it look like he was working.

He gave up and took an early lunch he didn’t have time

to take.

Hands in his pockets, eyes down, Spencer left the building

and headed for a cafe down the street where they knew

his name and his usual order. Just a smile and a wave at the

waitress, and his food would be on the way to his table in the back corner.

Anna smiled as she poured him a cup of coffee. “By

yourself today?”

“Yeah, just me.” Spencer returned the smile. She left him

to his coffee and the certainty that the shadowy ghost of Nick, 56

the one that slipped in and out of the bedroom like smoke

under the door, was sitting across from him.

Without all the paperwork, responsibility, and that

ringing phone, he let the barrage of questions crash into his

skul .
What am I getting myself into? Should I cancel? Where in
the hell do I find a man like Nick without a price tag?

That, in turn, made him wonder if Nick just got his

kicks at the Market Garden with his harem of clients. Did he

ever have relationships? A boyfriend? Hell, a girlfriend? For

all Spencer knew, Nick had a wife and three kids in Tower

Hamlets. Though at five hundred a fuck, he could afford

somewhere nicer. Maybe even a dog and a picket fence, all

paid for by his dick and his mouth.

He doubted Nick had a wife or a girlfriend, though. A

husband or a boyfriend maybe. He just didn’t strike Spencer

as being even a little bit bisexual, never mind hetero.

Thought the man who had the entire firm except for Percy

convinced he wasn’t even a little bit homosexual. Then again,

he didn’t imagine ticking the wrong sexual box would hurt

Nick’s career like it would his. After al , it had been all over the news just last week: the City still didn’t deal very well with sexual minorities. Hell, it was still very much a
white
boy’s sandbox as well as a straight one’s. Because if there was one

thing that made heterosexual white guys in their fifties clench up, it was people who were different from them.

So. Not out. Knowing this firm and its partners, he

doubted that he’d join their ranks if they knew he liked cock.

Especially shoved up his arse.

With a side of pain and some sharply-barked orders,

apparently.

Percy could probably get away with getting outed; he

had the divorce settlement to prove that he wasn’t
actually
57

completely
gay. Spencer had nothing. Just a work schedule that made keeping a personal and emotional life too complicated.

There were whole weeks—months—he simply didn’t

remember, like they’d been cut out his life by some satanic

pact: money against life-force.

Did Nick feel like that, too? Was the world of prostitution

quite as soul-sucking as the field of corporate law?

Damn, he really hoped for some conversation next

time. He couldn’t draw a bead on Nick at al , couldn’t put

him in a box, didn’t know anything about him, only that he

topped like a demon, and that he was probably a sadist of

some description. Nick had clearly enjoyed everything he’d

done to Spencer. Seemed to, anyway. That, or he’d given the

performance of his life.

Spencer finished his roast beef sandwich and ordered

another coffee. Then he figured he’d better return to his

reverse merger. He had to earn the money first that would

allow him to feel those things again, that abandon and the

pleasure edged with pain. A worthwhile reason to head back

into the office and chew his way through a cubic metre of files.

The afternoon crawled by. So did Tuesday. Wednesday.

Thursday. It was paperwork, phone calls, meetings, headaches,

a liquid lunch or two with Percy, and sheer mental overload.

This merger would be completed soon, he hoped, though he

knew damn well “soon” in the corporate world could be at the

other end of a geological age. Especially with public markets

as volatile as they were. All it took was one of many parties to suddenly get cold feet.

He stayed late every night and came in early every

morning, spent so many hours face down in the sea of

documentation and reports and bullshit that the only way he

58

could tell a dream from reality was whether Nick was sitting

in the chair opposite his desk or not.

In dreams, Nick spurred Spencer on with sharp sighs,

leather creaking every time he crossed and recrossed his legs

or folded his arms, and, when Spencer really slowed down,

black-painted nails drumming emphatically on the wooden

armrest. In reality, he was as invisible as the delicious damage he’d done to Spencer’s body, but undeniably
there
. Goose bumps on the back of Spencer’s neck. A paper sliding off the

desk like some little shit had come along and knocked it off.

The carpet under Spencer’s knees when he knelt to pick up a

pen that had rolled under his desk.

Nick had never set foot in Spencer’s office, but he haunted

it like he’d died here. If Spencer ever spent more than five

waking minutes in his house, he’d probably have felt Nick

there too. And maybe he did, but he was too tired to care.

Finally, Friday showed up. Though he felt a little guilty

about it—okay, really guilty—he cut out early. He needed a

few hours between the workplace beating and the recreational

one.Around five forty-five, his cell phone chimed to life. At

first, he thought it was Nick cal ing to cancel—
don’t you dare,
fucker, I will pay you double if I have to
—but it was Percy’s name on the caller ID.

“Yeah?”

“Hey, you want to meet me at Market Garden tonight?”

Percy’s smirk came through loud and clear. “Sample the rest of the merchandise?”

“Actually, I think I’m just going to stay home tonight.” He

glanced at the clock, and begged it to move a little faster. A lot faster.
Just be midnight, for fuck’s sake!
“It’s been a long week.”

59

“Yeah, exactly,” Percy said. “Good time to go have a few

drinks and let some trained hands take care of all the tension, you know? It did you good, Spence. You know it did.”

“It did.” Spencer nodded once for no one’s benefit but his

own. “But I just don’t have any energy tonight. Why don’t you

tell me on Monday if you find one you think is my type? Then

maybe I’ll give him a try next weekend.”

Liar, liar . . .

Percy sighed heavily. “All right. All right. Well, if you

reconsider, you know where the place is.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

A quiet chuckle came down the line. “Should I say hello

to Nick for you?”

Spencer’s shoulders tensed, but there was no way he’d let

Percy know that his question had been much too close for