Last Line (28 page)

“I used to. After Zemelya, I didn’t like to. If I looked good, even my own reflection seemed to be mocking me. I’d hear his voice—Anzhel’s—calling me his
poushka
, his handsome one, which in Zemel is more what you’d call your best horse or dog.”

“Oh, Mike.”

“I’m sorry. I made my mind up I’d never even say his name in front of you again.”

“What? Why?”

“I betrayed you with him. I wouldn’t insult you.”

John looked into the passionate dark eyes fixed on him, hot with indignation on his behalf. “You really are very Russian at times,” he said, daring a small smile. “Very Tolstoy. It’s all right. You may speak his name in my presence.” He sobered. “You’re going to have to. Anzhel Mattvei won’t fit into some tiny box you want to lock up inside, not after everything that happened. Talk to me.”

“Okay. Okay, love, I will. But just now all I can think about is how I wish you’d…”

His voice had faded to a whisper. John pressed close, kissing the side of his neck. “What? Anything.”

“Fuck the feel of him out of me forever.”

The silence that fell was deep, even for the heart of a Somerset night. Only the murmur of their campfire disturbed it, that tiny blaze somehow still bright after hours consuming one handful of fuel. John pushed up on one elbow. He examined Mike’s face, stroking back his hair. “That’s a serious one.”

“I know.”

“You’ve been hurt. Not just by Anzhel. In the jail, right? You got screwed over by the guards, the other prisoners?”

“Not them. They never got a chance. But the guards, yeah. In a way it was easier once Anzhel took me over. None of the others dared go near me then.”

“Great.” John kissed his brow, the gesture full of sorrow. “I asked you to tell me this, didn’t I, but it’s bloody hard to hear. Mike, all that left you damaged. Like I said back then, I’ve been with plenty of blokes who liked to be tied to the bedposts and roughed up a bit, but…”

“But not one that wanted to be cut.”

“Not one I loved.”

“Oh, Griff.”

They clung together, grip to savage grip. Struggled and fought until John almost rolled into the fire, saved at the last instant by Mike’s laughing, alarmed catch. Within seconds they were hard and ready, shuddering with need. “Was that all Anzhel?” John gasped. “You having to be hurt?”

“Not all. He brought something out in me, and when I thought I’d been part of Oriel’s genocide—the pain did help. It felt like expiation. But I don’t think I need it now, love. Not with you. Not—not tonight.”

“Okay. Listen, though. You know where I’ve been, what I’ve done. I’ve been careful.” He broke off, grinning. “Especially after you started worrying about me, telling me to watch myself. Felt like a prince then, didn’t I? But I’m not about to tackle you in all my naked glory, so…”

“You think I’d expect that? I remember what I let Anzhel do to me, and Christ only knows where
he’s
been knocking around.” He ruffled John’s hair and found spare blood supply for a blush. “You know how I went to the lawyer and the builder today?”

“Yeah. Oh, the butcher, the baker…”

“Right.”

“Don’t tell me you found time for the candlestick maker, as well.”

“I don’t know why. I wasn’t sure you’d ever let me near you again. But—yeah. Pass me that bag.”

They dispensed with the rest of their clothes, the fire blazing up at Mike’s admonitory glance to keep them both warm. They spent a minute dealing with the marks Anzhel had left on him, healing scars that lost the last of their pain under John’s mouth, the unfazed kisses he pressed to each one. Then John lay down close behind him and waited. He was big, stretching still farther in John’s caressing hand, but he was scared, and all the condoms and KY in the world weren’t going to ease that. John ran an expert finger down the length of his cock, pushed it into the suede, tender dip between his balls. Mike arched his neck back and John met him with a full, fearless kiss. “We don’t have to do this, you know.”

“We do. I do. Please.”

John reached round him, keeping one arm tucked under his head, a steadying, cradling embrace. He squeezed nearly half a tube of lubricant onto his fingers—the rest was already soaking his sheathed cock—and took the slippery touch up and in between Mike’s buttocks, smiling at the muscular twitch that promptly tried to close him out. “Is that reflex or a no?”

“Reflex. John.”

“Yes. I’m with you, okay? We’ll get you there.” He ran a thumb down his cleft, gauging. “Oh, mate, you’re so beautiful. Open up a bit for me, just a… Yes. There.” His thumb slipped in, meeting brief resistance then powerful, squeezing surrender. John rode the wave and withdrew quickly once Mike was lubed up inside, meeting his anxious moan with the first push of his cock. “There. You want it?”

“Please. Before I have a fucking heart attack. Now.”

John pushed into him. Wild heat shot through him, a moment when he could have burned to unthinking conclusion in Mike’s flesh, but he clawed back, a wail bottling up in his throat.
You can want someone too much
. He took hold of Mike’s shaft again, but Mike impatiently batted his hand away, thrusting back against him. “Don’t need that,” he rasped. “Just—inside. All the way.”

So John let him have it.
So gentle
. A faint voice spoke in his head.
Meant to be so gentle with him
. But it was no bloody good. Mike was bucking in his grasp, fighting for more of him, and when John hooked an arm round the back of one knee to draw it up and spread him, he cried out in ferocious joy and helped, heaving over onto his front. John slammed into him, thrusting to his length, nearly all the way out again, then back, great strokes that neither would withstand for long. Mike convulsed, fingers driving into the turf. John grabbed his hips and lifted him, feeling the force of his climax in hot muscle spasm round his cock. Somehow he hung on long enough to wring it all out of him, and then when Mike was folding down, sobbing and ordering him brokenly to finish—when the setting moon turned red with the blood-haze of his desperation—he heaved in to the root one last time and went still. His hands clenched on Mike’s hips. Briefly he thought something was blocked—he wouldn’t make it and would die here of unanswerable need—then the knots dissolved, and he was coming, hard and long, pouring out his soul with his seed.

Mike caught him as he fell. The movement, the swift roll off his belly, tore John out of him too hard and they both yelled, but there was no other place for John’s landing. He crashed into his lover’s arms, eyes closing, darkness coming down. He stayed conscious long enough to feel Mike’s arms going round him, to register his breathless kisses. His fractured enquiries as to his health. “Yes,” he managed. “Yes, I’m fine. Don’t leave me.”

“Never leave you, angel.”

* * *

The morning sun was high when they broke camp, the ashes still glowing deep ruby pink in the brilliance. A fresh breeze was sweeping up off the river. Cars swept by on the Glastonbury road, tiny silent jewels at this distance but visible, and the Tor was just a strange terraced hill. An ordinary summer’s day.

Michael shook out the blanket and folded it. John was clearing up boxes and bottles. They hadn’t spoken much since waking—shy with one again for new reasons—but they looked at one another often, muted glances full of merriment and fire. Promise too. Skin tingling, the deep parts of his flesh deliciously aching, Michael tried to concentrate on the simple job of packing the blanket into his bag. Papers rustled, and he pulled them aside to make room. “Oh. I forgot about these.”

“What?”

“Come here for a second and tell me I’m just being weird. These photographs.”

John came and crouched beside him. “Those are… God, are they our first ever staff party at Last Line?”

“Yeah. Our intake group, just after the old man decided we might be good enough to keep.”

There they all were, around a table in a Baker Street restaurant. Webb himself, glowering upon his new recruits as if he bitterly regretted every one of them. Diane Shaw perched playfully on Michael’s lap. Nick Skelton, hoisting an unsteady toast with an over-full glass. The handful of others who had made it too, all of them gone now, some killed on the job, others wasted, thrown to the wolves and the wind. John, resting his chin on one hand, watching his partner, his smile no disguise for his yearning. “God,” he said. “Heart on my sleeve even then. I didn’t know you’d kept these.”

“Well, mine wasn’t on my sleeve. Not sure where it was, but that was the only shot I had of you. And I could hardly ask you for another, so yes, I kept them.”

The kiss they exchanged was light, cautious of mutual bruising. So much love in it that tears prickled up into John’s eyes. “I think I’m meant to be telling you what a freak you are.”

“Yeah. Look at these. How long ago was it?”

“Oh, I dunno. Three years. More now. Nearly four. Why?”

“Not a huge amount of time, I suppose, but…”

“It is a long time in this bloody job. Look at this. Nick hasn’t got a white hair on his head.”

“That’s what I mean. It’s long enough to change people, a little bit anyway. Diane looks like a kid, and even Webb has a few less…well, on anyone else I’d call them laugh lines.”

“Yeah. People changed.”

“Apart from us.”

John looked at him. He took the photo gently from his hands and turned it into the sunlight. He examined the faces of his colleagues and his boss. “What? Don’t be daft.”

“I’m serious, Griff. Look at us. Not a mark.”

Silently John gave the photo back. His heart was beating too hard, and he felt as if he were catching distant music, a symphony he had known all his life and somehow lost. “You’re a freak,” he informed his partner lovingly. “Weird doesn’t even start to cover it.”

“You can see it too. I know you can.”

“Shut up.” John cupped Mike’s face in his hands. He stroked back the hair from his temples, beautiful sable hair as rich and dark as the day he’d first met him. “You and me, we don’t have any business worrying about life’s mysteries. We’ve got enough on our plates just getting from day to day.”

Mike nodded. He closed his eyes as John kissed him, blindly folded the photo up and pushed it into the bag. “A house to build,” he said.

“Yes. An irritating kid to raise. And I don’t know what to believe about Nick and Diane, or Anzhel and Oriel for that matter, but we’re going to have to keep the watch, sweetheart, every day.”

“One day at a time?”

“That’s right.”

“With you. All I ever wanted.”

Loose Id Titles by Harper Fox

A Midwinter Prince

Last Line

Harper Fox

Harper Fox is an M/M author trying to make it as a full-time writer, with just that bit more urgency after being made redundant from her day job. Interesting times! In a way it's great, because she gets to spend most of every day doing what she loves best—creating worlds and stories for the huge cast of lovely gay men queuing up inside her head. She lives in rural Northumberland in northern England and does most of her writing at a pensioned-off kitchen table in her back garden, often with blanket and hot water bottle.

She lives with her SO Jane, who has somehow put up with her for a quarter of a century now, and three enigmatic cats, chief among whom is Lucy, who knows the secret of the universe but isn't letting on. When not writing, she either despairs or makes bread, specialities foccacia, and her amazing seven-strand challah. If she has any other skills, she's yet to discover them.