Notturno

NOTTURNO

Z.A. MAXFIELD

MLR PRESS AUTHORS

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Z.A. Maxfield

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Luisa Prieto

Dick D.

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LB Gregg

Kit Zheng

Drewey Wayne Gunn

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NOTTURNO

Z.A. MAXFIELD

mlrpress

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and

incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are

used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or

persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2009 by ZA Maxfield

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole

or in part in any form.

Published by

MLR Press, LLC

3052 Gaines Waterport Rd.

Albion, NY 14411

Visit ManLoveRomance Press, LLC on the Internet:

www.mlrpress.com

Cover Art by Deana C. Jamroz

Editing by Kymberly Hinton

Printed in the United States of America.

ISBN# 978-1-60820-035-1

First Edition 2009

For He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named — not Lord

Voldemort— because kindness and generosity should always be

remarked upon, and also for Elisa Rolle whose scholarship,

friendship, and Man Candy Days always bring a smile. Thank

you, Elisa, for your help with the Italian in this book. (Any

mistakes are all mine.) I’m grateful to you both from the

bottom of my heart.

When Adin woke up on Lufthansa flight 456, it had already

landed at LAX and he’d had the strangest night of his life.

Words stuck in his sandy and arid mouth.

“I know he didn’t have too much to drink. I served him

myself,” one of the flight attendants said. “Does he look pale to

you?”

“Yes,” said the air marshal. “Better call the EMTs.” Two

other people gathered around him as he fought the dizzy

spinning of his brain. He looked out the window and his heart

slammed into his rib cage when he saw a familiar, handsome

figure walking confidently away from the gate inside the

terminal. A sudden feeling like he’d never known, a hunger,

coursed through him, and he flushed from his head to his toes.

“Water,” Adin croaked.

“There you are.” The flight attendant, Marcia, motioned to

someone farther to the front of the cabin. “Welcome back. You

were beginning to scare us. Do you have a medical condition?”

“Blood sugar gets low when I travel,” Adin murmured, and

someone brought him not only water but also a can of orange

juice.

“Thank you.” He took a sip. It would hardly have been

appropriate to tell them that he became a member of the Mile

High Club, not entirely consensually, in the bathroom

somewhere over the American heartland. “I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

He looked around at the worried faces.

“If you’re certain…? We can call for assistance. Is there

someone waiting for you?”

He reassured her. “I’ll be fine. I must have been more rundown than I thought.” He threw the blanket off onto the seat next to the window and got carefully to his feet as if he was

feeling better already.

2 Z.A. Maxfield

“Oh, you’re bleeding.” She pointed to a smudge of what

looked to be blood on his shirt.

Adin held the collar away from him; his tie was gone. “Oh,

odd. I don’t remember cutting myself yesterday when I shaved.

Maybe it’s the electric shaver. Sometimes they bite a little.”

“Well.” She didn’t look convinced. Adin could hardly tell

her that the man who’d broken into the bathroom and fucked

him had also bit him. He stood, carefully testing his legs against

the hollow airplane floor. He turned away from their curious

faces to open the overhead bin.

“I’ll just get my case,” he said. “It’s in the…”

Nothing was there. Motherfuck. The bastard had stolen his

case. Adin felt a terrible surge of disappointment. He’d known

somehow it would come to this, had felt that he was being

played. He cursed. Even as he’d allowed it to happen, he’d

known better.

“Sir?”

“Never mind,” he ground out, walking slowly to the cabin

door. He felt stupid tired; his limbs didn’t move when he told

them to. He imagined he was jerking like a marionette. “Thank

you.” He nodded to Marcia.

“See you next time,” she said. He couldn’t help but think it

would be a long time before he flew again. A long,
long
time.

He got his checked bag, went through a groggy and

embarrassing hour in customs, and left the international

terminal to find a cab to the Westin Bonaventure.

At midnight, jet-lagged and unable to sleep, Adin looked out

from his hotel room to see all of Los Angeles glittering below

him. He had a cut-glass tumbler with three fingers of Bushmills

in it, and a chance to think. The feeling, he knew, the
stalking
began in Frankfurt. It was on his mind that last night when he’d

gone out with Tariq. He’d even tried to rationalize it away in the

airport lounge the day before. He would never put ice in a glass

of good whiskey, but the cold glass might have felt good on his

aching head. He closed his eyes and tried to remember

everything that happened at the airport the day before.

NOTTURNO
3

^\

Adin checked his watch again. He’d come to the airport

hours early to deal with security checks and now sat in one of

the lounges trying to look relaxed with the last third of a drink

in his hand. He didn’t want to project the image of overt

wariness, but neither did he want to look vulnerable… It was

enough to maintain the discreet and politely disinterested

persona he had to affect when he was carrying something

important. He shifted his eyes down and checked his case. Still

there. Of course it was.

Only a handful of people in the world would be interested in

his case and not simply the money its contents represented.

Adin knew he was taking unusual precautions. Yet the feeling

that he was being followed persisted. Even the night before,

when he’d gone to the opera with his friend Tariq, he’d been

completely unable to concentrate on the pleasures the evening

afforded. He’d sensed another presence with them. He noticed

it at the theater, and then later at Tariq’s home, where he spent

the night. It bothered him enough to sweep the gauzy draperies

back and open the French doors onto the balcony of Tariq’s

lovely old flat, but there was no one there. Tariq teased him for

being paranoid and then coaxed him back to bed and made him

forget. Tariq could make him forget his name. Yet still…

Adin shook his head. He should be overjoyed. He was

already famous in academic circles as an authority on antique

erotica. Among his kind, the bibliophiles and the professors

from the small private university where he taught English

literature to recalcitrant undergrads, he was thought to be a

dashing if somewhat eccentric fanatic with more energy than

sense, who hared off after any clue to a manuscript that

promised to be just what this one was—if the rumors about it

turned out to be true.

Those colleagues who knew him well envied his gift for

sourcing rare books; even those that historians and scholars

claimed could not exist, as they had this one. He could also

claim a gift for ruthless and intuitive bidding at auctions. But

Notturno
? Finding that was going to cement his status among his peers for a lifetime, as well as garner him the notoriety he

4 Z.A. Maxfield

worried he secretly craved. More than one of his peers thought

of him as the shocking and unnatural Dr. Adin Tredeger,

purveyor of exotic porn.

Notturno
would have been a great prize, regardless of its

subject matter, regardless of its age, because it was in amazing

shape, from what Adin had seen of its carefully preserved

pages. But with provenance in place, the nature and quality of

the art scattered throughout the leather-bound journal, and the

kinds of entries the owner made within it,
Notturno
was proving to be the most exciting find of his career.

Adin’s interest was piqued when a veiled reference to a

journal, said to be written by an Italian count, used the term

amore vietato
, or forbidden love. Swirling the remaining whiskey in his glass, Adin almost laughed again, remembering the look

on the faces of the collectors he’d called in Frankfurt to confer.

They had been unprepared for the ferociously erotic text, or the

fact that it illustrated a pair of very well-hung and hungry earlysixteenth-century Italian aristocrats, known vaguely by historians to have married advantageously and procreated and

lived their short lives in relative obscurity.

At first glance,
Notturno
didn’t seem to describe a love affair as much as it chronicled a series of blistering sexual encounters

between two men who wanted each other and, for whatever

reason, played at games that would only become more widely

written about and practiced after de Sade made them famous in

the late eighteenth century. The rumor, in fact, was that de Sade

himself had come into contact with this very manuscript on his

travels in Italy and had stolen from it extensively. The rumors

had turned out to be exaggerated, but what little Adin had seen

of
Notturno
was enough to put a blush on his face for weeks.

The journal itself, packed and preserved as best it could be for

travel, weighed heavily on his mind. He hadn’t wanted it out of

his sight, and yet… Circumstances made him cautious. The

nagging feeling that someone else wanted it, that someone was

out there waiting for the chance to get their hands on it, hadn’t

left him.

Adin finished his drink and picked up his case. Any minute

the call to board Lufthansa flight 456, nonstop from Frankfurt

NOTTURNO
5

to Los Angeles, would go out over the PA system, and he was

ready. Glancing around again, he headed to the gate. The weight

of the case shifted in his hand, heavy, a potent reminder of the

gravity of the situation. Still uneasy, he turned a full circle but could see no one paying him any particular attention. He shook

off the feeling and walked on.

Flying west at this time of day, Adin always had the peculiar

sensation that he was chasing the darkness. He was cold and

needed a shave. The seemingly endless hours on the flight made