Quarter Square (10 page)

Min had a gig that evening, and I didn’t fancy dealing with questions from the insiders without her, so we left the square together.

I managed to keep my hands off her as we walked wordlessly down through the arena and across the stage into the cool darkness behind, but the moment we entered my bedroom, she turned to me and we melted into each other.

It was our first kiss in a hundred years. Our tongues joined in the passionate dance I’d dreamed about forever. She tasted divine, like honey, like the fresh, new growth of meadow grass on a bright summer’s morning, like heaven.

And she was real. Not a dream, but a strong physical presence in my arms whose hands roamed and pressed the back of my head and neck, jamming my face into hers. She matched my passion, moaning breathlessly and kissing as if she wanted to eat me.

I gripped her bottom and pulled her close, thrilling when she pushed hard and moved against my erection.

We came up for air and gazed into each other’s eyes, our hearts pounding in unison.

She rested her forehead against my chest, and her voice vibrated inside me.

“My Joe, my Cayal, my love, do you have any idea how I’ve longed for you? You’ve been in my dreams every night since we were last together, and I’ve never stopped searching for you, waiting for you to come back to me.” She raised her face and smiled.

I hated myself for asking this question, but I couldn’t go any further without getting it out into the open. “What about Will?”

“What about him?”

“You’re lovers, aren’t you?”

She held my face and kissed me again, just once, her lips closed and full. It was like a seal, a declaration and a confirmation of her love.

“Will and I have had our moments from time to time, but we’re not an item.” She peered up at me. “I do take lovers when you’re not around, you know. It’s been a century, Joe. You don’t think I should spend that time completely alone, do you? Would you want that for me?”

“No,” I lied.

“I understand, love. Honestly I do. But when we’re without each other, we have to live with deep loneliness. We both have others in our lives when we’re apart. It helps.”

She stroked my temples with her thumbs and gazed deeply into my eyes. “When you come back, there is no one but you.”

I kissed her again and asked the question that was burning a hole in my brain. “Do you love him?”

“He’s a fine lover and a good man. He’s as jealous of you as you are of him, but get beyond that and you’ll see he’s a good man.”

She hugged me close. “Please don’t worry.
You
are the love of my life. Friends like Will and Tara are loving company for me when I’m alone, but you have my heart forever.”

“Tara?” That one had passed me by unnoticed.

“Yes. She’s lovely. Why? Would you have me limit myself to men only, when I need love and companionship in your long absences?”

“I suppose not.” I slipped a hand under her T-shirt. Her small breast was soft and beautiful, and her nipple tickled the sensitive spot in the middle of my rough palm. The thought of Min making love with Tara added an unexpected buzz to my excitement.

“That’s good, because you’ve been a woman many times.”

My jaw dropped, and my hand stilled against her breast.

Min laughed. “That one always gets you, whichever gender you’ve come back as.”

There was obviously going to be a lot more of this situation to get my head around than I’d expected.

She squeezed my cock through my jeans.

“Fuck me.”

I couldn’t breathe.

“Fuck me now. We’ve waited too long.” She gave the most outrageous dirty laugh. “Now, man. Fuck me now.”

We tore each other’s clothes off and dropped them to the floor, then stood naked, drinking in the sight of each other’s bodies.

My heart pounded, and the pulse thudding in my groin made my erect cock twitch.

Min panted with excitement, her breasts quivering with her heartbeat and her nipples erect and hard. She stood with her feet apart, and I gazed at the blond hair between her legs, so fine it was almost invisible.

We stepped towards each other at the same moment and fell onto my camp bed, which creaked, protesting our combined weight.

Min gazed up at me. “I love you, Joe.”

“I love you, Min.”

She opened her legs and raised her knees to either side of my hips. “Time for finesse later, my love.”

I slid inside her wet, velvet warmth as if it was the most natural thing in the world, and shivered with delight.

She growled deep in her throat, wrapped her legs around me and dug her heels into my backside.

“Fuck me.”

It was fast and furious. I gave her the deep, hard fuck she wanted so desperately. Her slick, hot muscles gripped me at every thrust and brought me close to the end. I tried to slow down, to pace myself and prolong it, but she bucked beneath me.

“Don’t stop don’t stop don’t stop.”

“I can’t hold on for long like this.”

“It’s okay. I want you. Don’t stop.”

I came in a long, unstoppable rush and an explosion more powerful than anything I had ever known. We clung to each other as sweat broke out on our bodies. We held on, giggling while we breathed hard.

I softened inside her, but we didn’t disentangle our limbs, and I dozed off for a while.

“I’d better get a move on, or I’ll be late.”

“No…” I didn’t want to unwrap myself from her. I nuzzled her neck and gave a playful growl. “It’s your turn now.”

She rose up on an elbow and placed a gentle hand on my shoulder. The laughter had left her eyes, and her serious, direct gaze woke me up fully.

“We have to leave here. You do realise that, don’t you? I’ll sing tonight because they owe me for three nights and we need cash to get us started, but by tomorrow morning we need to have disappeared.”

“You don’t have to work tonight. I have money.”

“I suppose you mean bank accounts and plastic. Forget them. You may as well carry a big Here I Am sign around with you. We need to get off the grid, and quickly.”

I frowned and gestured around at the theatre. “What about this place?”

“Nothing else matters. Whatever we do in our lives that brings us together, we’re only doing those things in order to find each other. Once we do, everything else falls away. There is only you and me.”

“I told the insiders they could perform here. I promised I’d get it ready. They’re relying on me.”

“Trust me. They’ll be fine. You’ve promised this place to them, and they will use it, even though you won’t be here. I know these people. I love them. You’re not letting them down, and even if you were, they’d get by okay without you.”

This new start wasn’t going the way I’d expected. Not at all. I flopped back onto the pillow.

“What?”

I shook my head.

“Talk to me. What are you thinking?”

I spoke slowly, opening my soul and saying the words as they surfaced. “All my life people have told me what to do. Everyone in my life always knew better than I did. Everyone manoeuvred me into whichever position they thought I should be in and told me what I should be doing. I played their game for as long as I could, but last year I broke free, or tried to anyway. Carole and Tony were still pulling my strings. I just didn’t know the whole story until last week.”

I closed my eyes and saw them again in that hotel room.

“When I found Quarter Square—when I found you—my life turned around overnight. I’m free here. I make my own decisions and live the way I want.”

Min sighed.

I stroked her cheek. “I love it here, with you. It’s heaven.”

“It won’t be heaven when Tyac turns up.” She gripped my upper arms. “He’s hunting you. I guarantee he killed Carole and Tony to flush you out. Somehow he’ll be involved in the murder investigation. Please believe me. If we don’t run, he will find you.”

She shook me, her eyes glinting with tears as she shouted, “And he will kill you! Again! He fucking will, Joe, and I’m not going to let that happen.”

It was my turn to sigh. I hated this, but I knew when I was beaten. “Okay.”

“Tonight, as soon as I get back, we run. Okay?” Her voice was muffled as she pulled the T-shirt over her head.

“I brought my van back from London.”

“And a police tail.” She paused with her jeans hauled up to her thighs. “We’ll use the van to get away from here, but we’ll need to dump it before morning.” Her jeans were buttoned rapidly and her socks pulled on.

“I’ll come with you now.”

Right boot stamped in and laced. “You’re tired. If we’re going to drive through the night, you should sleep for a couple of hours.” Left boot stamped in and laced.

I couldn’t deny it. I needed sleep.

“See you in three hours. Sweet dreams. I love you.” And with a quick kiss and a smile she was gone.

I took a long, hot shower, shampooing my hair and beard twice, grinning because I hadn’t taken this much care with personal grooming since I was a teenager—certainly not while I’d been with Carole.

I’d grown the beard in the past year, and Carole hated it. For me it symbolised freedom from the constraints of commercial life. For her it probably symbolised rebellion or something.

In any case I was glad Min liked it.

While I showered, I sang an old favourite. “You’ve got a friend.”

I’d always sung this one when I felt sad, as if promising myself I would find a friend. I’d been sad all my life without even realising it. I supposed this was the condition Min called
the loneliness deep inside.
It was the sense of missing someone I hadn’t even known I was missing. Now I sang with joy, because the ache was gone, and I stepped out of the shower still humming happily.

There were two men in my bedroom.

My heart jumped into my mouth, and I almost fell back into the shower cubicle.

Sebastian Merritt was sitting on my bed, leafing through my sketches for the theatre renovation, and he looked up at me innocently. On the other side of the room, blocking the doorway—blocking my exit—stood a stranger I assumed was Merritt’s driver. A strong, silent type with a dark crew cut and a heavy five-o’clock shadow, he filled the space.

“Hello,” Merritt said, as if we’d just met by chance in the street.

“What the fuck are you doing in here? Get out.”

“Calm down.” Merritt smiled with an air of comfortable authority that dominated the room.

Naked, wet and vulnerable, I resisted the temptation to hide behind the towel as I dried myself. “What do you want?”

“I want you, Joe. I want you to come and work for me.”

I squinted at him. What the hell was he on about?

He nodded towards his sidekick without taking his eyes from me. “Fisher and I work for a government department. We investigate magic—magical people and creatures. Yes, they exist. I think you know they do.”

I concentrated on getting dressed.

“The murders of your wife and her lover show all the signs of a werewolf attack.” He leaned forward to study my face. “And you don’t seem surprised about that.”

“You’re mad. I’m wondering how long you plan to sit around in here before you piss off and let me get on with my life.”

“Very good. Whatever you say, though, I know you are involved with magic. I’ve been around it long enough. I can smell it.” He shut his eyes and inhaled deeply, a showman with perfect command of his audience. “I smell it on you.”

“You need therapy.”

He talked over me. “Magical activity is on the increase in the West Country, around Plymouth in particular. My department has been monitoring it for months.”

“What do you mean by
magical activity?
”

He chuckled. “Come on board and you’ll find out.”

“You’re barking.”

“What do you plan to do for money, Joe? It’s been a long time since you had a regular salary, and now you’re down here and you’ve got this…place…to sort out. No business contacts or friends or family. What will you live on?”

“I’ll manage.”

“I’m offering you a full-time, paid position, a good salary plus benefits.”

“Stuff it. And get out. You’re boring me.”

“I’m not going anywhere. You really should be my friend. You wouldn’t want to be my enemy.”

“You’re full of shit. You don’t believe in bloody magic any more than I do. This is just some bullshit to keep me under observation. It’s about the murder investigation. This way you don’t have to honour my legal rights. If you think I don’t know what you’re up to, you’re even more stupid than you look.”

Merritt shot to his feet, and Fisher tensed, ready to spring if I made a wrong move.

“Be careful how you talk to me, young man,” warned Merritt. “I know you’ve had an upset, but I don’t take crap like that from anyone.”

“How’s this, then? Leave my property now, or I will call the police.” I glared at him with my forehead thrust forward and my fists clenched at my sides. My aggression was more about fear than anything else, but I hoped they wouldn’t pick up on that. Might Merritt be Tyac? Could werewolves sense fear?

Merritt shared an amused glance with Fisher. “Do you want to know who the highest authority in your life is, Joe? Me. The police will do whatever I tell them to do. There’s only one organisation that will protect you. Mine. Don’t go fooling yourself by grasping at false security, will you?”

He and Fisher left without another word, and I followed them to the main door. Fisher disappeared round the corner. Then an engine started, and the black car eased out of the shadows.

“See you soon,” Merritt said.

I closed the door firmly.