Screwing the System (8 page)

“Wow, you’ve got a custom-built Martin? You must be seriously into it. These things cost a small fortune.”

Alasdair shrugged sheepishly. “Haven’t picked it up in years. I was taking lessons for a while, but I never got past the basics. I think I’m one of those people with no natural talent for music.”

Cosmo tried to wrap his head around the idea of a guitar like this one in the hands of someone who couldn’t even play it, but his brain rebelled. “She’s a beauty.” He took the guitar from Alasdair’s hands and strummed once. A discordant sound assaulted his ears. “Shit, when was the last time you tuned her? This could take a while. Have you got any spare strings in case these snap?” That could always be a problem with old strings.

“Should be some in the case.”

Cosmo barely noticed his host moving around the kitchen as he tuned the guitar. Alasdair had given him one of those electronic gizmos for tuning it up, but he didn’t need one. He had perfect pitch, so he could hear where the notes needed to reach. It was both a blessing and a curse. A curse when your bandmates were comparatively tone deaf and refused to tune their instruments up properly despite Cosmo’s pleas.

When he’d finally got the strings behaving, Cosmo strummed a few simple chords. Oh, but she was a masterpiece. The notes sounded rich and buttery, melting against his eardrums.

Cosmo must have had a grin wide enough to split his face as he looked up, to find Alasdair giving him this look back that made his skin tingle. There was happiness there, but also this deep, dark melancholy threaded through it. Cosmo wanted to wipe all that sadness away, which was just dumb, because he didn’t know a thing about what had caused it. The trials and tragedies of a biker-turned-entrepreneur’s life were beyond his limited experience.

Would Alasdair give him a chance to find out? Or was he just a plaything—his boy toy for the night? The thought hurt more than it should have.

Confused, Cosmo looked down at the guitar again. The music. That could always carry him through. He knew the notes. They were something he could always understand—how they worked together, harmonising, the majors and the minors, the flats and sharps. He picked out a simple melody of his own, before segueing into “May You Never”.

Cosmo didn’t look up as he sang. His voice sounded strange in his ears, hoarse still from the battering his throat had taken over the last twelve hours, but it seemed to work, making him sound older than his twenty-four years. Reminded him of that first album from Kings of Leon, Caleb’s voice already sounding whisky-damaged when he was barely out of his teens. Unless the guy had been deep-throating too. Somehow he couldn’t see it.

But as the lyrics worked their spell on him, Cosmo stopped thinking about sucking cock. He changed the wording a little just for Alasdair, asking if he’d ever lost his “boyfriend” instead of his woman. He heard a sharp intake of breath at that, but he didn’t look up. Not until the end, when he caught Alasdair wiping his eyes with his hand.

“That was beautiful,” he said, his voice all husky and cracked. “I didn’t know you could sing like that.”

“I don’t, usually. I’ve got a bit of a sore throat after swallowing you.”

Alasdair’s face fell. “God, I’m so sorry. You should have said something.”

“It’s all right. It was totally worth it.”

“But this is your livelihood. You can’t let me do something that’s going to damage your chances of making it as a musician.”

Cosmo thought about that one. Alasdair had a point, but then again… “I think I sound better like this. Gives me the voice of experience. Like when Tom Waits started putting on the old-man voice. He hadn’t sold shit before he did that.”

“I’m not sure that’s entirely true,” Alasdair began, but Cosmo cut him short. He wasn’t about to start arguing music history with the bloke. He had quite enough of that from the guys in the band. Rizzo had taken to proving his points by looking things up on his new smartphone, but it wasn’t like everything on the internet was gospel truth, was it?

“So listen, if you want to hear me play some more, my band’s got a gig in the Horse coming up, but that’s not till the beginning of May.” He had to see Alasdair again before then. “If you wanted, I could come around sometime next week. You know, when you’re not so busy.”

Alasdair nodded once, but his face had shuttered down again. “I need some time to think things through, but I’ll call you in a few days.”

“Not gonna give me your mobile number?”

“I’ll call you,” he repeated, stony-faced.

Well, it wasn’t like Cosmo had never had the brush-off before, but he hadn’t been expecting it quite so soon. Not after Alasdair had been so impressed with the singing and all. Still, it wouldn’t do any good getting wound up about it. It had only ever been a hookup, right? It wasn’t like he cared about the bossy fucker, and Alasdair was old enough to be his dad, which wasn’t a great basis for a relationship.

Cosmo’s heart told him he was full of shit.

“I should be going,” he said. “It’s been fun, but I’ve got stuff to do too.”

Alasdair gave a twisted smile that looked all wrong on him. “Off screwing the system again?”

That stung. Bastard, using Cosmo’s own words against him. But he manned up and smiled back, even though his face felt tight. “That’s right. I’ll be sticking it to the man.”

“I’ll call you a taxi,” Alasdair offered. “My tab.”

“‘S’all right. I can walk to the bus stop.”

“It’s tipping it down. Come on, don’t be a stubborn brat.”

Cosmo was about to listen to his pride and turn Alasdair down but he remembered he hadn’t a clue where to get the bus back to High Wycombe from here, and it would take hours to walk it, and he’d come out without a coat. So he let Alasdair call the taxi, and when it pulled up outside, he pasted a bright smile on his face.

“Well, might see you around sometime.”

Alasdair just nodded. That was it, then. Cosmo turned to leave, but Alasdair grabbed hold of his shoulders and spun him around. The kiss that followed was gentler than before, and it felt horribly like a farewell.

“Look after yourself, Cosmo.”

Yeah, a farewell. Cosmo wasn’t going to risk making a fool of himself, so he followed Alasdair’s example and gave him a nod before dashing through the pouring rain into the back of the taxi.

Chapter Six

Five days later, and Alasdair still couldn’t get Cosmo out of his mind. Five days! This was starting to feel like an obsession.

He listened to his fleet manager’s report on the necessity of kitting out all company vehicles with sat nav and did his best to concentrate on the man’s droning voice. Wednesday afternoons were always a time for Alasdair to catch up with the supervisors for both the cleaning and disposal teams, along with his department managers, and he usually enjoyed the meeting. It was pretty informal, held over tea and biscuits around the coffee table in his office, as he figured this helped people to relax and tell him things they’d otherwise keep quiet about. It was good to know the nitty-gritty of what was going on at ground level, and he took pride in sorting out any reported problems before they became the cause of staff unrest. This week, however, it was proving difficult to summon up the enthusiasm to care.

Eventually, he cut Sadik off mid-flow.

“Tell you what, you come up with a full costing and an estimate of how many man hours they’re going to save, considering most staff know their routes like the back of their hands. If the figures don’t add up, I’m not interested.”

Sadik pursed his lips but agreed to do so, and Alasdair wrapped up the meeting in record time.

“Any other business? Speak now or forever hold your peace.”

There were some surprised-looking faces around the table, including Mavis’s, but he held her stare, and she stood to leave.

“Coffee in ten,” she muttered on her way to the door.

Alasdair shut the door behind them all and pulled out his phone. There was Cosmo’s name and number staring out from the screen below the phone’s default black-and-white silhouette. He should have taken a photo when he had the chance, but wouldn’t that be more torture, seeing that gorgeous face staring out at him?

To ring or not to ring? He could make it sound like a casual check-up on how Cosmo was doing. Ask if he had any questions about what they’d done. It was a responsible Top’s duty, really. Trouble was, Cosmo would know he was full of shit after the way they’d parted. Not that Alasdair had said anything he regretted, but he’d seen the hurt radiating from every inch of Cosmo’s slouched body.

What he really owed him was an explanation, but that meant going into the whole Jon thing, and he really wasn’t ready to talk that through with anyone yet. Seeing as how it had been fifteen years now, he was forced to conclude perhaps he never would be ready.

Alasdair heaved a deep breath and lifted his gaze to the scene outside the window. He could see West Wycombe Hill from his office, rising in the distance over the urban sprawl of the valley below—the golden dome from the church on the top gleaming in the sunlight. Maybe it had been a stupid idea, taking on these premises with that reminder of his first night with Jon always in sight.

But it had given him some measure of solace, hadn’t it? Shame it didn’t seem to working anymore.

Screw it. He needed to take some action. Right. Alasdair pressed Dial before he could second-guess himself and turned his back on the view. As the phone rang, he fixed his gaze on the spot of carpet where Cosmo had knelt during his interview. All the better for getting into the right mindset for dealing with an insolent brat.

“Hello?” Cosmo’s greeting sounded unusually cautious, but maybe he always answered the phone that way.

“Hi. It’s Alasdair.”

A sharp intake of breath. “Right. And I should care why, exactly?”

Alasdair chose to ignore the attitude. “We need to have a debriefing session about last weekend. See if you have any questions about what happened. A first scene can be pretty intense for a novice.”

“De-fucking-briefing? Are you serious? Coz the only kind of
debriefing
I’m interested in with you is out of the question now.”

“And why is that exactly?”

“Because you acted like an arsehole and turfed me out?”

“Are you somewhere we can talk about this right now?”

“Give me one good reason why I should.”

“Were you in any way unsatisfied with the sex?”

The line went quiet at the other end. Alasdair waited Cosmo out. He wasn’t going to show weakness by repeating the question.

Eventually it came. “No. The sex was just fine.” The grudging tone betrayed just how very fine it had been.

“You don’t have any concerns about your reaction to pain?”

“Nope.”

This was going nowhere fast. Alasdair tried a different tack. “What was your favourite part of what we did together?”

He didn’t think he was going to get an answer this time, but eventually it came in a low, throaty whisper. “The spanking was amazing. And afterwards, when you fucked me, I could feel it again, every time you slammed into me.”

Alasdair stifled a groan. Oh yes, he could feel it too. The heat of Cosmo’s body clenching around him. “And what about the power dynamic. How did you feel about taking orders?”

“I don’t know. I mean, it was good while we were fucking, but I wouldn’t make a habit of it. Outside of sex, that is.”

Interesting. “So you’re curious to explore this further?”

“Maybe. I dunno… Oh, what the fuck. Yeah, okay, I want to find out more. Happy now?”

“Only if you are.” Alasdair fought back the grin trying to work its way into his words. “Listen, could we meet up again on Friday night? We can discuss this in more detail. Talk about your limits and what sort of things you’re interested in trying. I can come up with a set of questions for our appointment.”

“Great. An appointment. Do you ever switch off the boss-man mode?”

“I didn’t mean like a business thing. A chat over some dinner at my place. And then, if you’re still feeling like it, a light play session afterwards.”

The wait wasn’t as drawn out this time. “Can we try out a flogger?”

We
. That was encouraging, that Cosmo thought of this as a partnership—not something he was having done to him. Alasdair let the grin take over. “If you’re a very good boy.”

“Fine. Let’s do it. But you don’t get to make me feel like shit the next day, okay?”

“Noted. And I…” Could he do this? Yes. A good Top knew when to take the blame for his actions. “I’m sorry about that. It was nothing to do with you. Just my baggage.”

“All right, then.” Cosmo sounded mollified, and they arranged the details of where and when before Alasdair hung up.

Alasdair was still smiling when Mavis pushed her way back into the room, a steaming mug in each hand. She plonked his down on his desk hard enough to make it slop over the edge, and peered at him.

“Okay, what’s going on? You’ve been as miserable as sin all week, and now you look like the cat that got the bleedin’ cream. Is it the Montague deal?” She screwed up her nose to let him know exactly how she felt about Roger and his no doubt tainted money.