The Administration Series (64 page)

He did have a nice speaking voice, although she was having trouble with the words. Smooth, commanding, really rather attractive. Almost made her regret her principles about friends' boyfriends.

"Where's Toreth?" Dillian asked after a while.

Sara looked around, discovering that the two of them were alone. Of course — Asher, as a director, would be on the podium. Cele must also be somewhere at the front, because Sara had a vague idea that Warrick planned to mention her in the speech.

But Toreth . . . Toreth was nowhere in sight.

"Dunno." She shrugged. "Probably screwing one of the waiters against a wall in the back."

At first Dillian smiled. "I should hope not."

Sara waved her glass. "Don't worry about it. Happens all the time. 'S just Toreth."

Her matter-of-fact tone must have registered, because Dillian's smile vanished. "Are you serious?

Oops. "No, 'course not."

"Yes, you are. He's cheating on Keir?"

She would have denied it again, except that the idea of Toreth managing to sustain the kind of relationship that involved keeping secrets and cheating made her giggle.

Dillian's expression hardened. "Is he or isn't he?"

"No. He's not cheating, he's screwing around." She frowned, because that hadn't come out quite how she'd expected. "I mean, it's all okay. It's just Toreth. Warrick knows about it, so it isn't
cheating
cheating. He just . . . does other people."

"I don't believe you. Keir wouldn't put up with it."

God, she sounded like her brother when she was pissed off. "It doesn't mean anything. He's always done it. He —" He couldn't stop if he wanted to. "Look, they're both grown-ups. If Warrick doesn't like it, he can leave, can't he?"

"And if I asked Keir about it . . . ?"

Not very subtle. Sara shrugged. "He'd tell you the same thing."

Movement, and a rise in the noise level in the large room, caught Sara's attention, and she looked round. The presentation had ended. Now, as the crowd began to fragment, she caught sight of Toreth heading towards them, with a glimpse of Warrick's dark hair beside him.

"Look — they're both here," Sara said with relief.

When the pair reached them, Warrick looked flustered, and Sara had a sudden, very clear image of Toreth standing right at the front of the crowd, watching. Smiling. Maybe licking his lips. God knows, he'd had Warrick worked up enough in the car when they picked her up. The present must have been a spectacular success. She wondered briefly what Dillian would make of her brother's taste for chains.

"How much longer before we can go?" Toreth asked.

Warrick checked his watch, then did it again, as if hoping he'd misread it. "An hour, at least. I have to be here to say goodbye to the sponsors."

Toreth grinned. "Good. Sara, want to see if we can grab another ten minutes on the sim?"

As she followed him across the room, she wondered if Dillian was going to say anything.

It was, simply, torture. How Toreth, standing with Sara near the main exit doors, could look so relaxed was entirely beyond Warrick. Most things were, right now.

Defences crumbling under the onslaught of crashing waves of lust, he stood in the foyer and said goodbye to the departing sponsors. His eyes were drawn repeatedly to the vast mirror on the wall opposite. His reflection looked so calm, so collected. How Toreth managed it, he didn't know. His own calm came from years of practise in the sim.

This is my body, my representation in the world, controlled by my mind. I can make it do what I want. What I tell it to do. This is my body.

Only it wasn't. It was Toreth's, willing and desperate and aching to be taken. Thinking about it, about bolts in the wall and blindfolds and Toreth fucking him in chains, blanked out the noise around him, leaving him scrambling for words when the next group approached.

He knew that Toreth must want it, too, after what amounted to six hours of foreplay: the scene in the flat; the taxi; the platform; the interrupted fuck; twelve and a half minutes of adolescent groping behind the screen in the buffet room, which had started off as nostalgically amusing and finished with him almost ready to follow Delanie Halford's example; the speech —

You really ought to think about something else, an internal voice noted dryly.

Thank God for the decorously buttoned dinner jacket. He must have felt like this before, sometime, but he couldn't remember when. Not since shaving was still a novelty, anyway. Hormonally crazed, indeed.

Another glance at the mirror. Imperturbable, icy calm. It couldn't possibly be him.

Would he guess? he kept wondering. If he shook his reflection's hand, would he guess that only the overriding importance of SimTech, his first and greatest love, held him back from going down on his knees and begging Toreth to finish it
now
.

Dillian had talked to him earlier, and he'd actually found it difficult to listen. The previous half an hour of watching Toreth do every damn provocative thing he could do in public hadn't helped. Sucking his finger. How the hell could the man simply stand against a pillar and suck his finger and make it look
natural
? Like someone with a slightly odd habit listening attentively to the speaker. He'd almost laughed, afterwards, because Dillian had asked him if he was sure about Toreth. Never more sure, he'd wanted to tell her.

There had been something wrong, though, something she wanted to ask without saying it. Perhaps he should have tried harder to find out what, but after her contribution to the debacle with Lissa, he didn't feel particularly charitable towards her.

Another glance at his watch, another smooth farewell to another happy sponsor.

He ought to feel worse about Lissa. Under more normal circumstances, he would. How many years now of feeling guilty when he saw her? Every meeting stirring up the lingering feeling that he'd failed her, that he could've done something different, tried harder, accommodated more. But he found that there wasn't space, between the aching need and the memory of steel on his wrists, for the usual unfocused, low-level unhappiness. Lissa didn't deserve to be embarrassed, and he was sorry for that, but nothing more.

The surprise of discovering that distracted him temporarily from the gnawing desire. There was a feeling of finality, of something let go at last, which was novel and rather pleasant. Maybe Dillian had been right when she said he'd been hiding in the sim, avoiding his real life. Well, he had Toreth now (or at least, please
God
, soon), so that should make Dilly happy.

"Keir?" Asher approached, smiling. "I think that was the last one."

He returned the smile automatically. "Good. If I shake any more hands, my arm will fall off."

"I know." She flapped her wrist. "Me too." Looking round the room, she nodded. "It went well. A good evening, I thought."

"
Very
good."

The slight edge of hysteria he thought he could hear in the emphasis didn't seem to register with her.

"I got a positive response from everyone I spoke to," Asher continued. "People always make promises they don't keep at events like this, but I think some of them will pan out. Have you got the list of calls to make tomorrow?"

"Yes — safely saved."

Then it was goodbye to Asher, and next to the senior staff, thanking them for their efforts towards making the evening a success. After that, he spoke to the complex's management, with more congratulations and appreciation. It was almost a surprise when he discovered that his last duties had been discharged.

As he crossed the foyer again, he heard Sara laughing. Coming up behind the pair, he heard her say, still giggling, "— you in? I
can't
."

Toreth must have spotted Warrick's reflection in the door, because he nudged her and she stopped. He wondered what it had been about. Nothing good — that much was obvious when Toreth smiled at him, his expression full of anticipation.

What now? Then he realised. His duties weren't quite over, because they had to take Sara home. He would bet the cost of booking this hall that Toreth was trying to persuade Sara to help him drag the evening out even further.

"Ready to go?" Toreth asked, with an appallingly bad attempt at innocent enquiry.

"Oh, yes."

That turned the smile into a laugh, and Toreth said, "Don't forget we've got to take Sara home first."

Suddenly he didn't care about image or public propriety. "No."

Toreth blinked at him. "Sorry?"

"No." Warrick turned to Sara. "I'll call you a taxi. Don't worry, I'll pay for it."

She grinned. "You don't have to."

"I insist. I promised you a lift, and you'll get one."

A minute to call the taxi for her, another minute to walk to the car with Toreth, and then the door closed behind them. He sat down opposite Toreth, who stared out of the window, frowning slightly as Warrick gave the address to the system.

If Warrick leaned forwards, he could touch Toreth. Could do anything he wanted, now that the evening was over. Or, from another perspective, about to begin at last.

"Toreth," he said as the car moved off.

"Quiet."

Fuck me. Fuck me
now
. "Toreth —"

"What did I say?" The voice thrilled through him — game voice, cold and frightening. "Well?"

"Be quiet." Shivering breath. "I'm sorry."

Toreth shook his head. "That's not a very good start, is it?" He sighed. "Kneel down."

Pulse racing so fast he couldn't distinguish one heartbeat from the next, Warrick obeyed, the carpet of the car floor cushioning his knees. He put his hands behind his back, clasping his wrists. Imagining chains.

Toreth smiled. "Close your eyes."

The world changed to sounds and skin — his own quick breathing and Toreth's touch. Fingers held his face gently, positioning his head, thumb brushing over his lips, parting them. Even as he opened his mouth, the hand lifted away.

"I told you to do something," Toreth said quietly. "You didn't do it."

Then silence, stretching out. He struggled to keep his eyes closed, fighting the temptation to look, because he knew what was coming. Even though he was expecting it, when Toreth hit him he couldn't bite back the moan.

"Now stay there, shut up, and wait."

After the flat door closed, they stood in the hall for a long time, Warrick staring at the box still lying on the table. All exactly as it had been when they'd left the flat. In the aching silence of the car, he'd begun to wonder if it had been real after all. From the corner of his eye, he could see Toreth watching him.

Finally Toreth said, "Fetch me the cuffs."

Lifting the foam, Warrick uncovered the manacles and stopped, hypnotized by the sheer beauty of the metal, until Toreth said, "Don't you want it? Do you want me to put them away again?"

No hint in his voice that he might not mean it. Warrick snatched up the cuffs and offered them. Toreth held them up by the central ring, his head tilted to one side as he contemplated them.

"Pretty, aren't they?" he murmured.

Warrick took a deep breath. "Please."

A few more unbearably long seconds before Toreth looked up. "Did you say something?"

"Please, put them on me."

Slow smile. "Turn round. Hands behind you."

Soon . . . soon . . . oh, God — now. The steel closed around his wrists, even better than it had been the first time. His hands — his whole body — shook and, distantly, he heard Toreth swearing at him, telling him to stop fucking around. Clenching his fists, he managed to still them long enough for Toreth to secure the locks.

Toreth's hands slid up his arms, over his shoulders, and unfastened his bow tie. It fell to the floor, and then his shirt collar was loosened.

"Tell me." A whisper, lips pressed against his ear. "Did you do this with Melissa?"

"No."

"Never? Tell me the truth — I'll know if you're lying."

Warrick swallowed, trying to pull his scattered thoughts together, to marshal them into something like a coherent sentence.

"Sometimes. Sometimes we used to play with belts or scarves . . . with blindfolds." Always a treat for him, not because Lissa wanted it. "Or — but she didn't really . . . no. Not like this. Never like this."

"Good." Toreth's hands moved down again and circled his wrists above the metal, fingers digging in. "Did she buy you chains?"

"No."

"Did she hurt you?"

"No." Not like this.

"Good. Very good." Almost inaudible, a caress of breath. Then Toreth let go and stepped away. "Now, close your eyes."

Anticipation thrilling through him, he tried to listen, to work out where Toreth was, but he didn't hear even a hint of movement, or a clink of chain. The touch of metal on his throat, shockingly unexpected, almost sent him to his knees — might have done so, in fact, if a hissed, "Keep still!" hadn't frozen him, trembling, in place.

Click of the lock. Tug of the manacles behind him and the band around his throat dug in a little as the chains locked together.

Then it was finished — complete — and the world slid away from him for a moment.

Hands on his shoulders again brought him back to awareness, fingers digging in and pushing him down to his knees.

"Open your mouth."

At that moment, he honestly didn't care, but part of his mind, still not fully subsumed in the game, noted that Toreth must have washed at some point since the buffet, because he tasted clean and smelt of only a faintest hint of olive oil.

Then he forgot everything as Toreth's hands tangled in his hair and pulled him forwards. He struggled to keep his balance, awkward with bound hands, the collar and the cock filling his mouth combining to choke him. Panic rose briefly until Toreth eased away, giving him a moment's respite before he thrust in again.

Breathe — find the rhythm, each stroke easier to take than the last. Accepting it. Letting Toreth do what he wanted, because that was what
he
wanted. Surrendering.