The Administration Series (94 page)

"I've been trying to get hold of you," Warrick said, with an edge to his voice that Toreth identified straight away as suspicion.

"Yeah? Work's been a bastard all week, so I've been switching my comm off most evenings." Sara could always get hold of him, of course, but Toreth didn't generally advertise the fact.

"I called you at home last night and you weren't there," Warrick continued.

No question was added to the statement of fact, but Toreth answered it anyway. "I was with someone."

"Oh?" Politely enquiring.

"Yes." Sometimes he could be bothered to lie to Warrick, sometimes he couldn't. Today, after Doyle's irritating news, was a 'couldn't' day. "I met someone at the gym, we went out for a drink. We ended up making a night of it."

Over the comm he heard the sound of the office door being firmly closed.

"Did you fuck him or her?" This was now Warrick's chilly 'quest for knowledge' voice, which suggested he was going to get wound up about this one. It happened more often these days than it used to.

"Yes, I fucked him." Toreth waited with mild anticipation. 'What was his name.' That would be the next question, if Warrick was really irritated, although Toreth never understood why he asked.

"What was . . . never mind. That's not why I called."

Toreth felt a twinge of disappointment. He liked these arguments because the make-up sex was usually incredibly good. It made a difference when Warrick felt he possibly had something to prove.

"What can I do for you, then?" Toreth asked.

"I'm going away to a meeting next week, as you know, and I wondered — God knows why — if you'd like to accompany me. Assuming you can get away."

"You mean on Monday?"

"Yes. Sorry for the short notice. Call it a sudden impulse."

"A tech conference?" Toreth asked dubiously.

"Yes. But it shouldn't be too dull. The conference centre looks excellent, even by corporate standards, and it's in the Alps. Skiing, if you're interested."

"I've never tried it."

"Dangerous, potentially painful, pointless physical activity. Just your sort of thing."

"It sounds more like yours."

Warrick laughed. "Yes or no? I need to make arrangements."

Toreth thought about it. He had an investigation running, with prisoners due to be brought in today, and they had to be broken quickly before their associates could catch wind of the arrests and run. Still, some of it he could leave to his team. He could supervise at a distance if he needed to, once he'd conducted the first round of interrogations. Doyle could earn his keep for his last days on the team. Some weekend overtime would do him good.

He always lied about work details, and the translation was smooth and almost unconscious. "I have a case finishing. It's just paperwork, but it all needs to be tied up before I can get away. I could meet you there a day later."

"Very well. I'll send you the information."

The next four days at work were a nightmare. It took longer to get away than he'd hoped and he didn't arrive at the conference centre until late Tuesday evening. Warrick hadn't exaggerated when he said it was corporate standard. Toreth preferred cities, in his limited experience of the alternatives, but the journey up to the Alpine centre impressed him. Outdoor summer snow sports were a purely corporate luxury, and the complex was visible from miles away, the brilliant lights glittering on the artificial snow. It would take more than ten minutes' chatting up an admin to get a place like this past accounts at I&I, but in this case the expenses were Warrick's problem. Easier to sort out, Toreth supposed, when you owned the corporation.

By the time he'd got the room details from reception and made his way through the miles of thickly carpeted corridor, Toreth had almost shed the lingering tension of his long day at work. He deserved a holiday.

He swiped the card and the door opened smoothly with a gentle nudge. The room beyond was dark, although the lights came up automatically as he stepped through.

"It's me!" he called, wondering if Warrick was already asleep.

Water splashed somewhere off to his left. "I'm in the bath. I'll be out in a minute."

"Nice room," Toreth said, looking around.

"I suggested something more modest," Warrick said, his voice echoing in what must be a large bathroom. "But Asher decided she wanted us to impress potential customers and rivals. I have to say, though, it's worth every euro SimTech's paying for it."

It was. The door opened into a spacious living area with armchairs, thick rugs and a large hearth with a real wood fire laid in the grate. Toreth wondered whether it worked. It was completely unnecessary, of course, as the room was comfortably warm already. It might be fun to try, though. Solid fuel heating was a rarity outside the sim.

Warrick appeared, wrapped in a dressing gown and drying his hair. Toreth went over, but Warrick stepped away from him slightly — not far, but far enough to make his message clear. Toreth let him go and gave a mental shrug. Whatever it was would sort itself out. He went off to put his bags in the bedroom.

When he came back into the main room he found Warrick knelt in front of the fireplace, fiddling with the control for the hearth.

"Playing with fire?" Toreth enquired.

Warrick smiled, still oddly distant. "No more than usual. Ah, here we go."

With a crackle, flames started to lick up between the logs carefully arranged in the large grate.

"Join me?" Warrick offered, lying down on the rug.

Toreth sat cross-legged beside him, watching the flames starting to catch on the wood. The smoke disappeared smoothly up the chimney, leaving only a pleasant, resinous scent to escape into the room.

Warrick stared into the fire. "This man you were with," he said without preamble.

"What?"

"When I called you at I&I on Friday. You'd been with someone."

"Yes?" Toreth prompted after a couple of seconds' silence, not particularly wanting to have this argument, but not particularly caring either. Although it seemed a long way to come for something they could've done over the comm.

"What was he like?" Warrick asked.

"About my height, brown hair — "

"Not what he looked like. What you did."

That was a departure from the normal line of questioning.

"What you did when you fucked," Warrick elaborated.

"Yes, I worked that bit out by myself. I was just wondering why the fuck you would want to hear about it."

"Because I want to know."

"Very clever." Toreth scrutinised him carefully, but Warrick was letting nothing escape from behind his corporate mask. "
Why
do you want to know?"

"Curiosity?"

"Killed the fucking cat. Try again."

"Well . . . " Warrick lay very still, staring intently at the flames. "You'll sleep around whatever I say, and I'm not asking you to stop. Because I know you won't, or possibly can't, and normally, it doesn't bother me. Recently, though . . . I've tried ignoring it and that doesn't seem to be as effective as it used to be. So I thought I'd try something else."

"You really want to hear about it?"

"To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure. But it can't hurt to hear it through once. Perhaps that'll stop me thinking about it."

Toreth considered it for a few more seconds, ignoring a premonition that this was a bad idea. "Okay."

He lay down next to Warrick, not quite touching. "We went to his house — "

Warrick shook his head slightly. "No. Start earlier."

"When?"

"When you first saw him."

"At the gym, like I said. I saw him watching me, and then again later. So I smiled at him and then, after a while he came over to talk to me. I noticed he had a ring on."

"And?"

"We had a bit of a chat, and he was interested-but-wanting-not-to-be. Then he said he had to go, so I went back into the changing rooms with him." Toreth twined bits of the rug between his fingers, vaguely wondering if he was going to wake up still in the car on the way to the conference centre and find this whole conversation had been a bizarre dream. "We had a shower — I could see he was looking at me again — and he was attractive enough, so I asked if he'd like to go for a drink. I knew — "

He had been going to say, 'I knew you were busy, so I thought I'd settle for the next best thing'. The confessional atmosphere was obviously getting to him. "I didn't have anything else planned," he finished, instead.

"Where did you go?"

"Bar in the gym, first of all. Then somewhere he suggested. Not bad."

"What did you talk about?"

"I don't remember. Does it matter?"

"I'd like to know."

Toreth shrugged. "Just general conversation. He was interesting enough, but I wasn't really listening, not to the extent of remembering any of it now."

"About your job?"

"Yes. Some people are curious, you know. He wasn't all that curious, but it didn't put him off."

"And then you asked him . . . what?"

"He asked me. Actually, I thought he wasn't going to do it. But then he asked if I'd like to go back to his house." Toreth smiled. "Only took him two hours to get round to it."

He shifted against the rug, getting hard at the memory of the moment of victory and trying to get more comfortable with some degree of discretion.

Beside him Warrick frowned, thoughtful rather than annoyed. "Didn't you say he was married?"

"Yes, I did. She was visiting her sister or something — that's where they usually seem to be. I didn't bother to ask."

"Did you kiss him?" Warrick asked, throwing him slightly.

Toreth had to think about it. "No."

"Do you ever?"

"Yes, sometimes."

"Ah. Women more often than men?"

"Yes."

"Makes sense. Did you touch his mouth?"

"Warrick . . . "

"You don't have to tell me, if you don't want to," Warrick said mildly. "Or we can stop altogether if you like. Just say so."

"I don't . . . never mind." He did want to stop, but he didn't want to admit it. "Yes, I did. Or rather, he sucked me, so if that counts as touching his mouth then I did."

"Actually, I don't think it does. But since we're there, did you come in his mouth?"

"No. He didn't want me to." Forestalling the next question he said, "With his hand."

Warrick nodded. "On the bed?"

"What?"

"Were you on the bed? Lying down? Kneeling? Where?"

This was too fucking weird. "Uh, I was sitting on the edge of the bed, he was kneeling."

Warrick nodded again. "His wife's bed. Their bed."

"I suppose so. I didn't think about it."

"No?" He sounded slightly surprised. "So why do you like the married ones so much?"

"More of a challenge? I don't know."

"Liar." Warrick's expression didn't change, nor his even, calm tone of voice, but something in the atmosphere altered subtly.

Toreth hesitated, smoothing the rug in front of him. "All right. How about, I get a kick out of seeing people do things they don't like to think they want to do?"

"Better. Does that include me?"

The question had a dangerous edge, and Toreth kept quiet, wondering where this was leading.

"For example," Warrick continued precisely, "I've never seen the attraction in casual sex. Maybe I should take it up."

Toreth bit back his instinctive reply, but it didn't matter, because Warrick had turned his head slightly and was looking at him sidelong.

"You wouldn't like that, though, would you?" Warrick asked, his voice soft.

No, you bastard, Toreth thought, I fucking wouldn't. But he could hardly say that now. "I'm in no position to object," Toreth said carefully.

Warrick snorted. "No, you most definitely aren't. But you'd hate it. Knowing I was with someone else." His eyes closed as he turned his face back towards the heat of the fire, and his voice continued in a low litany, strangely dispassionate. "Fucking someone else. Being fucked. Telling them I want more, harder, deeper. Someone else coming inside me. Someone else saying my name."

The words flowed over him, sickening and arousing at the same time. Toreth found his hands clenching on empty air. "Don't," he said quietly.

Warrick tilted his head back, firelight flickering over his throat. "Or letting them fuck my mouth. Kneeling in front of them. Doing all the things I do for you. Ah . . . "

He opened his eyes again. "Do you know why I invited you here?" he said, in a more normal voice.

A cold chill poured down Toreth's spine. "No."

"Because the last time I was away, the last time I was at a conference, I did."

"What?"

"You know what. But if you insist: I fucked one of the other delegates." Now Warrick turned to watch him again, measuring the effect of his cool, deliberate words. "Not just once. Four or five times, over the conference. On the last morning we had breakfast and then went back to the room and I nearly missed my car to the airport. He asked me to call him when I got home."

The chill had collected itself into a ball and settled in his stomach. Toreth listened to his own voice, unable to believe he was asking the questions. "He lives in New London? Who is he?"

"I don't think I'm going to tell you that."

"Did you call him?" All those missing evenings over the past weeks.

He looked away again. "No, I didn't." Long pause. "He called me, though."

Then Warrick waited, until Toreth had to ask. "And?"

"I told him I was flattered, but that I wasn't interested. Which was a lie, incidentally."

Which part? Was this all leading up to 'it's over, goodbye'? Toreth couldn't force himself to ask directly. "Why did you want me to come here?"

There was a long silence.

"Because . . . he's here," Warrick said at length. "And I didn't think it would be a good thing to end up doing it again."

"Did you want to?" he asked, finally appreciating the strange compulsion Warrick had about the details of his own one-night stands. Better to know than to imagine.