The Administration Series (95 page)

"Yes."

Anger flared up, and it took him a few seconds to corral it, to keep it away from his voice and hands.

"It was weeks since you were away before. Why tell me now? Why the fuck are you telling me any of this?"

"Because I wanted to hurt you." A slight, sour smile in profile. "I wanted you to know how it feels."

A revenge fuck, God only knew why after all this time. But it was a better — or more bearable — reason than the ones he'd been afraid of hearing. Because he was a better fuck than you. Because I'm bored with you. Because I want him more than I want you.

"Well?" Warrick asked. "Did it work?"

Toreth took a breath, as deep as he could with the tight ache in his chest. "Yes." He couldn't imagine — and didn't want to find out — what a 'no' might provoke.

"Good." Warrick knelt up, still watching the fire. "Not that I think for a moment it will stop you doing it next time you feel the need to scratch an itch. But I wanted you to know — that's what it feels like."

He rose to his feet in one jerky movement, controlled anger evident in every line, and went off into the bedroom.

For a minute that felt like ten, Toreth lay still, feeling the heat of the fire on his face. Then he stood up and poured himself a large drink.

'Knowing I was with someone else.'

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the bedroom door, ajar. Warrick wanted him to follow him, or at least he was leaving the possibility open. Or maybe he'd just forgotten to close it. But Toreth didn't follow, because now the ice of the shock was melting into anger he didn't think it would be a good idea.

In fact it would be a very bad idea indeed, because he knew that, amongst all the things Warrick would tolerate from him, physical violence wasn't on the list. Not for real. Not outside the game. That would make him walk, and Toreth wasn't — quite — upset enough to forget that and he wasn't — quite — angry enough not to care.

A part of him
didn't
care, though. The part that hated how much he wanted Warrick. Hated knowing that, if Warrick walked out of the bedroom right now and knelt in front of the fire, and breathed, "Fuck me," that he'd do it, and that it would be wonderful, even better for the anger.

Taste of Warrick's name in his mouth, past the whisky, and he drank again, trying to blot it out.

He hated most of all this loss of control, this feeling of someone — anyone — having power over him again. Even if Warrick didn't choose to exercise it, even if he claimed that he didn't want it, it was still there. Warrick was different to every other fuck in his life, and when he was forced to acknowledge it, the rage brimmed up.

Feeling it, he wanted to hit Warrick, hurt him, make him oh-so-fucking sorry for what he'd done. To wring out an apology and a promise never, ever to do it again. Never even to think about it. Yet all that was nothing compared to what he wanted to do to this other, nameless man. He tried to banish the images created by Warrick's vivid word-picture.

'Someone else saying my name.'

With a sharp crack the glass shattered in his grip. For a moment he thought he'd got away with it, then he saw the blood and gasped at the sharp sting of spirits in the cuts.

Trying not to drip blood onto the carpet, he went into the bathroom and ran icy water over his hand until the bleeding slowed and it started to go numb. Then he was able to pull out the shards, swearing through gritted teeth at the slide of glass through flesh. Once they were all out, he flexed his hand, watching the tendons stretch, checking his fingertips for feeling. No serious damage done, he decided.

Luckily there was a first-aid kit in the cupboard under the basin, so he could patch his hand up with no worse of a mess than blood on himself and one of the towels. When he'd finished he looked at himself in bathroom mirror and thought: hypocrite. You've got no rights over him. You don't own him. Isn't that what you wanted? Isn't that what you asked him for? You can't even remember how many people you've had since you met him. He does it once, and you're breaking fucking glasses over it. Half of the General Criminal coffee room would probably choke to death laughing if they could see you now. Pathetic fucking hypocrite.

All true, but it didn't change the way he felt — hurt and angry. A bad combination.

He took deep breaths, trying and failing to find even a pretence of calm. His clothes were stained with blood and alcohol and he felt dirty, so he stripped and stepped into the shower. Holding his bandaged hand out of the spray, he ran the water hot and cold until his skin burned, but it couldn't clear his mind, or stop Warrick's voice running through it.

'Doing all the things I do for you.'

Eventually, when it had become a simple choice between walking out or going into the bedroom after Warrick, he got out of the shower, half dried himself, pulled on the filthy clothes and left. On the way across the room he dropped his keycard on the floor, so there was no chance he could change his mind and go back.

Then there was a taxi to the airport, and a late flight, and another taxi and he was back home. And still he felt the same.

Warrick lay in the dark, listening to the sounds punctuating the background of his own unsteady breathing. Breaking glass, a door opening, the shower running for a long time, then finally the outer door of the room slamming.

After that he rolled onto his side and watched the minutes passing on the clock by the bed. It took an hour before he allowed himself be sure Toreth wasn't coming back, and the sick fear started to let go of him.

He'd meant to tell Toreth. Or he'd meant to tell him something. Not the way he had, though — he'd been carried away by the moment. When he'd told Toreth that he wanted to hurt him, he'd been as surprised by the truth of it as Toreth possibly could have been. Then even more surprised by how guilty he'd felt as soon as he'd walked away from the fire.

He had nothing to feel guilty about . . . by Toreth's standards. By his own, plenty.

He had no right to punish Toreth for doing no more than he'd done for as long as they'd known each other. Warrick had been the one who had set the terms for their relationship, and Toreth hadn't broken them. Technically, perhaps, neither had he, because there was no commitment to fidelity on his part either. That, however, was semantic quibbling. He'd known perfectly well that Toreth would see it as a gross violation of his trust.

Kissing and telling. Fucking and telling. Why the hell had he thought that doing what Toreth did would be any kind of solution? In fact, now everything was over and the adrenaline had cleared his mind, he wondered if he'd thought
anything
intelligent over the last couple of months.

Not as far as he could tell, with the clarity of hindsight. He'd let himself become obsessed by the idea of what Toreth was doing with people that neither of them cared about. Then he'd done something unforgivably selfish and stupid (and he wouldn't even think about how much he'd enjoyed the illicit liaison, because that only made it worse).
Then
he'd compounded the idiocy by trying to pass the guilt along to someone who didn't have a perceptible conscience, but who had previously demonstrated a nice line in possessive jealousy.

What a wonderfully mature response to the situation.

He wasn't even sure what he'd wanted in return. An acknowledgement that he meant more than the others, maybe. An apology and a vow of fidelity would have been nice. Or not, because any promise would have been a lie and he had enough self-respect left not to want that.

The final realisation, unfortunately coming about two hours too late to be of any use, was that he did care about Toreth's infidelity, but not as much as he'd thought. Not enough to want to lose him. Not even enough to enjoy hurting him, once the flush of anger had faded. Definitely not enough to have done it in such a stupidly dangerous fashion.

In fact, stupid was an utterly inadequate description. Suicidal might be better, and that thought brought the fear back in a stomach-turning rush.

He'd forgotten his promise to Dilly to be careful. Somehow he'd forgotten what Toreth was and why he'd needed to make the promise in the first place. Dilly would kill him. If she got the chance.

The best he could realistically hope for was that he'd never see Toreth again. And, God, even after everything, he still didn't want that.

The next morning, Toreth arrived at the office early. God only knew what he looked like, because Sara didn't even ask why he was back so soon. She just brought him a coffee without being asked, and kept resolutely out of his way.

For almost an hour he resisted the temptation. Then he called up the attendee lists for the current conference and the previous one and cross-referenced the male delegates. That produced a substantial overlap, so he went with his first guess and selected those resident in New London.

That left him with only a dozen names. He looked at the list and toyed with other selection criteria. Marital status would be a potential one. Whoever he was, he wouldn't be married — Toreth couldn't see Warrick taking his revenge fuck similarities that far. And age. Probably around Warrick's age or a little older. There would be no graduate student desperate to secure a good corporate job — Warrick wouldn't want to feel that he was taking advantage of someone. Even though he had been.

A picture of the man formed gradually in his mind as he played with the ideas, refining the criteria. No face yet, but he was confident now he could fill in that detail. If he wanted to know. If the image wasn't clear enough already.

'Kneeling in front of them.'

Better to know than to imagine. Maybe.

He didn't actually run the searches, although it was a safe enough game to play. Even if he wanted to, he couldn't do anything to any of them. They weren't within reach. They were all . . . at the conference. With Warrick.

Abandoning the list of names, Toreth went to lean against the window, glass cool against his forehead. Nice, smooth move, he thought. Storm out in a sulk, don't even leave a message, and leave Warrick a few hundred miles away and in the same hotel as the man he'd fucked before. Very fucking clever.

If he does it again, he thought, I'll kill him. No. I'll kill both of them.

The calm certainly of the idea disturbed him. Suddenly, he badly wanted a drink, which at the same time he recognised was not a good sign at ten in the morning.

Get a fucking grip, he told himself.

He deleted the names — although he could always do the search again later — and decided that, since he'd booked the holiday, he wasn't going to spend the day hurting prisoners. For one thing, it would have been enjoyably therapeutic, and that was too unprofessional to tolerate.

"I don't know if I'm going to be in tomorrow," he told Sara on the way past. "I'll call first thing."

She nodded, and watched him leave without comment.

He was heading for the stairs down, tunnel vision in full operation, when someone called his name from close by. When he swung round, he found Morehen, who offered a hand screen.

"What is it?" Toreth asked.

"Since you were in the office, Para, I wondered if you could spare a minute to look at this report. I followed the General Criminal protocols, of course, but it's not quite the way I do — did — things over in Political. I — "

"Do you know what your last assessment grading said?" Toreth asked.

The investigator stared for a moment, mouth still open, and then his hand fell. "No, Para. They're all confidential."

"It said you have outstanding initiative and independence. And a lot of seniors don't like that. I do — it's why I wanted you. So if you want to keep your high grading and your nice little housing allowance bonus — "

The lift doors opened and Toreth managed to stop, aware of the other people suddenly near them. Professionalism, that was why he was on his way out of the building. And gratuitously bollocking staff in public was the way that Mike Belkin and wankers like him managed to hit record team turnovers. Wherever Warrick was sticking his cock, that was no reason for Toreth to fuck up the rest of his life.

Thinking about Warrick didn't help his concentration, though. Toreth sorted though possible conversation closers, trying to find one that would retrieve things without an apology, while Morehen slowly paled and began to fidget.

"If you have any questions about report formats, that's Sara's area. You don't need to prove to me that you're trying to do your job the way I want it done. Do the work well, which I know you can, and it'll prove itself." He dropped his hand onto Morehen's shoulder. "And right now, I'm on holiday."

Morehen nodded. "Sorry, Para. I'll go talk to Sara right away."

Toreth left him there and he went down to the I&I medical centre to have his hand checked out and the cuts bonded closed by someone not using his off hand. Then he spent the afternoon at the gym, winding down from murderous to merely angry. Afterwards he went home, showered and changed and thought about going out. In the end, he decided he didn't want to.