Wanting (6 page)

Dane pushed him towards the hay bale. Adam faced it, raised his hands then planted them on the prickly dried stalks, allowing Dane to tug down his jeans and let them fall to his ankles. A swish of sound meant Dane had shucked down his own jeans, then he was there, right behind Adam, hard cock nestling in his arse crack.

“Think about what’s going on next door,” Dane said, his voice breathless and jerky. “Think about all those men fucking and imagine we’re there, right in the thick of it.”

Christ, put like that, Adam couldn’t fail to be aroused.

“And imagine one of them coming in here and finding us.”

Dane jerked behind him, quick movements—fisting himself. Adam gripped his own cock, closing his eyes and seeing the men in the barn doing the same thing to their dicks. Dane brushed a hand over Adam’s crack as he worked, and it heightened Adam’s desire.

“Ah, yes!” Dane said. “Fucking look at us doing this when…shit…those men are doing it. It’s…God, it’s damn hot. I’m pretending we’re in there, me and you amongst all those bodies. What are you thinking? You seeing it? You fucking…ah…seeing it?”

“Yes!” Adam managed, his voice strangled. “I see…ah, fuck…it.”

“Yeah, you’re seeing it all right. Squeeze tighter. Squeeze your dick hard. Yeah, you know you want to come all over that damn hay. Ah, fuck!”

Adam’s balls drew up and he wanted some penetration. “Finger-fuck me,” he rasped out. “I need…”

“Yeah, I know what you need.”

The sound of Dane spitting came before his finger circled Adam’s hole. Adam widened his legs, bracing himself for the wicked burn he always got when Dane inserted something into his arse. It came, swift and hard, Dane seeking out the bud inside Adam that sent him over the edge every time. Adam masturbated harder, faster, the two different sensations combining to make one heady rush that spread from his arse, to his bollocks, to his cock. His knees jolted, and a build-up of cum swirled at his root.

“Oh, fuck. I’m gonna…”

“Yeah, me too,” Dane said. “Come on, yeah, do it like that. Shove your arse out just like that. Tight arse…fuck, I want my cock in there…”

Adam was lost. He gave two more up-and-down strokes and his orgasm hit. Cum shot out of him, and it splattered onto the hay, two speedy lines and a third, less forceful arc. Dane withdrew his finger to grip Adam’s waist, then warm fluid coated Adam’s lower back and dripped down his arse crack.

“Fuck me, this is good,” Dane said, so loud it was almost a shout. “Oh, yeah. This is fucking good.”

Adam slowed on his cock, the tip sensitive, the buzz of aftershocks zinging. His breaths came out ragged, and he tipped his head back to stare at the indistinct rafters. Dane stopped jerking and laid a hand on Adam’s lower spine, massaging in his cum. Adam reached back to touch Dane. This was a new one on him, fucking in a barn, but it had been fast and furious, a release of sexual tension that had been building ever since they’d seen those men naked.

He wouldn’t over-analyse it. They’d watched, they’d fucked and that was the end of it. No guilt.

None whatsoever.

Right?

Adam turned and helped Dane zip up while Dane did the same to him. They stared at each other in the gloom, Dane with a boyish smile, Adam with one of his own. He felt like a naughty kid, making out when he shouldn’t have, but who was to say what they’d done was wrong?

“That,” Dane said, running a hand down Adam’s coat, “was hot as fuck.”

“Yeah.” Again the thought of not being enough for him hit Adam. “You… Have you been wanting that kind of thing for a while?”

“Fuck, no. Didn’t even know I’d like watching until we did.”

“Right. Do we go back? See some more?” Adam didn’t want to see any more, not really, but he did want to make sure that guy was okay.

“If you want, although I’ve seen enough.”

“Just…it’s just that I want to check on that bloke.”

Dane nodded, indulging him. “All right. We check, we leave, we go home and shower, yeah?”

Adam smiled and led the way out of the lean-to, checking first that no one was around. At the front of the main barn, he peeked inside, Dane at his back, and saw men in various states of sexual activity. The man he’d thought in trouble didn’t appear to be. He was having his cock sucked, pushing and pulling the sucker’s head to maintain a steady rhythm.

Dane was right. Nothing bad was going on here at all.

Adam turned and walked across the field towards the road, Dane in silence beside him. Adam’s thoughts went to that voice and what had been said. He shrugged, unable to come up with a reasonable explanation for having heard it. He’d put it down to his over-active imagination, a leftover from his attack, where he fancied the group of men as sinister when all they were doing was indulging in a fantasy.

He couldn’t very well put it down to anything else, could he?

Nothing he wanted to entertain, anyway.

* * * *

Back at the cottage, they took turns to shower, and while he waited for Dane to finish, Adam inspected the shelf above their bed. It was large enough to hold all their toys and lotions, and he smiled at the thought of them getting over-excited and cracking their heads on the damn thing.

He climbed into bed, the dregs of what they’d seen and done still lingering in his mind. Despite telling himself in the lean-to he wouldn’t feel any guilt, he did. Adam was unsure of how he should be feeling—his mind was in a mess. What was the right way to deal with this? It felt wrong somehow, to have watched them, then fucked because of it. Like he’d felt as a youngster, staring at men in glossy magazines and wanking all over them.

No, he’d stop it right here. It was done.

Dane came in, sleepy-eyed and tousle-haired, then got into bed grinning with a grin on his face. “Want to talk about it?”

Yes, he did, but not about
it.
He needed to talk about that voice but knew if he broached the subject again Dane would only get arsey. Adam just didn’t want the hassle.

“Nah, I’m good.”

Dane clicked off the lamp on the bedside cabinet. “What have we got going on tomorrow?”

“Lazy day?”

“D’you fancy going back to the barn? Fucking there again?”

Adam smiled. It might take Dane a while to get this out of his system.

“All right, but if we get caught…”

“Nah, we won’t get caught.”

They lapsed into silence, Dane’s breathing growing heavier. Adam turned onto his side, still getting used to sleeping in a strange room. He wondered how long it would take before this place would truly feel like home.

He drifted and waited for that final curtain of sleep.

Just as it fell, he thought he heard that voice again, but the sandman was stronger than Adam’s urge to fully digest what the man had said.

“You left me. I had to do those things, and you left me. It’s over. All over now…”

Oliver lay in bed beside Langham and stared at the ceiling, listening to his lover’s breaths as they slowed, the detective’s body preparing him for sleep. Oliver wasn’t ready for the sandman to visit him yet, though, and selfish as it seemed, he wanted to keep Langham awake with him. Wanted to chat until his voice slurred and he drifted off, only to wake again and carry on talking as if there hadn’t been any pause at all.

“I wonder what Shields would have made of all this?” Oliver asked, thinking of the now-dead policeman who had treated him like shit,
them
like shit—one of the last coppers to accept that Oliver had no hand in the murders he brought to their attention.

He’d been an arsehole of a bloke, someone Oliver would never have spoken to had he not been a copper. He’d had no choice, though, what with him being another lead detective, sharing the load of the Sugar Strands case and a few others before that. Shields had made Oliver want to hurt him, and Oliver hadn’t liked that feeling.

Langham chuckled, low and soft. A sleepy sound. “Fuck knows, but if the warehouse murder was something to do with being gay like the victim suggested, Shields would have had a shit fit. Bad enough we’re gay and worked with him. Having to solve a gay case would have tipped him over the edge, homophobic wanker.”

Oliver laughed too. “Shame he realised after his death that gay people aren’t so bad—that
we
aren’t so bad.”

Langham sighed. “Yeah, well, it came too late, him understanding. He should have just accepted us as we are and got on with his fucking job.”

“I seem to recall you saying it wasn’t right to speak ill of the dead.”

“I did, but you made me see I’d be a hypocrite if I only remembered the good points about him.”

“Were there any?” Oliver lifted a hand and rested the back of it over his brow. “That man didn’t seem to give a shit about anyone but himself.”

“True.”

They lapsed into silence for a while, Oliver making pictures out of the aertex swirls in the ceiling, the faint light of a streetlamp outside seeping around the curtain edges giving him just enough illumination to see in the darkness. He found a dragon, an image of Mickey Mouse, albeit a bit skewed, and a strange mountainous range complete with jagged sun peeking from behind a spiky cloud beside it.

He’d been on edge since visiting the warehouse corpse, waiting for the next murder to occur, wondering, every time the phone rang whether that call would be the one to send them out to another location. The deceased—Thomas Brentworth, they’d discovered—was an openly gay man. Since he’d spoken to Oliver in the warehouse, it was like he’d vanished into the place spirits went when they were happy to be dead, nothing to remain around for, no urgency to see his killer—or killers—brought to justice.

There were no clues that anyone who shouldn’t have been there had occupied the warehouse—no hairs, no fibres, no nothing. The only fingerprints found were those of the men who worked there during the day, each one with an airtight alibi, none of them gay. Not that they could solely focus on homosexuals just because Thomas had said the case was gay-related—but it was secretly where they zoned their attention, and Oliver was oddly proud the Force took what he’d said he’d been told as the truth. It was about time too. It seemed the days were gone where they eyed him with sceptical expressions, probably thinking he was making it up or that he’d had something to do with whatever murder case he’d been helping them with.

“How long do you think it’ll be before the next one happens?” he asked now, his voice startlingly loud even though he’d purposely kept it low.

Minimal traffic swept by outside their flat, and the other residents weren’t a rowdy bunch, so it shouldn’t have surprised him that his voice would stand out.

“I was just about to ask you the same question.” Langham turned onto his side and plonked his head on Oliver’s chest. His cheek felt hot. “And before you say it, I know you can’t find out. It was going to be a pondering question not a direct plea for you to tell me the answer, to know the answer.”

“It’s different now, though. The feelings I get, I mean. It’s like… Fuck, I asked you that question to see what you thought because ever since dinner I’ve felt off.”

“Off?” Langham lifted his head to look into Oliver’s eyes. “You’ve seemed all right to me.”

“Yeah, well, it wasn’t something I could pinpoint at first. Was just mulling shit over, thinking about whether Thomas was going to make himself known again, and it kind of struck me that it wouldn’t be long and we’d hear more news.” He tucked a stray lock of hair behind Langham’s ear then toyed with the end of it.

Langham rested his cheek on Oliver’s shoulder but remained looking at him. “Struck you like what?”

“I can’t explain it. A knowledge. Like I’d been told to watch out for the call, except no one told me, no voice, nothing like that, just a feeling.”

“Sounds to me like things are changing with you. Like hearing the voices was only the start of your ability.” Langham kissed Oliver’s collarbone. “How do you feel about that? Make you uneasy?”

“Nah, it’s all right. What’s a few new senses added to the mix, eh? Shit, I may as well have the whole psychic deal, it can only help.”

“True.”

Oliver traced circles on Langham’s lower back with his fingertips and closed his eyes. He soaked up the sound of Langham’s breathing, once again slowing, and the very faint
swoosh
of traffic on the main road a few streets away. The water boiler in the airing cupboard beside their bedroom gurgled like a kettle, telling him it was just after midnight, their Economy 7 electric kicking into life. Wouldn’t be long and there’d be enough hot water for him to take a shower if sleep wasn’t forthcoming, or maybe he’d have a long soak in the bath. And it seemed sleep wasn’t forthcoming—he was wide-eyed and bushy-tailed, as the saying went. Langham, on the other hand, appeared to be well on the way to the Land of Nod, his head going heavy, his muscles twitching as his body relaxed.

Fuck. Much as he wanted conversation, company, he didn’t have it in him to speak. Not when Langham really was asleep.

He stared at the aertex again, searching for a new picture. He couldn’t find one—had lost the ones he’d seen a few minutes ago as well—and, bored shitless, thought about getting up to watch some TV. Something wasn’t right if he couldn’t sleep, and it didn’t take much working out to know what. A nagging
thing
in his head pestered, depositing information without a voice, without pictures, just dumping it so Oliver knew about it as if it had always been there. Someone had been killed tonight, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. Yeah, he could wake Langham, tell him what he knew—and by fuck, he knew it all right—but it wasn’t like they could get up and go scouring the city for empty warehouses, was it?

Except it wasn’t a warehouse. It looked like one, was as big as one—he couldn’t see it, but he knew it—and those bald men had been there, preparing a lamb for slaughter.

Why, though? If they were gay and selecting gay men for whatever the hell they did when they hummed and swayed—that was what Thomas had said, wasn’t it, that they’d hummed and swayed?—what was the point of murder?

It had to be a ritual of some sort, didn’t it? A cult, maybe?