Loverman Read online

  Copenhagen, after a gig, Charles appearing in his dressing room like a glossy, exquisite present. Eight years before, Kemp had been able to walk away from him. They’d been kids. He’d had incentive. This time… it had been impossible.

  The still press-friendly memory of Charles’ father, richer than god and for two years also stepfather to Viva and himself, had made flying under any radar impossible.

  Viva had never understood. Eyes as pale as Kemp’s narrowed on that blond beauty even as her lips thinned in distaste.

  “I don’t know what Kemp sees in you,” she said, pitched low enough for only the three of them. “But you two are together, and what makes Kemp happy, makes me happy. So I’ll tolerate you. I’ll even tolerate you invading my bloody shoot with your damned camera. But when I tell you to move, Durant, you fucking move.”

  Charles’ jaw finally clenched a degree. Incredible, in this heat, that sunshine glow of blond hair jagged about his jaw was fresh, not damp with sweat. His smooth skin perfect. Not a smudge of dirt on it, on his arms, his lean hands.

  Charles was about the only person under this corrugated iron roof not visibly sweating. A corner of his beautifully cut mouth curled, and his lips parted, no doubt ready with some acidic fucking comment.

  “Charles is just winding you up, Viva,” Kemp cut across calmly. “It’s the heat. It’s getting to everyone.” He cut a warning glance to the fucker. “You know better, Chaz. You get exclusive rights to a photoshoot, but you stay out of Viva’s way. Everyone’s way. It’s not much to ask.”

  The small intimacy of the nickname had a certain power.

  Charles looked amused, and his face was transformed. That habitual distance gone. A glimpse there now of the thirteen-year-old kid, that Kemp, same age, had first met.

  Blond. Angelic.

  But even then, Charles had disliked Viva. A weird thing, a kid just plain disliking a young girl, but he had. The siblings had shrugged it off.

  They’d not had much to do with Charles, nor he with them.

  Charles had his own friends, friends that had come from the kind of money they hadn’t. Their mother had used the passport of her looks, sexuality, and cunning to hook Richard Durant, but before Durant they’d been poor pretty much all of their lives, interspersed with better times depending on their mother’s boyfriend of the moment. She’d never held a man for long. Her beauty lured them in. Her demands pissed them off. Only Durant, for his own reasons, had made the arrangement legal. Charles and his elitist friends, those of them Kemp had met, had not been about to let the siblings forget their trashy background.

  They’d been snotty little bastards. The fights he’d gotten into with them had been bloody and pointless.

  But now Charles was smiling at him, and on anyone else, that smile would have looked like the sun coming out on the bleakest of days. He shifted with an innate grace, lacing an arm around Kemp’s shoulders. Lingering on the stubble-free skin, the pads of Charles’ fingertips slid down his neck to trace the line of his collarbone.

  “You’re right, Kemp.” He gave Viva a bland glance. “It’s your shoot, your space, your turf. My apologies for any misunderstandings. I’ll keep out of your way from now on in.”

  Viva eyed him, her sharp chin lifted. “If this is you being sincere, Durant, don’t go for that acting job. But fine. You stay out of my way, I won’t kick you out.”

  Charles returned that look. As if he knew her. Knew her secrets. Watching his sister, Kemp knew that small, clever smile on his mouth would be getting under her skin.

  “Scary, Viva,” Charles drawled. “Very scary. I feel appropriately reprimanded. I’ll behave, I promise.”

  Kemp caught hold of his wrist, lifted it away from his neck. He smiled and pushed out words in an undertone for Charles alone. “It wasn’t an idle threat. Keep needling, and you won’t have to guess what being thrown out feels like. You’ll know.”

  Charles’ face didn’t alter. But Kemp, fingers still curled about the silky warmth of Charles’ wrist, felt that pulse beat strong against his own fingertips, and his dick began to harden at the look in those clear eyes.

  Jesus wept, the things he wanted to do to that beautiful body. The things he had done. He wanted to twist every hidden piercing until Charles damned near screamed, begged for more. He wanted to shove him over the desk nearby and fuck him until they were both raw.

  He wanted to grind his cock bloodily under that controlled, silken surface and really, truly find out just what Charles got out of this. He didn’t want to believe their entire relationship was just convenient. Kemp had never dreamt he’d wind up in some fake PR-friendly relationship. Yet their entire relationship was just that: shiny. Convenient. The only real thing about it was their chemistry when he was dick-deep in Charles. At times he felt that was all he was to the man: a hard, convenient cock. A rough fuck. A live-in fuck buddy that Charles knew, with utter certainty, wasn’t interested in him for the obscene amount of money he was worth.

  In Charles’ world, that indifference was a rare commodity.

  In Kemp’s, the rarity was finding someone not in it for the reflected fame and glory.

  With anyone else Kemp would have found such an arrangement ugly. Intolerable. Somehow Charles… Charles had an innate dignity that held him above ugliness.

  But Christ, Charles knew that he got to him. He got to him every time.

  Chapter Two

  Kemp rented a townhouse in a converted industrial building in Balmain. Charles owned his own place overlooking the harbour but now used Kemp’s when he was in town. Kemp didn’t know how he felt about that. Since he had unwillingly discovered he preferred Charles’ unofficial, live-in presence in his home to living alone, he’d never told him to stop the extended sleepovers. It had been a stupid, selfish omission.

  He was breaking every promise he’d made to himself.

  They shared a history thick with the kind of secrets that had the power to wreck everything. If Charles cracked those secrets open, he might feel obliged to act. Family honour and all that. At least of the selective Durant variety.

  They drove to Balmain in silence.

  “You’re angry,” Charles said coolly.

  Yeah, at himself. And under that lack of emotion, Kemp knew Charles was devouring it. Charles enjoyed the discord he stirred. It amused him. Kemp had seen that from the start, ancient history, back when they’d been kids, all of them caged up in the Palm Beach mansion.

  Because if it didn’t amuse Charles, then why push so hard? God, that scene back there with Viva had just about done him in.

  “Fuck, Charles,” he bit out, adrenaline drained, finally hitting a wall of exhaustion and in no mood for this. “It’s been a long day. Let it go.” Teeth gritted, he saw the red light glowing up ahead in the darkness and slowed smoothly, shifting down gears. He stared stonily at the glowing brake lights of the car ahead, one hand on the wheel, the other hand resting on the gearstick.

  The light changed to green, and the cars about them surged ahead. It was late Thursday night. No one on this road wanted to be here. They either wanted to get home or find somewhere new to cruise to.

  As for Kemp, he just wanted a shower and to hit the sack. After a day that had begun before dawn, he’d had enough.

  Aside from the post-production stuff, it was done. The filming was over. Viva would have her swansong to the world of music videos, for her next move would be into film. The band would have the most beautiful, disturbing piece of creative art that anyone had wrapped around a song in years.

  And in addition to today’s classy commissioned work, Charles now also had a little extra, something unplanned: a series of photographs that would probably make him notorious.

  Shooting that set of incendiary images had taken ten minutes during the short pizza break the crew had taken outside the warehouse. Inside, as dusk fell, Kemp had posed in the dusty, dying, and magical golden light of that steaming afternoon for a series of images designed to shock and piss off.

>   The others, enjoying the pizza, the fresh air, the first hint of evening, had no idea what was going on in there with Charles and his fetishistic, subversive little shoot. If the two of them been missed at all, it had probably been assumed they were screwing.

  Charles had suggested the impromptu photoshoot. Amused, Kemp had played along. Even as he’d posed, naked, skin crawling and yet indifferent as he’d lazed on the broken chaise longue with its cargo of meat, he’d been wondering how deep the pit was that Charles was digging himself. For himself, he didn’t give a shit. There were more outrageous acts he’d committed in his life that the public would never get to see, but Charles was different. Guarded. Charles had worked hard to ensure he was only known for his immaculate taste and discretion—at least until he’d hooked up with his ex-stepbrother.

  So Kemp had let him dig that pit, curious as to exactly what Charles was planning to do with the results of this afternoon’s unofficial, private little photoshoot.

  Charles calculated everything. How did the images Charles had snapped of his naked rock star boyfriend fit in to his plans?

  So he’d gone along with it, but now…

  If those lightning-shot, throwaway, incendiary images were released, it was going to be a media and social media storm.

  It wasn’t as if his own reputation couldn’t take some mud. But Charles’?

  The shit was going to hit the fan. They’d been a target from the moment their hook-up became public knowledge. Those photographs were going to offend so many people. Kemp told himself he didn’t care. If that made him an arsehole, a sick, vicious fuck, then fine. Good.

  Charles’ perfect career dirtied, great. Charles’ choice.

  Kemp’s hands were slick with sweat on the steering wheel, and his gut hurt. He cared. He just didn’t want to.

  Now he shifted smoothly through first, second, third gears, flicked the indicator on, downshifted as they took a narrow left turn, and shifted up again. There was a knowing chuckle beside him.

  “Have you any idea,” Charles drawled with that maddening detachment, “just how it turns me on, watching the way you handle that gearstick, handle this car? You being the rock star everyone wants to fuck, that doesn’t particularly interest me. But if you’d decided to race Formula One instead, that… that I like the idea of. A lot.”

  Well, at least his lover wasn’t a fame whore.

  “Yeah, I hear Formula One drivers have a tendency to die young as well,” Kemp replied, mordantly amused despite himself. “Which wouldn’t be without its advantages.”

  Without waiting for an answer, once back out onto an open stretch of road, just for kicks he shifted through third, fourth, into fifth, so fast and hard that the force of the V8 engine in the partially restored seventies Japanese sports car slammed them both back against the upholstery. Speed. That knife edge. He’d always craved it.

  Maybe Charles had a point.

  The acceleration was a rush. Charles turned his face to the warm night air roaring through the windows. The taste of it was harsh, exhaust scented, on his tongue. The chemical edge of summer. Charles’ chest tightened. It truly hurt. Dear god, how long could he keep doing this for?

  But no. He had not pushed his way back into Kemp’s life to simply walk away… and at this point, did Kemp even truly want him to? And well, wasn’t that ironic?

  “Just tell me one thing. Why did you do it?” Kemp was asking.

  Not the first time he’d asked. Charles had never given him an answer that pleased him.

  He knew immediately what Kemp meant.

  “Turn up at Copenhagen?” Charles glanced out of the open window as neon-lit shopfronts slid by, the warm breeze slipping through his hair, and said idly, “Curiosity. Unfinished business. And you were one of the few people who treated me no differently after my father’s death. Indifference to my inheritance is something of a rare commodity. When you left, I hadn’t yet discovered just how rare.” Kemp glanced over at that. No, he probably didn’t want to remember the circumstances around his disappearance from Charles’ life. Somehow he managed a soft, cool laugh. “Besides. Your mind might not like what happens when we’re in the same room, but your body tells me a whole different story.”

  Setting up their reunion after eight full years had been dangerously simple. Massive wealth unlocked tight security at the Copenhagen gig, had slipped Charles past every check and barrier. Kemp had come offstage, soaked with sweat and flying on pure adrenaline. Charles had been waiting in the dressing room. He’d contained his self-doubt and terror with sheer iron-bound willpower.

  He’d had to do it, just to know… was Kemp still the one person on this vast, utterly lonely planet he could trust?

  They’d been sixteen the last time they’d been in each other’s lives and sharing a boarding school dorm room. Two years together in that shared space once the Palm Beach house had been closed down after his father’s death, transferred from being day students at the same school to boarders.

  Things had changed as boarders. Charles had found he could begin to breathe for the first time in his life, and Kemp… Kemp had gradually, so gradually, stopped seeing him as the enemy. Kemp had seen him through the dark night hours. Kemp had shown him the way to be himself.

  Kemp had possessed utter certainty. Charles’ only certainty had been that everyone about him did not see him but instead saw the Durant billions he’d just inherited. Kemp didn’t. Instead, he’d sat up with Charles when his insomnia hit, through the lonely late-night hours, the silent terrors, not offering Charles comfort with anodyne words but with companionship, sharing the weed he’d sometimes snuck in, but more often, sharing his obsessions with poetry, with art, and above all else, with music.

  A lot of music had been played. A lot of websites scanned, dog-eared books shared.

  Kemp had been utterly unlike anyone else Charles knew. He didn’t give a shit what others thought of his ambitions and tastes. His loves. His bold passions. He’d opened a doorway onto a fresh world.

  He’d shown Charles a true escape hatch from the life his father had mapped for him. From the expectations of others.

  Only one subject was truly off limits, then as now: Viva. But then Kemp was hiding Viva’s secrets, the ones bound up in those earlier Palm Beach years, and Kemp didn’t know that Charles already knew. Every ugly, lawless second of it. Every moment that would have earned Viva a horrific, traumatising encounter with the authorities.

  Charles would have told him, but how to do that and hold on to the lifeline of their strange, unlikely friendship?

  Besides, Charles believed that secrets were sacred things. Secrets were things you treated like fragile, skin-fine blown glass.

  Break them, and they could explode.

  No. Neither sibling would ever forgive him that terrible knowledge.

  So like so much else, he buried it. Just as today he’d concealed a humiliating craving for friendship with Kemp’s formidable, brilliant sister under a needling barrage of arrogance and contempt. Distance, at least, gave a protection he’d always understood.

  Kemp’s knuckles had whitened on the wheel.

  The warmed, salted, sweat-edged scent of Kemp’s skin drifted across to him. He could almost taste it and had to fight the urge to shift in the passenger’s seat, his khakis suddenly way too tight. Kemp would see that betraying move and despise him for it. Or perhaps he’d be amused.

  Swallowing, his head tilted back, he sank into the traffic sounds, the roar of the breeze through the windows. He cut the man who had maddened him, fascinated him—and finally, eight years ago damned near broken him—a sideways glance. “You really hate me, don’t you?” he asked softly. “You loathe me. Us.”

  “No, I don’t,” Kemp said flatly. He scowled. His voice had its usual gravel-edged indifference. “We’re wrong, Chaz.” Charles could only envy Kemp’s utter candour. It was brutal. He couldn’t match it. He’d never been able to. “You walked into that dressing room—with no bloody warning given—back in Cope
nhagen. We both knew it was trouble. Didn’t matter. We fucked anyway. Fun, right? Finally fucking for old times’ sake? Except with us, our old times weren’t that great. Remember?”

  Oh yes. Charles remembered.

  He turned his face back to those shimmering neon shopfronts before Kemp saw just exactly how much.

  Kemp knew he was selling out his conscience for this.

  There was a reason he’d deliberately cut off contact with the guy once he’d left that boarding school. Ignored the single brief email, a text or two. He’d felt like a bastard. Charles had been so, so very fucking alone.

  They’d bonded, back in that school. Dug under each other’s skins. Harder than Kemp wanted to remember. Back then, he’d been too young to realise he might really be the only one Charles had who knew him. Who he could trust. Christ, the fucking irony in that.

  Why was he even thinking of this shit?

  Better to think of Charles as his drug of choice. But screw that. Screw thinking.

  “Watching me handle a gearstick turns you on so fucking much?” Kemp said idly. “Prove it. Unzip your pants, get your cock out, and fuck yourself. And you’d better have come before we hit my place.”

  He sensed Charles still, sensed his indrawn breath, and then his fingers automatically went to the zip on his khakis. He slid it down, lifted his hips, adjusted clothing, underwear. Right on the speed limit, Kemp cut his eyes down, caught sight of Charles’ very beautiful, semi-erect cock. He fought not to shift in his seat, his own dick hardening further.

  “Put your hand out.”

  Charles did, palm before his face, knowing. Kemp spat into it. With anyone else it might have been a fun, sexy, dirty moment between lovers.

  This was nothing he hadn’t played at before. With others, and with Charles. But with this man, right now it had a dark, ugly edge.

  Charles pushed, and he pushed back. It didn’t seem to matter to his little exhibitionist. His saliva-slicked palm went down to his cock. Even as his fist wrapped about himself, Charles’ head snapped back and he groaned.