Loverman Page 3

  “Harder,” Kemp bit out. “And those rings. Twist them. I’ve wanted to do that all damned day.”

  “I’m sure you have.” The cool taunt in Charles’ voice was ruined by its hoarse edge. Streetlights flashed into the car as he lifted his hips, illuminating his lips falling open as his fingers found his guiche piercings. Kemp caught the motion of Charles’ hand as he twisted the metal, three rings lacing the skin between his balls and his hole. Charles gasped. “Oh… yes. Yes, the things you—”

  That raw abandon made Kemp’s gut twist. How many times had they played this out? That edge of pain, a little control? And from the throbbing ache of his own tightly caged prick, Kemp was a slut for inflicting it.

  Yeah, he’d played games with lovers before. But none as sharply edged as those he did with his Viking beauty. None so laced with danger. Up ahead, traffic lights blurred. He tossed a glance to Charles, and the sight was just so damned hot he flicked the indicator on, somehow swerved across a lane, avoided a collision, and took a left, another until they’d left bright streetlights behind. He pulled up in a narrow side street under the dense shadow of a tree.

  “Make yourself come,” he muttered hoarsely.

  Charles half laughed, eyes fixed on Kemp’s intent face as his fist slid in a pump, lubricated by spit, by precum, that became increasingly frantic, fingers twisting over the head of his cock. And what was meant to be a power play was turning Kemp himself on so bloody hard.

  Jesus wept.

  He pushed Charles’ hand away and replaced it with his own, seatbelt unbuckled and his mouth coming down hard on Charles’. Their kiss was hot and brutal and edged with the metallic tang of blood. Charles’ cock felt like silk and steel, slick in his fist as he pumped him with no finesse, just blunt imperative and a complete knowledge of exactly what he liked, Charles’ arm around him, fingers tight and painful in his long hair.

  Charles came with a sharp, lost cry against his lips. The fucker was always loud. Not unless Kemp put a hand over his mouth. Which he sometimes did, near asphyxiating him. A little game they played with the darkest of edges.

  Panting, Kemp watched Charles ease slowly back into his skin. His own cock was throbbing with the need for release. He drifted a hand down over the bulge, almost came at that lightest pressure, and shifted in his seat. Charles’ eyes opened fully, and he flicked them down over the goddamn iron bar Kemp had stuffed into his jeans. His eyebrows lifted delicately.

  Kemp shook his head at the question. Eyes fixed on a watching Charles, he raised his fingers to his mouth, licking them clean of Charles’ release.

  Finally Kemp started the car up, swerving it back around towards the main road. A telegraph pole came up ahead, flew past. What would happen if he lost control at the wheel, focus shot by that wild little scene, and slammed straight into it?

  A laugh tore at him. Dying that way couldn’t get much more Freudian in its symbolism.

  Instead, Kemp held focus. All he could do was keep driving, heading the car for the place he was renting, nomad that he was, and curse the hold that Charles had over his fucking all-too-willing flesh. Because if it wasn’t willing, none of this would be possible.

  Charles knew it. It was all he needed.

  Even as he thought it, beside him, Charles ran a hand over Kemp’s thigh. Kemp grunted, low and hungry, cock throbbing, his body still barely under control.

  They’d just pulled up at a red light. A couple in the car beside them, windows open on the hot summer’s night, as theirs were, turned towards that unmistakably sexual sound. They landed on Charles, profile pure and coin-clear, and then shifted to Kemp, who had to be unmistakable under the slanting sodium streetlights, charcoal makeup still smudged about his eyes and lips parted. No doubt he looked caught mid-fuck. Even as a flicker of shocked recognition dawned, the lights changed, and Kemp slammed his foot on the accelerator.

  If his sense of humour had been functional, he would have laughed.

  Perfect. Just perfect.

  Kemp stood in the shower, head tipped back, eyes closed, steaming water flowing through his hair. It didn’t matter that he’d turned the aircon on downstairs when they’d walked in, the rooms still held the day’s heat. Even so, he had the water as hot as he could stand it to get the feeling of self-disgust, let alone grime, the stench and reek of the day’s work, out of his skin. Today’s shoot was catching up with him.

  His skull pounded and his body ached from ropes he’d been suspended by upside-down at one point. It had taken what felt like hours. It had been the last shot of the evening. The steaming water barely helped.

  Those brief moments of solitude were over as, naked, Charles walked into the graphite-tiled shower space.

  “That scene back in the car wasn’t enough, was it?” Charles observed.

  Kemp’s cock, semi-hard ten seconds before, flooded with hot blood immediately.

  Jesus, just Charles’ low, knowing voice did it for him. He’d almost gotten his body back under control, but now that control shattered. The faint scent of smoky leather mixed with a dark vanilla filled the air. Charles had bought him that body wash, the matching cologne. How in the hell Charles had equated him with vanilla he didn’t know, but the stuff was delicious, even if he did mostly rely on plain soap. The scent spread through his senses as Charles squeezed a thick glob of the stuff onto his palm.

  Eyes closed, Kemp leant back against the tiles, feeling the steaming water stream down.

  That heat was soothing, even given the lingering heat of the day.

  “It’s been a long day. You’re going to crash,” Charles murmured, pressing his lips against Kemp’s collarbone. “I got some great shots, but today was tough, and you must be hurting.” As usual, he’d switched subjects like lightning. “It’s dangerous, you know, being suspended upside down like that, even if they did keep taking you down. It can mess with your heart… How are you feeling? No headache, nothing wrong?”

  His skull was pounding. Least of his issues.

  Kemp felt thin-skinned. Nerves raked by the concern that Charles had to be faking. Why pretend this was anything more than it was? At least there was a certain honesty in open lust.

  Charles began to smooth the slippery gel over his ribcage, fingertips tracing his skin. Kemp could not hold back a long, deep shiver.

  Had he simply grown tired of groupies and casual sex? But no.

  It was Charles himself. It always had been. The weird push and pull of the fascination he’d always held.

  “Christ, you’re something,” Kemp observed.

  Charles’ mouth curled wryly. “So I’ve been told. It’s not always a compliment.”

  Kemp grunted at that, and Charles’ muscular, toned body brushed against his. Charles circled a nipple with the pad of his thumb.

  His soft kiss felt like fire, a brand. A brand of ownership. Kemp’s eyes shot open, and he stared into Charles’ face, so close as Charles took his mouth in another kiss, drew back a degree. It didn’t seem to matter that Kemp did not return that kiss. That he was watching Charles throughout it. Charles was smiling faintly, the corners of that lush, perfect mouth curled. He ran a hand, still slick with gel, with suds, over Kemp’s arse. Slid his fingers over one muscular cheek, pressed them against the tight flesh of his arsehole. Charles smiled at Kemp’s hiss of pleasure. “You do look tired,” he murmured. His fingertips pressed a little harder. “Too tired to fuck? Because you didn’t get off, earlier, and that… doesn’t seem fair.”

  Fair? Nothing about this was fair. He knew that there would be heat in his eyes.

  There was always heat when he and Charles were alone.

  For one useless moment, he contemplated fighting this.

  Problem was, Charles had become the one human being on this dirty little planet that Kemp wanted to fuck.

  Even Ruby, that morning, with whom he’d shared some downright insane, raunchy, filthy good times, hadn’t been able to make his dick harden. And before Charles, before her marriage, the two of them pr
obably would have found some private corner after the day’s craziness, and lacking a horizontal surface, he’d have fucked her up against a wall.

  It no longer mattered. His cock was no longer with any plan that didn’t involve the blond standing right in front of him now.

  “Make me want it,” Kemp said, gravel voice laced with contempt.

  Maybe Charles thought that contempt was directed at him. He’d be wrong. It was solely for himself.

  Again, that faint, knowing smile. Charles leant up, stroked his tongue over Kemp’s taut lower lip, caught at it with his teeth as his hand moved down and he wrapped his fingers around Kemp’s cock, hand on his arse shifting, gripping the hard, toned flesh to slide his cock, Charles’ cock, slick with suds, with water, together.

  He’d been hard already. But the pleasure of that simple act…

  Kemp gasped. “Fuck.”

  Charles deftly shifted away from him. Hand still wrapped around Kemp’s rigid flesh, he slowly stroked over the head, pressed his thumbnail against the slit.

  As Kemp gave another unwilling hiss of pleasure, Charles laughed softly, mouth pressed against the now rough, stubbled column of Kemp’s throat. Eyes closed, he rubbed his cheek fiercely against the taut skin over his jaw.

  “Mmm,” he hummed against Kemp’s mouth. “Have I made you want it yet? Have I?”

  Something erupted inside Kemp. It was the darkness that Charles always bred in him. The darkness that was for Charles alone.

  Kemp spun them both around and pushed Charles back against the tiles.

  “Yeah,” he bit out. “You’ve made me want it. Happy?”

  Anticipation in those blue eyes. But Charles’ face was unreadable as ever, even flushed from the steaming water.

  “Make it good,” Charles said. “Make it really good. Make me feel it.”

  Chapter Three

  At some point, while Kemp dozed, Charles must have left the bed and switched on the room’s own air-conditioning. Kemp felt the difference when he woke. The room was still far from arctic level, merely cooled enough to rid the summer heat that had lingered in the building.

  He was alone. Charles was a light sleeper and a compulsive worker. Kemp could imagine he’d be going through his month’s schedule, double-checking where he had to be in the coming weeks, the video shoot done, and if it wasn’t Sydney, making sure that any travel plans to the next job were exactly right.

  Charles was obsessed with details. Dotting the i’s, crossing the t’s.

  It was amazing, the way that insane, compulsive need for order fell apart the minute Charles began to fuck.

  As the night’s memories flooded through him, heat began to uncurl through Kemp’s blood. His cock gave its invariable response.

  Fuck it. Kemp rolled onto his back, staring up at the ceiling.

  Images flickered through his mind. They were hotter than any porn he’d ever seen and starred the man who’d fallen asleep so peacefully beside him. Swallowing back a groan, Kemp slung an arm over his face.

  It didn’t help.

  Shit, when he remembered the way Charles had allowed him to push him out of the shower, a hand under the soaking wet blond hair at his nape. As they’d left the bathroom Kemp’s hand had fallen away.

  It had been a hot night. It hadn’t mattered that they were both slick with water.

  “Yes,” Charles had said, one taut, contained word, in the bedroom.

  Always that answer. That word. Yes. Yes, to everything.

  That yes had been a husk of sound on the summer night air, the room lit golden by one bedside lamp.

  It was a near empty room, a mirror to the nomad that Kemp was. Gallery-white walls, a beaten-up amp case serving as a bedside table. A studio had been set up, but in the other, larger, bedroom. This was merely a place he slept and fucked in, and even his few clothes came nowhere near filling the room’s walk-in wardrobe. Charles’ possessions took up more space in there than his, and he was not even officially resident.

  Just thinking about it made Kemp ache for the road. He felt safe there. Sane.

  The rules on the road were simple. You either gave the audience their money’s worth, or you were fucking worthless. And then you moved on.

  Simple. There was nothing simple about this.

  No wonder he’d stuck to no-strings sex before Charles. But now he sank into memory. The lush scent of vanilla and leather. Water dripping onto boards.

  “Yes?” Kemp had drawled, still wired.

  Jesus Christ. His cock had been rock hard, and it hadn’t mattered that he’d just walked through the front door exhausted after a bastard of a day.

  Sleep could wait.

  Charles had slowly slid to his knees before him and pressed his face against his thigh.

  Kemp’s strong, roughened fingers laced against his skull, taking in the water dripping from that blond hair, sliding in rivulets over the surprising width and bulk of Charles’ shoulders, down his long, elegant back.

  The water droplets glimmered in the light, diamonds, caught on that smooth golden skin. Charles pressed a kiss to the inside of his thigh. And then Charles’ fingers closed about the base of his already rigid, aching cock, his tongue sliding up to the head. The faintest pause, his lips pressing a kiss against it, and then he tongued at the knot of nerves on the underside.

  Kemp’s teeth gritted.

  Charles moaned, a soft, broken noise in the back of his throat, and then that sound was muffled as he sank down over Kemp’s cock, working him, shuddering as one hand slid up Kemp’s thigh to spread over his hip.

  Head resting back against the wall, Kemp watched him through narrowed eyes, fingers taut on his skull.

  The pleasure was everything. Kemp’s head arched further back, his eyes closed heavily.

  The darkness meant that the pleasure, that warm, wet mouth, became the universe.

  The words spilled through his mind as they always did: Imagine it’s someone else. Someone else you’ll be pouring yourself into.

  But even with that voice in his skull, he couldn’t. It was Charles. Right then, right there, it would always be Charles.

  His fingers caught, tightened, in Charles’ dripping hair. Dragged him back.

  Charles waited, reddened lips parted, still kneeling, weight back on his heels.

  “Get on the bed,” Kemp said flatly, the natural huskiness of his voice roughened.

  Charles gave him one long look, eyes unchanging, and rose to his feet, walked naked, with an innate athlete’s grace, to the bed and lay on it, skin golden, such beauty. And all for him, Kemp thought. He should be grateful. And it seemed wrong in that moment not to be grateful for this, no matter how shallow it truly was. No matter the dance he was doing with his conscience.

  Just what was he to Charles? A lifestyle accessory? A convenience? Someone he knew wouldn’t sell him out? Kemp guessed that worked both ways.

  He went to an old desk that doubled as a dressing table, rummaged in the top drawer, and found what he’d wanted: the white towelling belt from an old hotel robe. He’d come to appreciate the aesthetic value of that white wound tight, pristine against that golden skin. They didn’t play with this too often. Tonight Kemp felt an itch under his skin that craved it. It wasn’t just a game. Was this what it was like for his Viking?

  As he came back to the bed, Charles’ tongue came out to slick his lush, beautifully moulded lips. “How do you want me?”

  It was a whisper of sound. The man could barely breathe.

  Kemp’s lashes flickered. After a moment, he said coolly, “On your back. Hands above your head.”

  Visible shift of Charles’ throat as he swallowed, arms raised and laid on the pillows behind his head, his fingers curving gently into his palms. With a swift efficiency, Kemp knotted the belt about one strong wrist, reached the fabric through the slats in the bedhead, laced and tied it about the other wrist. He knelt back on the bed, studying the man watching him, the lift and fall of his ribcage, silken smooth skin shifting over
it.

  “Missed this, huh?” Kemp drawled.

  Slow blink of those dark blond ashes over the heavy eyes. A nod of the head.

  Casually Kemp trailed his fingernails over one small, taut nipple. Charles made some sound, lashes flickering, gaze staying fixed on his face.

  Kemp leant closer, hand spread over the pillow by Charles’ blond head. He put his lips to his ear and whispered, “Tell me what you want, loverman.”

  A shudder ran through Charles’ long, muscular body at that word. Loverman. It was a word that Kemp had only ever used for him, and Charles seemed to sense it from that first time they’d fucked in Kemp’s hotel room.

  They’d scarcely made it there from that crowded dressing room. It had been damned near bloodletting.

  They’d been re-establishing the rules. Their roles.

  “You know what I want,” Charles murmured thickly, watching as Kemp wrapped a hand around his own engorged, aching cock. “Everything.”

  Kemp raised an eyebrow, feeling his flesh harden impossibly further in his grip. Precum slicked the fine skin as he drew his fist up its length and rolled his thumb over the head, gathering it up. He sheened Charles’ full, reddened lips with it, slid his thumb inside. Charles suckled hungrily on his flesh, and Kemp damned near came, something lashing, tight, barbed and hurting within himself at that beautiful, naked need, breath tight in his throat.

  Before he could stop himself, he covered Charles’ mouth with his.

  Fuck, he was dissolving into this kiss. Into the heat of the man’s mouth, craving the tongue twining against his so desperately, velvet, Charles devouring him as he devoured Charles, so hungry. Hungry for this rare connection, for the taste of himself, his cock, in Charles’ mouth, for the taste of the man himself. For that silent, lurking mystery that he bound all else up in.

  Devour him further, and he’d break through that diamond-tough shell protecting him.

  He’d find the real man he was fucking, hidden behind those layers. Had he ever really known Charles? Once he’d thought he might. He’d had to walk away. He’d felt like a bastard.