Loverman Read online

  But Red peeled himself away, and ignoring the huge individual portraits, some of the famous, some not, he walked over to the first of the series of Kemp and found a space between the knots of gossiping, sniping individuals and stood before it.

  Kemp felt something like amusement kick in. No doubt he’d be reporting back.

  Charles turned, blue eyes on his face, glance catching at his. His fingers were tight, but his thumb stroked over Kemp’s wrist, below the broad leather bracelet he wore.

  He smiled hesitantly. “Liz has a place above here. I have a key.”

  “You do?”

  “I get… stressed at these things. She knows it. Sometimes I’ve had to… find somewhere quiet, to chill out.”

  Hmm, interesting. Cool, controlled Charles, so wound up that even Liz, tough as nails, would hand him a key so that he could have what were apparently major anxiety attacks in peace and quiet.

  Kemp nodded, raking back his long hair. “So, Chaz,” he drawled. “You wanna get out of here, get upstairs, grab some quiet time?”

  Sudden fierce glitter in those haunted eyes. “Yes. Yes, I do.”

  Kemp glanced through the crowd at Viva, Red’s arm about her shoulders. No, she wouldn’t feel like playing the social game with his dirty, smutty, genius photographer right now. In fact she was probably seething under the surface at Charles putting up shots of him, naked, for public view. No, not probably. Was. Kemp knew his sister.

  She was a million miles away from being a prude, but she’d never forgotten just what level of attention and expectation their association with the Durant name attracted.

  No, no point in attempting the social niceties. Inviting them here had been a mistake.

  Kemp pressed his lips against Charles’ ear and didn’t give a shit who got a shot of it, just knew that the pounding that was echoing through his body, hitting his cock, was only in answer to the heat his lover was feeling.

  His lover? For the first time the phrase felt like it meant something beyond a basic physical reality. As if it meant so much more.

  Jesus. Had to be the effect of those damned images on the wall. It had to be seeing the widening cracks splintering the ice of Charles’ immaculate facade. It had to be thinking of Charles as an artist, something to be respected, not a dangerous weakness he shouldn’t be tangling with.

  Whatever.

  Right now, he knew exactly what was required, and it wouldn’t take faking. “Then let’s fuck ourselves senseless in celebration,” he murmured, “of your goddamned genius. Or your self-destruction. I don’t know what you’ve done to your life tonight, but it needs to be rewarded with fuckery on a major scale.”

  Charles’ lips parted, all the cool, all the shields stripped away. And the mention of sex wasn’t what had done it, Kemp noted wryly, it was his opinion of the work. “You really like those images?”

  “What I’ve seen of them,” Kemp retorted ironically. “Now let’s get upstairs. Give them something else to talk about. You want?”

  “I want.”

  “For someone who values discretion above all else, you enjoy lobbing grenades, Charles,” Kemp remarked, leaning back against one of the stripped-back, bare brick walls. He’d checked the place out quickly, one glance: living room, white linen sofas, too pristine. Unusable. Bedrooms somewhere, natch. A wall of glass displayed a rooftop garden courtyard. Nice. The building’s Victorian history had been there all about them downstairs. This floor seemed to have been radically altered later.

  A small staircase hidden in the offices out back had led them up.

  As Charles had unlocked the door, his hands had been shaking. Kemp watched him, a knife blade of a line drawn between his brows.

  This was not the man he knew.

  Controlled, cool as ice outside the sack. Focused. Confident. Yeah, a rich man’s son—a very, very rich man’s son, and bred to the automatic privilege and power that gave him and not afraid to abuse it.

  No, this man was letting masks slip he’d locked in place so well Kemp hadn’t even known they were there.

  “You’ve a good imagination, Kemp,” Charles said, glancing about them. He went over to the deco sideboard and reached for the bottle of vodka on the drinks tray, poured himself a shot. He threw it back, wincing, then lifting the bottle, said, “You want one?”

  “No. You’re having another?” More and more interesting. Kemp unpeeled himself from the wall and stalked over to him, drew that silky blond hair aside to press his lips to Charles’ throat. The man shivered, some of the tension going out of him. But still, he threw back that second shot, and that, that was so very unlike him that Kemp’s frown deepened and his fingers reached around to slide underneath Charles’ shirt, pushing up the fabric to smooth over the taut, hard muscle armouring his body. Muscle that he knew, for a certainty, Charles spent hours in the gym every week honing.

  Mouth sucking at Charles’ neck, he reached up, rough fingertips sliding over a nipple, and Charles gasped.

  “Kemp—” he groaned, shuddered as Kemp’s other hand cupped his cock through his jeans, strong fingers massaging him with increasing pressure until he was grinding helplessly into that masterful grip. “God, don’t, don’t stop—”

  “Never going to,” Kemp bit back.

  Taste of Charles’ skin on his tongue. Hermès cologne, but more, the sheer taste of Charles himself… Christ, yes. His teeth grazed vulnerable flesh. He squeezed Charles’ nipple between his fingers and smiled against Charles’ neck as he gasped, thrust his shielded cock harder into Kemp’s grip.

  “I think you should pierce these nipples, Charles,” he drawled. “And you should do it tomorrow. The pain will take your mind off your other troubles.”

  “What other—”

  “Trust me. There’ll be shit to deal with. Besides, you’ve got the guiche piercings. Just add to the collection,” he added, gravel voice wickedly seductive against Charles’ ear. “A ring through each nipple. I’d like that. I’d like it very much.”

  Charles swallowed, torn, Kemp sensed, between arousal and denial. “I—I can’t.”

  “Because you think the outlines will show through your clothes, right?”

  Charles nodded, grunted as Kemp released his nipple to unfasten his jeans.

  Kemp laughed gently. “Charles, babe, that ship has sailed.” He spun Charles around to face him, unbuttoned his shirt until it hung half-open. “Those pictures downstairs made it quite clear exactly what a kinky little fucker you really are. So embrace it.”

  Something hardened in that beautiful face. “You really are a shit.”

  Kemp’s brows rose. “I see that my extensive vocabulary is contagious.”

  “Fuck you—”

  “Just get your clothes off, Charles. Leave the shirt on, though. You might thank me later.”

  Charles scowled but did what he said. And Kemp glanced towards the closed doors leading to that rooftop garden. Fun. This could well be a memorable end to the evening.

  Chapter Seven

  Charles told himself he didn’t want to do it. But dear god… Kemp didn’t have to try hard to push his limits.

  He had none with the man.

  “Hands on that wall.”

  His hands lifted and fingers spread wide on the top of the solid brick parapet that ran around the outdoor area, the bricked wall ending above waist height instead of railings. Uglier but safer. More private. He looked down into the street below.

  This side of the apartment overlooked what would be the front of the gallery. He caught the scent of cigarette smoke on the warm night breeze and watched the smokers below spilling across the pavement by the big glass front doors. Blurred chatter, but some words he could catch. Evidently, the opening night was nowhere near ended in the gallery below.

  He should be high on that. Instead, he was high on this.

  Streetlights and neon from the Thai restaurant across the street stroked his skin. Cars in the surroundings streets, headlights. The rooftop itself was unlit.
/>   Just as well.

  “Fuck—” he hissed, as Kemp, kneeling behind him, gripped his hips and yanked him back enough to arch his back further, his arse on display. Kemp pushed roughly against the inside of one knee, then the other, until he spread his legs further. Dear god, he knew what was coming, and the anticipation was churning his gut. Hardening his cock until it was an effort not to tell his lover exactly what he wanted.

  Loudly.

  And then he felt Kemp stroking those deceptively elegant, beautiful hands up the back of his thighs. Musician’s hands, so strong, and fingertips rough from the guitar strings. He loved that.

  “Mmm,” Kemp purred, the mocking bastard. “Gonna see how hard I can push before you scream. Gonna see just how calm you can look, for anyone that wants to glance up. You like that plan?”

  His throat hurt as he swallowed. “Yes.”

  “Thought so.”

  Those beautiful hands gripped his arse cheeks, opening him, and Kemp’s tongue tangled, played with the rings in his perineum until he was fighting for control, staring blindly out at the street, neon kaleidoscoping. Scared of his maddened pleasure reflecting in his face for anyone looking up to see, yet terrified Kemp would stop, he was incredibly turned on just at the thought of being observed, watched, nearly choking on his grunt of pleasure as Kemp’s tongue slid up his crack and then circled his hole, hot, wet, decadent.

  The pleasure was hard, fierce, immediate. Saliva was slicking his skin now, Kemp’s tongue pushing inside him even as his thumbs massaged that flesh.

  His cock was throbbing. Instinctively he put a hand down to touch himself, and Kemp growled, “Back. No fucking way.”

  His hand went back on the wall. Kemp’s hand went back on his flesh.

  The torture continued. He wanted to sob with it, but it was too good.

  The fevered insanity of the man kneeling behind him, tongue fucking him, fingers playing, teasing with his piercings even as Charles himself fought to keep his scorching face smooth, impassive, in case anyone looked up. Some must have. There were enough down there, drifting in, drifting out of the gallery, and Charles’ face, the upper part of his torso, could have been glimpsed, half in shadow, half streetlit, neon lit.

  Oh yes, Kemp knew his kinks all right.

  He was playing on them like a master.

  Another tug at the rings piercing his flesh and he choked back a cry.

  Behind him, Kemp chuckled, hand fondling his balls. Another choked sound.

  “Mmm, such control.”

  Control? He couldn’t control himself well enough to say a coherent word.

  That torment ceased, and Kemp rose up. A rustle, a brushing on the tiling at their feet. Then he leant casually on the wall next to him. Indifferent to anyone that might glance up and see them together, he pressed a kiss to the bruise he’d already suckled into Charles’ nape, hidden by his hair.

  “Take your shirt off and make yourself comfortable,” Kemp drawled, too softly. “I think you’ll get the picture.” At the wariness on Charles’ face, he grinned suddenly, cut that pale glance in the direction of the smokers below. “You don’t have to give them a show. Just me.”

  Charles moved back, into the shadows, sank to his knees on a sun-lounger’s mattress that Kemp had thrown to the tiles. The man knew exactly what he needed. The scene downstairs had shaken him. Torn at all of his insecurities. He’d done something insane, in some ways career suicide, with those images. Yet at the Isto video shoot, he’d studied Kemp, slinking, playing the cameras, then glanced over at that chaise with its cargo of reeking meat, and some dark, baroque certainty had clicked inside himself.

  That beautiful man, the man he was so obsessed with, possessed a shimmering, ambiguous, tough as steel surface, and yes, there were countless fans who wanted to touch him, fuck him, have a piece of him. But ultimately, he was nothing but a piece of meat to them. A commodity, an object to focus on.

  The businesspeople around Kemp were worse.

  It was a brutal industry. Life itself was brutal—and transitory. It was all so transitory, fragile, flesh and lives ready to bruise, ready to rot, yet he knew whatever happened in Kemp’s life the man would evolve, move on, adapt.

  Survive.

  Amused, Kemp had lounged back against that rotting, seething flesh like a lover, posed as he’d asked, and something in that juxtaposition…

  He’d known those images would work. They said so much. So he’d snapped them.

  And then he’d known, with a sick feeling in his gut, that he couldn’t just store them away on a hard drive and forget about them.

  No. So those images on show downstairs had felt like coming out in a way that coming out never had. He’d always been open about his sexual preferences. Never felt the need to hide them. There had been so much else to hide in his life that hiding that one truth would have been obscene.

  Kemp, clothed, draped himself over Charles as he settled on the mattress. The sensation of his clothed flesh against Charles’ naked skin was incredible.

  Kemp’s teeth bit at his shoulder. “Where have you gone?”

  He knew him too well. Charles shook his head.

  “The show. It’s been intense.”

  “Then clearly this hasn’t been intense enough.”

  God, there was… there was tenderness in those words, Charles would have sworn, and that undid him far more than any physical act could have done. But the man would never trust him with his tenderness. Just his lust.

  He understood that. He knew why.

  He’d been terrible to Kemp as a kid, to Viva… Strange, he’d felt older then than he did now. They were all paying for the hell that had brewed in that Palm Beach house. They should have all been allies. Instead—

  Yet for the first time, that tone in Kemp’s voice… it was a lover’s.

  There wasn’t restraint, caution somewhere, lacing it.

  If he hadn’t been so hot for this, tears would have blurred his vision.

  Kemp had drawn back, was trailing fingers down Charles’ spine as he knelt on all fours. He bit his hip, and Charles cried out, the sound lost on the warm summer night air, and Kemp was smoothing lube around his hole, opening him up with one finger, another.

  “Like that?”

  Charles nodded, lungs so tight. Blood so hot.

  But his mind… Those images of Kemp… those people downstairs, staring at those images, seeing a chunk of his soul.

  His soul, on view for the public, for the critics to tear at.

  What had he done? No wonder until now he’d stuck to the safe commercial work.

  Those shots downstairs of Kemp, bold, uncompromising, said even more about him than they did about Kemp. They gave away his view of the world, his feelings for Kemp that left his heart and soul rubbed raw.

  Dear god, he’d just put a key to his soul on those walls.

  “Mmm, gone away again,” Kemp observed.

  “I just…”

  “I know. I get it.”

  And Kemp would. He gave away blood, bone, and heart with every song, every performance on stage. No secrets. No hiding his soul away, too tender. Such courage.

  And then Kemp was driving that big, thick cock into him, and he cried out, gasping.

  Pleasure, just the right edge of pain. Delicious burn and stretch, Kemp waiting a moment, slowly pushing into him, taking him, owning him.

  “Fuck,” he groaned. “Oh, fuck, yes— God, yes, just that, exactly—”

  Kemp pushed down hard between his shoulder blades until his forehead was pressed against his folded arms and began to fuck him, relentless, driving. Charles was gasping, hot air, lungs burning. Loving the clothed body over his, so close to coming.

  Coming because of him. Needing him—

  “Forgetting it all now?” Kemp bit out.

  He was losing it himself. Charles knew that. It was a rush.

  “Yes—” he gasped.

  In answer Kemp wrapped a hand around his throat and drew him up, against him.
Charles twisted his head around, aching for a kiss. Kemp gave it to him. The next moment Kemp had taken his aching, needy cock in a slicked hand and was sliding his fingers over him in a grip that echoed the relentless snap of his hips.

  Moments later, the orgasm hit Charles so hard he lost himself. There was a sharp cry, raw, sexual. It might have been him. He knew somehow that he was coming in pulses, Kemp’s hand pumping every last drop of sensation from him.

  His mind went blank. It was the oblivion he’d craved. His mind spun out, went into velvet blackness.

  Kemp was holding him so tight, arm a band about him, hips snapping, cock driving into him hard.

  “Fuck,” Kemp spat, shirt now rough against his back, fingers loosening their grip on him. “Christ, yes, fuck—”

  His voice was rough on the dark night air. That powerful voice, one used to the stage.

  Probably echoes of it could be heard in the street below them.

  Charles realised he didn’t care. Head falling back against Kemp’s shoulder, the man stilled now, panting, he realised he didn’t care at all. For the first time in his life, the madness going on downstairs in the gallery, his soul cracked open, his heart an open book for others to smear their fingers over, bared, none of it could touch him.

  He had Kemp’s arm about him, the scent of his skin, his sweat, lacing the warm night air, filling his lungs just as his cock filled his arse, and it was all good.

  Wonderful.

  He could stand anything if he had Kemp’s tenderness, but Kemp was withdrawing from him, pulling away, and there was more than a physical distance being put between them.

  Kemp’s soft laugh. Trail of fingertips down Charles’ sweat-damp back.

  He’d thrown those walls back up. Charles could sense them. “You ready to face the scrum downstairs? Or you want to just leave?”

  Charles closed his eyes heavily. His instincts screamed at him to avoid that crowd and just get the hell out, but he was not a Durant for nothing, and he’d been trained well, his sense of obligation entrenched.

  “I should go back downstairs. There might be some collectors still down there. Liz will want me to do the meet and greet with a few more, I know.”