Harper Fox's Blog, page 11

New Contract!

Great news - Samhain Publishing accepted my proposal for a new novel. Now, I initially called it Sheep and Scrap Metal as a kind of joke, but my Samhain editor liked it, and it seems to have stuck. I was so inspired during our recent visit to the Isle of Arran that I drafted out a complete plot during the week we were there, which is unheard of - normally I like to agonise for a month at least. I've agreed a finish date of September and I'll keep you posted with any news about a publication date.

The contrasts of Arran were what set me off on thinking about plot. It's one of the most beautiful, magical places I've ever seen. Have a look at my website and the photos my clever webmistress has posted for me...

www.harperfox.net/inspiration/

(there's some images for Last Line there too), and here's another...



It's stunning, and yet most of the people I spoke to were holding down two or three jobs to make ends meet. The papers were full of adverts from farmers selling up their land, and the only industry that seemed to be thriving was tourism. We went there in February, and in between the blazing sunlight and glorious sunsets we had a couple of bitter, stormy days when it felt like the most unforgiving place imaginable. It made me turn over in my mind ideas about a young man called Nichol, who'd been happily enjoying bright lights and casual sex in Edinburgh until the death of his mother and elder brother summon him back to the family farm and his curmudgeonly old grandfather, who wants to die on the land where he's lived all his life. The farmhouse in the website gallery suggested itself as a perfectly gloomy and atmospheric backdrop, and I imagined Nichol struggling there, lonely and sinking under the weight of all the work, until one night he hears the sound of someone breaking into his barn, and goes out with his shotgun to find Cameron, a frightened runaway from Glasgow with a lot to hide.

I'm really enjoying writing this book. I adored writing Last Line, but I had to go into some very dark psychological places with Michael and John, and Cam and Nichol's problems, whilst fraught with their own kinds of peril, unfold a lot closer to the earth and nature.

Do have a look around the website. My webmistress has made it look great and I hope the pictures enhance Last Line for you and give you a tempting taster of Sheep and Scrap Metal. Enjoy! xxx

I have a winner

Once more Lucy the Cat has pulled out and eaten a name from the hat, and - yes, it's you, Pea02, so send me your email addie to harperfox777@yahoo.co.uk or message me via LJ (however that is done :) and I will send your copy flying on its way to you. What format would you like? Congrats and thank you for entering.

xxx

Last Line competition - honestly, these parochial Brits!

We really do think the world revolves around us, don't we. Just because we have Greenwich Mean Time :)

It occurs to me I'm being time-zone-ist with my competition! I have my European winner - congrats, Antonella! - but I will also be drawing a name out of the hat at the end of the US day today (my tomorrow morning :) from amongst all of you who leave a comment on this entry. So another copy of Last Line is up for grabs, and I would love to hear from you.

xxx

Last Line releases today - anyone fancy a freebie?

I'm excited to announce the appearance of my sixth m/m romance novel, Last Line, from Loose Id. On sale here!
www.loose-id.com/Last-Line.aspx

Wow. Can that be right? Six? I'm counting on my fingers and... yes, Life After Joe, Driftwood, A Midwinter Prince, Nine Lights Over Edinburgh, The Salisbury Key. It seems insane because my first, Life After Joe, was only published last June, so I've been in this game for less than a year, and really I'm trying to work out how it all happened. A lot of hard graft was part of it (I don't really sleep any more) but there do seem to have been miracles, like the willingness of well loved authors like Josh Lanyon to help me out, and I did have a couple of manuscripts ready before I approached the publishing houses. What I'm saying is, I don't think I'll be averaging six novels a year in future, great though that would be! 

Anyway, it all seems pretty wonderful to me, and I'd like to celebrate by giving away a free copy of Last Line! I'm useless at thinking up competition questions but I know a lot of you have read and enjoyed Driftwood, so how about - what was the name of Tom's dog? First person to tell me that, I'll be happy to send you your freebie.

xxx

Last Line, the book that once was Seize The Fire! **ADULT CONTENT WARNING**

I'm just back from a week in beautiful Cornwall, where to my relief I finally had enough time, inspiration and locally brewed bottled ale to finish my story Hallow Hill for the Carina Press Christmas anthology. But that's not what I want to talk about today. Of course Cornwall is the setting for Driftwood, and thoughts of a sequel danced round my head all week, and I got some great photos which I'll soon post to FB as a "tour of the book", but that's not what I wanted to talk about either.

Clearly the ale (which had great names like Dead Man's Hand and Fallout Bunker) is still swilling around in my head. I hardly drink at home, but on holiday veer to the edge of alcoholism within 48 hours, so I suspect it's my mechanism for coping with leisure.

What I do want to talk about (finally!) is the release of Last Line, which has just emerged from edits and is set for release from Loose Id on 31st May. A bit confusing, since for the last few months this book called Seize the Fire has been on my website, but I knew it was going to get a title change at some point. I did like the original title for its Blake-ean reference, but it never exactly tripped off the tongue, and I've been getting a few too many "you're calling it what?!" reactions from friends and family, so when my good LI editor Judi came up with Last Line, I gratefully accepted the suggestion. It's punchy, still very suggestive of the action, and is the informal name of the rogue counterterrorism my two gorgeous agents work for.

Yep, Last Line it is, and 31st May's the day. I'm looking forward to having some cover art to share with you, but for the moment, here's a couple of excerpts.

(More to be found on my website here, www.harperfox.net/books/last-line-excerpt/, and thank you, dear Webmistress, for putting those up for me so fast.) Enjoy!


In this extract, John has gone down to Michael's farmhouse near Glastonbury, to try and put things right between them after their first (disastrous) sexual encounter...

The river looked tempting. John clambered out of the car, tugging at his sweat-dampened shirt. He could see Michael’s house high on the hillside -- or the promise of a house that was beginning to rise from the masonry scattered around it. No car was parked outside, and the garden was empty. For a moment he wondered if Michael hadn’t come down after all, then remembered it was Thursday. He shook his head, smiling. On holiday or not, Mike never missed his drill with the local volunteer fire brigade when he was in Somerset. He would be out, tearing around the country lanes in a seven-ton truck, causing -- John always told him -- far more danger to life and limb than he and his colleagues could ever hope to avert. John had met him head-to-head on a curve once or twice, poised behind the wheel, face a pure mask of concentration, all the lovely musculature of his arms exposed in his uniform tee.

Damn. John had set himself carefully not to think about Michael in any sexual context at all. Easy enough until now, despite their recent clash. The last three days had been among the least arousing of John’s life. Here, though, in the lazy sunshine, lush green meadows rolling and dreaming all around…

He locked the car and shinned over the roadside fence. The water was calling to him strongly. No matter how bad he felt, a dip would usually help fix him up, even if it was only half an hour in the training pool at HQ. The Teal curved round Mike’s land in a sheltering half circle here, an embracing arm. The banks were deserted and tree lined. He wouldn’t frighten anyone. He made his way through waist-high goldenrod to the water’s edge. Late willow-fluff or early dandelion was floating on the surface. John knew that the leisurely motion concealed a strong, deep current, and having skinned out of his shirt, jeans, and boxers, he went in cautiously, gasping at the cold.

He let the current carry him downriver for almost half a mile, then turned, set his muscle against the great brown-gold liquid one surrounding him, and began to swim for all he was worth. He was more keenly aware of his strength in the water than anywhere else. It was one of the few areas in which he could outstrip Mike when it came to a physical contest between them. Patiently, arms and legs tingling then slowly numbing out, he worked back upstream to his starting point, turned, and repeated the exercise.

He found his depth and stood, waist high, water sheeting off his shoulders. He squeezed his hair back from his brow. He was trembling slightly with exhaustion, and that was good. He had wanted to take the edge off before seeing Michael again. If he closed his eyes, he was back in Michael’s kitchen -- in his bedroom, caught up again in everything that had gone so shatteringly wrong and right on his table and then in his bed. In a red-hot fuck without a trace of tenderness -- about the last thing John would ever have predicted from his partner, unless it was the bondage, pain, and blood.

Tiredly he sank down on the water-rippled sand. It was deliciously warm. His limbs still held the river’s chill, and he stretched out on his back, idly drying himself with the bunched fabric of his shirt. A faint moan of pleasure escaped him, audible only to the drifting willows and the birds. His bruises had healed with weird rapidity. He was almost all better, no aches or pains left to distract him from dangerous thoughts. Nothing but the cold in his marrow, and that was melting fast. He had to accept that he and Mike might have taken their swing at passion and failed.

In this extract, John is trying to deal with the ghosts of Michael's MI5 past, particularly the gorgeous but dangerous Anzhel...
 
Michael allowed himself to be steered into the nearest empty office. John closed the door behind him and leaned on it as if warding off evil. “You want to tell me what’s going on?”

“What? In general or…?”

“No. Pretty specific, actually.” John watched Michael settle on the edge of the desk and tried not to be distracted by the easy grace of the movement. “Why are you running round with that gun-toting Calvin Klein model out there? Do you trust him?”

“Of course not.”

That took the wind from John’s sails a bit. “Oh,” he said, then added lamely, “Good. Look, Mike, don’t…don’t you think we need to talk?”

Michael was nodding. “Definitely. Not now, though, mate. I’ve got to --”

“Yes, now.” Leaving his post by the door, John moved to stand in front of him. “Not about anything that happened last night. Forget that if you want. Listen, Webb talked to me after you left, and not just about my extravagant lifestyle. He told me what happened to you in Zemel Province.”

“He doesn’t know what happened to me there.”

“He does know some of it, Mike. It was in that file he had. He said you were caught up in some…bad shit, and Anzhel Mattvei was closely involved in it too. He said you were taken prisoner and tortured, though you don’t remember that part.” Michael made a faint sound in his throat. He tried to get up, but John put both hands on his shoulders. “No. Don’t run away from me. It feels like you’re a thousand miles off anyway. I don’t want you on this case, not while you’re so upset.”

Michael shook his head. “Upset…”

“Or not well, or whatever the hell this is.”

“I can’t believe he told you. I can’t believe I’m having to hear this crap again. John, when I came back from Russia, I gave MI5 a full and honest debrief. They didn’t like it, and they…practically dissected me to get at a truth that wasn’t there. That’s the only fucking torture I’ve undergone.”

“I’m sorry. But what if it did happen?”

“No! I won’t bloody hear it from you!”

This time John couldn’t restrain Michael’s surge to his feet. He stepped aside. Michael got as far as the door, then turned like a hunted animal and said, “Did he tell you the rest, then?”

“What?”

“The bad shit. Did he tell you what that entailed?”

“Yes. I didn’t believe it. I don’t.”

Michael stared at him. John saw all the anger suddenly drain from him, leaving him pale, looking ready to drop. “Oh, Griff,” Michael said unsteadily. He put out a hand.

John went to him in silence. He took the hand, pulled Michael close, and put both arms around him. “All right,” he murmured, feeling Michael resist him, then give it up and lean into the embrace, wearily returning it. “Whatever’s best for you.”

“God, I wish we could…leave all this. Go down to Glasto, lock all the doors and…”

“Is that what you want?” John stroked his hair. Footsteps came and went in the corridor outside. They were going to get interrupted any second, but he would sooner have died than let go. The feel of Michael’s grip on him now -- formidable but passionate, fiercely tender -- was the first point at which John’s fantasy of touching him had met with truth. “Let’s do it, then. Screw Lukas Oriel. Screw Last Line, for that matter. We can go.”

“You’d do that?”

“Say the word.”

Michael lifted his head. He met John’s eyes with a kind of yearning wonder. “Jesus, Griff. You’d pack it in? What about Quin’s school fees, and…and the car? Why?” 

 Tell him. A voice screamed in John’s head. This moment will never come back. Tell the man you love him.

But the words dried to dust in his throat. He had been able to bear -- just about -- the demolition of his dreams concerning sex with him. He had even found a place inside himself where he could lock up the memory of no not meaning no. If he gave up this last secret of his heart, though, and saw it fall on stony ground…   

It's falling-in-love-with-my-heroes day

I’ve been invited to write for the Carina Press Christmas anthology again this year, which is a great honour. I’m putting together the outline for a novella called Hallow Hill. This mostly came into being during our wonderful stay in the Balmoral Hotel in Edinburgh, which is odd because the story will be set in a much less luxurious part of the world, the bleak Northumbrian hills near my home. Perhaps it was just being isolated from my usual duties and distractions that allowed me to take such a good creative flyer at the plot. 

But at this stage, all I’ve got is a plot. A building site covered with scaffold, and flickering about, difficult to see as windblown ghosts, my protags. I can say that Gavin is a novelist struggling to finish his first serious book about the King Arthur legend in northeast England. I know he’s waiting for his lover Piers in a chilly backpacker’s hostel on a snowy Christmas Eve, and Piers is a postgrad theology student, shy, gorgeous, terribly trammelled by his Catholic background, and this first holiday together is make-or-break for them. But something else has to happen. To me, I mean, not to them! (That’s not the whole of the plot!)

And today for some reason it has. Maybe the sunshine, maybe because I’ve got so much other work I should be doing that my rebel brain has slipped off about its own devices. Suddenly I can feel Piers and Gavin as real. I meet them inwardly; I have flashing inward encounters with them as I wash the dishes, make the bed. Suddenly I know that Gavin is loving but imperious, a vigorous freethinker who for years has been giving poor Piers hell about his religious scruples and inability to tell his family about their relationship. I’m suddenly aware that Piers has thick dark hair that flops charmingly when he takes off his glasses; that Gavin wants him to get contact lenses to show off his beautiful eyes. That Piers is tall and thin and has sensitive, large-knuckled hands. In the course of an afternoon I go from knowing these men exist to knowing them inside out, and I’m quite at a loss to know what the process is or how it works.

I should just be happy it happens at all, and I am. It’s the difference between having a proposal in mind which more or less works for me, and being ready to start writing the book. And I am.

So now off to cancel all engagements, assignments, housework and visits to relatives – not you, dear Wend and Jayne! – for the next three months of my life. Hmmm, that’s not going to happen, is it? But I’ll get it done somehow. Yes, I’ve fallen in love with my heroes...

Release Day for TSK!

22nd February has finally rolled round, and I'm very excited about the release of Salisbury Key into the big wide world. I almost didn't live to see it happen. I rewarded myself for getting another book out there by purchasing some glorious high-heeled boots, in which I felt like a million bucks until I tripped on them and took the most amazing flying-rugby-tackle dive onto the pavements of Newcastle. I'm laughing over this now but at the time it was painful, not so much physically but in terms of the incredible, crushing embarrassment. Still, it's an ill wind - I was helped to my feet by an attractive young student who summarised my performance as "very impressive". You know, you kind of hope accidents like that will decrease as you reach a certain age, along with nicking your shins with the razor in the bath and frying your hair off with peroxide, but apparently not. I still can manage a really good pratfall to pay for my vanity.

What has all this got to do with the release of the book? Very little, except that I'm grateful not to be in hospital with a broken wrist and therefore still able to be here, typing and enjoying my release day! (I do have a bruise on my - er, we'll say "hip" for decency's sake - that bears a striking resemblance to the biohazard sign on Salisbury Key's cover, so I'll take that as a good omen.) Feel free to come and chat with me about the book, here or on Facebook. I'm crazy busy at the mo but would love to talk to you.

A little more Salisbury Key - excerpt 2

Thanks to the lovely people who've said they enjoyed/were tortured in a good way by excerpt 1. This section comes from later in the novel, when Dan and Rayne have settled their, er, differences, and are working together to try and solve the riddle of Jason's death. They've found their way into a souterrain, a mysterious underground chamber on Salisbury Plain...

Excerpt 2

Wordlessly we divided the chamber between us. Rayne’s experience in his field had made him just as good at a fingertip search as I had learned to be in mine. I eased the torch into a niche in the corbelling, and by its downcast light we worked in silence, taking chamber wall and flooring inch by inch. Touch would often reveal what vision missed—a tiny give in a flagstone, a softness in otherwise hard-packed earth…

Yes. I closed my eyes, held my breath. I was on tiptoe by the chamber’s north wall. There had been something, so fleeting I’d brushed straight on over it, but now I reached back, gently urgent, to find the place again.

“Rayne! Here.”

He came to stand beside me, unhitching the torch on his way and shining it into the space between the edge of the corbelled roof and the wall, where I had felt the slight roughness, a breaking up of the ancient silky mud. “The wall’s a bit softer here. It’s been disturbed.”

“Really?” he asked. I glanced round and saw him step close to see for himself, eyes bright and intrigued. “Yeah. You’re right.”

“I can’t believe anybody would do this. Anybody with the knowledge to find this place, anyway. They’d have to know the value of keeping it intact, not digging around under the stonework, weakening the structure…”

“All right. Have a fit about it later, sunbeam. What now?”

“I’m going to dig in there myself.” He lifted an eyebrow at me, and I said defensively, “Well, I can’t do any more damage, can I? Will you fetch me the trowel from my bag?”

“You brought your trowel?”

“Yes. Always. You never know.”

“No, I don’t suppose you do.”

It didn’t take me long to dislodge enough of the broken earth to find the direction and dimensions of the niche that had been dug here. It was recent, or relatively so. The earth had begun to pack down, but not to bind itself under the pressures that had kept the souterrain walls in one piece. And I didn’t understand it. Here was a perfect, watertight chamber beneath the ground, a beautiful hiding place for any treasure or horror you cared to name—and yet someone had violated it, scraped a hollow upwards and outwards, compromised its perfect seal.

I worked as carefully as I could despite the damage, Rayne holding the torch and brushing aside the earth as I trowelled it aside. Something cold and slick touched the back of my hand, and I snatched it back, flinching. “Christ!”

“What’s the matter?”

“Shine the beam here. Oh, sorry. It’s just roots.”

I ignored his faint snort of laughter.

“I don’t understand. This goes right out under the edge of the roof stones, almost to surface. It’s damp. Why would anyone put anything…?” My arm was almost at full stretch inside the hollow now. One last reach and I’d have done all I could without more equipment, without going in from the surface.

The trowel scraped on stone. I pulled back straight away. Probably it was only a rock beneath the turf, but that sound always made us drop the metal in favour of flesh, brushes, whatever would uncover without harming. I shifted back, about to say give us a leg up—but he was already there, bending to lift me.

“Ta. There’s something here—blocking the passage or ending it, maybe.” I could feel a flat surface, a stone, filling the whole space. And what made my heart pound, my spine prickle, was the knowledge shooting up through my fingertips that the stone was carved. A tiny hollow, a circle surrounding it. “Cup and ring,” I whispered, and felt Rayne’s shrug where his shoulder was pressed to my thigh. Never mind—I’d enjoy explaining to him later the mystic nature of these notations in rock the Neolithic inhabitants of Britain had left behind them, the tantalising hints they gave of maps, constellations, symbols for the cycles of the moon. They had been one of Jason’s most beloved mysteries. He’d been running every pattern and arrangement found to date into a custom-designed computer program up until a couple of months before he died.

That was it. Cup-and-ring marks, and under them, around them, short lines in coherent order. Rayne passed the torch up to me without needing to be asked. One quick survey with the beam confirmed what touch was telling me. Not just enigmatic symbols—text, all around the edge of the stone. I thought for a second it was Runic, then recognised the neat dashes and diagonals of Ogham script. The oldest alphabet in the world, designed to be chiselled into rock, used from earliest Bronze Age forward to inscribe boundary markers, monoliths on the graves of chieftains.

“Text,” I said. “Text with symbols. Connected to them, translating them maybe.”

“What, like a Rosetta stone, or…”

“Exactly. Exactly. Christ—this is what Jason was looking for. I don’t know why he got so distraught about it, or what the hell connection there is with Hartcliffe Dean or bloody biochemistry, and I don’t care.” I could hardly breathe. This would qualify as a key, all right. There was nothing extant in the whole world that linked Stone Age consciousness to the staggeringly different world view that prevailed after the invention of script. “Quick, help me get this out. I’ve got to see it.”

“Okay. I’ll have to let you down. You all right? Can you reach?”

“Yeah, with the edge of the trowel. Just…”

The top edge of the stone came free. It almost fell into my hands, and I stretched out my palms for it, pulling muscles in my shoulders and back. I’d have taken any kind of pain to make this catch. When I breathed in, I thought the air brought me a trace of Jason’s scent, as if he were here with me, urging me on, teaching and guiding me as he had always done. “He knew exactly what he was after. I don’t know why he didn’t talk to me about it. This is his key.”

“Daniel. Get back.”

I froze, the carved slab in my grasp. I had never heard Rayne sound like this before. I tried to work out what was different, and after a moment I realised that it was the note of fear. It sent a cold pang through me. I hadn’t thought him capable. Not through bomb blast, near capture by armed guards, overwhelming sexual surrender on a stripped-down bed… He was reaching past me into the hole, shining the torch into the space beyond the carved stone. “What is it?”

“Dan. You know how you never do what I tell you?”

“Yes.”

“Fucking do it this time. Take the stone and step back now.”

 

The Salisbury Key

I've just woken up and it seems to be January. Not only that, but it's a month today that my novel The Salisbury Key launches with Samhain, and I'd like to celebrate by sharing with you a couple of excerpts, one today and one tomorrow. I loved writing this book. In some ways it was a titanic struggle and in others it was a kind of delirious dance. Enjoy the excerpts, and look out for launch day on February 22nd (don't worry, I'll be reminding you :-)... Big, big thank you to Sasha Knight, my Samhain editor, to Josh for his wind-tunnelling (I may one day be able to retrieve my toupee from the treetops), and to my cover artist for capturing Daniel and Rayne so well. I know some of you don't like excerpts - and you have my sympathy - so stop reading here, those people, and, oh, just in case - ***Adult Content Warning!!!*** Excerpt Two is gentle and nice, I promise, and about archaeology. Oh, and a lethal bioweapon.

The Salisbury Key, excerpt 1

I had tensed up momentarily, almost unable to bear this new touch. Now, having let go and leaned briefly into it, I could hardly bear the thought of it stopping. I eased back, ending it myself. I wanted his passion, didn’t I? That was all. “I know,” I said. “I know. Thank you. Now come to… Come with me.”

Because come to bed was a problem. I was still sleeping on my own side of the double up there, and what I should have spent today doing was clearing out Jason’s clothes, which I didn’t need, not pretending to sort through his books, which I did. I tried to envisage rolling around in the sheets I still hadn’t changed, the wardrobes looking on in silent witness. I came to a halt in the hallway and felt Rayne gently collide with me. We both looked through the open living-room door at the sofa.

I said faintly, “What do you… What do you want?”

“Christ, Logan. I think I want you to fuck me, and I’m not even sure what that entails.”

I felt my eyes widen. “Not seriously.”

“What—about the fucking…?”

“No, you idiot—about the not knowing. I can’t—”

He cut me off impatiently. “No, for God’s sake. I know the—biological details. I just can’t imagine it being good.”

“Well, I’ll attempt to show you, but…” The sofa wouldn’t do for that. Quite apart from recent memories of Jase ploughing me down onto it—he loved that, to consummate passion while people went about their ordinary business, back and forth on the pavement outside—I needed space, or the demo would end up just as uncomfortable and awkward as Rayne probably feared.

I saw him seeing my problem. He was so alert. I could imagine being in a relationship with him, enjoying his delicious quickness, the sense of his being in pace at my side. No. Just a fuck. A good one, for preference, but that would be all.

He glanced upstairs and made a wry face at me. “I get it. Want to go to a hotel?”

Now there was a certain seedy, dreadful charm in that. Salisbury wasn’t long on establishments where you could book an afternoon room, but maybe we could find somewhere. Stay overnight to make it look good, screw each other blind and stupid and maybe get all this out of our systems in one fell swoop.

I swallowed, feeling faintly sick. That prospect felt worse—by just one shade, but definitely—than doing it in Jason’s bed on the day after his funeral. “God, no.”

“Okay. Well—don’t you have a spare room up there?”

I thought about it. Dan’s rumpus room, Jase had once called it, in affectionate disgust, passing by its open door. “Yes,” I said. “Of sorts.”

“Neutral ground?”

“Just about.” It would have to be. Apparently there wasn’t enough guilt in the world to stop me starting my slow burn. Heat like summer lightning, flickering all over the surface of my skin… He saw that problem too, and this time he didn’t say anything. He just took my hand.

So we each took up a position on either side of the bed, and between us we cleared it in painful silence. I would have felt much better if he’d laughed at me for my untidiness or for the range of my taste in books. I hadn’t always been a serious-minded student, and there were layers of history here—Frederick Forsyth novels and training manuals from the short time in my life when I’d wanted to be a commercial airline pilot.

But Rayne had thoughts of his own to occupy him. His hands moved efficiently, lifting off one stack after another. Eventually the mattress appeared. There was a pale blue undersheet on it, but that was all. I reached to brush dust off this and to tug it straight.

“God,” I said. “That looks a bit clinical. I’ll go and get a duvet.”

“No,” he said. I looked up at him. He was standing with his hands on his hips, surveying the mattress in much the same way as I’d seen him assess our next bit of dangerous ground on the plain. “Don’t. Putting a duvet over this isn’t gonna make it any better.”

I straightened up. Leaning on the wall, I folded my arms. “Better?” I echoed. There were things that I could tackle in a lover—initial shyness, mistaken ideas about anatomy—and things that I could not. Things that people had to straighten out for themselves. “Do you think what we’re going to do is bad?”

“What—morally? God, no. It just doesn’t fit…what I thought I was. What I thought I was going to be.”

“Which is?”

He shrugged. “Very boring. Wife and kids.”

With anyone else, I’d have laughed. I wondered what he thought was going to happen to him here on the spare-room mattress that would deprive him of the power to marry and reproduce. But he was pale, the rainy light and the expanse of sheet setting tired, nervous shadows under his cheekbones and eyes.

I said, “You can still have those things, can’t you? Did it ever occur to you that not getting killed in Iraq might be a better idea, if that’s what you really want?”

“Oh, I don’t really want them. I just…” He went to the window and carefully pulled at the cords of the blind until the slats were almost closed. Then he turned to face me. “Do you know what I wanted? I wanted to find some poor woman, marry her and squeeze a handful of kids out of her. Then be a perfect husband and father for the rest of my life, so I could shove my perfect fucking family in the face of…something that I don’t think even exists anymore.”

I repressed a whistle. His eyes were blazing. “Okay,” I said. “You can still have that, I suppose. But those are some bitter bloody reasons, Rayne.”

“You think I don’t know?”

I dropped a last handful of books and came towards him. We met in the narrow space at the foot of the bed. He went into my arms with a faint noise of surrender, and for a moment I held him there, tight as I could. He was shaking.

“C’mon, soldier,” I whispered to him. “You’ll be all right.”

I left him unsteadily beginning to unfasten his shirt and went into the bathroom, my heart beating so hard I could feel it in my fingertips. They fumbled at the door of the cabinet, and I stopped for a minute, trying to calm myself. There were considerations, weren’t there? Things I hadn’t had to think about in years. Jason and I had stopped using condoms almost immediately, once I’d moved in. I’d had my blood test, just in case, and it never crossed my mind to question him. He was my professor. He was Jason. I supposed, staring at my hollow-eyed self in the bathroom mirror now, that that might have been stupid. That I might have told my younger self to act different.

Did we even have any? I started pulling things out of the cabinet to see. Oh, Christ—there was one of Jason’s exquisite little jars of lubricant. I set it aside, shuddering. I’d need something—lots of it, with a first-timer—but even the scent of that stuff would make the introductory session a short and disappointing one. My cock was softening now at the sight of the bloody jar. Thank God—farther back, a tube of the KY we had used for less ceremonial occasions. That would do, but still didn’t solve the problem of the—

“Logan?”

I started, dropping the tube into the sink. Turning round, I saw Rayne leaning in the bedroom door. He was stark naked, and even with the light behind him, that was a sight to stop my breath. He had something in his hand. “Bringing condoms seemed presumptuous,” he said thoughtfully, giving the packet a chuck and catching it. “But then not bringing them seemed a bit presumptuous too, so…”

 

Why Lucy didn't do the latest prize draw

Yes, she finally got what she wanted - a motionless Harper, draped in rugs, to sleep on. She might as well have "do not disturb" draped round her little neck. She's even prepared to put up with the smell of Vick!