For Real (Spires, #3)

by Alexis Hall

“I am in costume,” I snapped. “I’m in costume as a really tired and pissed-off trauma doctor trying to get into a BDSM club in the vain hope of meeting a not-too-cack-handed stranger who’ll whip him into some semblance of satisfaction before he goes home again.” “It’s a good effort,” said Sam, deadpan. “Very convincing.”

In my experience, one of the less well-advertised secrets of group sex was how often it came down to logistics.

There were only so many times you could wipe up someone’s tears and tell them there were more fish in the sea. I used to think there were too, but I was tired of swimming. And either Robert was a merman, or I was just a really weird fish with a particularly obscure mating ritual. Even to other weird fish.

“Kink crowds are the same the world over. The good ones are already taken—” I gestured to them both “—the hot ones only talk to each other, and everyone else is desperate.”

“You do know you’re one of the hot ones, right? You could have any dom in this room if you looked marginally more approachable than an underfed piranha having a bad day.” “I’ve had all the doms in this room.” “You’re extra-specially hot when you’re slutty,” purred Sam,

“I know what I want. I really know what I want. I just don’t know how to get it.”

God, his eyes. In a few years . . . in a few years I didn’t like to think what someone with eyes like that might do to me. Or make me do.

When I’d thought he’d be stunning in a few years, I was wrong. He was stunning now.

And in the silence, my boy just gasped.

Then he collared me, his palm warm against my neck, and it was all I could do not to push forward into the safety and the threat of that simple, instinctive touch.

Like there’s a confused zone of lust-envy where wanting to do someone spills over into wanting to be them. Or the other way round.

like when you’re watching a nature documentary and you see a tiger and you’re all like, God, that’s gorgeous and God, that could totally rip my face off at the same time.

Next thing I know, he’s dumping his full-length, silk-lined, cashmere-wool blend over my shoulders. For such a big coat it weighs practically nothing at all, and it trails along the ground behind me like I’m a really short-arsed emperor.

Wants to shag boys, I can cope with her knowing. Wants to shag boys while they’re tied up and crying, just no.

I wonder if this is where he’d sit in summer, all sleek and golden like a lion pretending to be tame.

Holy shit, was that me? That was me. Shit, I’ve gone too far. I always go too far. He doesn’t move for a moment, like he’s thinking about it or struggling with it, and I can’t tell if he wants to do it or he doesn’t want to do it, and I don’t know what I’m doing, and I’m clearly a bit bobbins at this, but I want it so badly that I kind of don’t care.

I love that he’s a Dom but he’s unsure He wants it badly but it’s also new and scary and I just love that growing into confidence bit The part where you learn bc no one immediately knows someone else inside and out

I didn’t want to get into the complexities of apologising. The terrible powerlessness of being unable to do anything except wait for mercy you couldn’t earn and didn’t deserve. I hated being forgiven almost as much as I feared rejection. It felt too much like a debt you couldn’t pay.

“You shouldn’t be standing around in wet clothes.” “Why?” He gave me a sullen look. “What are you going to do? Get me out of them?” The words were more challenge than flirtation but, oh God. A child should not have been able to make me blush. Except he wasn’t a child. Which was why I was blushing.

“Look, I didn’t want your whore taxi, and I don’t want your pity tumble drying, either.” “Actually, it’s a guilt tumble drying.” “Wow, you’re really selling it.”

God. How could he turn so quickly from wicked to vulnerable? It made me dizzy and sweetly helpless, these bonds of silk and mischief. “What’s next, a bedtime story?” “Do you have Winnie-the-Pooh?” “If you don’t get in the bath, I’ll drown you in it.”

I still felt strangely like the . . . attendant, consort, plaything of some capricious, adolescent god-king. And some part of me thrilled to the notion. I imagined the unforgiving chill of the marble beneath my knees. The tug of chains at wrists and ankles. Perhaps the pinching weight of clamps . . . perhaps . . . perhaps other violations. He would want his toys adorned.

Oh good lord this gives me captive prince vibes and I am so here for it

“I’d make you read something else.” I was determined not to ask him what. That would have been entirely foolish.

“Please.” His eyes got very big. “Please can I call you Laurie? I like it better.” The kid was dangerous. But I’d known that all along. “Oh all right.” It wasn’t a graceful surrender but, then, they never were. He splashed me. Playful conqueror.

“They’re not ugly, Toby.” I ran my fingertips very gently over a rash of spots just above his nipple. “They’re just there.” “Yeah, well.” He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Given the choice, I’ll take not there, thanks.”

And because it was what I had wanted to do before, and perhaps what I should have done, I slid a hand around his leg and let my head rest a moment against his knee. I closed my eyes. His fingers moving lightly through my hair, and everything was still and dark and silent. And good, so very good.

Soft

A soft pulse of desire went through me, not for sex or pain or humiliation or some other release, but for this, this quiet closeness. Someone to hold in the dark.

I want him to say that to me and mean it and not mean it, knowing I might not stop. I want him to say it in pleasure, and I want him to say it in pain. And I want the power to deny him. Just because I can. Just because his suffering makes me hot.

“And anyway,” I press, “it’s not like you habitually go around banging younger guys, right?” “The room I told you not to go into? It’s full of twinks.” “Aww, I thought I was special.”

It’s hard to think when he’s touching me . . . I’d say like this, but it’s really at all.

“The right time to come, darling, is when you want to come.” He called me “darling.”

“You have no idea,” he whispers, “what you do to me.” He’s right. I don’t. I have no idea how I can possibly do anything to anyone really. But, God, it’s a fucking awesome notion that I could.

“Are you all right?” he asks. How could he tell? I’m still face-first in a bed. “Yeah.” I sort of nod into the sheets.

“Are you trying to make me fuck you again?” Ooh! “Is that an option?” He sighs, and I can’t tell if it’s impatience or regret. “No. No matter how much you twitch your pretty little arse at me.” I’ve got a pretty little arse? Awesome.

If only one could safeword out of a conversation.

“Then congratulations, Mr. Laurence Dalziel, consultant in emergency and prehospital medicine, on your acquisition of one slightly used, but otherwise prime condition Tobermory Finch.”

Toby got me a glass of water—which I had no idea I needed, but drank almost in one go—and I got him a spare toothbrush. He watched me see to my laundry. I watched him futilely attempt to comb the tangles from his hair. It was banal. It was intimate.

“Hold me like you did last time.” “Whatever your highness desires.”

“Don’t you ever worry about it?” “One of the few advantages of getting old is that you come to realise some things just aren’t worth worrying about.

“Please let me come. I don’t care . . . how. Just . . . please. I really need to—” “Nope.” Such awful, beautiful glee. “I just wanted to hear you beg. Wanted to know what it sounded like.” “Did it live up to your expectations?” “Well, it was kind of grudging. So I’d give it maybe two out of ten.” I wasn’t sure whether or not to be insulted.

“Revel in your power, princeling.”

If anything, he had lavished me, drowned me, seduced me utterly with it—my power to affect him, arouse him, satisfy him.

Knowing better, apparently, did not preclude actually giving a damn.

And while I lay in bed—my mind and body temporarily soothed to still water—he made me eggs and brought me tea. Showed me the bruises I’d left upon his wrists and, grinning, made me kiss them.

I know Laurie gave me all this bullshit about how he wasn’t my boyfriend, but the way I see it: we’ve had sex a bunch of times, talked about deep shit, he actually seems to like me for some weird reason of his own, I’ve cooked him food, stayed over at his place, and I have a standing invitation to go back there. If it walks, talks, and quacks like a boyfriend, it’s a boyfriend, right?

Ngh. Ridiculously fucking gorgeous man. How did I get so lucky? If this is my consolation prize for totally ruining my life, I’m pretty fucking consoled.

And he taught me. Really patiently because I’m a bit of a klutz. He didn’t actually say it was for getting laid (though I’m telling you the implication was there). He said it was how a gentleman wins a lady’s heart. An important life skill. And so I told him. I said, “Does it still work if a gentleman wants to win a gentleman’s heart?” He was quiet a moment. And my own heart was like thudump-thudump-thudump. To the rhythm of ohfuck-ohfuck-ohfuck. And then Granddad said, “Definitely.”

I read him Rapture. Or bits of it anyway, which you probably shouldn’t do because it’s meant to be a cycle, but I want him to have only the love and not the loss, which is wrong again because you have to have both. Except I can do this for him now because he’s dying. Because the loss is already happening.

I glance over my shoulder, to see if I’m fucking everything up, but Laurie’s gone to his knees for me. I hadn’t thought or known to ask just then, but it helps. His patience. His understanding. His acceptance. I’m still holding a wrist cuff, but I like him so much for doing that, I get down next to him and kiss him. I kiss him until it’s like we can’t kiss enough.

Shows how strong he is. To be willing to be powerless. For me. This is a thing he can do. He can make himself into a gift. And what it makes me feel is humble.

“Can you . . . can you—” his throat ripples gorgeously as he swallows “—tie my hands first? Please?” Definitely better than two out of ten.