LUCAS’S HOUSE was an early twenty-first-century build, and in keeping with the era, the size of a shoe box. From the front door, Lucas led Dante through the small hallway and living area to the kitchen-diner at the back.
The wide windows and pale walls created an illusion of space, and Lucas had a minimalist approach to décor, which afforded his home a sunny freshness that stood incongruously against this day of grief. The tightness in Dante’s neck and shoulders eased. It felt like a lifetime had passed since he’d asked Kit to invite Sharps over for Christmas. Since he nullified the wager with Jim. Since Jim had warned him not to get involved with Lucas’s plans to nullify Shaw.
He took off his coat and sat on the offered stool at the breakfast bar; the kitchen was too small for a dining table. The window over the sink overlooked a postage-stamp-sized garden, with a patch of damp lawn and naked shrubbery at its borders. Lucas kept it neat, like his home. Indeed, seeing him here, at home in his kitchen, moving from cupboard to drawer with uninhibited grace, Dante was pleased to discover Lucas had an alluring level of poise and confidence.
Lucas emptied the bag of food onto the counter and handed Dante the Barolo and a corkscrew. “Will you open this?”
Dante secured the bottle between his thighs as Lucas placed two large wineglasses on the counter between them. The cherry peppers stuffed with soft cheese, the olives, and the bread, Lucas spread onto a platter.
The cork lifted with a squeak and a pop and released its rich cherry vapors. Dante held the bottle high and poured them each a few centimeters, swirling the contents of both his glass and Lucas’s, while Lucas set out plates and cutlery. The wine had an intense color—bloody and brilliant. A perfect tribute.
“There.” Dante took the paper serviette Lucas had put on his plate and shook it open. “We have a feast.”
“Before we eat, I want to show you something.”
Lucas’s voice had the seriousness of someone about to confess. (Dante’s stomach lurched. Except, no, Lucas couldn’t have done it already. Dante had seen Shaw on camera this morning, leaving his house.) And like that, Dante was reminded of his own guilty secret. The cameras planted outside, overlooking Lucas’s back garden and the front of his house.
“Go ahead.”
From the other side of the breakfast bar, Lucas opened a drawer and took out an envelope. He slid it across the cold black stone, his fingertips lingering on the red paper, as if he wasn’t quite ready to let it go.
“I saw Avery five days ago. We went out together, and she gave me this. Go on, look inside.”
Dante already knew, of course, about Avery’s night out with Lucas. He’d spied them. Spied on them. Secrets and lies had never been a problem for Dante—they were sometimes necessary, occasionally thrilling—but there was something about Lucas. Deceiving him felt like swallowing stones.
He took out the Christmas card. Avery had never celebrated Christmas, and to have chosen one with a traditional design: Three kings, marching over a desert, taking gifts to the king of kings was even more unlikely to see.
“Open it,” Lucas said.
In a shaky hand, Avery had written: In the spirit of the season of goodwill to all men, and with love from a friend. What looked like a credit card was slotted into a tab on the inside.
“She told me to wait until Christmas. But who does that?” Lucas smiled ruefully. “It’s a prepaid credit card. I found out how much is on it yesterday.” Lucas shed his suit jacket and folded his arms, slotting his hands under his armpits. “She knew I’d open it early, but she didn’t want me to know how much she was giving me until after…. Christ. I didn’t think she had that sort of money.”
Dante didn’t feel it was his place to ask, but he knew a thing or two about Avery that maybe Lucas didn’t. He wasn’t surprised when Lucas said, “Fifty thousand.” That would be like Avery.
“As I said earlier, she loved you.”
One gesture at a time, Dante was beginning to see why. The way Lucas invited Dante to open the wine, yet made sure he was comfortable and catered to, at once made Dante feel at home. Lucas didn’t stand on formality, but he was mindful of Dante’s wellbeing and feelings. Never before had Dante felt so ashamed of the secret surveillance cameras perched in the evergreens outside.
Lucas returned the prepaid credit card to the envelope and returned it to the drawer. “You were like family. Did she…?”
“No, she didn’t. But that she did it for you meant she must have thought you could put that money to good use.”
“I’m sorry. You’d known her so long. It doesn’t seem right.”
Dante pondered this as he tasted the wine. It had an intriguing bouquet—sour fruits and spice enveloped hints of vanilla and cocoa. It was a wine to be savored, to be smelled and tasted with the patience and attention one might give a lover.
Now there was a thought.
Dante swiftly plucked an olive from the platter. “Next week, Avery’s solicitor will be reading her will. She might have left me something. She might not. I don’t care. I don’t need her money, and I’d rather not have to contend with her brothers complaining they’ve been cheated out of their due.” Of course, it made sense. “That’s probably why she put this cash aside for you early. To keep you out of the drama. She was pragmatic like that.”
“Yes. She was, wasn’t she?”
Lucas dragged one of the stools to the other side of the breakfast bar, so he was seated opposite. He lifted his wineglass, inhaled the bouquet, sipped, sipped again, then downed the rest of the glass. Dante winced.
“Cin cin,” he said, belatedly. Then he lifted the bottle, examined the label, and refilled his glass.
Dante was about to suggest Lucas slow down, but Lucas exchanged his wineglass for a hunk of bread. Dante followed his lead at a more leisurely pace, reveling in the sight and sound of Lucas eating and drinking, as much as the smell and taste of his own fare.
Lucas slid a cherry pepper over his lips, into his mouth whole, and hummed his approval. After he swallowed, he said, “These are delicious. Have you had one yet?”
His lips shone from the oil marinade. He licked his fingers, one at a time, lazily sucking each into his mouth and dragging it out again, shining with his saliva. As he reached his thumb, his gaze drifted from his hand to Dante.
Dante’s wineglass rested on his lower lip. He set it down slowly, gently, all the while his eyes not leaving Lucas’s moist fingers, his wet mouth.
The air was charged. Dante could feel the pinpricks of electricity crackling over his skin, penetrating his subcutaneous layer, deeper, deeper to the nerve endings buried below. His cock stirred. He licked his lips.
Lucas downed his second glass of wine and wiped his mouth with his serviette. Dante watched, frozen and fascinated, as Lucas rose from his stool, one hand clutching the counter as he rounded the breakfast bar and planted a hand on Dante’s shoulder.
His breath was sweet with wine and peppers as he pressed his lips to Dante’s ear and said, “I should have mentioned, alcohol makes me really horny.” He sniggered. “I want you to fuck me.”
Dante gasped, and the noise he made surprised him more than Lucas’s demand.
“I mean it. Fuck me.”
Dante stared at his lap, rubbing the cold sweat from his palms onto his trouser legs. He swallowed thickly. “Lucas. You’re upset. This isn’t the time.”
“It’s the perfect time. We’re not dead, Dante. We’re here. We’re alive, and for once I just want to feel like I’m actually living.” Lucas squeezed Dante’s shoulder. “Tell me you don’t too.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to. I can’t.”
“Can’t?”
“There are things about me…. If you knew, you wouldn’t….”
“Do you have an infection? Because—”
“No. It’s not that.”
Lucas placed his hand on Dante’s jaw, forcing him to face Lucas, and look at him. “For the last eight months, I’ve felt nothing but loss. There were times when I wondered if I was ever going to feel anything else again. I’m not asking for…. Just this. Just us. No strings.”
Like a house of cards tumbling around him, Dante’s carefully—thoughtlessly—made plans lay in ruins. The intensity in Lucas’s gray eyes stripped him bare.
Dante wanted this. He wanted Lucas. Why should he deny it? Deny himself? He was, after all, flesh and blood.
Just like the rest of us. Scared and needy and wanting.
Dante smoothed his napkin across his lap, folded it in half, placed it on his empty plate, and stood. Lucas took a baby-step back, his head tilted, and a slight frown creasing his tired brow. He looked like he couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry.
Dante grabbed him, one hand slipping around his waist, the other around the back of Lucas’s head, and took his mouth with a bruising kiss. Lucas gasped. His back bent, and for a second his knees seem to give, as if he’d melted. Moments later his strength returned to his arms, his tongue, and then his legs.
It was frantic, that first kiss. Their teeth clashed. They tugged and tore at each other’s shirts, searching for heated skin. A shirt button popped—Dante wasn’t sure whose—and bounced on the floor.
Spinning, polka-fast, Dante pinned Lucas against the counter. Lucas wrapped a leg around Dante’s thighs and drew him closer. Together, deeply, hungrily, their chests rose and fell.
Lucas’s mouth tasted sweet and bitter at the same time. With his shirt buttons undone, the scent of his body—soap and fresh sweat—rose headily. Dante slipped his hands under Lucas’s shirt, gliding them over his back and down, down…. He slipped his fingertips inside the waistband of Lucas’s trousers, teasing at the elastic of his underpants.
Lucas arched into the touch, breaking their kiss, allowing Dante a moment to look at his face. His eyes were open, pupils dilated.
Dante wanted to say something, but words eluded him. He ran his fingertip over the plump swell of Lucas’s lower lip. Lucas sucked it into his mouth, drawing it deeper as he pressed his tongue firmly along its underside. A sharp pulse of arousal clenched through Dante’s balls, drawing them up, making his cock tingle and swell.
“Turn around. Brace yourself.”
Dante pushed the wineglasses, the platter, and the plates to the edge of the breakfast bar closest to the wall, then removed his jacket and his tie as Lucas bent forward, forearms resting on the countertop, palms flat. After that, Lucas didn’t move. Not a centimeter. Dante wondered if he had any idea what that did to him.
Dante aligned his body behind Lucas, thigh to thigh, cock to arse. With his hands holding Lucas about the waist, Dante tilted his hips forward. Hard already, he made sure Lucas got the merest hint of it, a ghost of a touch, through the barrier of their trousers.
Lucas groaned and pushed back.
Dante whispered against the shell of his ear, “You like it like this?”
“Yes,” Lucas replied, with a shivery breath.
“I didn’t come prepared. I wasn’t expecting….”
Lucas turned his head. A fierce blush raced up his neck to his cheeks. “The drawer with Avery’s card inside it. There’s lube. Condoms.”
Dante smirked. He couldn’t help finding it funny, whether Lucas meant that way or not. “How very apt.” He leaned in and pressed a kiss on the thin, fevered skin behind Lucas’s ear. “Stay right there.”
Taking his time, steadying himself against the dizzying thrill of making love to Lucas for the first time, (he was already thinking, this is only the first time, but it won’t be the last. It can’t be. I have so much I want to show him) Dante ran his hands down Lucas’s thighs. Up again.
The muscles in Lucas’s legs tensed and quivered. Dante repeated the motion over Lucas’s back, over each bump in his spine, each rib and plane of muscle.
“You’re strong,” Dante said, with admiration.
“For a skinny bloke,” Lucas huffed.
“You’ve lost weight since I saw you last.” Pressed up to Lucas’s back, Dante reached around and unbuckled Lucas’s belt, unbuttoned his trousers, and lowered his zip. “It’s been a difficult time for you.” Dante closed his grip around Lucas’s erection, over his underwear, and massaged the rigid flesh.
Lucas’s breathing quickened. He turned his head. “Don’t want to talk about…. Not now.”
“No.” Dante pressed a firm kiss to his mouth, hard and urgently. “No more.”
The moisture leaking from the tip of Lucas’s cock had soaked through his underwear. Dante eased the elastic over his erection, and with one swift motion, yanked Lucas’s trousers and underwear down as far as his thighs. They fell to his ankles.
Pushing Lucas’s shirt up to his armpits, Dante was struck by the contrast in their skin colors. Every blue and magenta vein, every mole and bruise and blemish, was laid out on the milky canvas of Lucas’s skin. He was as pale as Dante was dark—extreme and opposite ends of the pigmentation spectrum. Opposite, and attracted.
Dante ran a slicked finger through the downy hair in Lucas’s crease, taking longer at his entrance to coax Lucas’s muscles into submission. Lucas swore under his breath. Dante leaned over him, pressing his chest over Lucas’s back.
“What did you say?”
“Fuck. That’s good.”
Close enough that Lucas would feel his knuckles against his buttocks, Dante unbuckled and unzipped and let his trousers drop. His cock bounced free and lined itself (it does have a mind of its own) perfectly in the crease of Lucas’s arse. Lucas hissed and pushed back into it.
“Soon.”
“For God’s sakes, I knew you’d be like this.”
Dante chuckled and licked the back of Lucas’s earlobe.
“Like what?” he asked, rolling the condom over his cock.
“A tease. A bossy, bossy tease.”
Lucas couldn’t disguise his mirth. His shoulders shook with it, and his legs buckled.
“Steady.” Dante had seen Lucas stretching. He bent down and freed Lucas’s left leg from his trousers, lifted Lucas’s thigh, positioning his knee up on the counter, opening his stance wide to give him extra balance. He’d need it.
They didn’t speak again. Lucas’s body was vocal and responsive. Dante could read every arch and curve, every stuttered breath and sigh. The breach was tight, and then it was bliss. Dante lost himself in the slap of their thighs and the thick, heavy scent of their arousal.
It was over as quickly as it had begun.
Lucas took his cock in his fist and came, soundlessly at first but ending with a deep, resounding grunt. His muscles clamped around Dante’s cock, and that was all Dante needed to send him over, hurtling and crashing. Dante squeezed his eyes shut, as his toes curled in his shoes and his fingers dug hard into Lucas’s hips.
He might have cried out, he couldn’t recall. His mind was a bliss-washed blank, and his thighs had turned to jelly.
“Fuck,” Lucas said at last.
“Yes,” Dante replied, puffing breathlessly against Lucas’s neck as he slowly withdrew and pulled off the condom. When he found the strength to stand, he tied it off and dropped it into the discarded paper bag that had held the food and wine. Then he turned Lucas around and kissed the moisture from his eyelashes.
Lucas looked thoroughly spent. Exhausted, in fact. He stumbled as he found his footing, regaining his balance by leaning back against the counter. His eyelids looked heavy, but the upturn at the corners of his mouth expressed a pleasant satiety.
Toying with the top button of Lucas’s open shirt, Dante recalled the night Lucas had come to Le Plaisir, and the blush he’d seen disappearing inside the collar of his shirt.
“That night you came to the shop, I wondered how far down this blush goes.” Dante touched the blotches of flushed skin across Lucas’s sparsely haired chest, around his dusky pink nipples.
“Now you know.”
“You look like you’re ready to drop.” Dante ran his thumb softly over the purple skin under Lucas’s eyes.
“I could do with lying down. Will you come with me?”
They pulled up their trousers, and Dante followed Lucas upstairs. In the center of Lucas’s bedroom, there was a double bed covered in a slate-gray-and-burgundy striped duvet, neatly made. They sat side by side on the end, removing their shoes, as if it was something they did together all the time.
They settled on top of the covers, shirts undone but fully clothed, like two weary warriors who have at last found a safe place to rest. Dante imagined a sun-soaked blue sky above, the kiss of warm summer air about, and the peaceful lull of the ocean rolling over hot sand. A dreamful, carefree place, shared by the man in Dante’s arms.
Lucas was curled on his side, one arm loosely over Dante’s stomach. Dante held him close. Neither initiated anything more.
Dante was glad. This felt good. Right.
Lucas circled his fingertip over the tight curls of hair on Dante’s chest, as if he was unwinding, slowing their racing hearts, their breathing, their troubled minds.
Dante had no doubt that Lucas was troubled. He could have counted his ribs without feeling them. Then there was the way he cried and the way he laughed. The way he fucked.
Lucas ran the treadmill of his life, day in, day out, but he was looking for a way to jump off. Dante had sensed it the first time they met. Known it the moment Lucas gulped down his wine. Felt it when Lucas ejaculated—it was a desperate, overwhelming release—over his breakfast bar and his trousers and his shoes.
Softly, yet certainly, eyes on the ceiling, Dante said, “If you still want me to, I’ll find a way for you take care of Richard Shaw.” He pushed a lock of hair from Lucas’s forehead and let his hand rest upon his face. “A way you can do it and not get caught.”
Lucas pushed up onto one elbow. “You know you’d be breaking the law as much as I would, if I went through with it?”
“Yes.”
“And that doesn’t worry you?”
With the one arm around Lucas’s shoulder, Dante squeezed him tighter. “Not as much as it does you.”
“What made you change your mind?”
Dante was a hair’s breadth from confessing. He wanted to. But wouldn’t it be easier to never mention it? To lie? Rather than ruin any chance that he and Lucas might have together, because he’d been too wrapped up in all the wrong things when Lucas first presented himself to Dante.
“It doesn’t matter,” Lucas said, saving Dante from a lie. “I don’t want to do it anymore.”
“You don’t?”
“No. You were right all along. I don’t have it in me to kill anyone.”
If Dante had had any concern about offering to help Lucas, that would have been it. Despite the will and desire, Lucas wasn’t a killer. Dante wanted to be relieved and glad that Lucas had come to his senses. He should have been. Only he wasn’t, because he wasn’t convinced.
“That’s good.”
“Is it?” Lucas splayed his palm on Dante’s chest and hooked his leg over Dante’s thigh. “You don’t sound like it is.”
“I’m tired. That’s all.”
“I know how you feel. I’m tired too. And tired of being tired.”
Lucas rested his head on Dante’s shoulder. Soon after, he fell asleep and rolled away, onto his side.
Something wasn’t right. Dante didn’t know if it was his feeling of disappointment where he should have been delighted or if he didn’t believe Lucas or if a deeper part of him didn’t want to believe Lucas. He’d watched him go out at night. Today he’d been as close to him as a man could be.
Something didn’t add up.
He ought to have left well alone, but Dante cared too much about Lucas to walk away.
Lucas—Dante knew it, as he’d known when Lucas asked him to take him home that they would end up fucking—was about to get himself into a world of trouble.
Dante remembered Lucas’s handset, left on the counter in the kitchen. Easing up from the bed, Dante tiptoed from the bedroom and down the stairs. Gift of gifts, Lucas didn’t have a lock on his handset. Dante slid open the screen and installed the tracking software he could use to follow him. He rinsed out his wineglass in the sink, filled it with water, and returned with it to the bedroom.
Lucas blinked open one eye. “I thought you might have gone.”
“I went to get you a glass of water.”
Lucas was deliciously pliant, and Dante would have loved to stay, to bend him every way his body would bow. But Dante had begun to sweat. He could smell it on himself—the rancid stench of a liar and a stalker—on top of the staunch scent of sex.
Perhaps he got a whiff of the same from Lucas too. Perhaps that was why he said, “I have to go,” when he really wanted to stay.
“Will I see you again?”
Dante hesitated a little too long.
Lucas sat and gulped a mouthful of water. “You can say no. I did say no strings. However, if you tell me I’m nice but it will never work, I’m going to punch you in the face.” He chanced a wan smile that squeezed the breath out of Dante’s chest. “Just saying.”
“You’re not nice. You drank a ninety-quid bottle of wine like it was plonk, and you fuck like a ten-quid whore. I’ll call you.”
Before Dante could escape, Lucas curled his hand around the back of Dante’s neck and kissed him. His mouth still tasted of the wine, and his tongue moved possessively against Dante’s.
As kisses went, it was another breath-stealer. If he kept this up, Lucas was going to be the death of him.