Chapter Twelve #4
proportion to the world from which he’d come—Alexandru was new
ground to him. Tenderness and pride racked Laurie at once. He was
seeing—beginning to see—all that Sasha was; Sasha was letting him
see it. “Hush,” he said, rocking him. “You’re okay. You’re home
now.”
Sasha
snatched a breath and choked. “That’s the…problem,” he said when he
could. His hot brow was pressed to Laurie’s shoulder, hands
clenching in the wool of his sweater. “I was so close. Living in a
squat in the next street. I was watching you.”
“Heading off muggers. Leaving a deposit for me at the bank of
Hassan Greengrocer.” Laurie kissed wet salt off Sasha’s cheek. “I
know.”
“But I couldn’t come to you. I couldn’t come home.”
“God, Sash. Do you think I’d have cared? About the danger, or…
I’d rather have faced that a hundred times than all those nights
not knowing where you were. Is that why you wouldn’t stick around
after I’d moved in here?”
“Well, I did. Far too often. I’d thought we were safe, thought
I’d shaken them off. When you left home, all I meant to do was look
after you. And I wanted to live with you.” He gripped Laurie’s arms
convulsively. “When you asked me to move in, it nearly killed me to
say no. But I swear to you, the very day after you came here, I
thought I saw one of my father’s men near the camp. I should have
cleared out then. But I couldn’t. I didn’t see him again, so I kept
taking chances, coming back to you, then being so
afraid…”
“And running back into the dark. Please, sweetheart. Never
again.”
“Oh—like I could. My father’s mob would have killed me if I’d
been deported back home, but it wasn’t why I ran from the
immigration police. I couldn’t stand the thought of a sea between
us. Thinking of that, so much distance—it was stones on my chest.
I…I couldn’t breathe.”
“Breathe now.” He was struggling, half-drowned in tears. Laurie
sat back to ease it, to let him get the morning air coming in
through the window. It was fresh—laced with petrol fumes, but
somehow sweet. Full of light. They knelt together in the February
sun. “After that night at the camp,” he said quietly, “and what
happened to Mama Luna, I didn’t think you’d even want to come,” he
said. “I hoped, but—”
“Oh, Laurie. I tried to hate you, but it lasted not even ten
minutes. Not even till I got out of the woods. Your father did
that, love. Not you. I know what he can do to you. I
know.”
“Not anymore. Sash, once we sort out your stuff, we’re free.
Out from under. He died.”
Sasha
went still. He lifted his head and looked at Laurie in
astonishment. “What happened?”
“Heart attack. Too many years of getting apoplectic with rage
over foreigners, queers, and other vermin. I think the pair of us
shoved him over the edge.”
Sasha
snorted with laughter. It wasn’t a good idea, and he reached
gratefully for the handkerchief Laurie produced for him. “For God’s
sake. John Kucharski told me that Clara was safe. That there’d been
some huge family misunderstanding. Was that something to do with
your father?”
“I’ll tell you all about it soon, but his death solved it.
Yes.”
“Thank God.” Sasha reached out a hand. He touched his
fingertips to Laurie’s cheekbone, his brow, as if seeing him wasn’t
enough.
Not
enough for Laurie either. There was a corpse in the room, and
Laurie had no doubt that at least one Interpol agent was burning up
the road in their direction. If the world had been ending, though,
he couldn’t have kept his hands from Sasha’s face, his mouth from
falling softly on the swollen one lifting to find it. The tang of
salt hit him first, then, in a rush, the taste he hadn’t even known
he’d registered, let alone missed. Sasha. He’d been starving
without it. He pushed his fingers into Sasha’s hair, feeling his
gesture returned as they both measured the distance and the time
they’d been apart. “This is beautiful,” Sasha gasped, pulling back
from the kiss. “Longer. Enough to bury my hands in.”
“Yes. I’ve been in the eighteenth century. And you… This is
shorter, like velvet…”
“Mm. Bloke in the squat with me had a set of clippers. Fifty
pence for a grade one.”
Laurie
broke into shocked laughter. Sasha silenced him, warm mouth hungry,
drawing him forward until the edge of the sofa stopped them. “Sash,
not here,” Laurie whispered. “Get up. Let’s go into the bedroom,
away from…”
He
didn’t need to finish. Sasha cast a glance back at Luca, then
scrambled up into Laurie’s arms with frantic haste. “We don’t have
time, do we?” he murmured, clinging to Laurie. “They’ll be here
soon—Kucharski or…”
“I don’t know. But come on, love. Please.”
No need
to ask Sasha twice. He put an arm round Laurie’s waist and led him
through into the bedroom, whose tiny confines were ablaze with
morning light. They fell onto the bed together, Laurie banging his
head off the wall and barely noticing, though Sasha did, gasping
and reaching out to stroke his skull. “I’m all right,” Laurie
assured him, hauling him on top. “You, though—even
skinnier…”
“You can talk.” Sasha’s hands ran hard down his ribs, then his
hip bones. “What’ve you been doing?”
“Missing you. Dancing.”
Sasha
looked up from the task of unbuttoning Laurie’s jeans, a puzzled
smile quirking. “Dancing? Hamlet dances?”
“Nn-nn. Not that gloomy bugger. Fourteenth chorus boy in
Les Misérables does,
though.”
“Chorus?” Sasha sat up long enough for Laurie to help him
struggle out of his parka. “What are you doing that
for?”
“Money,” Laurie said succinctly—the one clear word he could get
out before Sasha plunged back down, driving the air from his lungs.
He smiled. He’d encountered this pair of charity-shop combat
trousers before, knew how to deal with their complicated
fastenings. There you
are…
Sasha
groaned against his neck as the zip gave, and thrust down hard,
shivering with passion. “God. Sorry.”
“What the hell for?”
“Pouncing on you. I planned… I dreamed, every night, how I’d do
it when I found you again, how I’d have you or let you have me, so
slow, so sweet…”
Laurie
pushed his hands under the fabric of Sasha’s briefs. He seized his
backside tight, thrusting up at him, beginning their rhythm.
“Reckon we’ve got ten minutes max, love. So pounce
away.”
“Oh, Laurie—so hungry for you, so hot…”
It
didn’t take ten minutes. It barely took two. Laurie’s mind flared
with the images Sasha had painted—their first reunited fuck, alone
in the soft-thudding heart of the world, sweet and slow. This was
neither. This was the rough coupling without which both would die.
Sparing a hand, Laurie clenched it in the nape of Sasha’s T-shirt,
dragging him down tight, locking him into a kiss. Laurie’s cock
rammed painfully against Sasha’s thigh, and he shoved his hips up
in brief, violent synchrony to meet him. Sasha unleashed a raw
shout and came, bruising Laurie’s ribs where he was holding him.
Something tangled in Laurie—a need too intense to cope with its
satisfaction, an emotional air lock—and he wailed, struggling on
the brink. But Sasha, even done and beyond done, did not let him
go. Would never let him go—stayed in place, soaked and panting,
till Laurie’s block evaporated, releasing him to shuddering
climax.
Time
passed in the sunny room. How much, Laurie couldn’t tell—he marked
it only in the slow return to normal of his own breathing and
Sasha’s. Sasha’s head was pillowed on his shoulder. He’d taken one
of Laurie’s hands and spread the fingers, looking into his palm as
if seeking answers there. At length he said, an odd note of
apprehension in his voice, “So now your father’s gone, are you…Lord
Laurence of somewhere? Heir to his millions and ruler of all you
survey?”
Laurie
smiled. He cleared his throat and found he could speak. “I can
disclaim my peerage. But if you mean what I’m surveying right now,
yes. Rent’s paid here till the end of the month. Other than that,
nothing’s changed. His will’s with the lawyers at the moment, but
I’m pretty sure he left the lot to Clara.”
Sasha
kissed his palm. Laurie had to wonder at the man who would suddenly
give him such a look of relief—of exhilaration, almost—at the
prospect of a life of poverty. “I don’t know what you’re grinning
about,” Laurie said, stroking back Sasha’s hair. “I’ll never make
any money, you know. We’ll be eating Hassan’s discount soup for the
rest of our days.”
For the rest of our days. Well, he
had said it. He could have wished they were on a beach somewhere,
or at a nice restaurant, or anywhere really without a fresh corpse
in the next room, but it was said. He watched Sasha hearing it and
understanding. Sasha said softly, “I’m glad, love. I could never
have given you anything, could I, if—”
“If I’d been Lord Laurence of somewhere.”
“That’s right. And I want to, Laurie. For the rest…” He paused
and suddenly blushed up to his hairline beneath his weary pallor.
“God. How but guli. How…what’s the English word?” Laurie, who seldom knew him
at a loss for one, waited with interest to discover what had given
him pause. “Yes,” he finished after a second, still blushing, with
an air of satisfaction. “How corny, ves’tacha. But yes. For the
rest of our days.”
Laurie
pressed his mouth to Sasha’s. Now in their aftermath, he could do
it without bruising them both, and their kiss became a slow, almost
shy rediscovery. The room chilled around them. He should have got
up and shut the window. He should have shut the bedroom door to
seal out the smell of blood. He closed his eyes and interlaced his
fingers with Sasha’s and let the sunlit time drift on.
Footsteps on the stairs. The sound carried clearly through
the flat, and they jolted apart. He held Sasha’s shoulders. One
knock came, and then another three in swift succession. Laurie
smiled. A hell of a lot had changed in his life, hadn’t it, for him
to have a prearranged signal knock with bloody Interpol.
“It’s all right,” he said. “It’s Kucharski, or one of his men.
Don’t be frightened. I’ll be with you.” He pressed his brow to
Sasha’s. “Not going to let you out of my sight.”