CHAPTER SIX
“You moved to Madrid two years ago?”
“Mmhmm.” Jago took another pull from his beer and sank further into the orange couch.
“From Andalusia?”
“No, from Mexico, and Colombia before that.”
“Shit.” Alex sipped more of his drink. He could only imagine such travels. “I’ve never left Spain.”
“Never?”
“Does Barcelona count?”
“That very much depends on who you ask,” Jago said, raising his beer. “We are a country cobbled together by history and coincidence. The Basques, the Galicians, the Andalusians, the Catalonians… How did you meet Joanna?”
Alex had learned during their conversation that such an abrupt change of subject was not unusual for Jago, but it still threw him off-guard. “Through Vicente.”
“Ah, and he is your ex-boyfriend? Funny. It so often goes the other way. Girls first.”
“He’s bisexual.”
“I never said he wasn’t. It was just an observation. He protects you like a Golden Retriever.”
Alex didn’t know enough about dogs to answer that. “I wish he’d focus more on protecting Joanna.”
“I think she’s more likely to protect him, no?” Jago corrected Alex with a confidence that bemused him. “She is a remarkable individual.”
“You mean her dancing?”
“I mean everything.”
“You’re not attracted—”
“Oh gods, no. To her talent, sure, and to her energy. But no, she doesn’t speak to my dick, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Alex smiled. “You have a very forthright way of speaking, you know that?”
“And would you prefer I was vague? Spoke in platitudes? The show tonight was crap, and if Si-Man and his orbiting lapdog, Apricot—”
“Peach. Her name was Peach.”
“Whatever. If they’d asked me, I would have told them so. After all his ranting about honesty on stage, we’d see how much honesty he could really take.”
“You’ve got a mean side too.”
Jago’s eyes widened with mock offence. “I just don’t like my time being wasted.”
“Then why go? I mean, you seem to know your shit when it comes to theatre. Surely, you didn’t think it was going to be good?”
“It was not him I came to see.”
Alex paused before taking another drink. “Wait, you don’t mean me?”
“Why not you?”
“How did you even know we’d be there?”
Jago got up, returning to the couch with a small deck of oversized cards. “You’re familiar with the tarot?”
“Wait, wait, wait. You’re telling me some cards told you where we’d be?”
“Nothing so specific.” Jago shuffled the cards quickly, held them close to the centre of his chest for a moment, then cut them before drawing the top three and laying them out on the coffee table. Cards called the Tower and Death faced them, with a Four of Wands upside down in between.
“That doesn’t look good.”
“Again, you’re being too literal. The Tower can mean revolution or upheaval, usually painful, yes. But here, it’s in your past. Something you’ve worked through. A shedding of painful family bonds, perhaps?”
Alex bit his lip, not ready to answer that.
Jago shrugged. “It might also be something on a larger scale. Perhaps even the dictatorship, though that seems a lazy reach. As I said, it’s in the past. The card in the middle signifies where you are, while the one on the right—”
“Death? Death’s my future?”
“Death is everybody’s future. But in the tarot, it usually means a transition or evolution, often a positive one. A nice card to get in that slot, if I may say so. But in the middle here…” He tapped the edge of the Four of Wands. “…this is a more personal source of pain.”
Alex was intrigued. “Personal?”
“Safety? Security? Family? Purpose? Belonging? These are things belonging to the Four of Wands, but in your case, as the card of your present, it’s inverted.”
“Meaning I don’t have those things?”
“Or you feel you don’t, but under all of that… self-doubt, perhaps?”
Alex smiled, shaking his head. “Now you’re just telling me what I already know.”
“That’s the point. The cards are signposts. They help you find the answers you already possess, even if you've dismissed or buried them. They’re not oracles. They might teach you to trust a good feeling as much as a good idea, like your dance show. You understand now?”
“You mean it’s interpretation?”
“It’s a conversation, and the message changes with each person who sees it. I mean, unless you’re someone like Si-Man who wants everyone to share his own vision and experience because it’s so fucking compelling.”
“Let’s maybe let that one go,” Alex suggested with a smile.
“Gladly. Would you like another beer?”
“No, I’m okay. Thanks.” He shivered as Jago stroked his fingertips on the back of the couch. “I should go.”
“Why?”
“I just… I want to focus on the show right now.”
Jago lifted his chin, sinking dejectedly into the couch. “You’re not going to show your audience anything honest if you start by lying to me.”
“I’m not lying. I want the show to be…” He allowed the words to float into nothingness, instead resuming the conversation he’d wanted to finish with Jago outside the Teatro Espanol.
One no less expressive for its lack of words.
Bloody hell, Jago knew how to kiss. Even after the beers, his lips were sweet with red wine and the soft flesh of his hands as they brushed Alex’s temples made him shiver.
“I trust your ability to multitask.” Jago caught Alex’s lips with his once more in a way that made Alex only want to hold Jago close and kiss him for as long as breath would allow.
He smelled like the sun; like home, only Jago tasted like the man Alex wished he’d been at home but never could.
When they finally broke, Jago smiled with uncharacteristic shyness. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I just don’t want to rush things.”
“Things?”
Jago’s smile widened. “Going to make me work for it, aren’t you? Bitch.”
“Work for what?”
Jago tilted his head, staring at Alex as if he were a puzzle in need of solving. True, he was playing up the obtuse act with insufferable cuteness, but only because he was trying to avoid the lingering question that thickened the sexual energy between them.
“I want to give you a massage.”
Alex blinked twice. This was not the offer he’d expected. “You mean, like…”
“My hands on you, pressing your skin, working out knots in your muscles and hopefully relaxing you. Yes, that’s what I mean. Is that okay?”
“I… I suppose.”
“You’ve never had one, have you?”
Alex shook his head, his naivety no longer an act. The playful glint returned to Jago’s eye as he got up from the couch, crossed to the hidden door on which Alex had intruded, pressed it into the wall to open it, and beckoned Alex inside.
“You’re sure?” Alex asked. “You seemed pretty adamant last time.”
“Get in here before I change my mind,” Jago purred.
The door shut behind them, plunging the room into darkness.
Yet no sooner had it clicked shut than the walls took on a luminescence of their own, glowing with gentle, warm orange light, which crept across them like a rapidly growing vine.
Alex watched in awe as the light created by this effect wrapped itself around the room, lightening the space around Jago’s desk, and beyond it, a red and black carpet surrounded by pillows.
The books, the skull, the birds, the symbols…
every piece he’d seen on his last visit remained in place, but the warm light made this seem like the domain of a scholar, not someone embarrassed about his strange hobbies.
“I’m sorry, I lied to you earlier.” Jago pushed his chair beneath the desk, removed his belt and trousers, and kneeled down on the carpet.
He peeled off his socks before unbuttoning his shirt.
“I mean, I have done taxidermy, but just the once. This room? It’s my sacred space and sanctuary.
I wasn’t ready to share that with you yet.
I hope you understand.” He extended a hand toward Alex, who approached with far more caution.
“Are you sure?” Alex asked. “I don’t want to intrude.”
“Stop being so damned English.”
“There’s no need to be rude.”
“You’re here because I desire it, and I hope you do too. The type of massage I do is a sacred interaction, not just between bodies but between souls. I like you, Alex. I’m not only ready to show you this room, I’m ready to share it with you. Do you understand the difference?”
Alex shuffled his feet. “You are gay, right?”
“Yes.”
“So you mean sex?”
For an instant, Jago looked offended. “We’ll see.
First, your clothes, please. There should be no barriers between us.
” He peeled off his shirt and tossed it on one of the pillows at the side of the room.
For the first time, Alex saw the muscular contours of Jago’s compact body.
These extended to a sharp v-cut, which disappeared into a dark thatch of public hair framing a modest but well-formed cock.
Alex wondered if Jago always forewent underwear, or if the move was choreographed.
Jago eased his body forward, extending it like a snake as he pulled himself on his hands towards Alex, tightening the muscles of his lightly furred and perfectly rounded behind as he turned it to the ceiling with a grin. “Don’t make me come up there.”
Alex quickly opened his belt and shucked off his trousers, followed by his socks.
Jago rolled over, his cock lolling to one side as he rested both hands beneath his head, watching Alex disrobe with a patient smile.
Alex paused before taking off his shirt, only continuing when a nod from Jago boosted his confidence.
He felt silly, being so self-conscious in front of a man dressed as nature made him, but touching the soft paunch of his belly, he was suddenly aware of the untrimmed pubes that would accentuate the so-so-dimensions of his cock, the annoying tufts of hair that had begun to sprout on his back, the ugly scar on his right flank, and the one front tooth slightly longer than the other.
“You really hate being on stage, don’t you?”
Jago asked this with such tenderness that Alex managed to dismiss his doubts long enough to toss away his clothes and stand naked before his host.