Chapter 12 #2
He reaches out and brushes a strand of my hair off my face. It immediately flops back down. “Such wilful hair,” he says.
I clear my throat. “It has a mind of its own.”
“Like its owner.” His voice is so affectionate that it makes my eyes feel hot. Then he takes a deep breath. “It might not work.” I raise an eyebrow, and he elaborates. “I might not be able to take any pictures.”
I surprise myself by reaching up and cupping his face in my hands. His skin is sun-warm under my fingertips. “You will,” I say, pushing all my confidence into that statement. “I know it.”
He stills beneath my hands. “Really?”
I nod fiercely. “Yes. You’re the best photographer in the whole world.”
“I really don’t think that’s true.”
“Yes, it is. I read it in Which magazine, so it must be true.”
“Don’t they evaluate kitchens and hoovers?”
“Yes, what’s your point?”
His laughter is wonderful, and I feel my mouth twitch into a smile just watching him.
Then he sobers, and I can see he’s steady once more. I did that, I think, and the thought shouldn’t be as thrilling as it is. I have a vision of doing this for the rest of my life, and I push it firmly away.
He opens the door and ushers me in. His camera is on the side table, where it’s been all week. Sometimes, when I lie next to him after sex, I see it out of the corner of my eye and fancy I can hear it calling to Reuben.
I hide my sigh as he walks over and give the scuffed leather case a caress.
I have the sudden desire to take the camera away and put it in the deepest bin I can find—somewhere he will never be able to locate it—but the truth is I can’t.
His path lies millions of miles away from mine, and I think this is probably the only time in our lives that they’ll ever cross.
I care about him, so the best I can do is help put him at ease with the camera.
If he’s at ease in himself it’s got to make him safer in Afghanistan.
That’s the most important thing to me. The thought of a world without him in it makes me swallow hard, and my eyes burn.
He looks up as if sensing my emotion. It wouldn’t surprise me. He’s such a perceptive man in a lot of ways. In some ways, though, he’s criminally oblivious. His eyes cloud with concern. “Xavier? Are you okay? We don’t have to do this.”
I shake my head immediately and pull on my sassy persona. After that awful thought, it’s harder than it usually is to find my snarky side. “And miss the chance to be photographed by the great Reuben Langley?”
“Makes me sound like a magician.”
“Come on. Photograph me like one of your French ladies, Jack.”
He rolls his eyes. He doesn’t get loads of film references, probably because he spends a large amount of his life dodging bullets rather than watching the telly, but he gets this one. “It’s sad you weren’t on the Titanic. Your jawbone could have carried a few extra passengers.”
“More than that door did for sure.” I put my hands on my hips. “Clothes off or on?” I make a praying motion. “Please say off.”
He rolls his eyes. “Go and lean against that wall.”
I blink, and he picks his camera up. I see his fingers tremble.
For a second, he pauses, and I say quickly, “Hair up or down?” He loves my hair. That should distract him. Sometimes at night after sex, he’ll wind strands around his fingers, and his face will be absorbed as if he’s Rumpelstiltskin, intending to spin gold from it.
I’m gratified when his eyes flare. “Down,” he says huskily. “Lean against the wall and look out into the sunlight.” His voice has changed. It’s harder—more in control, and fuck, it’s getting me going. I want him to use it when he’s fucking me next.
I hasten to obey him, and I repress a smile when I see his hands have firmed.
He raises the camera, and the click is loud in the quiet, sunlit room.
That first photo seems to galvanise him because he starts to move around me, taking picture after picture, his movements growing surer with each click.
After a few minutes, he says, “Shirt off.”
I obey, and he takes more pictures as I lean back into position.
“Look at me.” The command is soft, but I jump to it. I can’t see his face, just the camera, but I stare into the shutter as if it’s a path into his soul, and I smile.
He stills for a second. “I like that smile.”
I brighten, feeling the warmth in my chest and belly. “Do you?”
He doesn’t answer. Instead, he moves around, crouching and rising and firing off more orders.
His voice is hard now and almost cruel, completely absent the usual grumpily gentle tone he uses with me.
It could feel impersonal, but it doesn’t, because I know I have his entire attention.
Every single atom of his body is focused on me.
As he guides me into position, his fingers are gentle.
He pulls the camera away and looks intently at me. “Take the rest of your clothes off.”
I swallow hard, feeling the air thicken around us.
I want to say something snarky. It’s always my default position when I fear my emotions will be too visible to other people.
But if I snark at him now, the spell winding around us will break.
So, I just nod and kick off my shoes. I wriggle my toes into the carpet as he continues to move around me, snapping more shots.
Once I’ve centred myself, I unbutton my jeans and slide them off.
Then I snap the band of my briefs. “On or off?”
He swallows hard, but his voice is calm. “Off.” Then he pauses, his eyes locked on my crotch. I never mind his attention there, so I stand happily as he comes closer.
“What’s up?” I ask.
“You have days-of-the-week underpants?”
I look down at the briefs. “Yeah, aren’t they cool?”
“If you’re six, I suppose.” His eyes narrow. “You have the wrong day on.”
I shrug. “Well, that’s just me, I’m afraid. Carefree and debonair as the day is long.”
“Or just not very good at laundry.”
My laugh is far too loud, and his mouth twitches, but he immediately snaps a few pictures of my face. That sobers me. I almost want to tell him not to focus on me when I laugh. It’s when I’m at my most vulnerable.
Ever perceptive, he stops. “You okay? Want me to stop?”
I smile at him, unable to hide my affection. He’s just always so careful of me. Always asking if I want him to stop. Always checking if I’m alright. I’ve spent my life searching for this sort of attention and never managed to find it. It’s more special to me than he’ll ever know.
But as I watch him track my features, I think maybe he does know. He has a knack for decoding me. Probably because he studies me more intently than the codebreakers did with the Enigma machine.
“I’m fine,” I say firmly. “Where do you want me?”
His eyes have become dark and full of want. “On the bed,” he says hoarsely.
I swallow hard, and the whole room seems to still.
I settle on the mattress, lying back and looking up at him as he takes the picture. He sets one knee on the mattress, depressing it so I roll slightly to him.
I can’t see his face, which suddenly bothers me. It’s like his attention is somewhere else, so I raise my hand and pull at my nipple ring, hearing his soft intake of breath with satisfaction.
“Xavier,” he warns, and I shoot him an innocent look.
“What?”
“I’m keeping this decent.”
I gesture down my body and bug my eyes out.
His lip quirks. “I’m only taking pictures of your torso and face, not your cock.”
“Why not? It’s the best part of me.”
His face clouds the way it does when I say anything derogatory about myself. “No, it isn’t,” he says immediately, and it makes my whole chest feel mushy and warm, which won’t do at all.
“Don’t you want to take pictures of my cock?” I say, shooting him a cajoling smile. “He might feel left out.”
His mouth is still set in a firm line, but he can’t hide the heat in his eyes. “Xavier, you can’t offer to do that,” he immediately chides. I’d have put money on him having an objection to this. “Nude pictures are a surefire way to fuck up your life.”
“But it’s you,” I say in a small voice. “You’d never hurt me like that, would you?”
“No, of course not,” he says, setting his camera down and running a finger over my face. It hovers near my lips, and I make my mouth into an exaggerated pout to make him laugh. When he does, I take his finger and suck on it, watching the laughter fade like the sun into night.
I release his finger with a pop. “Do you want to?” I ask breathily.
There are a few seconds of hesitation. “Yes,” he finally says, and it’s like a starting gun on my cock.
I lower my hand and run my fingers loosely over my dick, which is chubbing up nicely. His eyes linger and flare with heat, and I reach out, kicking his leg gently. “Aren’t you supposed to be photographing this?”
“You’re going to be the death of me,” he says darkly. “I know it.”
“Hopefully not right now. I have an agenda.”
His lip twitches. “When don’t you?”
I nod at his camera, and he obeys the unspoken command and picks it up.
However, he doesn’t put it to his eye. Instead, he watches the lazy movement of my hand as if hypnotised.
It does wonders for my self-confidence, but I gesture at his camera.
I’m finding that I quite like being bossy as long as I know he’ll take over in the end.
He sets the camera to his eye, and I hear the now familiar sound of the shutter.
I’ve managed to avoid doing nude photos since that time at school when it got me expelled, but that had just been a way of making another boy like me.
This is far from that. For a start, I know Reuben likes me regardless of his grumbling, and because I know it’s safe, it’s actually really fucking sexy.
My cock is fully hard now, and I look into the tiny black lens of his camera. Then I raise my hand and spit into my palm.