Chapter Five Tristan #2
His hand came down over mine, big and commanding, spreading my fingers and tangling them with his.
Then he took over. Controlled the rhythm.
Controlled me. Dragging us both towards the edge.
Faster. Harder. My breath broke apart in his ear as my knees buckled, my whole body strung tight as wire.
But he didn’t stop. He chased it. Chased me.
Each pull sharper, meaner, until he came with a grunt, heat spilling over his cock, mine, our hands.
But he kept going, working himself through it, milking every pulse as he held my gaze, urging me right to the brink with him.
And when I came, it tore through me. A groan broke out of my chest, release spilling and mixing with his on our joined hands. Only then did he peel his big hand off mine and wipe it on his jeans, casual as sin.
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
We just breathed the same air.
Close enough to taste each other’s frantic exhales. Close enough that anything either of us said would’ve broken whatever this was. So we said nothing. And stayed frozen there. Stunned, aching, afraid to move, or even to look away.
Then he flicked his gaze past me, down the alley.
I glanced over my shoulder and saw the others.
A few had been watching, faces half-lit in the dark.
I didn’t much care, but Leather did. I saw it in the way he zipped up fast, jaw clenched, eyes dropping to the ground.
The men around us carried on, lost in their own noise.
I bent and hauled my trousers back up.
“What do you call that?” he said, voice low. Rougher now, but quieter. Not a threat. Something else. Shy, almost.
I blinked, confused. “What?”
“So I know what I’m paying for.”
Our eyes met. Held.
I had no fucking idea what I was supposed to say to that.
I should’ve laughed. Told him he’d got his money’s worth. Told him I didn’t take repeat customers. But the words wouldn’t come. And he stepped back, wiping his hand on the hem of his jacket, gaze elsewhere. The distance hit harder than it should have.
“Forget it,” he muttered. “Doesn’t matter.” Then he drew out some money and stuffed it in my front pocket.
Then he turned. Just like that. Back into the dark, the black leather swallowing him whole, and I stood there, heartbeat still wild, skin still hot where he’d touched me, watching until he disappeared.
I hated how empty the space felt without him in it.
But I dragged in a breath, cold air burning my lungs, and told myself to move. To forget him. My hands still shook. And when I finally turned away, it wasn’t the act I remembered. It was his eyes. The way he’d looked at me, as if he’d seen something he didn’t mean to. And how his kiss felt real.
Tentative, but real.
And after the shitshow with Ollie, the realisation landed hard: he’d never wanted me like that. Not with that level of intensity. Or that kind of focus.
This felt different.
And that difference was already addictive.
With numb fingers, I did up my belt and told my legs to move.
My body felt… not borrowed, exactly, but newly issued.
As if someone had swapped it for a version that startled easier, wanted things it shouldn’t.
But I composed myself enough to pass for normal, and made my way back down the alley, brushing past men locked in twos and threes.
One group of four at the end, lost to everything but each other.
Most gave me a look, sultry and open, a silent come join.
What had been easy a moment ago now felt different. Not sordid as such. But claimed.
Mine. And his.
Whoever he was.
But the money burnt a hole in my pocket, a reminder that it wasn’t ours. That whatever I thought that was, it wasn’t love and wasn’t a connection. It was a transaction I was pretending meant more.
I raked my fingers through my hair and went back into the club.
The Yard at full pulse was a living thing and I scanned the room for Benji. Found him dead centre of the dance floor, eyes glassy, pupils blown wide, a bloke in a shimmering shirt pressing something small and white between his lips.
Jesus.
Benji swallowed and smiled as if it were bliss.
My stomach sank. Not because he was taking something, he always did, but because it meant he wouldn’t want to leave.
And right then, I did. I’d chased my rebellion, found it, and it’d gone sprinting off in a leather coat.
There was nothing left here for me but the crash after the high. Everything suddenly felt cheap. Nasty.
I thought about telling Benji I was heading out.
Let him burn bright without me. But I couldn’t.
As out of place as I was here, Benjamin bloody Rothwell, actor, dramatist, Mayfair’s favourite scandal, fitted in even less.
He’d call it research, “method experience,” or some other theatrical bullshit, but we both knew he was a tourist here.
And that was apparent when he started arguing with someone on the floor.
I couldn’t hear the words over the bass or the crowd grinding around them, but I knew that body language.
Sharp gestures, chin tilted high. If I had to guess, he’d started quoting Shakespeare and pissed off whoever was trying to wrangle him for payment.
Then, suddenly, he leapt, cutting through the crush of bodies and strobe flashes like a spark breaking loose, and grabbed my arm. “We’re off!”
I didn’t argue. It was what I wanted, anyway.
So we pushed our way out into the night, laughter spilling from him.
The street had emptied; the queue was gone.
Everyone who mattered was inside or home.
The only movement came from passing cars and the glimmer of neon reflecting in puddles.
Benji fumbled with his phone, thumbs clumsy, the Uber app glowing like a lifeline in the dark.
“Ten minutes,” he announced, then tipped his head with that same reckless grin. “Come on. Walk a bit. I need air.”
“What’s going on?” I already knew I wouldn’t like the answer.
But Benji kept walking and I had a sinking feeling this wasn’t Benji’s first, or even second, visit to this place.
Because he moved through the streets as if knowing exactly where he was going and what to avoid.
And if that was true, if he’d been here with Ollie…
the thought hit sharp enough to make me stumble.
“Nothing, darling.” His voice wobbled between charm and slur, every syllable wrapped in that tipsy drawl he used when trouble was close. “Bit of a misunderstanding, that’s all.”
“What sort of misunderstanding?”
He didn’t get the chance to answer, because two figures peeled out of the dark, grabbed Benji by the arms and dragged him back.
“Oi, posh wanker. Think you could fuck us over, yeah?”
So he had been here before. This wasn’t a random mugging. They’d been waiting for him. ‘Posh wanker’ summed him up nicely.
Wonderful.
The men both wore black hoodies, tracksuits and cheap trainers. The uniform of menace. Not someone Benji normally hung around with or even spoke to, making their familiarity of him that much harder. Then one stepped in front of us both, lifting his jumper.
“You owe us.” The glint in his eye was almost as menacing as the steel tucked into his waistband.
“Jesus Christ!” I stumbled back, heart clawing up my throat.
The other one drifted behind me. I felt him.
Because he was close enough that if I moved, I’d brush him.
I didn’t want to chance that, not with what I knew he had tucked into his belt.
My stomach dropped. Knife crime was something I read about, not breathing this close to me.
It was statistics and headlines and my father’s courtroom anecdotes.
Boys with shaking hands and bad lawyers.
But this wasn’t a headline. This was right here.
Hot breath. Icy rain. The flash of steel that didn’t give a damn who I was.
And I’d never thrown a punch in my life.
My armour was Latin conjugations and a working knowledge of criminal defence. Neither counted for shit here.
I shook so hard I thought they might hear it.
But the worst part?
It wasn’t the thought of getting knifed on some godforsaken Hackney backstreet because Benji couldn’t cough up fifty quid for his latest thrill. It was picturing my father’s face. That quiet, annihilating disappointment.
This wasn’t how the Mayfair elite got offed.
Certainly not by two boys who couldn’t be older than eighteen.
Still, it fucking scared the shit out of me. Knives did that. Whoever held them.
“Not my fault you don’t take black Amex.” Benji had the audacity to laugh. A thin, performative sound, not quite brave enough to convince anyone.
“Wrong.” The man behind him slid a hand into Benji’s pocket and produced the card anyway. Black. Immaculate. Untouched by anything as vulgar as legitimate expenditure. It caught the streetlight and gleamed like a bad punchline. He turned it over, smirked. “Pretty.”
It was. Titanium. Weighty. Designed to be felt rather than used. Came with an obscene list of benefits too—concierge, access, discretion. All the invisible things money bought when it didn’t want to be seen buying them.
But here? Worthless.
The card was probably dead anyway. Benji’s parents would have frozen it the moment he stopped behaving.
Let him keep the object, strip the power.
A lesson disguised as mercy. Something to flash.
To cut lines with, not pay for them. I had one too, of course.
In our world it wasn’t a payment method so much as an accessory.
A signal. Status without liquidity. More useful for the services it unlocked than the spending it implied.
And I very deliberately did not stand between them when it occurred to them that Benji could lock it with a single, shaking swipe of an app.
“We’ll take this too.” The taller one snatched Benji’s phone straight from his hand.
So, that fucked that idea.
Benji didn’t fight it. Didn’t even blink. He knew the score. That bit of plastic would be replaced by morning, new number, same contacts. And whatever was on that phone was locked up tighter than his dad’s bank vault.
The shorter one gave a small laugh, teeth flashing in the dark. “Bet Daddy’ll sort you out, yeah? Maybe send the chauffeur with the cash next time?”
Benji stayed quiet. He’d gone pale, maybe the drink and drugs wearing off or maybe he knew exactly how this ended if he opened his mouth.
I fucking hoped so.
The taller one shoved him back into the wall, leant in close enough for the threat to sit hot between them. “We want cash. Or we use this.” He showed the knife again.
“Wait!” I shot my hand in the air before my brain caught up. Then I reached into my pocket, pulled out the crumpled notes my so-called liaison had shoved in there earlier and held them out. “Here. Is that enough?”
The second man snatched the wad, flipped through it fast, damp fingers smearing the paper. “A ton.” He glanced at his mate with a wide-eyed grin. As if they’d hit the jackpot.
A ton? A hundred quid. Leather had bought my double-handjob for twice what he thought my blowjob was worth. Wasn’t sure whether to feel elated or insulted.
But at least it kept me alive.
“We’ll call it even.” Man pocketed the cash. “For now.” He then pointed at Benji. “But you owe interest. And we want what your mate took!”
They melted into the dark, laughter trailing behind them. Benji lifted a shaky middle finger, which I yanked down as a black Uber rolled up beside us.
The window slid down. “Rothwell?”
“Tis I.” Benji bowed like an idiot before tumbling into the back seat. “Stupid bastards. As if I’d come back here. Wouldn’t be caught dead in their scummy little shithole.”
“You keep going how you are, and you will be caught dead here. Bleeding out in the gutter.”
He blew me a kiss. “Don’t be dramatic, darling. You’ve had your little slum safari. Let’s go back to where we can get into some real mischief, eh?”
He slammed the car door, muffling his laughter.
I stood there for a moment, breath fogging in the cold, rain turning steady. My pulse still hadn’t slowed, and I looked across the street as a figure shifted in the shadows, along with a curl of smoke drifting into the air. The smell reached me.
Tobacco. Rain. Leather.
Then I felt the eyes on me.
I told myself it was nothing.
Had to tell myself it was nothing. Benji was right. I’d had my dance with danger. My slumfest, as it were. And it was loud and clear this world didn’t belong to me.
So I got in the car and left.
Never to come back again.
But couldn’t help myself from asking Benji as we slid away, “Which mate were they referring to?”