Chapter Fourteen You Don’t Own Me
chapter fourteen
You Don’t Own Me
This was worse than a road traffic collision.
A tailgate of students meandered outside Aaron’s Halls of Residence, rubberneckers all wanting a whiff of what was happening inside. The police were in there. Some outside, too, questioning anyone who said they had a connection to Rahul, despite Aaron knowing none of them did. Because when he’d asked them before, they’d all told him they had no idea who he was.
Getting their fifteen minutes of fucking fame.
Everyone on his floor had been told to evacuate, and they’d all buggered off somewhere else. But Aaron sat on the communal staircase, back to the railing, one foot on the wall, one down two steps, throwing a luminous pink bouncy ball at the wall, keeping his ear to the ground with the goings on. He wondered if this was what it was like in jail. Boredom and monotony.
Thud, thud, thud, catch .
Thud, thud, thud, catch .
For maybe a worse reason than the rubberneckers, he, too, wanted to be part of all this. Wanted to know what was happening. What the police were looking for. What they’d find. It was a fascination; he supposed. How could he not be fascinated by it? Death. Murder. That was all in his past. But he remained as stoic as he could, throwing the bouncy ball with a thud, thud, thud, catch .
“Hey,” a voice called to him from the open communal door.
Aaron slapped the ball into his palm. Looked to his left. Said nothing. Despite his heart beating into overdrive.
Dr Kenneth Lyons leaned out of the way for another forensic in a suit to scurry past him. “You want somewhere to go while this all happens?”
Aaron cocked his head. “Like where?”
Kenny offered nothing other than a tilt of his head. That’s all it required, anyway. Because Aaron leapt up, grabbed the bag by his feet and trundled after him, squirming into his hoodie. This was better than going to the third year gang bang at Taylor’s. He might get some answers. Better answers. And, well, maybe something else he’d been thinking about non-fucking-stop.
“What they looking for?” Aaron asked as he trotted alongside Kenny, over the grass mound, toward a staff car park.
“Anything. Clues.” Kenny pressed his key fob for a gold Land Rover Discovery to light up. “Get in.”
Aaron gave him an eyebrow arch over the car roof, but he opened the passenger door and dropped onto a fabric seat where the distinctive scent of artificial lemon from the dangling air freshener hit him. He checked the logo on the wooden tree. It was a hand car wash Kenny was clearly a frequenter of. Because no one kept a car this clean.
When Kenny got in, he started the engine, and Dusty Springfield blasted out of the speakers. Kenny switched it off with a quick tap.
“Had you down as more of a Swifty,” Aaron said, settling back in the seat.
“I like classics.” Kenny floated the car out of the university and into all the early evening traffic heading towards town.
“Yeah? Me too.” Aaron winked. “We got something else in common.”
Kenny peered at him across the car. “Something else ?”
“We both like getting in people’s heads.” Aaron chuckled, then settled back in the seat. “Where are we going?”
“My place.”
“Bit forward. Do I not get dinner first?”
Kenny tightened his grip on the steering wheel. Didn’t answer. So Aaron assumed this wasn’t him being taken on a date. After a few more twists and turns into the suburbs, Kenny parked up on a single driveway outside a standard semi-detached house with neat hedges, a white picket fence, and two hanging baskets.
Aaron peered out of the front windshield. “This looks very… normal. Like it should have a wife, two kids and a dog in there.” He turned back to Kenny. “Does it?”
“Get out.” Kenny shouldered open the car and rushed up to his front door, grabbing the Amazon box shoved under the porch. He angled his head for Aaron to get inside, checking across the street to see if anyone was peeking through their curtains watching him ushering a student into his house.
Aaron took his time.
He doubted there was a family in there. As much as Kenny wasn’t opposed to straying, if him picking up twinks in gay bars whilst in a relationship with Heather was anything to go by, Aaron didn’t have him down as someone to bring that home to his wife and kids.
He hoped there was a dog in there, though.
He liked dogs. Dogs were uncomplicated. They either ripped your head off or licked the wounds.
Stepping inside the gleaming hallway, he whistled. The staircase opposite him had had a fresh whiff of polish along the wooden banister, and the carpet wafted the scent of a recent deep clean, alongside perfectly wiped surfaces, with a potted plant in the corner beneath the mirror, a particular vibrant green suggesting it had lovingly been watered.
“This what pointing out rapists and murderers gets you, huh?” he said as Kenny checked through his post.
“It’s the why , Aaron. We point out the why people rape and murder.”
“Because they like it?”
Kenny shoved the letters on the side windowsill and dumped the Amazon box underneath it. He pointed up ahead. “Kitchen.”
“Should I take my shoes off?” Aaron lifted his tatty All Stars. “This looks like a no-shoe zone.”
“No. Move.”
Aaron stumbled to the back of the house and into the kitchen-slash-diner, where he let out a soft gasp of surprise. The pristine, sleek black-and-white design screamed modern and new, with the bi-folding glass doors like a full-length mirror looking back in on itself because of the dark from outside where, Aaron suspected, was a decent sized garden. The place practically gleamed, spotless and orderly. And in the centre of the breakfast bar stood a fresh bouquet of bright colourful flowers, beside them an envelope with curly cursive writing of Dr Lyons’ shopping list scrawled on the front.
Dr Lyons had a cleaner.
And OCD.
Kenny went to the built in fridge and cracked it open. “Do you want anything to eat?”
Aaron ripped off his hoodie, dumping it on the floor with his bag, then ruffled down his loose T-shirt and stroked back his hair. “What you got?”
“Stuff for a sandwich.”
Aaron perched on a stool at the breakfast bar, spinning it with lazily childlike air. “All right. You can make me a sandwich.”
Kenny moved mechanically, pulling out salad, ham, cheese, butter, everything to assemble a simple meal. Aaron wasn’t getting the slap up steak dinner that Heather got, then. But the way Kenny slapped the bread on the chopping board with his shoulders tense and his jaw clenched, Aaron was under no illusion he was in the same realm as the woman Kenny was dating. Especially as no idle chit chat was forthcoming. Kenny was waiting for him to fill it. Aaron knew what Dr Kenneth Lyons was doing. Making this whole situation as awkward as fuck so Aaron might say something. Might need to fill the silence.
He did, but he wouldn’t do it with words .
So he checked out the far end of the kitchen, where a tatty wooden piano wedged under the slanting roof of the staircase caught his attention.
“You play?” he asked, almost unconsciously. A little of the real him snuck out with the question. With the hope. With yet another piece of commonality. Something they might share.
“My mum did.” Kenny sliced through the cheddar cheese. “The piano’s hers.”
Aaron slid off the stool, unable to avoid going over to it. He hadn’t played in a long time. When at school, in the sticks of the countryside, he’d used to sneak into the music block at lunch to give himself his fix. But after moving to London, he no longer had access. And playing piano when in a halfway house in Woolwich wasn’t recommended if he wanted to keep his pretty face. But here…here was different. So he lifted the fallboard with a gentleness at odds with the usual sharp-edged demeanour he carried around and stroked the keys. The smooth feel of real ivory shunted him back in time. To a different place. A happier phase of his life. A safer existence. The irony didn’t escape him, and he could sense Kenny’s eyes on him like a piercing laser. He’d stopped making the sandwich, and it was as though he’d sucked all the air from the room when he held his breath in anticipation.
Aaron cracked his neck from side to side. If Kenny wanted to know him, there was only one way to do that. One way to be absolutely certain. Whether it would ruin him, or them, or whatever chance they could have had, Aaron had to test it. He liked testing boundaries. It had got him into trouble more than once, but somehow, like a moth to a flame, he was always ready to fly right into danger and burn.
Because, as his mother had once said, he was invincible.
Or had she said invisible?
He couldn’t remember, so he dragged out the piano stool, the foam and leather seat cracked and torn, and gazed up at the ceiling light, searching for the recollections long buried. He waited a beat, then, having grasped that elusive memory, took his seat, hovering his fingers over the keys.
Three. Two. One.
He came alive. His whole body. He didn’t just play the piano; he roused it, coaxing every note into existence with an electric energy, a revival of the music his mother had taught him. And the piano, though slightly out of tune, responded to him as if it had been waiting for this moment. For him . To bring it to life again.
Aaron threw himself into it. Head bowing. Shoulders dipping. Pressing his foot to the right pedal to lengthen and sustain the notes echoing around the sterile kitchen. And the melody flowed, a seamless, hypnotic current, as though releasing the trapped notes that had been yearning to fill the space once again. It wasn’t a random tune, either. Not just any song. But the unmistakable, delicate piano instrumental of Dream a Little Dream of Me.
Why?
Because Aaron liked walking on a knife edge.
Then he stopped. Peeked over at Kenny. Would he say it? Would he ask? Was he wondering, too, who Aaron was? But Kenny was stunned. Lips parted. Frozen and hypnotised. So Aaron slapped his hands on his knees, twisting on the stool, and rose to check the food Kenny still hadn’t assembled. “No tomato,” he said.
“What?” Kenny blinked himself back into the room.
“I don’t like tomato.” Aaron stood and made his way over to the breakfast bar opposite Kenny. “The other salad stuff’s fine. But not tomato. Seepy juices make me gag.”
“Not from my recollection.” Kenny slathered the butter over the slices of bread.
“Oooh. You went there !” Aaron straddled the stool. “Not all seepy juices. Just tomatoes’ seepy juices.” He dumped his elbows on the counter, facing him, then reached over to grab a slice of cucumber and crunched through it. “What do you gag on?”
Kenny arched an eyebrow.
Aaron chuckled, resting his chin in his hand and twisting his arse from side to side to make the seat spin. And Kenny’s head, it would seem.
“You don’t have to do that.” Kenny pointed the tip of the knife at him. “You can just sit on it straight.”
Aaron leaned back. “Even though I’m bent?”
“Even though you’re bent.” Kenny slapped the ham and cheese onto the bread, added the salad, then held up a jar of mayonnaise.
“Yeah, slather that shit on.” Aaron rubbed his hands together.
Kenny spooned a dollop on one side of the bread, then pressed it on top of the contents, crushing down to make the sandwich. He cut it in two, crouched for a plate from the cupboard below, then pushed it across the counter. Aaron dived straight in, taking a huge bite, the sauce gathering in the corner of his mouth, and Kenny stepped back, arms folded, once again assessing him.
“You play piano.” Kenny said. Not a question, because Aaron had already answered that. It was his subtle way of making Aaron talk .
But Aaron had a mouthful of sandwich. “Mmm hmm. Used to.” He threw out between chews.
Kenny waited.
So Aaron asked his own question. “You invite all your students back here for a ham and cheese on rye?”
“Only the ones who’ve sucked my cock.”
Aaron choked on his bite. Coughed. Gagged .
“Not just tomatoes, then.” Kenny pointed a finger from out of its fold and Aaron looked up at him with a death stare.
Kenny glided over to the sink, tension creeping through the air like a slow fog, and he grabbed a glass from the draining board, filled it with water, then handed it to Aaron. Aaron kept his eyes trained on Kenny while he knocked back the water, watching him move around the kitchen, reaching up for a lowball glass from a higher cupboard and slamming it beside a decanter of whisky. He then poured himself a glass, downing it in one long gulp that had Aaron’s cock stirring.
“You get that, and I get water?” Aaron cut through the heady silence as he finished his sandwich, wiping his hands down the thighs of his ripped jeans.
Whisky would loosen his tongue.
And his jeans.
Kenny shot him a look, sharp and pointed, one that said more than words ever could. A look communicating his authority, control, and an unspoken don’t push me . If it was to warn Aaron off, he was working the wrong vibe. Cause that stirred him all the way on. Why invite him here if he didn’t want to be pushed? Given a little shove? A tantalising thrust in his direction?
Kenny poured another drink, knocked it back, and his voice turned to gravel when he said, “You earn it.”
Aaron raised his eyebrows, rocking back and forth on the stool. “How many other students have had your cock in their mouth? Should we set up a club? Take sign-ups at the Fresher’s Fair?”
Kenny remained stoic, almost too calm. “Just the one.” He cocked his head. “So far.”
Aaron laughed. “Damn. I was hoping to make some friends.”
“That would be unwise, considering what happens to those you get friendly with.”
Aaron clutched his heart. “Ouch. That hurt.”
“Did it?” Kenny’s voice remained controlled, but there was an edge there, a subtle threat beneath the surface.
Aaron’s smirk faltered for a second, but he put it back just as quickly. “Rahul’s not even cold, and here you are using him to make me feel bad.”
Kenny leaned forward, eyes narrowing. “ Do you feel bad?”
The question wasn’t casual. It was a weapon, carefully aimed, designed to provoke. Aaron recognised the shift in tone, and for a moment, his playful mask slipped.
“This thing you’re doing? Is it, like, that technique you were lecturing us about the other day?”
“You tell me.”
Aaron chuckled, but it was hollow. So, abruptly, he let the humour drain from his face for Kenny to see a little of the real him. “Yeah, I feel bad. Course I feel bad. As bad as I can for a bloke I barely knew. He made a killer daal, man. Now I’m stuck with Super Noodles. So, yeah, I feel that bad.”
Kenny studied him. Aaron was good at deflection. At burying anything real under layers of sarcasm or hardened comebacks. But Kenny, no doubt, had seen it all before. And Aaron could feel himself wilting under the expert scrutiny as Kenny poured himself another glass of whisky and created the silence that followed.
Aaron tilted his neck. “Are you psychoanalysing me?”
Kenny once again regarded him with lingering scrutiny. “Always.”
“What do you see, then, doc?”
“I’m yet to make an informed analysis.”
“Well, I do love the spotlight.” Aaron jumped off the stool, then jabbed a thumb over to the other side of the room. Beyond the piano. “That a jukebox?”
“Yes.”
A slow grin spread across Aaron’s face. “Huh. Nice.”
Aaron meandered toward a retro glass jukebox, steps languid, as though he had all the time in the world. In a way, he had. And Kenny followed his every move as if he couldn’t, or daren’t, look away. Aaron thought he better give him a show. Something to look at. Other than who Aaron was.
Placing his hands on either side of the glass casing, he dipped forward to inspect the records within. He felt more than saw Kenny’s eyes tracing the lines of his neck, the delicate curve at the base, the skin exposed just enough as he let his T-shirt ride up. Because it was heavy. Laden. Thrilling .
Aaron’s laboured breaths clouded the glass, and he was glad Kenny was far enough away he wouldn’t see the condensation defacing his beloved surfaces.
Although…he might get a slap for it.
“You do love the classics,” Aaron said, scanning the listings of old records, trying to regain control of the situation.
Kenny’s breaths were hard. Deep. Rumbling .
Aaron might explode on that sound alone.
Within a few clicks, he got the jukebox humming to life and the retro machine, with its neon lights and chrome trim, glowed, casting sparkling colours across the black and white box tiled floor. He picked his choice, and the handle slid into place, selecting his chosen record with a mechanical whirr, filling the room with the unmistakable powerful, dramatic orchestral swell of Dusty Springfield’s You Don’t Own Me.
Kenny said he liked the classics. Let’s see if he liked what Aaron did with them.
With his back to Kenny, Aaron swayed. Jutting his hip to each click and thud of the bass line. He rocked his shoulders from side to side, letting the rhythm seep into his veins. There was something hypnotic about dancing. And seductive about classic ballads. It was as though he was part of the melody itself. Shunted back to a time and place where he felt invincible. Cherished. Looked at . Like when he was in Inferno. He didn’t just dance; he embodied the music. And this wasn’t any old dance. It wasn’t him switching off, getting out of his head. It was him goading Kenny to watch him. See him.
Feast on him.
Because Aaron wanted nothing more than for Kenny to eat him alive.
So he turned, locking eyes with Kenny and mimed along to the lyrics. He, too, liked the classics. Or, well, his mother had. Did . And he rolled his hips in time with the pounding bass, movements smooth and languid, gliding a hand over the jukebox’s gleaming surface with an easy sensuality. Teasing. Probing. Every flick of his wrist or sway of his hips, a feline provocation, pushing the boundaries to keep Kenny watching him.
Watch he did.
He couldn’t tear his eyes away, and heat pooled in Aaron’s gut as Kenny’s eyes glinted, his nostrils flaring with his rabid breaths. So Aaron added a devilish smirk, cavorting to the rhythm, miming the lyrics that might as well have been written for him. No one owned him. No one could.
But if Kenny wanted to take him for a little while?
Oh yeah, Aaron would let him.
Even if it scared the ever-living fuck out of him.
Kenny set his glass down on the kitchen counter, then stalked around the breakfast bar. Aaron’s heart pounded in synch with the crashing drum solo as Kenny skated closer, a wildness sparking in his eyes. Aaron lured him in, never wanting that dark, hypnotic gaze anywhere else but on him . Always on him. He yearned for Kenny to set him alight again. And he lit the match when he closed the distance.
But he stopped just as abruptly, movements tight, and leaned past Aaron as if his only purpose was to silence the music. Their eyes met, and the air between them thickened. Aaron moved in rhythm, swaying his hips a whisker away, the unspoken challenge written in every conscious motion. Kenny inhaled sharply, his chest rising as if pulling himself together, gaze flickering with the tension of losing his grip on the rulebook. He clenched his jaw, but the struggle written in his eyes had the lines blurring, and his logic unravelling, and Aaron waited on tenterhooks. Kenny then looked away, but the reflection in the dark glass of his luxury floor-to-ceiling windows betrayed him, pulling him back to Aaron like a magnet.
Aaron knew it was coming, felt the air shift, and braced himself.
Kenny grabbed Aaron’s hips, firm and commanding, as if trying to hold him still, to push him back. But his grip tightened, almost possessive, and Aaron’s breath hitched, sharp and audible, but he didn’t flinch. Didn’t step away. He held perfectly still, heart pounding. Waiting. Testing. Daring Kenny to cross the line they both knew was already gone.
“Go on,” Aaron whispered over the tension.
Kenny’s chest rose. Then, without words, he dragged his fierce hands up into Aaron’s T-shirt, fingertips grazing his skin. Aaron held his breath as Kenny kept his touch slow, featherlight, tracing the contours of Aaron’s body, every inch, as if memorising him to sketch later, every mark, every dip of muscle, every line of sinew. And Aaron tensed, then relaxed under his expert hands, yielding to his touch as he knew he would. Who was in control now? Aaron knew it wasn’t him. But Kenny probably thought the same. And, in a silent surrender, Aaron lifted his arms, dropping his playful facade to hand himself over to Kenny. He wasn’t hiding anymore.
He wasn’t Aaron Jones. The given name. The fake persona.
He was him .
And he wanted Kenny to know .
Beneath Aaron’s top, Kenny swept his thumb over his chest, then paused, a startled look of surprise. Not an unpleasant one. A fascinated and tempted one, and he flicked the bar of metal pierced through Aaron’s nipple, lips parting. Aaron wanted to bite those pink cushions between rough, dark stubble and have Kenny tweak his barbell while he did it. But Kenny didn’t give him the chance as he curled his fingers into the fabric of Aaron’s T-shirt, yanking it up and over his head in one swift motion. He threw the T-shirt to the floor in a heap, then stepped back.
Aaron panted, hair dipping into his eyes, exposed. Revealed .
And he stared right back at Kenny, his full three-piece suit of shirt, tie, waistcoat and trousers holding him together. The pull of desire tightened around Aaron’s throat the longer he stood there, topless, in front of this man who’d twice ripped his world apart. Because it wasn’t just lust in Kenny’s eyes. It was more primal than that. As if he couldn’t fight the pull. And Kenny had stripped away Aaron’s defences, too. Turned him into something he didn’t recognise. The person he avoided being. And the longer he stood there, completely vulnerable and at his disposal, it wasn’t just his body laid bare—it was everything .
The jukebox clicked off the song, leaving only the sounds of their shared breaths.
“You gonna just stare at me?” Aaron breathed out the same words he’d used in the back room that had started all this.
“For the moment.”
Kenny was trying to fight. Desperate not to give in. His breaths came ragged, and his muscles tensed, so Aaron stepped closer, and his resolve cracked . Aaron smirked. And he tilted his head, leaning in, hovering his lips by Kenny’s neck, the coarse stubble rasping his delicate lips and driving him wild. He remembered that beard destroying him before, and he wanted it again. The pleasure. The pain. And his breaths came hot and heavy, grazing Kenny’s neck. In a flash, Kenny shot up his hand, gripping the back of Aaron’s neck, digging his fingers in, trembling with restraint to keep him there. But Aaron had him. He knew it. Kenny knew it. And Aaron flicked out his tongue, licking a slow line up to Kenny’s ear.
“Told you, you want me,” he whispered, voice dripping with seduction. “So take me.”
Kenny tightened his grip on Aaron’s neck, then he tucked his feet between Aaron’s and shoved him against the jukebox. Aaron gasped. Sprawled over the glass, he panted as Kenny draped his entire clothed body over him. Aaron dropped his head back, laying himself out, giving himself to Kenny by gliding his hands through Kenny’s hair, waiting for the kiss to consume him.
The unmistakable sound of vibrating snapped Kenny from his reach.
Kenny stepped back. Away. Wiped his mouth with trembling fingers.
Aaron unstuck himself from the glass casing as Kenny fished out his phone. Answered it.
“Heather?” Kenny stumbled all the way to the other side of the kitchen as he took the call.
Aaron crouched, retrieved his T-shirt, put it back on and when he glanced back to Kenny, he had his back to him, talking to her .
Aaron regained his senses and the control by leaving.