Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The door shuts, and I’m on him. My hands on his shirt, my mouth on his neck, three days of silence detonating on impact.
‘Wait,’ he starts.
‘No.’
Hands. Skin.
Three days. Ronan’s questions. The phone screen. The A glowed in the dark like an accusation—the weekend in someone else’s skin.
I need this. Ronan took it. The investigation, the library card, the phone, each wall taken apart and left in the light. And now I need it back. The only place I know how to take it: here. This flat, this man.
‘We should do something different today.’ I step back. Put a hand on his chest and push, not hard, just certain. ‘No toys. Words.’
His eyes, the calculation. The risk assessment that happens behind those glasses every time I propose something new.
‘What kind of words?’
‘The kind where you do exactly what I say.’
Silence. Outside, a car passes. Inside, the space between us is the width of a decision.
He nods, slowly. Already decided.
‘Kneel.’
One word, the air contracts.
Laurence hesitates. I see the fight, the professor, the man who commands rooms.
Then his knees hit the floor.
Christ.
The visual. I’m not ready for it. Laurence Haldrey on his knees in his own flat, looking up at me through those glasses, lips slightly parted, his hands resting on his thighs.
My cock is so hard it hurts. Hands stay locked at my sides. Not yet.
‘Undress me.’ My voice comes out steadier than it has any right to. ‘Slowly.’
His hands are on my belt. The buckle, the button, the zip, the same sequence I’ve done to him a dozen times, reversed. My jeans are around my ankles. His fingers hook the waistband of my boxers and pull down, him level with my cock, his breath warm against it.
‘Suck me like you mean it, Dr Haldrey.’
The title, in this room. On my lips while he receives me. The obscenity of it makes my knees buckle.
He takes me in, slow. Deliberate. He knows what I like; he’s learned it all. The flat of his tongue, then the tip, then deep, his hands on my hips gripping hard enough to mark.
I grab his hair, hold. Guide.
He moans around my cock, and the vibration nearly kills me. Fuck. I pull back, not yet.
‘Stand up. Bed. On your back.’
He does, I climb over him. Pin his wrists above his head with one hand; he could break the hold easily, but doesn’t.
Condom on. Lube. I reach down, position myself, and his hips tilt, the smallest possible movement upward. An opening, he asks without words.
I prepare him quick and then push in slowly. His wrists don’t move. His eyes don’t leave mine.
I fuck him with his wrists held. My pace, my angle. My decision is when to speed up, when to slow down, when to stop moving entirely, and let him feel the fullness without the friction until he’s swearing in Lancashire and his hips are trying to move, and I won’t let them.
‘Please.’ I didn’t know this man could beg. The sound rewires the inside of my skull. Permanently.
I let him come, time it. The tightening around my cock, the arch of his back, the sound dragged out of him through clenched teeth. I follow. Because once his body does that, I couldn’t hold back if I wanted to.
After: his wrists. Red marks from my grip. I stare at them, evidence like a signature.
Thursday. Same flat, different script.
‘My turn.’
He says it in the hallway instead of the bedroom. The hallway, my jacket still on. His voice is the lecture-theatre voice.
‘Strip. Lie on the bed. Don’t speak unless I tell you.’
The reversal hits like cold water. I open my mouth to joke. Deflect. Reach for the arsenal I keep for moments like this.
‘That wasn’t a request.’
I strip. Lie down, the ceiling. The crack in the plaster. My cock is already hard because conviction doesn’t care which direction it’s coming from.
He takes his time. Stands at the foot of the bed. Looks at me like I’m an unsolved problem, evaluating, deciding where to start. Then he touches me, my ankle first. Works up. The inside of my calf, my knee, the inside of my thigh.
When warmth finally closes around my cock I’m already shaking. He hasn’t hurried once.
He edges me three times. My hands gripping the sheets, every muscle taut, and each time he stops, pulls back, waits, his hand flat on my stomach, feeling my breathing. Laurence has been practising withholding his entire adult life.
I come only when he lets me. The orgasm breaks open. My whole body convulses, and he holds me through it—his mouth on my hip. The aftershock rolls through me in waves that are his now, not mine to stop.
‘You can speak now,’ he says. Quiet. Almost amused.
‘Fuck you.’
He laughs. I haven’t heard him laugh during sex before. The sound cracks open something sealed inside me.
After. The bed. His sheets smell like us.
He plays with my hair, absent. The habit’s stayed.
‘I was with someone. Before.’ His voice is different. Careful. Each word is placed like a foot on ice.
Stillness becomes survival. The smallest shift, and this ends.
‘Another academic. At Cambridge. It ended very badly.’
‘Badly how?’
Silence.
‘I crossed a line.’ Flat. Final. It sits between us like a locked box, and his face is stone, and I know that the line he crossed is the one I’m standing on. The one we’re both standing on. He’s not going to say it. Maybe not ever.
I wait. He doesn’t open it.
‘You don’t have to tell me,’ I say.
‘Thank you,’ he says.
I trust this man.
The words stay locked inside where they’re safe. But they’re there.
His breathing slows, his arm heavy. The flat stills like it does when the world outside has given up pretending it matters.
I press my face into his chest—the red marks on my wrists cooling in the air.
The marks will fade by morning. The trust won’t.