Blue Steel Chain (Trowchester Blues Book 3) Read online

  Dave gave him a great white grin and slung an expansive arm around his shoulders, holding on too tight when James tried to squirm aside. “Well, what d’you think we’re doing?”

  “You said we would talk in private. About us. While you weren’t wasted.” James wasn’t sure who he was most disgusted with: Dave, for once more proving he was a self-centred, infantile little toerag who cared about nothing but his own needs, or himself for having fallen for the sweet talk and still being here.

  Dave shrugged and leaned to the side so a purple-haired white boy with Polynesian chin tattoos could kiss up the side of his throat. “What is there to say? We never said we’d be exclusive, and you’re never fucking here. What d’you expect me to do?”

  “I don’t know. Pay me some attention when I am around. Put me first. Acknowledge that I’m more important to you than one of these . . .” James indicated the groupies with a cut-off gesture that felt dismissive and angry. He wanted to say, But I assumed we were exclusive. You never said otherwise. I thought . . .

  In the back of his mind, the part of him that was interested in alternate points of view—the part that helped him think himself into the shoes of prehistoric people or cultures other than his own—kept piping up to suggest that Dave was just acting like someone in his position could be expected to act. That it was unreasonable to expect better from him. It made him feel guilty for being furious and betrayed. It made him uncertain when he wanted to be righteous.

  Dave stepped to the side and twisted to put the two of them chest to chest. His body heat struck through James’s clothes like a furnace, his skin and his eyes glittering. He raised his head and looked over James’s shoulder, smiling, and then there were hands on James’s hips and a bare chest pressed into his back, the lump of a clothed erection pressing into his arse. He looked down and recognised Steve from his hands—from the golden dragon ring on the index finger inching from his hip to his prick.

  “We can all get on together,” Dave whispered, grazing the top of James’s ear with his lips, going in for a kiss. “There’s no need for all this drama.”

  James’s heart raced until it was almost as fast as the pulse he could see hammering in Dave’s throat. He tried to shove Dave away, stiff armed, so he could get some distance from Steve’s groping hands. “Get off me. Get off! What is wrong with you?”

  “Wrong with me?” Thankfully, Dave was insulted enough to recoil. James elbowed Steve in the stomach and twisted out of the presumptuous grasp just as Dave returned to stab him in the chest with two pointing fingers.

  “What’s wrong with me? Jesus, I remember when you were fun. When did you turn into this fucking old man? When did you sell out to fucking heteronormativity with your little house and your monogamy and your middle-class scruples and your— Don’t pretend you’re not looking down on me right now.”

  James tried to deny this, because it was deeply unfair. He didn’t think he would mind so much if they had some kind of alternative arrangement. A threesome, even. If he liked the other person and the other person liked him and all three of them were tied together by bonds of mutual respect and courtesy and love. Dave had always been somewhat oversexed for his liking and having a second person in the relationship with whom to spread the load might even be a benefit. Polyandry was practised successfully among many cultures and he could have adapted to it, he was fairly sure.

  But this wasn’t anything of the sort. This was just Dave trying to get his rocks off and shut James up in the most expedient way. This wasn’t mutual respect. It was contempt, and he resented it bitterly.

  Unfortunately, by the time he had finished thinking this rebuttal out, Dave had skipped on to something else. “Do you know how many people would kill to be in your position? I’m fucking David Debourne. I’m a legend. I’ve got fucking auditoriums full of randy teenagers jizzing their pants at my every move. And the ones who don’t cream themselves in the audience go home and wank off to me at night.”

  He was pushing into James’s space again, spread hand braced on his chest, face ugly with anger, and his self-aggrandisement might have been pathetic if the things he was saying weren’t true. “And Steve? The golden lion, they call him. They worship the fucking ground he walks on, like he’s the angel Gabriel himself. Any one of them would faint for joy to find themselves the meat in a sandwich with the two of us. And you’re going to be a stuck-up whiny little cunt about it? You don’t deserve to be in the same room as us.”

  James felt the unmistakeable snap of another tie breaking in his chest. He drew himself to his full height and shoved back. Dave went reeling, looking slightly taken aback as if he hadn’t planned to be quite so honest, or as if he hadn’t expected James to have so much fire.

  “I deserve better,” James said and headed for the door.

  Aidan woke slowly, aware even before he opened his eyes that sunshine was slanting down upon him, curving around his cheek like the hand of God. His aches were distant as his thoughts, placed far away from him by something that made his head muzzy and his throat dry.

  He hadn’t expected to wake up. Disappointment rode low in his stomach at the realization that it wasn’t over yet, that he hadn’t suffered enough. He ignored the feeling with a habit that had become an instinct over the years. He ought to be glad to still be alive, so he made an attempt at being glad.

  Cracking his eyes open was harder than he expected, but it brought the reassuring sight of an empty hospital room. Institutional art featuring interpretations of DNA made out of glass and light hung on the white walls. A large flat-screen TV on an angle-poise stand folded out of the side of the bed. An IV tube trailed out of the back of his hand, maybe for painkillers.

  The bedside table smelled like spring under a load of cut flowers, the daffodils wilting slightly, the hyacinths looking fresher, their bow crisper, as if they had been brought more recently.

  He reached up with the tubeless hand and touched his necklace. Still there, still fastened with a padlock wrought like a heart.

  A stir outside the door and then it opened and a nurse came through, shaped like a little planet, or maybe a star—she radiated warmth as she walked.

  “Well, look who’s awake,” she said and awarded him a huge smile for the achievement of opening his eyes. “How are you feeling? Any pain?”

  “Thirsty,” he croaked and wondered how much pain counted as any. His head had begun to ache, but he didn’t want to bother her with inconsequential things.

  She nodded. “We can manage to do something about that.”

  The suite had a fridge. She opened it and brought him a bottle of water, fiddling with the controls to make the end of the bed under his shoulders rise up until he was almost sitting. His hands felt unreliable and his arms weak, so he let her wrap her fingers around his and guide the bottle to his lips. The water was like rebirth, cold and shocking and clean. It slid down his throat and settled in his stomach alongside the dread.

  “There’s someone here who wants to see you,” she said, as he’d known she would. Of course there was.

  “He’s been here every minute God sends.” She fluffed Aidan’s pillow and propped it under his back, nodding towards the door with an approving smile. “Sleeping on the couches out there. And if he has to go, he always brings flowers when he comes back, and coffee and chocolates for the nurses. He’s been so worried. God bless you, you’ve got a good one there. Will I send him in?”

  It wasn’t really meant as a question, Aidan knew that. It was a pleasantry like, How are you? where no one actually expects you to tell. But the thought had lodged in his mind like a thorn. What if it had been a question? What if he could say no? What if he could say, Send him away. I never want to see him again? What then?

  Piers wouldn’t go, that’s what. He would just throw a strop in the nurse’s room, maybe attack them. Hush it up later with money and lawyers once these good people had been traumatised enough.

  It wasn’t really a question. It didn’t need an answer. But
he could delay it. He reached out and touched her wrist with two fingers. She turned back towards him, looking curious.

  “What happened to me?”

  Curiosity became a blend of human startlement and professional concern. She sat down beside his bed. “You don’t remember?”

  Another moment when he could do something. A moment when he could say, He beat me up. And then maybe . . . maybe somebody would do something to help him. Maybe the hospital would know of places he could go, far away from Piers. Places they would keep secret from him. Maybe they’d get the police to take Piers away, and then he could make a new life somewhere else, somewhere he’d be alone. Alone and helpless and injured and scared.

  And maybe if he tried, Piers would kill him.

  He shook his head, pressing back into the pillow, closing his eyes to try to keep the tears from squeezing out.

  The nurse held his hand quietly, until the unexpected swell of grief receded enough for him to open his eyes again. “Your boyfriend was hoping you could tell us. You texted him from outside Dantes nightclub, saying you were afraid you were being followed. But when he got there he found you in an ally nearby, unconscious. It’s good he got you here so quickly. There was a rib out of place that was threatening to puncture your lung if you had twisted wrongly. But we stabilized that. Lots of broken ribs. Two broken fingers, lots of soft tissue damage.”

  She shook her head. “Judging from the bruises, I’d say you were lucky not to have a broken pelvis and spinal damage as well. They hit you with something very hard. You may not believe this when the morphine wears off, but you were fortunate. There’s nothing done you won’t recover from in time. And you don’t remember any of it?”

  He could have killed me, Aidan thought, cold right down to the marrow of his bones. I have to get out. He opened his mouth to say something, but no sound came out. He couldn’t form the words.

  And then the door opened again, and an armful of roses came through. An arm in a Savile Row sleeve. Aidan’s breath locked up tight in a throat that suddenly felt raw, parched, as if it had never touched liquid in its life.

  “I hope you don’t mind.” Piers set the flowers down on the table at the foot of the bed and ran his hands through his sterling-silver hair as if he was unsure of himself. As if he hadn’t just barged into a place where he hadn’t been invited. “I saw you talking through the window. I couldn’t . . . I had to come in. Aidan, oh thank God! Thank God you’re awake!”

  It was an extraordinary sensation. There was a moment where Aidan didn’t know what he felt—where the fear and love and dependency and visceral terror were so mixed he couldn’t distinguish between them. He couldn’t contain them all; he would burst from it. But then they folded themselves together and imploded, and his mind went as numb and hazy as his body. He took a couple of shallow breaths and watched as Piers smiled at the nurse, joy coming off him in waves, and charm like a physical blow.

  “Could we have a moment alone?” Piers asked, deferent and anxious and movie-star beautiful.

  “Of course.” She huffed to her feet and returned the smile, clearly dazzled. “I’ll go and make sure the other nurses are kept occupied. Some of them are a little less accepting than I am, and I don’t want you bothered with that kind of nonsense today. But half an hour, no more. He needs to sleep.” She moved away, but paused to consider the roses in their crinkly paper, slowly drying out and wilting, and obviously in need of water.

  Piers took the nurse’s place in the seat by the bed, took her place holding Aidan’s hand. Aidan was abruptly surrounded by the scent of Louis Vuitton. His lungs tried to shut down, but he closed his eyes and breathed through the panic until they loosened again and he could fall back into the cushions and gasp.

  Piers gave him a look of concerned adoration, squeezing his hand reassuringly. “When can I bring him home?”

  “Tomorrow,” said the nurse, gathering up the roses and placing them in a nearby vase. “Or the day after, depending on how easy it is to bring the pain under control. We’ll have a better idea in a few hours.”

  Tomorrow. If Aidan was going to do something, he would have to ask for help immediately after Piers left. If he ever did leave and didn’t just go back to lurking outside the door. Aidan would have to unblock his silenced voice somehow. And hope that this nurse who was now fluttering out the door, charmed and blushing under Piers’s praise, would believe him. Or hope that one of the other nurses, one of the ones who were “less accepting,” would care enough to help. Wouldn’t feel this was a just punishment for his immoral lifestyle.

  What hope was there that any of them would look at him, built as he was, and believe he would allow this to be done to himself? What kind of a man would take it and not strike back? What kind of a man wouldn’t be too fucking ashamed to ask for help?

  The snick of the door closing narrowed him down to his aching bones, his pulverised, frightened flesh. For a long moment, it was deadly silent in the room. The footsteps and laughter outside seemed a universe away.

  Piers took a deep breath, bent his head over Aidan’s captured hand. His grip didn’t tighten, remained gentle, cherishing. A drop of warm liquid hit Aidan’s palm, and then another, and while Aidan was drawing a blank over what this might mean, Piers sniffed and looked up at him, anguished and red-eyed.

  Oh. He was weeping.

  Aidan made a little protesting noise and instinctively tried to wipe the tears that were spilling over Piers’s cheeks and running down to drip off his chin. Piers couldn’t cry. Aidan didn’t know if it made him scared or sad when Piers was upset, but something in him wailed that it was bad and he had to make it stop.

  Piers caught that hand too and leaned his face into it. “Thank you,” he said, “for not telling her. But . . .” His face compressed around his white lips, almost as if he too was trying not to implode. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what came over me. I’m going to tell you a secret. It’s a terrible secret, but you deserve to know.”

  He gave Aidan a watery, uncertain smile, somehow more human than he had seemed in years.

  “My mother died when I was five,” he said in a hushed, confessional tone. “She killed herself. My father was so ashamed that he buried her in that hill, with the dead king. I watched him do it, from my window. Sometimes I think I can hear her down there, and she’s screaming and she’s angry and she wants to kill me because I didn’t make it stop.”

  Aidan was ashamed himself. It had never occurred to him that Piers might be afraid too. And it should have. It explained so much. What a terrible thing for a child to watch. A child of that age, thinking his mother was being buried alive, powerless and unable to stop it. It must be . . . It must be where the stones had fallen outward. He must have done it right there.

  Aidan’s skin crept.

  “And when you go there, I have these nightmares, these visions, that she’ll take you away because I don’t deserve you. And she’ll— she’ll pull you down there too, under the earth.”

  Piers covered his face with both hands and rocked in the chair. “And I know I don’t deserve you. Darling, I know that. I . . . I . . . This has really made me wake up, you know? I knew I had a problem, but I didn’t know it was this bad. I didn’t think I could . . .”

  He sobbed behind his fingers. “I swear to you, Aidan. I swear it. I’m going to get this thing under control. I’m going to go to counselling. Anger management classes, shock therapy, I don’t know. But I do know that it’s never going to happen again. I promise you. Please, please forgive me. I love you so much. I was just so scared she would get you. And please, please don’t go there again.”

  Aidan couldn’t feel anything keenly—every part of him was still defensively curled up tight inside. But he thought it was pity that moved him to rub a comforting thumb down Piers’s damp cheekbone and murmur, “Of course I forgive you. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. It’s okay.”

  He thought it was pity. It might have been despair.

  Three weeks later
, they were lying in bed after having sex. Piers still called it making love, but Aidan knew there was something missing in him because he couldn’t see it that way. When he’d brought him home from the hospital, Piers had promised he would give him the first week to heal before demanding his conjugal rights again. But he’d still knelt up next to him in the bed and jerked himself off to the sight of Aidan’s bruises, leaning up to spurt cum over Aidan’s chest or hips or flaccid cock.

  Possibly he didn’t think of that as sex, just masturbation, but for Aidan it was almost as bad as penetration. He didn’t want to think about sex, didn’t want to be in the same room where it was happening, didn’t want to be involved even by knowing that he was in Piers’s thoughts when Piers was aroused.

  Was there something wrong with him? True, he didn’t get out much, but he watched a lot of TV, a lot of films. He read a lot of books. And he didn’t think he should feel that sex was an oppression, a sordid task that he sometimes did for Piers, because Piers liked it, but really would rather avoid. He didn’t think it could be normal that he would rather be cleaning the toilets—that he would feel that was less demeaning.

  Okay, the beating might have made him feel like this, and that would be understandable if he hadn’t felt like this already. If he hadn’t felt like this all of his life.

  Back in the early days of their relationship, when he had still been overawed and astonished by the fact that someone as perfect as Piers could possibly want anything to do with him, he had been . . . flattered. Glad to know Piers found him desirable. But still, every kiss had taken him by surprise, every fuck had been a puzzlement, because he forgot between one and the next that anyone could really want to do this. Once out of curiosity perhaps, but surely never again.

  Now it seemed that Piers regarded having sex as some kind of indication that he was forgiven, that things were all right between them. Aidan frowned in deep thought. Maybe he even thought Aidan would find it comforting, somehow? Certainly Piers liked to be sucked off when he was ill, because he said it made him feel better. Aidan didn’t understand that either. The idea that you would devote all that energy to something so . . . laborious and unrewarding . . . when you were already feeling low? It made no sense.