Caspian was back in a couple of days, probably having made, like, $100,000 an hour while I’d flailed around trying to come up with pitches and eating a lot of Coco Pops directly from the packet. It was disconcerting because I’d never lacked for inspiration before. There’d always been something going on at college—news or gossip or drama or simply a fresh target for satire. And even at school, I’d got serious column inches out of stuff like the time Glen Lowrey got a D on his chemistry homework, set it on fire with the Bunsen burner, threw the smoldering pieces in the bin, and then the bin exploded. We went to print with the headline BIN BURNER LOWREY IN NEW ARSON SHOCK. And I’d got detention for gratuitous sensationalism.
The problem was, here at the top of One Hyde Park, there was nothing. Just wealth and quiet and bulletproof glass. I mean, unless I wanted to write about being the…kept man? temporary fucktoy? of a gay billionaire. Except no. Just no. I would never do that to Caspian. Or, for that matter, to myself.
In any case, I was glad for the promise of distraction when Caspian texted to tell me he was on his way. And, of course, excited to see him. Because yay for prenegotiated short-term encounters. Also I was hoping now we’d got the nervous-making first bonk out of the way he’d feel more comfortable sharing his kinky side with me. Of course, I could have been reading too much into a few rough kisses and the occasional command, but he seemed to get off on being in control. I could still remember the way he’d responded when I’d gone to my knees on the balcony. The raw need in his voice over the phone before my finals. And I was so very up for more of that: his unheld-back self, unleashed for me.
Except there was also how dismayed he’d been, apologizing for the bruises he’d left on my hips. His mouth-fucking hit-’n’-run at St. Sebastian’s. Probably he was worried about hurting me or pushing me into something I didn’t want, and I guess I could have done a better job of reassuring him I was okay. Admittedly, I only had passing practical experience with BDSM but pornography could be super educational and I’d been seriously hot for everything Caspian had done up till now. Besides, I think I just…liked sex. In all its innumerable, multicolored shades.
The trick, though, was making sure Caspian got that. How did you broach that sort of topic without it being embarrassing or just incredibly presumptuous? I even semi-wussed out on thinking about it properly—settling, instead, for dangling a teeny-tiny pair of decorative handcuffs from one of my nipple shields. Just as a kind of…hint.
Of course I still needed other clothes. At least, probably? That was the thing about waiting for someone to explicitly come over and shag you: there wasn’t really a dress code, unless it was nothing but a come-hither look, but I didn’t quite have the bollocks—so to speak—to try it. In the end I settled on a fairly generic pair of lounge trousers, because they were comfortable, easy to take off, and didn’t make me look completely terrible, and my HUFFLEPUFF FOR THE REST T-shirt, because it was the last clean top I had. Oops.
And then I just had to wait.
Aaaaand wait.
Until, at last, Caspian arrived, having been caught up in traffic. Probably the day would come when I wasn’t a puddle on the floor at the sight of him—all icy-eyed and exquisite, in his three-piece suit—but that day wasn’t today.
“Hi,” I croaked. “Nice trip?”
“Very productive, thank you.” He brought his hand out from behind his back and presented me with a box of matcha chocolate Pocky. “I believe this is what you wanted?”
I’d honestly forgotten I’d asked for them. “Oh wow. You found some.”
“Mmm. The chairman of the Nakamura Corporation was able to locate a convenience store that had them in a stock.”
I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised that Caspian had links to the Nakamura Corporation. Or that he’d apparently asked the chairman about obtaining my favorite Pocky. “You…he…really didn’t have to do that.”
“He was happy to help.”
I couldn’t resist. “People always do what you tell them to do?”
“When I’m making them a lot of money? Yes.” He gave me a bewildered look. “What are you laughing about?”
I smothered my giggles with difficulty. “Nothing. Sorry. Just…someday you have to watch a movie. I mean, any movie. But Pretty Woman would be a good starting point.”
“I don’t have time for films.”
“Maybe”—I peeped up at him hopefully—“we could watch one together?”
“Tonight?”
Shit shit abort abort. “Well, uh, I thought maybe there was something else you might want to do tonight?”
“Now you mention it…I did have a few ideas.”
He offered his hand and I took it, letting him draw me off the sofa. It was an unusually romantic gesture for Caspian—and for me actually—and I definitely didn’t intend to immediately climb him like the monkey bars. But the next thing I knew I was in his arms, my legs wrapped around his waist, and he was carrying me off to the bedroom.
Where he stripped me and sexed me with this kind of ruthless intensity. He touched me in places I didn’t think I’d ever been touched. Err, not in a kinky way, just nobody had ever kissed the crease of my elbow before or stroked the knot of my ankle. It was like he was…learning me? No, more than that—like he was conquering me inch by inch. Which was the sort of thing I should have been into but it was all so very about me it was on the verge of uncomfortable-making. And not enjoyably uncomfortable-making. I mean, the attention was nice—being the gaspy, shivery subject of Caspian’s unrelenting focus—but I could have done without the detachment.
Or maybe detachment wasn’t the right word either. It was hard to think in the middle of the sensual onslaught to which he was subjecting me. And probably that I was trying to think at all was a sign of some hitherto undiscussed messed-upness on my part. But I guess I just wanted him to be more involved? I wanted pleasure to be this bottle of strawberry wine we passed between us on a summer day. I wanted it to be sparks in a plasma ball jumping from me to him and back again. And I definitely didn’t want to be serviced by a beautiful bonk robot as if I was stuck in Westworld.
Which was totally ungrateful of me because there was some amazing stuff going on. My body was having a really happy time—but where was Caspian? Every time I tried to touch him back or participate in any way he’d move my hands or reposition me with infuriating gentleness. I wouldn’t have cared if he’d pinned me or overpowered me, come at me rough and cruel and full of threats of torment. Except, instead, he just held back and held back until his control was nothing but distance.
The worst of it was, I think in some terrible way he thought he was taking care of me. That he was showing me something I needed to see. When all he was really doing was denying me what I needed most of all which was…him. And I didn’t know why. What I’d done to turn him into this careful stranger less than a week after he’d plowed into me like a werewolf in heat just on the promise of hearing me beg.
I thought about stopping him but I didn’t know how. Please don’t make tender love to me because, apparently, I’m a weirdo. And, besides, I wasn’t quite that much of a masochist—the man had serious bedroom skills and I wasn’t about to turn down a ’gasm, even one bestowed by a sexually talented alien who had briefly taken over Caspian Hart. It was good sex. It was just, having seen his naked desire, I knew it wasn’t real.
I came though. Of course I did, with my body alive beneath his hands and his cock deep inside me. And then—when I was too limply postcoital to protest—he flipped me over and finished off in this, well, hurried way. Which was considerate since I got sensitive after but it also made me feel a little bit like a teenager’s sock. The best bit was when he got close and his breathing turned ragged and his whole body curved over mine, his teeth grazing the back of my neck. It was so excitingly predatory of him that it almost got me going again.
But at that point we were pretty much done and Caspian was rolling away from me and I was doing my best impression of a well-fucked starfish, flattened on the bed, with my limbs pointing in whatever direction they’d flopped.
After a moment or two, I turned my head to look at him. At least he’d undressed this time—not that I’d been able to appreciate it. Even naked, there was something armored about him, his perfect body as much a shield as his tailored suits. If he ever let me touch him, my fingers would probably slide over him like glass.
How could he be further away lying beside me than when he’d been a voice down the phone?
Come back to me, I wanted to say.
Except that would have been totally ridiculous.
“Um, was that okay?” I blurted out.
Which was so much better.
His eyes snapped open. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
“I don’t know…I just…oh my God. Can’t you just say yes or no like a normal person?”
He opened his mouth. Closed it. And said finally, “I’m not sure how to answer that.”
For a moment I couldn’t work out how frustrated I was but I ended up laughing instead.
He looked briefly flustered. Then perilously close to amused. “I wasn’t trying to be evasive. Context is important. And I’m not sure what you’re asking.”
That was fair. Especially because I wasn’t sure either.
The thing was, I’d have been happy to be as vanilla as cupcakes with Caspian if that was what he wanted. But the problem was I just didn’t know anymore. It felt like something had changed between us. Or maybe I’d been imagining shit all along?
“I guess I want to check that I’m…um…that you’re happy with me? Was that…what you like?”
There was a silence I couldn’t read. Then, “Did I hurt you again?”
“What? No.” This was going the opposite of well. And rapidly developing into a conversation I didn’t want to have with my arse in the air. I rolled gingerly onto my side, trying to draw courage from the plink of the handcuffs as they swayed on their tiny chain. “It’s more about…The thing is, I want to be the very best prenegotiated sexual encounter I can be for you.”
“Arden”—somehow he managed to sound both fond and exasperated—“you don’t have to worry about that.”
“I know I didn’t exactly cover myself in glory at Oxford but I can be a devoted student when I’m passionate about my subject.”
“Sex?”
“You.” I gave him a hopeful, if slightly terrified, grin. “Which is why I was wondering if there was more I could be doing. When you’re, y’know, when you’re with me.”
“What do you mean?”
Nope. It was impossible to talk about this kind of thing casually. But I tried my damnedest. “Oh, just if you had any special preferences or fantasies or anything.”
“Nothing in particular.” Caspian was better at casual than me. He could build a fucking wall of casual.
But, because I was an idiot, I ran at it anyway. “Well, what sort of things do you think about?”
A very small pause. “Investment strategy, asset allocation, and risk management, mostly.”
“No, I mean when you’re…” Holy shit. Was I really asking Caspian Hart about his masturbatory habits? Apparently I was. And now I was thinking about them. Imagining him, stretched out and naked, much as he was right now, except taut and abandoned, his hand working his own cock. Gosh. What a vision. I would have given pretty much anything to see it…in the flesh, as it were.
He turned slightly. “When I’m what?”
I wussed out and made a gesture.
“Ah.” The hand I had speculated about was resting on his chest. I was a little bit envious of it, to be honest. I would have liked to draw my palm over the smooth skin and elegantly defined muscle—learn the texture of the curling, silky hair for myself. “If you must know, I think about you.”
He did? “That’s unexpectedly flattering.”
“It’s the truth.”
“So, err”—I wriggled a little closer—“what sort of things do you think about doing with…or to me?”
“We just did them.”
“All of them?”
“Arden, I—”
“No, it’s fine. Sorry. I shouldn’t have asked. I guess I just thought it would be hot.”
“Did you now?”
The words, and his tone, were super-quelling. I commenced quietly dying inside, waiting for him to go, so I could curl into a shameball.
But instead he rolled on top of me, bracing himself on his forearms and settling his body over mine. The shock of closeness and the shock of, well, shock drew a little gasp from me. He’d touched me plenty when we’d been doing it, but not like this. Not in a way that let me participate. I raised a knee in welcome and he sank into the warm, cuddly space between my thighs.
“Since you’re interested in fantasies,” he murmured, “why don’t you tell me one of yours?”
“Uhhh…” It was only when he’d turned it round on me that I understood how intimate a question it was. How exposing. Dear God, what had I started? My mouth had gone completely dry. My brain completely blank. His eyes holding me in a cold, blue prison.
“Well?” The cruelty in his voice was both sweet and terrifying and shot straight to my cock. I squirmed and tried to turn my head away, as if this could somehow conceal that I was bright red up top and totally hard down below. His hand slid into my hair, pulling me back. “What do you think about? In the dark. On your own. When there’s nobody to know what you imagine?”
I was blushing even more. I was blushing everywhere. Heat rushing through my body like a river undammed. This was so embarrassing. Except it was an oddly sexy embarrassing—a kissing cousin of desire—because I liked…I liked that he was insisting. It meant I was right. That he did want something more from me. And that maybe he’d let me give it.
“Come on, Arden.” He leaned down and kissed me lightly. A tease, perhaps, or invitation. Reassurance, too, of a kind. “You’re going to tell me.”
Of course I was. “Give me a minute,” I grumbled. “My fantasy life happens to be rich and complex.”
His mouth curled into a rare, soft-edged smile. “I would expect no less.”
There was a silence.
Oh shit. It was supposed to be my line.
“I, uh—” My throat had clogged up. I tried to swallow in a sneaky and subtle fashion and ended up making a Gollumish gulping noise.
Maybe I couldn’t do this after all…
I gazed up at Caspian. It was a little bit magical to have him so close to me. I could see the silver fractals in his eyes. Feel the lightest ripple of the breath from his mouth. And I realized how much I cared about pleasing him. Far more than I cared about being embarrassed.
“I think about being…um…menaced.” There. I’d said it. And it didn’t feel bad at all. In fact, it suddenly seemed a bit ridiculous to have been worried. These were just my fantasies. Nothing to be ashamed of. And there was nothing humiliating about sharing them. Just revealing.
And I didn’t mind revealing myself to Caspian Hart.
Because, in a way, he had revealed himself too. In wanting to know things about me at least as much as I’d wanted to know them about him.
“Menaced how?” he asked after a moment.
“I…Well. Like James Bond.”
“Spies again?” There was laughter lurking in his voice.
And I remembered sharing Oxford’s golden shadows with him, the brush of his fingers. He’d been an impossible stranger then. Now he was a possible one.
I fake-pouted. “I’m not repetitive. I’m thematic.”
“Is he really all that menaced?”
“Are you kidding me?” I couldn’t move very much, so I attempted to challenge his skepticism by wrapping my legs around him and squeezing. “Fleming was a massive pervert. Bond is the most menaced man in popular culture.”
He moved a little restlessly, his arms tightening until the sinews stood out like carvings. “If you insist. I can’t remember the last time I thought about Bond.”
“You haven’t seen the Daniel Craig films?”
He shook his head. Which sent my imagination springing back to Movie Night With Caspian Hart. Him and me and a bowl of homemade popcorn. And Daniel Craig emerging from the sea in his very tight trunks. Glory be to God for dappled things.
Except the man barely had time to fuck me. And it seemed to be an either/or.
“You might like them,” I offered, all impressively noncommittal. “He’s superhot when he’s suffering.”
Caspian pulled back abruptly. Liberty had never felt so cold. “You have some odd ideas about what I find appealing.”
I nearly got sassy and retorted, Well, you won’t talk to me about it. But he looked …absurdly dignified, kneeling naked and affronted between my legs, and trying—for whatever reason—to pretend that he hadn’t just pinned me to the bed and coaxed my mortifying sexual fantasies out of me like a cat letting a mouse scamper between its claws. So, all I said was, “I just think it’s cool that a guy who’s like this massive symbol of masculine pride and strength is actually a raging masochist who spends quite a lot of his time naked, vulnerable, and overpowered.”
He was quiet for a moment, watching me. The intensity of it was shiver-inducing. But I had no idea what he was thinking. About me or about anything. Probably he was just going to tell me he had to leave. To my surprise, he trailed a finger along the outside of my leg, scraping lightly with the nail. “That is, indeed, quite interesting. But I believe I asked for a sexual fantasy, not your dissertation.”
“Maybe it’s both.” My blush was back. I was so obvious. But I’d been pretty chuffed with the dissertation: “I Just Wanna Feel: Masculinity and Masochism in the Works of Ian Fleming and Chuck Palahniuk.” Of course, it was Oxford, which meant it would probably wind up in the marking pile of someone who would give it a third for not being about Chaucer.
“Is that really what you do?” Caspian asked. “Imagine you’re Bond?”
“More that I’m like Bond. I’m still basically me, except for being a spy. And I get captured a lot.”
“That would make you a very ineffective secret agent.”
His teasing was sunlight and firelight and all the bright, warm things between. “It’s wankbait. Not a work experience placement.”
“I apologize. What happens after you get captured?”
I squirmed as if I’d fallen into one of my very own fantasies and was undergoing a rigorous interrogation at the hands of a committed sadist. “Well, my nemesis—”
“You have a nemesis?” His mouth had gone all amused and kissable. “This seems very intricate, Arden. However do you find time to come?”
“That’s what in media res is for. I jump straight to the bit where I’m sweaty, naked, and in chains, being threatened with naughty things.”
“And you enjoy that?”
My cock twitched excitedly, slutty little minx that it was, giving me away. “Um, yeah. I mean…there’s a massive, massive difference between fantasy and reality. I wouldn’t really want to be tortured by the KGB. But being tied up and sexily menaced by someone I liked could be pretty fun, don’t you think?”
“I think,” he murmured, “the boundaries of fantasy are less permeable than people realize.”
“Um? What?”
“I just meant, it probably seems glamorous and edgy and exciting in your head. But in reality, you would most likely feel frightened and degraded. It’s an ugly thing—the will to hurt someone you love.”
So much for flirty pillow talk. I shuddered, suddenly cold, despite the heat of his body. Turned out, there were conversations I didn’t want to have either.
“It can be,” I said finally. “But not all hurt is abuse.”
“Pain is pain, whoever inflicts it.”
“That’s…just not true. Context matters. And so do people.” I closed my eyes—discovering abruptly that talking about sex acts got even more revealing when you tried to articulate the feelings behind them. “The thing with my imaginary nemesis is that…I’m special to him.”
“You don’t have to earn someone’s care with suffering.”
“Oh my God, no.” This was turning into the conversational equivalent of the way we’d just had sex: a hideous combination of mutual goodwill and incomprehension. “The kink is there because I think it’s hot. And the rest is because…it’s a never-ending movie that’s all about me. It’s got exotic locations, a supporting cast, lashings of sex and violence, and a love interest who’s part villain, part hero, wholly infatuated. I know this is going to make no sense to you, but for someone like me? It’s fun not to feel ordinary sometimes.”
I’d said too much. I’d said way too much.
He was quiet for ages. Long enough for my insides to curdle.
And then, in the sharpest tone he’d ever used with me: “Arden, I find your persistent conviction that you’re ordinary extremely irritating.”
I stared at him, jolted out of self-consciousness about my masturbatory habits. Somehow I’d annoyed him. And it was terrifying. Like when he was aroused—the same ferocity, but none of the heat or the thrill. He was giving me frostbite in my heart.
“I’m sorry?” I tried.
“Then stop doing it.”
I nodded frantically. “I will, I will. Um, stop doing what?”
“Telling this lie to yourself and others.”
“Which lie?” My brain was so mushed I could barely remember what we were talking about. “That I’m kind of ordinary? That’s not a lie. It’s—”
His hand came down over my mouth. “What did I just say?”
“Mh mhm mgfh mh,” I explained, “mgfhmh mgfhm mhhm mh mh mhm mgh.” Which had started life as I can’t tell you, because your hand is in the way.
He stared down at me, anger fading, ice thawing. And then, very slowly, let me go. “Enough of this nonsense.”
I dazedly touched my lips, where I could still feel the pressure of his palm. I wasn’t exactly scared of him, just oddly shaken. And convinced I’d accidentally perpetrated an enormous fraud. I mean, it was super nice that he seemed to feel there was something remarkable about me but what was going to happen when he discovered there wasn’t?
“The thing is,” I said quietly, “I’ve been to Oxford. I’m sleeping with you. I know what extraordinary looks like. And I’m just me.”
One of Caspian’s brows lifted into a devastating arch. “Are you truly telling a man who made his first million at twenty-one and his first billion at twenty-five that you are better qualified than he to judge what is extraordinary?”
“Yeah but…millions. Some of my coats don’t even have buttons.”
“You’re not listening to me.” Unexpectedly, he smiled, a swift, lovely thing, as unhesitating as a rapier thrust. “That, in itself, takes a courage few possess.”
It wasn’t courage so much as utter overwhelm, but I thought it was probably best to keep my mouth shut.
His breath fell softly against my lips like its own, ephemeral kiss. “You’re always yourself no matter where you are or who you’re with. You’re generous and passionate and honorable. You make me laugh. And, though many would believe me the last person on earth to need it, you’ve always been kind to me.”
Oh. My. God.
The wanking-related blushes were nothing compared to the hellish inferno currently raging on my face. My head was Jackson Pollock whirly, and for a moment or two, I thought I might cry. But I just about managed to control myself.
Gave an unconvincing bleaty laugh instead.
“I guess you’re right,” I said, “I am pretty awesome.”
He leaned in and took my face between his hands. His fingers were cool and light, his touch so cautiously tender that I had another struggle with my tear ducts. “You are,” he told me.
I gave him the world’s soupiest smile. He didn’t return it—Caspian Hart probably couldn’t look soupy if he tried—but for a moment his eyes were summer day gentle. And I thought maybe it didn’t matter if he was right or wrong or defrauded deranged to think all these bizarrely wonderful things about me. Only that he did.
I thought he might kiss me, but he didn’t, disentangling himself instead. “I have to…that is…I should leave.”
And, this time, I knew it wasn’t rejection. I gave him my best smile—“Of course you do. Those billions aren’t going to make themselves”—and let him go.
For a long time after he was gone, I lay there in a happy stupor, in the bed that was still warm from both of us and smelled very faintly of his cologne and his pleasure. The main thought running through my head was: He likes me. He really likes me.
It was late enough that falling asleep didn’t feel like a total cop-out. Even though technically I could have got up and done useful things, or at least made myself some toast. But I just snuggled down and slipped contentedly into unconsciousness.
Had an absolutely amazing dream.
I was chained up in a dungeon—a proper one, not some sort of BDSM playroom—arms over my head in rusty shackles. Someone was hurting me, the details of it all hazy because it was a dream, until I was running with sweat and blood. And so hard I could have drilled through the stone walls. And then they were inside me. Buried deep enough to burn. One hand at my throat.
And it was Caspian.
Telling me I was generous and passionate and honorable as he took me and hurt me and left me breathless.
Though, of course, I woke up alone.
To another bouquet of fucking roses.