Slippery Creatures Read online

  “Sorry,” he said. “You look like you were having a night in.”

  “I still am,” Kim pointed out, hanging up the damp hat and coat. “Would you like a drink?”

  “I...” He wasn’t sure if he wanted to drink, to sit on a sofa and make awkward conversation.

  “Have you eaten?”

  “Yes. Thanks,” he added a bit too late.

  “Are you here to give me the information?”

  “No.”

  “Has something terrible happened that I ought to know about?”

  Will managed a smile. “Not yet.”

  “Well, that’s all the other options,” Kim said, and stepped close.

  Will didn’t move. Kim examined his face, eyes searching. He moved his hand up slowly—not tentative, simply giving Will time to push it away or step back. He didn’t.

  Kim’s fingers brushed his cheek, then slid down, over his jacket front. “That’s a dramatic flower.”

  “My friend made it.”

  “Phoebe told me. She gave me a suffragette orchid. Did you have a pleasant lunch?” His hands closed on Will’s lapels, gently lifting the jacket as if to slide it off his shoulders.

  “I—” He wasn’t going to stutter all night, damn it. “Very pleasant. Can we not talk about that?”

  “We might have had enough lying for the moment,” Kim said. “Phoebe knows who I am. So do you now.”

  “I bloody doubt that,” Will said, and reached for him.

  Their mouths met hard, lips crushing together. Will had Kim’s face in his hands, cupping the fine structure, the high cheekbones. Kim’s hands moved down to Will’s waist, under his jacket, pressing hot against his shirt. They kissed in bites and gulps, like starving men. Kim pulled himself close to press his hips against Will’s, and Will snarled in his mouth and grabbed for his arse to grind him closer still. Kim bent against him, pliant, and Will could feel the need pounding in his groin.

  “Are we going to be interrupted?” he demanded, lifting his mouth away.

  “Not if I lock the door.” Kim clamped both hands over Will’s arse, a very deliberate gesture, gave it a second, and stepped back. “Which I shall now do.” He did so, turned, and stood rather than coming back, eyes on Will in the lamplight.

  Will took the scrutiny for a few seconds. “Well?”

  Kim’s mouth twitched in that little almost-smile he did when things weren’t really that funny. “I’d just like to be sure you want this.”

  Will ran a hand over his trouser front, deliberately vulgar. “Find out.”

  “It would be my pleasure.” Kim’s eyes were very dark.

  “You said you liked to be obliging.”

  “And you told me to show you.”

  Their eyes were locked. It felt like a battle. Will wasn’t sure if they were on opposite sides or the same one.

  “Go on, then,” he said.

  Kim came over, walking with a lot of grace for a man in purple slippers, especially one sporting a solid cockstand. He hooked his thumbs into Will’s waistband, bringing them very close together, face to face, mouths a whisper apart.

  “I like to please,” he said, voice low. “I like sucking pricks. Does that bother you?”

  Will wanted to make some sarcastic rejoinder, but whatever part of his brain was still functioning sent up an alert. Kim hadn’t sounded provocative so much as defensive, even defiant, and there was a wary look in his eyes.

  “Why would it bother me? Means a good time for everyone.”

  “You’d be amazed.” Kim sounded a little waspish, but the tension in his face relaxed. “Well, since you say so...” He took Will’s lapels again, and this time Will let him push the jacket off. Kim tossed it out of the way onto a chair, and slid Will’s braces off his shoulders, then tugged him round and urged him backwards, towards the sofa where Phoebe had sat before. Will took the seat, watching, as Kim dragged the coffee table out of the way with a soft scrape of metal on carpet. He nudged Will’s calf gently with a foot, urging his legs apart. Will spread them wide and leaned back, sprawling like a lout in this beautiful setting, vulgar and transgressive. He wondered if that was what Kim wanted.

  It seemed that way, because his mouth was a little open, his arousal visible despite his clothing, and Will could hear him breathing.

  “Go on,” he said roughly. “Suck me.”

  Kim dropped to his knees, between Will’s spread thighs. He put his hands on Will’s knees, ran them lightly up and in. Will inhaled more sharply than he’d meant.

  They stayed like that for a moment, Will seated, Kim’s palms warm on his inner thighs, then Kim reached for the buttons at his waistband. Will lifted his hips a little to help Kim ease his stand out. It seemed to him the business would be more efficient done standing, but it was pretty clear which one of them was the expert here. And there was unquestionably something about this, about lounging while Kim knelt to serve him, and knowing Kim was just as aroused. He could get used to this.

  Kim had his prick, holding it with three light fingertips, examining it as if he was going to find a clue there. Will watched his face, and after a moment Kim’s dark eyes flicked up. He gave a little half smile, leaned in, and took Will in his mouth.

  “Christ.” Will sagged back a little more, resting his head against the wall, and gave himself over to sensation.

  Once again Kim didn’t use his hands, just lips and tongue and teeth, the lightest scrape, and he took his time. He switched from tantalising touches to taking Will deep, sucking hard then pulling away for long caressing licks as Will’s pleasure mounted. It was ecstatic, obliterating everything in Will’s brain but the pleasure of that clever mouth and his own spiralling need. He groaned as he reached the brink, and gave a grunt of agony as Kim lifted his mouth off.

  “I want to keep you here a little.” Kim sounded raw. His lips were red. “Can I?”

  “Christ.” It was about the only word he could remember. Kim mouthed his cock from the side, not enough to bring Will to the peak, worked his way slowly around, flicked his tongue over the head as if he liked the taste of Will leaking. Lips sliding up and down, fingers tense, mouth shamelessly wet. Will found he was running out of breath. His toes were curling, his balls painfully tight.

  “Please,” he gasped. “Please, now.”

  Kim’s mouth was light and taunting but his fingers dug hard into Will’s spread thighs. He took Will down again, lips just barely touching the spit-soaked length, and slid back up. “Do you want to come in my mouth?”

  “So much. Jesus. Kim!” He stared down at the dark head as Kim bent over him, sucking in earnest now, bringing him off with such deliberate power it was more like being forced than pleasured. Will didn’t stand a chance. He came as hard as he could remember in his life, so hard that his balls hurt, his vision blurred, and he cracked his head hard against the wall as he threw it back. He didn’t even care.

  “Oh Christ,” he mumbled when he regained the power of speech. “God.”

  Kim was still bent right over him, Will’s prick pressed against the back of his throat. He wondered for a fraction of a second if he’d somehow asphyxiated the man, and had just time to envisage explaining that to the police before Kim lifted his head away. Swollen lips, reddened skin, mouth wet with saliva. He’d never looked better.

  “You,” Will said, and added, “That,” when he had a bit more breath back. “Jesus.”

  “It’s nice to be appreciated.”

  Kim didn’t move from his position, kneeling there with his hands on Will’s thighs. Will took a couple of moments to let the blood stop roaring in his ears, then sat up. His slackened prick was still hanging out. It seemed appropriate.

  He eased himself forward and slid down off the edge of the sofa, so he was straddling Kim’s bent legs. Kim met his eyes dark and unreadable, and Will leaned in and kissed him. His mouth was wet and tasted of—well. Himself. Couldn’t complain.

  Kim responded open-mouthed, bending backward. Will urged him further back
still, kissing him all the way, until they were lying on the ground, Kim supine, Will over him and fumbling for his prick. It wasn’t difficult to find.

  “You do like pleasing people.” He took a grip of the length, and started moving his hand, feeling Kim strain up into his fist. “Are you this hard from sucking me off?”

  Kim’s eyes snapped to his and his hips stilled. Will grinned savagely at him. “Because I’ve got to tell you, that makes me fucking horny.”

  “Does it.” Kim sounded breathless but he started moving again.

  “If you were getting this worked up...” He didn’t even know why the idea was so arousing, except he’d always assumed the act was a one-way street, one man giving pleasure and the other taking it. “I wish I’d known. That’s hot stuff.”

  He worked the prick he held steadily. Kim’s breath was already coming fast. “Glad—you think so,” he managed jerkily.

  “Do you like to rub yourself off while you do it?”

  “However you want.”

  Kim was so close. Will could feel it. “I want you on your knees, with your mouth round my cock. I want to watch you loving it. And I want you right now thinking about sucking me off and how you’re going to do it again—”

  Kim’s back arched, and he came hard, pulsing in Will’s hand, face twisted as if the climax hurt. Will stroked him through it, not letting go until he sagged slowly back on to the floor.

  They stayed there in silence. Will didn’t want to move, or let go. Kim was warm and willing and alive under him, and he didn’t want this to be over, to go back into the dark.

  At last Kim said, “I suppose it’s too much to hope that my smoking jacket escaped unscathed.” His eyes were still shut.

  “Uh?”

  “Not that it matters in the great scheme of things, but it’s hell to get jism out of velvet.”

  The garment had fallen open but Will checked the purple cloth anyway. “No, I think you’re all right.”

  “Thank God for small mercies.” Kim opened his eyes and gave Will a rueful grin. “Well.”

  “Well.”

  “I’m not going to press you.” He sat up as he spoke, forcing Will to move away. “Your choice. But I don’t suppose you came here lightly so...will you stay tonight?” He touched a finger very lightly to the corner of Will’s eye. “Just one night. You’re tired. And—well, the door’s still locked.”

  Will knew what that meant. When Kim unlocked the door, he’d go back to working for the War Office and Will would go back to the bookshop and everything else that waited for him. He didn’t want to think about any of that now.

  “I’ll stay.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  They moved to the bedroom. If you sat in a sitting-room with a drink, you had to talk, and he doubted either of them wanted that. So Kim brought a cut glass decanter of very good single malt Scotch and two crystal tumblers, Will kicked off his shoes, and they both lay on the huge double bed. It was lit by more elegant lamps and adorned with pillows in crisply ironed purple linen cases. Kim’s quilt was purple as well. It was a very comfortable room indeed, except for the elephant in it.

  Will had no intention of mentioning Draven’s monstrous creation, or Kim’s betrayals, or his obvious wariness about his preferences. The former two would unlock the door and let the world in; the last of them was far too much like saying he cared.

  “Thanks for taking me in,” he said instead.

  Kim gestured with his glass. “Who would turn away a lost waif on a cold night?”

  “Waif?”

  “Metaphorically speaking.” He looked like he was about to say something else, but stopped himself.

  Will answered anyway, since the question was obvious. “The bookshop was a bit lonely tonight. Lot of dark corners.”

  “And easily broken windows, and easily forced doors.”

  “That as well.”

  “Hard to get a good night’s sleep under the circumstances. I see that.”

  “You don’t have many dark corners here. Your electric bill must be something.”

  “Lighting is an essential part of the design of a modern home,” Kim informed him in lofty tones.

  That sounded like Phoebe. Will sipped his Scotch. “I don’t think Phoebe should come and see me any more.”

  “I’m not her keeper.”

  “I don’t mean as matter of feeling. I’m not sure it’s safe for her. I was thinking today that it’s a good thing I don’t have any family, or a girl, right now.”

  Kim gave one of those backwards whistles, inhaling rather than exhaling. “That bad?”

  “I might just be nervy.”

  “You are a terribly delicate flower.”

  “It’s the waiting,” Will said. “At least in the trenches, when they tapped you for a raid, you know it was happening and you got on with it.”

  “Scheduled mayhem is more convenient? I suppose you can put it in your diary. Work around it.”

  “‘Sorry, I’ve no time for a knife fight in the street on Thursday, could you make it Friday?’”

  Kim spluttered into his whisky. Will couldn’t help grinning. That had been the first lesson in surviving Flanders: it was always easier when you laughed.

  “Have you been in the shop all day?” Kim asked after another, slightly more comfortable silence.

  “I went out. Had lunch, saw a couple of pictures. Smilin’ Through and the latest Ivor Novello thing.”

  “Any good?”

  “Not sure I was in the best of moods for them. But, you know. Trying to keep myself occupied.”

  Kim twisted round so he was on his side, facing Will, propped up by an elbow. “Do you know, if you asked me what I thought would be the best thing for you to do at this time, going to the pictures would not have been in my top five suggestions.”

  “I thought we weren’t talking about this stuff.”

  “That’s why I’m not going to give you one to three inclusive,” Kim said. “Suggestions four and five, on the other hand, would be well within the evening’s terms and conditions.”

  Will shifted round as well at the note in his voice. “And better than the pictures, you reckon?”

  “Well, you get colour and sound. It probably won’t last as long as a two-reeler, but one can’t have everything.”

  “I hope you’re not casting aspersions on my manhood,” Will said. “What’s number four, then?”

  Kim gave him a long, glinting look, under lowered eyelids. It was the sort of look a seducer might give a girl in the pictures. Will was no girl, didn’t need seducing, and still felt a pulse of something a little bit like nerves. “Do you like to fuck?”

  “Er, yes? Oh. You mean all the way?”

  “Absolutely all.”

  Will had to lick his lips. “Me doing you?”

  “Ideally with a better verb but yes. If you’d like. Is that appealing?”

  In theory, absolutely. Practice might be different. “Thing is I’ve only done that once and it wasn’t marvellous for anyone. You know. Flanders.”

  Kim paused. “Do you mean Flanders as in ‘it was wartime’, or is there a Belgian buggery problem I should know of?”

  Will almost spilt his drink with the force of his bark of laughter. Kim was obviously amused by his own joke, eyes warm, face light and lit. “Arse. Wartime. Everything in a hurry, military police, no privacy all that. The point is, I wouldn’t know what I was doing, and I wouldn’t want to hurt you.”

  Kim’s eyes flicked to his, then away. “You didn’t have a good first experience, then?”

  “The other bloke didn’t seem to, and that’s not my idea of fun.”

  “It can be good. But it’s entirely up to you.”

  Will examined his face. “Do you want that? I mean, is it something you like to do?”

  Kim didn’t answer for a few seconds. When he spoke it was deliberately, but not with the earlier defiance. “I like getting fucked, yes. I realise one isn’t supposed to, but there we are. Does that matt
er?”

  Will’s previous partner had initiated the experience as well, for all that was worth. “Of course it does. I don’t want to do anything you don’t want. That’s no way to go about things.”

  “You said something along those lines before. That it made you, ah, horny to think I liked sucking you off.” Kim sounded as though he’d never used the word before in his upper-class life. It was oddly endearing.

  “It does.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. Because you like it, that’s all. I want you to want it, and to tell me so.” He saw the velvet darkness growing in Kim’s eyes and went on, deliberately. “I like knowing that you want me to fuck you, even if you aren’t supposed to want it. Especially that, maybe.”

  “One really oughtn’t, of course.” Kim spoke softly, almost purring. “And yet I just can’t help myself. The sheer pleasure of getting fucked—the feel of a man in my mouth, or bending me over a bed—”

  “Oh God.” He couldn’t believe Kim was admitting this; it was killing him, tightening his gut and constricting his ribcage with desire. He wanted to give him what he asked for, make him gasp and beg and spend. “Do you—uh—”

  “Spit it out. As it were.”

  “The first time, when I was standing up. I wondered if you wanted me to move. To fuck your mouth for you.”

  “Interesting you should say that,” Kim said. “It’s suggestion five. I rather thought at the time that you might like to.”

  “I didn’t want to be rude.”

  “Manners maketh man.” He ran a finger along Will’s cheek. “How do you want me, Will? Would you like to find out just how hard it would make me to take your cock?”

  “Jesus. Yes. You’ll have to talk me through it, though.”

  Kim plucked the whisky glass out of his hand and put both tumblers on the bedside table. “My pleasure.”

  It was the sounds that Will remembered most, later. Other things too. Kim’s long, pale body by lamplight, and the feel of his elegant hands. His low voice, so matter of fact, turning what Will had found a physical implausibility into something almost easy. The strangeness of working his way in, well lubricated with Vaseline—someone deserved a medal for inventing that—and the feel of Kim’s body impossibly tight round his prick, and the astonishing moment when he worked a hand under Kim’s belly as he thrust and found him standing as hard as promised. That had nearly sent Will off there and then, just the thought that he was fucking Kim Secretan, and Kim was loving it.