“Follow me.” He tilted his head in the direction he’d been walking, turned, and carried on without looking back, knowing I’d do as he said. “You ever fooled around outside?”
It was just as well there was no-one else nearby. I was out, yeah, but not shamelessly, flamboyantly in-your-face about it. “Um, fooled around, yeah, but not…” I caught up with him and our footsteps kept time with each other. His breaths, I noted, became shallower.
Maybe nerves, maybe anticipation.
“Not…?” he prompted.
“You know.”
“Hmm.” He nodded with a discreet smile—probably the only discreet thing about him this evening, and kept looking ahead.
“Are you trying to get me arrested?”
“You’d be no use to me behind bars, now, would you? Unless I was your cellmate.”
“Ugh, now that’s bringing to mind a whole buttload of images involving not bending over to pick up the soap in the shower.”
“Interesting you should use the word ‘buttload’.”
“Steven, you’re…” I shook my head, not even bothering to finish the sentence. When he was in this sort of mood—playful, flirtatious, wait-‘til-I-get-you-alone—there was no point arguing with him, I knew that much already. “Never mind.”
“Yeah, you know it. Just be a good boy and do as you’re told.”
“Fuck you—”
“I told you. I never bottom.” Steven laughed, and I had to join in. As well as curiosity, I’d been infected by his mood, his sense of daring. Maybe it was the fact the sun had set and the light had almost faded, dyeing everything in subtle shades of dusk with a sodium halo.
“Come on. In here.” He slipped behind rusty wrought iron gates separating civilisation from a ruined building I’d passed a million times on my way to and from work but never paid much attention to.
“In there?” Surprise at what he was suggesting choked the laughter at the back of my throat, but dutifully I shadowed him. Closely, as the farther we got from the street, the less light there was by which to keep track of him.
“What’s wrong with it?” Some of the fading light glinted off the blackest parts of his hair, reflecting its shine. And I never noticed how shiny a guy’s hair looked unless my hands were tangled in it. “Kit?” He looked back over his shoulder, sure-footed even when not keeping a close eye on the path he took. He’d obviously been here before.
“It’s hardly homely, is it?” It was an old abandoned mansion house, set back a fair way from the street and I’d never seen any life there in all the time I’d lived in the area. It could have been converted into a block of flats, a library, a medical centre, anything, but had simply been left to stand, only put to use by roaming animals and horny gay guys with nowhere left to go.
“It’s still better than being disturbed by a housemate who should have stayed out for quite a while yet.”
“How do you know about this place?”
“Everybody who lives round here knows about the manse,” he shot back. “Come on. The front door’s usually open.”
“Yeah, I knew it was there, not exactly what it was—”
“I told you. A manse. An old, abandoned spooky manse, and no-one knows what happened to the previous owner.”
I guessed his voice was supposed to be spooky, but he just sounded like he was trying desperately not to laugh.
“You sound like you’ve been here before.”
“I have.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Not for that, Blackman. I’m not that desperate to get laid. Well.” He stopped, turned around and I walked into him with precision timing. As if he’d planned it. And he grabbed the front of my jacket so I couldn’t back away. “Not usually, anyway.”
“There could be homeless guys hiding in there.”
“Nah. It’s usually empty for some reason.”
“Except for when you’re in there?”
“You ever play dares? Just for a laugh? Have a few drinks and dare your mates to go into the local haunted house?”
“How old are you, Steven? Twelve?”
“Okay, I haven’t done that for years, but this place has been here for an absolute age. Used to go to school nearby and sometimes we’d bunk off and spend the afternoon drinking in the grounds.”
“You’re a delinquent, Kenton, you know that?”
“And proud of it.” He still didn’t let go. I caught a flash of his smile before he leant forwards and kissed me. God, I’d missed that. It had only been, what? Minutes? A short time, anyway, since the last kiss, but still too long. “There’s still furniture in there, too. You should see it. It’s like the rapture occurred or something. No-one lives here, but—”
“You are not fucking me over some abandoned rat-bag furniture even some homeless case wouldn’t want to piss on.”
“Oh, come on, baby.” He shifted his hips from side to side, letting me know exactly what was about to happen. “You just don’t appreciate the effort I make for you anymore.”
I couldn’t help it. I burst out laughing. Again. I hated the way he kept making me do that.
“It’s better than throwing you down on the ground in a park somewhere.” Steven kissed me again, slower this time, and deeper, and inched me back and back and back, until my back hit a wall.
“Are you sure about that?”
“At the risk of getting arrested? I’m sure you’re a fine piece of ass, Blackman, but if I’m ever cuffed, it’ll be at a time and place of my choosing, not by Her Majesty’s Constabulary.”
“Not even if they have big truncheons?”
“No-one will come.”
“Are you sure about that, too?”
“You’re getting far too cheeky for my liking, Kit.”
“Better do something about it, then.”
His hands were at my belt, more sure than mine would be if I’d tried to undo it. Maybe desperation carried him through, and it had to be desperation that made his breath hot, rapid and shallow against the side
