Chapter Nineteen

Felix

I’d meant it when I’d told Darien he was the kindest person I knew. As he hugged me and told me he was here for me and I wasn’t alone anymore, I realized he was the sweetest as well, his heart big enough for the both of us. I didn’t know why after years of piling crap on my head, the universe had given me this precious gift, but I wasn’t about to throw it back in its face. Instead, I’d cling onto it with both hands and see it as my due. A tiny oasis of joy in a desert of crap.

Inevitably, having Darien pressed against me caused certain parts to stir. Rather than being offended, he laughed, the sound lightening the tension that had grown so thick in the kitchen as I’d spilled my guts that it had a presence of its very own.

There was more laughter as I scooped him up and carried him upstairs, Darien happy to lie back while I slowly undressed him. Once he was naked, I set to work on my own clothes. Darien propped himself up on his elbows and watched with a lazy, heated amusement that only aroused me more.

Was it normal to be horny so soon after baring your soul to someone? Maybe not, but I wouldn’t fight it. And this time felt different. All our previous sexual encounters had been about the two of us coming together in a conflagration of need. Whereas this was about me showing Darien how much I appreciated him. Only, I was better with my lips and tongue than I was with words.

I started at his feet, Darien chuckling as I kissed his toes. From there, I worked my way over his ankles, then his calves, and then his thighs. Bypassing the stiff cock I found—for now—I gave the same attention to his abdomen, and then his chest, his nipples distracting me for a while, before I eventually reached his lips, the kiss we shared the sweetest one that had ever occurred between us.

“I don’t deserve you,” I said between kisses, my confession prompting one of those special Darien smiles that made his dimples pop. I ran the tip of my finger over the left one. “And these should be in a museum.”

His brow furrowed. “What should?”

“Your dimples.”

“How would that work? Am I having them surgically removed, because I’ve got to warn you I’ll probably look like The Joker afterwards, or are you putting me inside a glass case to stand there for all eternity? I suppose you could wait until I’m dead and have me stuffed. Like that guy in the Museum of London.”

“What guy?” I slid my hand down Darien’s body and took hold of his cock, the slight hitch of his breath the only telltale sign he’d noticed.

“Jeremy Bentham. ”

“Who?”

“Shit!” His head went back on the pillow as I stroked him. “He was an English philosopher and social reformer. When he died, he left instructions for his body to be dissected and put on display. I watched a documentary on him.”

“Of course you did. So he was stuffed, was he?” I didn’t really want to talk about this Jeremy guy, but it amused me to watch Darien try to recall details about him while I stroked his cock.

“Yeah…” The word sounded more like a gasp. “He ended up on display in the Museum of London. They had to make a wax replica of his head.”

“Why?”

“Because...” Darien seemed to lose his train of thought. Possibly because I kept rubbing the pad of my thumb over his sensitive glans. “Because they didn’t do a good job of preserving it. It used to be on display in a separate case, but students kept pulling pranks with it. The body is really his, though. His skeleton, and stuffed with hay. It’s rumored they take him to meetings, that he’s marked down as present, but not voting.”

I let go of him momentarily to lick my palm before getting back to the serious business of driving him out of his mind. It didn’t matter that we’d only fucked this morning. I couldn't imagine a time where that would ever matter with us. And concentrating on Darien, watching him buck and twist beneath my ministrations was the perfect salve to stop me from dwelling on the conversation we’d had in the kitchen, and about how honest I’d been.

Only when Darien’s balls grew tight enough to signal he was close to coming did I release his cock. I slapped his thigh to get his attention, Darien’s head lifting to stare at me with a glazed expression on his face. “Turn over.” He did so without complaint, spreading his thighs and settling himself on the pillow with a contented sigh. “Unless you wanted to fuck me?”

Darien shook his head. “No. This is good.”

I kissed down his spine, all the way to the curve of his buttocks, goosebumps breaking out where I touched. He stirred when I parted the globes of his arse to bare him to my gaze. “What are you doing?”

I blew on the pretty pink hole I’d uncovered, every inch of Darien attractive. “If you can’t tell, I’m not doing it right.” I leaned forward for a lick, Darien letting out a moan. “That’s for defending me to your brother.” Darien’s laugh was decidedly shaky. I dragged my tongue over his taint and down to his balls, pausing there so that my words vibrated against the sensitive skin. “That’s for being so good at listening, and for not pushing me to say more than I wanted to.” I really got stuck in then, probing his hole with my tongue until he was panting. “And that’s for believing in my innocence.”

“I’d have told you earlier if I’d known this was the payment for it.”

I sat up and put a condom on, making sure I was generous with the lube. “When did you change your mind?”

“I don’t know. It just crept up on me.”

I moved into position, lining myself up with my target. “It means a lot to me. More than I can put into words.”

“I know.” The second word turned into a gasp as I breached Darien.

I paused with just the head of my cock in him. “Are you sore from this morning?” It was a stupid question to ask when I wasn’t going to stop even if he said yes. Perhaps I was fooling myself that I’d be gentler with him if he answered in the affirmative.

“I’ll cope.” The smile on Darien’s face said he’d do more than cope and had me sliding forward another couple of inches.

“Thank you. I appreciate you being a martyr to the cause.”

“What cause? ”

I treated him to a thrust, sliding deeper on the return stroke. “The cause of making me come.”

Darien lifted his hips on the next thrust, making it easier for me. “I don’t remember seeing that on a list of registered charities.”

I picked up speed. “It should be. Felix’s release fund. FRF, for short. Want to be a sponsor?”

Darien laughed. “I thought I already was. I can’t think of another reason why I’m currently taking your cock.”

“No?” I leaned forward, pushing my cock deeper as I thrust harder. “Maybe because you do it so well.”

Talk stopped at that point, both of us saving our energy for fucking as I gave it to him in long, sure strokes, his cock oozing pre-cum as I stimulated his prostate repeatedly. When I pulled him up onto his knees, my hips moving furiously, he took the change in position as an invitation to stroke his cock. I knocked his hand away. “Not yet.” I softened my demand with a kiss. “I want to come at the same time.”

He nodded, waiting until I was close before wrapping his hand around his cock and stroking himself. It wasn’t quite at the same time, Darien still beating me to it, but it was as near as damn it, my orgasm coming less than a minute after his.

After, we lay naked and sweaty, both of us staring up at the ceiling. I replayed the conversation from the kitchen and realized that Darien’s reluctance to push me had resulted in one major omission from the story. “Ask me the question again.”

“What question?” Darien sounded genuinely confused.

“The one you asked me before.”

The mattress gave slightly as Darien turned on his side and propped himself up on one elbow. “Do you mean the one that had you freaking out the last time I asked it? I’m too tired to take on the snarling dog tonight.”

I laughed at his phrasing. “No snarling dog, I promise. Ask me.”

The breath Darien heaved out said he didn’t quite believe my assurances, and I hated him feeling that way. I was going to need to work hard to prove he could trust me not to flip out, and there was no time like the present. “Where were you the night Lily Reynolds was murdered?”

Even though I’d told him to ask it, it didn’t stop my breath from freezing in my chest. I covered my discomfort—or at least I tried to—by sitting up and pulling the sheet across my lap. There was such a thing as being too naked. Instead of lying down, I propped myself up against the headboard. “We had a basement.” Just as he had in the kitchen, Darien didn’t prompt me when I fell silent, patiently waiting until I was ready to continue.

“Julian was all about control. You’ve probably already worked that out about him?” In my peripheral vision, Darien nodded. “He came up with a new thing two years into our relationship, just after the first time I walked out on him… I figure he thought it would stop me from doing it again. We’d fight…” I frowned at my description. They’d been Julian’s words, something he always said every time he convinced me to go back, that all couples fight. They’d never been fights, really. They’d been Julian finding fault and me trying to appease him, to stop it from blowing up into more. Sometimes it had worked, and other times it had been a lost cause. “He’d drag me into the basement and lock me down there.”

“Fuck!” Darien sounded genuinely appalled by the notion.

I laughed. “It wasn’t a dungeon. He didn’t secure me to the wall with manacles, and there weren’t rats running around. It was a fully converted basement. There was no bed, but there was a comfortable sofa. Comfortable enough to sleep on.”

“How long did he leave you down there for? ”

I played with the corner of the sheet, pleating it and then letting it come apart before starting over. “It varied. Sometimes just a couple of hours so I could”—I let go of the sheet to make quotation marks in the air—“calm down. Other times it was days.”

“Days? Didn’t anyone miss you? They would have come looking for you, surely?”

“He took my phone. Back when I still had friends, before I drove them away on his instruction, he’d text them pretending to be me, claiming I was ill or that he’d surprised me with a romantic getaway. You wouldn’t believe the places I went to while I was in that basement. Venice. Florence. Even a weekend in New York once. Obviously, once he’d alienated me from them for good, it was no longer a problem. Then he’d just have work to deal with, and he’d call in sick for me.”

“What about food?”

“I got into the habit of leaving stuff down there. Crisps. Biscuits. Cans of stuff. That sort of thing. There was a camping stove down there, so I used that to cook so everything wasn’t cold. There was a toilet, thankfully. No washing facilities apart from a small sink, but you can’t have everything.”

I risked a glance at Darien to find him looking stricken. “It wasn’t that bad. It was quite peaceful, to be honest. It gave me a break from Julian. I used to read books and do crosswords.”

“Not that bad!” Stricken changed to disbelief. “He took away your freedom. He lied to your friends and your workplace to cover up what a worthless piece of shit he was.”

I went back to pleating the sheet, the action comforting. “So you asked me where I was the night the girl… the night Lily was killed… The same place I was the night he got rid of the body. Safely tucked away in the basement, that’s where. Later, I wondered how many times he’d picked a fight as an excuse to get me out of the way. Nothing cramps your style more when your girlfriend’s coming round than having your boyfriend lurking in the background. ”

“Why didn’t you tell the courts where you were?”

I was laughing before Darien had even finished asking his question. “You think I didn’t? You think I covered for him?”

Darien frowned. “But if you told them, I don’t understand why they still found you guilty.”

“Because… they didn’t believe me. They believed him. He was extremely convincing on the witness stand. Even I have to admit that. And he was clever enough to have thought ahead. By the time anyone got around to looking at the basement, there was no longer a lock on it, or any signs that there’d ever been one. The bastard had taken it off. So you can understand them struggling to believe that part of the story. How can you lock someone somewhere that’s not lockable?”

“They must have believed the rest.”

“Must they?” The snarling dog rose to the surface, and I pushed it down, refusing to give in to it. Not here. Not with Darien. Not when he’d been nothing but good to me. I wouldn’t take my frustration out on him. I counted to ten before I spoke, keeping my voice carefully modulated. “I was bigger than Julian. They couldn’t see how he could force me into a basement if I didn’t want to go. They underestimated the tenacity of the fucker. He managed it just fine. Add to that the fact that I’d told no one. There were no medical records to back up my version of events because I saw no one. It was my word against his. And he lied through his teeth. He painted me as some sort of fantasist. The only saving grace was that he spent so long turning me into a Walter Mitty character who makes up lies about his boyfriend abusing him, that he forgot to give me the same treatment when pinning the murder on me, and he went down for it, anyway. ”

Darien let out a slow breath. During my heartfelt tirade, he’d joined me under the covers. “It’s not fair.”

“Which part?”

“All of it. The abuse. The prison sentence. The things that have happened since you got out.”

“No, it’s not.” I reached across and took hold of Darien’s hand, threading my fingers with his. “It’s not been all bad, though. I met this guy. He’s a bit of a documentary watching weirdo who knows all about stuff that most people couldn’t give a damn about.” When Darien opened his mouth to defend himself, I hurried with the rest of my words. “But… he has the biggest heart of anyone I’ve ever met, and he took a rabid dog and tamed it.”

Darien smiled. “Is that so? Can I teach it to do tricks?”

“I wouldn’t go that far.”

He moved across the bed to drop a kiss on my shoulder. “Never mind. I like it just the way it is.” His expression turned serious. “I am sorry, though, for everything that’s happened to you.”

His sincerity made me want to cry. “It’s not your fault.”

He urged me down on the bed until we were lying on our sides facing each other. “I won’t let anyone else hurt you, I promise.”

“You might have to. You know, because of your job.”

“Screw my job! It’s just that, a job. I can always work for Hayden at his restaurant. He won’t let me be destitute. Plus, he’d love the chance to lord it over me.”

“There’s a slight problem with that idea. You can’t cook.”

Darien pasted a pseudo-hurt expression on his face. “How would you know? I can’t get anywhere near the stove to find out because you’re there. When Hayden calms down and sees sense, the two of you should get on like a house on fire. You can talk herbs and spices and whatever else gets your adrenaline pumping. ”

My next words were slow and careful, so keen was I not to mess them up or to come across as too flippant. “You’re talking like we’ll be a long-term thing.”

“I hope we will. Don’t you?”

The urge to shrug it off, to protect myself against rejection, was there, but I beat it off with a stick and employed honesty instead. “Yeah, I do.”

Darien rolled onto his back. “Well, then.” The smugness in his tone had me laughing. It was amazing how he could take me from baring my soul to laughing in a matter of minutes.