Chapter 2

"Then I guess I'll see you there . . ."

I scouted the concert venue with the words reverberating in my brain. Kim had cut and run soon after he'd uttered them, but they'd stayed with me every minute since, distracting me from just about everything. Not that setting up at the small venue required much brainpower. I'd been shooting bands here since I was sixteen and knew every nook and cranny like the back of my hand.

Still, it had been a while. I hadn't done much live work since I'd moved to Porth Ewan, preferring the solitude of online design contracts—websites, branding, social media—all the corporate bullshit I despised. I'd landed this job by accident after a beer-fuelled meeting down the boozer closest to my folk's farm, and now here I was, observing the sound check as the long-dormant buzz of a grungy band gig seeped into my soul.

That, and the promise of seeing Kim again, but I tried not to think about that.

Tried, with questionable success. It was a coincidence, right? That we were both going to be here? That my spine kept tingling and skin flushing was claustrophobia. The venue was a rabbit warren of dark corridors and unmarked doors. I'd be lucky to make it out alive.

You probably won't even see him.

And that would be just fine. It wasn't as if I was in the market for anyone who made me feel like he did. Fuck making my heart skip. That muscle in my chest was dead and buried, and it could fucking stay that way.

* * *

Lights out. Showtime. The band hit the stage, and I caught the lead singer's opening vocal in what I hoped was the first of many epic shots.

Hope. That four-letter word. Shooting bands was one of my favourite ways to earn a crust, but gigs like this, dark and smoky, were a fucker to photograph. The sensible side of me knew I'd be lucky to get ten decent shots out of every hundred, but that didn't stop the thrill in my veins that came with embracing the job I loved.

I took a few snaps of the band head-on, then changed my lens and stepped to the side, focussing on the bass player, who had a presence I wanted to capture. With her lustrous red hair and milky tattooed skin, this chick was entrancing. She owned the stage, and I got a little lost in her until a change in tempo roused me.

The band slid seamlessly from a stomping anthem into something gentler in cadence, and I moved on, shooting the stage from every possible angle. Then I headed upstairs to the balcony to get an aerial view. On my way, I took in the crowd and the electric atmosphere. I knew the band's drummer from the summers I'd spent in Porth Ewan, and dug the EPs he'd sent me over the past few years, but I'd never seen them live, which I regretted now that I saw how awesome they were. The grungy bass and funky guitars made me almost wish I'd left my camera at home. That I was rocking out in the mosh pit with the hard-core fans.

Then I caught the redheaded chick in a shot that made my night, and everything fell into place.

The gig flew by. I filled a memory card and was halfway through a second when a hand on my shoulder blasted my tunnel vision.

I jumped, half stumbling out of my crouch, and collided face-first with a lean, wood-scented chest.

"Shit." And thank fuck for neck straps. I'd dropped cameras before, and there was nothing more depressing than seeing an expensive Canon smashed on the ground.

Strong hands steadied me. "Sorry, mate. Didn't mean to scare ya."

Kim. Of course it was. As his melodic brogue reached me, even over the pounding music, I let myself imagine that I'd recognise it anywhere.

I got my bearings, hoping I looked as unfazed as he seemed to be. "All right?"

He grinned and offered me a beer. "Cheeky one on the job?"

"Hell yeah." I took the bottle and downed half of it in one go. "Cheers. It's fucking boiling up here."

"Yeah, I thought you looked hot." Kim drank from a water bottle with a smirk that made me forget about the camera around my neck and the band tearing up the stage below. "And happy, which makes sense."

"Makes sense?"

"Aye-aye. No offence, but I could tell the jam shit wasn't your bag. Had you pegged for an artist . . . a designer, or a sculptor maybe, when I first saw you, but the camera fits. It suits you."

"Suits me?" In the back of my mind, I was aware how dense I sounded, but my ability to string a sentence together seemed to evaporate more with every second I stared at Kim. At his messy hair and warm eyes. At the artfully tatty T-shirt stretched across his chest. Dear God, he was something else.

Kim chuckled. "Trust me. I've been watching you dart about this place since I got here, and it's probably the coolest shit I've ever seen. Last photo I took, I chopped my pa's head off."

I didn't see how that made me cool, but I took the compliment. Coming from Kim, it felt more sincere than anything I'd heard in a while. "Trust me, there'll be plenty of shots where I've decapitated people. Shit happens."

Kim smiled, but said nothing as I refocussed and snapped the last few angles I'd had on my list. When I was done, I half expected him to be gone, but found him behind me again. "So this is what you do?" he asked.

"Some days." I reclaimed my now-warm beer and took a healthy swig. "When I'm lucky."

"What do you do the rest of the time?"

"Editing, some design work. Anything that keeps me out of trouble."

"Trouble? You don't look the type."

Kim leaned closer, eyebrow raised.

I absorbed the scent of fresh-cut wood, and covered the dizzying effect it had on me with a snort. "Tell that to my step-mum. Everyone always told her my brother Gaz would give her the most grief, but I smashed that shit out of the water."

"I'm intrigued."

"Yeah?" I studied Kim, tried to gauge if his bright eyes and open stance were really the flirtation I wanted them to be. "What do you want to know?"

"Everything."

Okay.My brain failed me for a moment. Most of my anecdotes involved heavy drinking and the hooliganism, but I had other stories too. Tales of being caught with my pants down by my elderly grandmother, exploring the anatomy of the summer help from the neighbouring farm. Did Kim seriously want to hear those?

The rational voice inside me said no, until Kim edged closer, his thigh touched mine and his wayward hair brushed my cheek.

The air shifted. "I've been watching you all night."

"Really?" I swallowed thickly. "What did you see?"

"Enough."

"Enough for what?"

"Enough to know that I want to see more."

I tightened my grip on my beer bottle. Felt the warmth of the glass seep into my palm. "Like what?"

Kim plucked the bottle from my hand and set it on a nearby ledge. "Everything."

* * *

We pushed our way through the crowded venue. Kim's hand was hot at the base of my spine, and I felt him behind me with every nerve in my body. It crossed my mind to make for the nearest exit, catch a cab back to my Porth Ewan flat, and screw his brains out in the comfort of my bedroom, but I couldn't wait.

I led him downstairs and backstage. Around us, the band's road crew were hard at work, packing up equipment and untangling wires, but they paid us no heed as we slipped past them to the storage rooms below the performance area. I tried one door, then another, and another, until I found the prop room I was looking for—the only room that locked from the inside.

Kim kicked the door shut behind us. We stared at each other. Above us, the thudding bass of the show's after-party kept tempo with the blood rushing in my ears. Then Kim moved—a blur in the dim light— pinned me against the door, and the surrounding noise dulled to a low roar.

It had been months since I'd kissed someone. I'd had a few fucks since my life had imploded, but they'd been just that—fucks—no kissing or lingering eye contact. No connection. Nothing like the heat that sluiced through me the moment Kim's lips touched mine.

I fell into his kiss with a crazed hunger that he matched with every clash of teeth and plundering swipe of his tongue. Lips, jaw, neck. I shoved my hand into his silk-soft hair and tugged as he bit down on my collarbone.

"Damn." I tipped my head back.

Kim pressed himself against me, his hard, sinuous muscles digging into my bones. "I've been thinking about this all day."

I couldn't deny I'd done the same. I slid my hands under his T-shirt and roamed the smooth skin of his back. "Yeah? What else did we do in your dirty daydreams?"

Kim dropped to his knees and unbuckled my belt. "This."

My head hit the door with a dull thud. Kim yanked my jeans down, then my boxers, and shot me an evil smirk as my dick sprang loose, giving away how much I wanted his mouth on me. "Do it," I whispered. "Show me."

Kim closed his lips around my cock and sucked me down deep. He moaned around me and met my gaze with a dark stare that made my knees tremble as I clenched my fists. Fuck, it felt good. I couldn't recall the last decent blowjob I'd had, and none in recent memory held a candle to what Kim was doing to me.

I groaned, glad I'd had the foresight to hustle him to a place no one but him would hear me. The last time I'd been down here had been to gather wooden farm animals for my brother Davey's A-level drama production. In a distant place in my mind, it felt comforting to know nothing had changed here in the decade since.

A shift in pace brought me back to the present. Kim had slowed his movements and tugged my balls, and now he pulled off with a wet pop. "I want to fuck you."

My heart raced. It had been a while since I'd last bottomed. Rich—my ex—had been an inflexible top, and I'd gone through a phase of rebellion when we'd finally split for good, fucking anyone who'd been willing. Cold and clinical—getting off, then getting gone. I'd sworn I'd never go back to how it had been with Rich . . . never give myself to anyone like that. Body, mind, soul, whatever. But the vow escaped my conscious thought as I fumbled for my wallet. I wanted Kim. Wanted him all over me, inside me, deep and brutal. I wanted him now.

I pushed a condom and a lube packet into his hands. "Do it."

"You sure?"

"Fuck yeah." In case he needed convincing, I turned, placed my palms flat on the door, and widened my stance. For an aching moment, nothing happened. Then I heard the zipper on Kim's jeans and the tear of the condom wrapper, and I closed my eyes.

Kim made short work of getting me ready. It might've been a while for me, but he seemed to sense that I didn't need a gentle touch. That I craved the burn and stretch of his dick inside me.

He withdrew his fingers and pressed the blunt head of his cock against me. My eyes watered. He felt big, really big, and my body resisted, fought him, until he slipped past the mutinous muscle and slid home, slow and smooth, like we'd done this before. Like my body fit his like a glove, the perfect balance of pleasure and pain.

"Fuck." I panted out sharp breaths. Heat flooded my face and sweat trickled down my back. It hurt, but, fuck, it was good—better than good. I'd forgotten how the push and pull of a man's cock inside me could be so consuming.

Kim pressed in until he could go no further. Then he rubbed my back and squeezed my shoulder. "Okay?"

"Yeah." It came out as a strangled groan, but the sentiment reached Kim all the same. He dug his nails into the sensitive flesh above my hip bone, and withdrew enough so he could slam back in with a jarring thrust that drove the breath from my lungs.

He growled and did it again, and again, setting a rhythm that erased all coherent thought from my mind. The dusty storeroom and the noise from above faded away, and my world narrowed to the brutal dig of his cock, and his gravelled grunts and groans.

Shit, he was good at this. I almost wished that I could see him. That I could watch his muscles bunch and constrict, and absorb the snarl I imagined his full lips forming with every thrust of his hips. But there was something about getting fucked from behind, raw and rough, hands on the peeling paint of a door, or the cool concrete of an industrial wall. Something primal, and sordid, in all the right ways.

Shame it wasn't going to last long.

Kim leaned over me and bit my shoulder blade. I shivered through a groan, and the first stirrings of orgasm burned in my belly. I found my dick and matched Kim's movements as my eyes rolled, and my sweaty hand slipped on the door.

I gasped. "You're gonna make me come."

"Shit, yeah. Do it. I'm close."

Kim pulsed and swelled inside me. The sensation blew my mind, and my balls tightened to that painful point of thrilling agony, those dragged-out moments before coming when I was sure that I'd combust before I shot my load. "Harder."

"Jesus." Kim pulled on my hips and shoved my head down with his other hand, bending me in half. The change in angle led his cock to that magic bundle of nerves that made me shout, as I buried my face in the crook of my elbow and came like a motherfucking train.

"Fucking hell." I shuddered and spilled into my hand, distantly aware of Kim behind me, growling out a few choice words of his own, lost in the shot of warmth soothing me from the inside out, and the crashing rush of the hottest climax I'd had in years.

It seemed like I'd just blinked as Kim eased out of me and coaxed me upright. He kissed the back of my neck and smoothed my sweat-damped hair out of my eyes. "All right?"

I hummed, better than all right, but incapable of intelligible speech. Kim chuckled and fumbled around. Fabric touched my hand, my back, and my legs, cleaning me up, then he spun me and pressed his forehead to mine.

"Your daydreams next time, eh?"