“No. Like you already know, I’m definitely a meat eater.” Kaspar smiled and pushed a stray lock of hair out of his eyes.
A young waitress came over to take their order. Jon ordered chicken. Kaspar chose the beef.
Once she’d walked away, Jon fixed Kaspar with an anxious look. “There’s no easy way to say this but…you’re not ashamed of being seen with me or anything, are you?”
“Jon, how can you even think such a thing? If that were the case, I’d hardly be here with you in a busy pub, would I?”
“I know. It’s just that when I was at your house I got the feeling you really didn’t want me to meet Ellie.”
“That’s nothing to do with you, believe me. Ellie’s great, but she’s what we’d call in Dutch ‘
met grote neus’
. How would you say it, nosy?”
Jon nodded. He seemed to be visibly relaxing at Kaspar’s explanation.
“And I didn’t want to subject you to one of her interrogations, however well meaning. Though I’m sure she’d be impressed I’ve landed myself a hot university professor.” He sipped his drink, giving Jon time to absorb the compliment. “Plus, Ellie is related to my boss, and I don’t know whether Marina has any rules about her staff getting involved with customers.”
“I don’t see why that would be a problem. Much less complicated than dating someone you work with, I would have thought.” Jon sighed. “I’m sorry. I look at you and I just have to keep telling myself this isn’t all a dream.”
“Jon, our relationship is very real. Just like this…” On impulse, Kaspar reached for Jon’s hand. He guided it under the table, letting it rest on the bulge in his jeans. He lowered his voice. “See the effect you have on me. I’m so tempted to just forget about lunch, drag you out to the car and fuck you on the back seat…”
“Who’s having the chicken?” The sound of a man’s voice close to his ear had Kaspar letting go of Jon’s hand and hastily sitting upright.
“That would be me,” Jon said.
The waiter placed a plate of food in front of him before serving Kaspar. “Enjoy your meal, gentlemen.”
“This looks good,” Jon commented, picking up his cutlery.
Kaspar regarded his own meal. A couple of thick slices of tender-looking meat, roast potatoes and a selection of vegetables, topped with a small cake, made of batter, which he tapped with his fork.
“It’s a Yorkshire pudding,” Jon explained. “And no Sunday dinner is complete without one.”
Kaspar cut off a small part of the pudding and popped it into his mouth. He crunched it up then smiled at Jon in approval.
“That’s good.”
For a couple of minutes they ate in silence, Kaspar trying not to bolt his food. His mother had always stressed that he might be part animal but that was no excuse for poor table manners.
“So,” he said when he’d taken the edge off his hunger, “I never asked you what made you decide to become an archaeologist.”
Jon speared a piece of carrot with his fork. “I was one of those kids who always had his nose in a book. And it was always stories about the past that interested me the most. I loved to read about the Vikings and the Romans, and I always wondered what it would have been like to live in those times. Then we went on a school trip to the British Museum. I could have stayed there forever, just looking at all those old shards of pottery and the tools people used to use…”
He spoke with a passion that made Kaspar—who’d never found anything he could picture himself doing for any length of time—envious. “You make it all sound so fascinating. And do you want to stay at the university here or—?”
“I’m lucky. I work for a department that has a good reputation across the country, and I get to devote plenty of time to my research. But I’ll admit there’s a part of me that would love to work as a visiting lecturer, teaching somewhere like Harvard or Yale.” He sipped from his glass. “What about you, Kaspar? What do you want to do with your life?”
“Apart from spend it with you?” The comment was out of his mouth before he had time to think about it. Aware it might have sounded a little stalkerish when talking to someone he’d really only just met, he said, “I don’t know. That’s always been my problem. As long as I have some money in my pocket, I’m happy enough. And I’m enjoying working at løve. Marina’s a good boss.”
He didn’t want to add that Bath was a place where he felt he could put down roots and make a better kind of life for himself. Ellie’s words about not jinxing things came back to him but he ignored them. He didn’t have any doubts that he and Jon were meant to be together, but he sensed Jon might not be so sure.
“I hope you’ve got room for dessert,” Jon said as Kaspar wiped up the last smears of gravy on his plate with a piece of potato. “They make their own ice cream here and it’s incredible.”
A vision flashed into his mind. Jon, naked except for little dollops of ice cream on his nipples and along the length of his cock, waiting for Kaspar to lick him clean.
Not now, but soon…
He smiled and nodded, thinking of all the delicious things he would do to Jon once he got him alone.
Chapter Fourteen
They walked out of the pub into a glorious early summer afternoon, the sun so warm it made Jon wish he hadn’t bothered bringing a jacket.
“You wanted to know more about my job,” he said as they strolled over to his car. “Well, why don’t I show you? I mean, you don’t have to go home just yet, do you?”
Kaspar shook his head. “Are we going to your university?”
“No. Somewhere far more interesting.”
It was a while since Jon had been up to see the Foolish Brothers. Early into each academic year, he would take his new intake of students to visit the circle, along with a couple of other sites where stones stood in isolation. He enjoyed seeing them through others’ eyes, listening as theories were thrown around about why they had been erected.
He waited till he and Kaspar had both secured their seat belts before revealing their destination. “I take it you’ve heard of Stonehenge?”
“Oh, yes. It turns up in that film. You know, the one where the rock band wants a replica of it for their stage show, but the thing ends up being way too small and they have to find a dwarf to dance round it…”
Jon was in the process of reversing out of the parking space. He glanced over his shoulder at Kaspar and shot him a blank look. The reference meant nothing to him.
“Man, for a guy with so many qualifications there are some serious gaps in your knowledge.” Kaspar chuckled.
Jon shrugged the comment off. “Anyway, there are lots of similar stone circles across Somerset and Wiltshire. Stonehenge and Avebury are the most famous, but we have one just a few miles away from here, by the village of Stanton Combe, and that’s where we’re going now.”
“We have nothing quite like Stonehenge in the Netherlands,” Kaspar said. “Though around Drenthe and Groningen, up in the north of the country, we have these weird, piled-up stones… We call them
hunebedden
. I suppose you’d translate that as ‘giant’s beds’.”
“Yes, I’ve seen photos of those. They’re Neolithic burial sites, and they pre-date the stones I’m taking you to now. Very impressive, from what I remember.”
“It was always a big mystery to me. How a country like ours—where there are no mountains and the land is so flat—could produce such huge boulders.”
“Glacial shift.” Jon relished the chance to show off his knowledge of the subject. “At one time, most of the north of Europe was covered in a thick layer of ice. As the glaciers moved across the land, they dragged lots of debris—including those stones—in their wake. The real mystery is why people then chose to transport the stones to these particular places and use them to build those huge graves. It would involve a significant feat of engineering today, never mind six thousand years ago.”
The turn-off for Stanton Combe village appeared just ahead of him and Jon indicated to turn left.
“Of course,” he went on, “there’s so much we’ll never know about the lives and rituals of the prehistoric tribes of Europe. The oldest clues they left us are in the cave paintings of Northern France and Spain. Those date back to around forty thousand B.C.”
“I can’t even begin to think how long ago that was.” Kaspar’s remark might have sounded flippant, but he bore the rapt expression Jon had so often seen on the faces of his students in the lecture theater.
“Those paintings show a lifestyle revolving around hunting and scavenging,” Jon went on, “but by the time the
hunebedden
in Holland and the henges across Britain were being constructed, people had started to become farmers. They domesticated animals, grew crops for food—and they put down roots. We’ve found flint tools and pottery shards at many of the sites we’ve excavated…”
The circle of stones loomed against the backdrop of the skyline and Kaspar stared at them, clearly transfixed.
“We can park just up here on the right and walk the rest of the way. You can’t appreciate The Foolish Brothers properly until you’ve seen them up close.”
“Why are they called that?”
“Oh, it’s because of the legend surrounding the stones.” Jon brought the vehicle to a halt. “The story goes that the village was home to an alchemist who’d mastered the secret of turning base metal into gold. One night, a group of men broke into his cottage and tried to steal his wealth. The alchemist caught them in the act and for their pains he cast a spell that petrified them—literally.”
“Wow, that’s brutal.”
“Most of these circles have similar tales surrounding them. Take the Merry Maidens down in Cornwall. They’re supposed to be the remains of young women who were turned into stone as punishment for dancing on a Sunday.”
“And I used to think being grounded by my parents was tough.” Kaspar grinned.
They got out of the car and walked up to the stones. Though Kaspar set off with loping, confident strides, the closer they came to the Brothers, the more he seemed to hesitate.
“Is everything okay, Kaspar?” he asked.
“You don’t feel it?” Kaspar replied.
“Feel what?”
“The atmosphere here. It’s so oppressive, like there’s a storm in the air.”
Jon gazed up into the cloudless, bright blue sky. “Well, the weather’s set fair for the day.”
Kaspar walked into the center of the circle, then rested a hand on the fallen stone at its heart. He pulled it away quickly, as though the contact had burned his skin.
“I don’t think these brothers are so foolish after all,” he said. “Something very bad has happened here and they remember it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Blood, murder. Innocent voices crying out for mercy, their deaths needing to be avenged…”
Kaspar’s expression had clouded. Jon could have sworn the angles of his face had altered, so subtly as to be almost unnoticeable. It was as though something lurked beneath that handsome countenance, wild and dangerous. Then the moment passed.
The more Jon thought about it, the more he wondered whether Kaspar had picked up some psychic vibration—a lingering remnant of the site’s gruesome history. “I didn’t mention it before, but one of the theories about this place is that it was used as a ritual altar. Some of the texts I’ve read talk about a pagan cult who worshiped a deity they called Leweilun, who walked the earth in the form of a lion.”
“What did you say?”
“Oh, I know, it’s not very likely, is it? There’s even an account suggesting there was a whole race of strange part-lion creatures who lived around here. If the stories about the stones being a site for human sacrifice are correct, I’d say that’s what you were picking up on, but I don’t believe any of it.”
“Well, whatever it is, I don’t like it.” Kaspar hugged himself tightly. “Don’t you notice how there are no birds singing? Even they know to keep clear of this place. Can we get out of here, please, Jon?”
“Of course.”
Kaspar had already set off toward the car, not waiting for Jon to catch up with him. Jon couldn’t understand why Kaspar was quite so spooked and why his agitation had increased at the mention of Leweilun.
“Hey, Kaspar, slow down,” he called. “We don’t have to go back into Bath just yet, do we? It’s a beautiful day. We ought to make the most of it.”
Kaspar came to a halt. Jon caught up to him and put his arms around his neck.
“What did you have in mind?” Kaspar asked even though Jon’s body language must have made it pretty obvious to him.
“We’re all alone, out here in the open. No one around to interrupt us. We can do whatever we want.”
“I like the way you’re thinking. Let’s just go somewhere we’re not being overlooked by the Foolish Brothers.”
They were halfway back to the car before Kaspar pounced on Jon, pressing him to the ground. “This’ll do,” he declared before covering Jon’s face with hot, eager kisses.
“Hey, slow down,” Jon replied.
He rolled over so he was on top then grabbed hold of Kaspar’s wrists, pinning them together. With his legs straddling Kaspar’s hips, he was all too aware of his lover’s erection poking at his thigh. “You like this, don’t you? Like it when I’m in charge?”
“Oh, yeah. Though you have to realize this is only a temporary state of affairs, because I can always do this…”
It seemed to take no effort at all for Kaspar to break free of Jon’s grasp. They wrestled, panting and laughing, until Jon flopped on his back, allowing Kaspar to take control.
Kaspar pulled Jon’s T-shirt up to his armpits, baring his chest. The hot sun felt good on Jon’s skin. He sat up a little way, allowing Kaspar to remove the garment entirely.
“Now you,” he murmured, helping Kaspar to take off his own top. His lover’s musky scent lingered on the fabric, and Jon put the shirt to his nose, breathing it in.
Kaspar pulled him down to the ground again. They exchanged long, deep kisses, gazing into each other’s eyes as they did.
“Lay back, Jon,” Kaspar instructed. He started to lick a slow trail down Jon’s chest. He nuzzled his nipples then darted the point of his tongue into Jon’s belly button.
When he felt his belt being unbuckled, Jon put his hand on top of Kaspar’s. “Before we go any farther, I don’t have any condoms with me.” He looked at his lover hopefully, but Kaspar shook his head. “In that case, I don’t think I can…”