"Listen," she said, before she could change her mind, "this is going to sound incredibly bizarre, I know, and it's none of my business, but — be careful with him."
From his icy expression she saw straight away that he'd misunderstood. "I don't need —"
"No, sorry. That came out wrong. I mean, um, please don't hurt him."
He stared at her for a moment, astonishment replacing irritation. "
Hurt
him?" He sounded as if the idea had never occurred to him, which it probably hadn't. The possibility hadn't crossed her mind until very recently.
"Seems unlikely, yeah. But he's human. It could happen." She ploughed on, determined to finish now that she'd started. "I wouldn't exactly call him a friend but, glaring faults and all, I like him. Whatever you've half done to him, undo it, or get it done properly. Before I forget what a good boss he is normally, put in for a transfer, and end up working for someone who won't look the other way when I leave early every Friday."
The people in front of them turned away from the bar, murmuring apologies as they squeezed past, and Sara noticed that they had reached the head of the queue. She watched as Warrick ordered for the four of them. He handed two glasses to her, her own and Toreth's.
"Well?" she challenged.
He took the other pair of drinks. "I'll bear it in mind," he said blandly.
Smooth bastard, she thought as she followed him back. And then: suits Toreth, I suppose. She decided to forget about her misgivings for the night and just enjoy herself. They were old enough to play their games without a referee.
When they reached Dillian and Toreth, Dillian turned towards her. "Sara, I wondered if you would like to join us for dinner afterwards? I'm sure we can change the reservation. But Toreth said that since you're in charge of the night out, he really ought to let you decide."
Sara smiled, enjoying the thrill of conspiracy. "Sounds lovely!" she said, without looking at Toreth.
The restaurant was one that Toreth had never eaten at before. Still, merely walking through the door gave him the idea that it was likely to more than wipe out any savings occasioned by the free tickets. Sara was paying, though, so what did he care?
To his surprise, he enjoyed himself. Dillian made good company: witty, fun and relaxed. And so very like her brother that once or twice he almost called her by the wrong name. With Warrick there, he entertained himself by walking the fine line between interested conversation and flirting. Not that it was particularly any of Warrick's business what he said to her. Warrick talked mostly to Sara, but Toreth caught him looking at the two of them more than once, and he enjoyed that, too, without bothering to analyse why.
Eventually Dillian looked at her watch, covering a yawn. "I'm awfully sorry, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to call it a night. I've still not really adjusted back from Mars time and I'm supposed to be meeting clients tomorrow. If I don't get some sleep I shall probably end up agreeing to build them something that breaks the laws of physics, never mind the structural codes."
Toreth tried to catch her eye, but she cut him out, turning to Sara. "Are you a night-owl like these two, or would you like to share a taxi back? If I remember New London properly, I believe I'm on your route home."
Sara grinned. "Sure." She finished her drink and stood. "Ready when you are."
Dillian stood up with her. "See you later, Keir — don't make too much noise coming in. Goodbye, Toreth. It was lovely to meet you." She didn't sound entirely convinced of that.
Warrick watched them go, then turned back to Toreth. "More coffee?"
Toreth shrugged. "If you like."
"Mm. Perhaps not; it is getting late." Warrick nodded at Toreth's injured hand. "That looks nasty."
"Sara's new cat." Toreth rubbed his thumb over the scratches, which despite the disinfectant were red and slightly swollen. "It's fucking psychotic. But apparently I scared it, so it's all my fault."
"Really? Somehow I'm not surprised." Warrick glanced round briefly, as though looking for a waiter, then fixed his gaze back on Toreth. "So. What do you think of Dilly?"
"I think . . . she's very nice." And I want to fuck her, because she looks like you.
Warrick looked as if he'd caught the first half of the thought, if not the second. "Do you want to know what she said about you?"
Yes. "Not really."
"She said you were charming, considering what you do for a living." He seemed to find that rather funny.
Toreth smiled nastily. "Maybe I should give her a call. What do you think?"
Warrick looked at him for a moment, serious again, then shrugged. "I think I'm not sure whether you want me to warn you off from her, or her off from you."
Too wound up to even try to decode that one, Toreth snapped, "Why should I give a fuck what you think?"
"Well, apart from the fact that you just asked me, there is absolutely no reason at all."
Toreth sat and fumed for a moment, not understanding why he felt so angry.
"Sara told me it's your birthday," Warrick continued. "Which I knew already, actually. I apologise for not sending a gift, but I wasn't sure whether you would —" He paused, then said, "Toreth?"
He looked up, looked into Warrick's eyes, and suddenly the anger was gone and he
wanted
him. It took his breath away, dulled the noise of the room around them. A drug hit, delivered straight into a vein and flooding his whole body at once. He fought the feeling down until it was only unbearable, then stood up. "I have to go." He couldn't think of a reason to give, so he just repeated it. "I have to go."
"Toreth —"
But he was already walking away, somehow putting one foot in front of the other and ignoring the sound of Warrick's chair scraping across the floor as he stood up. At the door he almost turned back, but he pushed his way through and into the street. As he stood there, trying to attract a taxi, he wondered what the hell he was going to do if Warrick came after him — and why the hell he didn't know if he wanted him to or not.
Back at home, he went to bed and couldn't sleep. The air-conditioning was on the blink again, and the room for once was too hot for him. He opened the window and lay on top of the sheets, pretending he could feel a breeze from the still July night outside.
Even after the room cooled a little, sleep seemed no more likely. Lack of sex and an unusually early night, he decided in the end. His body had grown used to the excesses of the last couple of weeks.
Well, the extra sleep might do him good, and the first part of the problem he could solve on his own. Rolling onto his back, he tried to fantasise about Dillian, but every time his concentration slipped, she morphed into Warrick. Eventually he gave up and thought about Warrick. Not the sim, or their D&S games, but about the leisurely not-quite fuck in Warrick's flat.
'Just . . . shh. '
He put one hand up to his shoulder, to the place where he could almost feel Warrick's mouth against him. The other hand he pressed flat on his cock, trying to duplicate the smooth slide of Warrick's body against his.
Unsatisfying and lonely by comparison, but less so, surprisingly, than having another body there who wasn't Warrick.
'Shh. Just . . . shh'.
He focused on the words, remembering, murmuring them out loud as his hand moved faster. Feeling, not thinking. Warrick moving with him, burning hot skin under his hands, so close. He could taste him now. Soft, generous mouth against his. So close, nothing separating them, wonderful and frightening at the same time. Yes, feeling the same fear he'd felt before, but able to ignore it because this was like the sim, distance dulling the edge.
It was only a fantasy. Tomorrow he could tell himself he hadn't done this, or that it didn't matter.
And that it didn't matter if he said Warrick's name, over and over, wanting him to be there with him as he came, because there was no one else to hear it.
Then he fell asleep and slept better than he had done since he had been in Warrick's bed.
Maybe it was the good night's rest, but as he walked in to work, he had an idea, which seemed so blindingly obvious that he was sure it had to be wrong.
"'Morning, Sara," he said cheerfully.
She looked up. "Christ, what happened to you?"
He sat on the edge of her desk, picked up what was probably an important piece of paper, and started to fold it into a bird. It was the one thing he knew that both qualified as a party trick and could be performed in polite company.
She watched him without further comment.
"Sara, who gave you those tickets?" he said eventually.
"Which tickets?" she asked, and he knew he was right.
"For the play. For my birthday."
She struggled with the temptation for a couple of seconds. Then she said, "Warrick."
"Why?"
"He said he had a couple spare."
Toreth contemplated the finished bird sitting in the palm of his hand.
"Lying cunt," he said, watching Sara's eyes widen with shock. Then he crumpled the figure up, dropped it in front of her, and went off into his office to think about what to do.
Once inside the office he stood by the window and stared blindly at the tiny enclosed courtyard below, feeling the rage build. Part of him almost welcomed it: familiar and focusing, something he understood.
Very neatly planned. It had all been very neat and he had to admit that even as his hands tightened on the window frame until the knuckles whitened and the scratches stood out lividly against his skin. He felt like going back outside and taking it out on Sara, but a tiny voice of self-preservation said: not in front of the rest of the office.
Sara helping Warrick set him up. And Dillian, of course, because she'd been the one who'd asked them to go to dinner. Thinking back, she'd also taken Sara out of the picture at the end of the night.
Yes, the two of them had gone off very conveniently so that Warrick could . . . what? Something he couldn't think about clearly because remembering made the dizzying mix of fear and lust he'd felt last night return to catch him like a hammer blow in the chest. He closed his eyes, willing it to go away.
He wasn't scared. He didn't want Warrick, right now, here. No. He was angry. Very angry, because he'd been played like a fucking fish and he hadn't seen it at all. And by Sara, of all people. The anger washed the metallic taste of fear out of his mouth, allowed him to concentrate.
He couldn't let this go — or he couldn't let it go on — and that meant seeing Warrick and finding out what the hell he'd been playing at last night. Letting him know how very fucked off he was.
He put a call through to SimTech, his hands shaking almost too much to fit the comm earpiece. On another day he might have asked Sara to call for him. No doubt she'd just love the chance to fucking interfere again, the treacherous conniving bitch.
When Warrick answered Toreth somehow managed to bite back the anger sufficiently to sound, if not friendly, at least not homicidal. He fixed his gaze on the wall, trying to listen to the words without hearing Warrick's voice.
"I'd like to see you. Yes. That's fine. I'll see you there."
Warrick hadn't sounded at all surprised to hear from him, either.
Bastard.
Somehow, he made it through the day. After he'd gone outside and explained in low but serious tones that Warrick had better not hear anything about this, Sara went home with a headache. Toreth did paperwork at random, and then went to the gym and lifted weights until the blood rang in his ears and the monitoring system made him stop.
In the bar that evening, Warrick was waiting for him, looking so relaxed and unconcerned that Toreth felt a near-irresistible urge to punch him. Instead he said, "The inestimable fucking Sara told me about the tickets."
Warrick smiled. "I thought she would. Too much fun to keep it a secret. I hope you aren't too angry with her."
Toreth sat down and Warrick pushed a drink over. He ignored it.
"I feel like strangling the bitch."
That produced a pause before Warrick said, "I think she suffered enough having to sit through the play. She was only trying to help."
"Help?" He clenched his fist, the scratches stinging as the skin stretched. "What the fuck does that mean?"
Warrick shrugged. "You'd better ask her."
"I'm asking you. Don't try to pretend it wasn't your idea."
"All right, I won't." He looked away for a moment, then looked back, his gaze very direct. "I wanted to see you. I remembered your birthday and I thought it would be a perfect opportunity." He raised an eyebrow. "I really didn't think that you'd mind."
We play games all the time, his tone implied.
Toreth met his eyes, still managing to hang on to the anger that had carried him through the call and got him here. "So why the hell did Sara think I needed help?"
"She told me that you had been keeping yourself occupied with, as she put it, fucking your way through the city. All night, every night." Warrick shrugged, his tone overly casual. "
She
seemed to take it as a sign that you were unhappy about something I'd done."
"And what did you think?" Toreth asked, even though he didn't want to. What he increasingly wanted to do was walk out before something awful and irrevocable happened. He was going to kill Sara tomorrow.
"Well, it's hardly untypical behaviour." Warrick grimaced. "All that sets your recent endeavours apart is a certain grandeur of scale. And the fact that I no longer feature in the line-up."
"It's none of your fucking business. You —"
"Isn't it?"
Toreth ignored the interruption. "You don't own me. You don't have any rights over me. And you sure as hell don't have the right to tell me that I can't fuck anyone else."
Warrick shook his head, exasperation replacing the restrained discomfort. "When, exactly, did I tell you not to fuck anyone else?"
This question stopped Toreth dead. He thought it over, and began to suspect that quite soon he was going to feel like an idiot. "You've never been exactly thrilled about it."