Craig shut the door, turned the key in the lock, and stripped off in front of him. Taking it slow. Watching how Paul's cock stiffened and grew as he gazed at him. Watching how he made no move to hide himself. He wasn't the only one either. Craig was so hard by the time he got down to his underpants that he had trouble getting them off. When Craig slid onto the bed next to him, Paul reached for the condoms but Craig stopped him.
“Not yet,” he whispered. “We won't be needing them for a while.”
He kissed a slow journey down from Paul's mouth, over his throat and Adam's apple, along the line of his shoulders and across his chest. Craig used his lips and tongue, sometimes nibbling with his teeth in places where Paul wasn't scarred or where it wouldn't hurt him. All the while Paul panted, gasping and, once, letting out a soft cry that he cut off almost as soon as it started.
“Hush,” Craig murmured. “Try to be quiet. We don't want to wake Andrea.”
Paul nodded, and Craig could see his boyfriend's sweat and his own saliva glistening on his body. He eased his tongue down Paul's belly, remembering as he did so the last man he'd been with here in Devon. Michael.
Michael
. Funny how that memory didn't seem to matter as much tonight. Funny too how Craig had only allowed it back into his mind today.
Trying not to think too much, he ran his tongue around Paul's belly button and then buried his mouth into the wiry depths and darkness of his pubic hair. Paul gasped again, and Craig could feel the urgency of his cock rubbing against his face.
“Please,” Paul whispered, raising himself from the bed. “Please....”
“Soon,” Craig murmured. “When I'm ready. And only then.”
Then he took Paul's cock into his mouth. After a while, Craig eased him sideways, laying down so Paul could take his swollen cock into his mouth too. Which he did eagerly and with a groan of pleasure. Craig almost lost it then, but managed somehow to hold on to his spunk. For at least a little longer.
Finally, the salty punch of him filled Craig's mouth, just as he came in Paul's. When neither of them had anything left to swallow, for the moment, they lay trembling and sweating, hot and dirty, next to each other. Paul was whispering words of thanks, words of love, and Craig smiled to hear them.
They continued to lie there for a while, staring up at the beams on the ceiling. Without warning, Craig started to laugh and then stifled the sound at once before Andrea could hear it.
“What is it?” Paul whispered, his breath warm now against Craig's face. “Go on; share the joke.”
“It's nothing,” he whispered back. “It's just that I've never felt so at ease with someone so soon as I do with you. God, Paul, but you're
so
hot.”
Another snort of laughter escaped him, and Paul started to laugh as well, the two of them pressing their hands to their mouths and holding each other.
A sudden sound from along the landing stopped their fit. A door clicked open and footfalls creaked on wood. Another door opened.
“It's okay,” Craig mouthed. “She's just using the bathroom again. That's all.”
They waited, gazing at each other, the sweat still shining on their skin. At last the toilet was flushed and Andrea safely installed in her room once more.
“She must have seen our light on,” Paul said. “Under the door.”
Craig shook his head. “Maybe not. Her eyesight was never that good. And she's older now.”
After a while he began to make love to Paul again. This time, he needed a condom and made Paul lie on his back, legs raised, so Craig could see his eyes when he entered him. He loved the way that pleasure and wanting chased themselves over Paul's face, the way he pressed himself up against Craig until he was deeper inside Paul than he'd been in any man, and the way he gasped when Craig rubbed his cock to greater hardness. Most of all though, he loved the look Paul wore when he came: as if a door had been opened and he might see everything the other man was if he chose to. Craig spread the spunk over his own chest and a moment later he came too.
A while after that, just before he fell asleep, Paul murmured his name once. As if committing it to memory. “Craig.”
Their lovemaking had been explosive. Honest too, in a way he'd never known. The kind of feeling Craig had never experienced before—or only once—and which he knew he wanted again. With him. He knew also that soon he'd have to tell Paul the truth.
But before that he needed to be again in the place where he'd last seen Michael.
Chapter Seven
It was still dark by the time Craig got there, and twice he'd stumbled on the walk up to the woods from the farm. He'd left Paul sleeping. Thinking about waking him, telling him where he was going, Craig hadn't known what to say. So he'd said nothing at all. Now it was cold and he wished he'd remembered his sweater. It was December after all. He should have known better.
Rubbing his arms against his body to try to keep out the icy air, he came to the edge of the wood and turned to gaze over the valley. Nothing to look at of course. Not yet. But if it had been the full light of day, he would have seen patchwork farmland spreading as far as the eye could see, a scattering of cows in the distance perhaps, and the rolling hills all the way to Exeter. Before that, of course, the neighboring cornfields and the river. As a boy, he'd always found peace here, in the times when things grew bad or when his father, with all his religious demands, became impossible to be with. Sometimes Craig imagined he might have been here with his mother, which was perhaps the reason why he loved the place so much, but of course he couldn't be sure of that. She'd left them so long ago. And she'd never come back.
He shook his head to clear his mind of that bad memory and found his fists were clenched together. She hadn't come back because of his father, he told himself. Somehow he'd made it impossible for her. All his church ideals—they were enough to drive anyone away. It was nothing to do with Craig. Anyway, he shouldn't be thinking of this now. He was really here to think about Michael. This was where they'd been together.
Craig's first time. It seemed like centuries ago, but also as if any moment now he'd hear the soft rustle of footsteps on dried wood, turn, and he'd be there, he'd....
“Craig?”
The voice, though not much more than a whisper, caught him by surprise. “
Jesus
. Who on earth...? Paul. Paul, is that you?”
“Yes. I didn't mean to startle you.” A dark shadow rose up from the darkness already around Craig and steadied itself into the shape of a man. A man he knew from the present, not from the past. “I heard you get up.”
“You followed me?” His voice sounded more accusing than he'd meant it to but Paul didn't answer. Not directly.
“I thought you might need this.” As he spoke, Craig felt something warm and soft pushed against his chest. The sweater he'd left behind. “It was easy enough to track you, but I won't stay. Not if you don't want me to.”
Craig was silent for a moment. Then he made his decision. “No. Stay. I'd like you to. And thanks for the sweater.”
“You're welcome. Couldn't you sleep?”
“No. Not that. I just wanted to ... see this place again.”
He put on the sweater and leaned back against the gnarled oak. Its rough wood rubbed against his body. Paul moved to stand next to him.
“Bad memories or good?” he asked.
Honestly, it was so hard to tell sometimes. His memories were rarely so easy to label.
“Both, I think,” he said slowly and then stopped.
Paul took hold of his hand. His fingers felt warm.
“Tell me,” he said. “I've had enough of men who tell me nothing about their lives. I don't want it to be like that with you, Craig. Or would you rather I called you Daniel?”
“No, please. Craig is who I am now. Daniel is what I left behind. Please believe me. I didn't mean to start off with a lie. When I left here, everything changed.”
“Then tell me,” Paul said again.
“Craig is my middle name,” he said, shutting his eyes but still holding Paul's hand. “And Robertson was my mother's maiden name. When I left home, I changed it.”
Paul made a small sound, somewhere between a groan and a laugh.
“I see,” he said. “Funny, but you're not the first man I've known to have told me that.”
“You mean your ex?” Craig asked. He might even have been angling for a change of subject, but Paul wouldn't allow it. Not for the first time, he wondered at the balance between them—the way Paul seemed to be in charge out of bed, whereas he was in charge in it.
“Yes,” Paul said. “My ex. But that's not important now. Tell me why you left home. Why you changed your name.”
Craig allowed his back to slide down the rough bark of the tree until he was sitting. Paul followed suit. Then Craig told him what he wanted to know.
* * * *
Daniel watched the man for four evenings. At 6 p.m., he always left the cottage, walked to the top of the hill and sat down. Sometimes he stared out across the fields toward the river. At other times he cried. Daniel didn't want him to know he was watching. The man wouldn't be happy if he knew he was here. He might tell his dad and then there would be trouble. Spying was a sin.
Daniel shouldn't have been watching him but he couldn't help it.
He was an ordinary bloke. Medium height, medium build, brown hair, brown eyes. Quiet-looking. Even when he was booking the cottage from Dad that first day, he didn't say much. He'd turned up on the off-chance, he said, wanting somewhere to take stock for a couple of weeks. Dad made no comment. Brought him into the kitchen where Daniel was lounging half-asleep in his old chair, and made up the paperwork. He was glad to take the money, he said, and the bloke smiled.
That's when Daniel noticed him first. As a person, rather than yet another holiday-maker. When the man smiled, his face softened, as if an inner light had been switched on from somewhere. Daniel couldn't help it; he smiled in response, and the man glanced over at him, brown eyes widening for an instant.
“Hello,” he said. “I didn't see you there.”
Daniel shrugged, feeling the swift familiar burning of his face. He got his reddish-blond hair and pale skin from his mother. “Hi.”
The sound of his voice made Dad stop counting for a moment. “What? Oh yes, my son Daniel. This is Mr....?”
“Harris. Michael Harris,” the stranger said, but kept his eyes on Daniel. “Pleased to meet you, Daniel.”
He mumbled something in return, and a couple of seconds later the business was done. As Dad led the way out of the kitchen, jingling the cottage keys in his hands, Daniel heard him say, “Sorry about that, Mr. Harris. My son's very shy. The teenage years, you know? They're a difficult age....”
He didn't hear Mr Harris's reply.
The next day, Daniel worked outside, in the allotment and near the outhouses, though he didn't get much done. He wanted to be within sight of the cottage. Mr. Harris went out twice in the car, the first time for groceries, but the second time he was gone for two hours. When he returned, the tires were caked with mud and grass. Maybe he'd been sightseeing at one of the nearby working farm museums. There were a lot of those in Devon. He smiled at Daniel when he got out, but Daniel looked away, skin prickling, and by the time he looked back Mr. Harris had already gone inside.
At 6 p.m., when he was trying to mend the steering on Dad's tractor, Mr. Harris walked out of the cottage, stood for a moment on the threshold with the warm evening sun lightening his hair, and took the path around the side, toward the hill.
A minute ticked by. Then, leaving the toolbox next to the tractor to make it look as if he'd just gone for a moment, Daniel followed him. It seemed the right thing to do. Mr. Harris walked through the trees, over the stile, and up the hill. The air smelled of leaves on the turn, the end of summer. At the top, he sat down and Daniel waited behind him, secretly, in the wood and watched. This was the first time he saw Mr. Harris cry. When he returned the way he'd come, Daniel hid and waited ten minutes before going home. His heart was beating fast. That night his father, wrapped up in a special time of prayer and fasting, said nothing about his lateness—maybe he didn't even notice it—and so for the next three evenings he did the same.
Now it was the fourth time and Mr. Harris was crying again. Daniel could see the shake in his shoulders. Behind, unseen, he crouched against a tree, trembling. He didn't know what to do. Suddenly, from nowhere, a flock of swallows rose, swooping and dancing against an orange sky, and then he knew.
Getting to his feet, Daniel walked across grass and moss toward him, away from the wood and out into the open. Each step felt as if it were miles. Mr. Harris must have heard him but still he didn't move. When Daniel reached him, he said nothing, but sat down, one arm brushing the top of Mr. Harris's shoulder.
Mr. Harris wiped his eyes.
“You know, I thought you'd never show yourself,” he said. Then he touched Daniel.
Later, Daniel lay next to him. Mr. Harris's—Michael's—arm was underneath his shoulders and he could feel the warmth of breath on his cheek. Above them, the sky was darkening and he could smell rain in the air, though it hadn't yet fallen. From somewhere in the bracken and trees, there was a small animal rustling, maybe a fox or a badger. Even though he was full of words he wouldn't be able to say, he was enjoying the silence between the two of them.
It was Michael who spoke first.
“Will it be all right with your father? He won't suspect?”
“No,” Daniel shook his head, feeling the rub of Michael's arm against his hair. “He'll think I'm off in the fields somewhere, or out on the bike. Not that he'll worry anyway. He's too wrapped up in God and stuff to worry at the moment. Anyway, nothing different happens around here.”
“Indeed.”
They kissed for a while. Michael tasted musky, like the earth. It was nice. Not the sudden rush of crimson, which happened before and which made Daniel want to look at him,
touch
him. No, it was gentler now. A soft shade of brown, like his eyes.