Page 9 of Compulsion

“Yeah.” I hesitated a moment but then just added, “It was. Thanks.” I bent and grabbed at my jeans, then tucked in one of my legs to start dressing myself. I hissed in frustration as I got tangled at the knees. Shit, if I’d known I was going to need to pull my clothes on and off quickly, I’d have chosen to wear sweats instead. Seve caught my arm as I staggered, and I bit back more thanks. Not that he hadn’t earned it, in more ways than one.

He was all zipped up, all done and dusted and calm as anything. Maybe there was something still lingering… a breath heavier than before, a flush on his smooth skin? I was sure he’d been blown away by it as much as I had. He wasn’t rushing off, after all. Nor had he tried to slip me a twenty in payment for services rendered. Dammit, I knew I was being a hypocrite. I was creating melodrama around something that had been perfectly clear to both of us—nothing but spontaneous lust, nothing but a fast and furious race toward mutual satisfaction. And I’d welcomed it wholeheartedly.

“I’ve got to go.” I stumbled out the words. So much for any witty repartee.

Seve frowned, a brief crease on his brow. “Okay, Max.” That deep, steady voice, like he hadn’t just fucked me to a sob, like he hadn’t just come like an enthusiastic porn star himself. But I was absurdly pleased he’d remembered my name. “If that’s what you want.”

I blinked hard. “Yeah. Um… my friends? They’re still in the club.”

He shrugged and his smile had an arrogant, harsh twist to it now. “Push the door hard. Security will let you back inside. They know you’re out here.”

“You coming too?”

His dark eyes blinked as if I’d startled him. “No. I have things to do.”

He fell silent again. I just stared. Even allowing for this whole weird scenario, he didn’t seem much of a conversationalist. There was a single bead of sweat shimmering at his left temple. Once I’d seen it, I couldn’t seem to tear my gaze away.

“I’ll see you around,” he said.

Before I had a chance to return the farewell, he turned away. I watched him walk diagonally across the yard and let himself out of a small access gate. The shadows were deeper there, and all I could see of his head and shoulders was silhouette. He shut the gate firmly behind him, and I heard his footsteps fading away, heading toward the main street.

I leaned back against the wall for another ten minutes or so, watching my breath huff out on the increasingly nippy air and waiting for the soreness in my arse to ease off. I wished like fuck I was still smoking.

Chapter Six

“MAX, you’re not sleeping well, are you?”

I peered up over the top of my book. I immediately forgot what had been on the page, despite having skimmed over it four times already. One-man-against-the-world thrillers were proving way too implausible for me. “Sorry, Jack. Have I been disturbing you or something? I only get up for a drink or a read.”

Jack was standing in the doorway of the living room, wiping his hands on an apron with “Kiss Me Quick” on the front. “Or to cook something. Or to have a shower.”

I flushed. So perhaps I’d been a pain in the arse this last week. But I had things on my mind. Things that kept me awake, that nagged at me, that refused to be laid back to rest.

Jack wriggled out of the apron and threw himself down in the armchair opposite me. “It’s not a problem for me. I sleep little anyway. And Louis expends all his energy dancing and socializing, so he’d probably sleep through the Second Coming. It’s you I’m worried about.”

“No need,” I said hastily. “But sorry if you’re losing sleep over me. I’ll stop roaming about at night. You need your rest to keep up with the new job.”

Jack had recently been promoted. His employer was working closely with the local police on a new initiative against drug crime, and Jack had been co-opted onto the liaison team. Louis all but itched with pride whenever he tried to explain it to me, with me smiling and trying to look like I understood every word.

Part of the reason we’d built such a strong friendship at school was the complementary mix of our three personalities. Jack was the steady achiever, Louis the smart extrovert. I was… well, what was I, apart from the bridge between the two? I’d been one of those guys they all said had great promise. I was the one with plenty of energy and drive—I’d do something with my life. Unfortunately it didn’t take me long to start misusing that energy, kicking back at authority as soon as I was old and big enough to stand up for myself. Not that the school wasn’t good, that the teachers weren’t sympathetic to teenage boys. Shit, I wouldn’t have had their job for all the tea in China and places beyond, especially with kids like me in the class. But I was full of aggression and bravado and the confusion that comes at that time. Bloody hormones in a rage too. What was I really doing with my life? I was setting the scene for a few messy years, is what.

I was high maintenance. And I always fought to go my own way, even when no one was challenging me. I always took the difficult route, always expected struggle and opposition. I got into fights, was disruptive in class if I didn’t understand the subject, and came in late, hungover, and sometimes stoned. Louis and Jack tried to rein me in. Tried to convince me I wasn’t a moron and shouldn’t act like one. That I could understand mathematical principles, carry out a successful science experiment, and write something more lyrical than my name on the toilet wall. But I was just too far up my own arse to listen to my peers.

It was a small miracle I lasted long enough to get to Brighton University. In fact, I think the school head put in a few words for me, just to get me that one last chance. The three of us were still together, the Uni life was good—it should have been a brave new world for me. It just didn’t go that way.

The partying had started in the late school years. I knew I was gay from an early age, knew I was highly sexual as soon as I learned enough about it. And I liked the thrill of finding out how my body worked—I liked to see the games we were all starting to play with each other, the drama and the physical excitement. And I found I was particularly adept at all of those. I kept fit and I had the gift of the gab to pick up casual partners. I was enthusiastic too.

I lost my virginity in Compulsion, the first term of Uni. It was called something like Beach Bubbles then and was into the cocktail crowd. Clubs changed their names a lot according to fashion and to new owners. I was only just legal—not that that had stopped me drinking illegally for the past few years—and I’d scammed my way into an over-twenty-fives night with a fake ID. I picked up a pretty fit bloke and we were all over each other. Can’t even remember his name or if we swapped any details except the “yeah, right now” look. We stumbled into a cubicle in the gents’, full of beer and a smoke and laughing at something that probably wouldn’t have been funny to anyone sober. And so it happened. Made me wince a bit, and it was over in the time it took to pull a vending machine condom on and then peel it clumsily off, but I was excited at the way it made me feel. Loved the power of how it obviously made him feel too. By the time I’d got through that first term, I was well on the way to quantity over quality. Didn’t have much idea of inhibition; restraint was an alien concept. Yeah… if you’ll pardon the pun, I was way up my own arse.

“Max?” Jack was frowning at me. “You look miles away.”

Not just miles but years. Or maybe not even that long ago. Jack wasn’t entirely right—I was sleeping at night. But it was so restless that each morning I felt as if I’d had no rest at all. Louis usually teased me because I was difficult to wake in the morning—I was notorious for sleeping like the dead, just like him. If there’s a fire, he’d say…

I’d burn, would be my flip reply.

And that’s what seemed to be happening to me now. I was burning up, but with needs and wants, not flames. Last Saturday’s escapade had nagged at me every bloody night this week. I was disturbed out of all proportion. I mean, life went on, regardless. I worked extra shifts at the construction site, I cooked a couple of suppers for us at the flat. I thought about changing my job or signing up for night-school Spanish or getting my hair shaved—all the usual nonsense that went through a bloke’s head during the day. But I just couldn’t settle. I scooped up a bunch of secondhand thrillers from the charity shop to read in the evenings, and I even tried watching the TV soaps with Louis. He’d recently filmed a minor part in one of them and now he was hooked on the whole damned lot, but I eventually drove him mad asking who was related to whom all the time. Nothing eased my mood. I found myself pottering around the town in my lunch hour, wondering whether to buy another good shirt or two and trying out samples of men’s cologne. I’d never bothered about those things before. I nearly got discovered by one of the site managers—also on lunch—as I was thumbing through packs of new underwear. Decent but way too expensive stuff. Totally weird.

I was burning for all sorts of other reasons. Something had lit up under me, and I couldn’t put out the heat. “What’s the time?” I asked.