‘Do you have protection?’
‘The bedroom.’
Noah brought him to his feet, holding his hand. He was naked, sculpted, the light hair from his stomach congregating at his pelvis. Quinn bulged against his own underwear, smiling as he allowed Noah to guide him to the bedroom.
‘This is the bathroom,’ Noah said as he opened the door.
‘Bedroom is to the left.’ Quinn giggled.
‘Why didn’t you say anything?’
‘Your bum distracted me.’
Noah grinned and took him into the bedroom, pushing him onto the bed, climbing atop of him. Now Quinn was naked, and every part of them met, solid yet supple. Quinn reached for his bedside cabinet and slipped out a Durex packet, which Noah opened. Quinn helped him slide it on, feeling the tension under his fingers.
‘Lube?’
Quinn nodded to the same cabinet, and Noah reached over this time, dropping the water-based lubricant onto his hands. With a gentle touch, he massaged Quinn, slipping one finger inside him, which Quinn greeted with an audible gasp. Noah’s dick, with its blue crisscrossing veins and curved shaft, responded to the noise with a jerk. Quinn added the lube to his own hand and ran it over Noah’s shaft, letting his fingers run over the trimmed hair on his balls. Noah groaned, his breath dancing across Quinn’s face.
Slowly, his lips on Quinn’s, he pushed in.
ChapterForty-Five
Two Months Later
The for-sale sign above Kings & Queens was pasted over with a red ‘sold’ sticker. Quinn, standing outside the shop on a frosty February morning, watched his breath catching in front of him. The New Year had been a turning point for Quinn. After Christmas, he had spent every day with Hermione, hearing her tell her story and writing out the recordings he took on his phone. He’d written most of the book, but he knew he needed to go back and tweak it here and there. Noah had been right. His publishers pulled through.
Hermione’s life was colourful, but what struck Quinn was her honesty. She shared details of her life that Quinn hadn’t asked for, but it made the book all the juicier. Because despite everything, the publisher, a very well-known tuxedoed animal, thank you very much, wanted all the titbits. Hermione was already raising her profile in time for a summer release, the publisher hoping it would make a good holiday read.
Now she genuinely had to avoid the press, hiring security to guard her gate and keep them off the property. Quinn didn’t have the heart to tell her that the press until that point hadn’t been all that interested in her life. He knew there would be a flurry of activity. Interviews, television appearances, author signings.
It didn’t matter that all that glory would be for Hermione and not him. His name wouldn’t even be on the book. He was the ghostwriter, and that suited him. Hermione promised him a thanks in the credits, especially because Quinn flat out refused to have his name on the cover.
He didn’t want the attention. He wrote Hermione’s story for her own liberation. As the excitement built from the publisher, Hermione, the press and Noah, he thought he brought her some form of justice.
His mother left Harold. Turns out him selling the place after saying he wanted it as part of the castle was the final straw. She later told Quinn that she had considered breaking up with him before Christmas, when he ignored her pleas to stop him from evicting her only son. Quinn hadn’t seen Harold since Christmas day, but he’d heard that he’d moved to Cardiff, where maybe he’d find Dougie and they would live a wonderful city life together.
Quinn walked to the window of his shop over the wet pavements, clutching his coffee cup to his chest. It hurt him to see the shop so bare. His mahogany table was there, lying empty, the eviction letters long gone and burned in a ritual Ivy had asked him to be part of.
‘Cleansing the stagnant energy,’ she’d told him, as she threw the red stamped eviction letters one by one into the flames.
Quinn had to admit that watching them curl up into nothingness was rather cathartic.
The books in the shop had all found their ways into the other shops, and others entered the honesty library in the castle grounds. It was a full circle moment, his books entering the castle. Almost as if that was always their destiny.
Daniel still kept in touch. Quinn planned to meet with him soon and discover how his life was going.
At the back of the shop, the confessional booth remained. It made Quinn happy to know that the original features would stay there. Maybe the church would function again, though he thought it was more probable that it would turn into some hip restaurant.
On the second of January, Noah had left Hay. It was hard watching him go, and as Quinn waved goodbye, he felt like an abandoned animal. Noah needed to go to London to ‘sort things out’. Quinn later found out that it was to help Matty move his things from his apartment.
Matty. Beautiful Matty.
Quinn had discovered Matty was not as successful as he’d first thought but came from rich parents. Like, uber rich parents who could speak multiple languages. No, seriously. His father held a stake in Uber and his mother in Duolingo. They had set Matty up for life. That was until his father had told him he had to go work for a living, and that had sent Matty crashing to the ground.
So, with twenty-thousand pounds to see him on his way, Matty had opened his bakery. But Matty didn’t know how to run a bakery and was more concerned with getting acting and modelling gigs. So, the bakery soon crashed into the ground, but not before he met Noah and realised quite how successful of an author he was.
Noah equalled money and acted as an escape for Matty. Noah had fallen for it.
