Young, who had been maintaining his cover successfully up to this point, looked up grudgingly from his mobile. “Sir?”
“A middle name, Young. A second name. The one your parents gave you because one was not enough. Do you have one?”
“Er…yes, sir. David.”
“David! An excellent name. And do you like it?”
“It’s…it’s all right, sir.”
Young’s eyes found Beauchamp’s over Vidal’s shoulder with the wordless plea of a man who had never had to deal with the full focus of Vidal’s attention on him. Beauchamp gave him the smallest nod,ride it out, and fell back a half-step, Mercè gone boneless against him.
Vidal kept up a running commentary for the rest of the walk, aimed exclusively at Young and Mercè, while Beauchamp carried the dog and said nothing.
By the time they reached the Mayfair building, his shoulders had tightened enough that he was going to need an ibuprofen and a lie-down. Vidal swept through the front door without looking back at him, and Beauchamp followed at a careful three paces, Mercè’s weight the only thing keeping his hands occupied.
At the landing, Vidal turned towards the second floor. He held out both hands. “Mercè, please.”
Beauchamp passed her over. Vidal tucked her under one arm, and without so much as a glance in Beauchamp’s direction, walked to Connor’s door and knocked twice.
Connor opened it in a T-shirt and jeans, a tea towel slung over one shoulder. “Alright, sweetheart. Come in.” Vidal stepped inside, the door swinging shut behind him with a decisive click.
Beauchamp stood on the landing staring at the closed door for longer than he should have. Then he turned and walked up the stairs to the empty flat with Young.
Chapter Twenty-One
“Alright, sweetheart. Come in.”
Connor stepped back to let him in, the tea towel still slung over his shoulder from the washing up he’d been halfway through when the knock came. He’d been expecting Vidal at some point today, just not quite so early and not quite so quiet about it. Vidal was a man who announced his arrivals. He usually came through the door already mid-sentence.
This morning he simply stopped in the tiled entryway. Mercè was tucked under one arm, her bald head pressed against his ribs. “Give her here.” Connor held out a hand. Vidal surrendered his dog without protest, which was the first thing that told him the day had gone sideways for the poor dear.
Connor carried Mercè through to the kitchen and set her down on the sheepskin he’d bought for her the week after Vidal first invited himself up to his flat. She turned three tight circles on it, dropped into her usual crescent, and was asleep before he’d made it back out to the hall.
Vidal hadn’t moved. He was still standing in the entryway with his hands at his sides and his overcoat buttoned right up to the collar. The young prince took one step forward and put his forehead against Connor’s collarbone. He didn’t quite collapse, but it was a near enough thing that Connor had to brace himself belatedly against his sudden weight.
Connor got one arm around his back and the other up to cup the back of his head, holding him there in the quiet of the entryway. “Alright,” he said. “What’s this then, love?”
Vidal’s breath went out of him in a long exhale. “Connor.”
“Yeah?”
“I would like you to take me into that room, and I would like you to put me on my back on your dining table. Then I would like you to service me, my darling, in the most literal and unglamorous sense of the word. I will just lie there and be a body that you are fucking, and I would like not to have to hold up my end of anything at all for the next hour of my life.”
Connor pressed his mouth against the crown of Vidal’s head and breathed in deep, taking in the clean smell of him.
It wasn’t the request he’d have expected, but he understood it. When Vidal’s energy for performance ran out, this was what was left underneath it: a man asking to be looked after. The fact that he felt safe enough to come to Connor for that gratified him.
“Alright, sweetheart.” He kept his voice level and his hand steady against the back of Vidal’s neck. “Dining table it is. You go on in and get yourself comfortable. I’ll fetch what we need.”
Vidal pushed himself gently upright, and pressed a brief kiss against the side of Connor’s jaw.
Connor took the corridor to his bedroom, pulled the bottle of lube from the top drawer of the bedside table, and came back through to the dining room archway.
The dining table was a long oak slab that Connor had bought from a salvage man in Bethnal Green years ago, and Vidal hadlaid himself out along the length of it like a feast. He was naked on the oak with his dark hair spilled behind him and the gold crucifix caught in the hollow of his throat.
He hadn’t arched his back, or cocked a hip, or done any of the twink in a porno nonsense Connor had been treated to over the weeks. He just lay there, open and quiet, and Connor found he liked this side of him best of all. “Look at you,” Connor breathed. “Bend your knees for me, sweetheart. Feet on the table. There you go.”
Vidal brought his knees up without a word. His feet settled on the oak as his thighs opened for Connor. He stepped between Vidal’s parted feet and laid one hand on the inside of his thigh, just above the knee, stroking his thumb along the smooth skin there. “You tell me if anything’s not right.”
