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“I’m not. It’s just—” He broke off, laughing. “Nobody that bedraggled should look that good.”
My words on the stern floated uncomfortably back to me. And out of nowhere, I blushed, although hopefully Leo would attribute it to the change in temperature. “Well”—I attempted insouciance—“what can I say?” Except then I couldn’t think of anything to say.
Which just made him laugh again. “Pass that towel and come here.”
We put both towels on the floor by the stove and huddled close to it, our bodies wedged together, as the cold fled us like an exorcised demon. Thankfully Leo didn’t seem to want to discuss the nonsense I’d spewed before we went for an unscheduled swim in the freezing Thames. Or he was being, fuck him, kind.
“We’re going to have to shower,” he said finally. “We smell—I don’t even want to think about how we smell.”
“Is there enough water?”
“Maybe?”
We transferred our increasingly damp and filthy towels to the bathroom and stood on them while Leo faffed with the pump before taking the shower from its hook. “You first.”
I stepped into the enclosure, letting Leo rinse me down with swift efficiency. He turned off the tap again while I soaped myself generously and then rinsed me a second time. In abstract terms, it was undignified—I felt like a spaniel who’d rolled in mud—but in real terms, it just felt good to be clean.
Then we swapped places, and it turned out to be absolutely no hardship whatsoever to be the one holding the showerhead. It was like some personalised pornographic fantasy watching Leo turn and arch beneath the spray, his skin all glisten, all shine, and droplets running hither-thither in tantalising disarray over the planes and contours of his body.
“Marius?”
“Mm?”
“You’re wasting water.”
I turned it off. Though Leo didn’t get very far with the soap because I stepped back into the enclosure, hanging up the shower and pushing him against the far wall. Everything was damp heat and slick skin and not enough space as I wrapped my hand around his cock, my own sliding roughly against the groove of his hip. He let out a stuttering gasp, hardening almost instantly, one of his palms slapping against the tiles. My answer—a harsh groan I was surprised had come from me—echoed in the narrow space.
Catching one of his wrists with my free hand, I pinned it by his side and leaned my weight against him, partly for the sake of my ankle but mostly because I loved how easily he took it. Took me. And how readily he yielded his strength, losing none of it.
I jerked him off, fast and rough, his sounds reduced to whimpers. His abdominal muscles flexing frantically, grinding myself against him until I had to shove my face against his neck to muffle whatever nonsense was pouring from my mouth this time. He tasted of nothing but clean, just water and skin, and I was an animal, wanting to lick his salt from my fingers, put my teeth to his throat. He came quickly in a jet of heat, with a sweet, piercing cry, his head falling back and his trapped wrist straining against my grip like his body had arched under mine when I’d fucked him a few nights back. It didn’t take much for me to follow him over. Pleasure snatched from friction and proximity, the strange intimacy of his come on my cock.
I stayed too long afterwards, raw and wrung out, my head still tucked against his shoulder, his arm—which I’d barely noticed moving—wound about my waist. My breath was ragged. Shivers that weren’t cold racing up and down my arms. Water in my eyes. But that could have been anything: the river, the shower, Leo himself. It didn’t have to be me. Not while he was there, and the world was far away from both of us, and he had found a way to hold me and not quite hold me. To let me be sheltered and free, inside and outside, as whole as I was ever likely to be.
11
“You know”—there was something in Leo’s tone that made me instantly dread whatever he was about to say—“you don’t have to leave.”
We were sitting at the dinette, me in Leo’s dressing gown, Leo in a pair of clean trousers. My mother had left a jug of kompot wigilijny, and I’d told Leo to heat it up for us. Normally I found its sweetness cloying and childish, even with the addition of winter spices. Now, however, it was disturbingly perfect. Comforting in ways I loathed to need.
“Actually,” I pointed out, “I do have to leave. I should get my foot seen to.”
Leo willfully failed to take the hint. “But you could come back.”
“Why would I want to do that?”
It should have discouraged him. The question hadn’t been a tease. Instead, his eyes flicked up to mine, at once amused and vulnerable. “You can’t think of a single reason?”
“Look.” I made a gesture of—well, I wasn’t sure what it was a gesture of. “This has been fun. But…”
“But what?”
“But…” My next gesture was more impatient. This should have been obvious. “But you surely don’t intend to stay moored in Oxford. And I—”
“You…?”
I swallowed. “I have to find my art. Somehow.”
“And you don’t think you could find it with me?”
