You're Almost Dead Page 9

  Blood roared in his ears, heart pounding as Emery's hands gripped the sides of his face and the kiss deepened. He scrambled at Emery's pants until finally, with some maneuvering, he managed to discard them. Once that was done he pulled back slightly, lifting his fingers to Emery, who bent his head forward and covered them with his mouth to perform a filthy, shameless simulation of oral sex that made Kurt dizzy with anticipation. After a moment he withdrew them and began to loosen Emery up properly.

  He continued to nip and kiss at the tender crook of Emery's neck as he did so, breathing him in. He smelled intoxicating, like scented soap and spearmint and a little like Cognac. Emery kept hitching and holding his breath, clearly trying to keep the volume low until Kurt reached down, unzipping his own pants and pulling out his cock, which he stroked a few times before pushing into him slowly.

  Emery stifled a harsh groan into his own shoulder. Kurt soothed him with a firm caress to his hair and tried to focus on keeping himself quiet. This wasn't something he'd envisioned. How had he gotten here, fucking the man who was supposed to be his hostage? He never meant to see him that way. He never meant to look too deeply into those pretty blue eyes or read so much into that roguish little quirk of his lips. He never meant to walk into his room and kiss him that night, but when Emery had responded by kissing back and riding him like his life depended on it, Kurt couldn't do anything but go along with it. Now it was all he could envision. He positively couldn't help himself.

  He watched with admiration while Emery drew deep breaths, his hips rolling and his hands gripping Kurt's biceps as his head fell to one side. He was riveting in the throes of passion. Kurt picked up his pace and moved his hand up to Emery's jaw, where he gratefully bit down on it to keep himself from crying out when Kurt's other hand reached between them to stroke his hard length in time. Emery quickly lost his ability to coordinate, his movements became erratic, his eyes squeezed shut as Kurt thrust faster. Then he came with great, shuddering sobs that he swallowed back down as soon as they came up and it was almost too much to witness. Kurt was undone. He bit into his tongue and barely held back a yell as his vision fragmented, his chest seizing and wave after wave of incredible relief bearing down on him so hard he thought he might collapse, but one hand had shot out against the wall to hold him securely upright.

  When the blissful, overpowering pressure began to ebb, Kurt let out a held breath, slowing his thrusts to a gradual halt and finally releasing a quiet groan. Boneless contentment began to settle over him as he looked up. Emery stared back at him, eyes wide with amazement and a crimson streak at the side of his mouth. Kurt quickly held up a hand and took Emery by the chin. "Damn, your mouth…"

  Emery tilted his head up as Kurt brushed the mark away. "It's nothing…still…bleeds a little. Off and on," he panted quietly.

  "Did I hurt you?"

  Emery lidded his eyes with that coy, freshly fucked look that suited him so well. "Just right, darling."

  Kurt felt another lethargic thrum of desire and fancied himself getting used to this.

  CHAPTER 10

  "Why do you speak German?"

  Emery lifted his head off the mattress, momentarily confused as to where he was. He looked at Kurt lying next to him and laughed internally, not realizing that he'd dozed off. "Oh. That. I was tutored in German for six years, I should at least remember a bit. Also know a good deal of French and Italian, but the French is just a matter of having vacationed in Paris a time or two. The advantages of money, I suppose." He wasn't sure why he said that last bit with scorn—it was a legitimate advantage after all.

  "Hn," Kurt grunted. He sat up, rubbing his face and looking out the window at the morning light, then at the clock. Probably trying to gauge when Sheridan and the others would be back from their latest overnight pickup.

  "You'll see soon enough." Emery rolled towards him lazily and laid an arm over the heat his body had left on the bed as he closed his eyes. They opened again when Kurt's weight lifted off the bed and he stood, picking his pants up off the floor to pull them onto his naked figure.

  Emery lifted himself up on an elbow with his chin on his hand as he admired Kurt's form. "My god you're fit. How old are you?" he asked curiously.

  "Thirty-two," Kurt answered.

  "Really?"

  Kurt gave him a wry smile and Emery felt every bit certain that he'd be weak in the knees if he were standing. "Is that too old for you?"

  "No, I'm just impressed," Emery raised his eyebrows. "I mean anyone can look good in their twenties. That's not hard. But when you're past your thirty mark and still this bloody gorgeous…"

  Kurt fastened his belt and went back over, crouching down to Emery's level on the bed with his folded arms resting on its edge. "Do you want something from me? Is that why you're suddenly all flattery?"

  "Already had what I want," Emery said. He traced a finger down Kurt's well-defined upper arm. "And maybe I want it again."

  Kurt seemed to consider it for a split second, then snorted in dismissal. "Try eating something today. You're looking too thin."

  "That's your response to flattery?" Emery laughed.

  "I meant it nicely."

  "Yes, it was very nice," Emery pouted halfheartedly. "Well the bleeding's stopped at last, so I dearly look forward to mastication." Kurt moved to stand, but Emery held him back by the arm. "Stay a bit. It's getting bloody cold in this room and I'm too worn out to get up just yet."

  "I can't. Not now." Kurt stood up and leaned over him, pushing him onto his back. "As much as it might interest me to fuck you numb so that you can't even feel the damned cold."

  "That's very poor sportsmanship," Emery groaned. He yipped in surprise when Kurt swept down and bit his ear roughly before standing up. He was between a laugh and a growl as he watched his bedmate pull on a shirt and wander out the door, shutting it behind him. Cheeky cad…Emery thought as he laid his head down onto a pillow that still smelled like Kurt's aftershave and pulled the covers back over his head.

  * * *

  His mother was definitely right about the little things. Emery had never been so grateful for a piece of fruit in all his life now that he could chew it, and he'd never particularly liked grapefruit to begin with. Nevertheless he sat, cross-legged in some decayed arm chair eating spoonfuls out of the half of one as a fuzzy television hummed before him. It was the only channel that could be made out on the old contraption and seemed to be cricket. Beside him, on an equally tattered and hideous couch, Scott sat, arms stretched over the back of it as he stared into the set. He and the others had returned about an hour ago, ten million pounds richer just three days after their last haul. As near as Emery could tell, this put them at around eighty million, but he was starting to lose track of things in light of a certain distraction.

  He couldn't help but feel good. It was stupid, but there it was. He was perfectly comfortable sitting here watching television with one of his captors while another, the one that he was currently sleeping with, showered in the next room. He supposed that traditionally he should be cowering in a corner chained to a radiator and filled with regrets about an unlived life, but this was alright too. It was almost funny how much more at ease he felt here than in Hunter's home. Almost.

  Emery prodded his food with a spoon as he considered that. He knew he should care more about what was going on outside of his bedroom, but the past five days with a new paramour had made it damn hard. Kurt was an ideal lover. Dominant and submissive, gentle and rough, teasing and serious and generous and self-gratifying and versatile and…perfect, in a word. It never felt like enough. He didn't know it was possible to feel so satisfied and so restless at the same time—was he really thirty-two? His sex drive certainly suggested a much younger man.

  He shoved another chunk of grapefruit into his mouth and looked over at Scott contemplatively. "Scott," he said tentatively. "What's the oldest person you'd ever consider sleeping with?"

  Scott turned his head, looking unprepared for conversation. He shifted slig
htly and shook out of his television trance, head rolling along the back of the couch to stare up at the ceiling in thought as he scratched his chest. "I don't know. Forty, I guess."

  "Really? That old?"

  "Sure." Scott shrugged. "Maybe older. In fact at this point in my life I probably wouldn't fuck anyone under thirty."

  Emery laughed. "You don't like young women, then?"

  "Not really. I mean a younger woman is hot and all, but that's usually her only asset, you know what I mean?"

  Right. These conversations were sometimes tricky with straight men. "I can honestly say I don't."

  "Okay," Scott straightened up and turned towards Emery. "What I mean is like…they're hot. They don't really have to do anything else to get a man's attention, you know? Don't have to please you, don't have to learn any tricks, do any favors. Plus it's a lot of work getting them. It's different with women in their thirties. They're still hot, but for some reason they don't think so anymore. They know what they're doing, what they want, and they'll show you shit you never even imagined. Crazy shit. And they're always ready for it."

  Emery tried not to laugh at Scott's sudden seriousness on the topic. "I see."

  "I mean it. In fact in my whole life I've only ever slept with four women under the age of thirty. People in their thirties are just…ripe, you know? All that sexual peak bullshit—it's fucking true." He sighed, setting his arms behind his head. "You know before this job I was set up in this house just over in Whitchurch. All alone on a dirt road, no neighbors. It's a decent crashpad, got a nice setup. Anyway, if you think chicks in their thirties will rock your world, try small town chicks in their thirties. It probably helps to be a foreigner—they can't resist. Fuck, I almost wanna stay there, but," he finished his statement with a shrug.

  "Why don't you?" Emery asked.

  "Because after we're done here I'll just buy some mansion in Mexico and live out the rest of my days drinking Sangria in the sun. England's great and all, but your beaches are shit."

  Emery shook his head. "You…won't go back to America, then?"

  Scott studied him for a moment before turning back to the television. "Nah. You know what they say: you can't go home again."

  He had to agree. He almost never even thought about his home in Brighton anymore. The place where he had made his first friends, broken his first bone, gotten in his first fight. The place his father had taught him how to do cheap magic tricks when they spent Saturday afternoons together. Where his mother was happy and content instead of frantic and sick and Hunter Eaton was miles, and years, away. He hated thinking of it. He hated thinking of his parents and all that they had done for him, only for his life to have turned out like this.

  "So, have you ever done it?"

  Emery looked up. "Have I what?"

  "Slept with anyone over thirty?" Scott reminded.

  Emery laughed and let his eyes roam skywards, pretending to think about it. "Umm, yes. Quite recently in fact."

  "And? Was it or wasn't it the best sex you ever had?"

  Emery bit his lip when heard footsteps approaching and watched Kurt go into the attached kitchen, shirtless and slightly damp from a shower as he opened a cupboard to retrieve a mug. Emery stared at the flexing lines of his back appreciatively until Kurt turned around and caught sight of him and Scott, features passive. Emery's cheeks burned and he grinned. "Well Scott, when you're right, you're right."

  Scott turned up his hands and obliviously settled back into the couch, satisfied. "I'm not a genius for nothing."

  Kurt gave Emery a delightfully cagey look as he glanced between them, having missed all context for those two statements. Emery simply winked at him in return.

  CHAPTER 11

  There was a strange madness to being so bodily gratified all the time, Kurt mused while he lay on his bed four nights later, staring up at a ceiling fan that didn't work in preparation to sleep. It did a good job of deadening you to concerns that were previously a priority. There was no room for tension regardless of its roots in a mindless, endorphin filled carcass—it even made one too relaxed to be bothered by this realization. Sheridan wanted him to be a voiceless lackey anyway, so perhaps he'd just try it for a while.

  What Sheridan wanted lately, however, was becoming less clear. The more money that they brought in the more time he seemed to spend entertaining himself somewhere instead of lying low. Kurt supposed it was probably gambling, as that seemed to be the man's major vice, but it was anyone's guess what he got up to when he wasn't here. He wasn't likely to answer questions on the matter and Kurt wasn't sure whether or not he even wanted to know. He momentarily thought to himself that he wasn't likely to work with Sheridan again after this before realizing how pointless deciding something like that would be. This situation only had two outcomes: either they would be rich enough to never need to work again or too dead to do so.

  Kurt closed his eyes just before he heard a sudden crash from the room down the hall from his. Emery's room. He rose off of the bed quickly and went to the hallway, waiting for a moment to see if anyone else had been disturbed by this. All other doors remained closed. He went across the way and opened the door, hand reaching out for the light switch. "Emery?"

  "Don't come in, wait, wait,"

  Kurt turned on the light to see Emery on the floor. He was on his hands and knees over a lamp that was broken into shards in the shag carpet, one hand up to signal Kurt to stay away. At first Kurt's worry vanished, chalking this up to some mundane accident, but then he saw the wildness in Emery's eyes and the sweat on his bared upper body. Kurt knelt down, helping to pull ceramic pieces up off the floor. "What's wrong?"

  "Nothing," Emery panted as he scrambled to collect the debris around him. "I just…careful, don't cut yourself up now. It was…accidental, I…hit it in my sleep I think."

  Kurt looked at his shaking hands skeptically before reaching a long arm over to grab a waste basket and stuffing the majority of the broken lamp into it. He held it to Emery, who deposited the rest of his pieces into it as well. "Were you dreaming?"

  Emery sat back on the floor, winding a hand into his hair and sighing. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess I was. Fucking hell."

  Kurt set the bin aside and stood up, heading into Emery's bathroom to fetch a water glass. He filled it and returned, handing it down to him. "You seem a bit shaken."

  Emery took a drink. "I'm alright. Too old for bloody nightmares," he let out a quiet, unconvincing laugh. "Did…I get all that damned lamp? I don't look forward to stepping on that in the morning. It's hot in here. God, what day is this, am—am I undressed…?"

  Confused, Kurt bent down and touched Emery's elbow to try and get his arm and pull him up, but Emery flinched back violently as though struck and spilled water all over himself. Kurt held his hand away uncertainly.

  Emery gaped up at him, climbing hurriedly to his feet on his own and putting a hand on Kurt's chest. "Sorry, Kurt. I'm sorry, I'm…still half asleep or something. It's just that for a minute I…" he looked over at his bed like it was a nest full of spiders. "…could've sworn I was somewhere else."

  "I'm not sure you're awake at all. Sit down," Kurt instructed. Emery obeyed and Kurt sat next to him, rubbing the back of his neck with a strong hand to try and bring him around. "You realize where you are now, yes?"

  Emery nodded. "Sorry I woke you."

  "You didn't."

  They sat on the bed like that for some time. Emery became more lucid bit by bit, his eyes focusing and his breathing returning to normal. He broke the silence a few minutes later with a sigh. "I thought I was over it…"

  "What's that?"

  "Night terrors," Emery explained. "I had them when I was young. Apparently I was an avid sleepwalker, too. My mother said she used to feed me full meals and once even sent me to school asleep without realizing it. They got worse for a bit around the time I…" he stopped, swallowing.

  Kurt took his hand back and folded both into his lap. "What are they about?"

  "That's somethin
g you wouldn't care to hear."

  "Perhaps it is."

  Emery met his eyes pleadingly. "Then let's leave it at I don't want to say."

  Kurt nodded apologetically and caught his drift, briefly seeing red at what he felt was implied there. What else would they be about? "I didn't mean to upset you."

  "You haven't done anything wrong."

  Kurt had most assuredly never heard those words from anyone before, he thought offhandedly. What was this? Emery had gone from frantic to melancholy, two states that seemed highly unusual from him, in the span of ten minutes and Kurt wished he knew what to say. Emery had been systematically abused for nearly half his life; there was no way it hadn't left fractures in his psyche no matter how charismatic and unblemished he seemed on the outside. …Kurt wasn't sure why he cared so much, but he did. Perhaps he'd grown to like Emery for more than just his good looks and bedroom prowess. He was admirable enough. Headstrong and a little naïve, but plucky and clever, too. A nice sort. Kurt felt helpless to do anything but open a wound of his own in repentance for opening Emery's. "You were close to your mother, weren't you?"

  "Isn't every gay son?" Emery joked lightly, but there was a real sadness behind it.

  Kurt shook his head. "I don't remember mine."

  Emery didn't say anything for a moment. "…You don't? I thought you were six when you last saw her."

  "I was. She was always there when I was a child, but was bedridden most of the time. For some reason I can't recall her face. I can only remember my grandparents."

  "Were they good to you at least?"

  "I thought so," Kurt said, looking away. "They were the only parents I had. But…"

  "…But?"

  "I…went to England. I thought they didn't want me to, but I never heard from them again. Or my mother. In the back of my mind I'd always wondered why. It wasn't until I was nineteen that I decided to find out what had happened to them. I learned from public records that they had all died over the course of my later teen years."