Page 14 of For Real

I curled an arm over the edge of the bath and hid my face in the crook of my elbow. I couldn’t bear him to see me right then, stripped tenderly to the bone by the blade of his voice.

“‘In the daytime thy voice shall go through him, In his dreams he shall feel thee and ache; Thou shalt kindle by night and subdue him. Asleep and awake.’”

The sound I made, muffled though it was, echoed off the tiles until it seemed infinitely loud, infinitely helpless. I had no idea what he was reciting, but the words hooked into me like thorns.

And, yes, for his wishing and for his pleasure, I would have recited them. For my merciless, smiling prince.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

And, in that moment, I was his, so I answered, “Laurence Dalziel. Most people just call me D.”

“At the club they called you Laurie.”

“My friends call me Laurie,” I corrected him sharply.

“I’m going to call you Laurie.”

I lifted my head. “You call me what I say you call me.”

“It was aspirational.”

“We’re not going to be friends.”

He blinked at me through a coal-dark fringe of water-heavy lashes, and I felt like a prick. “Please.” His eyes got very big. “Please can I call you Laurie? I like it better.”7

The kid was dangerous. But I’d known that all along. “Oh all right.” It wasn’t a graceful surrender but, then, they never were.

He splashed me. Playful conqueror. “I’m Toby. Toby Finch.”8

I didn’t know what to say—it seemed a little late for pleased to meet you—so I just nodded. Toby. His name was Toby. It seemed as though I’d always known it.

He uncurled without warning and disappeared under the bubbles in a flurry of skinny limbs and gleaming skin. He surfaced again, a second or two later, shaking the water from his hair, and lay back with a sound of absolute sensual abandon. “Being warm after you’ve been cold is totally the best feeling ever.”

Like pleasure after pain. And I was as hard as a horny teenager, just watching him enjoy himself.

He stretched out, straining a toe towards the taps and not quite reaching them. “This bath is epic. I can’t remember the last time I had one. I mean—” He flailed into a sitting position, this time shifting enough of the bubbles that I caught sly glimpses of him beneath them, the shadow of his pelvis, the curve of his calf, the ridge of his ribs. “I do wash and stuff. We’ve got a shower at the loft.”

I wasn’t supposed to be encouraging him. “You live in a loft?”

“Yeah, at the top of this tobacco factory conversion thing. This guy gave it to my mum.”

“Someone gave your mother a loft?”

“Yeah.” He lifted an arm out of the water and peered at it. “Look, I’m going all pruney.”

I suspected him of none-too-subtly changing the subject, but I let him. As I’d said, we were never going to be friends. “Time to get out then.”

He did the now familiar turn around gesture.

I rose, then sighed. This was getting ridiculous. “Toby”—his head jerked up at his name on my lips, and indeed, it was sweet to say it—“Toby, do you really think I’m going to be so overwhelmed with lust at the sight of your naked body I won’t be able to control myself?”

To my horror, he went bright red and curled into a tight ball at the bottom of the bath. “God. No. I’m just…I’m just shy, okay? Jesus.”

“You’re…what?” I repeated stupidly. The boy who had called bullshit on me at a BDSM club, brought me to my knees, told me all the things he wanted to do to me, shown me need and want and naked ecstasy, and come back to me through a rainstorm because, while he was proud, he wasn’t stupid…he was shy?

He pressed his forehead against his knees and said nothing. So I took a fresh towel from the heated rack and opened it out, holding it between my outstretched arms. “I’ll close my eyes.”

“Okay. But no peeking.”

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