Page 126 of Sinful Crimes for the Artistically Inclined
“Not tonight.”
“You don’t want to do the… the train?”
Percy groaned. “No.”
“Or, the… What’s the one with the…”
“The spit roast,” Percy mumbled.
“Yes!”
“No! No, I don’t. But if it’s important to you…” He relented gently against Joe’s enticing caresses. “Then you can…” But there he stilled, exactly as though he had just realised something. And when he looked into Joe’s eyes, Joe could see the fire ignite. “Actually, no. You can’t. I don’t want you to sleep with him. And I don’t want you to be with anyone else. Not ever. Not even once.”
And that was that.
Percy lifted Joe onto the sturdy, expensive desk and used him just as thoroughly as ten men might have.
Joe didn’t give Giordano another thought that night, or until they next saw him. Perhaps all it ever needed was a proposal, for Percy to drop all his lies, take Joe on as a partner in crime, and refuse consenting group sex with other beautiful men, but from that time Joe felt he was, finally, perfectly secure in Percy’s love.
Percy, on the other hand, did think about Giordano. Only once Joe was sleeping in his arms, while his fingers toyed absentmindedly with the lock of a curl, did he allow himself to, but he was starkly aware that Giordano never came to theirroom. Not that they didn’t hear him, or missed it somehow, but that he had chosen not to. And that fact endeared Giordano to him all the more. Not remotely in the same way he held and loved Joe, but there was a bittersweet finality about it. Their first parting on good terms.
He never knew how close Giordano came. That his hand was on the door when he thought better of it. Because what he had wondered about earlier in the night was true. Percy had changed. And Giordano loved him too much to touch the fragile thing that was happening inside him. So he left, maybe to wait another four years in his bar, and to see who Percy was then.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
ONE LAST SURPRISE FOR JOE
The next day, Percy and Joe were in a taxi on their way to the airport when Percy leaned across and said, “I have a little surprise for you, handsome.”
This sort of comment, at this stage in the relationship, elicited in Joe a combination of excitement, love, and teeth-grinding fear. The look on Percy’s face was less mischievous than it had been when he stole the champagne. Joe couldn’t see a hint of guilt or trepidation that he thought he might have seen there had Percy killed someone again. And with this physical reassurance, he turned in his seat to face Percy, just as Percy had turned towards him.
Percy swept Joe’s hands up into a ball, running his thumbs over his knuckles. “I couldn’t resist. I’m taking you to Rome.”
Sheer, white-hot panic assailed Joe. “What?”
“Remember our first night together? We said how nice it would be to go to Rome one day? But that was when I was doing that stupid not-boyfriends thing, and…” Percy kept talking, but Joe had already tuned him out. All he heard was the pulsing of his blood in his ears, and all he felt was the bump of the car that kept moving him, mercilessly, towards the airport, and towards Rome. With Percy. “…an apartment with beautiful?—”
“No.” Joe heard the word on his lips and balked at the sharply incisive curve of Percy’s brow.
“No? You don’t want to go to Rome?”
“No, um…” Joe searched for an excuse—anything feasible that would explain why a man wouldn’t want to go to, arguably, the most beautiful city in the world with his brand new fiancé. “We need to be in London. We were going to London.”
Percy laughed, though it sounded a little hollow, as thrown as he was by Joe’s unexpected reaction. “London can wait a few days, surely.”
“But Althea. What if— She might need us there. We should go there. For her.”
Percy was studying him far too keenly now, in that way he did when he was pretending he wasn’t studying something. “She’s been there almost a week already. You spoke to her this morning. She’s totally fine.”
“But what if?—”
“And she has Leo’s number, and he has ours. We can be on a plane in an hour if need be.”
Joe turned away, eyes searching the back of the seat in front of him. What was he supposed to say? He couldn’t risk being seen in Rome. So many people there would recognise his face…
Or would they? He hadn’t been back for a decade. He’d sworn he would never set foot there again. But one changes in that time. And he was a grown man now. Not the horribly recognisable teenager he’d been the last time. Maybe no one would notice… Maybe if they kept to themselves…
“What’s wrong?”
