Stockholm Syndrome [01] - Stockholm Syndrome (8 page)

Lindsay only stops staring when he accidentally catches the kid's eye.

His mouth feels very dry. He downs his water quickly and keeps an ice cube in

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his mouth, something to concentrate on instead of Valentine while he tries to remember where he'd got to on his page. Words don't seem to make much sense any more.

"I think you should stop reading," the kid says, slow and smirking like he knows. Lindsay frowns and keeps his eyes on the page, but that only makes Valentine come over and steal his book, closing it with a bang and dropping it down on the carpet next to the empty glass.

"What are you doing?"

"You, I hope." The armchair's big enough for two people, as long as one of the people is on top of the other. They found this out a couple of days ago.

Clearly Valentine hasn't forgotten. He's still half-smiling as he settles in place on Lindsay's lap, straddling him halfway up his thighs but not moving closer yet, only touching his fingers gently to the open collar of his shirt, down to the first button.

"Please don't touch me, it's too hot. Let me read."

"
No
." He slips the button through, and the one below that, and leans to put a kiss on Lindsay's chest, just where his collarbones meet. "I ain't allowed to leave the house. It's your job to entertain me."

"You
can
leave the house, you can go home and get out of my life."

"Don't want to." He's working the buttons slowly, fingertips dragging in the sweat as he moves them down. "I wanna stay with you. I wanna be in your gang, I can work. I'll be your driver. I can be your mistress," he adds, quiet and dragging the word out to a teasing hissing whisper. "Like we agreed."

He's got a great knack for twisting words to mean whatever he wants them to. "I don't remember any agreement."

"Shall I refresh your memory?"

That's it, he's gone. "If you must," he mutters, trying to sound grudging.

Valentine just beams him a massive smile and pulls down the zip on Lindsay's trousers. He's starting to get hard already and the first touch of the kid's fingers, 63

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still cool from his ice, is like an electric shock. His mouth's cool, too, and sweet and sticky, tasting like factory-faked strawberry when Lindsay reaches up to pull him closer for a kiss that doesn't seem to want to end. They even manage to struggle each other out of their shirts with barely a break, and Lindsay's glasses, then Valentine's pressing closer, kissing harder, winding an arm around Lindsay's neck and
clinging
, and everything's so sticky and blisteringly hot and uncomfortable Lindsay finally has to give up and turn his face away. Valentine's not bothered, he just starts kissing down Lindsay's neck instead, biting him there gently and smoothing over the spot with his tongue.

"Alright?" He shifts just a bit, just enough to press a fraction harder against Lindsay's cock.

"Yeah. Go upstairs."

"Aww, Lindsay, it's even more fucking unbearable up there. Least we've got more windows and doors down here. Look-" Lindsay almost makes a stupid desperate noise when the kid gets to his feet, then, but he bites it back and curls his hands into fists around his thumbs instead, not saying anything, just watching him. He crosses over to the French doors and flings them all wide open. It doesn't change the stillness in the air very much at all. It makes it
worse
, almost, because now they can hear the faint crash of waves somewhere far below, at the base of the cliff.

"You'll have to run and fetch something, then."

"Why? Are you gonna fuck me?" He says it softly, lowering his head just slightly so he can look at Lindsay through his eyelashes, biting his lip and half-smiling. Lindsay wonders, not for the first time, whether he
has
actually had sex before and this is just his style, or whether he's making it up to sound like he knows what he's doing, because so many of his mannerisms are pure rubbish porn.

"Yes. Whether you go or not. I'm just saying,
you're
the one who'll be sore if you don't."

"Yeah, and
you're
the one who won't have nowhere to put your cock if

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you injure me."

"You've got a mouth. Might shut you up for two minutes."

"Only two minutes?" He's laughing with his eyes. Lindsay just looks at him until he salutes and runs off, bare feet skidding on the smooth floor out in the hallway in his haste. He's got the bottle of lube from the bedroom, when he returns, and
another
strawberry ice lolly, the sort that comes on a stick this time, with a big bite already taken from a corner.

"Glutton." As soon as the kid's within his reach, Lindsay snaps his hand out and hooks his finger through a beltloop to tug him closer, until he's standing between his knees. He's got the button and zip open in half a second, the jeans and pants down around his ankles in another, and he wraps his fingers around Valentine's flushed cock and starts stroking him, slow and tight.

"Mmm," Valentine says, around his lolly. Lindsay's not sure whether it's supposed to be words. He just strokes, strokes, strokes, watching Valentine's face, watching him slip the lolly into his mouth right up to the wooden stick and pull it out gradually, staining his lips neon crimson with the melting juice. "Suck me."

"Don't tell me what to do."

"I know you want to."

"Even so. Don't tell me what to do." He does as he's told anyway, copying the slow, sliding motion Valentine made with his mouth on the ice, pulling off to the end, swirling his tongue around until his mouth is flooded with his taste, back down again to repeat it all twice more – then Valentine apparently decides that's quite enough foreplay and shoves at Lindsay's shoulder, throws the bottle at him, and holds the ice in his mouth so he can yank at the rest of Lindsay's clothes and slip back into his lap, just like earlier but with nothing between them now except sweat. Lindsay kisses him hungrily, never mind how much he loathes the taste of the cheap chemical flavourings in those lollies. It drips onto his shoulder, where Valentine's hand came to rest, trickling a chilly little trail there and almost burning his scorching skin with the contact.

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"Ice," the kid mutters into his mouth. "That's well kinky." He drags the lolly down to press against Lindsay's nipple, and Lindsay yelps like a chihuahua that's been trodden on and snatches the thing away from him to drop into his empty glass beside the chair. Valentine looks seriously wounded. "I was enjoying that!" he says, all indignant and sulky, but Lindsay grabs his messy ponytail to anchor him still and kisses him again, hard and forceful until he subsides and kisses back. He's shaking when he searches for the bottle and finds it wedged down the side of the cushion, so Lindsay eventually lets him go, when he's sure he's going to behave himself, and covers the kid's hand with his own to hold it steady, flick up the cap, coax out the cool gel to slick over his cock and both their hands – Valentine's where he's stroking Lindsay's cock carefully, his own where he's slipping it between the kid's legs.

"I'm alright, I'm alright," Valentine keeps saying, very quietly as if he's not sure whether or not it's true. He bites down hard on his lip again when he pushes Lindsay's hand away and starts inching himself down.

"Are you?"

"Yeah, you've just been pounding me like a jackhammer all week, ain't you? I'm alright, though, don't ever stop." He settles there, all the way down, and breaks into that huge smile again, with his eyes closed and new sheen of sweat on his forehead. "You feel amazing."

"You want me to be more..." What? Gentle? Tender? His skin crawls.

He can't finish.

"No, no, you just sit there. This one's mine." He rocks his hips gently, and Lindsay makes a noise and puts his face against the kid's chest, eyes closed and fingers tightening on his waist.

"Do that again."

"This?"

"Yeah... yeah, that, keep doing it." He does, careful rocking and shallow slides first, then faster and harder, then slowing again every time Lindsay feels like he's getting close. He can taste salt, now, kissing Valentine's mouth and

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finding sweat there from his upper lip, and he can feel his damp hair plastering itself to his face and then peeling away when Valentine scrunches his hands in it to hold him while he's kissing back. All's going very nicely, until something horrible happens:

"I love you," Valentine says.

He presses his face into Lindsay's neck, breathing quickly, kissing him on the pulse there, and so completely misses the look of terror Lindsay feels settling on his face.

"I know I've known you like five minutes but it was long enough for Romeo and Juliet, weren't it? It's just... I wanna stay with you, I don't ever wanna be where you're not."

"...Because you..."

"Cos I love you."

"Fucking hell."

"What?"

"That's a hell of a moodkiller."

"You're a bastard. I love you's meant to be a
nice
thing."

"You've stopped. Don't stop."

Valentine lifts his head off Lindsay's shoulder and starts moving again.

"I thought I killed your mood."

"No more talking." There's plenty of
noise
, when he wraps his fingers back round Valentine's cock and strokes him in time, but thankfully no more words, not for a long time, not until he hears... voices in the kitchen? He freezes still and wants to die.

"OI! We broke down, had to hike half a mile in the fucking heat, why do you have to live on the side of a fucking
mountain
? Where the fuck are yo- OH

OH JESUS OH GOD OH FUCK."

"OH CHRIST, LINDSAY, MY EYES."

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"DON'T JUST WANDER INTO A MAN'S HOUSE UNINVITED, THEN!"

"THE FUCKING DOOR WAS WIDE OPEN, YOU NONCE!"

"YOU ASKED US OVER! WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?"

"I DIDN'T THINK YOU'D BE HERE TIL THE AFTERNOON!"

"I KNEW YOU WEREN'T GETTING RID OF HIM BUT I DIDN'T

NEED TO SEE THE FUCKING REASON
WHY
."

"DON'T TALK ABOUT ME LIKE I AIN'T EVEN HERE!"

"I CAN
SEE
YOU'RE HERE, MATE, BELIEVE ME, I CAN SEE

FUCKING EVERYTHING."

"CAN EVERYBODY STOP
SHOUTING
?"

A second of deathly, motionless silence.

Danny's got his hands clamped over his eyes. He chances a peek between his fingers, as if he thinks maybe he dreamed it and it'll be different on the second look, then makes a disgusted noise and covers up again. "How do you even
do
that from the front? Ain't you aiming round the back?"

"Read an anatomy book, you
fucking imbecile
!" Lindsay says through gritted teeth, wishing he had good heavy hardback one at hand to throw.

"Unless our little friend Pipsqueak doesn't just
dress
like a girl," Ty suggests. He's smirking nastily now he's past the initial horror of walking in on unexpected buggery.

Valentine scowls like thunder and leans back a bit to display himself, naked and smeared with sweat and lolly juice. "Your wife got a cock big as this, has she?"

It could easily have turned into a fight, then. Lindsay sees it all in his mind in a split second, trying to break up a round of fisticuffs when he's still trapped cock to arse with one of the players, and doesn't fancy it much.

"YOU, SHUT YOUR MOUTH BEFORE I PUNCH IT. YOU TWO,

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GET OUT
."

"Yeah, come on, let's have a fag," Danny says, putting a warning hand on Ty's arm then snatching it away when he realises what he's said and hastily adding, "You know, a
smoke
."

Lindsay's brain won't give his mouth any words. "Oh shit," he finally manages, sounding weak and hollow. It's not like they haven't all seen each other naked before, stag party pranks and sharing hotel rooms and sometimes sharing girls, but this is
different
. Valentine leans against him again, laughing breathlessly in a way that's got less to do with being amused and more with mild hysteria.

"Shut up. Your cock's shoved up my arse, it's not like no one can
see
it.

What about me, crown jewels all on show for every fucker and his dog to see?"

"You filthy little exhibitionist, you wouldn't understand."

"Oh yeah, talk dirty to me, Lindsay-"

"HEY!" someone shouts from the kitchen, and Valentine sighs heavily and leans over to start retrieving their clothes.

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C H A P T E R 6

Valentine sleeps on his back with his limbs sprawled like a starfish. He's such a skinny little thing but he takes up far more bed space than he really should, and Lindsay's left balancing on a tiny sliver of mattress at his side. He thinks briefly about getting rid of the double and buying a king-size, but that's such a stupid idea,
such
a stupid idea. It'd just encourage the kid, make him think it's okay to creep in here all the time. He's supposed to be in the guest room, and sometimes he even starts the night there, but Lindsay always wakes in the tiny dark hours of the morning to discover the kid asleep next to him, wriggled into the circle of his arms with his legs splayed diagonally down the bed and the covers all bunched up round his feet, because he always gets too hot when he's sleeping. Lindsay always gets too cold. He's fucking freezing but if he tries dragging the covers back up the kid mutters and whinges and frowns in his sleep so he's stopped bothering, he just goes to bed in thick winter pyjamas even though it's barely September. Sometimes when he wakes there's a sly hand rummaging in the flannel, or his clothes are round his ankles and Valentine's getting dribble all over him, coaxing life out of his sleepy cock and smiling around it with eyes lit up like lamps when he sees Lindsay's awake and watching

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him.

A month and a half he's been here. Forty-five days exactly. Not that Lindsay's been keeping track or anything, of course he's not. He just counted it all up so he'd have some good hard facts to spit at Valentine on his umpteenth attempt to get him out the house. It fails, of course, like all the others.