With or Without Him (40 page)

“It’s hard being the middle one.”

Tyler glared. “Stop making excuses for him. He wanted you dead so he could have your money.”

“He wants the business more than the money though the two are entwined. Even if he went to jail, under Sharia, he’d still inherit a third of my father’s estate. But this is up to you. If you want to tell the police, go ahead. Do what you think is right.”

Tyler chewed on his pizza.

“When I was looking for you, I went to see Jeremy,” Haris said. “I thought he might know where you were. His parents were there. He’s going to live with them for a while. He was adamant he wouldn’t say anything about Prescott or Gerald. He didn’t want to hurt his parents.”

“I’ve already told the police all about that. I hope it doesn’t fuck up his chances of flight school.”

“Not if he doesn’t accuse Gerald. The police probably won’t be able to touch the bastard but if they raid the apartment, maybe they’ll get Prescott. And I’ll pay for Jeremy’s flight school. It’s the least I can do.”

Someone else to throw money at? But Tyler was glad Haris was going to help Jeremy. “That’s very good of you.” He leaned into the couch, sucked in a breath at the pain in his back and sat forward again. “Why did you tell Stan to follow me?”

“I already told you. I was trying to protect you. Wilson had seen a car following us. A white Fiat to start with and then a black Peugeot. I know now it was Malik and Rashid but I had no idea at the time. I wanted you to be safe. That was all. It wasn’t anything to do with not trusting you.”

“Really?”

“I wanted to keep you safe. Except when Stan sent me a picture of you hugging a guy with dark hair outside your place, I didn’t realize it was Jeremy. I thought…I thought you already had a boyfriend.”

“I told you—”

“I know. I just…shit. In trying to keep you safe, I almost wrecked what we have. I’m sorry. Not sure how many times I need to say that.”

Tyler slid closer to him. “You’re an idiot.”

“Yep.”

“You thought I’d cheat on you?”

Haris sagged. “Any point saying ‘sorry’ yet again?”

“I know you’re sorry.” Tyler sighed. “I’ll tell the police everything Rashid told me, about him being the artistic director of the Cairo Symphony Orchestra, how he drugged me and took me to the club. You and Stan could have been following me because…you didn’t trust me…and you arrived just in time.”

“We were late.”

“Being too late would have been worse. I can say Rashid had tried to chat me up before and that I thought he might have followed me home. Some random bloke who fancied me. Not able to be openly gay in Saudi so cruising in London would fit and explain how he came to attack Jeremy. I don’t need to know anything about him. There doesn’t have to be a link to you. The police won’t be able to find that out, will they?”

“I don’t know.” Haris furrowed his brow. “Probably not. If Malik had any sense, he brought him here on a false passport. Even if he didn’t, Rashid was in prison for a long time. The link to me is…there, though distant. But I don’t like lying.”

“You want to explain to the police why you told your brother to get out of the country?”

Haris shook his head.

“We just need to make sure Stan’s story matches ours.”

“It will. He won’t want it known he traced any cell phones.” He exhaled. “I really don’t like lying.”

“It’s not lying exactly, more like not revealing everything.”

“Talking of revealing everything…” Haris’s mouth twitched in a smile.

Is he going to tell me he loves me?
“Yes?”

“Where did that Christmas tree come from? I thought I had the wrong house.”

Tyler pushed back his disappointment. “You don’t mind, do you?”

“Of course not. I’ll have to cancel the delivery of the eight foot one I usually get.”

“Oh shit. Sorry.”

Haris laughed. “I’m kidding. Do we need stuff to put on it?”

“Suppose so.” Tyler quite liked it plain and honest.

“Maybe we can go shopping tomorrow.”

“Don’t you have to go to work?”

“I’m going to have the day off.” He rose to his feet, held out his hand and pulled Tyler up.

Haris had the call from Stan as they were on their way upstairs and put it on speaker. The PI had told the police very little because he
knew
very little. He said he did occasional work for Haris, that the pair of them had followed Tyler to a café and then followed Tyler and an unknown man to the club. By the time they had access, Tyler had already been assaulted. Stan had never spoken to the unknown man, or to Tyler and knew nothing more.

“Is that going to work?” Tyler asked as they went into Haris’s bedroom.

“Rashid is dead. There’s no one to contradict our story. The only question will be why he committed suicide.”

“Maybe he was trying to get away. We drive on the left side of the road. He could have forgotten.”

“You are devious.”

Tyler laughed. He pushed Haris to sit on the bed, then crawled onto his lap and straddled him, a knee either side of Haris’s thighs. Haris slipped his hands onto his butt and then let him go.

“I’m not made of glass,” Tyler said.
I can make you love me.

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I’ll yelp if you do.”

He flattened his hands on Haris’s chest and laid his palm over his heart. The steady pulse beat through his hand and into his body. Tyler leaned until Haris dropped onto his back and then he feathered his mouth up his neck, over his rough chin and onto soft lips. His back was throbbing but Tyler didn’t care. He just needed Haris to love him and everything would be all right.

“Sure you’re okay?” Haris whispered.

“I’m fine.”

Haris smiled. “How about if I lie here and let you ravage me?”

“Typical. I have to do all the work.”

Tyler slid backward off the bed and undressed. The dressings tugged at his skin when he moved, but he felt sore rather than in pain. Even so, the thought of Haris being whipped fifty lashes at a time made his stomach churn. In a perverse way, he was glad Rashid had whipped him. At least he knew a little of what Haris had been through. Not that he needed anything else to bring him closer to the guy. He was too close already. And yet, not as close as he wanted to be.

I need you to love me. You could say it to your dad, why can’t you say it to me?

Maybe sex could make everything right.

Haris undressed and lay on the bed stroking his cock. Tyler threw condoms and lube next to him, pulled open the bottom drawer of the dresser and tossed out a few other things.

“Been snooping?” Haris asked.

“I was looking for a sandwich, and boy, was I surprised. I threw away the ladies bra and panties.”

“I didn’t have—oh right. Very funny.”

Tyler kissed his way from Haris’s knee to his inner thigh. He wrapped his hand around the base of Haris’s cock and closed his lips on the head.

“Oh fuck, your mouth,” Haris mumbled.

Tyler did everything that he liked having done to him, inch by inch engulfing the hot dick he held in his hand, feeding it into his mouth. He fluttered his tongue over the crest, sucked hard, then sucked slow while Haris’s breathing grew more and more ragged. When he took Haris’s balls into his mouth, the breathing stopped for a moment and a few seconds later, Haris inhaled with a gasp. Tyler loved the taste of him, the scent of him, the different textures of his body.

“You are so bloody good at that.”

Tyler laughed and peppered his thighs with kisses. He snagged the lube and dragged it over together with a couple of other things, and dropped his mouth to the taint, rubbing his tongue over the strip of flesh behind his balls until Haris’s thighs trembled. Tyler shoved at his legs until he pulled them up and gave him more room to play. He ought to have put the cock ring on Haris before he was hard, but it was adjustable so Tyler slipped it over the head of his cock and tightened it at the base.

Haris released a loud groan.

Once his fingers were lubed, Tyler teased around Haris’s puckered opening.

“Let me in,” Tyler whispered.

“What’s the magic word?”

“Let me in, Asshole.”

Haris laughed and Tyler’s finger slid in to caress hot, soft velvet and Haris’s laugh turned into a groan. He kissed Haris’s thigh as he thrust gently in and out and then added another finger. With the next shunt, he nailed his prostate.

“Fuck.” Haris bucked.

When Tyler did it again, he bucked again and released a deep groan.

“I still remember the day I found that place in my body,” Tyler whispered. “I’d bought a rubber dildo in a sex shop and I was petrified someone would grab my bag and find it before I had a chance to hide it in the care home. First time I tried to put it in, I had no lube. I thought I was going to die and I decided I wasn’t gay after all.”

Haris chuckled and slid his fingers into Tyler’s hair, twisting the dark locks into spirals.

“I bought lube. Not that it made it much easier. I stood with a foot on the toilet and a finger up my bum and thought, if this hurts, how the hell can I get that thing up? I resigned myself to future sex with guys who had two inch dicks.”

“Don’t make me laugh.”

“Then I touched the place that makes it all worthwhile and almost passed out with sheer pleasure. It made me more desperate to try again with the dildo. I finally eased the thing all the way in and someone knocked at the bathroom door. They wouldn’t go away and I had to hide the cock in the toilet cistern. It was gone when I went back. One of the boys who was in the home with me, stuck it onto the door of my school locker with superglue. It backfired on him though, because he was seen doing it and the other kids thought he was gay and I was straight. I’d kissed a few girls and he hadn’t.”

“Did you like kissing girls?”

“It was okay. They’re soft. I like hard. I like kissing you.”

Tyler pulled his fingers out, rubbed off the lube and ripped open a foil packet. Condom in place, one nudge, one push and he slid straight into Haris’s body.

“Da…mn,” Haris groaned.

“Oh that feels good.” He shuddered.

Haris reached for one of Tyler’s nipples and Tyler gasped in surprise when a clamp bit into him.

“Okay?” Haris asked.

“Yeah.”

“You look so hot.” Haris fastened another on the other nipple. “And even better, you can’t put them on my cock now.”

Tyler rocked his hips and rode him slowly. “I can do anything I want.”

But he didn’t plan to take the clasps off. The bite of pain had segued to pleasure. He rolled his pelvis and thrust steadily into Haris, enjoying the way his body closed around him, sucking him in. He watched Haris work his own cock, pinching the tip with spit-slick fingers and then looked into his eyes to see Haris staring straight at him.

“We going to try and come together?” Haris asked.

“Do I get a prize if I do?”

“You can clean me up.”

“What if you come first?” He drove harder into Haris’s body.

“You can still clean me up.”

Orgasm was building inside Tyler, every cell on a hair’s breadth of anticipation. His balls had drawn up tight, his toes and scalp tingled, his nipples were on fire, and much as he might have wanted to prolong this, he couldn’t.

“I should have used that ring on me,” he said with a gasp.

Tyler lost control. He tried to hold off a little longer but it was impossible, like trying to push water uphill. An ache set up at the back of his head and his breathing turned choppy.
Faster, harder, faster, harder.
The words echoed in his head, spilled from his mouth. Haris’s fingers fumbled with the ring and then it was off and Tyler’s whole body jerked as he spilled himself inside Haris.

Haris’s hand squeezed his cock and Tyler watched through half-open eyes as jets of come spurted over that perfect chest. With every spasm, Haris squeezed his rectal muscles and Tyler groaned in delight. He finished coming before Haris and watched mesmerized until the last drop had left the guy’s cock.

“Fuck, I wanted to hold you,” Haris said with a groan. “Only I was afraid I’d hurt you. I never want to hurt you. I…”

Tyler withdrew from his body with his heart still pounding. He disposed of the condom into a tissue and then began to lap at the streaks of come coating Haris’s chest. He didn’t want Haris to see his face, to understand the way he felt because he knew he wanted him too much, needed him more than Haris would ever need him. Tyler had not just sold him his body, he’d offered him his heart and now he had to wait and see what Haris would do, because there was no way Tyler could take it back.

Haris thought the police must be able to see how nervous he was. He had to make a conscious effort not to fidget, talk too much or clench his fists. But it quickly became clear they were far more concerned that they’d allowed a guy they’d taken into custody slip from their hold and get hit by a car. They’d asked him if he knew the man and he’d lied and said no, and hoped that didn’t come back to haunt him. So much for not liking lies. What a hypocrite.