“Faster,” he said on a hoarse breath, panting as Angel increased his speed. In a rush of hot fluids and tense muscles, Kael moaned out his orgasm. Still breathing hard as he basked in the aftermath, Kael opened his eyes and, even in the near blackness, saw Angel licking the semen off his hands. “How does it taste?”
“Delicious,” Angel said, a smile in his voice.
“On your back,” Kael ordered.
Without pause Angel obeyed, rolling away from Kael’s side. Turning onto his side, Kael cupped Angel’s cock and balls with his big hand. “Oh Daddy,” Angel said breathlessly. Kael gathered the boy’s genitals into his hand and squeezed. A small cry escaped him.
“Did that hurt?”
His voice breathy, Angel whispered, “Yes, Sir.”
Again Kael squeezed hard, feeling Angel’s cock harden against his palm. The boy’s body tensed. “Daaaddyyyy,” Angel said, dragging out the vowels, his eyes drifting shut. With his elbow, Kael tossed back the duvet. Angel’s beautiful face was utterly tranquil.
“Spread your thighs wide, boy.”
“Yes, Sir.” With his legs apart, bent at the knees, Angel remained completely still. Though he had to know more pain was coming, he did not tense against it as many inexperienced subs would. Angel knew what he wanted and welcomed everything Kael did to him.
Kael raised his hand to about eighteen inches from Angel’s stiff, pink cock and stretched ball sac. With his usual precision, he knew exactly how hard the slap would be when it landed—enough to cause sufficient pain to induce orgasm, but without causing any damage. Again he looked at his boy’s face. Angel’s eyes remained closed, his body in repose, waiting patiently.
Kael landed the slap perfectly so that his palm cupped Angel’s cock and balls, not quite a caress, and with force enough to induce a long shriek from the boy. Sperm shot out of Angel’s cock as his body tensed. A thin shriek tore from his throat, followed by heavy panting. With pleasure and pride, Kael saw that Angel’s thighs remained wide. The natural tendency to close the thighs when the genitals were caused pain was something Angel had learned not to do. The boy’s self-control and strength drew Kael’s admiration time and time again. “Good lad.” He leaned across Angel to grab a paper tissue from the box.
“Daddy, I’ll do that,” Angel said.
“It’s fine.” Kael wiped the spray of cum off the sheet and drew the duvet up again. He tossed the crumpled tissue onto the bedside cabinet. Angel would move it tomorrow when he changed the bedding as he did every day. “Come here, boy.”
With a sigh of pleasure, Angel rolled sleepily into his arms. “Daddy, I’m going to have a gap year too. I can spend it training with you, improving my aim at the firing range and learning the covert skills you’ve talked about. You know, how to spot when someone is carrying a concealed weapon and how to tell when someone is lying by reading their body language.”
With his arm wrapped around his boy, Kael said, “Your aim with a gun needs no improvement, only practice to keep up your accuracy. The other stuff I can teach you as we go. You’re not taking a gap year. I’ve never heard such crap. Nobody I went to school with took gap years. We got on with being grown-ups.”
“Daddy, I’m not ready for university.” Angel sounded slightly desperate. “The only reason I’ve done so well at Redmond is because you’ve helped me so much. Without you I don’t know if I could do it.”
“I’ll still help you. You’re not going to Mars. With any luck, we’ll get you into Cambridge, which is only an hour and a half from here if you drive and about two hours on the train.”
“That’s a lot of traveling time, Daddy. Four hours there and back.”
“You won’t be traveling. I’ll be traveling back and forth to see you. At Cambridge you are expected to live in halls. You have to live within a prescribed radius of Great St. Mary’s Church.”
“Why?”
“It’s part of the tradition. Like I said, it’s a couple of hours away. This is about your future, Angel.”
“The future will always be there. I’m more interested in the
now
.”
For some time, Angel had been expressing doubts about going to university. Kael put it down to nervousness. Angel’s life had changed so much in the last year and a half. Almost nothing had been expected of him by his mother and stepfather, and now Kael was piling expectations on him. But he was certain Angel could live up to them with the right guidance.
“Daddy, how was I at the party? Were you watching me?”
Unsure what to answer, Kael said, “Some of the time.” He didn’t want his boy to think he didn’t trust him. At the same time, he didn’t want him to think he wasn’t interested.
“I just wondered if my manners were good and stuff. You know, with it being so fancy and all those important people there.”
“You weren’t that worried last year.”
“No, I know. But I didn’t really realize then that you worked with government people and who they all were. The deputy prime minister was there tonight.”
“For about fifteen minutes, yes,” Kael said. “Anyway, your stepfather was rich enough to have lots of fancy parties. He just got his money from a different source.”
“Yeah, illegal arms sales. And they did have lots of fancy parties, but I wasn’t allowed to be there. I was always in my bedroom. Sven hated me, remember? And since I never went to school, I spent a lot of time on my own, so I never got to practice social skills and manners.”
“You’ve got better social skills than I’ve ever had, and they drummed good manners into us at College Grange. You’re very well-mannered.” It was true. Angel knew how to be around people and not offend them. “I’m always proud of you.”
Angel rubbed his cheek over Kael’s nearer nipple, which told him that his boy needed reassurance. He always headed for Kael’s nipples when he wanted comfort. “I love you, Daddy.”
“It’s entirely mutual, sweetheart. Now go to sleep.” Kael kissed Angel’s forehead, holding him close, allowing the boy to suck gently on his nipple until he knew by Angel’s steady, even breathing that he was asleep.
The tiredness of earlier had passed, and after a few minutes, Kael eased Angel out of his arms, tucked the duvet around him warmly, got up, and pulled on his navy blue dressing gown. He always turned the heat very low at night and didn’t bother to turn it up as he entered the spacious, open-plan living room/dining room. Coming home late and going straight to bed, they had not bothered to close the blinds over the wide picture window. Kael crossed the room and stood in the darkness looking out at the River Thames and the lights of the city.
Not often, but every now and then, he remembered being a child and knowing there was more to life than the grubby council estate where he was raised while his mum worked as a cleaner at the local launderette and the old peoples’ home. He had always been proud of his mum, even after he got a scholarship to College Grange, where all the other boys came from families with servants and summer homes in other places. Kael had long since lost his heavy Scouse accent, and he had always known he would have more in life than he was born into.
From the coat cupboard in the hall, he took his diary from the very back of the top shelf where he always left it these days. In the living room, with only the light of the city to assist his better than ordinary eyesight, Kael sat on a black leather chair by the window to write.
I was twelve the first time I asked my mum who my father was. I was home for the Christmas holidays after my first term at College Grange. All the boys at school either lived with both parents or they knew who their dad was, even if he lived somewhere else and was married to another woman. But very few of the kids I knew from home lived with both parents and, like me, many of them had never seen their father.
Mum was putting the finishing touches on the artificial tree—gaudy silver tinsel and purple baubles. I was sitting on the scruffy old couch watching her. I had decided two years prior that decorating a Christmas tree was “lame” and had refused to help, but I still loved it when she was finished. I just never admitted it. Mum couldn’t reach high enough to put the fairy on top. I was so tall by then that she always asked me, which made me feel big and manly. I set the fairy in place with the top branch under her frilly paper dress, and then I looked at my mum and asked, “Who’s my dad?”
“He’s long gone, luv,” she said. “Let’s have a cuppa tea.”
“What’s his name?” I asked her. After seeing all the boys at school with their dads the day we all arrived, and hearing them talking about them, I really wanted to know.
Mum said, “I’m not sure, Kael.” She went into the kitchen to put the kettle on.
I followed her in. “You must know his name, Mum. Was he your boyfriend?” She was starting to get upset, but I was just a kid and I wanted what I wanted and that was to know something about my father.
Mum stood with the box of Typhoo tea bags in her hands, looking at me. She said, “I was only eighteen. I was working in the Adelphi Hotel as a chambermaid, and he was there as well. That’s all I know about him. Are you hungry again? Do you want some Jaffa Cakes?”
I was always hungry as a kid because I grew so fast. Half of Mum’s wages probably went on feeding me when I was home. But I wouldn’t give up. I never did when I wanted something. “I just want to know his name, that’s all. Did you go on a date with him? He must have told you his name.”
She was really getting upset now. “No, I never went on a date with him. Now shut up about it.”
But I wouldn’t shut up. “You mean you just had sex with him? Just one time and that was that?”
The kettle began to beep, and Mum turned her back on me to unplug it and pour the hot water into the mugs. She said, “Yes,” very quietly. I don’t know where my next words came from: cruelty, stupidity, ignorance? It could be any or all of those, but I’ve always regretted them. I said loudly, “Did he pay you?”
Mum put the kettle down slowly and carefully without speaking. She turned and looked at me, and her face was so hurt and so sad that I hated myself. Mum had never laid a hand on me, not even when I was the most annoying little know-it-all sod in the world. But I thought she was going to then. She didn’t though. She said, “You little horror.” Never in my life had she called me a mean name. It was always luv or my big son or my Kael. Then she ran to her bedroom.
For the next couple of hours, I sat on the couch, turning the television up louder and louder because I couldn’t stand the sound of her crying and I didn’t know how to make it stop. When she did stop and there was no sound from her bedroom for about twenty minutes, I made her a cup of tea and carried it in to her. “I’m sorry, Mum. I’m sorry,” I said.
She drank the tea, and she gave me a hug.
I spent the rest of the holidays trying to make it up to her without speaking directly about it. I had her meal ready every night when she got home from work even though I couldn’t cook and some of it was probably inedible. She always said it was great and ate it anyway. I cleaned the flat and did the washing up and generally tried to be a perfect son.
I never mentioned my father again.
Chapter Three
“I’ll see you tomorrow after school,” Kael said. They stood to one side as the other boys, all in smart uniforms, streamed in through the gates of Redmond Independent College. It was the first day back after the holidays, and everyone looked cheerful except Angel, who looked worried.
“You’re not going out of the country, are you, Daddy? If I’m leaving in September, I don’t want you going away for days at a time.”
Straightening Angel’s red-and-black-striped school tie, Kael said, “No. I’ll be in the city, and as I said, I’ll see you tomorrow. It’s not a dangerous job, and it’s only twenty-four hours.”
Angel reached up to touch the outline of Kael’s gun secreted in a shoulder holster under his black jacket. He always wore all black on a job, smart trousers and jacket with a black crew-neck shirt underneath. No one looking at him would notice the gun, but Angel knew he always went to work armed. “You’re not wearing the heart necklace I bought you.” Kael had worn it every day since Christmas, but this morning he had left it on the bedside table.
Taking Angel’s face between his hands, Kael kissed him tenderly on the lips. “No jewelry on a job. No identifying features.”
“What about a tattoo?” Angel asked. “You would look so cool with a tattoo.”
With a smile, Kael tapped his nose. “No tattoos either, and that goes for you as well.”
An oversize lad of about eighteen walked past, looking at Kael.
“That’s him, isn’t it?”
“Aubrey Carey-Fox. Yes.”
The boy caught Kael’s eye and hurried through the gates. Kael wanted to chase him down and kick his arse for upsetting Angel. But Angel wanted to take care of this himself, and he must allow him to. “Remember what I said.”
Angel laughed. “Yeah, you’ll bitch slap him if he gets in my face again.”
“That’s right.” He kissed Angel again. “Go on. Get going. Do well for Daddy.”
“Yes, Sir.” Angel strode off through the gates. Kael waited because whenever he dropped Angel at school, the boy always turned when he reached the steps and waved. “Daddy, be careful!”
Kael waved back. “I’ve got Mattie watching out for me.”
* * * *
At the intersection of Parliament Street and Downing Street, a twenty-feet-high barrier with a gate in it prevented tourists, terrorists, and anyone else from walking past the prime minister’s residence. Conran handed Kael his special security pass. “You’re late. Your team is already here.” He pointed through the barrier. “I’ve sent them through.”
“I took Angel to school.” Kael was five minutes late, something that would never have happened before he had Angel in his life. “Anyway the mark is not supposed to be here until ten, and why do I need another security pass? I’ve got my top clearance pass.”
“This one is only for twenty-four hours, and it was issued by Specialist Operations who mind the PM. It is specifically for Downing Street. Security is tighter than ever these days.”
“Calm down. It will go like clockwork.”
“I just want everything to go perfectly. I’m up for a promotion, and I’d like to get it.”