Part Three
TIMELESS MOMENT
The hiss of water through the shower nozzle sizzled like static as it discharged a silvery spray of water over the two glistening bodies beneath. They pulled closer together for a moment, joined at the hip and mouth, searching hands gliding slickly over smooth wet skin, then dipping lower, groping and rubbing harder and more urgently. Cory’s blond head tipped back and the Vampire’s lips parted, taking possession of his throat as he gasped with delight. Rayne’s hand kept on pumping as his fangs extended and he bit deeper, letting the hot, rich spill of his lover’s blood fill his mouth and run down over his tongue. He gulped and swallowed, then suckled harder, rubbing faster, feeling Cory buck against him keening and panting like an injured animal.
The boy was impossibly randy. He should not have been able to stand, by rights, after the things they had done to him last night. Rayne Wylde was supremely impressed that he could even get it up again, let alone be so very close to climax. The Vampire fed for a few moments more, timing his withdrawal from Cory’s neck to perfection. Hungrily he kissed the boy for a little longer to be sure the vein was properly closed, then, as the muscular little blond began to sob with pleasure and desire, he sank slowly to his knees and swallowed the boy’s chunky, circumcised cock deep into his mouth, sucking slow and hard and caressing between the kid’s tight young cheeks with his knowing fingers until Cory exploded with a long, shivering moan of relief.
The youngster was still gasping and sobbing when he rose, licking his lips and grinning like a wolf standing over a fresh corpse. For a little while he kissed the boy again, sucking on his tongue to quieten him, still working his fingers vigorously between those tight young buttocks. During last night, Marc had monopolised the boy’s arsehole almost exclusively. Before Cory went back to work, Rayne Wylde intended to redress the balance slightly.
“Oh Christ..!” Cory exclaimed softly as Rayne turned him and spread him firmly against the wall. Then, as the Vampire’s long, hard cock eased into him without preamble (or lube) and began to fuck him slowly and rhythmically; “Holy Jesus! Yes!!”
It felt peculiar to wake up alone with no concept of the time or even where he was. The swaying of the train beneath Marc was so familiar now that it had become a curious, techno-lullaby and he stretched deliciously sore muscles and rolled over to lie on his back in order to look around him. Initially he was unconcerned at the idea of being on his own, but as time progressed it felt more and more awkward and he made himself sit up, searching for something to occupy himself until the others returned. Rayne had put the camera away, but he knew where it was normally kept and convinced himself that, since he only wanted a reminder of just how he had come to be so wonderfully sore and exhausted this morning, surely there was no problem. A little diligent rummaging under the bed produced the black, rubberised laptop case. Fortunately it had not been locked and he flipped the catches and pushed back the lid. As expected, the glistening camera nestled in beside the Vampire’s travelling Notebook, packaged with rolled up socks and other personal items. Tucked in beside it was a fat, black, leather-bound organiser.
Marc hesitated, his finger hovering over the filofax. It occurred to him that he knew very little about his lover. They had shared intimacies that would make even committed partners blush, and yet he knew next to nothing about the man who had shown him so much pleasure. The temptation made his fingers itch.
Ever so softly he let them brush the matte leather surface, hesitating for a second or two to listen for warning footfalls in the corridor outside. When no sound came to him over the steady clacking of ironbound wheels on the tracks below, he lifted out the organiser and unfastened the small, elaborate buckle that fastened it.
It wasn’t really prying, he told himself adamantly, flicking his way rapidly through pages of detail that meant nothing to him. There were names and numbers and e-mail addresses for a selection of record companies, bars, publishers, travel firms; a plan of the London Underground system; a quick reference conversion table; a pocket containing travel documents; an A-Z section with more personal looking addresses, in which only the name ‘Simon’ followed by an 020 number meant remotely anything... and it was not necessarily the drummer of Whipsnade, Marc reminded himself solemnly.
He was on the verge of closing the file and putting it back when he found the photographs. They were tucked away right at the back and he almost missed them; a handful of mismatched snaps from the past twenty or thirty years. One black & white shot, tattered and crumpled from time and constant handling, showed a man and woman in their mid-twenties, perhaps. The girl was taller than her dark, hirsute companion, with long, straight, black hair and the tiniest, belted mini-dress. Her huge, pale eyes were made up like Liz Taylor in 'Cleopatra' and her full, rouged lips were not quite smiling, in an expression he found touchingly familiar. The man was beaming through his bushy beard, one arm around her waist, clearly proud and possessive of his beauty, as Marc supposed any straight guy would be.
There was another photo of the woman, this time more casual, smiling, sitting on a beach towel in a blue and gold bikini, in a faded colour print from the early seventies. Her hair was still long, but pulled back in a tail that cascaded down her back and her huge eyes were hidden behind large, owlish, turquoise sunglasses. In front of her a little, naked, sun-tanned boy; round-faced with thick, dark, bobbed hair; made sandcastles with the earnest concentration of the under-threes. By the woman’s side a slender girl of around five, with a single long, black plait held in bobbles, played with a doll and gazed into the camera seriously.
The third made him smile... it was clearly taken in the early eighties and showed two young lads who reminded him of his own teens, decked out like mannequins in ruffled shirts and huge, dark, pleated trousers replete with zips and buttons in obscure places, tucked into soft, suede-leather pixie boots. Their painted faces gazed back defiantly at the camera, bleached out even more by the flash that picked out the razor lines of their rouged cheekbones and pouting lips, and the dark, imploring pierrot eyes that made them look more girl than boy. The kid on the right had dark, reddish hair, cropped close at the back, but longer and spiky on the top. His companion was leaner and blond, with a tumble of pale fringe, which obscured half of his sharp-featured face. His visible eye was wide and pale, in a ‘Boy George-esque’ stare and his royal-purple shirt was half open, almost off one shoulder. A studded belt clung to his skinny hips for dear life.
Marc was chuckling so much at this delicious little period piece that at first he did not even realise that the blond was Rayne and his companion had to be Whipsnade’s drummer, Simon Hathaway! When it sank in he sat gazing at it for a while. His lover must have been about fifteen... possibly younger. Innocence masquerading as outrage. He smiled more ruefully for his own childhood then and looked on at the rest of the pictures.
The others were more recent. Two featured a little girl whom he initially thought must be the child from the second shot. The fashions realigned his opinion... these pictures were only taken in the last few years and the girl wore pale blue jeans and a brightly coloured ‘My Little Pony’ tee-shirt in one, where she was seated on a stone wall stroking a black and white cat. Her heavy black bangs were pinned back from her round, pale face with butterfly grips and she stared at the camera determinedly as if schooling herself not to smile. Her eyes were slightly screwed up against the sunlight but he could see that they were pale as ice, like the beautiful woman’s eyes.... and Rayne’s. In the other snap, the child was standing beside a small, curvaceous female whose waist-length hair was slightly curling as though it had once been braided or dreadlocked. She wore it pulled back in a tail from the top of her head and her long, hippyish skirt blew against the curves of her body in the breeze. The child wore pink shorts and a black tee shirt with a silver motif. Her hair was pigtailed and she had dark sunglasses perched on her nose.
He stared at this for a long time. The woman also resembled the classical beauty from the first pictures but he thought that she looked more like Rayne. Slowly he was beginning to piece the shots together. The woman in the last one was his companion’s sister… which meant that the first picture was of Rayne’s parents... and the baby on the beach...
Marc smiled again... so absorbed in his detective work that he did not look up until the door of the sleeper compartment clicked softly shut and he found himself looking up into Rayne’s quietly perplexed face. The singer’s wet hair was pushed back from his sculpted face; fine brows were drawn down like the wings of a distant bird in flight, touching the bridge of his nose and arching back over his coldly-colourless, unblinking gaze. The Vampire stood, barefoot in a loose shirt and pants, touchingly vulnerable yet coldly outraged, and licked his lips tentatively.
His voice was little more than a breath of sound.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Automatically, Marc dropped the photographs, trying to fumble them back into the case without looking down. His heart had begun to pound again as he edged away, conscious of the other man’s disturbingly quiet anger. The conspiratorial feel of the last few moments shattered irrevocably.
