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1.
Maurice was surprised that his own reaction was so calm, faced with Scudder’s sheer impertinence in imagining he could just show up like this – at Maurice’s City office, damn it – without any warning. Scudder standing out like a sore thumb in his cheap suit amid the grandiose pillars and mahogany and polished marble. His head and shoulders sloped downwards in misleading deference, but he’d just spat a fag-butt out onto the floor and was grinding the ash and saliva into the tiles with his boot, eyes downcast, mouth set hard, face flushed and far too handsome. His mood seemed dangerously unstable: staring nastily one moment, gazing in childlike awe at his surroundings the next; jutting his lower lip like a child, eyes brimming with hurt, then suddenly vicious with poisonous threats.
Maurice couldn’t help chuckling dismissively, though, when the best Scudder could manage was ‘I know about you and Mr Durham.’ Oh, do you, Scudder? What was there to know? Three years of restraint and frustration with Clive, then the terrible loneliness, the depression, the raging, undirected, unsatisfied lust? Three years that the shock of just the first few minutes of Scudder in his bed had overturned for good. Shouldn’t you be more worried what I might tell about you, Scudder?
Maurice let slip a bitter little laugh – but he was half-smiling, and leant back against a pillar, curiously relaxed considering, and looked gently at the gamekeeper. Indignant dark eyes blazed back at him. God, Scudder looked stung. Maurice reminded himself that he had the upper hand. If Scudder made any further trouble he wouldn’t stint in making him regret it for the rest of his life. Whoever would want such a disgraced servant?
Maurice’s body throbbed suddenly with its own answer.
He jolted, and realised that his business partner Hull and their junior broker Hunt, were still looking on at the intrusion – casually but too curiously, Hull pulling on his pipe. Observing the visitor who wasn’t from their class, wasn’t a clerk, and was looking in very much the wrong way at Maurice. He had to get Scudder out of here. Maurice signalled silently to Hull, grabbed Scudder by the arm – in a hold that looked normal but was bruisingly hard – and steered him firmly towards the door.
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2.
They were barely down the steps from the central office, and Alec was already pulling, wrestling angrily against Maurice’s strong grip.
‘I said you can’t treat me like a dog.’
‘Can’t trust you in there, more like. This is my office. You don’t have permission to be here, and I can do as I damned well please.’
The few – broad, stone – steps led down to the entrance lobby. Thank god it was late afternoon: no one on the front desk, but all the same Maurice thought it prudent to act quickly to get Alec out of sight. Quickly, he hooked his arm right through Alec’s, locked against him so hard it hurt, and yanked him to one side towards a heavy mahogany door. He twisted and pushed the brass knob and, before Alec had time to resist, had pulled him inside, restraining him with not quite all his strength. He turned the key in the lock and secured it in his inner waistcoat pocket. Then, just to be sure, bolted the door.
Alec continued to jostle angrily. The show of strength was starting to make them both a little short of breath, but Maurice wasn’t letting go yet.
Alec swiftly appraised his prison. The room had the same high ceiling as the huge, very grand, pillared office they had just left, with lots of dark, polished wood, but was a lot plainer: long and narrow, with just one, very tall but equally narrow, window, right at the far end, frosted and barred against entry – or escape. There were dark-wood pigeonholes on one long wall – some contained boxes, others reels of flex or wire – then, next to them, some curious mechanical equipment Alec had never seen before. A storeroom or technical room of some kind? A long polished table in the middle, and, at the far end, more desking up against the wall, and a couple of padded wooden office chairs.
If Alec hadn’t been so agitated and emotionally hurt, he might have felt some admiration for the muscle-power being used to subdue him. ‘Something’s up at the mission’? What mission? Was Maurice one of those philanthropic gentlemen who boxed, then? Imagining no one knew they got a charge from the fists and muscle and sweat and bruises and an eyeful of the lads horsing in the shower? Most of them wouldn’t try anything more, but everyone knew they tossed off afterwards. Oh, that figured, all right. A shame he hadn’t thought that Maurice might like it rough back in the Russet Room at Pendersleigh. Who’d have known, faced with a shy virgin who’d needed christ knows how much coaxing out of his shell before he’d ... But with the body of a god once he was out of his clothes, and…
Alec swallowed hard.
Because everything that had happened between them that night had been perfect.
So perfect that Alec couldn’t bear – and, even now, couldn’t truly believe – the way Maurice had so comprehensively ignored and snubbed him ever since. Well, maybe he understood, now, all right – seeing how Maurice acted at work with his own kind, his own class, the casual, unthinking condescension: ‘What brings you to London, Scudder?’ But what Alec suddenly thought he understood only made the pain rip through him a thousand times worse.
He felt agonisingly split in two: between delight – despite himself, and despite everything – at being able to gaze on Maurice again, and a sick feeling of fury deep in his belly as the truth of his humiliation was rammed home. What a fool he’d been, imagining that their night of sharing – Maurice’s first time, and plunging Alec into depths that had caught him right off guard, emotions and desire that pierced him hardest only after Maurice had gone – had meant a thing to a gentleman in the cold light of day. Deluded that they both felt the same, that Maurice would come to him when he ordered, wasting work time and risking trouble to make the boathouse clean and enticing, kitting it with all the comforts as well as necessities for warm, sticky August nights of leisurely fucking. Making slow progress, as Alec’s body couldn’t stop recalling little details, couldn’t stop thinking of his angel, or jumping ahead of himself as if they’d already lain together in his favourite hideaway, so that his efforts stalled into a sensual haze and he had to keep breaking off for a smoke by the water. Then pacing and smoking more frantically, sleep-deprived, miserable and alone, feeling ever more wretched when Maurice never came. And all that time, Maurice…
… Had felt nothing. And thought what? Done what? Been where? ‘Up at the mission’? By now, Alec could only think the worst, close to boiling point as he tormented himself with jealousy. Christ, if Maurice had been near the boys at the boxing mission or whatever it was … His imaginings of how he might punish Maurice for his humiliation, his rejection, grew ever darker.
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3.
Behind the locked door of the telegraph room, Maurice was still gripping Alec’s arm painfully tight.
‘So what is this “business” you’ve planned with your brother in London, Alec? Do tell.’
‘“Alec”, am I? Suddenly on first-name terms now I can’t shame you in front of your toff colleagues?’
Maurice moved as if to twist Alec’s arm behind his back. It really hurt, and it was a step too far. Gritting his teeth, Alec rammed Maurice hard, with his full weight, into a niche of clear wall near the door. He wasn’t daft: doing the same against the door itself would have made a terrible attention-grabbing racket. He kicked a knee between Maurice’s thighs like a mallet and pinned him there, grabbing him by both wrists and forcing his arms upwards.
‘Ow!’
‘“What brings you to London, Scudder?” You fucking hypocrite.’
Alec had chosen his spot well, and Maurice was trapped. His wrists hurt, his raised arms ached, and the sharp force of Alec’s kneecap felt as if it had bruised him. Angry breath seared the gap between his ear and his stiff collar. A shred of Clive’s reply when Maurice had quizzed him about Scudder’s character floated unbidden into his brain: ‘Strong as a horse’. Alec had reined that in in the Russet Room, his lovemaking gentle and almost superhumanly patient, but it seemed Clive hadn’t exaggerated – right now, despite Maurice’s fight training and height advantage, he could barely move. Half-winded by anger and physical resistance, their breath clumped in aggressive gasps. Instinctively, Maurice twisted his head aside as a precaution in case Alec lashed out and hit his face. No matter that it brought the hot breath closer to the most sensitive part of his neck.
Trapped he might be, but he could still play the cards of class imperiousness.
‘Answer me, Scudder. What “business”? What payment are you after?’
‘You fucking bastard. You know damn well all my business here is with you.’
Only with you, and very personal, Alec could have added – but his voice faltered, suddenly upset.
His grip on Maurice had slackened, too, and Maurice took advantage, his right hand breaking free to grab the left lapel of Alec’s suit, pulling him aggressively forward.
‘Well? How much? Let’s get this over with.’
‘That depends, don’t it.’
This with an opaque glint in Alec’s eye and a sudden nasty sneer in his voice. Now it was Maurice who felt like hitting him. He didn’t act on it, but instead rolled the feeling around, imagining how it would feel to slap Alec in the face, the contact with his warm skin, the stinging red mark Maurice’s hand would leave. He was not reflective enough to speculate on why the thought gave him pleasure.
Something in Alec was delighted by the storm of anger he could feel and see rising in Maurice, the thunder in his face and eyes: it was a reaction, anyway. He didn't care hugely about the money, but by now his feelings for Maurice were so entangled with cynicism and a curiously charged desire to punish that to throw extortion into the mix felt recklessly alluring.
Moderating his tone a little, Alec added:
‘You’re the one that’s got the explaining to do, Mr Hall.’
‘Me?’
‘Why didn’t you come?’
‘What?’
‘Why didn’t you come to me? Why didn’t you come to the boathouse like I asked? Not even a reply when I wrote.’
‘You know why.’
‘No. I. Don’t. “Something’s up at the mission”, eh? Who the fuck do you think you are.’
Incandescent with rage and hurt, Alec ripped Maurice’s hand away from his lapel and shoved him back against the wall, so hard that his own body followed violently. They ricocheted off each other. Rebounding bruised, Maurice crashed forward into the room and grabbed Alec randomly, no longer reserving any of his strength, his hands catching clumps of Alec’s shirt so that it came untucked, and dragged him roughly towards him – but the effect of the tussle was to throw them both back against the central table. Alec landed there, briefly, on his arse, Maurice still tugging at the waist of his shirt so that it almost tore. His adrenaline pumping hard, Maurice momentarily imagined pushing Alec onto his back and pinning him to the table with all his strength. But Alec had already propelled himself back up to standing and, muscles tensed to full power, he pushed against Maurice, forcing him back at arm’s length towards the wall.
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4.
For a while, they clashed and collided and wrestled. Everything was tension, heat and aggression, as if each had a primitive need to prove that he could beat the other in a show of sheer physical strength. But in the tension and heat, something else was happening. The close contact, their slamming bodies and locking muscles, weren’t quite a fight any more, and each – separately at first, then together – knew it.
Maurice was no longer certain what their quarrel was, just intensely conscious of his own body and the power of Alec’s. He became unsure whether the true object was to force Alec’s strength away or to take pleasure in it. He found he was slackening off, curious to see if Alec would subdue him – then willing him to do so, almost hungry for it, until Alec pressed closer and closer to him and was not pushed away. Alec was in the same turmoil. He had Maurice pressed against the wall again, but now he moved against him slowly, as if his body was speaking something deep, primal and aching that words couldn’t say. His breath still burned, but now it came from lips that were barely a pencil-width away from the sensitive skin of Maurice’s throat.
Maurice’s head fell back, no longer in self-protection, longing for Alec’s mouth to make contact, for rough kisses, to provoke Alec into a passion that would heighten the throbbing that had started by stealth but was pulsing more and more insistently down and deep into his body. His lips parted in a silent gasp and he pulled Alec close, caressing his fingers deep into the loose dark curls, barely feeling the vile brilliantine that was failing to tame them.
‘Alec. You know why. This was why.’
The first soft kisses trailed along his jaw. They weren’t soft for long. Alec’s mouth sucked against his skin – hard, demanding, almost vindictive in making him feel, right here in his own office, protected only by thick walls and a locked door – until Maurice couldn’t hold back from bucking against him as they both began to shake all over from the painful, long-suppressed need.
‘Want to give you more.’
‘Yes. Oh yes.’
Fin