I pushed back the duvet and crawled out of it, kneeling next to him on the sofa instead, wanting him—for once—to hear me. “I think what Luke believed about himself, and what his friends believed about him, were very different things. He was living in a cave, as you put it, because he couldn’t forgive himself. Not because he’d done something unforgivable.”
Caspian turned, and in my need to reach him, maybe I’d misjudged the distance, because we were suddenly close. Very close. Close enough to feel his breath against my face when he spoke. “I know I’ve said this before, but I wish I could see the world as you do.”
I lost myself in the paler fractals in his eyes. The faint tug and cling of his upper and lower lips between the words they shaped. The soft curls at his temples.
“You don’t have to,” I told him. “Just let me show you.”
One of his hands came up to cup my face, the edge of my jaw slipping into the soft cradle of his palm as if it belonged there. My eyes closed involuntarily—I wanted to look, dammit—surrendering me to the long-missed pleasure of his touch.
“Arden,” he murmured. “My Arden.”
“Yours.”
His mouth brushed mine. Honey-sweet, electric, making the hairs on my forearms dance in giddy delight. But it was only for a second.
He gasped. Pulled back. Dismay slashed across his face like graffiti. “I…I need to go. Nathaniel…Nathaniel is…”
I don’t know what I said. Probably wait or stop or please or don’t. It didn’t matter. He was gone.
Leaving me, of course, distraught in his wake.
Because he always did.
And I never fucking learned.
Chapter 25
So much for a new start for a new year. But y’know what, life went on. It’s the one thing you could always rely on. Well, unless you were dead, but then you probably had bigger problems to deal with. Or no problems at all. Swings ’n’ roundabouts. I was inescapably down for a couple of weeks—because of Caspian, or cocaine, or the fact I was an idiot, or maybe all of the above combined—and I missed Ellery terribly. Like Professor Wossname inMy Fair Lady, I’d grown accustomed to, well, not her face, because she was usually facedown somewhere, but the stomp of her boots, the smell of her nail varnish, the too-easy-to-take-for-granted comfort of having someone to come home to. Nobody drank my milk or ate my cereal or carved obscene sculptures into the side of my bread. But honestly? I kind of wished they did.
I cared for Broderick, as per my promise, polishing his tusks and combing his fur. But I think he wanted Ellery to come home too. I sent her regular updates about his health and general well-being, along with photographs of his activities—like the tea party he had with some of his whale friends—which took me bloody ages to set up. But, hey, what else was I going to do with my time now that I’d utterly alienated one of my best friends?
The story of me utterly alienating one of my best friends, though that was obviously not how it got reported, stuck around but, as Caspian had promised, didn’t grow. Barely a day or two day after it had hit, a fresh scandal broke—something about a minor MP apparently sending dick pics to an undercover journalist posing as a teenage girl—and that largely overwhelmed the proportion of the news cycle that thrived on salacious things happening to other people. The timing couldn’t have been more ideal, which gave me pause, and some pricklings of unease, especially since Finesilver had pretty much told me this sort of thing was his job. But then, if we’re trusting you to run the country, you should really know better than to send pictures of your genitals to randos. Right?
While I wasn’t mad keen on having pictures of me doing an incredibly stupid and hurtful thing floating around in the public domain, the practical consequence seemed to be minimal. Unless you counted another uptick in Instagram followers and a handful of calls from companies wanting me to endorse shit, and the occasional promoter trying to make me go to their club nights. I’ll admit the money—which would have been more than I made in a month atMilieufor a single Insta—was tempting. But given I mainly posted pictures of, like, Broderick and my shoes and the view from my office window at various times of day, I would have felt skeevy as fuck suddenly being all “Hi, I’m Arden St. Ives and I totally legitimately use Brand Name Energy Drink in my daily life! #BrandNameEnergyDrink #BrandNameEnergyDrink4Life #DefinitelyNotBeingPaidForThis.” Also, no power on earth was getting me voluntarily through the doors of a straight club. Ew.
Over the next month or so, I did, however, manage to write some semi-decent pieces forMilieuon the principle that you might as well throw yourself into your work when everything else has gone to dogshit. And there was George, of course, probably the only good thing in my life I hadn’t fucked up yet. Not that she was a thing. But the truth was, it was depressingly easy not to fuck up when your caring came with carefully created limits. Probably there was a lesson in that. Except I wasn’t sure it was one I wanted to learn.
Anyway, we had fun together. Fun that involved me crying and hurting and yelling. But I was crying and hurting and yelling on my own terms. And I always got to come after. Sometimes during. Often both. I never let her spank me, though. I didn’t realise it was going to be a problem until the first time her palm landed crisply on what I’d assumed were my eager upraised buttocks. Turned out, they weren’t eager at all, and I’d safe-worded at light speed. Had to sit in a corner in a blanket for a bit. Crops, cats, single tails, floggers—even the cane which was right on the edge of too much ouch for me to take—all fine. But the intimacy of hand to skin, I wasn’t ready for. It felt like it belonged to Caspian, and Caspian alone.
“Well, poppet,” she said to me one weekend, having got off my face and dragged her dick out of my wet, gasping mouth, “would you like to see some photos?”
I peered up at her through a haze of happy sex tears. “You’ll probably have to untie me first.”
“Shame.” She unleashed a melodramatic sigh. “You look delicious all spread-eagled and helpless and covered in come.”
“The truly tragic thing here,” I pointed out, my throat hoarse from its recent abuse, “is that none of it’s my come.”
“Tragic for you, maybe. I’m having a wonderful time.” She tugged on the cascade of stars falling from the barbell through my right nipple.
I whined and wriggled—not that it did much good, considering she had me spread like a Boxing Day buffet. “You’re torturingmeeee.”
“Oh no, poppet.” Reaching behind her, she caught up the remote for the vibrating plug she’d tucked into me earlier. “Thisis torturing you.”
She clicked. I howled. And my poor cock juddered like it was trying to achieve actual liftoff from the rest of my body.
“I…I need to come,” I gasped out, rattling the cuffs that held my wrists and ankles.
George regarded me curiously. “Now why do you think that is?”
