Page 23 of A Case of Possession
Stephen flushed. “I’m perfectly capable of accepting help. I asked you to come today, didn’t I? And look what happened.”
“What?” said Crane, injured.
“We discovered we may have two dead shamans and a rat-controlling maniac at large. Whereas if you hadn’t been there, I might have given up and gone home early.” Stephen moved into Crane’s arms again. “I’m sorry, Lucien. And I’m sorry about last night, too, I wasn’t very fair to you. I’m a bag of nerves at the moment. Do I need to dress up like a shop dummy for this club, then?”
“Not by normal human standards,” Crane replied. “Which is to say, yes, my sweet, you do. Why don’t you come back to the flat to get some decent clothes, and I’ll see if I can do something for your nerves while I’m at it?”
“Mmm. Tempting. Though…”
Stephen hopped backwards to sit on the desk and Crane moved between his legs to kiss him, felt him lean back invitingly, and grinned against his mouth. “Dear me, Mr. Day. You really do love to get fucked on desks, don’t you? Put you on a desk, and you’re begging for it. What is so particularly exciting about desks?”
“They’re not exciting, they’re boring.” Stephen quivered as Crane’s mouth moved to his sensitive earlobes. “You write on them and then you go home, and nothing horrible happens, nobody dies. Lovely dull surfaces. All the better to do interesting things on.” He slid his electric hands down Crane’s back, over his hips.
“There’s a perfectly good desk in the flat,” Crane said. “A lot stronger than this, and decidedly safer.”
“But, in the Strand,” Stephen argued, “whereas this desk is right here, and you could have me on it right now.”
“You’re feeling more yourself, I see.”
Stephen locked his arms round Crane’s neck, wrapped his legs round the other’s hips, and lifted himself clear off the desk to press his body against Crane’s. The taller man staggered at his weight and braced himself with his hands, laughing.
“I have wanted this since you called Esther a beautiful native sorceress.” Stephen started laughing too. “Her face, my God. You’re such a swine.”
“And you love it.”
Stephen grinned, then moved to meet Crane’s lips in a long, deep kiss that ended with him on his back on the desk and Crane half on top of him, painfully erect. “I need to lock the door,” Crane said throatily. “Unless you can do it from here.”
“Iron,” Stephen said concisely; Crane was well aware iron was unresponsive to his powers. “But I bet I can get naked before you can lock the door and get back.”
“Stakes?”
“Ooh. If I win we do it on the desk. If you win, you can have me against the wall.”
Crane’s cock leapt at that. He loved to screw against walls but the height difference made it necessary for Stephen to stand on something, and while he was normally unconcerned by his stature, that did annoy him. “You’re on.”
He lost, of course, since Stephen cheated ruthlessly by sending the keys flying from his hand and skidding across the floor, but as he buried himself in Stephen’s arse and felt those magic hands flare joyously against his back while Stephen’s teeth dug into his shoulder, he felt as if he had won a victory of another and much more important kind, though he would have been hard-pressed to say what it was.
Chapter Eight
A couple of hours later, Crane sat at ease in the Traders. Stephen was next to him, wearing the suit Crane had bought him. Stephen’s obvious poverty, added to the height difference, made a mismatch in their appearances that drew far more attention than was prudent, and since Crane was an extraordinarily rich man where Stephen struggled to pay the rent, it had seemed only sensible to him that he should fund a decent set of clothes. Stephen had reluctantly accepted that, but had reacted with fury when he learned that Crane had had several other suits made up for him at the same time. He would have been livid had he known quite how obscenely expensive the discreet tailoring establishment was.
Anyone who cared about clothes would have known, Crane reflected. The material he’d selected, with no useful help from his sartorially inexperienced lover, was a subtle heather mix with tiny flecks of red and yellow, a quiet, autumnal effect that set off Stephen’s hair and eyes perfectly, and it was flatteringly cut, without any ostentatious attempt to make up for his lack of height or breadth. He looked, Crane thought, delightful: well dressed, bright-eyed and freshly fucked, the latter point hopefully lost on the men gathered around the table with them.
They were in the Traders’ conversation room for postprandial drinks. Cryer was there, with one speculative eye on the attractive young man who had arrived with Crane; Humphris, abstracted and frowning; and Peyton, interjecting obvious sarcasm whenever he could. Shaycott was enthusiastically retelling Willetts’ Red Tide tale yet again, but had earned his keep by introducing a Java man named Oldbury who Crane hadn’t met before, and a scholarly type called Dr. Almont, who he had seen haunting the library on several occasions, and who apparently was an expert on Polynesian tradition, insofar as that was possible without ever having left England.
Shaycott came to the much-anticipated end of his tale and got a minimal grunt of appreciation from most of those present and an enthusiastic response from Stephen.
“What a marvellous yarn, thank you, sir. Is that a common legend in those parts, I wonder, the rat cult?”
“Not that I heard,” Oldbury said. “Only ever had it from Willetts.”
“It has some similarities to other tales in the tropes of the priestess and the summoning.” Dr. Almont was ready to lecture. “Interestingly, it lacks an element one would have expected, which may be found in many superficially similar tales, the device or motif of theanitu.”
“Ghost,” said Oldbury.
“More than merely a ghost, if I may say so. Theanitu, or spirit of the dead that has the capacity to animate another body—”
“Not in this one,” Oldbury said firmly. “No ghosts, just rats.”
