“Shirt.”
He flung it away and shivered at the cool air on his naked arms. In the yellow light drifting up from the street, the scar across his belly shone platinum.
“Your wrists, please,” said Aristide. Cyril held them together and let Ari loop the necktie taut. He could feel heat gathering between his cupped palms. Ari tugged, not gently, and Cyril staggered after him.
In the bedroom, he let Ari fling him across the silk expanse of the duvet. The woolen necktie scratched his wrists as Ari drew the loop apart. Cyril reached for the gilded buttons of Ari’s waistcoat, but Ari struck his hands away. “No,” he said, like iron. Then, more softly, “I’ll do it.”
Cyril lay back, grateful and furious, and let him do it—let him do everything—until Ari was leaning over him, slippery with sweat and gasping for breath. One of his hands was pressed deep into a pillow, the muscles of his arm corded with the effort of holding his weight. With the other, he was pulling himself off. He was close; Cyril knew from the cant of his head, from his crooked mouth. He was biting the inside of his cheek. Sometimes he made himself bleed, like that.
Unable to resist, Cyril grabbed two handfuls of those sinful curls and yanked Ari’s head back, stretching his skin over the sharp ridge of his larynx. Cyril drew the flat of his tongue up the deep groove of Aristide’s throat, where the tendon was thrown into sharp relief. The chemical bitterness of cold cream coated his mouth, and the alcohol base of Aristide’s cologne. Ari cried out, his supporting arm buckling. Cyril pressed his hips up. Ari’s buttocks gave against the ridges of his hipbones. Cyril’s jaw ached around his clenched teeth.
“No,” said Ari again, ripping free of Cyril’s grasp. “No!” He pinned Cyril’s wrists over his head with one hand and slapped his face, hard.
Hissing through clenched teeth, Cyril spent himself, crumpling the fine linen of the pillowcase in his grasping hands. He closed his eyes, exhausted, but Ari put a fist in his hair and hauled him up.
“Finish it.” His dark eyes were wide and mad, curls snarled and springing around his head like the mane of a big cat. “Perdition take you, bastard son of a whore, you finish it.”
Reeling with fatigue, Cyril still felt a twist of desire, and he marveled at it. He lay on his side, cheek pressed in the crease of Aristide’s thigh, and said, “Come on, then.” Ari twisted, and Cyril took him into his mouth, pressing the pads of his thumbs into the hollow of Ari’s hips.
When Ari finished, he let his grip on Cyril’s hair go loose. His hands ghosted past Cyril’s ears, slipped through the sweat beneath his arms. They pulled him higher, so his head rested on Ari’s chest. Light from the street caught stray flecks of glitter still stuck to his skin.
Cyril squinted and yawned, painfully wide. There was something he needed to do. But what was …
Oh. His briefcase. Mother’s tits.
“Ari,” he said, and even to him it was nearly unintelligible. “Ari. I need to clean up.”
Ari’s arm tightened around his shoulder. “In the morning.”
Cyril squirmed. “No. Really. Just quick.”
A sigh, and Cyril’s head rose and fell with Ari’s breath. “Fine.”
Leaning against the wall, he tried to make himself move fast. Aristide would realize what he was up to, if he was gone too long. But the lingering effects of the absinthe conspired with his own traitorous, postcoital body. He had only just made it back to the washroom, briefcase in hand, when Aristide called his name.
“Half a minute.” Cyril climbed unsteadily up on the lid of the toilet and reached above his head to lift the top off of the decorative tank. The case was oiled leather, and if he angled it just right—yes, like that—it would stay mostly out of the water. He replaced the lid and stepped down.
For appearance’s sake, he wiped clean with a towel and threw it into the tub, then splashed a little water on his face. A headache was creeping in beneath his dizziness. With luck, he’d get to sleep before he witnessed the squalling birth of his hangover.
Shuffling back into the bedroom, Cyril shivered. Goosebumps came out across his damp skin. Ari held the blankets back and Cyril fell in, pressing against the warmth of the body beside him.
*