The Beast of Bodmin Moor Read online

  Only an extreme masochist—one capable of considering limb amputation a form of foreplay—could have gleaned a glimmer of pleasure from the torture now enacted on Jake’s entrails. Being gutted with a medieval flail may have felt similar. Or gored by a wild boar. Jack was not budging. Apparently. Furthermore, he didn’t give a flying fuck in which form he curled up with Phin tonight. They were staying, whether they moulted on the bed or not.

  Thus, it was that Phin procured an overwrought overnight guest.

  “I’m…terrified I might hurt you,” Jake owned. A last-ditch attempt to reiterate the truth without telling it.

  “Knowing you don’t want me hurts more, methinks.”

  If there was a response that could have defused the dropping of that bomb, Jake sure as Semtex had no recourse to it. Phin’s words were the verbal equivalent of a detonation device.

  Jake found himself plastered to Phin before he could blink. Long arms encompassed Jake as lips stole the breath from his body. That was how it felt, despite all facts to the contrary. Plump lips parted on a cinnamon sugar sigh that went straight to Jake’s head. Opium kisses…headier than heroin. A tangle of tongues that fed, fuelled, an addiction Jack could neither control nor conquer. When Phin slid his hands up the back of Jake’s T-shirt and starfished them across his skin, it was all he could do to drag his lips away for long enough to yank it over his head. The clash of chests was incendiary, too intoxicating to care that he was a layer of cloth closer to losing his mind. The groan that grated in Jake’s throat scarce qualified as human when Phin’s mouth crashed down on his own.

  Need so pure, potent, it was a speedball of scent, taste, touch. Seeping from Phin’s pores; stronger, richer than the brandy on his breath. Infinite, in the drowning depths of those eyes; black with desire, lids lust heavy. The scorch of skin on skin all-but obliterated the tension tethering Phin’s…customary instincts. Jake’s incorrigible innocent, so tentative at first, flared to full steam ahead with rocket-fuel finesse more flammable than kerosene. Thus emboldened, Phin clamped one hand to the curve of Jake’s arse and unleashed the fingertips of the other as if he were speed reading braille.

  “Phin…” Jake groaned, allowing his head to fall back, baring his throat in a way that made Jack tenser than his hackles could take lying down.

  Jake’s lids flared wide with shock. It was the first time his own desire had over-ridden Jack’s since they’d scented Phin on the wind. To the jackal, it signified submission. A low growl crawled the arc of Jake’s throat about a snatched-off breath before he found himself straddling a saucer-eyed Phin, now splayed across the tabletop.

  Midnight eyes sought, conquered his own, as a slow, secret smile spread across Phin’s angel face. The satisfied twitch of those lips was hot-wired to Jake’s crippled cock—a lure too tempting to withstand—even if he’d wanted to, and of course, he did not. Damn good job too; Jake would’ve been done for when wiry arms ensnared his neck. Tugging him into a kiss that was darker, deeper now, loaded with— Deny us if you dare.

  Jack. F’fucksakes. I need your insertions like a hole in my bloody head.

  Where, oh where, to start on that sentence…

  When Jake mustered the will to tear free, it was to trail his tongue down the ivory column of Phin’s neck. Aching to taste, touch, every excessive inch of skin, share every beat of his heart, keep it safe always. It was an agony too cruel, the guilt of endangering it most.

  “Jack, please…”

  “Tell me…what you want…”

  “More…” Phin pleaded, eyes huge, imploring. Impossible to resist.

  “More…?” Jake couldn’t help himself, he had to hear the pearl of perfect nonsense that prompted.

  “I…everything, I want you. All of you.”

  Oh hell…

  You asked for it. Just sayin’…

  21. Phin

  It scarce seemed possible that the magnificent man in Phin’s very own van was meant for him. The Beast of Bodmin popping by for a cuppa and snackeroo would be less bewildering than the impossibility that Jack might want Phin.

  Yet somehow, he was not only standing there half-starkers, sculpted from gold, gleaming in the lamplight, he was hard. Shrinktastic jeans struggling to constrain a stonking erection hard. There was no one else present. Just Phin. A singular fact as deranging as watching Jack prowl his way, muscles gliding in a melody of movement. That was exactly how it appeared; Phin wasn’t gilding any lilies he didn’t have. They were too glary, he preferred lily-of-the-valley. Or jasmine, gypsophila, snowdrops…those were his favourites. A sprinkle of little flowers, always white, like titchy stars tumbled to Earth.

  The flora had filled the space separating Jake and Phin, who was forcing himself to wait while Jake did whipping his kit off. That was never Phin’s best thing…but this was the first time that ‘worth the wait’ had ever seemed a dead cert. So, Phin was gritting his teeth against the scratchy insistence that now was the only surety and doing his damnedest to stay still. This, after enduring the loss of heavy heat and silken skin—bearable as a precursor to the unveiling of more—and thus, a quid pro quo, par excellence.

  He’d never done imagining that being squished beneath another body could make him feel so full—nourished—when being trapped should have screamed suffocating. Instead, Phin had felt somehow less…fragmentary, scrappy inside. Less like a piecemeal person, wired all wrong.

  Phin lay, fingers laced behind his head to hold it up, mesmerized by the shucking of shoes and the peeling of spray-painted jeans. The latter did snaffling his socks when Jake yanked his feet out, which was exceedingly fortunate on the fit of the fidgets front. Finally, there Jake stood…oh, so nearly naked. In Phin’s campervan. Two pairs o’pants away from paradise.

  “Hmmm…” Oops…that had aired itself while Phin wasn’t watching. The least surprising snippet of news in the whole world ever. He was too riveted to do concentrating on aught but the lustre of honeyed skin over lean lines of muscle—tendons taut, standing proud—shrieking tightly tethered strength. Caramel waves cascading to sinewy shoulders, streaked with umber, bronze…eyes of topaz blue flame, ablaze with desire. Desire. For Phin. Unless Jake was thinking very hard of someone not splayed across the table wearing just Phin’s pants. That was possible…despite the halleloo hypershriek louder than Jack’s twanging tendons.

  Phin did propping himself up on his elbows, too twitchy to stay still, too flat for best seat aboard privileges. He’d no sooner done so, than Jake glanced down at himself with an expression Phin might’ve called ‘doubtful’—except that would be daft—Jake was, most definitely, there. Here. In Phin’s campervan. In naught but his pants, which ensured that there was lots of evidence on view. A fact Phin had deduced with utmost diligence.

  When Jake did lifting his head, his gaze was blue zircon; Starlite bright, ablaze with a world of dark wonder while slinking to stand before Phin, still perched atop the table.

  “I was so certain Foxy was real…but can’t seem to do believing in you,” Phin heard himself sigh, from far, far, away. Too dazzled to blink, too dazed to break eye contact.

  “You’re barmy…” Jake’s smile didn’t seem to mind overmuch.

  This had e’er been the common consensus, far from a novel notion, so Phin told the truth, which was inviolate, being his own. “But not barmy enough to know what’s ‘good for me’,” he pointed out…p’raps with the tip of his tongue.

  “I’ll bite that off in a minute,” Jake snorted. “Were you not taught that sticking it out at people is not ‘po-lite’?” That smirk was more dangerous than the rest of Jake, if only he could see it. It was devilish, divine.

  “Yup…but you’re not people,” Phin noted instead, which was less unseemly.

  “I’m not…people?” Jack sounded a smidge alarmed, as if he’d just been declared a Dark Lord of the Sith. Rather than not informed that his smirk was deadly.

  “Well, you’re Jack,” Phin shrugged. “That’s more than just ‘people’.”
>
  The blue flared as if the gas had been turned up to full throttle. It was almost too luminous to stare into. It was…too close to care. Too…hmmm…a shimmer of pleasure thrilled down Phin’s spine when Jack did leaning to brush featherlight lips across Phin’s. Once, twice, while winding strong arms around his waist to tug him in tight. The scintillating press of chests, skin-to-skin sent Phin’s senses into a fizzy frenzy. It was the strangest double whammy of wondrous; leaving him fit to swoon and sprint up the side of a skyscraper, all at the same time.

  The whizziness won out when Jake did melding their mouths to lay waste to Phin’s lips. In the kind of kiss that inspired madness or murder in Kings and coves alike. That was the last snippet of nonsense to flit through Phin’s head, which was startling in itself, but nowhere near as staggering as the reason why…

  It was a surge of movement so swift he had to piece it together afterwards: Jack did nudging Phin’s knees apart, cupped his butt cheeks and tugged him in tight, then hoisted him up off the table. Phin had to do clinging on quick like a koala when Jack swung them around and splayed a palm between Phin’s shoulder blades to lower him to the floor. All this happened a tad too fast to do concentrating, so he might have made a muddle. There was lots of Phin and less of Jack, which made much of that seem a smidge unlikely.

  Phin didn’t even try to do unravelling it; all that mattered was, he was exactly where he wanted to be. Flat on his back beneath Jack, who hovered above him on all fours and kissed away all likelihood that Phin might do focusing on anything, anytime soon.

  He was far too busy luxuriating in the slow, sensual drag of Jack’s lips, the tangle of tongues, their shared breath as Jake lowered himself to his elbows in a lush smudge of skin. This kiss was slower, gentler than before, more…tender. Sound only seemed to exist as a denseness in Phin’s ears…and yet, the space between them was as light, airy as a candy floss cloud. There were fingers entwined in his hair, a tongue in his mouth, a palm clamped to his thigh. Jake was everywhere, all at once; the heady weight of his body, the trailing tendrils of hair caressing Phin’s face. Between his thighs, hard heat crushed close through filmy cotton, for the very first time. Oh, so close to his darkest dreams. Did Jake even want Phin…that way? It felt as if he did, and yet, he kept claiming it was too dangerous. How? Why? Or just a white lie, to let Phin down in a decorous way? How he wished he knew…there was no way of telling what he might ask for.

  Jack hadn’t seemed to think that making a racket put Phin in jeopardy, so why did more? He didn’t even know if Jack would permit a repeat of…yesterday? Earlier? It still seemed to be the same day, despite the dark; he hadn’t been to bed and had breakfast yet. Phin had to do steeling himself to stillness when Jake lifted his head. Every instinct was clamouring to cling on like a limpet when a sliver of space was a mile of separation. Farther, while fearing that every kiss would be the last. Much to Phin’s relief, the heady press of Jake’s weight didn’t diminish, it shifted. He began to do sliding backwards, scattering a blazing trail of kisses down Phin’s front.

  Phin held his breath, watching with wide, wider, eyes as Jack wriggled lower, lower still; too scared to breathe, perchance he stopped. Phin’s lungs cared not and promptly did staging a mutiny by sucking in a week’s worth of oxygen when Jake’s chest brushed Phin’s fit to bust pants.

  “Aaaahh!” His brain was too busy melting to mush and blowing up to be bothered who won Air Wars. The friction alone was mind boggling, but Jake’s head was heading toward torrid territory. Wherein a third head resided. Matters were getting a mite Fluffy from Harry Potter.

  A thought eclipsed by the squeaky gate sound that escaped when Jake did trickling his tongue down the trail of hair vanishing into Phin’s waistband. Next thing he knew, that had gone. Alongside his missing pants and a scorch of moist heat that clobbered Phin with a bolt of bliss. A fact that poured such a vat of oil on the squeaky racket, it melted into maple syrup and drizzled from his lips as an “ooooooh…”

  Last time, Phin had been too dazzled to relish the ricochet of sensations, too staggered by their all-consuming shriek to do concentrating on how it felt. A symphony of sound too overwhelming to hear the melody itself. Impossible to assimilate…like the taste of cymbals clashing.

  The tumult within was too loud to hark the racket without as Phin lay, plastered to floor like roadkill trammelled by a tractor. It was too much to do feeling all at once, so he let his eyelids flutter shut and did some concentrating on savouring every second of slurpy serendipity. Jack’s tongue was indecent, Phin decided. His mouth, a den of iniquity. Oh, if only life membership was on the table…or the floor…or in the bed nook…on the moors, under a blanket of stars…bathed in moonlight.

  Jack must have done dipping lower, somehow, because Phin’s cock crashed against the back of his throat—which tightened—as if the scoundrel was hellbent on swallowing it down. Phin was done for…he couldn’t have held out if his membership card depended upon it…

  “Jaacckk!” The only word in the world. It did clawing the walls when the need gnawing Phin’s nuts detonated in a dizzying rush. Unleashing a strobe-lit blitz of bliss that blazed through his body in a white-hot torrent of too much and more… When it was done with him, Phin was fit for nothing and everything. Anything Jake wanted, ever again, for the rest of forever. Aside from that, Phin felt very lovely. In a tongue lolling out sort o’way.

  Somewhere, on a planet far, far away, Jake did dragging his mouth back oh, so slow. The shock of cool air that accosted Phin’s cock was obliterated by slick warmth when Jake sluiced the sticky away…with a thoroughness that was the epitome of unseemly. Sublime.

  Adj: extreme or unparalleled excellence.

  As inimitable as Phin’s foxy friend.

  22. Jake

  Jake crawled the length of Phin’s body and hovered above him on all fours, gazing down into pools of liquid midnight. Berry lips smudged in a smile, so Jake dipped his head to trickle his tongue across the lower one, then tugged on it with tender teeth. A miracle as ineffable as Phin himself. When everlasting arms wound around Jake’s neck and tightened, he steeled himself and unlocked his elbows, allowing his weight to be…welded to acres of naked flesh. A soldering of fevered skin to silken ivory that crushed the crippled contents of his pants to Phin’s far more satisfied cock. Jake was clinging to his undercrackers like the last sliver of sanity they were.

  “It’s odd to taste myself on your mouth,” Phin told him, when Jake risked cranking his eyelids open. They had slammed shut on impact, alongside a rifle-shot gasp.

  “Odd in a good way or bad?” he rasped, in a voice like ground glass.

  “Oh, goood. It’s sort of…sexy, on your lips.” Phin decided, after pausing to ponder the most erotic taste on the planet. Jake was still grinning when he rested his head on Phin’s chest, and lay, listening to the steady thrum of his heart.

  Their favourite sound in the world—by far—apparently. A thought that should have been enough to wipe the smirk off Jake’s face. It failed. Dismally.

  “‘Sexy…’” Jake repeated, too charmed to resist…chasing the stick. Clearly. “So…what else feels sexy?”

  “Your skin squished to mine…making a racket…when your lips do the twerky thing despite yourself…watching you walk…”

  When your lips do the twerky thing despite…who you’re fooling no one except.

  “Watching me walk…?” Jake asked, ignoring snarky asides from the backseat.

  Ouch. Bitch.

  “Hmm…walking’s not really the right word. You prowl…like a panther.”

  “I…” Jake didn’t have the foggiest idea what to say to that gem. It was an irony too…beastly for banter. Is Jack evident in my body language now? He had no idea, having assumed that he’d skulked around scowling for the last two years. That seemed far more feasible than the possibility that Phin observed the same things as everyone else. Even if he did, that bewitching brain processed whatever the hell it wished. How Jake wished he could se
e himself through Phin’s eyes.

  Remaining still was no longer an option. If he didn’t shift himself, then he might shift full stop. The worst of this was a feat too astounding to fathom; Jack was uncannily calm. So, why the fuck do I feel fit to bust?

  Your guess is as good as mine?

  No. It’s not.

  You’re right. It is yours.

  What’s mine?

  Your guess.

  What are you on about? My guess is as good as mine?

  Not quite. Not as good as yours…IS. Yours.

  You. Are doing my head in.

  Why change the habits of a lifetime? Just sayin’…

  Goddamn dog. Too smug to make sense…there’d be no living with him after this. It was with a sigh of resignation that Jake slid a knee between Phin’s thighs in order to lever himself up.