Chapter Three: Something Lost
(Note: if you missed Chapters 1 and 2, click on the chapter heads at the top of this page.)
As soon as he turned his back on Burns, Thomas knew he would not come back. The arrangement stunk to high heaven. He was not a street corner pick up, or so hard up for a lay that he would arrange a tryst with a stranger. Burns was intriguing, all right. But he was a peregrine falcon, a wanderer flying through, even perhaps a sexual predator. He did not want to find out.
And yet … the man had never once tried to flirt with him. His actions, if anything, were so discreet they verged on paranoia. He’d asked Thomas in a forthright way to join him for a drink. Then why did he feel a frisson of anxiety and excitement leap from his slit to his asshole when the man simply smiled?
In spite of his hasty retreat—and his bone-deep fatigue—Thomas felt something akin to an electrical charge invade his gut and work itself into his groin and down his thighs. It was a feeling he hadn’t experienced for years. Not since he and David had first met, and then had fallen in love, before their paper-thin partnership had collapsed like the house of cards it really was.
Four years ago. He’d just gotten out of the British army, needing a home to take the place of the incessant traveling from one temp duty to another six-month assignment. A friend had told him about a fast-track opening at the Dundee Police Scotland division. How he could jump a rank based on his military experience.
Thomas lifted the homely constable’s cap from the faux-antique rack at the Bide-a-Wee and ran his thumb along the brim, remembering. A brash young PS recruit with a full head of auburn hair had greeted him the first morning he arrived with a jaunty grin and a shimmy of his shoulders.
“Yum. New meat. Me like.”
Thomas had been flabbergasted by the man’s flamboyant “I am gay” vibes. He himself had always tucked his sexuality far behind an iron flap in his heart and rarely opened it for others. He wondered how long this man would last in the force. If cops were anything like rough soldiers, they hid their wallets and their sexual preference until they knew each other pretty damn well.
He’d found himself warming to David instantly. Barely twenty, a few years younger than himself, he seemed to thumb his nose at authority, always in a funny and subtle way. He was handsome, with a lean, angular face and a mobile mouth that Thomas instantly imagined testing his ready cock.
Thomas was shrugging into his stiff leather jacket when a low voice sounded behind him.
“Something lost.”
The words chilled him. How can Burns know?
He turned slowly, keeping his face a mask. Burns was standing behind him with a glass half full of amber liquid. Damn, but it looked inviting. They both did.
“Excuse me?”
“I disagree with what you said… Nothing lost. If you don’t come back, I think something actually will be lost. Besides my carry-all I left on your rear seat.”
He waited for Burns to spit it out, willing his eyes to remain at half-mast. When the Scot simply continued to stare, Thomas allowed his mouth to relax a little.
“Tell me.”
Smoky gray resumed its intriguing dance with dark, dark brown. “We’ll lose a clue to a mystery. Maybe two.”
“Meaning?”
“The mystery of you, certainly. And myself also, I think.”
Burns smiled, and Thomas felt floppy little wings dancing again in his belly.
One bloody drink. I can do that.
“I have a civilian shirt and a pair of trousers in the car. I suppose I could duck into the lavatory and change.”
“Will you?”
This time it was Thomas who deliberately allowed a few ticks to elapse. But he didn’t have to think about it too hard.
“Let me grab my gear, and yours too. I’ll see you in ten minutes.”
He turned quickly to the door and braced himself for the cold. Sure enough, a chill wind slapped his face, almost a reprimand. What the fuck am I doing?
He answered himself. Why the bloody hell not?
Standing at the boot of the Focus, he cradled his holster and the Glock together, pushed them to the back, and set his cap on top. He preferred to avoid using a gun, but the presence of the firearm was a testament to the dangerous job he’d just concluded. He’d brought a few changes of clothes, knowing he might have to bunk out overnight on a bench in the Montrose Tayside Station. He rustled around in a small traveler’s bag and pulled out a heavy cotton shirt, then a pair of corduroy pants and a hoodie.
Cradling the clothes under one arm, he entered the roadside inn and went to the gents’ privy. In a few minutes, he became an average guy again, a look much more to his own liking. He carried the Police Scotland uniform out to the car and deposited it on the back seat, smoothing it in a lame attempt to keep it from looking slept-in. Thomas was no fashionista, but he was fastidious about appearance. Wrinkles and sweat stains, in his studied opinion, were the mark of a man who didn’t care about himself.
He’d also removed his jockey shorts for some damned reason—probably because he could feel them bunching his balls, invading his crack. He pushed them under the uniform.
Stripping away my last defense. Bloody hell, what am I doing?
But it felt almost sensual, jamming the jockey shorts out of sight. He hadn’t dropped his drawers for … hell, almost a year. Ever since David had stopped finding him “yummy” and had invented an excuse to transfer to the Glasgow division.
No, he hadn’t been with a man ever since he’d worked up the courage to confess why he’d really escaped home almost a dozen years before.
The old memories were still clutching and clawing at his psyche. And so he’d tried to share them with David. He’d struggled to recapture the past, explain maybe to himself why he still felt the shock, the fear, the guilt…
The man he’d almost married couldn’t handle it, had been terrified of living with the real Thomas Fitzgerald, the one he himself had been running from. One of them had to escape, and the logical choice was David.
Thomas twisted his mouth in frustration. He knew he was lucky the man had turned away when he did.
He remembered standing at the upstairs window the day David had left, watching him walk down Strathmartine to the corner taxi stand. His gut had felt like he’d swallowed drain cleaner, and he could hardly breathe. But what if he’d waited until they were married? His fiancé was funny and endearing and fragile. But he needed a caped hero—not another man as frightened and vulnerable as himself.
As he lingered at the passenger door, the wind slapped his cheek, chiding him again. He bent to retrieve Burns’ carry-all. It seemed strangely heavy. What the hell did the man need to rescue from his stranded car? Feels like the entire transmission.
He wanted, he desperately needed, a friend. Even a one-hour friend, someone he’d never see again. After all, they were only going to share a drink. They’d absolutely go their separate ways with no obligations. So maybe what he needed was waiting for him at the edge of this bitter cold night on the outskirts of Dundee in a crappy roadside inn. Someone who didn’t mind being a hitchhiker for an hour in a near-empty vehicle.
He shut and locked the rear door.
Striding back to the Bide-a-Wee, he consciously wrenched his mind from the past and let his thoughts dwell on the stranger … a man of obvious wealth who apparently did care about his image, in spite of his unshaven jowls. Thomas thought that much was clear from the way he carried himself, the way his sober clothing nevertheless fit him with flawless grace.
He also seemed to be a man of good breeding and education. And he certainly knew how to use his dark looks to make a statement. Even without glancing at his fly, Burns was talking man-to-man to his destitute prick.
What else would he learn about this stereotypical dark stranger? At the door, he squared his shoulders, stepped inside, and sought the bar along with a few answers to the enigma named Burns.
~oOo~
~Burns~
Good fucking god, what have I done?
Burns hunched over his Irish whiskey, half-assed wishing he could somehow disappear into the night. He could always stand out on the A92 highway and thumb a ride, à la some road warrior he’d read about in an old American novel, and hope to hell Fitzgerald didn’t come looking for him. But not a soul had walked into the travel inn for the last quarter hour—which meant that traffic was light on a Monday night in the middle of nowhere. He might stand out there in the cold wind for an hour and not have a driver stop for him.
And then he remembered his carryall. His life was tucked into that small bag, and he could allow no one to pry into that life. Not even … ah, not especially … a hungry-eyed cop.
Burns tossed down a mouthful of strong whiskey, wished he’d sipped it, and coughed like a kid. But the alcohol had its desired effect, scorching his esophagus before settling deep in his belly and speaking nice to his already engorged prick.
Damn, but Fitzgerald was a rare find! Nibble-my-dick handsome, with eyes to melt an igloo, built like an Olympic athlete. A man he wanted, he needed, to know better. No matter what.
He glanced at his watch. Eight of the evening. By his best reckoning, he had fourteen hours.
Burns stopped swearing and started smiling. He’d figure something out. He always did.
~oOo~
In case you missed the short first chapter and interlude, they’re right here: https://romancemanlove.wordpress.com/burns-too-deep-a-work-in-progress/ or find the title in the chapter headings at the top of the blog.
Thomas imagines a “bulging sporran” on his traveling companion. Chapter 2 of BURNS TOO DEEP is here: https://romancemanlove.wordpress.com/burns-2/
And Chapter 4 with its Burns interlude is here: https://romancemanlove.wordpress.com/770-2/ (or go to top of page, to chapter headings).
This work is set in the Scotland universe of THE KILT COMPLEX and HUNTER’S POINT, books 2 and 3 of NEVADA HIGHLANDER.
The trilogy:
NEVADA HIGHLANDER/THE KILT COMPLEX/HUNTER’S POINT
On my author pages:
USA http://amzn.to/1w8PVgI
UK http://amzn.to/17DWFzg
OmniLit: http://bit.ly/1tvfx7E
Another intriguing extract! And a sure winner to add to your collection! Congrats!
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To Charles: your endorsement is priceless! To a writer who pens mystery seething with undercurrents of erotica … thank you!
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This is so beautiful so far, the best of everything that you do–infusing your characters and plot with mystery, longing, beauty, hesitation, frustration, and (I expect) incredible carnality. Wow, keep going!
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Dear Bo, you really need to become a novelist. Your writing makes me weep. Thank you for everything. :~)
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I am a failed novelist. My agent went on to be a very famous and notorious political creature who couldn’t understand anything I wrote. alas.
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