Knight pulled Elliot toward an area behind yet another parting, which served as a home gym. There wasn’t much equipment there, since there was a real weights room on the premises anyway, but when Knight approached a large punching bag that hung off the ceiling, and lifted it to vacate the ceiling hook it became clear what its other use could have been.
Beast watched Elliot like a hawk, but Elliot’s focus was on the deliciously kinky things he could to with Knight if the hook came into play in different circumstances. Uncomfortably though, it was also a reminder that Elliot wasn’t all that special, and Knight had done these things with many other people.
It didn’t take long for Knight to attach the back of Elliot’s straitjacket to the hook, and when he made sure the thing wouldn’t budge, he stepped away, mouth in a thin line. “You fine with me leaving?”
Elliot licked his lips and pulled on the hook with his weight once more. He didn’t want to seem like a big baby. He’d cried in front of Knight too many times already. “It’s okay.”
Beast let out an unintelligible grunt, but Laurent pushed at him with a smile. “You can go. It won’t take long.”
Knight shifted his weight, his gaze still lingering on Elliot. “How ‘bout we stay in the bathroom? That way we could be here right away if something happened,” he said, indicating the door nearby.
“That’s a great idea,” Beast was quick to say and immediately charged toward the en-suite.
Laurent rolled his eyes but nodded. “You’re making this unnecessarily complicated, but fine.”
Knight gave Elliot one more peck on the mouth before following Beast.
Fane made a sound as if he were exhaling deeply, even though he didn’t breathe. “Finally. We’re alone with him. We don’t know when the next opportunity will come, so we need to find a way to draw blood. Just look at those lips. Wouldn’t you enjoy them on you once his body is mine?”
Elliot shifted uncomfortably, looking into Laurent’s pretty face. No wonder Fane was so obsessed with him. His skin was like milk, dotted with a few beauty spots, and he moved with such grace, his back always straight and his chin high. Elliot had no idea how they were related, because his own angular features were nothing like Laurent’s soft charm.
Laurent pulled back his wavy hair, which looked as if he’d just stepped out of a commercial for some luxurious product. “I wish we’d met under different circumstances. I wouldn’t have been so deaf to your torment.”
“All those fine words. All lies,” Fane hissed, and his body trembled like a faulty hologram.
Elliot swallowed, faced with the man who killed his idol of many years. Since finding out who Laurent was, things had been such a whirlwind that the two of them never got to talk, and now was finally the time. “Will you tell me how it all happened back then?”
“For me, ‘back then’ was only last April. But in all honesty, it does indeed feel like forever ago.” Laurent entwined his fingers and never took his eyes off Elliot. “I was not even twenty years of age when I met William Fane, and he was the perfect gentleman. His charm made my heart pound faster, and he seemed to hold the answers to all the questions I was too anxious to voice. In that time, you couldn’t freely enjoy another man’s touch, Elliot, so the things he implicitly offered were a forbidden fruit I couldn’t wait to bite into.”
Fane smirked, and his fingers squeezed around Elliot’s shoulders, sending bitter cold to the depths of his bones. “And I would have given him everything. I offered so much, but he wanted everything to happen on his terms. He wouldn’t give in to what I wanted.”
Laurent leaned against the wall and watched Elliot, somewhat pale when his eyes wandered. Perhaps he could sense the ghostly presence in the air somehow? “I was ecstatic when he asked my employer to send me to this place overnight. I felt that we had a connection, that something would happen, and that elegant man, who was the embodiment of all my dreams, would give me the things I’d seen in forbidden books. But he changed the moment he took me to the cellar. His words became cruel, and so did his hands.”
Fane reached out for Laurent’s neck even though his touch couldn’t affect anyone but Elliot. “He knew exactly why he was there. He was playing coy, but I suspect he’d already known a man’s prick by then.”
Elliot wasn’t so sure about Fane’s words though. Laurent had no reason to lie about the past. No one would prosecute him for the murder, and he didn’t have to tell Elliot any of this in the first place. Fane on the other hand had proven himself to be volatile, ready to change his mood and attitude to Elliot at the flip of a switch. The skeleton Elliot had found with Knight in a cage was only one of many pieces of evidence that showed the truth of Fane’s nature. The willingness to imprison helpless men.