Taming the Lion (17 page)

“Oh, of course.” Jon rose and stretched. As he did, Kaspar wondered how long he’d been sitting in that hunched position, poring over his research.

Jon walked over to one of the crowded shelves and pulled a book down. “Here you go.”

He passed it to Kaspar, who studied the title.
A Complete History of the English Pagans.
The author was the Reverend Neville Farthing.

“Thanks.” Kaspar flicked through a few of the pages. The type was small and dense, littered with extensive footnotes. Not exactly the light bedtime reading he’d hoped for. Still, it might prove interesting.

Jon looked at the clock mounted above the door lintel. “Is that the time? Maybe we should go and have some lunch. We can go to the Claverton Rooms. It’s dining for staff and post-grad students only, but they’ll let you in as my guest.”

“That sounds good, but we don’t have to rush off there just yet, do we?” Kaspar had arrived intending this to be a quick social call but his mate’s scent had permeated every inch of this little office. It inflamed his senses and made him want to leap on Jon and rip his clothes off.

“Why, what did you have in mind?”

“Well, I should really thank you for the loan of this book…”

Jon must have picked up on the seductive note in Kaspar’s voice. “Kaspar, we can’t. Not here. What if someone finds out what we’re doing?”

“And how likely is that? Sit down, Jon, and let me make you feel good.”

Jon did as he’d been told.

Kaspar crawled under the old wooden desk and settled himself on his knees at Jon’s feet. He reached up and unfastened Jon’s fly, expecting to hear some words of protest. They didn’t come. He smiled and reached into Jon’s underwear, taking hold of his cock and extracting it from the soft cotton.

He ran his fingers up and down Jon’s length, feeling it grow firmer with every stroke. Once it was fully hard, he dropped a gentle kiss on its tip. Above him, his mate sighed. Despite his obvious anxiety, Jon appeared to be relaxing into the moment just as Kaspar had hoped he would.

After all, what did they really have to worry about? The desk’s solid back would conceal Kaspar’s activities from view in the unlikely event of someone coming into the room. Yet part of him hoped that might happen. His own dick twitched at the thought of Jon trying to carry on a rational conversation while Kaspar gave him a blow job.

He took Jon farther into his mouth, licking over and around the crest. His lover tasted delicious, fresh and salty. Kaspar kept swallowing him down till his throat was full and his nose almost brushed the crisp hairs around the base of Jon’s shaft. He wished he could look up into Jon’s eyes at this moment and make a complete connection but the overhang of the desk obscured his view. Still, the soft noises Jon made and the way he pushed his hips forward let Kaspar know he’d found the sweet spot.

“Mmm, that feels amazing,” Jon murmured, his voice thick and husky.

Kaspar took Jon’s sac in his hand, cradling it gently. He let Jon’s cock slip from his mouth and concentrated on licking the full, heavy balls.

Jon gripped the seat of his chair with both hands. “Yes, that’s it. Just keep doing that.”

“And what happened to the man who was worried we might get caught?” Kaspar teased.

“He doesn’t care anymore. He just needs to come. Please…”

The little overtone of desperation in Jon’s voice sent a surge of desire straight to Kaspar’s groin. He was just as much in need of his own satisfaction but that could wait. He took Jon’s helmet between his lips again before beginning to work his hand up and down the thick shaft.

“Oh my God.” Jon slapped his palm down on the desktop, sending reverberations through its structure.

Kaspar wanked him faster, sensing that Jon had passed the point where he still remained capable of holding back. Cum filled his mouth, hot and bitter. He gulped it down then loosened his grip on Jon’s cock.

Jon sighed. “If that’s how you’re going to thank me for letting you borrow a book, I have a whole library you can take home with you.”

Kaspar emerged from beneath the desk. He went to place a kiss on Jon’s lips, knowing his lover would be able to taste his own essence as their mouths met.

“Thanks, Jon, but hopefully this will answer all my questions. Shed some light on the way people have viewed my kind.”

“I doubt that’ll be the case. As far as I can see, what the Reverend Farthing wrote pretty much belongs in the same category of sensationalist nonsense as those books claiming aliens built the pyramids.”

“And what if they did?” Kaspar quipped.

“Behave, or I’ll make you pay for lunch.”

“Okay, but you do know that what I told you the other night doesn’t change anything between us, don’t you?”

“Of course. It’s just going to take a while for me to get used to the fact you need to be a lion every now and again. Now come on, let’s get over to the Claverton Rooms. If we’re lucky, they’ll have Thai green curry on the menu.”

A knock came at the door.

“Now who could that be?” Jon muttered. Before he could call out, a plump, white-haired man waltzed into the room, smiling like the cat who’d licked up every last drop of the cream.

Chapter Twenty-One

What the hell are we doing wrong?

Henry strode along the corridor that led to the archaeology and anthropology departments, wrapped up in his thoughts. One of the administrative staff members, Wanda, smiled at him as she passed by, but he barely acknowledged her. His problem couldn’t be solved by checking the student attendance records, or appealing to the great and good of Bath for extra money. Indeed, if the local businessmen who usually attended the university’s fundraising evenings got as much as a sniff of what he’d been doing, they’d be calling the police to have him arrested.

Not that he ever intended to tell anyone what happened on those nights when the full moon shone down on Stanton Combe. Some secrets could never be revealed. All those who took part knew letting one careless word slip out would be disastrous. But they were sensible, discreet men. He’d known that before he’d recruited them. And, like him, they were totally committed to their course of action.

Still, he couldn’t understand why they had tried close to half a dozen times now, and had still come no closer to succeeding. He’d selected what he thought had been ideal offerings. Good-looking men in their early twenties, living on the fringes of society. No one whose disappearance would be questioned—or even noticed.

Henry glanced at a couple of post-grad students who stood chatting by the department pigeon holes, almost the only people left on campus now the summer term had ended.
The tall blond with the gold hoop in his ear… Now, he’d be ideal.
He could picture the boy stretched out naked on the fallen stone, his pert arse ready to be penetrated by cock after cock. But he had family, a network of friends, a course tutor…people who would start asking questions if the lad failed to turn up for a scheduled meeting or a regular night out.

Far easier to take some young homeless man off the street or select a willing rent boy, like the one from four nights ago. No matter what efforts society made to look out for those who fell through the cracks, some of them would always be beyond help. It wasn’t his fault that Jase and others like him were more than happy to take drugs and offer their body to a group of strangers in return for money, no matter how risky that behavior might prove. He knew he’d sound judgmental if he was to voice these opinions out loud, but he didn’t care. People were foolish. If they took no responsibility for their own lives, why should he be expected to treat them any differently?

But it didn’t seem to matter who he chose. Henry and his acolytes had followed the ritual to the letter, performed the bloodletting at the moment of orgasm when the offering was at his most relaxed and vulnerable, just as their god demanded. Yet still Leweilun, the Lion Father, refused to appear to them.

Henry thought of the Old English manuscript he kept under lock and key at home, the handwritten account of how the stones at Stanton Combe had been used to raise Leweilun. He’d found it in the days before he’d become Vice-Chancellor, when he’d been leading an archaeological dig on what was believed to be the site of an Anglo-Saxon burial mound close to Trowbridge. By some miracle of preservation, fragments of the thousand-year-old book had survived intact, the writing still legible. To a practicing pagan like Henry, it was a sign he had been chosen for something more than a life of study and research. Leweilun would walk the earth again, and he would make it happen. He just had to figure out whether the fault lay in his selection of victim or whether he needed to go over the text one more time and discover if he’d made some error in transcribing the words of the sacred rite.

He reached Jon Fellowes’ study, pausing with his hand on the door handle. Faint voices came from within. It wasn’t Henry’s habit to listen in on private conversations, but he’d expected Jon to be alone, and the other speaker had a distinctly foreign accent, which meant Jon couldn’t be talking to one of the other department members. As far as Henry knew, Jon wasn’t supervising any post-graduate students at the moment. So who else was in the room? His curiosity piqued, he strained to make out the words.

“…do know that what I told you the other night doesn’t change anything between us, don’t you?”

“Of course. It’s just going to take a while for me to get used to the fact you need to be a lion every now and again.”

Had he heard right? Henry pressed his ear to the door again, but now Jon and his unknown companion appeared to be talking about going to the Claverton Rooms for lunch.

‘You need to be a lion’.
He might have dismissed the words as some kind of joke, but Henry had read too many of the legends surrounding this part of the country to think that. He knew about the creatures who were supposed to have lived here with their ability to transform into big cats at will. Hadn’t Jon been talking about that very thing when he’d been discussing his research at the staff soirée?

This is another sign. Those stories speak the truth. I am on the right path. Leweilun be praised.

He knocked on the door and breezed straight into the room without waiting for a reply. Jon sat in his usual place behind his desk. Standing beside him was possibly the most stunning young man Henry had ever seen. He had full lips, tousled hair the color of sun-warmed hay, and strange, golden eyes that regarded Henry with an inquisitive gaze.

Henry’s instincts had been correct. Jon’s companion was one of the lion people. He would swear to it.

“Ah, Henry, what can I do for you?” Jon asked.

“I needed to have a chat with you. Lucinda Mitchell has put in a request to take six months’ sabbatical, starting in September, and I wanted to see whether it would be feasible for you to cover a few of her seminars while she’s away.”

Jon’s brow creased. “It should be, but I’d need to know exactly which parts of the curriculum she’d intended to cover and how many hours—”

Henry raised a hand, cutting him off. He glanced again at the golden-eyed boy and fought the urge to lick suddenly dry lips. “We’ll discuss that in due course, but aren’t you going to introduce me to your colleague?”

“Of course. This is Kaspar, a friend of mine. Kaspar, this is the Vice-Chancellor of the university, Doctor Henry Mortimer.”

Kaspar held out a hand. “Very pleased to make your acquaintance, Doctor Mortimer.”

“Please, call me Henry. And that’s an interesting accent you have, Kaspar. Am I right in thinking it’s Dutch?”

The boy smiled, clearly flattered by his interest. “That’s right. I’m from Amsterdam, though I’ve been living in Bath for a few months now. It’s a really beautiful city, and everyone here has been so welcoming. Particularly Jon.”

Jon shrugged and smiled at Kaspar.

Henry gained the impression that Jon hadn’t just welcomed the boy to the city, but into his bed, too. In other circumstances, he might have been pleased that a man who’d been buried in his work for far too long had finally decided to get a personal life, but his mind was running ahead of itself, pondering how he could use the obvious relationship between Jon and Kaspar to his advantage.

“Well, I won’t disrupt you two any further,” Henry said. “I have to be on a conference call with the Dean of Mount Holyoke College in ten minutes. But I’d like you both to keep July thirty-first free in your diary. I know it’s a while in advance, but I’m pretty booked up over the next few weeks. When the academic year ends, a Vice-Chancellor’s real work begins.”

“Of course.” Jon pulled what Henry saw to be his desk diary from his top drawer before scribbling a note in it. “Is this another of your staff dos?”

“No, this will be rather more intimate. I want you to come over to the cottage for a spot of supper so I can get to know Kaspar better. After all, any friend of yours is a friend of mine, Jon.”

“Thanks, Henry,” Jon said. “We’d love to, wouldn’t we, Kaspar?”

The boy nodded. “For sure.”

Henry smiled to himself as he closed the door behind him. That had gone more easily than he’d expected, though he was keeping the real reason for inviting them over on July thirty-first to himself. That night, there would be a blue moon—that rare quirk of the calendar when two full moons occurred in the same month. On those occasions, pagan lore held that the power of the moonlight would increase threefold.

It could not be a coincidence that this glorious boy had come into his life at a time when the moon would be at the height of its influence. He would convene the acolytes on the thirty-first and prepare them for an evening of ultimate satisfaction. He knew despite all the errors he had made in the past, this time they would be able to make the perfect sacrifice to Leweilun.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Henry Mortimer lived in one of those quaint English villages that Jon was convinced only existed to become the subject of thousand-piece jigsaws. Hanging baskets adorned most of the houses, the pub had a thatched roof and a war memorial, decorated with wreaths of poppies, stood on the green. The rectory was next door to the squat Norman church that dominated the landscape, a modestly built stone cottage with ivy clinging to its front wall.