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Chapter one

Obsession

Present Day, Friday, September 16 th

Dr Kenneth Lyons was done.

Leaving the muffled symphony of laughter and conversation spilling from the after-conference drinks behind him, he stepped out of the university hall into the courtyard. The heavy doors groaned shut behind him. As if they, too, wanted to see the back of him. He needed a drink. Just not in there. Not among the clinking glasses, the posturing, the ‘brilliant’ exchanges traded like currency. He couldn’t stomach another congratulatory handshake. No. He needed to burn off the past two days .

To be undone .

A soft, golden glow from the overhead lanterns highlighted his exit from the polished debates, guiding him into the city. Whilst the sandstone facades of the University of Barcelona, framed by arches and climbing shadows by the old plane trees, made it a tempting place to spend an evening—inspiring, too—two full days jam-packed with back-to-back workshops, talks, symposiums, and keynotes had been relentless. Academia suffocated him. Tonight, he wasn’t in search of answers.

Only escape.

So he weaved through the streets and the narrow cobblestone alleys, where the air filled with the scent of saffron drifting from late-night kitchens, heat clinging to him, cloying and insistent. It seeped through his dress shirt, the fabric sticking to his damp skin. Even at this hour, gone nine, the city pulsed with warmth, as though the stones absorbed the sun’s heat, refusing to let go, and he wiped his upper lip dotted with sweat, pushing back his dark, shoulder length tousled hair, shaking off the last tendrils of the day ready to be set on fire. The world beyond the academic bubble beckoned him. He had a new city to explore. Wild and alive. New places to lose himself in.

There were some perks to attending these conferences far away from home.

He ripped off his tie, scrunching it into a ball to tuck in his pocket, and loosened the first button on his shirt, then the second. An act of rebellion over the persona he’d been playing these past couple of days. And as the night air whispered against his collarbone, cooling the sheen of sweat, he rolled his sleeves to his elbows, baring his forearms, shedding the last remnants of work like an exoskeleton.

Tonight, he belonged somewhere else.

Maybe he always had.

And with his phone in hand, he followed the route he’d mapped out earlier, each step carrying him further from academia, further from the world he often tried to escape yet couldn’t quite sever himself from completely, and toward something else. No change there. After a gruelling conference talking about the depravities of the human psyche, he often searched for the complete opposite. He wasn’t looking to talk up his research, nor engage in a conversation forcing him back to his lecture notes or a chance to gain a peer review which could aid his chance for the Professorship. No. What he sought was something else entirely.

To get out of his mind.

Ahead, a narrow street opened to a crossroad where neon glowed in fractured hues across the stonework. Music rose from underground and he clomped faster, heart rate elevating. The building’s low windows barely peeked above street level, glass fogged with the condensation of bodies swaying below. Outside, a pride flag caught the breeze, colours dulled by the night but still defiant. Still alluring.

Exactly what he wanted. Right here. Right now.

Some habits just don’t die.

He smiled. He’d done his research. A good little academic always does. And it led him to here . Excitement thrummed beneath his skin. Just like it had when he’d found all those other hidden worlds where no one cared who he was or what accolades he’d gathered like dust. Where he could shed himself for a while. He collected these clubs in his memory bank. Portugal. Greece. London . All had somewhere exactly like this. And the anticipation of this one caused his pulse to spike as he snuck down the narrow stairwell, the bass vibrating through the soles of his dress shoes, travelling up through his ribs to throb in his chest.

Yeah . This was where he could go a little crazy .

The air was thick with heat and smoke, a blur of perfume and sweat mingling in the dim, flashing lights and the crowd surged and parted, a sea of silhouettes caught between beats, the sharp glint of pierced lips and collarbones flashing like constellations in the gloom. He squirmed past them, bumping shoulders, and caught sight of the bar stretched ahead, polished but worn at the edges. He raised two fingers at the bartender. Simple. No pretension. No champagne. No fine wine. He wasn’t here to toast.

He was here to drink .

“Whisky. Neat,” he called.

The glass landed with a satisfying clink on the bar, and Kenny wrapped his fingers around it like a lifeline. God, he needed this. And he lifted it to his lips, letting the burn seep into his chest, hot and steady, as though he could cauterise what had broken inside him. He closed his eyes for a second, savouring the moment, then turned, settling back on one elbow, scanning the room.

The club was small. Basement-close. Intimate . The dancefloor level to him blurred the lines between the watchers and the watched, and there wasn’t any balcony to peer down from. No safe distance separating his solitude from their spectacle. Just a writhing mass of bodies locked in a rhythmic war, sweat-slicked and shameless, grinding to the music in their bid to be seen. A game of lust and posturing.

He wanted to roll his eyes. The scene was so familiar he could script it. Recite it blindfolded. The same men, brimming with overconfidence and cloaked in secrets, moving like kings while quietly craving to be conquered. Even here, amid the pulse and thrum of bodies, his mind ran its course of quiet analysis. The crowd, for all its chaos, was predictable. Hypnotic in its repetition.

But the current shifted. Parted. Revealed something quite spectacular.

Kenny hovered his drink shy of his lips as he faltered, caught in a different trance. One that didn’t follow his mental choreography. Or, if he was honest, one that hadn’t used to. A couple of years and a world of experience had reshaped him, grounding him in theories. Though some things still defied logic.

Because there he was. Proof of it.

Rivalling anything the city offered as its top ten attractions, the man in the centre of the throng had Kenny drinking in a new poison. Blond hair caught the overhead strobe lights and shimmered like spun gold. Just as rich. Just as tempting. But it wasn’t his hair that had Kenny frozen to the spot. It was the graceful curve of his throat as he tossed his head back, dancing with an unhurried, sensual grace. Smooth as silk, yet crackling with energy.

Just the way Kenny liked them.

Liked him .

Although, as Kenny knew all too well, there was a soft vulnerability beneath those guarded layers. But control he had. He commanded it. Demanded the space like it was his to claim. He wasn’t there to impress, though. No. He was far beyond something as mundane as showing off. He danced as if the music had fused with his very essence. As if it poured from his veins and flowed back into him with every beat, sustaining him. Each sensual sway of his hips, each delicate roll of his shoulders, every lithe, flexible cavort was less like a performance and more like a ritual. He wasn’t following a rhythm. He was creating it.

Fluid. Intimate. Untouchable.

Yeah. Most definitely untouchable .

Kenny watched from the sideline as men circled closer to his infatuation, drawn by the gravity of the performance, but the dancer dismissed them with a flick of his hand or the careless pivot of his body, spinning away as if they weren’t worthy of his orbit. They weren’t. That was for damn sure. And they all recoiled back, as if having hit the electric fence surrounding him, giving him the room he required. Deserved . Kenny sipped on his whisky, gluttony in his gaze, as if he’d paid for the show.

Well, he sort of had.

This time.

Another man entered the throng, all muscles and body-hugging clothes, drifting too close for comfort. Kenny straightened, narrowing his eyes, tightening his grip on his glass until his knuckles blanched. Rage surged, hot and irrational, climbing from his gut to his temples like fire licking at dry kindling. He watched this man who thought he was worthy of such beauty curl into the blond’s space, hovering his mouth dangerously closer to that exquisite neck, and Kenny locked his jaw, entire body strung tight, coiled like a live wire, waiting for this bloke to give him a reason to snap.

He didn’t get the chance.

With a sharp retreat, the man stumbled back, clutching his groin as if stung. The blond remained poised, though. Nothing to suggest he had anything to do with it at all. He just continued his slow, seductive dance with all the innocence of an angel. But Kenny knew better. That man was no angel. Nor was he the devil. But he wasn’t oblivious to the pain he inflicted. Physically. Emotionally .

Every touch he gave was his choice.

Kenny fell back against the bar, sipping his whisky.

Touch him and die indeed.

The music surged, bass-heavy and primal, rattling through the floor and climbing up Kenny’s spine. It thrummed in his chest, a rival to the rapid cadence of his pulse. And after a while, watching wasn’t enough. Fantasy wasn’t enough. It never was.

He wanted in there .

Setting his empty glass down on the bar, the faint clink lost beneath the storm of noise, Kenny set his eyes on the blond, but he spun again, turning his back to Kenny. A perfect, tantalising dismissal. He saw. He knew. That was awareness wrapped in defiance. An unspoken challenge. God, Kenny was obsessed with this. With him .

Beautiful. Elusive. Unbound.

Kenny wanted to catch him. Cage him. Keep him. Make him his.

For his eyes, his hands, his mouth. His cock . Definitely his cock.

The hunger was no longer a want. It was a need . A craving stronger than any vice. Obsession twisted in his gut, all-consuming, dragging him forward, and he didn’t even resist it. What would be the point? That man was stronger than any addiction he’d ever fought off and Kenny wove through the mass of bodies, each step driven by a pull he couldn’t deny. Didn’t want to deny. Not anymore.

The crowd shifted, parting like water, ravenous for the spectacle of him reaching for the most untouchable man in the room. They watched, waiting to see him shoved aside like the others.

Watch and learn. Watch. And. Learn.

Kenny closed the distance, moulding his body to the blond’s. A seamless fit. Spooned together as if made to. Or, more accurately, acquired through practice. Lots and lots of practice. And Kenny gyrated his hips in time to the music and in sync with the ones he snuck his hands onto. There, he settled them both into a sensual grind. The blond stilled for all of a heartbeat before surrendering, raising his arms above his head, thin black T-shirt riding up to reveal a sliver of pale skin kissed by just enough sun to glow, and Kenny ghosted his hands over him, around to taut abs honed from core strength workouts, to claim and savour him. The world around blurred, fading into static along with the surprised eyes of strangers wondering how he got to touch him and still live.

Kenny could touch him, because he was his .

As he had been for a while now.

How long he would live for doing so was yet to be decided.

“You done with the boring stuff, doc?” Aaron drifted his arms back, tangling his fingers through Kenny’s hair, then tugged hard enough to sting, guiding Kenny’s mouth onto his beautifully exposed neck.

Kenny pressed his lips to the familiar tattoo. “All yours, baby.” He then kissed the Mars symbol that had become his obsession. “Take me out of my mind.”

Aaron spun in his arms and before Kenny could so much as catch a breath, or take in the sheer, devastating sight of him bathed in strobe-lit brilliance, Aaron crashed his mouth onto his. Kenny didn’t know how Aaron could make every kiss this wild, all-consuming storm, devouring him with fierce, unapologetic hunger and obliterating every coherent thought Kenny had ever held, but he could. And did. Every time. And they’d kissed a fair bit since Kenny had lifted those rules. Behind closed doors. In secret. In bed. But never like this. Never with people watching.

That in itself was intoxicating.

Wrapping his arms around Aaron, Kenny splayed his hands over his arse and thrust him forward with all the possessiveness of a man who thought he might one day be treated like all the others. Discarded. Thrown to the wolves. Not yet, though. He had time. And he was going to bask in Aaron’s tight grip of his hair, keeping him in place, as if he couldn’t stand for even a breath to get between them for as long as Aaron allowed. Because he made his knees weak, and he ground his hardness to Aaron’s, clutching his backside as if clinging to the edge of salvation.

Or maybe damnation.

Time fractured, each second stretched and spun in the molten heat of the kiss. Kenny could taste the salt on Aaron’s skin, the sweetness electric and undefinable. Pure him . And Aaron deepened the kiss, as he always did, brushing his tongue to Kenny’s until his lungs burned, but he didn’t care. He could die like this and call it a life well-lived. He’d touched Aaron everywhere for the past nine months and hadn’t died yet.

But he knew.

It was just a matter of time.