escort

0.3

He's breaking about seventeen rules by going to Jacob's house. Troye doesn't pick up guys in bars. That's not how this works. All clients have to be thoroughly vetted and tested or, at the very least, they have to book an appointment through Charlotte. She's going to kill him when she finds out. Actually kill him dead. Especially when she finds out that they met while he was out with Chris.

Troye doesn't know what he's doing, why he didn't just give Jacob his number like he would to anyone else. But Jacob isn't anyone else and that's exactly why he shouldn't be going to his house. This isn't about sex. It's never been about sex. Control? Certainly. Money? Absolutely. But never sex. If it was Troye would have packed it in three years ago when his first client came in his hair before he'd even taken him in his mouth. But then he looks out of the window of the cab he's in, watching as it rolls along Chelsea Embankment, past the brightly coloured barges and Albert Bridge, white as toothpaste against the black sky, and his heart hiccups at the thought of seeing Jacob again.

Three years and he hasn't felt so much as a passing fancy for anyone. Perhaps a barista in a coffee shop with tattooed arms and a pierced lip or a guy on the tube who's reading Gone Girl and he wants to ask him what he thinks of Amy, but no more than that. No more than a flicker that never quite catches and burns out by the time Troye walks out of the coffee shop or gets off at his tube stop. He never thinks of them again, and if he does, it's only for a moment, remembering their mouth or their long fingers when he's having a sleepy wank in the morning, but it's not enough to think much more than that.

It's never enough.

He thought it was the job, that he'd flicked a switch to be able to do it because he doesn't feel anything any more. He does, of course, he still gets hard, still shivers when someone's teeth catch on his nipple, but he never feels it in his bones, in his marrow. Kind of like a decaf coffee that doesn't quite taste the same and he forgets a few minutes after he's finished it. But then he doesn't want to feel anything, because if he did, if he felt something every time, his heart couldn't take the strain. That's the trouble with Troye, he either feels nothing at all or he feels everything at once, there's no inbetween. So there he is, fidgeting as the cab pulls off Chelsea Embankment, fidgeting like he's on a first date. And with that he's sixteen again, in his Topman suit and his father's tie, on his way to pick up Emma Holland for summer prom, and his heart feels brand new.

It makes him lightheaded, the thought of Jacob, and he doesn't know why him. He never knows why. When he likes someone like that, in that dizzying, distracted way that has him drifting away while he's reading a book or waiting for the kettle to boil, he can never say why. It isn't the way they look or dress or smell, or maybe it's all of those things, but it's something else as well, the same something that keeps him up at night and he doesn't know why or whatever makes him listen to a song on repeat for days.

Why that song? He doesn't know.

Why Jacob? He doesn't know.

+++

Jacob arranged for the cab to pick Troye up at the club exactly half an hour after he left so Troye doesn't realise he's heading for Cheyne Row until he sees Charlotte's house, set back from the road with its Liberty purple front door and sash windows. Of fucking course Jacob lives there. He can't live in Surrey like everyone else who plays for Chelsea or in a glossy penthouse overlooking the Thames with black silk sheets and a pool on the roof. No. He has to live there, across the street from Charlotte.

The light upstairs is on and Troye imagines her, sitting at her dressing table in a satin gown, brushing her hair a hundred times. He almost laughs as he clambers out of the cab, not because it's funny, but because shit like that only happens to him. If she looked out of her bedroom window she'd see him and only he would risk something like this under her nose. But he can't lie, the thought of it, of getting caught makes his heart beat a little harder. After all, it's not too late. He could ask the driver to wait while he tells Jacob that they have to meet somewhere else, suggest they meet at The Gore instead. So when he presses the buzzer and the gate begins it's slow swing open to reveal the Range Rover Jacob left the club in, Troye only has himself to blame.