“I’ve changed. You’d know that if you hadn’t run off to Kent with your blushing bride.”
“Ben—”
“What did you expect?” Ben snapped. “That I would have spent the past three years sobbing into my brandy and wishing to have back what was lost?”
“Of course not.”
“Then you hoped to be welcomed back into my life as if you didn’t betray me?”
“That isn’t it, either.”
Ben had begun advancing on him throughout their exchange, and Alex soon found himself hauled forward by his waistcoat. Longing heated his belly as he was snatched closer to Ben … so close Alex could smell the cold night air and light hint of the sweat glistening on his neck. The scents tangled with his signature Bay Rum and the clean whiff of starched linen. Slumbering desires roared to life within Alex in a powerful surge.
“I knew you wouldn’t have forgiven me,” Alex managed, fighting a losing battle against the urges melting his resolve. “But I had hoped we might talk. You don’t even have to listen to me. You can berate me and call me every horrible name you can think of, and I will sit and listen. I just … when I had settled my affairs in Kent, I found myself wandering around this cold, empty house, and … I had to come. Even knowing you hate me, even realizing I have no right to intrude on your life.”
Ben’s fist tightened around his waistcoat as he closed his eyes and issued a harsh sigh. Were it any other person manhandling Alex this way, he would have fought back, perhaps berating the offending party for ruining the starched perfection of such fine silk. However, this wasn’t just anyone; this was Ben, and he could do anything to Alex he wanted if only to bestow the touch of his hand—whether harsh or gentle.
“Say it,” Ben demanded, yanking Alex closer until they were nearly nose-to-nose. “Tell me why you’ve come.”
Alex gripped Ben’s hand, holding it tighter against his chest, desperate for closeness of any sort. His heart lodged itself within his throat as he held Ben’s gaze, feeling as if he stood on the edge of a steep precipice. One false move and he would fall to a slow and agonizing death, mourning what never was.
He could bear it no longer. Ben was here before him, whole and warm and real—not just some figment of his imagination, haunting his dreams and waking him in a feverish sweat.
Their lips brushed, and Alex trembled, suspended somewhere between the past and the present, and yearning as he never had. “I came for you,” he whispered just before he pressed his lips against Ben’s, tentative and questioning.
Alex was sent reeling when Ben slammed both palms against his chest, his lower back meeting the edge of the heavy, oak desk. Bracing his hands on the thick wood, he waited for Ben to make the next move—to either cast him out bodily or … or, what? Ben had no reason to let Alex kiss him, no reason to trust him after what he’d done. Alex’s heart sank with the realization that he had gone too far, as Ben swiped the back of his hand over his mouth. It was too soon for such intimacies, with broken promises and shattered dreams scattered at their feet like shards of glass.
But then, Ben was on him faster than Alex could blink, pushing him tighter against the desk and caging him with powerful arms. His kiss was harsh and punishing, unrelenting and forceful. Alex’s skin erupted with sensation, his entire body enlivened by the nearness and taste of Ben. Pure joy swept through him, as the past converged on the present moment. A tortured groan echoed in the cavern of Ben’s chest, vibrating through Alex from the outside in. A night’s worth of stubble abraded Alex’s skin, bringing so many memories flooding through his mind. He used to tease Ben about his facial hair and how hopeless it was for him to shave when a dark blond shadow always made an appearance by the end of the day. His gut clenched at the memory of what that stubble felt like against his neck, his chest, his thigh.
Cupping Ben’s jaw, Alex returned the fiery kiss with years’ worth of suppressed desire, dipping his tongue between parted lips. The taste of Ben, wild and heady, flooded his senses, familiar and yet somehow new again. Alex felt like a fumbling, desperate boy, wanting everything at once and having no notion where to begin. He drowned in the kiss, which soon became a battle for dominance as Ben’s tongue pushed against his. The hands gripping his hair were downright painful, but Alex accepted the pain with the pleasure because it was coming from Ben. Alex would take whatever he could have.
It ended far too soon for his liking, Ben jerking away with a low growl and leaving Alex leaning against the desk, cold and bereft.
“Ben,” he pleaded, no longer caring how desperate he might sound. “Would you hear me out? I can explain—”
“Explain what, exactly?” Ben interjected, though where he might have bellowed, he merely whispered. He kept his back turned and braced his hands on a cabinet holding several decanters and clean glasses. “How you made me agree to run away with you so we could be together before changing your mind and deciding to marry a woman instead?”
It was exactly how they had ended, but there was so much more to the story that Ben didn’t know, so many reasons marrying Katherine had been the right thing for Alex to do at the time. He hadn’t been able to go to Ben and explain afterward, even knowing how it would hurt him.
“It wasn’t what it seemed,” he replied, taking a step toward Ben, then thinking better of it. “I just want the chance to make things right.”
“There is nothing to make right,” Ben replied, head bowed and his voice still lowered to that ominous, steely whisper. “You made your choice, and I think we are both better for it. I like my life the way it is and I won’t have you intruding on it. Until tonight, I’d quite forgotten all about you. Perhaps you ought to do the same and forget about me.”
Alex didn’t believe that for a moment, but now was not the time to push Ben. He must suffer the shock and anger he had caused by catching Ben off guard. However, it had been his only recourse. Any letters he sent would have been tossed unopened into the fire, just as Ben had destroyed his father’s letters during their college years. Ben needed to know that he was here and would not give up so easily.
Smoothing his palms down his rumpled waistcoat, Alex squared his shoulders. “I’ll leave now, but this isn’t over. You will see me again.”
Ben hadn’t so much as turned his head when Alex left the room, didn’t come after him once he left the house and set off for his own lodgings. It had been foolish to hope he would, but Alex had hoped all the same.
He blinked as he ascended from the haze of his memories, his vision swimming while the world around him solidified. He’d told himself to give Ben time and space, but seeing him once had heightened Alex’s sense of urgency. Having stayed away from Ben and London for nearly four years, the time had come to fight.
Deciding Ben had had more than enough privacy, Alex stood and finished his whiskey with a single swallow. Then, he weaved his way through scattered tables and staggering patrons returning to the bar for more ale, making for the stairs.
Ben was right where the barmaid had said he’d be—the last upper room on the left of the corridor. Alex didn’t bother to knock, simply letting himself in and quickly shutting the door. Ben was seated at a small table before the lit hearth, a half-empty bottle of brandy at his elbow and a plate holding the remnants of beefsteak and potatoes before him. Slumped in the chair with his head rested against its back, he made an imposing sight despite his state of undress. He wore a shirt now, but his feet remained bare, and the rest of his clothing had been strewn across the small bed in the corner. His bruises were wrapped in linen, and the scent permeating the room must be some sort of salve, which made Alex’s eyes water.
He looked as if he had washed, his damp hair pushed back to curl at his neck and ears. Unfocused, bloodshot eyes met his, and Ben scowled.
“Are you reckless, or just plain stupid?” he muttered.
Alex leaned against the door and reached into his breast pocket for the pouch of peppermint sticks stashed there. Ben watched him push one into the corner of
his mouth between his cheek and his teeth, eyes narrowed.
“Neither,” Alex replied with a shrug. “Simply curious. Have you grown so bored with normal pugilism? Is that why you engage in underground brawls with drunks and rogues?”
A lopsided smile curved one corner of Ben’s lips as he raised the pint of brandy. “I am a drunk and a rogue.”
Alex couldn’t help smiling back, a burst of sugary peppermint flooding his palette. “I see. A gentleman by day, drunken brawler by night. No one can ever accuse you of being boring.”
The light humor between them dissipated as Ben sat up straight, brandy bottle raised halfway to his lips. “I thought I made myself clear last night.”
“I assumed I had as well.”
Ben’s nostrils flared, his eyes like penetrating daggers of ice as he stared at Alex over his bottle. “So you intend to become my unwanted shadow. Is that it?”
Alex swirled the peppermint stick, noting the spark of heat in Ben’s gaze as he sucked. “Unwanted … I think not. That kiss last night begs to differ.”
Ben swallowed a mouthful of brandy, then snorted. “You kissed me.”
“And you returned that kiss,” Alex fired back, raising an eyebrow.
“A thoughtless reaction. I would have done the same with any man throwing himself at me.”
“The Ben I knew had higher standards than that.”
“Well, you were the one who taught me to lower my expectations.”
Alex’s teeth clenched around his sweet, severing it in half. He deserved that verbal jab, and they both knew it. Finishing off the peppermint stick, he retrieved a handkerchief and used it to clean his hands.
“You cannot frighten me away,” he insisted. “I came to London for you and don’t intend to leave until I’ve earned your forgiveness.”
Ben slammed the bottle onto the table, slowly rising to his feet. “On the day London is overrun with flying pigs, you may expect my undying forgiveness. Now sod off.”
“Ben—”
“I waited for you,” he said suddenly, pausing halfway to the bed and whirling to face Alex. “For hours. I was committed to our plan. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you, and you left me waiting in the rain with every possession I cared about packed into trunks. I stood in the wet and cold, not caring whether I succumbed to lung fever or some other sickness … so long as you came, I would survive. As each minute passed, I kept telling myself that you were coming. Something had delayed you, but you would never abandon me. You were the brave one, remember? After the second hour, I began to fear you’d been hurt. I paced beside the carriage, imagining you broken and bloodied on the side of the road—waylaid by an accident or a violent highwayman or …”
Ben clamped his mouth shut and turned back to the bed, snatching up his waistcoat. Alex’s heart dropped into his belly, which twisted with an overwhelming mix of guilt and shame. He’d never known any of this, as he and Ben never had the opportunity to talk after that fateful night. He was right that Alex had been stopped from coming to him—but not by an accident or a highwayman. The force keeping them apart had been far more powerful than that.
“Things were happening that you knew nothing about,” he protested feebly. “I tried, Ben, I … I wanted nothing more than to run away with you. I wanted it so badly.”
“You never came!” Ben roared, whirling to face him with his waistcoat hanging open, face flushing red. “I waited until sunrise like some idiotic, besotted chit, convinced you would arrive! Then, to see the announcement of your engagement to Katherine in the papers only days later …” Ben pressed a thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose and sighed, shaking his head. “No, I do not care to hear your explanation now when you never bothered to make one back then. I learned all I needed to know the day I sat in St. George’s and watched you bind yourself to someone else. Just because her life conveniently ended doesn’t mean I’m eager or desperate enough to have you back.”
Alex watched Ben finish dressing in silence, his usual skill for words failing him. During the journey from Kent, he had ruminated over all the things he wanted to say and how he wished to express them. Just now, his mind was a jumbled mess of words unsaid, all of it fighting to slip off his tongue at once.
All he could manage was a pathetic, “I’m so sorry.”
Now fully dressed—though his open shirt and lack of cravat made him look as much a rogue as ever—Ben pinned Alex with a baleful glare. “You should be,” he spat before taking up his brandy and thundering from the room.
Alex slumped against the wall, each of Ben’s heavy footfalls on the steps resounding through him like a nail being hammered into his chest. The wound Alex inflicted had festered over time, and now there might be no healing it. By coming here, was he only tearing into a painful scar? Was it selfish of him to pursue Ben, knowing how hurt he had been by Alex’s actions?
Spotting a crumpled, abandoned cravat atop the neatly made bed, Alex went to it. Sinking onto the lumpy mattress, he took up the linen and pressed it to his nose with a deep, slow inhale. Ben still smelled of laundry starch and clean, earthy Bay Rum. No fuss, simple and compelling—like the man himself. He was such a sharp contradiction to Alex, who collected scents, colored cravats, and eclectic waistcoats, and was as fussy about his appearance as a debutante. It was a wonder they’d ever come to love one another at all. The sheer impossibility of it reminded Alex of his determination. Some things were simply meant to exist, and he could never be convinced that he and Ben as a pair weren’t among those things. It wasn’t selfish to want to make everything up to Ben, to make right what he had broken.
Tucking the cravat into the breast pocket with his peppermints, Alex left the tiny, sparse room—shaken but not broken. As far as he was concerned, he and Ben were far from finished. They had hardly even begun.
Chapter 2
Eton College, 1799
Benedict clamped his lips shut to muffle a whimper of agony. In his sleep, his mind forgot that movement of any sort was out of the question. The fiery stripes across his shoulders burned at the touch of nightshirt or bedclothes, so he slept in only a pair of old breeches, the sheets draped across his backside. The punishment he’d earned after being caught brawling in the late hours of last evening had been the harshest yet. Dame Culpepper’s unexpected appearance in the yard off the back of her house had earned him a caning at the hands of the headmaster. It was bad enough the dame had caught them red-handed; that cowardly bastard Lionel Blackburn had been waiting in the wings to report that the fights had been going on for months—and that Benedict had encouraged the other boys to engage in the vice of gambling by orchestrating bets.
Of course, Benedict hadn’t been alone in his actions, but pummeling Blackburn and his friends had painted a target on his back. He had been threatened with expulsion on more than one occasion, and was told after the lashing that this was his final chance. It had taken every bit of his self-control to keep from laughing in the headmaster’s face. They both knew all it would take was for his father to make a generous contribution to the college to ensure Benedict’s continued education. It didn’t matter that the viscount despised him; no Sterling man had ever been ejected from Eton, and his father wasn’t going to allow such a thing to besmirch their illustrious name.
As he lay there breathing through the pain of half a dozen cane marks, his head rested on a goose-down pillow, and his bedclothes were the finest that could be found in England. The warmth of the coal he’d purchased kept not only him warm, but all the other occupants of the room. He ate like a king every day, having learned that slipping a pint of gin to Dame Culpepper along with the money for ingredients to stock her larder was enough to earn the woman’s generosity. While those around him benefited from his improved finances, Benedict couldn’t pretend he had done it for any of them. Five of the boys he’d beaten had requested new living quarters, and those who shared his room now were tolerable if not exactly likable. However, a sense of self-preservation and resolve not t
o suffer another cold winter or half-empty belly drove him.
Benedict had been raised in a world where a good name, blue blood, and a fortune were supposed to make life easier. Yet, he had been denied the ease that guided the lives of his brothers and some of the other lads attending school with him. Despite his youth and lack of experience with the world at large, Benedict had learned one very important lesson: if he wanted anything for himself, he was going to have to fight for it. His father certainly wouldn’t smooth his path or give him a hand up, and his brothers were too fond of their places as the favored sons to go against the viscount.
“If you would just try harder to please him, things wouldn’t be so difficult for you,” his elder brother, Esmond, often said. “You must try.”
“You could stop clinging to Mother’s apron strings, for a start,” Francis, the secondborn, would agree.
Closing his eyes, he shifted his mind away from the wounds on his back and drifted toward slumber.
Benedict snapped open his eyes, his restless thoughts disturbed by the shuffle of footsteps and the thunk of something against the floor. A burst of lamplight made him squint, and he recognize the figure of Alexander Osborne, one of the new transplants from a different boardinghouse. He had replaced Lionel a few weeks before the end of the previous term, and had returned in the spring to resume his place on the other side of the room.
He was a peculiar sort, swathed in his decadent banyans when in their chamber, lounging on his bed to pore over the books he kept organized beneath the mattress. The boy was just as richly dressed outside this room as he was in it—perhaps more so. He stood out like a peacock among the somber, dark colors the other boys wore, seeming not to notice the attention he drew wherever he went.
However, it wasn’t Osborne’s dandified fashions that made him odd. Often, Benedict would feel a prickle down his spine, registering the sensation of being watched. He was used to being gaped at as the other boys passed rumors about him back and forth. But this was different. It was as if something within Benedict instinctively knew whose eyes rested on him, alerting his senses. Sure enough, whenever he glanced up, it was always to find Osborne observing him with a pensive look in his eye. Even more discomfiting was the fact that he never looked away when Benedict caught him staring. Sometimes Osborne would simply meet Benedict’s gaze, almost as if issuing a silent, but not necessarily threatening, challenge—one Benedict didn’t understand.
Chasing Benedict (The Gentleman Courtesans Book 5) Page 3
