“Let me suck you,” he whispered. He dropped to his knees without waiting for an answer, busying his fumbling fingers with unfastening the placket of James’s breeches, ignoring his protests, and the hands that tried, halfheartedly, to push him away.
“Iain, I don’t think—”
“I know what I’m about,” Iain murmured, spreading the folds of fabric apart to reveal James’s smallclothes. He breathed a hot gust of breath against the layer of thin linen that hid James’s cock from his hungry gaze. “Let me do this. I want to—and you want me to. You know you do.”
James groaned, and it was a groan Iain recognised. A groan that said, This is a terrible idea, but I’m going to let it happen anyway.
Iain smiled when he finally tugged the smallclothes down and revealed James’s hard, elegant shaft. Like its owner, it was long and lean—and bent, curving toward James’s right hip. Iain leaned forward and greedily engulfed the whole, warm length in his mouth.
Ah, fuck.
James’s cock. So warm, so alive. Pulsing with life. Rude and blunt and entirely unsubtle. It reached for the back of Iain’s throat selfishly, and in the oddest way, Iain relished the demanding cutting off of his air.
He gave himself up to the passion of service, of worship. He licked and laved and suckled and gorged. He dipped his head still lower to paint wetness all over the man’s balls with his tongue, to mouth those tender orbs with his lips, to graze them with his teeth. And as he worked, the last vestiges of James’s reluctance evaporated. His long fingers tunnelled into Iain’s thick dark hair, and he began to cant his hips forward, begging for still more.
“Iain,” he breathed. “God, Iain. You can’t expect me to stop you now—”
Iain laughed at that, his chuckle muffled by all the hot, hard flesh in his mouth, and Christ but he loved that too—the sound of his own service, honest and unwavering, his very voice silenced by the male flesh hammering into him. He stroked his hands up the backs of James’s thighs, and up further to grasp his arse, and he hoped James could read the language of those caresses. That the last thing Iain wanted was to stop this.
He felt like he was proving something—something important—to James. That James was desirable. That his body was delightful to Iain. That he was beautiful and, yes, wanted. And as hard as Iain’s own cock was—and right now, it was very hard indeed—his own pleasure didn’t really matter to him right now. He relished the bordering-on-painful press of the parquet floor beneath his knees as much as he did the pleasurable pulse of his shaft—because it was for James.
Jamie.
It wasn’t long before the fingers stroking through his hair tightened, snagging, till the hips he held in hands began to stutter in his grasp. Above his head, James was moaning his name.
“Iain, God, Iain—”
And it was so bloody perfect, giving James this gift. Making this loving offering of his body. Usually sex was about taking for Iain. Or at least as much about taking as giving, but now, for the first time in his life, he just wanted to give and keep giving. Till he was all used up and there was nothing left of him at all.
His jaw began to ache, but he kept it open, kept his agile tongue caressing as James began to push harder, faster into his mouth. His hands were tight on James’s hips but he made no attempt to temper the depth of James’s thrusts into his throat. Right now, he’d happily choke if it would give James more pleasure. And he did choke, a little, on those last few thrusts of James’s hips.
He heard James sobbing out an apology for his roughness, even as his hands held Iain’s head still and his cock swelled that last impossible fraction. And then James was coming in salt-sweet, blood-warm pulses and Iain was swallowing his spend, loving this last part of the act perhaps most of all.
He rested his forehead against James’s thigh after, dimly aware of James’s hand stroking his head gently.
“I’m sorry,” James whispered. He sounded appalled. “I was rough. You must think I—”
“I loved it,” Iain interrupted.
“At least let me reciprocate,” James murmured, drawing Iain to his feet.
Numbly, Iain let James lead him into the adjoining bedchamber and help him off with his clothes, working as tidily as any valet. James folded each garment neatly, piling everything up on the chair in the corner. Then he pulled off his own clothes, taking much less care with those, and led Iain over to the bed. Iain dutifully crawled in and stretched out. He was aware of his cock, hard and sensitive, even as his exhausted mind was trying to shut down.
A soft puff of James’s breath extinguished the candles. Now it was dark, though Iain could see the faint, thin trail of smoke sent up by the deadened wick. He followed it with his eyes to the ceiling, then shuddered as James’s hand circled his cock, taking hold of him.
“You’re so hard,” James murmured in his ear. “Like iron.” He plastered himself against Iain’s side, adjusting his body, and his grip, trying to get his hand as near to the position of Iain’s own hand as he could. His grip was confident, knowing, and when he began to stroke it was with the expertise of a man who had done this many times before, to himself and to others, perhaps.
Iain opened his mouth to say something, but the words caught in his throat, overtaken by a throaty groan of pleasure. He wasn’t going to last more than seconds, he knew. And sure enough, a half-dozen more strokes of James’s hand had his back arching off the bed and an unholy cry escaping him. He emptied his balls over his belly, over James’s hand, and all the while, James praised him, whispering nonsense words of tenderness and affection in his ear, and it felt so damn good that all he could do was close his eyes and let all the good feelings surround him like a warm blanket as he drifted off.
HE DREAMED OF TOM THAT night. It was a dream that had come to him on and off over the years.
He was in the river, just as he had been the day Tom drowned. He was circling his legs in the water to stay afloat when he heard Tom say his name. Except it wasn’t that Tom was saying it to him, it was more that Iain heard it in his head, like an echo.
He began to look around for Tom, twisting and turning in the water in his desperation, whipping his head round as he searched. The frantic movements tired him out, and that made him feel panicky.
And then, finally, he saw Tom. Tom as he had been that day—completely vertical in the water but for his arms extended at his sides and unnaturally still. His mouth was open, chin lifting even as he began to slowly sink, and his eyes stared right at Iain with that glassy look that Iain would never be able to forget.
Iain tried to scream Tom’s name, but he couldn’t. His own mouth was filling with water, and he was sinking down, the river closing over his head. He opened his eyes under the water, and there was Tom opposite him, like Christ, legs crossed at the ankles and arms stretched out, palms towards Iain. Sinking down, down, while Iain struggled to breathe...
He woke in the greatest of distress, but without noise—just one terrified, guttering exhalation that sawed out of his chest as his heart thundered in his ears.
He turned his head on the pillow, and there was James. Faintly smiling as he slept.
Happy.
Oh, Jesus in heaven. What had he done?
The effects of the drink made themselves known to him one by one—his mouth was dry as dust, his head thudding painfully. Nausea made his belly lurch. He felt wretched, and not just physically.
How could he have done this? Come back here with James and—oh Christ, but this was a mistake. Such a mistake. Regret swamped him, hot and smothering.
A year—ten months ago—he’d left Wylde Manor with the firm objective of making sure this didn’t happen again. In the months that followed, James had written to him, begging him to consider the true nature of their friendship and to examine his heart. Iain’s own infrequent return correspondence had ignored those outpourings entirely, merely reporting scantily on the day-to-day minutiae of his life, as though he was answering a different set of letters altogether, and
eventually James had stopped mentioning it, his letters becoming more formal—and less frequent.
All these long months, Iain had been working at building a path back to where they had been before Wylde Manor—to the platonic companionship they’d once shared. They’d managed it once before, finding their way back to friendship after the mortification of James’s first bumbling kiss in this very house. It hadn’t seemed unreasonable to hope they could manage it again, given time.
Until now.
Until he’d ruined all his efforts in a single, drunken night. And now he was going to lose James, because it was happening all over again. And Iain knew, with leaden certainty, that when James woke up, he’d take one look at Iain and know exactly what Iain was thinking. He’d always been like a weather vane when it came to Iain’s moods.
Lying there in the predawn, Iain realised he couldn’t bear to go through it. To witness James’s hurt and the inevitable unravelling.
He knew he was being a coward, but he did it anyway. Got out of bed and fetched his clothes from the chair, lifting the painstakingly folded pile of garments in his arms and carrying them into the sitting room. He dressed quietly, let himself out into the corridor and descended the stairs.
The doors of this house were well oiled, and the floorboards gave out no creaking. He was so silent that when he reached the bottom of the stairs, the night footman was still sleeping in his chair, and Iain had to waken him to be let out.
As the footman closed the front door behind him, the first pale fingers of dawn were probing the sky.
Iain huddled into his coat and began to walk.
Chapter Seventeen
20th April, 1822
Redford’s Club, London
The man sitting opposite James was like no one he had ever seen before. He couldn’t remember meeting any man he would’ve described as pretty before, especially not one who looked to be about forty years old. But yes, this man—Kit Redford—was pretty, with his fair hair and long lashes and sweetly shaped lips. He had an oddly innocent look to him—till you looked in his eyes.
The eyes were old. Very old. They were eyes that had seen everything and known more disappointment and sadness than most.
And yet the man hadn’t stopped smiling since James had arrived on his doorstep, uninvited, an hour ago, for one last desperate attempt at tracking down Iain Sinclair.
“Won’t you have a scone, Mr. Hart?” Redford asked. “My cook bakes them herself, and they’re lighter than any you’ll ever have had before, I promise you.”
Scones—that was what he was being offered by Kit Redford, proprietor of one of the most debauched clubs in London.
“No, thank you,” James said, trying to hide his frustration that Kit Redford did not appear to view his request with the same urgency that James felt. The man was reclining on a chaise longue across from him, sipping tea. Although it was two o’clock in the afternoon, he wore nothing but a satin dressing gown of peacock blue and pink and gold.
“Generally speaking,” Redford said now, in his light, sibilant voice, “no one is allowed to step foot inside my club without two references from current members, but you only know Captain Sinclair.” He paused, then continued, “And you say you don’t want me to ask him for a reference.”
“No,” James said. “As I said, the only reason I want to come to your club is to make him see me.” His face burned with mortification as he admitted it.
Redford’s eyebrows rose. “You are...refreshingly frank.”
“It’s only fair to be honest with you,” James replied. “He’s refused to receive me when I’ve gone to his rooms, and he’s not answered my letters.”
“Why do you want to see him so badly?” Redford asked curiously.
“Because”—James swallowed hard, then made himself continue, despite the humiliation—“because I’ve loved him for years, you see, and he always said he didn’t want more, only last week he did and then—” He broke off. He was rambling. Taking a deep breath, he tried again. “He came back to my house with me, stayed the night with me, but afterwards, he just left. Sneaked out while I was sleeping.” He heard clearly the hurt and bewilderment in his own voice, and it made him feel raw and exposed. “And I just want to know why. Why he would do that.”
“And what do you imagine his answer’s going to be?” Redford asked. He smiled kindly. “The truth is, Mr. Hart, it’s probably not what you’re hoping to hear.”
James sighed and nodded. “I know you’re probably right. But as naïve as this sounds, I think he loves me in his way, and if I can just talk to him, maybe I can make him see it for himself.”
Redford tilted his head to the side, considering that. “Tell me about him,” he invited, settling back more comfortably into his sofa. “About both of you. From your first meeting.”
So James did. He talked and talked—till the clock struck five and he glanced up at the mantelpiece, astonished that so much time had passed. It was easy, because Kit Redford stared out of the window the whole time he was speaking, almost as if he wasn’t really listening.
When he was done, Redford didn’t say anything right away, just looked out of the window. At last, though, he spoke. “You’ve been in love with Captain Sinclair for a long time.”
“Yes,” James admitted.
Redford looked at him then. Weary eyes in a startlingly lovely face. “From what you’ve told me, I suspect he does care for you in some way,” he said. “But possibly not the way you care for him. And even if he does care for you in that way, he’s probably not going to admit it. Probably can’t even admit it to himself.”
James waited, sensing there was more to come.
Redford sighed. “He comes in several times a month,” he said. “No set day of the week. You may have to come along quite a few times before you see him.” He sent James a surprisingly hard look. “I can’t take you entirely on trust, of course. I’ll be making some enquiries about you after this, and you’ll have to sign an agreement. We’ll call it...a temporary membership. One month.” He paused. “And there will be a fee, of course.”
“That’s fine.” James knew it was probably foolish to agree to such terms, but this was Kit Redford, a man Iain had decided to trust with his secrets, and trust was not something that Iain gave lightly.
Redford nodded. All at once, the hardness was gone, and he looked sad again. “I’m afraid your captain is going to disappoint you, Mr. Hart. Few men are brave enough to take the risk of going against the world’s ideas of what a man should be, and those of us who do sometimes pay a steep price for the privilege.” He gave a twisted sort of smile. “But I can see you won’t rest till you have this out with him. At least within these walls, no one will think the worse of you for it. And if your captain has a tenth of your courage, my dear, you may even have a chance at convincing him.”
JAMES SPENT FOUR LONG evenings at Redford’s without seeing Iain at all. He’d never been to such a place before, and he found the open flirtation that took place in the club room shocking enough, never mind the naked debauchery he witnessed in the back room.
Over those four evenings, he was flirted with, propositioned and pawed by a score of men, none of whom were Iain. It was all curiously unreal to him, seeing the masks of polite society fall away to reveal the true nature of each of Kit Redford’s customers while they walked these halls. And then seeing the masks being donned again as they departed, upstanding men of society, every one of them.
This was where Iain came when he wanted release. Not to James, but here. Here, to find a warm, willing body he could share for a few hours before he went back to his usual life. To being Captain Iain Sinclair, war hero and King George’s favourite. The perfect military man.
By Wednesday, the fifth evening in a row he’d come, he was beginning to question his purpose. Beginning to wonder whether he was entirely mistaken in thinking that Iain could want anything more than what Redford’s offered. In the meantime, James had called again at Iain’s rooms and bee
n told that Captain Sinclair was not at home. Plainly, he did not want to see James. Did not even want to speak to him.
So why, he thought, as he rapped at the door of Redford’s, am I back again tonight?
“This is the last time,” he told himself under his breath as he waited for the door to open.
The footman who admitted him was used to James by now. He greeted him like the faithful customer he was turning into, murmuring pleasantries as he took James’s greatcoat, hat and cane before ushering him inside. James went straight to the club room, where Kit Redford was already circulating amongst his patrons, resplendent in his perfectly tailored evening clothes. Midnight-blue coat and breeches and snowy white linen, a cerulean waistcoat lending a flamboyant touch.
Redford’s expression brightened when he set eyes on James, and his urbane smile transformed into one that was a little more genuine, the sudden spark lighting up his attractive features in a way that enhanced his delicate beauty. He strolled towards James, holding out his hands. A huge sapphire-and-gold ring adorned his right index finger.
“My dear boy,” he said, taking the single hand that James offered and wrapping it in both of his own. “I wondered if you might give up after four nights, but here you are again, as faithful as can be.”
“As foolish as can be, you mean,” James replied.
Redford smiled. “I know what I mean.”
“Do I take it Iain’s not here?”
“On the contrary, he was here in the club room just a few minutes ago.” Redford cast his gaze around but apparently didn’t see Iain. “Perhaps he’s in the back room now?”
James stared at him, strangely shocked. He hadn’t expected it to be so easy when it finally happened. Suddenly, his stomach was in knots, his pulse racing in his throat as his mouth dried.
“I’ll—I’ll go and check then,” he said faintly.
Redford nodded. “All right,” he said kindly. “I’ll be watching out for you.” He clapped James lightly on the shoulder before strolling away.
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