By the time Arthur turned back, Maxence had moved her backward by her fingers as if he hadn’t said anything at all.
Dinner with Three Young Gods
GEN fidgeted, wearing a dark red cocktail dress from some charity thing a couple of months ago.
Their dinner reservation in the restaurant downstairs was at eight o’clock.
Eight o’clock was scandalously early for this crowd, Arthur assured Gen. They were flaunting convention.
When Gen opened the door to leave the hotel suite, the four black-suited men who had met them at the airport were waiting in the hallway. They rode the elevator with Gen and Arthur and surrounded them as they entered the restaurant, watching the crowd with sharp glances and quick hand twitches. Gen wasn’t sure whether she felt like a movie star or a hostage at gunpoint. Probably the latter.
Arthur checked with the maître d’hôtel to claim their reservation, but Maxence was already seated at a square table and eating the bread basket.
At least the poor man had an appetite.
Around them, the restaurant was filling up with people also wearing suits and cocktail dresses. A couple walked in behind Gen and Arthur, and several people already at tables stood, waving discreetly to them. With a major wedding in town, old friends and distant relatives were finding each other. It was the upper-class, restrained version of a bar where people shouted your name when you walked in.
Arthur nodded to several people as they passed tables, walking toward Maxence. Many more raised their eyes and smiled at him, obviously recognizing him.
Gen was getting better at reading people’s expressions with Arthur’s tutoring. None had any tattletale signs of deception or animosity. They were pleased to see Arthur, and their outlook was more optimistic after they did. He was a harbinger of a good time, which made complete sense.
At the table, Gen sat across from Maxence, and Arthur sat on another side. Just as Arthur sat, he bounced up from his chair. “Caz!”
Here was Arthur’s other emergency contact, Casimir van Amsberg.
Gen turned in her seat, expecting someone normal-looking.
That was a stupid thought.
Casimir van Amsberg was every bit as tall and gorgeous as Arthur and Max. Again, he had perfect bone structure with hard cheekbones and a squared-off jaw, but he had brilliant emerald-green eyes. Even though he wore a conservative, dark suit, you could tell that Casimir did, indeed, lift.
The only flaw on him was a scar—slightly puckered, a little sunken—below one of his cheekbones. Maybe it was one of those Heidelberg dueling scars. If anything, that slightly pink scar on Casimir’s cheek highlighted his good looks and gave him a bit of ruggedness, a touch of danger.
Gen shook Casimir’s hand. She was pretty sure that she said, “How do you do?” but she might have garbled out a bunch of gibberish for all she knew.
The image of herself in the center of a naked pile of all three of them flashed through her head. Last night, Arthur had fucked Gen simultaneously in her ass, her pussy, and her mouth.
Maybe he was preparing her for . . . something?
My God, what was she even thinking? Beyond the fact that Casimir was supposed to be married and Maxence seemed to be wearing a priest’s clothes, what was she thinking?
It was like all three of these men exuded sex hormones that made her contemplate things that she would never, ever think of otherwise.
And yet, which one of them would go where on her?
Damn it, she had to stop thinking about a group thing with these guys. Gen would never sleep with a married man and couldn’t imagine screwing a guy who had made his vows to God.
Nope. Stop. Nope.
What the heck kind of place was that boarding school that they had all gone to? Some sort of school for vat-grown supermen who were all six-four and frightfully good-looking with an irresistible animal magnetism that drove women to think previously unimaginable things? These men had to be mutants or aliens or half-incubi or something. That school had to be putting growth hormones in the food and have plastic surgeons on call for emergency acne and douse them all with bull ox musk.
That was not natural.
She should go on the Pill. She might get pregnant just sitting at the same table with this much blazing hot manflesh, just sniffing the testosterone in the air. Sitting there was like eating dinner on Olympus with three young gods, their radiances shining from their brows.
Arthur touched her hand as he was talking to Maxence, a quick brush of his fingertips on her hand and wrist.
Yeah, she only really wanted to go home with Arthur.
Besides, Arthur’s desensitization therapy must be working. Even a few months ago, she wouldn’t have been able to even think about a pile of men without freaking and running out of the room, sobbing.
She turned her hand over and entwined her fingers with his, and he glanced at her with a softness that he usually reserved for private moments.
Gen contributed to the conversation as much as her estrogen-thickened tongue would allow, but the guys talked first about people they knew, then world events and politics.
Arthur made sure she was included in the conversation, of course. To do otherwise would have been impolite and thoroughly un-British.
Once they hit global politics, Gen felt like she could add some stuff instead of sitting at the table like a bump on a log, so she chimed in more.
Turns out, Casimir was a lawyer, too, in California. He asked Gen’s opinion on anything verging on the law and nodded approvingly when she stumbled over answers that she managed to dredge out of her sexed-up brain.
When Arthur mentioned that his brother’s lawsuit for the earldom had been thrown to the House of Lords, Casimir raised an eyebrow but didn’t inquire further.
Arthur changed the subject.
Maxence had lived all over the world, it seemed, but he was quiet about it. He had lightning-quick responses to questions about conditions in African and South American countries and the devastating after-effects of dictatorships.
When Gen asked Maxence about his work, he clammed up, staring down at his hands on his lap, so she asked again. When he realized that she meant it, that her questions were really about his work, his dark eyes lit up.
His sexiness shifted to a different type of magnetism.
Gen found herself drawn to his stories about organizing communities to resist dictators and oppression, to save lives and build schools and wells for hundreds of people and for the families he was personally helping.
When Arthur touched her hand, Gen realized that she was leaning forward, her eyes wide and her arms stretching on the table toward Maxence.
She jumped back, startled. She didn’t even remember letting go of Arthur’s hand.
“Don’t be alarmed,” Arthur said, grinning at her. “Maxence has that effect on people, don’t you?” he asked Maxence.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Maxence mumbled, staring at the table again.
“He can’t help it,” Casimir added to her, but he said to Maxence, “but I’m pretty sure you know when you’re doing it.”
Maxence looked off into the sparkling crowd milling around the restaurant tables. “I say, isn’t that Christine? My cousin,” he added, for Gen.
Arthur looked up. “Where?”
“Over there. Say, I haven’t seen her in months. I’m just exhausted from all the travel, first from Khartoum to London, and then—”
“Right, right,” Arthur said. “I’ll just pop around and see if I can convince her to be social.” He left the table and wound through the crowds toward the far doorway.
Just as Arthur was out of earshot, Casimir and Maxence both swiveled toward Gen. They pinned her to her chair with just their eyes—striking emerald green and darkness incarnate—and started interrogating her.
Casimir asked, “What did you mean, his lawsuit has been thrown to the House of Lords? Is he going to lose his earldom?”
Maxence crossed his arms but still leane
d toward her. “It will destroy him. He can’t lose it. He funnels everything through the earldom.”
Casimir insisted, “Gen, you need to tell us.”
Holy crap, Maxence had played Arthur to get him to leave her alone with them.
“That’s attorney-client privilege,” she told them, professionalism finally breaking through her astonishment at their pre-meditated ambush. “I can’t go blabbing willy-nilly about Arthur’s case to a couple of random guys. Arthur hasn’t given me permission to discuss it.”
“We aren’t ‘random guys,’” Casimir said, starting to get angry. “We’re his friends from childhood. We’re the closest thing he has to brothers, dude.”
“Dude? You sound like a California surfer.”
Casimir’s striking green eyes narrowed, and his cheeks flushed pink. His voice lowered to a snarl, “Now, you see here—”
Maxence laid his hand on Casimir’s arm but spoke to Gen. “I’ve known Arthur since infancy. We’re distant cousins of a sort, and our parents ran with the same crowd. When we were six, we both arrived at Le Rosey terrified, but at least we knew each other. Casimir joined us a year later when we were seven. Casimir and I were there for Arthur when his parents were killed. We were the ones on the phone with him for hours every day while his mother was dying in hospital.”
Casimir took off his suit jacket and hung it on the chair behind him. He started rolling up the sleeve on his right arm. “This is how close we are.”
Maxence did the same thing, doffing his coat and rolling up his right sleeve.
As the white cotton fabric was rolled up over Casimir’s forearm and the black material was rolled up from Maxence’s, the tattoos emerged.
Gen knew what she was looking at before they had even halfway revealed their arms.
Both Casimir and Maxence had the same tattoo as Arthur did, three shields around a central triangle. While Arthur had the blue shield with three golden crowns pointing down toward his wrist, the other two men’s tattoos were rotated around the Celtic knot in the center. Casimir had the orange shield with the rearing white lion pointed down on his, while Maxence’s tattoo had the red and white checkerboard shield closest to his wrist.
All three of the tattoos were the same, just turned.
“Who designed those tattoos?” she asked Casimir.
“Arthur,” he said. “He designed all of our tattoos.”
“The one on his back?” Gen asked.
Maxence nodded. “We all had our tattoos done at the same time. First the shields, then the rest.”
Which meant that these two gorgeous men were also copiously inked.
Gen’s toes curled in her shoes. The sheer force of their hotness was wearing off, but damn, the pictures she could take of these guys.
Gen reached across the table and angled Maxence’s arm as if she was inspecting his tattoo. His wrist bones were knobby, and thick muscles stood out under the skin on his forearm. Though very muscular, his arm was far too thin for a man his height, and his skin clung to the sinews with absolutely no spare flesh.
Maxence drew his arm back and rolled his sleeve down, looking away from her.
“Look, guys,” she said in her most professional voice. “Unfortunately, matching tattoos does not fulfill the criteria required to allow me to breach attorney-client privilege.”
Casimir frowned and rolled down his sleeve.
Gen said, “And you should know better, Casimir. You’re a barrister, even if you are an American one.”
“It’s important,” Casimir said. “Arthur may seem flippant and devil-may-care, but he has certain interests that may get him into trouble.”
Oh, the kinky stuff. She said, “Yeah, well, he probably got himself into that quite willingly, didn’t he?”
“Yes, but he’s gone down the rabbit hole too far,” Casimir said. “In the beginning, he talked about it with us, but the last few years, he’s stopped talking. He won’t, even when pressed. I think he’s in some deep shit. He thought he was doing the right thing, but I’m not sure he knows what the right thing is anymore.”
“And he keeps getting in deeper,” Maxence said, dipping his head. “He’s done some odd things, and he’s falling in with the wrong sorts of people.”
Wrong sorts of people?
From their tone, they weren’t snarking about her. Maxence kept glancing at her and making eye contact. He seemed to be trying to enlist her help or convince her to talk about Arthur.
What the hell did they mean by people in the plural?
Casimir shook his head. “I’m worried about what will happen to him if he continues on this path, and I’m worried about what will happen to him if he doesn’t have it anymore. Couldn’t he just do the computer end?” he asked Maxence.
Gen had no idea what “the computer end” of the kinky stuff might be.
Oh, maybe they meant the computerized thing with the app on Arthur’s phone that he had, indeed, put in her end.
Oh, dear God. Surely, they didn’t know about that.
She shrank in her seat.
Maxence shook his head. “The computer angle isn’t even half of it. He’s phenomenal at coding. Always has been. He’s an artist at whatever he does, but he’s better at the human part. He’s more valuable to them in that manner. They can find a dozen computer geeks, but he’s the only one who can walk among us.” Maxence gestured at the restaurant, now filled to the edges with royalty, nobility, and the celebrities, all in Paris for the royal wedding the next day. “He’s one of the very few people in Britain who could do this. Their royals can’t. The press scrutinizes every moment of their lives, and no one would talk to them, anyway. Most of Britain’s other nobility would quake at such a mission, or they’re inbred to the point of idiocy, or their motives would be questionable. Arthur is perhaps the only one who could do it and is willing to. Even if he wanted to get out, he couldn’t. They wouldn’t allow it.”
Gen tried to keep a confused expression off her face, but what kind of kinky lifestyle choices could they mean?
“Did he tell you all this?” Casimir asked Maxence.
“I’m his confessor,” Maxence said. “Sort of his confessor. He needed to talk to someone. He’s Church of England, of course. Not Catholic.”
“You’re not ordained yet.” Casimir’s dark green eyes widened. “Are you?”
Maxence looked down again, frowning. “No, and I won’t take Holy Orders until my uncle or my brother gives his permission, probably after Pierre and Friederike have at least one child, maybe two. I don’t think the Church would allow it without their permission, quite honestly.”
Gen had no idea what they were talking about, other than evidently Maxence wasn’t a full-fledged priest yet. It was weird that someone would have to give their permission for Maxence to become a priest if that was what he wanted to do. He was obviously far over eighteen years old. Maxence had even said that he and Arthur were six years old at the same time, so they had to be the same age, which was twenty-nine.
That just made it weirder.
“But about Arthur,” Casimir said, glancing at Gen.
“I can’t answer questions about his case,” she said.
“Answer this, then. What can we do to help?”
“Ah, now you’re asking questions that I can talk about.” She paused, thinking for a moment. Phrasing her answers would determine whether or not she crossed the ethics line. “The House of Lords Committee for Privileges is composed of sixteen members. Thus, nine would be a majority.”
“Right,” Maxence said, watching her.
Personal stuff wasn’t privileged. “Two of them are old family friends.”
Casimir nodded. “Two.”
“And four more were invited to a dinner at Spencer House. Looks like we did pretty well with three of them.”
“Three?” Casimir asked.
“Yeah, one of them was being stupid.” She told Maxence, “That was the Lord Asshole that Arthur was talking about on the plane.”
<
br /> “That’s unfortunate,” Maxence said.
“But the important thing is that four members of the committee are supposed to be here at the wedding. I can get you their names. We need all four to hit the magic number of nine. If we don’t get all four, then we’ll be scrambling around London when we get home, trying to get one here or another there to get a clear majority.”
“But you’ll have time when you get back,” Maxence said. “Indeed, it sounds like a comfortable margin.”
“The hearing in the committee should begin soon, within a few weeks, probably. The House of Lords doesn’t dilly-dally with things like this. Luckily, we had all the briefs ready to file when it was thrown to the House.”
“As a multiplier,” Casimir said, “Perhaps we could influence people in our circles to prevail upon these four individuals.”
“That sounds good,” Gen said.
Casimir remarked, “In addition, Arthur’s other masters might be able to apply some leverage.”
Gen sat back in her chair and let her face fall into a perfectly smooth mask, just like Arthur had taught her during car rides, over lunches, and while waltzing at charity dinners.
That was an odd term, masters.
The only thing that Gen could think of was that Arthur might have some old, um, acquaintances that he might prevail upon.
But then Casimir would have said mistresses.
But masters? In the masculine sense?
That didn’t make sense at all. Not with anything she had ever heard from Arthur. He was so kinky that he was bent into several right angles, but nothing he had ever said suggested that he also swung toward men.
Or that any previous lovers, either masters or mistresses, were still in his life.
Hot jealousy rose in her throat.
Maxence asked her, “Has he determined what they can do? His other masters can be rather influential.”
Casimir chuckled.
Gen spread her hands on the table and braced herself. She wouldn’t put up with anyone cheating on her, not even His Hotness, the Earl of Givesnofucks. “He’d better not have any other masters or mistresses. Arthur is with me, now.”
Hard Liquor: Runaway Billionaires: Arthur Duet #2 Page 9
