Jack put his left hand on Ross’s shoulder, and a muscle in Ross’s neck tightened, and Jack was almost sure. Almost.
Carefully, forcefully, he pushed. Ross took three steps back for every two of Jack’s forward. Beneath Jack’s hand his shoulder was bony and hot, and he made no attempt to pull away. When his heel and hip hit the bookshelf again, his gaze cut to the side for a considering moment: registering that Jack had walked him right back to where he’d been standing. Right where the Roman booklets took up half a shelf in a purple block. His eyes flicked back to Jack, and now they were full of that half-wild taunting, as if they’d collected it along the way.
You dared me to ask.
Jack said, as if bored, “You’re here because I can have anything. Anything I want.”
Ross’s lip curled. “Of course. You toffs are all the same.”
Now he was daring Jack to stop asking.
And Jack knew there were reasons he’d considered this a bad idea, but right now he couldn’t remember a single one.
So he did exactly what he wanted, which was to put his free hand in a proprietary way at the front of Ross’s trousers and press down.
Ross gave an abrupt shudder. His eyes fell closed, which did nothing except show off the thickness of his lashes. He bit down on his lip in a way that was either involuntary or the most studied impersonation of it that Jack had ever seen. Either way, it called up an answering violence inside Jack’s own mouth.
“Hm,” Jack said. As if about to start haggling down the price. When Ross opened his eyes again and shot him a glare, Jack shifted his grip, rubbing with his thumb. The fabric of Ross’s trousers was worn, soft and giving to the touch, and hid very little.
“Fuck you,” Ross muttered.
“What was that?”
“You—ohshit—you heard me, your lordship.”
Jack’s other hand was still holding Ross by the shoulder. By now he knew Ross wasn’t going anywhere. So he used it to force the man’s chin up instead, finding that glorious eye contact again.
“Smart-mouthed guttersnipe, aren’t you?” he said. “Go on. Tell me what you think of me.”
Ross shuddered again under the next demanding caress, but kept his eyes open this time. His hips pushed into Jack’s hand.
“I despise you,” he whispered. “I resent your very existence. You’re an unremitting prick.”
“Tell me you hate me.”
“I do hate you.”
Jack trembled with how much his own cock ached, along with strange, hungry parts of him. The backs of his shoulders and thighs. The small expanse of skin where his hand cupped Ross’s jaw, subtly rough with evening stubble. He leaned even closer, until the scent of body heat rose intoxicatingly into his nostrils.
“Tell me you want me anyway.”
Ross made an angry sound in his throat and tilted his head up. He rose onto his toes, and he was hot and hardening under the heel of Jack’s hand, and his mouth came close to Jack’s ear.
“No.”
A barrier in Jack broke. One hand slid past Ross’s ear to tighten in his hair and tug sharply, and the other slid around the man’s hip to his arse, where the wood of Jack’s shelves shoved painfully against his own knuckles. He didn’t care. A patrol full of riflemen could have opened fire on the other side of the room and he wouldn’t have fucking cared, because he had a thigh shoved between Ross’s legs now and Ross was rubbing against it, all spite and heat. Ross’s hands formed claws on his chest, and Ross’s face was close to the base of Jack’s neck. Jack took a moment to be concerned for his major blood vessels, then decided he didn’t care about that either.
His body jolted as Ross shoved him away.
Jack pushed back, harder. A furious moan came from Ross as he sagged against the shelves. His mouth was half open and his shoulders rose with his breaths, tension and cock-daze in every inch of him. Jack wanted to devour him whole. He reached for the collar of Ross’s shirt, and—
“No. Stop.”
Jack’s hand fell at once. He sucked in warm air through his nose.
He waited for Ross to step aside, to seek an escape, but it didn’t happen. There was no fear at all in Ross’s posture. Just surprise, in the arch of his brows—swiftly covered, but there. And no sound but the both of them fighting to control their breaths.
“Ah,” said Jack. “Did you think I wouldn’t?”
“You’ve read my scribbles,” Ross said roughly. “Stop and no aren’t often heeded in that kind of scenario.”
“Did you not want me to heed them?”
A ludicrous question in most circumstances. It seemed a sensible one now. Ross raised a thumb to drag down his own lower lip in a maddening, considering motion.
“I assume you have a name as well as a title. Though I’ve not heard anyone use it. Not even your pa.”
“Why would I use it, when I have people who can say ‘your lordship’ like it’s coated in dirt?” He let that lie there a moment. “It’s John. Jack, more often. Jack.”
“All right then. If I tell his lordship to stop, he can ignore me as he pleases. If I tell Jack to stop—he’d better pay attention, or he’ll end up with a knee in his knackers.”
Anticipation rose again and mingled with the frisson of hearing his name in Ross’s mouth, the intimacy claimed boldly and unasked.
“Any other rules in mind?”
“Don’t kiss me.”
“Do you mean—withhold it, even if you ask for it?”
“No, I…” Ross searched Jack’s face. Jack didn’t know what he was hoping to see, or not see. Some of that hard boldness seeped away. Ross said, slowly, “It’s fine if I ask for it.”
Jack shrugged. He wouldn’t hold a grudge for rule-setting. In that moment he’d probably have accepted any condition if it meant he was allowed to put his hands back on Ross’s body, and he was uncomfortably suspicious that Ross knew it.
That, too, was power.
Jack stepped in, closing most of the distance that Ross had put between them. He let his voice drop and darken. “It’s not the first thought I have when looking at that mouth of yours, anyway.” A lie. All he could think of now was kissing it. “Fuck, you’re a bloody devil.”
Ross tossed into the gap between their faces a smile of luminous and infuriating beauty. “I’m a guttersnipe, me. Probably trespassing. I don’t know any better.”
“You need to be taught,” said Jack, hoarse, and they were away.
Now he was more in the mood to punish than tease. He unbuttoned Ross’s trousers and reached into his drawers without further ado—smothered Ross’s first strangled noise with his other palm, then gripped the angle of Ross’s neck.
Ross hissed through his teeth. “Is that all, then?”
“You’ll take what I give you,” said Jack.
“And won’t complain?”
“Oh, complain all you like.” Jack had the warm length of Ross’s prick in his hand now. He gave a couple of short, rough pumps within the confines of Ross’s drawers. “It’ll make no difference to me.”
“Christ you fucking rat’s arse shit-heel bastard,” said Ross in a low rush, but his eyes closed and his head thudded back, and his breath was coming as fast as Jack’s ruthlessly working hand. A firestorm of lust had Jack entirely enclosed. Surely it’d be visible if anyone watched, pouring off him like magic or smoke.