Candle wax, Alan thought stupidly. His blood roared in his ears.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” said Jack presently.
He lowered Alan’s head again but didn’t seem able to look away from him. Alan wanted to say, I know, but could only bring himself to stare back.
After a second Jack levered himself to the side and settled onto his back, and Alan managed to sit up. He pulled up his knees, then put them down again. His backside gave a mild twinge when he moved. He felt as if he’d been beaten for dust, hung in the sunshine, and then re-laid on a comfortable floor.
He also felt covered in the results of two spectacular climaxes, and had a halfhearted go at wiping himself clean with his hands. Then found himself hesitating before touching the bedcover, which was ridiculous given what had just taken place on it.
“We made a mess of you,” Jack said, sounding far too pleased.
Alan leaned down and licked his way vindictively into Jack’s mouth, wiping his hands all over Jack’s shoulders and the dark hair of Jack’s chest in the process. His lordship could see how he bloody well liked it.
He realised his mistake when Jack groaned against his lips and hauled Alan closer against him, and met Alan’s tongue with his own, and Alan’s senses flooded with the hot, indescribable scent that was Jack’s cologne layered over the exertions of their bodies. Jack kissed like an argument. Alan slid his hand to the nape of Jack’s neck and argued fiercely back.
The way you write kisses, they’re—devastating.
Alan had two languages and would still have to invent another to properly describe the way it felt to kiss Jack Alston. What had begun as deliberately filthy was unravelling into something perilously close to tender. Alan was clinging to Jack now, his knee slung over Jack’s leg. He could wrap himself around that thigh like a ribbon around a maypole, and be kissed forever, and be happy.
He was smiling at that image when they drew apart, and a mirrored smile appeared on Jack’s mouth. He drew Alan in again for a lighter, quicker brush of lips.
Something moved in Alan the way he imagined worlds moved in the dark of the universe.
He tried to breathe around it.
“You’re a wonder, Cesare,” said Jack. “That was exactly what I needed. No, stay there,” he added, when Alan began to move away. It was one of those aggravating casual commands, but for once Alan didn’t need to push against it. His body was happy to flop back and obey.
Jack himself climbed off the bed and wandered naked towards a door connecting through to a tiny bathroom. Alan rolled onto his side and admired the view, both going and coming; Jack returned quickly with a flannel and a towel.
Alan held his hand out, expecting more flinging.
“I thought I told you to take what you’re given,” said Jack.
“I thought we agreed I’d throttle you if offered bath attendants,” Alan shot back.
Being thoroughly fucked had been wonderful, yes, but this was a revelation: the surprising care in Jack’s motions as he scrubbed and wiped both himself and Alan clean with the cool soaked flannel.
“This is an army thing, isn’t it,” said Alan, turning over when directed to. “Everything scrubbed and dusted and folded.”
“And polished,” said Jack. He circled the flannel over Alan’s arse, idly running his thumb down the crack. Alan caught a noise in his throat and made a grab for the towel.
Once dry, he retrieved his clothes and dressed. Jack stripped the top cover from the bed in another efficiently military motion, and Alan drew one of the golden cushions onto his lap as he leaned against the headboard. He watched with a pang of disappointment as Jack’s body disappeared again beneath trousers and shirt. That chest, and those thighs, and that cock. Forget stately homes: Alan could write articles about this. His lordship Baron Hawthorn has a well-appointed figure, its architecture too rough to be described as strictly classical, dating back to the year—how old was Jack, anyway?
Alan swallowed a laugh and set the cushion aside. “I should…” He tilted his head towards the door.
Jack paused on the last button. “Why?”
Alan cast a speaking look at the rolled-up, debauched bedcover.
“Alan, we’re in a house so full of inverts that Wilde could write a play about it, on my family’s ancestral land. And there’s still a while before we have to change for what will no doubt be an exhaustingly long dinner and strategy session.” Jack came and stretched his legs out on the other side of the bed, sitting up, propped against pillows. “Another army lesson. Rest when you can. Stay.”
He was probably right about dinner. Lord Cheetham and Bastoke were expected midmorning the next day, so tonight the final touches would be put on their plan for the gala: the ambush that would prevent Bastoke’s ritual from ever taking place. A final snatched island of pretence and calm was a tempting thought.
Jack captured Alan’s hand where it was fiddling anew with the golden fringe of the cushion. “I can tie you to the bed, if that’s what it takes to make you rest in it.”
Alan grinned and used his other hand to toss the cushion at Jack’s face. “I look forward to it.” But he made his own pile of pillows and slumped against them. Then shifted, restless. “Lying down in the afternoon. Doesn’t feel natural.”
Jack laughed. He still had Alan’s hand; Alan hadn’t seen any need to remove it from Jack’s possession. Jack’s own fingers slid against what Alan knew were distinct pen calluses, and a small constellation of dark freckles, and—
“What’s this from?” Jack asked.
The white scar on the back of his hand. There was a matching one in the centre of the palm.
“That’s—a reminder.” Damn. He’d lost control of his voice. Jack looked at him sharply and managed to guess.
“Morris and George…？”
Alan hadn’t gone into detail when he first told Jack about his reluctant recruitment to the role of Bastoke’s spy, but what was the point in keeping it secret now?
“Morris handed me a penknife and drew a rune on my hand. He called it a compulsion.” He swallowed. His fingers curled tight within Jack’s grasp. “They didn’t stab me. I stabbed myself, when they told me to. And—” And twisted the blade, when he was told to. Alan swallowed a rise of bile. “And once the point was made, Morris healed me. Good as new.”
Except for the scars. A reminder of who owned him, and what was at stake.
“Compulsion is difficult magic.” Jack could have been Edwin, explaining a concept, except for the terrible flatness of his tone. “Hard to maintain for any length of time. And it must be very contractual, very specific, to work at all.”
Ah. Part of Alan had wondered why they hadn’t slapped such a rune on him and told him what they wanted, and set him loose. Simpler than coercion, surely.
And Alan hadn’t known how to perturb anything purposefully then. There’d been just enough room to shift within the compulsion that Alan’s terrified fingers had spasmed and released the knife the first time he set its point to his own hand.
Not the second time. Morris had put more effort into it then.
“They were,” said Alan, “specific.”