Stop it. He bit Gabriel’s shoulder a little harder than necessary, his own stiff cock working as hard as it could to drown out his sudden weakness.
Soon blankets were kicked away, revealing urgent, animal bodies moving in tandem. Edward’s hips bucked back against Gabriel’s thighs, sending waves of pleasure through his aching cock, as he worked harder and harder to bring Gabriel to release. Yes, this was better, this was closer to how he normally felt—the delicious desire racing through his body like summer flames, spurring him onward, making him forget himself.
“I want you.” Gabriel spoke tightly, through gritted teeth. “Now. Do it.”
Edward reached hastily for the oil still sitting on the bedside table, gasping as he coated his rigid cock. He spoke quickly, trying to outpace his lust. “I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to—to—”
“Just do it.” Gabriel turned his head, his eyes heavy-lidded with lust. “Please, Edward.” He ground against Edward’s cock, shameless, and Edward had to close his eyes and pray that he didn’t lose control. “Please.”
How could anyone resist a request like that? Especially when it gave words to every silent need that Edward’s body demanded.
With a deep, heartfelt sigh that hovered on the edge of anger, he sank inside Gabriel as slowly and deeply as he could. Gabriel cried out in pleasure-laced pain; Edward held still, kissing his shoulders and neck, feeling the man’s cock pulse violently under his hand. All he had to do was hold, hold, and murmur, and kiss, and wait...wait until Gabriel began, however shyly, to push back.
“Oh...oh.” Gabriel arched his back, moving him deeper; Edward gasped as a hot flood of sensation overwhelmed him. God, he was tight—tight, strong, perfect. “More.”
More? Edward couldn’t help but laugh, kissing Gabriel’s neck with passionate fervour. This was it, then, the path he always found himself on—giving Gabriel Winters all that he could give.
They had explored so many ways to satisfy one another the previous night; there had been play, and laughter, and moments of sweetness that had expressed so much more than words ever could. Edward, as his thrusts grew deeper and less controlled, intended this particular exchange to be an outpouring of all the lust he felt—something for his body to do, while his mind went elsewhere. But Gabriel...oh, Gabriel meant that Edward couldn’t go anywhere at all.
Be here, now, with me. Edward couldn’t help but obey him, brain and body and soul. Lust had combined inextricably with sentiment; Edward found himself mutely pleading for more of Gabriel, one hand reaching down to hug him tightly as the other rested lightly against the man’s jaw. Gabriel’s moan as his lips rested against Edward’s fingertips, his cock jerking in his fist as Edward slid two fingers into his mouth, sent a jolt through his core that was half agony, half bliss.
“I’m close.” He whispered the words into Gabriel’s ear, his voice almost frantic. “How am I close again?”
Gabriel moaned in response, the sound humming through his fingers. Edward cried out, thrusting harder, as he felt Gabriel’s hand slowly close over his own; he clasped it tight, other hand still shivering as Gabriel’s tongue caressed the pads of his fingers.
“Come for me.” He spoke urgently to Gabriel now, feeling the tendrils of his own climax beginning to grip him tight. “Now.”
Gabriel’s cry filled him, hot, needful; the thought that he had been waiting for Edward’s command was more erotic than a thousand forgettable back-alley encounters, a thousand men who hadn’t cared for him. Edward pulled his fingers from the man’s mouth, kissing him with vivid, near-painful want as Gabriel shifted to look at him.
“I love you.” Gabriel’s gaze was steady, his tone full of raw, sweet rapture. “I love you.”
Edward, torn between ecstasy and hopelessness, bowed his head as his climax overcame him.
As he lay back against the pillows, bliss spiralling through him like an eternity of sunbeams, he closed his eyes. He felt Gabriel’s hand wrapped in a corner of the sheet begin the same gentle attentions that it had in the kitchen, softly cleaning the both of them, and Edward couldn’t help but pull him into a deep, marvelling kiss.
As his body slowly relaxed, he attempted to apply the same release of tension to his mind. It was all going to be all right. Everything. They would find a way of getting to Sussex, and wipe away the madness that had characterised recent weeks—they would find the person who had stolen the seal, and punish them. It would be safe to return to London; he could begin his life again, change it how he wished, begin to forge some kind of joint path with Gabriel Winters—
And he would feel less afraid.
Wouldn’t he?
Edward tried. He furrowed his brow, imagining a glorious future, but panic still assailed him. There was a terrible problem in all of these carefully built castles in the air, a flaw in the design, which could, and would, ruin everything.
He was still the flaw. The weak thread in the rope. A rope that would wrap round Gabriel’s neck, the man he loved...and strangle him.
I love you. Edward mouthed the words desperately to Gabriel’s heavy head as the man rested against his shoulder. He couldn’t say the words aloud, yet—but surely it had to work? Loving someone was meant to be like a magic charm, protection against the elements; it was meant to make everything better.
It had healed some things, but not himself. The one thing that truly needed healing.
Gabriel’s breath had already fallen into the deep rhythm of sleep. Edward, sick at heart, began to slowly pull away.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Gabriel woke up to an empty bed. He looked with slight confusion at the rumpled sheets, the faint air of abandonment clinging to the pillows and blankets, before realising with a panicked jolt that the sun was already up.
He couldn’t be discovered here, naked in another man’s bedroom. Edward hadn’t woken him—why hadn’t he woken him? After all they had shared, all they had said, and done...why, they were bound, now. Surely.
After what he himself had said. Gabriel remembered his own words at the height of climax with a slightly embarrassed shake of the head. No response from Edward, but perhaps that was to be expected...he thought of the scars on the man’s back, and shivered. Cruelty had blighted Edward’s life in ways he could barely imagine.
After dressing himself with an anxious, attentive eye, he walked through the quietness of the morning house. He strode into the kitchen, rather hoping to find Edward—he rather hoped to find Edward in every room, if he really thought about it—but to his considerable annoyance he found no one but Bryce, arms full of jars, the pantry an absolute mess.
Not only Bryce. Buttons sat nearby, idly playing with a small scrap of ribbon. The kitten was already growing; he had lost the starved, feral look that had clung to him in the first days of his Hardcote life, slowly fattening him into a creature that looked as if it expected to be treated well. Gabriel couldn’t help but think of Edward, how he seemed less sallow, less jumpy, the more he stayed in Hardcote...
He still seemed haunted, though. Haunted by a past that Gabriel couldn’t change, even though he had played a part in it. Gabriel, to his own disgust, had found himself hoping that his love—true, and constant—could somehow erase the terrible things that had happened.
Love did not work like that. Time did not work like that. And from the coldness of Edward’s empty bed this morning, the man he loved didn’t work like that either.
Duty compelled him, as it always did, to be useful. “Are you in need of any assistance?”
“Yes. Hold these.” Bryce’s manner bordered on the actively offensive. “Given that I am bored beyond measure with the lack of London social life, I’ve decided to put this biblical quantity of preserves into a semblance of order.” He beckoned Gabriel into the pantry, thrusting jars of jam into his hands with little ceremony.
Gabriel stared up at the walls stacke
d high, each one containing a summer’s harvest gone unaccountably to waste. “It seems such a shame...all of this food left to rot, when there are hungry mouths to feed.”
“The brothers didn’t think about it.” Bryce shrugged. “The younger one had too much to think about, and the older one never thinks about anything beyond his own creature comforts.”
Gabriel felt his hackles rising. “Why do you stay in his service, then,” he said, trying to keep the anger out of his voice, “when he brings you so much trouble?”
Bryce brushed away the dust on his trousers. “Sir Gabriel. Reverend Winters. You can choose between two possible conversations. I can politely thank you for your help, tell you that coffee and buttered rolls have been placed in the morning room, and alert you to the fact that Lady Ploverdale and our London guests are attempting to play rounders in the Long Gallery, should you wish to join them. Or that Lord Maurice is still in the study, attempting to make the Madingley Diamond Affair grow legs and lead us to our deliverance. Does that conversation not sound preferable?”
Goodness, the man was punchable. “No.”
“I see.” Bryce took a deep breath. “Does your interest in my loyalty to the current Duke of Caddonfell spring from dispassionate curiosity, or something more personal? Because if I said the reason for staying was my pay, I doubt very much you’d believe me.”
“Quite.” No doubt the man had fended off much blunter enquiries from people much more socially adept. “Dispassionate curiosity.”
Bryce looked at him with the weary expression of someone used to half-truths. “Really?”
“Fine.” Gabriel hoped to God he wasn’t blushing. “Personal.”
Bryce’s eyes narrowed. “I once had an irate admiral try to convince Edward to sack me.” He moved a swathe of chutneys aside, running a cloth along the dusty pantry shelf. “He thought our rapport was entirely too familiar. Suspiciously so.” He sighed. “He was one of the many men who assume Edward is a creature to be caged. Bought.”
“You use his Christian name.” A note of jealousy crept into Gabriel’s voice as he put the jam jars back on the clean shelf. “Not a liberty typical of a servant.”
“And you, if you’ll excuse the expression, follow my master from room to room like a dog in heat. Not a liberty typical of a vicar. And don’t attempt to strike me, because I’ll be forced to render you completely insensible. I’ve done it with men much bigger than you.”
For a moment the two men glared at one another with hearty, mutual dislike. Bryce finally broke the stare, turning back to the shelf. “You know I haven’t always been in service. It’s obvious enough. Just as I know you were born richer than you pretend to be.”
“I’ll thank you not to—”
“Most people take me for a fighter, and they’d be right. I fought well, and for money, before the drink got me. But before that I was a soldier. Not one of the ones in shiny uniforms you see nowadays, either.” Bryce sighed. “I was part of the Flanders campaign.”
Gabriel fought an unexpected stab of sympathy. He regularly visited the homes of men who’d lost limbs, and worse, in the disastrous land offensive. Unqualified generals leading ill-equipped soldiers had led to legions of broken men, limping home to loved ones unprepared for such a drastic change in them.
“Yes. The look on your face tells me you’ve some knowledge of it. Or at least some basic common sense.” Bryce shook his head, as if attempting to dislodge dark memories. “When we came back to England, I fought and drank. That will keep nightmares away, for a time. And then the drinking began to overtake the fighting...and just as I thought I would die in a gutter, Edward found me. Hired me as his valet for the fun of it. And on my first day without drink, when my fingers were trembling so badly I couldn’t button my boots, he told me comic stories until I forgot myself.” Bryce smiled. “He spoke for hours.”
“Edward is kind.” Gabriel shook his head, remembering how Ginger and the Hardcote folk had taken to him immediately. “So kind.”
“Edward is broken. You and I both know it.” Bryce looked steadily into Gabriel’s eyes. “Broken apart and pieced together so many times that one blow would destroy him now. I don’t know what London did to him—don’t know what Hardcote did to him, more likely, seeing as he never speaks of this place. But he’s spent so long surviving, building a shell, that he’s terrified of coming out of it. He keeps trying to distract himself from his pain—his own version of comic songs, I suppose. But time is a terrible thing. Soon he’ll realise that he must confront himself, and when he does, by God, I’ll be there. I’ll let him know that there’s someone who will listen to him. Someone who will drag him back from whatever cliff he plans to throw himself over.”
“I’m... I’m sorry.” Gabriel looked at the man he’d misjudged so harshly, wondering how he’d let jealousy gain the upper hand so easily. “You are a true friend to him. Like the men of the Society.”
“The men of the Society get as close as Edward will let them.” Bryce shook his head. “They do their best. But I hear him screaming after dark, when the nightmares get too much for him. I’m a true friend to him, whether he likes it or not.”
“More than that. You...you are family.”
“I don’t know about that.” But a smile vanished into Bryce’s moustache. “Were you looking for him?”
Now Gabriel felt less ashamed about admitting it. “Yes. But if you need help here, I can—”
“I don’t. Be off with you.”
Gabriel brushed the dust off his breeches, fighting the feeling of being dismissed, wondering just how long Bryce had been waiting to speak about Edward in such an intimate fashion. “Thank you.” He paused. “Are you sure there’s nothing else I can do?”
“Yes. Stop making your bed in the morning. You do an atrocious job.”
Gabriel left the room with a short bow, trying not to smile.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Edward wandered rootlessly through the house. Light and birdsong filled room after room, making every space entirely unsuitable for the restless nature of his melancholy.
At least in London there were plenty of dark, rain-lashed corners to be miserable in. As Edward walked slowly down corridor after corridor, noting the muffled sounds of laughter coming from the Long Gallery, he realised with a dissatisfied jolt that Hardcote House was becoming a...well, a cheerful place.
Not happy. Not yet. His life was still in danger, someone close to him had worked with a man now trying to kill him, and whatever was occurring with Gabriel in his own soul meant true contentment was far away. But still...this place was already different, so very different, from the place it had been during Edward’s childhood.
“Richardson? Too rich to work with a man like Sussex.” Frakes’s voice boomed through the corridor, along with the whistle and thwack of a rounders ball. “We need someone who was in direr need of coin back when the diamonds were broken down.”
“Parker?” Lambert’s cautious voice rose above the sounds of exertion. “He was always asking for credit.”
“I remember him.” Caroline’s husky voice broke through. “He seemed to always have enough money to patronise the ladies of Covent—wait, where on earth has Ginger gone? Is he writing to his mother?”
“No.” Frakes’s exasperated tone made Edward smile. “Hartley is still using all the ink and paper.”
Edward, a small chill of suspicion falling over him, aggressively shook the thought away. Moving past the Long Gallery, he walked until his feet slowed at the door of Maurice’s study.
His brother certainly hadn’t been sleeping well, or eating regularly; Edward had seen him picking at his food, a habit Maurice only indulged in when nervous. Swallowing a tide of guilt, he knocked at the door.
“Come.” Maurice’s voice was already irritable.
Edward entered. If Maurice was surprised at his sudden intrusion, h
e didn’t show it; he looked blankly at his brother before returning to the pile of papers at his desk. Edward watched him, trying to work out why something felt so off balance...until, with a jolt of surprise, he realised the source of his confusion.
“There’s something different about this room.” He sniffed suspiciously, turning to Maurice with a look of real wonder. “You...you’re not smoking.”
“Correct.” Maurice turned back to his paper, his voice curiously flat.
“But you always smoke when you work.” Edward tried to remember the last time he hadn’t collapsed into a coughing fit after visiting Maurice’s study. “Aren’t you working?”
“Of course I’m working. At least I was, until you interrupted.” Maurice pinched the bridge of his nose, sighing briefly. “I am simply...not smoking.”
“But why?” A sudden burst of fear gripped Edward’s heart. “Good God, are you sick?”
“The only thing I’m sick of is being interrupted.” Maurice stood, pointing at the door. “Leave. Given that you returned to London empty-handed and with three of your friends in tow, we have less time than we originally thought. I’ve had news from my port spies; Sussex’s men have returned from the Continent. If I don’t find something soon, Sussex and his men will not only find us, but do things that I can’t stop.” He ran his hand through his dark hair, a look of exhaustion on his face. “I can’t stop them. I need time.”
Edward pieced together disparate moments of the last weeks with a growing sense of the absurd. “Your...your sudden concern for the smoke in the air wouldn’t have anything to do with the husky-voiced Lady Ploverdale, would it? She who withers in anything less than the freshest of air?”
The Vicar and the Rake (Society of Beasts) Page 20