by KJ Charles
“Are you hurt?” Kim moved to do his other wrist.
“No. Go and get them!”
“What’s going on, Mr. Darling? Where’s the fire?” It was Norris from next door. “I heard shouts, and two men just barged past—Good God! Mr. Darling?”
Kim knelt to untie Will’s ankles, somehow making the Messer with its eight-inch blade vanish in the movement. His face was a picture of shock as he stared up at Norris, hands shaking visibly. “Oh, thank goodness. There’s been a burglary. Did you see them?”
“They pushed past me on the doorstep. What on earth is happening?”
“They tied him up,” Kim said, sounding helplessly baffled. “It was daylight robbery—well, not daylight, obviously—they were going through the desk—”
“I’ll get a policeman,” Norris said.
“Have they gone, or might they attack other shops on this street?”
Norris’s eyes widened at the thought his own shop could be visited. “They ran past me, but—”
“You’d better check,” Kim said with great concern. “I’ll get the police as soon as I’ve helped Mr. Darling free.”
“Right. Yes.” Norris hurried out.
Kim sat back on his heels. Will finished the job of untying his ankles, irritated that his fingers were so clumsy, then looked up and met Kim’s dark eyes.
“Conscientious objector, my arse.”
Kim grinned wolfishly. “Are you all right?”
“Fine. Aren’t we going after them? Or getting a policeman?”
“No point. The fellow with the knife, was that your tattoo chap?”
“Libra.”
Kim’s face stilled. “Was that his name?”
“I don’t know. Ingoldsby called him that, or at least said the word. But he had a set of scales tattooed on the underside of his wrist, and isn’t that Libra, the scales? And I’ll tell you what else, the other one had a tattoo in the same place.”
Kim whistled soundlessly. “There’s a thing. The same tattoo?”
“No, different. A head with horns, I think. A goat or a sheep, perhaps.”
“How peculiar. Well.”
He was still sitting on his knees. Will was still sitting on the chair. They stared at one another.
“How did you get here?” Will asked.
“I had your telephone message at the club. I popped round and arrived just in time to see you being bundled into the shop. It seemed a rather tough spot and I wasn’t sure what to do, so I went round the alley that runs behind your yard, came over the back wall, and got in through the window.”
Will blinked. “The window was fastened.”
“It isn’t now.”
He couldn’t argue with that. “Where did you learn knife fighting?”
Kim glanced to the door. “That sounds like your helpful neighbour coming back. Let’s get rid of him, shall we?” He put his hands on the arms of the chair to stand, so his body trapped Will’s for just a second, then headed to the door to do the talking.
CHAPTER SIX
Will let Kim deal with it. He didn’t bother listening, just let the persuasive, mellifluous tone wash over him as he stretched and flexed his wrists. His blood was fizzing with unspent adrenalin and the need to act.
Kim shut the door behind Norris at last, and Will heard the bolt go. He came back through the shop to where Will stood, face unreadable, eyes watchful, incongruous and beautiful in his scuffed black-and-white finery.
Will stepped forward and shoved him against a bookcase.
Their mouths collided savagely. Will had him by the shoulders but Kim’s grip on his hips was fierce, pulling him in, and he was almost biting at Will’s mouth and tongue. Will kissed him back with equal wildness. The need was urgent, a physical desperation that howled through his nerves and skin. Kim wrapped his leg around Will’s to bring their hips together, then grabbed his hair and tugged his head back to expose his throat, devouring the rough skin, open-mouthed and hungry.
Christ, it was good. Will shut his eyes to let sensation overwhelm him, then had to open them again to flick a glance at the windows and make sure the blinds were down.
“We’re behind the lamp,” Kim said against the skin of his throat, voice vibrating. “No shadows.”
“Shut up.” Will pushed him back again, quashing a sudden mental image of the ranks of bookshelves going over like dominoes. He fumbled at Kim’s waistband with one hand, holding him at the shoulder with the other. Kim’s fingers came up to meet his, and Will grabbed his hand, feeling its warmth. A hand that could use a trench knife, pliant in his. He pushed Kim’s arm back, interlacing their fingers, shoved clothing out of the way with his other hand, found the fierce stiffness of his cock.
Kim inhaled sharply. His pulse throbbed against Will’s fingers. They stared at each other for a second, then their mouths met again, kissing with ferocity as Will worked him in fast, harsh movements. Kim panted into his mouth, little gasps that raised the hair on Will’s arms with their increasing urgency, until at last he gave a muffled cry of release.
Will pulled his head away. They stood like that as Kim’s eyes cleared, locked together in the moment. The blood pulsed in Will’s cock.
Kim straightened up, then moved, that dancing fighter’s twist again without releasing their locked hands, and Will found himself swung round. He stood with his back to the bookcase as Kim dropped to his knees.
“Oh Jesus.” He let himself lean against the shelves, staring down. Kim let go his hand, leaving Will’s exposed to the chilly air, dealt with his straining buttons, and took out Will’s prick with delicate fingers. He paused there, as if examining it, mouth a little open, receptive, waiting to be filled.
There was no blood left in Will’s brain. He could only watch as Kim leaned in and flicked him with a catlike tongue.
“Christ,” he whispered.
Kim’s lips curled. He ran both hands up Will’s flanks, gripped his hips, and took him in his mouth.
Will had to hold on to the shelves. He’d only had this a few times in his life, and he’d been sloppy drunk for half of them. It was astounding. The sensation of Kim’s lips forming a tight ring round him, the suction, the wet warmth—Kim wasn’t even using his hands, just his mouth, and Will was afraid he might blow within seconds. He really didn’t want to. This was masterly, and blissful. Lips, teeth, tongue, a blaze of sensation, his cock going far deeper into Kim’s throat than he’d thought possible, plus Kim’s hands on his hips, pulling Will forward.
Oh Christ, he wants me to fuck his mouth, he likes it in his mouth. The thought quivered through him. Will wanted to put a hand in his hair, to grab or caress, he wasn’t sure. He wished he knew how to ask if Kim wanted him to thrust: he feared that might imply some demand or insult. Absurd to be self-conscious now. He could feel himself leaking.
Kim pulled back, his movement slowing to nothing but a touch. Will looked down and saw him looking up. His mouth was obscenely open, lips red with friction, and beautifully filled with Will’s erection.
He made an embarrassingly desperate noise and felt Kim’s smile curve round him before he started sucking again, harder and faster, till Will came helplessly with an airless groan, spilling deep into his throat.
He hung onto the bookshelves, arms outstretched as if crucified, head down. If he let go, he might well fall over.
After a moment he opened his eyes. Kim was sitting back on his knees again, wearing that oddly neutral expression of his, as if he wasn’t sure what Will might do now.
Unfortunately, nor was Will. He had no idea what civilians, or civilised people, would say in these circumstances. Thanks for that, old chap, much obliged, perhaps? Ought he apologise for coming in his mouth? Would this be a good moment to restart the conversation about where Kim had learned to use a knife?
Thank God they were British. He took a deep breath. “Cup of tea?”
Kim went absolutely blank again. It was a trick he had, Will thought, as if his muscles locked in position while
his mind worked. Then his face cracked into an infectious wide smile. “Got anything stronger?”
“How about both?”
It was much easier to deal with the aftermath if you could occupy yourself. Will put the kettle on, poured them each a generous Scotch, and tried not to notice Kim seating himself on the camp bed while he got the mugs out.
Kim hadn’t made a mess of the window in the back room at all. Will examined it while the kettle boiled. “How did you break in again?”
“I came through that little alley, the one to the side of the Black Horse. Up the back wall and over two other yards into yours because I miscalculated. I flipped the latch with a bit of metal I found lying about.”
It was a sash window, and the latch wasn’t precisely snug, but Will hadn’t realised it was that loose. He made a mental note to fix it. “You came over the walls in those clothes?”
“Heartbreaking, isn’t it?” Kim brushed at his knees, which were admittedly rather scruffy now Will noticed. “It’s a good thing gentlemen aren’t wearing trousers tight at the moment. That might have been difficult.”
“All of it sounds difficult. I didn’t hear you get in.”
“I was trying to be quiet, for obvious reasons,” Kim pointed out. “I’m sorry I took a while. I could see proceedings through the crack in the door, and I was waiting for a moment when I wouldn’t startle that swine into stabbing you.”
“Appreciated.” Will took a mouthful of whisky. “And then you grabbed my knife and engaged a dangerous man in the sort of action I haven’t seen since my last trip to Jerry’s trenches.”
“You were a trench raider?” Kim lifted a brow. “I did wonder why you had this pig-sticker lying around. Is it British army issue?”
“German. I picked it up in ’15. Some people swore by trench clubs, with or without nails in them, but I don’t think you can beat a Messer and a push dagger on a raid. How did you know how to use it?”
“I wouldn’t claim I do. Did you buy it or was it, ah, a souvenir of a trip?”
Will declined that gambit with a look. “You don’t answer many questions, do you?”
“Don’t I?” Kim grinned at Will’s expression. “Sorry. How I learned...ugh. I wasn’t against the war because I’m a pacifist.”
“There’s quite a divide between ‘pacifist’ and ‘knife fighter’.”
“You should go to some of the Anti-War League meetings, they get pretty heated. No. As I told you earlier, I mixed with bad company in my youth.”
“Knife-fighting bad?”
“One was obliged to learn certain skills in anticipation of the revolution,” Kim said. “It’s not a period I like to dwell on.”
“I’m sure it’s not, but it saved my neck this evening. You saved my neck. I’d have been up a gum tree if you hadn’t come back.”
“Well, you called me. May I ask why?”
“I wanted to apologise. I don’t think I had any right to go off at you like that earlier.”
“You aren’t the first to do so.”
“That doesn’t make it better.” The kettle whistled. Will went over and poured water into the teapot. “I don’t think I was fair and I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Kim said. “What you were told was essentially true. I mixed with—supported—a movement whose promise of a better future is not coming to pass, to say the least, and whose leaders were not the idealists I believed them to be. I didn’t go to the war. My younger brother did, and died in my stead.”
“I can’t see that’s your fault.”
“Oh, it was. Noblesse oblige.” Kim stared into his glass. “One of us had to go, for the family honour. When I refused, the burden went to him.”
“The thing about that,” Will said, and stopped himself.
“What? No, go on. I’d like to know.”
Will took a mouthful of whisky to gather his thoughts, and perhaps his courage. “I was out there the whole time. Four years and change, not demobbed till late ’19. I was at Ypres and Passchendaele. I did fourteen trench raids.”
“Christ!” Kim said, sounding genuinely startled. “Fourteen? Do you have a boxful of medals?”
“Pawned them.”
“Sorry?”
“My grateful nation wasn’t grateful enough to give me a job. I pawned my medals to keep a roof over my head and food in my belly, and I’ll tell you what, the Military Cross doesn’t fetch a great deal, no matter how many bars you have on it. The pawnbroker told me I should have tried for a Victoria Cross. That would be worth something, he said.”
Kim’s lips tightened. “Perhaps someone should have a word with him.”
“It’s a seller’s market. Did you not read about the chap who marched down Whitehall with his pawn tickets pinned on his uniform where his medals should have been? Anyway, the point is, I know about doing your duty out there. And what you said about honour is balls.”
Kim raised his brows. Will pressed on. “Sitting around in the trenches, whittling and telling dirty jokes we’d all heard a dozen times. Going out with your mates knowing a load of them would die to win a hundred yards of ground that Jerry would get back next time, and then doing it over and over again. I got stuck in a shellhole with a sergeant once, under a barrage. We were there for hours, sat in freezing water if you could call it that, keeping our heads down, and once it got dark we crawled back through mud. Afterwards he said to me, ‘When we started I was afraid I’d die out there. After an hour, I was terrified I wouldn’t.’ There was no honour or courage in any of that, just survival. Yes, I’ve got a boxful of medals. I won them for sneaking up on people and killing them from behind.”
“Is that a fair way to put it?”
“It’s what I did. And you know why I did it?”
“Orders?”
“I was good at it,” Will said. “I enjoyed it. The danger and the challenge, mostly, but killing was part of the game too, and it was a lot better than sitting on my arse in a trench. I volunteered to go kill men who I’d have had a drink with if I’d met them in a pub, and that wasn’t courage, just a twist in the head that went the other way round to shellshock. Calling it honour is putting ribbons on a pile of shit. It might look good, but it still stinks.”
Kim was sitting still, his glass half way to his lips. Will realised he’d said rather more than he’d meant to. He went to pour the tea, an excuse to turn his face away. “Anyway. That’s what I think.”
Kim nodded slowly. “You seemed to feel strongly about those who didn’t go, all the same.”
“I do about the people who had their feet up while we did the work. People who thought they were entitled to stay out of it because their own lives were important and other people’s weren’t. And profiteers, they can rot. But I had my life saved by a conchie stretcher-bearer who went out under fire to get me back when I’d taken a bad one to the leg. That was courage, the real thing. And you came over a wall and through a window and took on a lunatic with a knife to help me out, so whatever you are, you’re not a shirker. Milk and sugar?”
“Just milk. May I ask a question?”
Will didn’t have a coffee table, and he needed to gather himself. He went to get the spare chair from the shop, put the mugs on it, and took up position on the bed, very aware of Kim’s proximity. “Go on.”
“Why did you not stay in the army?”
“I’m not officer class, and I don’t like marching in step. I’m not good at obeying orders.”
“You’re good at trench raids. A talent you were obliged to develop over four years, and then to forget as inappropriate for civilian life.”
“I’ve got a second-hand bookshop, though. Amounts to the same thing.”
Kim choked. “Very true.”
“Anyway. All I meant to say was, I’m sorry about your brother, but honour was the lie they told to get us out there. Nobody should have gone.”
“Thank you, Will. That’s kind of you.”
Will shrugged, unsure how to respond. They sat in silence
for a moment, then Kim said, “Meanwhile, do you have any idea what provoked tonight’s excitement?”
“I think there’s people watching me.” Kim didn’t seem at all surprised by this, which emboldened Will to go on. “No, I know they are. Ingoldsby and the baby-faced johnny knew you’d come here. And Libra said as much. He said I was seen finding papers in an envelope and taking them next door to telephone. That’s why they came after me.”
“What papers?”
“It was nothing, just invoices. I was thinking about something else, and I happened to hold on to them when I went to ’phone for you.”
“Did Libra know who you’d called?”
“He said not.”
“So you were seen but not heard. Someone in one of the shops across the street?” Kim tapped his fingers against the tumbler. “They had you watched, and when they thought you’d found the information, they attacked within a couple of hours. That’s keen.”
“Who are they?” Will asked. “The matching tattoos—are they a gang? A secret society?”
Kim didn’t laugh at him, for which Will was grateful. “A secret society that uses identifying tattoos is making a schoolboy error, if you ask me. The chap with the ram’s head was masked, wasn’t he? I wasn’t able to give him my full attention.”
“He had a scarf round his head.”
“But the other, Libra, didn’t feel the need to hide his face. Of course you’d seen him before, but it still suggests an unpleasant degree of confidence. They’re pretty nasty, these chaps.”
“Very nasty.”
“And there’s a few of them. Which leads me to wonder whether it’s a good idea for you to stay here alone.”
“I don’t have a great deal of choice. And if I leave this place unoccupied, they could break in overnight and ransack it.”
“They could do that anyway, cutting your throat as they pass,” Kim pointed out. “I doubt they will, since that would invite the authorities, but they could certainly return to finish tonight’s work. I don’t much like that idea.”