His Second Chance

by Stephanie Lake

  Randall pushed open the door, the hinges well-oiled and silent.

  David scrunched up his face, so like Lady Prudence when she was being contrary.

  He almost laughed, would have, if the situation hadn’t been so tragic.

  It was time to step in. “I assure you, Lady Prudence, I realize David is not headed for Bedlam; he is merely trying to protect you.”

  The two jumped apart as if being caught trying to set fire to St. James’ Church.

  It was endearing, actually. “I would do the same if someone threatened my cousin Elizabeth. Having no siblings of my own, she is like a sister to me.”

  She stiffened. “Are you a threat to me, Lord Blair?”

  “I assure you, sweet Lady Prudence, that is not my intention.”

  She beamed at him and then at David. She completely missed, or chose to ignore, what was not said. That he might hurt her even if it wasn’t his intention.

  “Lord Blair, Prudence has given her blessings for me to have your company for the rest of the afternoon, that we may discuss our differences.”

  Randall raised a brow.

  “So, if you don’t mind a ride, I took the liberty of having our horses readied.”

  He kissed Lady Prudence’s hand. She smiled at the gesture and swished her skirts by swinging side to side in a contented lady-lioness swagger.

  Chapter Five

  Thank heavens that was over.

  Pru took a sip of sherry. Yes, it was too early, but she needed the libation. This past month had been a dreadful trial. But it would all be worth the effort eventually. Wouldn’t it?

  Footsteps, quiet but determined, approached. “All your visitors be gone, m’lady.” The low rumble and questionable grammar sent a thrill up her spine.

  “And the rest of the family out on visits.” She stretched languidly on the settee. “It seems I have no demands on my time, and nothing to occupy the rest of the afternoon.” She sighed.

  Warm hands pressed on her shoulders, fingers caressed her collarbone, then ran under the lavender satin bodice. She shivered and leaned her head against rough wool and the hard chest behind it.

  “As it happens,” a strong baritone steeped in longing said, “I know a very pleasant way for you to occupy your leisure time.”

  “Is that so? And do these plans include time with you?”

  “Hmm.”

  “Don’t you think you are getting a bit above your station?”

  “Actually, I would rather be underneath.”

  Pru shivered and closed her eyes. The day was definitely improving. Definitely.

  She pulled one masculine wandering hand over her breast. “I need you.”

  “Hmm.” His hand slid lower.

  * * * *

  The past hour had been spent on a bruising ride. Once off London’s crowded streets and on the road heading for Leicester, leading northwest through gently rolling countryside, the mare and gelding had stretched their legs.

  David raised his face into the pine-scented wind. It had been too long since riding at hell-bent speeds for no other reason than just enjoying the wind on his face and a willing horse beneath him. Of course it helped he had a beyond-competent rider beside him, urging both horses faster.

  He threw his head back and laughed. He was happy. Actually happy. He’d not felt that emotion for a long time. A very long time. He liked it. He wanted more. Unfortunately, his ultimate goal for this excursion would insure he never again gained such happiness.

  Also unfortunately, the bruising ride sent fiery exhilaration straight to his cock. He was aroused and ready. Damn. Why was he here, anyway? He thought he had all this planned. Now, he wasn’t certain this was such a good idea.

  The small, well-appointed hunting cottage on his family’s country estate, some twelve miles out of London, was not far. Less than a mile to go. He reined in, Randall quick to follow his lead, and directed his horse down the tree-shaded, gently sloping lane on the left.

  He’d come here often as a lad. The place dredged up memories of running about the woods, playing with the foxhounds, and rare acceptance from his father. He’d always been a good shot, able to shatter a dozen empty port bottles with a short Brown Bess carbine from one hundred paces, one by one, reloading the weapon by himself, without missing any. He’d been content here. Gaining a few words of praise from his father; there had always been so very few.

  He stopped and dismounted.

  Randall asked no questions and dismounted as well. The man looked positively delicious. The wind and sun had colored his cheeks. His smile was broad, straight and strong, just like the man himself. That smile haunted David’s memories. It was his first waking vision, the last one as he fell asleep.

  He swallowed. There was a reason for this adventure, and he needed to stay focused.

  They cooled down the horses, leading them the last quarter mile to the cottage, and privacy. He needed to talk to Randall where no one could overhear. Oh, who was he jesting? He would convince Randall not to marry Pru with every weapon in his arsenal. He planned to seduce the man, show him he would make an awful husband.

  Was that the only reason for the seduction?

  Yes!

  Perhaps.

  Definitely!

  “So, you have come to your senses and decided to call the wedding off, correct?” Damn, he’d not meant to sound like an arse.

  Randall said nothing, his jaw tightening.

  David pursed his lips. “You are making a mistake, and I brought you here to show you.”

  The normally gregarious viscount was unusually quiet.

  With no conversational help from his companion, he forced himself to continue. “I had hoped you would make the decision yourself, but it’s obvious you need a reminder why you are a dreadful choice for Prudence.”

  Randall cocked a brow, but David ignored the silent question by unlocking the heavy wooden door to his father’s hunting cottage. The spacious three-room structure was dark and cool. It smelled musty, but it appeared as though someone came to clean every fortnight or so.

  Randall let himself in without being asked and looked the place over, touching this bit of furniture or that uninspiring landscape bordered by a gaudy gold frame.

  Sun streamed into the room from the open door, illuminating dust motes and occasionally gilding Randall’s boots as he walked around the room.

  David swallowed hard and forced himself to close the door and shut out the light, forced himself to continue with his potentially catastrophic plan. Locking the door behind them, he slowly removed his coat, staring at Randall the whole time, challenging him to do the same, to demand an explanation, to make him stop, anything.

  Nothing. The man just stared back, jaw working, breath coming heavy and fast.

  A surge of awareness and arousal, so strong he could taste its metallic flavor, nearly choked him. His body thrummed with lust.

  Randall walked forward and touched his cheek, the caress gentle, warm.

  He pressed into the touch, needing it, craving more.

  “You are the only man I ever truly could not resist. And now you are more handsome than you were at two and twenty. Or did you lie about your age as well?”

  “No. That was not a lie.” David closed his eyes, stopped unbuttoning his waistcoat, and leaned in.

  NOTHING COULD HAVE stopped Randall from taking that invitation. He stroked those lips, which so rarely smiled, with his own. Gentle, supple; not enough. Not near enough.

  Diving in, tongues sparring, he tasted the velvety cavity. The flavor was familiar, more like the smell of an ocean breeze before a storm than a taste. He would know the flavor of this man anywhere. He had woken countless times dreaming about it, craving it. So uniquely David. Clean and crisp like the North Sea, but deeper, almost buttery. He could drown in this sea of ecstasy and still crave more.

  He wrapped fingers in a thick mass of black waves. He’d wanted to bury his nose into David’s hair from the first time he set eyes on the gorgeous m
an. And he had, time and again, during their brief affair. But not now. Now he used the soft hair as leverage and pulled them more firmly together for a claiming kiss.

  David pushed his groin into Randall’s thigh and groaned.

  He growled back, an automatic response, a mating response. Pain and pleasure squeezed his balls. Ears ringing with the whoosh of his pulse.

  Reaching between them, David jerkily, roughly, undid their falls.

  Before Randall could think, he had David up against the wall, his bare cock rubbing his lover’s bare cock.

  Velvet over steel.

  Sublime.

  “I missed you. This.” Choked, husky.

  David sucked in air, gaze locked, lids heavy, almost sleepy; then he devoured Randall’s mouth.

  Nothing more was needed to take him to the point of no return. His balls drew up, and a tingling started at the base of his prick. He had to slow down, or this surreal reunion would end. Now. This time, he did not want to awaken from his dream. To realize, in the morning, there had been no one touching his cock but himself and his sheets. “Stop. Or I’ll… It’ll…”

  David grabbed his ass and pumped harder, eyes glazed.

  Rocking with him, he lost control, threw his head back, and roared his release, his contentment, his ecstasy. Lights flashed behind closed lids as he soared on a wave of ecstasy.

  Still rocking against the slackening rod, David panted, smearing spent seed.

  He opened his eyes in time to see the bliss slide over David’s face. The man’s breathing stopped, eyes squeezed shut as he grabbed Randall’s ass and jerked once, twice, three times. Then he collapsed into Randall’s embrace. Holding David close, he ran his nose through windblown hair, his heart beating to a symphony played double-time.

  David had come home…come back to him. He tightened his arms around his thin but muscular lover.

  Still embracing, still mostly clad, seed slipping down their bellies, leaning and panting against the wall, David ruined the moment. “So, you see why you cannot marry Pru? Both of you will be miserable. You are already as good as wed, and you cannot keep your cock in your pants around other men.”

  Randall jerked away, stuffing his sticky member back into his trousers. “Is this why you brought me here? Why you seduced me?”

  David looked down at his feet.

  “Did this”—he waved at their midsections, at their rumpled clothes, voice rising—“mean anything to you? Or was it just to make me feel miserable?”

  “I am determined to keep you from ruining my sister’s life. I am prepared to do whatever is necessary.”

  “Even use your body? Don’t you think that makes you a whore?”

  David’s expression was mutinous as he set his clothing to rights. “You must know now you will not, cannot, be faithful to Pru. Call it off, Randall. I beg you.”

  Running a hand through his hair, he tried to clear his mind enough to think. “Give me two days. I… I have to think this through. Two days.”

  David nodded and donned his coat. Just like that, he turned off all warmness, desire gone, no evidence it had ever been there.

  But it had been.

  Hadn’t it?

  Yes, it had been, and it had been paradise. For two short minutes. Two minutes that would likely haunt him for the rest of his life.

  “So, do you feel righteous now? The noble martyr sacrificing himself to save his sister from a fate worse than death?” That was vicious, but right now he needed to strike out. To hurt, like he hurt.

  David stiffened and slapped his gloves against his breeches but said nothing more.

  Randall left the cottage with its teasing tang of sex and walked back to his horse.

  An empty coldness settled in the pit of his gut. He wanted this man again, over and over. He could never get enough of him. But it was obvious, what they once shared was now firmly murdered, and there could be no resurrection.

  Chapter Six

  It was dark by the time Randall arrived at Vincent and Elizabeth’s opulent, first-class dwelling in Mayfair, and his mood had grown darker with each of the sun’s setting rays.

  “Lord Blair is here to see you, madam.” The rough-looking footman, probably one of Vincent’s street rescues, announced Randall into the St. John sitting room. Two Bits jumped up from a ruby, ebony, and sage patterned Persian carpet where she and Elizabeth perused books, and ran over to hug his legs. The twelve-year-old, or at least that was how old they best estimated Elizabeth’s adopted daughter to be, barely came to his elbow. She was a slight but tough little mite from her many years on the street. He ruffled her brown, disheveled curls. “What are you up to, scamp?”

  “We were studying chemistry, Uncle.” She pulled him by the hand to where Elizabeth lay sprawled in front of a large text. “Look at what I’ve learned today.”

  Randall groaned inwardly but humored his godchild for about fifteen minutes, at which time he could wait no longer. “Liz, I really do need your attention on a matter.”

  Two Bits perked up, all ears.

  “This is an adult matter, scamp,” Elizabeth said softly, giving the scrawny girl a motherly pat on the rump. “You will have to occupy yourself elsewhere.”

  She stuck out her lower lip, but Liz, who was wrestling with her skirts so she could stand, added, “It is your bedtime. Go wash, and I will be up to tuck you in soon, love.”

  The girl put away her textbooks, did a cursory curtsy, then ran from the room, the sound of her footsteps pattering down the oak-floored hallway.

  The girl was gone. No need to pretend. His plastered smile crumbled.

  “What is it, dear?” Liz patted his hand.

  He squeezed the comforting fingers. “I’m in quite a pickle, and before you say it, yes, you did warn me off. But I could not have foreseen how bad things could get.”

  She was uncharacteristically quiet, which meant she was truly concerned.

  “I knew a man, David, five years ago. We spent a week together. It was heaven; we squandered time laughing, loving. I actually thought I was in love. Ridiculous, I know, having only just met him. But he was so handsome, bright, and caring, or at least he seemed so at the time. The man he pretended to be and I were perfect together. But then he just up and left. I had no way of finding him, didn’t know where he lived. Broke my heart a little.”

  She bit her lower lip, eyes gleaming with shared misery.

  “Turns out he was in the navy, suppose he was scared, so he ended it as quietly as he could. Unfortunately, he is Lady Prudence’s brother; you met him today.”

  “The brooding man who wished to speak with you? He would be relatively attractive, I suppose, if he ever demonstrated a sense of humor.”

  Relatively attractive? Hell, the man was bloody gorgeous, humor or no. Even now he had to dampen down arousal just talking about him. “He recently returned from time in the South Seas.”

  “Oh my!”

  “Afraid so. He has not taken the news his sister is going to marry a sodomite very well and is being quite vocal on the subject.” He ran a hand through his hair, pulling just enough to cause pain and focus his thoughts. “I was content with my decision, Liz, and I know Lady Prudence would have made me a fine wife. I’m sure we would have gotten along glowingly. But now… I’m not certain what to do. I’m not sure I can marry her, but how can I call the thing off without a major scandal?”

  “It seems obvious you have to call the wedding off.”

  “If I had someone like David in my life, it would be an easy decision to make.”

  “I do not imagine he will allow you to go through with the nuptials. That makes the decision quite simple.”

  “Hmm, suppose you’re right. So yes, my decision has been made for me.”

  “If he is so against it, then he can help assuage her and their family’s disappointment.”

  He shrugged.

  “Anyway, he might still be interested in you? That could be one of the reasons he is against the marriage.”

/>   Remembering David’s stiff shoulders, his aloofness all the way back to London, he said, “No, I don’t believe so.”

  “Are you certain? It is not like you to give up so easily.”

  He thought about the few minutes of bliss in the hunting cottage, but then shook his head. “No, even if he were interested, he’s in the navy. He’ll be hieing off all over the world, leaving for two, three years at a time.” Getting killed and never coming back. Damn, he’d not thought of that threat before. David could get killed. He clenched his jaw at that terribly depressing thought until his teeth ached.

  “You know I want stability. Someone to share my life with. He could never fill that role. Not that he’s offered.”

  “If you want him, find a way to keep him in London with you.”

  He rubbed his hands over his face. “God, why didn’t I listen to you months ago? I would never have seen David again, and all this turmoil would not exist.”

  She winked. “You may be a few days older than me, Randall, but I have always been the wisest of us two.”

  He laughed. She could always make him laugh. “Saucy wench.”

  “Don’t marry the girl. Between us and Vincent, we can find a way to break the betrothal gently so no one gets hurt and reputations stay intact.”

  He snorted. “And how will we do that? Any of the typical excuses will ruin her reputation, and I don’t want to hurt her. She is rather likable.”

  “You should ask this young man of yours—David, was it? Surely he has put some thought into the matter.”

  He nodded and looked toward heaven, realizing God would not help him, an unnatural, achieve his dreams. “But I’m not sure I can stand being around him. I just might get my heart broken again.”

  “Oh, my sweet.” She gathered him into a maternal embrace.

  Her smothering affection calmed his racing pulse and rumbling stomach.

  A voice, more like rough rocks falling against shale than a human utterance, made him jump.