by KJ Charles
Alec could feel, physically feel, the blood rushing to his cheeks. “That’s—that’s—”
“Entirely up to you,” Crozier completed for him. “Notwithstanding, you seem to be struggling with all sorts of moral complexities and remorse and self-doubt, none of which I find troublesome. I could take charge of this, Lord Alexander.”
“Take charge,” Alec repeated.
“Make the decisions. Tell you what to say, and write, and do. I will make sure you come out of this job clean; you have my word as a dishonest man on that. Do as I tell you, and it will all be taken care of. Might it not be easier, and more pleasant, simply to do as you’re told?”
Alec’s toes curled in his shoes. His heart was pounding with a mixture of humiliation, anger, and desperation. I’ll fucking make you still rang in his ears. “And how far does doing as I’m told extend?”
“Smile,” Crozier said. “The waiter is coming. We’re having a pleasant chat. Smile, now.”
Alec forced his mouth into the required shape. “I’m not hungry.”
“But you’re going to eat. Ah, marvellous,” he added to the waiter with an instant smile. “Tell me, is Monsieur Francois offering his sweetbreads tonight? For both of us then, and a half bottle of Pouligny-Montrachet, I think. One hates to rush a good wine, but Lord Alexander has an engagement. Thank you.”
“Do I have an engagement?” Alec asked when the waiter had gone.
Crozier divided the last of the champagne between their glasses. “Do you want one?”
“I don’t know what you’re asking.” Alec felt a little flown by drink, very tired, exceedingly on edge. “I don’t understand any of this. I don’t know what to do. I had the most awful row with George and Annabel and I’m terrified my father won’t write back and it will all have been in vain. I don’t know what you want from me, and I’m tired of trying to make decisions when I’m not even sure I should be doing this at all.”
“Then let me make them. It seems to me you’ve enough to do being Alec Pyne, illustrator. Why don’t you put Lord Alexander under my direction?”
Alec could have wept. It was a momentary impulse, but so strong he had to shut his eyes briefly to regain control. He moistened his lips. Crozier’s eyes flicked to his mouth as he did it, and he saw one brow tilt. “As long as—as long as you understand the difference.”
“Well, I think I do,” Crozier said. “Do you? It seems to me that Alec is a courageous, talented, dedicated artist making a success of himself on his own terms, with admirable determination for one brought up to be an idle waste of air.”
“Oh.” Alec felt himself going pink with shock and, undeniably, a twinge of pride.
“Whereas,” Crozier continued, “and do correct me if I’m wrong, Lord Alexander might be that very idle waste of air. Lacking in all determination, all too ready to bend to the whim of a stronger will. Positively wanting to be given orders—or even not to be given a choice?—in a way that Alec’s pride couldn’t possibly condone.”
“You make me sound like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”
“Dr. Jekyll’s hidden urges were monstrous ones, if I recall. Selfish cruelties and callousness. I think your secret vices are an entirely different matter.”
“What about you?” Alec demanded. “Do you have a Mr. Hyde, or am I talking to him now?”
Crozier threw his head back and laughed. “Ha! No, the good doctor’s potion wouldn’t do much for me. I fear there’s no virtuous do-gooder lurking within.”
“You don’t have a secret life as a vicar?”
“No, I’m straightforwardly disgraceful.” Crozier grinned at him. “And you’re changing the subject.”
“So would you, if you were me.”
“My friend, if I were you, I’d have gone out and taken what I wanted years ago. Or, rather, given it. May I make a proposal?”
“What?” Alex said, with some trepidation.
“We’ll eat. Discuss work and theatre and light subjects. And then we’ll go somewhere private and you will tell me, quite honestly, what, let us say, Lord Alexander wants, without shame or prevarication or fear of being overheard. The truth. Have you ever told anyone the truth?”
“More often than you, I’d bet!”
Crozier grinned crookedly. “On this specific subject. No, I didn’t think so, somehow.”
“Perhaps that’s because I don’t want to.”
“Don’t you?”
Alec shifted in his chair. He wanted to keep fighting, and he wanted to surrender. He felt an urge to toss Crozier’s presumption back in his face, and a stronger one to give in, to confess the shameful desires and longings and see what happened. He wondered if he’d feel this urge to confess after participating in a robbery. Only if the policeman is particularly handsome, he told himself, and took up his glass to stifle a nervous laugh.
The sweetbreads arrived. Alec had forgotten Crozier had ordered for him, and the thought gave him an internal squirm that was somewhere between uncomfortable and enticing. He’d never have chosen sweetbreads, left to himself. They were delicious.
“So, the Shakespeare book,” Crozier said. “Have you heard anything from the publisher yet?”
Alec made some reply, was drawn to explain the commissioning process for illustrators and the likely competitors for the role, and to his own astonishment became caught up in the conversation. It felt unreal to be discussing work, and a glass of Pouligny-Montrachet on top of the champagne added to that, but he rarely had the chance to talk shop except at the Sketch, and there he was always in competition with louder, more confident men who knew they belonged. Crozier wanted to listen to him, or was astonishingly good at pretending to, and Alec was startled to discover that his plate was clear.
Crozier summoned the waiter with a crook of his finger. Alec said, “Surely I—”
“Not at all. My pleasure. Shall we go?”
Alec followed him out. Neither had brought an overcoat; the evenings were getting warm, the air thick. Alec almost wished it was colder. He felt overheated and sweaty.
They walked in what any observer might have taken for companionable silence. Alec wondered if he’d find himself pushed down an alleyway. The tension throbbed in his wrists; he flexed his hands, trying to loosen fingers that felt clumsy.
If they went down an alleyway. If Crozier told him to go to his knees. If he could just forget, let go—
He hadn’t thought about his family situation in an hour. He realised that with a small shock and felt a dull throb of misery at the reminder, but Crozier was knocking on a discreet door of a very ordinary-looking house, and greeted the slab-faced man who admitted them with a murmured word. Alec followed him in, trying to look around without showing that he was doing so. The house seemed to be a hotel, with a certain amount of noise and tobacco smoke issuing from down the hall. Crozier led the way upstairs to a small room, and ushered Alec in.
He’d expected a bedroom. He’d honestly expected that, rather than a sitting room with a small card table, a chaise longue, a couple of armchairs by the empty fireplace.
Crozier gestured to one of the chairs, and locked the door, an act that didn’t make Alec feel any more secure. “There’s brandy in the decanter, although it’s bloody awful here.”
“I’ve had enough, I think.”
“You aren’t missing anything.” He seated himself in the opposite chair, steepling his fingers. “Well, then. We said you’d tell me what it is you want.”
“No, you said that. I don’t recall agreeing.”
Crozier’s lips curled. “And yet you’re here.”
That was undeniable. Alec stared at his own hands, ink-stained, the index finger dented by use of a pen. The faint noise of male carousing rose from downstairs.
“Tell me about Lord Alexander,” Crozier said softly. “You’ve drunk Dr. Jekyll’s potion. Alec Pyne goes in like the weatherman to his house, Lord Alexander comes out. What does he want?”
“Oh, not to be responsible,” Alec said. His v
oice was rather thin. “To have someone—someone like you—tell him what to do. Not to have to struggle for job after job, always hoping and worrying. Not to feel guilty he can’t support himself and his sisters while his brother feels guilty for not supporting him. Not to be constantly aware of—of things that are wrong. Not to care they’re wrong.”
“No. That’s you,” Crozier said. “Lord Alexander doesn’t care. Lord Alexander is the weaknesses you fight, the moments of indulgence, the truth you’d prefer wasn’t true. What does he want?”
Alec wanted to say that was nonsense. But it had been so easy to argue against his siblings, to reject Cara’s insistence, and the promise they’d made her, and the lifetime of miserable helpless anger. He’d felt the power of the words as he’d spoken them, because they were true to his feelings in a horrible shameful way that he’d been trying to run from.
He tried to run from so much.
“And what does it mean if I tell you? That all of it is real? That it’s what I am deep down?”
“That it’s part of you,” Crozier said. “Why should it not be? Dr. Jekyll came up with his potion to separate out his worse impulses from his better precisely because he had worse impulses. Everyone does. His tragedy came about because he tried to eliminate them.”
“Whereas you think I should embrace them.”
“I think you should acknowledge they exist, and then spend less time making yourself miserable about the fact that you’re imperfect. Really, if you think you’re flawed, you ought to spend a day with Templeton.”
“But I don’t want those impulses to exist,” Alec said through his teeth. “That’s the point.”
“But they do. That’s the point. You can try to eliminate every trace of them like Dr Jekyll and tear yourself apart, though preferably not in such a Gothic manner. Or you can accept that your soul is as tarnished and mouse-nibbled as everyone else’s and consider what to do about it. You aren’t really going to give up your work and grovel to your father for income, are you? No matter how much easier and more pleasant it might make your life?”
“No.”
“Because?”
“Because it would be utterly shameful of me.”
“Why? Where does the shame lie? Who would it harm?”
“Me,” Alec said. “I’d be revolted by myself. It wouldn’t be more pleasant, it would be weak, and wrong. Utterly wrong.”
“Weak,” Crozier repeated, dwelling on the word. “Very well. In that intriguing conversation a couple of days ago, you told me that whether you like taking orders depends on the order. Do you remember that?”
“Yes.”
“Is that another of Lord Alexander’s foibles, to enjoy submission? Is that weak too?”
Crozier’s eyes were intent. Alec swallowed. He didn’t like this probing. It felt as though a scalpel were gently separating congested layers of thoughts that had become matted and tangled together, and it hurt to have them picked apart. He’d thought Crozier was simply going to fuck him. “I. Uh.”
“You aware that there is an entire industry of houses and whores that cater to such desires, because so many people share them?”
“Are you talking about flagellation and that sort of thing? Because I don’t want that. At all,” Alec added, to avoid doubt.
“Don’t want to want it, or actually don’t want it?”
“The latter. I’ve no idea why anyone would enjoy being whipped.”
“No accounting for taste,” Crozier said. “So what is your taste, Lord Alexander? What particular orders do you want to take? What is it you’d like to be made to do?”
Alec shut his eyes. He heard the soft sound of Crozier rising from his chair, sensed movement, felt a hand close gently on his chin.
“I asked you a question,” Crozier said. “Answer me. Do you want to be told what to do—in the right circumstances?”
Alec’s breathing rasped in his own ears. He wanted to say something, something clever or defiant, to push Crozier’s hand away and tell him he was entirely wrong. It would be so much easier if he was wrong.
“I think Lord Alexander is looking to surrender himself,” Crozier said softly. “That can go bad easily.” Alec wasn’t aware he’d reacted to that, but he felt Crozier’s fingers tighten slightly all the same. “And, I suspect, did. What are you thinking of?”
“There was a man.” Alec didn’t open his eyes. The room was warm; Crozier’s fingers were firm but not tight. He’d never told anyone this; there was nobody he could tell for the shame of it. Nobody except this stranger-friend, this openly dishonest man who demanded the truth, and now the words came with surprising ease. “I wanted—oh, just to have him do it. Up against a wall. I didn’t need him to care for what I wanted; I just wanted him to have his way, you see. And I said that, and when he was done he, uh, he pulled me round and spat in my face. So when you ask what I want—”
“I see,” Crozier said. “Christ. Good Lord, there are some cunts in this world.”
Alec’s eyes snapped open. Crozier released his face and propped his backside on the arm of the chair. “Do you know this fellow’s name?”
Alec shook his head. “He was just a man. Someone I met in a public house. I suppose I—”
“Don’t finish that sentence,” Crozier warned him. “Unless you were going to say ‘shouldn’t have kicked him in the balls till he passed out’, and even then I’d disagree. Well. That sounds a very discouraging experience.”
Alec attempted a smile. “You might say so.”
“Extraordinary. Here I am, entirely consumed by thoughts of pushing you up against a wall myself, biting your lovely neck and hearing you gasp as I have my way with that delectable arse, and you tell me about this mannerless tosspot. I’m offended.”
Alec stared up, speechless. Crozier brushed a strand of hair over his ear, a touch so gentle that Alec shivered. “If you want to be used, Lord Alexander, you have no idea how I should enjoy using you. And I don’t spoil my tools.”
Oh God. Alec’s throat was closing, and the blood was rushing away from his head. Crozier’s smile crooked at his silence. “I did say if.” He was so close Alec could feel his heat. They hadn’t kissed; they hadn’t even touched. “Explain it to me. The heart of it, the thing you need. Not to be hurt, I grasp that, and not to be treated with contempt. So what is it that’s making your breath short and your eyes so deliciously dark at this moment? What is it you want?”
“I don’t know. I can’t say.”
“Lord Alexander?” Crozier took his chin again, fingers a little harder this time. “I want you to explain. I don’t care how little you want to. You will tell me.”
Alec swallowed. The room felt unbearably hot and close. “Not to—not to have a choice, I suppose.”
Crozier gave a slow nod. “To say no and be overruled, powerless in a ravisher’s hands? Is that your pleasure?”
“No. No, that’s not—I don’t—”
“Spit it out,” Crozier said softly. “And don’t shut your eyes. Look at me.”
Alec clenched his hands, making himself get the words out. “It’s not that I want to be forced to anything. I just want someone else in charge. That’s all.”
“Ah.” It was a breath. “Not someone cruel, or careless. Just someone to take the burden of choice and responsibility and decision from you.”
“Yes. Yes, that’s it.” It sounded extraordinarily simple, put that way, or extraordinarily foolish. “I dare say that’s contemptible.”
“You say wrong,” Crozier told him. “A pliable, obedient young nobleman doing my bidding is the best idea I’ve heard in months. If you wanted to pant and beg and spend at my command, of course.”
“Oh God.”
Crozier’s fingers released Alec’s chin, skimmed down his throat. “You understand that I’m not a good man, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“And yet you’d put yourself in my hands anyway.” It wasn’t exactly a question; it wasn’t quite a statement either
.
“Yes,” Alec said anyway. It was what he wanted and Crozier had stripped it bare for them both.
“Entirely in my hands. Which is quite appropriate, since these hands steal jewels.” He ran his fingers up Alec’s neck, stroking the skin against the grain of stubble. “Such a pretty thing. Are you hard?”
Alec nodded. Crozier’s fingers tightened a fraction. “I like words, Lord Alexander. If I ask you a question, I expect an answer. Are you hard?”
“Yes.”
“Because?”
“You. You’re making me hard.”
Crozier rose, without letting go of Alec’s neck, manoeuvring himself round so he leaned over the back of the chair. “Unbutton yourself.”
Alec reached for his waistband. His fingers were shaking. Crozier said, “Slowly. No. Slower.”
One button. A second, a third. Alec had kept his evening dress for longer than a man of wealth would; he was glad that it wasn’t fashionably and tightly cut. He loosened his drawers, couldn’t help inhaling as his fingers bumped his own prick.
“Take it out,” Crozier said from over him. His hand encompassed Alec’s throat, pushing back slightly, just enough to be not quite comfortable. “And take hold of it. Don’t move.”
Alec swallowed, his throat working against Crozier’s fingers, his prick swollen against his own, throbbing for attention. Crozier gave a soft hiss. “Beautiful. You’ll do what I tell you.”
“Yes.”
“Let’s see you play with it. Slowly, now. Slide your fingers, up and down. Move your fingers round, I want to watch you.” Alec adjusted his grip, dreamlike. “You’re going to bring yourself off, very slowly, while I watch. I want to see you, and I want to hear you.”
Alec groaned low, the sound vibrating in his throat and against Crozier’s palm. He felt movement as Crozier leaned close.
“Rubbing yourself off in full evening dress, on the orders of a man whose face you can’t see. There’s a position to be in, Lord Alexander. Spread your legs wider. And slow down. I’m going to take my time.”
“Are you—” Alec began, and clamped his lips shut.