by KJ Charles
Clem’s bedroom wasn’t large but it had a wrought-iron bedstead big enough for two. That was a luxury he’d bought himself a few years ago, and it still made him happy every night. He’d never shared it before.
Rowley sat on the bed undoing his shoestrings as Clem put Cat out, muttering, “Lock the doors, lock the doors,” as he did it. The kitchen door to keep the outside out, then his study door to keep the inside in.
Rowley was in his bed, eyes closed, lying on his side. It was cold, with the bedroom fire long out. Clem undressed rapidly, deciding to neglect his nightshirt, then put out the oil lamp and slid between the sheets beside him. He put one arm carefully over Rowley’s bare shoulder, and felt the smaller man wriggle toward him so they were body to body, Rowley’s hair in Clem’s face, his warmth on Clem’s skin.
It was so intimate, it stopped Clem’s breath. To be together, to hold each other, to have his arm draped over Rowley’s hip and Rowley’s quiet intensity by his side.
Clem knew his family story wasn’t edifying. Some of the nastier boys at Repton had accused him, in the worst terms, of giving himself airs because he was an earl’s bastard. Clem had never been able to see what there was to give himself airs about in being casually conceived on an unwilling woman, no matter by whom. The fact that he’d grown up in a stately home seemed of far less import than the fact that he hadn’t been meant to exist at all.
He lived with it, as he lived with a number of things he didn’t like, because there was no alternative. But there was something about the way Rowley’s eyes had widened and his mouth had tensed. Clem wasn’t marvellous at reading faces, but he could tell anger when he saw it. Anger on his behalf, anger over things Clem couldn’t be angry about because he couldn’t take the risk. He’d spent his life carefully not looking into an abyss of rage like the pit of hellfire he’d so often been told awaited pagans, because if he ever really looked, he feared he might be angry forever.
Rowley grunted into his neck. Clem realised his arm had tightened unreasonably. “Sorry.”
Rowley squirmed sleepily against him. “T’morrow.”
Chapter 8
Rowley had no idea where he was when he woke up. The mattress was disorientingly larger than that of his own narrow bed; he was used to seeing his dragon’s sharp-toothed snarl first thing; mostly, there was a mass of black hair in his face and a warm, smooth back against his chest.
He’d slept in Clem’s bed.
The foolhardiness of that sent a jolt of panic through him, so that he had to clench all his muscles at once rather than spring out of bed. Had Clem even locked the door? What if someone came in?
They wouldn’t, he told himself. Clem wasn’t a fool, he’d never risk it if Elsie or Polly was likely to come in. Still, the risk they were running, for nothing except closeness…
Closeness, peace, a quiet night’s sleep. Rowley hadn’t imagined he’d sleep. His attempt at a nap yesterday had been filled with blood and fire, the feel of a man’s face ripping open as he pulled the wolf’s teeth across it, the maddened rage in Spim’s eyes. Not to mention the conviction that he was hearing, or about to hear, stealthy footsteps, and would look up to see a bloodied rampsman standing over him, a killer with pliers, or a hatchet, or a flaming torch.
He’d lost his goods and his safety and his peace of mind yesterday; he’d thought he’d never sleep again; and now the clocks were chiming seven and he actually felt rested.
“Clem?” he whispered.
“Mph.” Clem rolled over. His eyebrows were tangled with sleep, the long black hairs in wild disarray. Rowley had never known anyone with eyebrows that could tangle. He looked slightly confused for a second, then his glorious smile dawned. “Good morning.”
“Morning.” Rowley angled his face for a kiss. Clem met it and held, hand sliding over Rowley’s arse and up his back, then settling his hands and letting his tongue move in lazy, confident exploration.
Confident. Rowley wasn’t sure if his breath caught then for the way Clem was relaxing into their lovemaking or for the ownership of his hands on Rowley’s body. He was quite sure that he didn’t want to say We should be careful, let alone I have to see a man about a badger, or to think about any of the things that would descend on him when they got out of bed and he had to face the day. He just needed a little time here, alone with Clem, pretending that nothing else mattered.
“Door?” he whispered.
“Locked.” Clem licked at his lips. Rowley could feel his prick, morning-stiff, jousting with Clem’s; Clem’s fingers tapping down his spine, vertebra after vertebra, as if checking that every part of Rowley was there. “We have to be careful, I’m afraid the bed might creak.” His hand met the crease of Rowley’s arse, one finger stroking a little further. Rowley shifted his legs apart in response to the silent command, and felt Clem’s finger nudge. “Mmm. I feel like…let me see. Shift down the bed a bit?”
Rowley did as bid, lying supine. Clem pushed himself to his knees and swung one leg over so he straddled Rowley’s upper chest, trapping his arms, his stand very much in Rowley’s face. “Oh.”
Clem hunched over to bring his face close, spoke low. “So if I told you, I’d like you to suck me, and not touch you till I’d done…would you like that?”
“Mmm.”
“Only, it sounds awfully like me telling you what to do, and you just having to take it. I feel as though I’d be using you for my own pleasure, and not doing anything about you, and you’d have to wait for ages.”
“Mmm.” That came out rather high-pitched.
“Oh, well,” Clem said, straightening up. “Life is hard.”
“It’s not the only one,” Rowley managed, and opened his mouth as Clem leaned forward, took a firm grip on the iron bedstead, and pushed his prick forward for attention.
Rowley had never felt ashamed of his desires for men, but his liking for passivity had always been a shameful thing. He’d been a late developer, still a small and scrawny boy when his fellows were unofficially handfasting coster-girls and flower-sellers; by the time he’d grown into himself he’d spent so long coping in a world he couldn’t see, son of first a loathed and violent man then a murderer, that isolation seemed his natural state of being. But it was one thing—a miserable thing but an unavoidable one—to be condemned to furtive couplings and anonymous encounters; it was another to have those encounters and be pushed aside as passive, inert, dull.
Clem’s hands were gripping the bedstead as he gently fucked Rowley’s mouth, a slow, steady movement that gave Rowley all the space he needed to work. His thighs, strong and muscular, were tight on Rowley’s arms, keeping him still, so all he could use was lips and teeth and tongue. It would take ages to bring Clem off like this, without his hands; ages while Rowley’s own cock would stand untouched, stiff with need, not so much as bumping against Clem’s back, because this was all about Clem’s pleasure, and nothing made Rowley harder than that.
He angled his neck so that the ridged roof of his mouth rubbed across the head of Clem’s prick, loving the gargling noise that elicited.
It wasn’t that he wanted someone else doing all the work. It absolutely wasn’t that he wanted to be hurt or degraded, as he knew plenty of men did, to have someone order him to lick his boots, let alone to bring out whips or canes or spiky things. It was simply that, while he enjoyed a climax as much as the next man, they came and went. The exquisite agony of anticipation, of abnegation and self-denial and feeling his blood pounding in his stiff stand without relief, the bewildering, all-encompassing thrill of being Clem’s subject and his object and entirely at his pleasure…that could last for hours.
Or not, because he could taste Clem now, the tang of clear liquid before he spent. Rowley hollowed his cheeks, sucking harder, lavishing attention on Clem, listening to his harsh breaths. Stringing this out, because he could lie here with Clem fucking his mouth all day.
Clem stilled his movements, pulling back a little. “Stop. Oh heavens. Rowley. I’m trying to decide wh
at I want to do to you.” His prick, hard in Rowley’s mouth, made it impossible to respond. Rowley gave it a little curl of the tongue instead, saw Clem twitch. “Gah. Oh God, you look so good like that. You’re so…mine. I do love you.”
Rowley stared up, silenced. Clem smiled down into his eyes. “My beautiful preserver. Hold on.” He swung his leg back over, shuffling to one side. “Right. I want you to stroke yourself. With your hand. I want to watch that, how you like it. Only you’ve to tell me when you’re nearly there.”
Rowley moved his hand, dreamlike, closing his fingers around his prick. He had no idea if Clem was expecting him to put on some sort of show; he had no idea how; he couldn’t think. He just moved his sweaty fingers, watching Clem’s eyes, slowly at first, then faster, finding a rhythm. Clem reached out almost idly and took hold of his nipple, rolling it in a firm grip, then squeezing just off time with Rowley’s movements, and he could feel his balls drawing tight, feel the pleasure peaking.
“Close,” he whispered.
“Stop.”
Rowley made a strangled noise. It almost hurt to obey, but he did, letting go, feeling his own leaking wet on his hand.
“Thank you,” Clem said softly. “I thought you might finish sucking me off now, if you like?”
Rowley couldn’t have formed words if he’d tried. He was painfully, agonisingly close. This was torture. He nodded, and Clem straddled him once more, movements clumsy, hands shaking a little. “Good Rowley. My very, very good Rowley. Is it difficult? Only I really do think I’d like to make you wait and wait, because you have no idea how lovely you look, all openmouthed and desperate. Oh, God, yes, suck me.”
Rowley’s whole world felt like it had shrunk to this room, this bed, the throbbing need between his legs and the hard prick in his mouth and the words in his ears. He wanted to writhe and beg. He sucked and licked, and stopped again, obedient to Clem’s command, keeping it going as long as was required of him.
“Oh,” Clem said. “Rowley. I’m going to—in your mouth?” Rowley tightened his lips in answer. Clem was breathing hard. He moved, thrusting a little too deep, a little clumsy, and Rowley couldn’t have cared less. Again, once more, and then he was pulsing into Rowley’s mouth, and there was nothing but the taste and feel of Clem’s spend and his deep, incautiously loud groan of pleasure.
Rowley swallowed, for lack of anywhere convenient to spit. “Clem?”
Clem’s shoulders were heaving, eyes shut. “Give me a moment. Oh God. That was wonderful.”
Did you mean to say “I love you”? He wasn’t sure Clem had noticed his own words, and found he didn’t dare ask.
Clem clambered off, rolling onto the bed beside him and pulling the blanket up to his hips. “Was that, making you wait—”
“So good.”
“If we had all morning, do you know what I’d do?” Clem propped himself on an elbow and trailed his fingers between Rowley’s legs. “I’d have you do that again, toss yourself to almost there, and then I’d stop you, and—I don’t know, have a cup of tea? And keep doing it, maybe even till I came again, not letting you spend, but keeping you nearly there—”
“Jesus Christ.” Rowley’s voice didn’t sound like his own.
“I’m definitely going to do that at some point. You can’t imagine how you look. But we don’t have all day, so…I’d love to suck you, if you don’t mind?”
“I don’t mind.”
“Well, no, I dare say you don’t. It’s only that I might not be very good at it, at first.”
“To be honest,” Rowley said, “you won’t need to be. If you don’t want me spending in your mouth, maybe your hand would be better?”
“Warn me,” Clem said, and shifted over, his mouth closing, tentative and careful, on Rowley’s prick.
Rowley’s fingers clenched tight with the effort of holding back. Clem was obviously finding it a challenge, breathing loudly through his nostrils in an almost schoolboyish way as his mouth moved, awkward and exploratory rather than setting a rhythm. That was the only reason Rowley didn’t blow at once, because this was glorious. His pent-up excitement, Clem’s long lashes and tousled hair, the throb of blood in his groin, Clem’s little frown of intense concentration, all for him—
“Hand,” he jerked out. “Quick.”
Clem wriggled a little so that he was resting his head on Rowley’s thigh, and took a grip on his prick, sliding his fingers over the wetness there. One tug, a second, and Rowley was spending as he hadn’t in years, like a boy again, his entire being reduced to the pulse of blood and spunk.
He lay, gasping and exhausted, and felt Clem press a kiss on his hip. “Was that good?”
“I think the doctors are right,” Rowley rasped. “It does drain your vital energies.”
Clem gave a sudden splutter of laughter. “We had a master at school who went on and on about that, how tossing yourself off would exhaust your life forces and leave you a drooling imbecile. I was so worried after that, until Tim pointed out that if it was true, everyone in the dorm would already be an incapable. And then in the next lesson—” He choked. “—in the next lesson, the master started talking about it again, and Hughes Minor began to slur his words, and—and he started to dribble—” He was shaking with laughter now, and Rowley was laughing too, as much from the contagion of hilarity as for the story of Hughes Minor’s misbehaviour, the pair of them spent and happy and close.
It couldn’t last, of course. Rowley had to get up, splash his face with icy water, and dress himself, then sneak out of Clem’s room ready to tell anyone he encountered that he’d fallen asleep in the armchair. It was not yet eight on a Sunday morning, though, and he met nobody. It felt like a good omen.
—
They went together to the badger-buyer’s townhouse on Great Coram Street, once Rowley had turned the sales docket up among his papers, smoky but not burned. He didn’t know if Clem was worried about his safety, or taking the day off, and didn’t want to ask.
It seemed, in the light of day, even a yellowy-brown overcast London day, an absurd quest. There were so many ghastly tasks in front of him—cleaning, throwing out all the damaged stock, alerting the insurance company—and surely the answer to arson and murder didn’t lie in the paw of a stuffed badger. But it had been Clem’s idea, Rowley wanted to take it seriously, and it was only an omnibus ride to make sure. Rowley even brought along a suitably old and crackled piece of paper as a replacement scroll, with a brand new bit of ribbon to tie it, and couldn’t help a little glow at Clem’s admiration for his foresight.
They bumped hips on the omnibus and walked arm in arm from the stop to their destination, and Rowley wanted to drag Clem down some convenient alley where they could be unseen and ask the damn question. Did you mean it? Do you love me? Could you? Why?
It was impossible to ask, so impossible that by contrast it was a thoroughly simple matter to explain to the customer’s footman that he had to check the badger mount. He’d made up some nonsense about whether the arsenical soap had taken properly as a reason, but he might as well have repeated Abracadabra for all anyone cared. He simply poked at the badger a bit, then eased the scroll out of its paw, sniffed it, announced, “Yes, I thought as much,” and replaced it with the one he’d brought, feeling slightly giddy at his own daring.
“I have it,” he told Clem, emerging. “Whether it’s any use or just scrap paper remains to be seen, but I have it.”
“Oh, well done. Shall we look?”
They were no more than a minute’s walk from Brunswick Square. Its flowerbeds were wet earth and its trees skeletal and soot-blackened, but Rowley was interested in a bench to sit on, rather than the view. He hesitated before tackling the red ribbon around the paper. Clem looked so absurdly excited, his eyes sparkling with enjoyment. “It may be nothing. And then we’ll be back to square one.”
“I know. But it’s nice to think it might be a treasure map.”
Rowley spluttered. “You’re expecting a treasure map?”
/> “I’m not expecting one as such, but it would be nice. That or a will that proves you’re the lost heir to the crown, but I think a treasure map would be best, so we can snatch the booty and live in luxury.”
“I can see you’ve given this some thought.”
“Haven’t you?”
Rowley’s speculations had been along equally melodramatic but decidedly gloomier lines. “A confession to the darkest of crimes,” he suggested. “Written by a lady of the first consequence. The Duchess of Such-and-Such, admitting that in her wild youth she was, uh—”
“A lady pirate, like Grace O’Malley, raiding ships off the coast of Ireland.” Clem grinned, then his smile faded. “And all of that would be marvellous but—you’d better have a look.”
The ribbon was old, tied in a bow, and the dust worked into the knot told Rowley it hadn’t been undone in years. He tugged gently at the rolled paper and felt it slide through the satin loop. He eased it out and unrolled it.
It looked like a sheet from a ledger, printed with ruled lines and text to make up three identical forms that had been filled in by a copperplate hand. Rowley squinted close. “Page thirty-seven. Marriage solemnised in the parish of Chepping Wycombe. Joseph Coaley of this parish and Margaret Mayhew of this parish were married by banns on the twenty-first of December 1849 at the Church of St. Peter by— Fuck me ragged!” Clem gave him a startled glance, as well he might. “I beg your pardon, but here, see. They were married ‘by me, William Lugtrout.’ ”
They looked at each other.
“It is,” Clem said. “It must be what they were after. That can’t be chance. But who’s Joseph Coaley? What else is on the page?” He craned closer.
“Joseph Coaley to Margaret Mayhew. Thaddeus Graham to Jessamine Tiley. George Smith to Matilda Smith. No relation, I suppose, unless that’s what all this is about.” Rowley turned the paper over. “Page thirty-eight. Edmund Taillefer—”