by Selina Kray
“I cannot be thankful you knew such pain, even if it led our paths to cross. But I am grateful to know something of you at last.”
“My dearest Kip,” Hiero murmured into his neck, “you know me as no one ever has nor ever will.” He angled his face that they might gaze in each other’s eyes. Hiero caught him in a look more unguarded, more honest, more real than Tim had ever perceived there before. A breathtaking look aimed at him alone. “You hold my heart.”
Tim smoothed his fingers along Hiero’s cherished visage, claimed his kiss. Rested their brows together that they might simply be, two lovers with their limbs, lives, souls entangled. Guided Hiero’s arms around him to let him take what he wanted, he who had given so much. Met his lips in a crushing embrace, shifted into Hiero’s lap that he might manhandle Tim at will.
As Tim desperately hoped he would.
In a rare show of strength, Hiero hoisted Tim up and carried him over to the bed. Tim wasted no time spreading himself across the coverlet, snaring Hiero by the hips with two nimble legs. Tim made quick work of his shirt buttons, parting the satiny fabric to expose his chest, should Hiero wish to sup or fondle. He teased down the waist of his bed trousers, inviting Hiero to aid in their disposal, eager, so eager now for his touch and his taste and the hard thrust of his prick. To strip his body bare as Hiero had stripped himself naked in spirit.
When no sensuous hands traveled the length of his frame, Tim glanced up to see...
Hiero struggling with the clasps of his shirt. Brow wrinkled, fingers fumbling. Tim leapt up, caught them in his own.
“You owe me nothing. You’ve laid yourself as bare as—”
Hiero silenced his concerns with a chuckle. “Seems I’m out of practice. Will you help?”
“If you’re certain.”
“I would give you all of me. Of that I am certain.” Their heated breaths mingled as Tim unhooked the meddlesome clasp. “Ah! There.” Hiero shrugged out of his shirt and unlaced his trousers, which flopped to the floor. “Freedom at last.”
Tim only had eyes for Hiero’s radiant smile, but his hands, less prone to distraction, hastened to grab their fill of Hiero’s plump buttocks. Too riled by recent events and conversation to take his time, though he whispered a promise to every inch of Hiero’s satiny skin that he would devote the evening to its exploration, Tim stopped his mouth with a deep, delving kiss.
Hiero crushed Tim to him; they moaned at the first thrilling press of their naked bodies, chest to furry chest, hip to bucking hip, prick to jutting prick. But all that glorious contact wasn’t enough for Tim, who collapsed back so Hiero could climb atop him, taking the full weight of his sleek form. Tim laughed, dizzy with joy and arousal as Hiero licked down to his collar, sucking on the fleshy notch found there.
“No niceties.” Tim rubbed the head of his cock up and down the coarse trail of hair that bisected Hiero’s abdomen. He stifled a scream of pleasure at the sensation. “Take me. As only you can.”
Hiero lifted his head, his eyes a sparkling obsidian. “I had rather thought you might care to... sample my wares?”
“Is that what you would prefer?” Tim asked, fighting to keep the needfulness from his face. His Hiero would have whatever he desired on this day of all days, no matter how much Tim ached to be owned by him. Which was very, very much.
Tim knew he’d lost the battle when Hiero chuckled, his lustrous look brightening all the more.
“We truly are well matched.”
“Some might say,” Tim panted as Hiero saddled between his legs, “we flirt with perfection.”
“Only flirt?”
“The day is young. And I have passion to spare.”
Hiero watched the shadow play of wind-tousled branches on the bedroom wall, feeling replete. Splayed across the newly christened sheets of Kip’s nominal bed, without a stitch of cover except for Kip’s warm body melting into his legs and back, Hiero basked in the moment’s hard-won leisure. Outside a howling late-summer storm thrashed the trees and gloomed the sky. But here, in what he privately called their apartments, a sirocco had swept across the parched dunes of his skin, raining pleasure.
His Kip had made good on his promise to worship every inch of Hiero’s sinuous frame with lips and touch. He began by massaging him into a near-hypnotic state. Then with the ardor of a true explorer, he mapped every plane and curve of Hiero’s body, from the coarse bracken beneath his arms to the delicate skein behind his knees to the coronae of scars around his ankles to the deep cleft between his buttocks. The mind-bending sensation of being sucked there, of being teased and taken with tongue—a first for Hiero—almost transported him out of his body.
Except he had very much wanted to stay tethered to his earthly frame, to ache and curse and shout and sob as Kip undid him, remade him in his image, a Hiero of light, of hope, of ecstasy. Having completed this great work, Kip now slumbered atop his creation, heavy with languor. Really, all those prudish, pious types misunderstood epiphany if they thought it could be achieved through celibacy. Hiero had never felt so blessed as in the arms of a lover.
This one in fond particular.
Which was why he groaned at himself when that old itch, restlessness, tickled his ear like a pesky fly. He should have been content to lay there well into the evening until Han summoned them to family meal. He’d conquered his fears of exposing himself to Kip, found new purpose in their endeavors, and lured his skittish paramour into cohabitation. They’d enjoyed a carefree summer of solving petty crimes and surreptitious heavy petting, their desire for each other unquenchable. Even Kip, exasperated by his inability to work long hours and annoyed by the restrictions the doctor imposed, had surrendered to their afternoons of delight.
So why couldn’t he relax in kind? Had the torments of his youth and the hardscrabble years after inured him to happiness? Had he grown so accustomed to blotting out the bad with tomfoolery and drink he couldn’t embrace the life before him, sober and sated? Or was it simply that the cynic in him held no faith in their togetherness despite all evidence to the contrary?
A kiss between his shoulder blades halted the carousel of his thoughts.
“Your quiet is rather deafening, my lovely.” Kip snugged his arms tighter around Hiero’s torso. “What troubles you?”
“Not a single solitary thing.”
“Precisely the problem?”
Hiero harrumphed. Kip shifted until his stiffening cock notched into the very cleft he had earlier plundered.
“Do you require... further distraction?”
“Your attentions are always welcome.”
Kip stopped the slow rotation of his hips. “As bad as that?”
“Worse.” Hiero sighed, missing the decadent weight as soon as Kip slid off him to converse face-to-face. Though his moroseness lifted some—as it ever did—when he looked at Kip’s concerned face. “I fear I’ve been infected by the plague of introspection.”
“Oh, dear. Should I summon your physician?”
Hiero scoffed. “Scamp.”
“Misery guts.”
“Bluebelly.”
“Lushington.”
“Ha! A tipple would not go remiss.” Hiero laughed. “Scuffer.”
“Beauty.” Kip tangled his fingers in Hiero’s hair, drew him into a languid kiss. Rested their brows together when they parted. “I see I will have to dedicate my considerable skills to relieving you of this maudlin mood.”
“Continue as you have been, and I’ll soon brighten.”
“Oh, I intend to.” A flash of heat illuminated his green eyes. “As for my amateur diagnosis, after examining all the signs and symptoms over the past few months, I can only come to one conclusion.”
“Which is?”
“You, my beastly one, miss the stage.”
Hiero opened his mouth to protest, but any attempt at twisted logic died on his lips. Such were the perils, he supposed, of living with a detective. One’s peculiarities, idiosyncrasies, and foibles were understood, perhaps too well.
He exhaled a heavy breath and frowned. “I do.”
“Then you must return.”
Before Hiero could decide how to feel about that, a knock seized the door. Hiero recognized Aldridge’s particular rhythm, bade him enter. Accustomed to their afternoons of repose, Aldridge kept his eyes level as he delivered an officious-looking note. Not to Kip, as Hiero had expected, but to him.
“Royal summons, do you think?” Kip asked, sitting up.
“A bastard prince birthed at Castleside, and we overlooked him?” Hiero chuckled. “There’s my knighthood gone.”
After thanking Aldridge, they perched, entangled, on the edge of the bed as Hiero tore open the envelope. The contents, however, did not reflect the pomp and circumstance of the packaging.
ONE WILL FALL EVERY DAY
HORACE BEASTLY STAYS AWAY
Hiero repressed a shiver. “No signature.”
“You see.” Kip stole away the letter for a closer examination. “The public clamors for your return.”
“And I suspect your skills, Detective Inspector, will soon be in high demand, if this blackguard has any bottle.”
“Shall we rally the team?” Kip asked, thrumming with excitement.
Twinkle eyed, they shared a conspiratorial grin.
“As the toffs would say, tally-ho!”
STOKER AND BASH WILL RETURN IN...
The Death Under the Dark Arches
Notes on the History Behind the Fiction
I can’t remember how I first learned of the Panacea Society and their prophet, Joanna Southcott, but they are the inspiration for the Daughters of Eden. I’ve used a few quotes from Mrs. Southcott’s writings in Sister Juliet’s preaching, and many of the small details were taken from the Society’s practices.
Joanna Southcott believed she was the Woman of the Apocalypse from the Book of Revelation (a part I gave to Callie) and foretold she would give birth to the new Messiah at age sixty-four (she died instead). She indeed had a box, leaving instructions that it should be opened in a time of national crisis by all twenty-four bishops of the Church of England. The alleged box was opened in 1927 by a psychic researcher and found to contain weird bits and bobs like a lottery ticket and a horse pistol. Her followers in the Panacea Society disputed the authenticity of the box. The last member of the group died in 2004, and you can visit a museum dedicated to Joanna Southcott and the Society at the Castleside compound in Bedford, England (and they do have a small garden). Thanks to the digital wizardry of my cover artist, Tif, that is a picture of Castleside in the background on the cover. If you want to learn more about the Panacea Society—like the fact that, for decades, they kept an entire house ready and waiting for Jesus’ return—there’s an excellent documentary on YouTube.
Serial murders as a result of baby farming were an all-too-real epidemic in the Victorian and other eras (and it’s not a far stretch to connect them to current real-world problems). The practice first came to light in 1870, with the discovery of Margaret Waters’s crimes. Later executions involved childcare workers such as Amelia Dyer, probably the most notorious female serial killer (not called that at the time, but that’s essentially what they were), and Amelia Sach and Annie Walters. If you’re interested in further research, a warning that the details of these cases are not for the faint of heart.
This is where I confess I cheated a bit on the pregnancy front. There was no accepted scientific pregnancy test invented until 1930. Before then the only surefire way to know was around the fifth month, when women started to show. However, since scientists rarely consulted midwives or nurses when studying pregnancy hormones, it’s believed these experienced women had nonscientific ways of telling when someone was going to have a baby. I’ve cast my lot with in the midwives.
The list of incredible historians doing wonderful, detailed work on the Victorian era and other periods is too long to mention, but I was particularly helped by books/websites by Liza Picard, Dorothy L. Haller, Lee Jackson, Ruth Richardson, Judith Flanders, Moira Allen, Chris Payne, and Fern Riddell, and the plentiful resources at the V&A and the British Library. Any mistakes I made while transforming their sterling facts into fiction are entirely my own.
Acknowledgements
Self-publishing is kind of a misnomer since publishing a book is not really something you can do alone unless you’re way more multitalented than I am. It absolutely takes a village. I am forever grateful to everyone who helped bring The Fruit of the Poisonous Tree to fruition and who has given their best for three books now (and counting!). My brilliant editor Nancy-Anne Davies’s insights rescued the emotional arc of the book and made it sing. Anna “Tiferet” Sikorska listened when I needed it and delivered another gorgeous cover (and I will be forever in her debt for finding a model for Hiero). A wonderful group of betas held my hand through the initial feedback, namely Liv Rancourt, Francesca Borzi, Sam Higson, Day’s Lee, and Judie Troyansky. The lovely Elena Meyer-Bothling gave the book a thorough sensitivity read and consulted on Shahida. The amazing Rachel Maybury from Signal Boost Promotions works her magic on the review blogs every time. And Paul Salvette from BB eBooks is the formatting wizard that keeps the books looking as sharp on the inside as on the outside.
I worship at the altar of Polly Jean Harvey, whose album To Bring You My Love lit the spark that eventually blazed into this book. And a special shout-out to Jordan L. Hawk, a huge inspiration whose squeeing about The Fangs of Scavo basically made my life.
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Books by Selina Kray
Stoker & Bash Series
The Fangs of Scavo
The Fruit of the Poisonous Tree
The Death Under the Dark Arches (coming Fall 2019)
Historical Romance
Like Stars
Contemporary Romance
In Wild Lemon Groves
About the Author
Selina Kray is the nom de plume of an author and English editor. Professionally she has covered all the artsy-fartsy bases, having worked in a bookstore, at a cinema, in children’s television, and in television distribution, up to her latest incarnation as a subtitle editor and grammar nerd (though she may have always been a grammar nerd). A self-proclaimed geek and pop culture junkie who sometimes manages to pry herself away from the review sites and gossip blogs to write fiction of her own, she is a voracious consumer of art with both a capital and lowercase A.
Selina’s aim is to write genre-spanning romances with intricate plots, complex characters, and lots of heart. Whether she has achieved this goal is for you, gentle readers, to decide. At present she is hard at work on future novels at home in Montreal, Quebec, with her wee corgi serving as both foot warmer and in-house critic.
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