James steps back, gravel crunching under his feet. “Bobby.”
“Tell me you only fucked me because we’re in the country. Tell me you don’t feel anything real for me.”
James’ back presses into the hedge behind him, and Bobbylooms over him. He can’t lie and tell Bobby he doesn’t feel what’s clawing up his throat, desperate to be shouted to the rooftops. But he can’t free those words from his mouth when he has no plan for how to keep them safe.
When he doesn’t know how alovecould survive beyond the safety of Bobby’s family’s country home.
Feeling overcome and desperate and pent up, he does the only thing he can think of and lurches forward, grabbing Bobby’s face to pull him into a hard kiss. Bobby stills against him for a moment before pushing James back, hands on his shoulders, holding him against the hedge, glaring.
They stare at each other, too much to be said, and then their mouths crash back together. James groans as Bobby rucks up his shirt. The press of his hands against James’ skin, the stroke of his fingers, sends shivers up and down James’ spine. He clutches at Bobby’s neck, sucking on his bottom lip. He bucks into Bobby’s hand, already making its way into his trousers.
“Tell me you don’t feel anything for me,” Bobby rasps against his mouth as his hand wraps around James.
James can only moan, pleasure clenching all over his body as Bobby uses everything he’s learned about James this week to bring him to the edge in a matter of minutes.
“Tell me,” Bobby insists.
He can’t explain, but he could show him. He kisses Bobby roughly, skirting his hand down to fumble with the buttons on Bobby’s trousers. He would drop to his knees right here in the hedges, worship at the altar of Bobby’s body to say all the things he can’t put into words. And maybe if he does, maybe Bobby can understand what he meant to say all alon—
A shriek pierces their hazy frenzy of lust and anger and feelings, and the little control James has over his panic and fear shatters apart.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Bobby
He twists his fingers together, pacing across the faded rug outside the sitting room, and wishes he still had his blasted signet ring. He keeps replaying the horrible sight of Lady Harrington fainting to the ground while his hand was wrapped around James’—
Bobby shudders and rolls his shoulders. If only that were the worst of it.
Because then James ran, leaving him alone in the hedge maze to help the collapsed Lady Harrington. He bolted clean off the estate—left everything behind, his luggage, the clothes strewn between their bedrooms, his books, his money, everything.
Bobby’s not surprised. Running is what James does best.
He comes to a halt across from the closed double doors to the sitting room where Gwen, Beth, Meredith, and Albie are attempting to deal with the mess he’s made.
Except he didn’t think James would run this time. There was a part of him, a larger part than he wants to admit, that thought maybe it was enough—maybehewas enough—that what they were building together, through kisses and sex and games of whist and time with his family, was enough to make James—
What? Make him want to fight through the justifiable fear of retribution and prison? Make him want to shout from London’s rooftops that he’s been fucking Bobby Mason and wants tocontinue for the foreseeable future? Enough to make him want to forsake all his duties, and a wife, and a family, for Bobby?
Of course it wasn’t enough. Of course Bobby wasn’t enough. James has a bigger life to build, a viscountcy to honor, political ambitions to achieve. How could Bobby alone be enough to persuade him to forsake all of that?
How could Bobby be enough to love, really? What was he thinking?
He jumps when the doors to the sitting room open. Meredith slips through, giving him a once-over. Bobby stands up straight, tries to look like he isn’t completely falling apart. Tries to drum up the words to apologize and explain and promise it won’t ever happen again.
“Meredith,” he starts, her name a croak out of his parched mouth.
“Come here,” Meredith says, stepping across the narrow hall to take his arm and lead him two doors down to his father’s old study.
Bobby goes, an old unhappiness rippling in his stomach alongside his humiliation and fear and rage. He can do no more than stumble in behind Meredith as she opens the door and waves him through.
The room is dusty, like time has stood still since he and Albie left for London. The chairs are still covered with drapes, the curtains still drawn. It’s close, and a little musty, and filled with the ghost of his father, who would be screaming bloody murder if he had caught Bobby—
“I’m sorry,” he says, blinking as Meredith throws back the curtains, sending a plume of dust into the air and filling the study with fading sunlight. “It can’t be healthy for you to be in here.”
She shoots a look over her shoulder and cracks the window to let the warm afternoon breeze waft through the room. Bobbywatches it rustle the remaining papers on the desk, a whisper of years past.
“Sit,” Meredith says, turning to look at him with her hands on her hips.
