“Why are you crying?” Beckett said hoarsely.
“No reason. I’m tired,” Arden said, and managed to conjure up a wobbly smile. “Just tired. Will you…?”
“What?” Beckett leaned down and kissed him. When Arden didn’t continue, he ran the tip of his nose the length of Arden’s; kissed him again. “What do you need, sweet? Tell me. I’ll give it to you.”
He’d asked that many times during the night. Arden had gasped out breathless requests. Beckett had filled every one.
Had filled Arden.
“Will you hold me?” Arden said after a moment. “For a little while more? I know this is over. That we’re done. But I’d like it if you’d hold me a little longer.”
“You want me to finish you off first?” He’d meant it as a joke, but Arden shook his head.
“No,” he said quietly.
“You sure? I can get you there one more time.”
Us. He meant us. A final, soft, dreamy orgasm, and then sleep. After that, he’d find a way forward for them. Beginning with an apology for making Arden wait. For being a dick.
Arden shook his head again and shifted. Beckett moved, letting him roll onto his side. Beckett settled in behind him, wrapping an arm around his chest and scooping him as close as he could.
“This is enough,” Arden said. “It’s lovely.”
There was something distant in his voice that set off warning bells, but the fact of it was, the pair of them had been at it for hours, and Beckett could only keep his eyes open for so long.
When he opened them, it was the middle of the afternoon and Arden had gone.
Not from the bed.
From Avendene.
CHAPTER 18
JACK
Jack felt like shit.
Good.
It was an improvement. Last thing he remembered before he passed out in his study, he’d felt like death.
Someone had obviously found him and put him to bed, because he was flat on his back on a comfortable mattress, not slumped in a chair in his study. Or drooling on the floor.
He blinked open bleary eyes and stared across the room at a pair of unfamiliar gauzy curtains. The faintest hint of pre-dawn light glowed behind them. It wasn’t enough to illuminate the room, wherever he was.
He levered himself awkwardly up to his elbows, paused to take a few slow, deep breaths as he waited to see how his stomach felt about it—amenable—before shuffling up to sit with his back to the mound of pillows behind him.
Queasiness still hummed faintly in the background but, like the headache that throbbed behind his gritty eyes, it was nothing he couldn’t handle.
He’d had worse hangovers.
His pulse had returned to its usual steady beat and his heart was no longer racing. He wasn’t burning with fever or shakingwith cold. He blinked a few more times and his blurry vision cleared.
He climbed out of bed and poured a glass of water from the carafe waiting on the small table in the deep bay window embrasure. He sipped it slowly at first, then gulped it. Never been so dry in his damn life.
Obliging himself to slow down, he drank a second glass. He drew back the curtains and leaned a shoulder against the cold wall, gazing out across the dark parkland.
The sun wasn’t yet up and mist was rolling its quiet way down from the distant hills. The woods were a shadowed smudge in the distance, a dense and velvety night green. Ahead of him lay Avendene. A few lights shone in the building. A few only.
