After Beckett had leaned over him a few times, deliberately breathed on the back of his neck, brushed an arm alongside Jack’s while removing his empty plate and replacing it with the next course, Jack leaned back in his chair and looked up into Beckett’s face with burning dark eyes and enough heat in them to set Beckett’s breeches on fire.
Beckett somehow had the poise to murmur inquiringly, “Something you need, Your Grace?”
“Change places with Hapton, please,” he ground out.
“Very good, Your Grace.”
For all the good it will do you, Your Grace.
He spent the rest of the night staring at Jack from the other end of the vast, candlelit dining room. Hapton served him, Jack chatted with his guests, but his attention was on Beckett all night long.
The waves of his want, of his focus, thickened the very air in the room. There wasn’t a soul in the place who didn’t sense it. You could tell by the nervous laughter. By the way the guests shifted and prickled in their seats. The two omegas present were the most affected.
Not, Beckett thought smugly, that Jack spared a look for either of them.
The female omega gritted her teeth against it. She was a lovely woman in late middle age, all grace and poise and silver-streaked hair. She was there with her husband, a beta who had the half-guilty, half-excited look of a man who knew full well that he would be mauled the second they climbed into their carriage.
The male omega was struggling, poor lad.
He was a spindly thing, perhaps a handful of years older than Beckett, and he clearly hadn’t experienced the force of an alpha in a mood before. He was dazed and slow, drunk on it. Beckett felt bad about that, he did.
Jack lifted a lazy hand to bring Hapton to his side. Hapton stepped back into the shadows, and a few discreet minutes later, while pouring the omega lad’s wine, Hapton ‘knocked over’ the omega’s glass, apologised profusely for drenching his coat sleeve, and escorted the limp and relieved lad out of the room.
Beckett was going to pay for that.
Couldn’t fucking wait.
Except wait he did. And wait, and wait.
The evening dragged on long enough for Beckett to regret his little scheme, because instead of standing at Jack’s back, he was stuck in the shadows directly opposite the duke, watching him in the dancing candlelight; watching that big body sprawl in the carved wooden chair, watching the casual way he played with the stem of his wineglass—for Beckett’s benefit, he assumed, unless His Grace normally jerked off the glassware—the way his strong throat arched when he laughed, the way he tipped his headcloser to give the woman seated next to him his full attention as they conversed.
Beckett wanted to challenge him.
Position be damned, he wanted to challenge this man.
His intention, if he could survive this endless fucking dinner, was to go up to the duke’s bedchamber, get him on the ground, or the bed, or against the wall, and make himmoan.
Course after course was served, until the party finally left the dining room and retired to the drawing room, at which point the footmen all slipped off their stiff frock coats, rolled up their shirtsleeves, and got down to clearing the mess left on the table.
The dining room set to rights, all the servants who’d been on duty trooped down to the kitchen where Cook had put together a late supper for them. Beckett should have been right knackered by then.
He wasn’t.
He was energised.
He sat at the kitchen table cradling the mug of expensive chocolate that Cook liked to treat them to after particularly long nights, and bade people goodnight one after the other until he was the only one left save the yawning scullery maid banking the fire and Cook knocking back the dough for tomorrow’s bread. He rinsed his mug in the sink, took himself up the back stairs, and strode boldly through the corridors until he reached the master’s bedchamber.
The door was open, and he smiled to see it. Soft lamplight spilled through the doorway, and he trod quietly as he approached, hoping to catch a glimpse of the duke unaware.
The duke was not unaware.
The duke was lying in wait.
Before Beckett even moved into the spill of amber light, he said in his deep voice, “Finally.”
CHAPTER 22
BECKETT
