Charlie set his parcel carefully on the large trunk in the corner, then turned slowly to Jonathan. “They wouldn’t come clean,” he said, eyes downcast.
Jonathan shrugged. “Never you mind. I dare say you’d worn those clothes until they were worn out.”
“Four weeks,” Charlie said, tangling his fingers together in front of him as he did when he was nervous as he followed Jonathan through to his living area. “I wore them for four weeks.”
As soon as they passed through into the quieter, domestic feel of the kitchen and parlor, Jonathan turned back to Charlie. “Four weeks? Is that how long you’d been on the street?”
Charlie’s eyes widened, like he’d said something he hadn’t wanted to say. He nodded.
“Where were you before that?” Jonathan asked, carrying his lamp over to the table and fetching a taper so he could light the other lamps in the room.
“Home,” Charlie said, lowering his head.
“And where was home?”
“Bermondsey,” Charlie answered, his shoulders slumping as well.
“Did you like it there?” Jonathan asked as he moved around the room, increasing the light bit by bit.
Charlie’s face pinched as if he wasn’t certain. “It was home.”
“But you’re a man now and not a child, and you wished to venture out on your own to begin an adult life,” Jonathan toldwhat he assumed was the rest of the story with a cheery smile on his face.
Charlie wilted into what Jonathan could only describe as guilt. “I was thrown out,” he said.
“Oh.” Jonathan blinked, then blew out the taper, putting it back in its place. He carried one of the freshly lit lamps to the table and gestured for Charlie to sit. “Whyever would you be thrown out of your home?”
“Because I was dismissed from my employment at Bayswater and Heaton.” Charlie shrank into his chair.
“And why were you dismissed?” Jonathan asked, moving to the stove to see if it was hot enough to make tea, then adding some coal to the fire when it wasn’t.
Charlie didn’t answer. Jonathan stayed focused on his task, making certain the stove was fueled and safe, filling the kettle with water from the pitcher he kept filled off to one side, and setting the kettle on the stovetop. When he finally turned to look at Charlie, the precious young man had his head lowered and his shoulders rounded, as if he were trying to protect himself from an incoming blow.
Jonathan decided to help him.
“It could not, perhaps, have had something to do with the enthusiasm you showed while I photographed you,” he said with a teasing grin, “or the abandon with which you allowed me to fuck you, could it?”
The red that splashed across Charlie’s face was one of the most captivating things Jonathan had ever seen. The images he created and made his living producing were all black and white and shades of grey, but the color that radiated from Charlie was an allure of its own.
“I have hellfire within me,” Charlie said, glancing up to Jonathan at last. His eyed flashed with signs of that hellfire, butalso with the sort of shame that Jonathan abhorred and had spent his life combatting.
“I like a bit of hellfire,” Jonathan said, his tone low and saucy as he stepped away from the stove and over to the table. “I like it very much indeed.”
He reached Charlie, grasped his chin, and tilted his face up. Charlie seemed to melt under his touch, and when Jonathan crashed his mouth possessively over the young man’s he sighed and returned the kiss with fervor.
Charlie most definitely had the sort of passion within him that would have seen him dismissed from the ordinary world.
No wonder he’d appeared to fit so perfectly in the surroundings of The Zagreus Den.
That thought alarmed Jonathan enough that he ended the kiss and turned quickly away from Charlie, heading back to the counter to see if they had anything to eat. He wasn’t particularly hungry after the excellent feast of the afternoon, but he needed to do something to distract from the swirl of feelings that remembering The Zagreus Den gave him.
“I’m not certain I should accept Brutus’s photography job,” he said while his back was still turned to Charlie, slicing a few pieces of the day’s bread.
“You…you aren’t?” Charlie asked hoarsely.
Jonathan glanced back over his shoulder at him. Charlie had unfurled from his tight pose and now seemed to be all arms and legs, like he might fall out of his chair if he didn’t brace himself.
“I’m already beholden to him for giving you such a lovely gift of clothing,” Jonathan said with a careless shrug that he didn’t feel, turning back to the counter. “I do not like to feel beholden to anyone. I risked too much to grasp my freedom to then hand it over to somebody else.”
