“No.” Barnaby set his coffee down. “James. Put it down.”
James did not put it down. His expression took on the particular gleam that Barnaby had last seen the night before James’s coronation, when Vidal had presented him with a crown made entirely of Haribo gummy rings and demanded he rehearse his vows wearing it.
“James, whatever that is, I am asking you, as your oldest friend—”
“Benton.” James didn’t look up from the page. His voice was pleasant and measured. “Would you mind terribly closing the door?”
Benton, who had been arranging the remaining fan mail into neat stacks, crossed to the door and pulled it shut with a soft, final click. Barnaby’s dread intensified.
James cleared his throat. He held the page at a distance that suggested he was about to deliver an address to Parliament.
“‘Chapter One,’” he read. “‘The Locker Room. By BLEXual_Healing.’”
Barnaby lunged off the armchair. James sidestepped him easily, having had lots of practice dodging Barnaby’s attempts to snatch things from him since they were thirteen, and continued reading in his plummiest, most formal register. It was the voice he used for the annual King’s Speech, and it made the words coming out of his mouth sound all the more obscene.
“‘Lex pressed Barnaby against the cold tile wall. Water from the showers cascaded over their entwined bodies. “You want this, don’t you, my lord?” Lex growled, his voice husky with desire. Barnaby could only nod, his aristocratic composure crumbling—’”
“Give me the paper, James.”
“’—as Lex’s strong, calloused hands, hands that had won two Olympic golds and also apparently several MMA championships—’” James paused. “They’ve given you a mixed martial arts career, Lex. Congratulations.”
“Cheers.” Lex, who had not stopped eating, bit into a scone. The cream shot out on the other side, and Lex licked at it in a way that Barnaby was pretty sure he didn’tmeanto look obscene, but did, in the context of what was being read aloud at that moment.
“’—calloused hands travelled down the pale, quivering—’” James’s voice achieved a register of such crystalline seriousness that it could have been carved into marble. “’—the pale, quivering plane of Barnaby’s aristocratic abdomen.’”
“My abdomen doesn’tquiver.”
“It is here. It’s doing quite a lot of quivering, actually. Your whole body is, by paragraph three.” James scanned ahead. “‘His quivering thighs. His quivering lip. His quivering—’ ah.” James’s eyebrows rose. “Even your arsehole is quivering, Bash.”
Barnaby stopped lunging. He stood in the middle of the sitting room, breathing hard, his hands at his sides. Lex was watching them from the sofa with his legs spread wide, a smoked salmon sandwich in one hand, and another in his mouth.
“‘Lex positioned the turgid length of his manhood—’” James paused, and Barnaby watched him make a decision about whether to continue. “’—the turgid length of his manhood at Barnaby’s entrance. “Are you ready, my lord?” he breathed. “I was born ready,” Barnaby whispered, his grey eyes glistening with unshed tears and barely contained lust.’”
“I have never in my life said ‘I was born ready.’ I would sooner die.”
“‘With one powerful thrust, Lex drove home—’” James held the pause with the timing of a man who had been trained since birth to command a room. “’—deep into his warmth.’”
The sitting room was silent. Lex bit into his second scone.
“‘Their bodies moved together in a passionate rhythm, Barnaby’s moans echoing off the tiled walls of the locker room as Lex claimed him, body and soul, his turgid—’”
“You’ve already said turgid.”
“BLEXual_Healing has said turgid. I’m just the vessel through which their words flow.” James turned the page. “There’s more. Shall I continue? There’s a section where Lex carries you to a bench and does something that I believe contravenes at least two laws of physics, and then you say ‘harder, my champion’ while gripping his—”
Barnaby crossed the room in four strides. He tackled James around the midsection with the full force of a man whose dignity had been dismantled paragraph by paragraph, and they went sideways into the sofa. The page flew from James’s hand and drifted to the carpet. James was still laughing.
Benton bent, picked up the fallen page, and placed it on the side table with the rest of the fan mail. “Shall I refresh the tea, sir?” he asked, addressing the room at large.
Lex, still on the sofa, reached for the Victoria sponge. “Yeah, go on.”
“I am going to stuff those pages down your throat, James.” Barnaby snarled.
“Benton will protect me.”
“I will not, sir,” Benton said, from the side table. He met Barnaby’s eyes with the steady, unblinking solidarity of a man who had chosen his side and made peace with the constitutional implications.
James peeled himself off the floor, straightened his polo shirt, and crossed to the sofa where Lex was sitting. He dropped onto the cushion beside him and immediately reached for the sandwich stand.
