Page 68 of To Save a Scoundrel’s Soul

“Valentin?” Urgently, Mickey felt for the bed behind him. Hysteria tickled the edges of his throat; he didn’t know whether to surrender to the gleeful madness of it or collapse under the crushing ache of seeing his lover’s smiling face as he strolled towards him from behind the screen.

“You…you are not in France” was all he managed, and even that was a struggle.

“Not yet. A merchant boat headed for Le Havre leaves Thames docks later tonight. I have secured passage on it.”

“But you are not there now.” Though Mickey’s mouth formed the words, it felt as if someone else spoke them.

“I am waiting for cover of darkness; I have but an hour. I had something very important to do first.”

Mickey dragged his gaze back to the box. “This. This is the original Ashington parure.”

“Yes.”

“You came to return it to its rightful owner. The duke.”

“That as well. I mean, yes. Perhaps.” Valentin shrugged his beautiful Gallic shrug. “Though, to me, it is a task of far lesser importance.”

Than what? For a second, Mickey couldn’t make sense of it, and then Valentin was there, arms outstretched, pulling him up from the bed, pulling Mickey towards him. Pulling him in, flooding Mickey’s senses in one overwhelming wave. On instinct, his hands found their way around Valentin’s back, fingers digging into the fabric of his coat.

“Oh God,” he half sobbed into his lover’s warm chest.

Tightly, Valentin crushed Mickey to him, so tightly Mickey felt he might not draw another breath. He couldn’t speak. He didn’t need to.

“I came because I had to say goodbye. How could I not?”

“It is dangerous. Surely, they are searching for you.”

Valentin took Mickey’s shoulders in his warm grip. His forehead rested against Mickey’s. “Holding you again, my love, is worth the risk.”

He cupped Mickey’s face in his hands. He brushed a lock of Mickey’s hair back from his temple. His breath caressed Mickey’s ear before he inhaled Mickey’s scent.

“My London,” he sighed, just once, and then his warm, tender mouth pressed against Mickey’s in a kiss. One which started soft and then went firm and then ardent, turning into the kind of kiss during which the parure could be pilfered from its box and Squire’s club burn to the ground without Tommy’s second in command noticing.

When they briefly parted for much needed air, Valentin eased Mickey back onto the bed, still kissing him as if he was already missing him. The next time they surfaced to breathe, Valentin’s tongue licked against the underside of Mickey’s chin before roaming down the line of his throat to the notch of his collarbone. His faint whiskers tickled against Mickey’s skin, and his hands pushed at Mickey’s linen until it was bunched up around his chest. And then Valentin laughed.

“Given that I am pressed for time, it is considerate of you to be already mostly unclothed.”

Valentin wriggled from his tailcoat and tossed it to the floor. He loosened his cravat. He loosened his trousers, too, shoving them down low enough to straddle Mickey.

“My beautiful London,” he whispered, devouring Mickey’s bare flesh with his eyes. With the very tip of his finger, he touched the wetness already dripping from Mickey’s cock and brought it to his lips. “How exquisitely you were created, just for me.”

What little time remained to them, Valentin used well. His fingers and mouth were put to good use, too, until Mickey took him into his body, hardness within softness. At first, Valentin rocked slowly in and out, carefully rearranging Mickey’s limbs as well as his insides. Taking control as he always did. Mickey liked it that way. As he continued his loving strokes, Valentin gasped against Mickey’s lips, whispering words in his beautiful language that Mickey barely knew. He didn’t need to; their meaning was clear and honest in any tongue. When he drove in deeper, he gripped the back of Mickey’s thighs tighter, the rhythmic pace coaxing Mickey, sending him higher, ruthless and demanding, until all the tense muscles of his body loosened. Pleasure washed over Mickey in faster and faster rushes, and he spilled hard. He felt Valentin’s hot release, too, and when the wetness trickled from him, he clenched his channel and thighs to hold it in for longer. For a short space of time, as they lay curled together afterwards in spent, glowing silence, Mickey let himself forget that Valentin was leaving and a wanted man. He let himself forget that Valentin might never safely visit English shores again, that their love affair was at an end. How could he ever contemplate all of that when full of his lover’s seed?

“You could always come to France with me.”

For the second time that evening, Mickey’s heart faltered. For a few of the precious moments remaining, he allowed himself to imagine tossing his scant possessions into a bag and running through the night to the docks with Valentin.

“The invitation is still open,” Valentin asserted.

“I cannot leave Tommy. After all he has done for me, I would never treat him so badly.” Each word stabbed between his ribs.

“He would forgive you. He would understand.”

“Yes, but…”

How could he begin to explain to someone like Valentin, whose horizon was a sweeping expanse, that Mickey’s world was confined within the borders of London’s gritty streets? For certain, his hoarded books told plenty of tales of distant lands where men frolicked with other men and the sun never set. But they were just that—books and stories and maps, tales and adventures for other people to explore. The only life for Mickey was here, at Squire’s: Sidney’s rough hands as he fastened the doors each night, the constant hum of the fine gentlemen two floors below, the flicker of light from St James keeping Mickey company as night crept over his small bedchamber. He didn’t pick from a buffet of possibilities; the streets that had swallowed his parents and his infancy and his unbroken chain of routine were all he knew.

“Then I shall have to return one day,” Valentin insisted. “When it is safe for me to do so and thieve you away.” He laughed and kissed Mickey’s forehead. “You shall be the jewel in my crown. The devil’s very own diamond.”