Page 52 of Thief Taker

Elias didn’t know what they were talking about anymore, but his heart was pounding, blood running hot into his face. Duvall was taking him apart with a damned look and it was all he could do to breathe, to keep his chest rising and falling beneath the man’s clenched fists. Inside his head, like a caged bird, the words were battering against the bars: I do. I do need it.

I want it.

Duvall’s expression changed abruptly, his eyes widening; he must have seen something in Elias’s face. His grip softened. “Elias…”

“We can’t.” Elias tried to push his hands away, but somehow his fingers found his coat instead, pulling him closer. “We can’t—”

“Why not?” Kit pressed him harder against the tree. “Isn’t this exactly where you want me, Elias Cole?”

With a groan Elias hauled him in hard, their mouths clashing in a harsh, urgent kiss. Hardly even a kiss. Then he tried to push Kit away, but couldn’t seem to let go, and Kit surged forward, pressing his body flush against Elias’s, his hand sweeping up into his hair, tugging his head to one side and pressing his lips to his jaw.

Something inside Elias ignited, went up like dry tinder, and all he could see was light and heat. And somehow, he got Duvall pressed up against the tree and his fingers were tangling in that glorious mess of thick hair and touching his face and everything was him…him…him…

And, oh God—

Elias lurched back, wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his coat. “Damn it.” He shook as he pulled away—terrified, ecstatic, dazzled. “I can’t do this.”

Duvall was breathing hard. “Why not?”

“I should go,” Elias blurted, striking out blindly for the street. “We should pretend this never—”

“Wait.” Duvall caught his arm. He was shaking too; Elias could feel it through the fingers Duvall wrapped around his wrist. “Elias, wait.”

But all Elias could think was I can’t deceive you like this. I could send your brother to the gallows. The thought made him sick, like he might shoot the cat right there and then. He took a breath and kept his back turned, trying to ignore the warmth of Duvall’s fingers on his wrist.

He couldn’t do this, not to this man.

“I have to go,” he said. “I’ll see you at the house. Best if we don’t arrive together.”

And then he walked away and Duvall let him go, his fingers trailing over his wrist and hand and his frustrated sigh following him through the trees.

Chapter 18

Naturally, Elias didn’t sleep that night.

He’d returned to Curzon Street a little after midnight, and his mind had been darting between anxiety and desire ever since. Anxiety, because Duvall didn’t come home, and desire because his blood burned with the memory of Duvall’s eager mouth, the hard press of his body, the urgent nip of his teeth.

Damn, but the man was reckless! Foolish to turn up at Salter’s half seas over, foolish to challenge Marlborough, foolish to act on his impossible desires—in that, perhaps, Duvall was more like his brother than he’d want to admit. But he was young and possessed a young man’s imprudence. Elias, on the other hand, was old enough to know better. He did know better, and yet he’d been the one to reach out first and take what he wanted… Even if he’d come to his senses in the end.

All of which meant Elias spent the rest of the night listening to the ragged chiming of London’s churches every hour, tormented by his own imagination—vivid images of Duvall bleeding into the mud of Piccadilly, with Marlborough standing over him, wielding his cane. Or, worse, Duvall crawling home pale and deathly, a victim of some footpad in the dark.

I should never have left him alone.

But how could he have stayed? He knew full well how the night would have gone if he had and wasn’t convinced that taking the man against a tree in Green Park was in anyone’s best interest.

Nevertheless, as he waited in his small servant’s bedroom, he ached with a desire so visceral it cut up under his breastbone and made it difficult to breathe. Between his provoking encounter with Wessex, and now this, every nerve was aflame. And his body responded with enthusiasm.

But he refused to reach for the small bottle of oil he kept for such purposes, and lay there in the dark, hard and aching. The thought of relieving himself to memories of Duvall’s touch made him feel sullied; Duvall was a good man, a gentleman, and he deserved some damned respect.

So, he spent the night variously distracting himself from his desire with his fears and from his fears with his memories of Duvall until he could stand it no longer and got up to dress.

It wasn’t even nearly dawn, the sky still black as pitch and the fog pressing up against the window of Elias’s room. It was cold too, but he relished the chill of the floorboards against his feet and hoped it would cool his blood.

For the same reason, he decided to wash. He cracked the sliver of ice atop the water in the ewer and poured it into the basin. Pulling on his breeches against the cold, he stripped off his shirt and shivered as he worked the soap between his fingers.

Those same fingers had plunged into Duvall’s hair, caressed his face, curled into his coat and pulled him close.

God, the look in his eyes when he’d done that…