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  He ducked to take Will’s prick in his mouth, tongue and lips curving warmly around him. Will hissed and relaxed into the pleasure, watching his dark head. “Do we have to keep quiet? How far’s the nearest person, quarter of a mile?”

  “Mph.” Kim came up for air long enough to say, “Should be some way, but I can’t swear.”

  You never knew when a servant might be passing, Will supposed. He cupped a hand round Kim’s skull, feeling the movements of head and jaw. Fingers, teeth and lips and tongue: Kim knew how to make his toes curl, and he was doing it very effectively indeed. “God, you’re good at that. Fuck, yes. Not too much.”

  “Wouldn’t dream.” Kim brushed his fingers downward, stroking Will’s arse, mouth going tantalisingly light. Will was definitely feeling nervy about this, along with the arousal. It felt a bit odd, was all. Intrusive, or intimate, or something. A bit much.

  Breathe into it. Will breathed, let Kim explore, and relaxed a tiny bit. The skin Kim stroked felt very sensitive indeed, tingling with anticipation. He could do this.

  Kim lifted his head and reached for the Vaseline. “Shall I?”

  Will nodded and watched him scoop out a glob, felt his thighs pushed gently wider. Kim’s finger, cool and slippery, nudged at him. He was watching Will’s face. Will straightened out what he only now realised was something like a frown, breathed some more.

  “Suppose you tense up for me a moment? Now relax.”

  Will obeyed orders, and a slick finger pushed in. Into him, with a pressure that definitely felt intrusive. “Jesus!”

  Kim stopped instantly. “All right?”

  “Uh. Yes. Just a bit— Go on.”

  “If you don’t like it, you’ll say so, yes?”

  “Course.”

  Kim moved his free hand to Will’s prick, stroking it. Will did his best to concentrate on that as Kim’s other finger made tiny movements inside. It felt like it was inside him, and it was a bloody weird feeling and he didn’t like it. How big was Kim’s finger anyway? He’d always thought they were slim. How the hell did you get a prick up there?

  “Will?”

  He breathed out. He could do this. “Give us a second.”

  Kim paused, then sat back on his heels. “I’m more tempted to give you a hiding. I feel like a doctor doing an unwanted examination.”

  “Shit. Sorry. Just getting used to it.”

  “No you aren’t. You’re hating this, and I am not going to stick my hand up your arse just so you can say you went through with it.”

  Will stared at the ceiling. “I just thought—you know.”

  “I don’t know. You thought you might like it and you aren’t, which is fine, but I’m not grasping why you can’t just say so. Look, if this is going to work, it won’t be now. Hold on.”

  He eased his finger out. Will couldn’t help exhaling with relief. Kim looked down at him for a second, dark brows drawn together, then came forward to lie next to Will, on his side, head propped on his hand. “What’s going on?”

  “Sorry. I’m being stupid.”

  “No, you were being pointlessly stubborn.”

  “I wasn’t,” Will said, and had to amend that with, “Not pointlessly. Fuck. I just...”

  Kim looked entirely baffled. “What?”

  He took a deep breath. “I wanted to give it up to you, the way you do to me. The way you make me feel when I have you, the things you say when I do it. I wanted to do that for you. I thought I could show you that way.”

  Kim’s eyes widened. “Oh.”

  “I wanted to,” Will said, wretchedly. “Only, it didn’t feel—”

  “Hold on a moment. I would also like to have you give yourself to me. I would like that more than anything. I’m not sure why you think it needs to be physical.”

  Physical would be easier, or at least he’d assumed it would be. “Doesn’t it?” he said, knowing he was stalling.

  Kim brushed a thumb over his eyebrow, down the side of his face. “I love you, Will. I’ve told you that, knowing you weren’t ready or able to answer. But it isn’t the easiest thing to repeat I love you and I want you to a man whose idea of the future is ‘we’ll see where we go’.”

  “Kim—”

  “You were always welcome to my body,” Kim went on steadily. “Making you free of my soul was a great deal harder. I am unsure of your intentions, and unsure I have any right to ask for them, and I told you how I felt anyway because I promised not to lie any more. That’s giving it up to you, and it’s really not the same thing as a spot of recreational sodomy.” He gave Will a half-smile that wasn’t happy. “You’re confusing truth with acts, my love. If you’re offering, I’d rather have truth.”

  Will had to do some more breathing. He felt like he’d been punched in the stomach, right down to the sick feeling that provoked. “You’re right. You’re right, and I... Hell. I’m a coward.”

  “Don’t be absurd.”

  “There’s only one of us in this room with the guts to say what he means, and it’s not me. That’s shitty, and it’s shittier that I didn’t realise how shitty I was being.”

  “I’ve done worse to you.”

  “No, you haven’t,” Will said. “You really haven’t. This matters. All right, wait. I’ve got the Military Cross, I can hold a conversation.”

  “I’m fairly sure that’s not what they give it for.”

  “If it was, you’d have three bars.” Will propped himself on an elbow, mirroring Kim’s position to look him in the face. He took a deep breath, and realised he had no idea where to start. “Shit.”

  “You said you wanted to show me. Show me what?”

  Words, Darling, use them. “Look, when we talked before, I panicked for a lot of reasons,” he began. “Some of it was—well, not feeling good enough, one way or another. And I suppose that’s my problem, but it’s mostly your problem.”

  “It is?”

  “Well, I don’t listen to you when you’re saying you’re not good enough for me,” Will pointed out. “You’re a grown man, you can decide who you want to be with. Use your own damn judgement.”

  “Very fair,” Kim said, with a gravity in his voice that didn’t match the spark in his eyes.

  “The rest of it, that was harder. You said a future, a forever, and that felt too big to wrap myself around. But I’ve been thinking about it, about what a future might look like, and I reckon I’ve worked it out.”

  “What does it look like?” There was a tiny tremor in Kim’s voice, just a hint of nerves.

  “Dark eyes, dark hair. Gorgeous mouth.” He ran a thumb over Kim’s lips, then down his bare arm, over the faded scars. “White lines, white stains. That’s what I want. I don’t care if it’s in the bookshop, or a palace, or the south of France. That’s just trappings. But you and me? I want that.”

  Kim’s eyes were locked on his. Will had never seen an expression like that on his face, too often guarded by stillness or irony. Now he was bare and raw, and Will found speech coming more easily in the face of that look. “The way you talk to me, the way you think, the ways you lie, even. Every damn thing about you. You drive me out of my mind, Kim. It’s been months and I can’t think of anything but you. And I suppose all that means I love you, but that—the words—”

  “Not right?”

  “Not enough. What it comes down to is—” He couldn’t find a better way to say it. “I don’t like it when you aren’t there. It pisses me off; I think it always will. Don’t piss me off?”

  “Oh, Jesus,” Kim said, and lunged for him, knocking Will onto his back again. He wrapped his legs round Kim and kissed him, hands and limbs everywhere, in desperate need for closeness and contact and as much touch as two bodies could have. Breathing him in, and breathing into him, and finally feeling those old, hard tangles in his chest ease apart. They’d been so impossible and viciously thorned for months, and now they felt like the silk tie of Kim’s summer dressing gown, the knots slithering apart at a touch.

  A decision made
, a future claimed. Giving it up to Kim. He could do that.

  They ended up entwined in one another, Kim’s head heavy on his shoulder. Will was coming to like that feeling a lot.

  “Where were we?” Kim murmured. “Oh, you were saying not to piss you off. I’ll try.”

  “You say that now.”

  “I can’t let you get complacent.” He puffed a breath over Will’s skin. “Are you sure? Given the situation—”

  “I’m sure. Anyway, I was thinking about that, and don’t you lot always have some bloke with a shotgun to slope around behind you and glare at people who don’t tug their forelock hard enough? I could do that.”

  “No you couldn’t.”

  “Course I can. You be the marquess, I’ll be the gamekeeper. I’ve my own flat cap. All ‘my lord’ this and ‘your lordship’ that and ‘as your lordship pleases’—”

  “And you have the bald-faced cheek to call me a liar.”

  Will kissed his hair. “I don’t know what we’ll do but we’ll do it, all right? So you needn’t talk like I’m going to run away from this, because I don’t want an easy life, any more than I want a better man. What would I do with a better man? He wouldn’t like it, and I’d get bored.”

  “Christ, I adore you.”

  “Good,” Will said. “You’re not bad yourself.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  They slept together that night. Maybe it was reckless; Kim didn’t seem to care so Will didn’t either.

  They’d sealed the deal with an intense, joyful, glorious fuck that risked the bed-frame and probably had Kim’s noble ancestors turning in their graves all the way back to the lady who shagged the Prince Regent. Kim was all gasping, quivering pleasure under Will’s hands, and Will kissed him and fucked him, shoved him down into the mattress and told him he was beautiful, and came painfully hard, clutching Kim’s shoulders, as his lover cried out under him.

  Kim went out like a light after that, the lines of stress around his eyes and mouth fading in sleep. Will felt like a bit of a toe rag for how many of them he’d put there.

  They’d each given the other a hard time in a variety of ways since they’d met. They’d both acknowledged that, and in the last months Kim had worked hard to change. Will had taken that gift, and he’d truly appreciated it, but he hadn’t stopped to consider what of his own behaviour needed changing. Maybe because he was a selfish idiot, maybe because of the overwhelming implausibility and impossibility of the future Kim wanted.

  But Kim had wanted him anyway, and he’d fought accordingly, until he got it through Will’s thick skull that it was time to stop seeing where they went and start heading there on purpose. Slippery, vulnerable, starlight Kim had dug in for the duration with a stubbornness Will himself might not have equalled, and the least he could do was match that.

  So he’d do better. He had to: he wasn’t giving this up now. There was something in Kim that called to something in himself with a fierce urgency like the baying of hounds on the scent, and that was all that mattered. Yes, there were going to be problems and he’d have to make sure he didn’t add to them by, for example, punching any more rich people. But he’d never felt the sort of connection with another human soul that he did with Kim, and he wasn’t letting it go either by choice or by stupidity, and that was all there was to it.

  He fell asleep on that vow, and woke entangled with Kim’s excessively sprawling limbs.

  “Morning, beautiful.”

  “Good morning.” Kim smiled at him, drowsy and almost shy. “Sleep well?”

  “Like a baby.”

  “So did I, for a miracle. Good Lord, it’s past eight.”

  “So it is. Reckon Chingford’s come back?”

  Kim considered. “Do you know, I’m sure he has.”

  “Really?”

  “Of course. I was sure last night that he would come back, as a gentleman who had given his word. I am sure he’s even now sleeping off his bad temper. So I suggest we go for a nice long walk, and if we discover that he’s missing when we return, that’s the point we realise that we were wrong and call the police.”

  “And he’ll be on the Continent by then?”

  “The Aurora can do fourteen knots under steam and sail. Nine or ten hours to Vlissingen, assuming he makes full speed. If that’s not enough of a head start, he’s on his own. Shall we get up?”

  They got up. They ate breakfast, which Kim had a proper appetite for this morning, and told each other about the lovely sunny weather, and headed out for a walk. It felt so different from yesterday’s walk that Will could have sung.

  Kim seemed to feel the same, because he was whistling. Will must love him, because he didn’t mind.

  He couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, he took his tea so weak it ought to be illegal, he might be letting his brother get away with murder right now, and Will felt like the whole world came to a point on him. Everything that mattered and everything he needed was right here in the dark-eyed man walking next to him, butchering ‘You’d Be Surprised’.

  It was a good song that didn’t deserve Kim’s baleful influence. Will, who had a reasonable tenor, began to sing in self-defence.

  He’s not so good in a crowd but when you get him alone

  You’d be surprised

  He isn’t much at a dance but then when he takes you home

  You’d be surprised

  He doesn’t look like much of a lover

  But don’t judge a book by its cover

  He’s got the face of an angel

  But there’s a devil in his eyes...

  Kim shot him a look with plenty of devil in it. “Pine woods again? I was pleasantly surprised by how comfortable the bracken was.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  Will would have liked to hold hands. If he’d been walking with his girl on a day like this, if he’d had a girl, they would have been holding hands. He took a swift scan of the landscape to see if anyone was around to notice them. Inevitably, there was a gardener or some such making his way along a path, in their direction.

  “God, there’s people everywhere,” he muttered.

  “This place takes an astonishing amount of upkeep.”

  “What would you do if it was yours?”

  “Give it to the nation. The staff would have to be considered, there’s people who’ve spent their entire working lives here, but one could sell the less good paintings to rich Americans and pension everyone over fifty on the proceeds.”

  “Not a hard decision?”

  “I hate it,” Kim said. “Well, I’m currently rather fond of these gardens, and the Floral Stair, but otherwise I hate it and I would absolutely rid myself of it. The hard part would be the twenty-odd years of my father alternately ordering me to serve our heritage, refusing to give me any power to do so, berating me for my unworthiness to inherit, and wondering why I’m not more grateful for the privilege. Frankly, I’m amazed Chingford didn’t leg it for the Continent long ago. I’m not surprised he prefers London life.”

  “What does he do all day?”

  “Clubs. Horses. Barmaids.”

  They were at the pines by now. The gardener bloke was still in sight, but they were probably all right for a bit on fun on the forest floor once they got into the trees.

  It was hot enough that the shade was welcome. The smell of pine on the breeze and warm earth and the green scent of bracken enveloped them, and Will filled his lungs. “God, this is nice.”

  “Do you miss the countryside?” Kim asked.

  “Not in winter. I’ve had enough mud for a lifetime. Bloody hate mud.”

  “You can tolerate London fog, though?”

  “It’s not mud.”

  Their feet crunched on the path, with its coating of ancient brown needles. The bracken rustled in the breeze. Woods were noisy places, Will thought, noisy enough that you might think someone else was making their way through it behind them.

  The thought wasn’t welcome, and he wasn’t sure where it had come from,
except he’d been thinking too much about the damn war over the last few days. It was stupid: they were in the Marquess of Flitby’s private grounds, not a Flanders forest that hadn’t yet been turned into a charred graveyard. He looked around all the same. There was nobody in sight.

  “All right?”

  “Thought I heard something.”

  Kim glanced around and shrugged. He was doubtless right to: they could see a fair way back along the path. It was conceivable some nosey parker was lurking behind a tree and Will had a sudden urge to retrace his steps, but he also didn’t want to ruin the mood of the morning. He’d just keep an ear out.

  “My imagination,” he said.

  “I’m sure you have better things to do with that.”

  Will definitely did. “Here, listen. About last night. Is it uncomfortable and you just get used to that, or does it get better?”

  “I think that depends,” Kim said. “If you’re asking whether you’d have had a better time if you hadn’t weighted the experience with wholly unnecessary emotional significance, the answer is: probably.”

  Will made an offensive gesture, mostly for form’s sake. “Could we try again sometime? Give it a fair go?”

  “We can do exactly as you’d like, my love, whenever you please. I’m at your service.”

  He said it so casually. No complaining how Will had come close to ruining the night; no giving him a hard time for timidity or indecision. For someone who’d made Will’s life so difficult on so many occasions, he had a hell of a way of making things easy.

  “He’s not so good in a crowd, but when you get him alone,” Will sang quietly.

  “Well, I’ve got you alone,” Kim said, and a gunshot rang out from the trees.

  Will’s body hit the earth without intervention from his brain. Kim was still on his damn fool feet. “Get down!” Will snarled.

  “It was a stick—”

  There was another shot. Kim jolted, made an odd noise, and put his hand to his arm. Will came up from the ground with all the speed and strength he had while keeping low, and shoved him sideways, off the path and into the trees. Another bullet zipped by them and there was a puff of splinters. He pushed Kim forward and down, hard, and rolled the other way to scramble behind a fallen trunk.