“I can’t love you again,” Ben said, his heart aching on the words. “How can I, when I never stopped? I couldn’t stop loving you when I hated you so much it made me sick to think about you. I used to dream about killing you and wake up crying because I thought you were dead. I can’t not love you. I don’t know how.”
Jonah lunged for him, flinging himself over in a movement of terrifying carelessness that thumped Ben back against the sharp stone edges of the rock face. Then they were kissing as though it was all that stood between them and the precipice. Ben grabbed Jonah’s hair, felt Jonah’s hands on his shoulder, pulling them close, and kissed, warm and wet and clumsy with need, relishing the scrape of stubble. Jonah was straddling him now, clutching him like a precious thing, and Ben pushed himself up and into his grip, forgetful of the sheer drop and the danger.
“Ben, my Benedict,” Jonah panted in his ear, and sat back, on Ben’s thighs. “Really mine? Honestly?”
“I don’t know how we can do this,” Ben said. “But we have to, somehow. God, I’ve missed you so much.”
“I won’t leave you again, ever. I promise. I swear it.” Jonah’s eyes were wide, begging for belief, and Ben pulled him down, and kissed him with all the tenderness that had gone unused and unwanted in the last long, brutal, lonely months.
At last Jonah sighed and sat up. He curved a hand over the side of Ben’s face, running the lightest of touches over the scar, and gently rested his forehead against Ben’s, breaths mingling.
“What happened?”
He hadn’t asked until this moment. Ben wanted to say, It doesn’t matter, but he owed the truth. “Gaol. Someone went for me with a broken bottle.” Shrieking about fucking mollies, fucking coppers, half-mad. The guards had watched them fight, shouting encouragement. “It happens.”
“I should never have let it happen,” Jonah said softly. “I won’t ever let anything happen to you.”
“Going to stay out of trouble?” Ben tugged at the lock of white hair, Jonah’s own mark of Cain.
“Yes. I promise.” Jonah’s ridiculously expressive eyes clouded, a touch of worry visible. “I mean that. Do you—can you trust me?”
Ben started to laugh. He couldn’t help it. The laughter bubbled up, from a spring that he’d thought long dry, until he was shaking with it. Jonah, astride him, gave him a bewildered look. “What?”
“I jumped out of a window on your say-so,” Ben managed. “I jumped off a cliff.”
“Oh. Well. Yes, I suppose that was quite…” Jonah gave a sudden choke. “Actually, don’t you think that was a bit rash? You really should be more careful.”
Ben doubled over, unable to retort, barely able to breathe. Jonah tipped his head back and gave a whoop of sheer joy that sent seagulls wheeling off with offended croaks. He held on to Ben as the laughing fit subsided, eyes aglow, then shifted to sit next to him and snuggled close.
“I never, ever want to be in trouble for the rest of my life,” he said. “I just want to be with you.”
Ben leaned over to plant a kiss on his tousled hair. “I love you, Jay.”
Jonah’s eyes widened at the pet name, so long unused. His unstoppable smile lit his face, and Ben felt the responsive prickle all over his skin. “I love you too.”
They watched the sea from their rocky perch for hours, holding hands, kissing sometimes, talking now and then, mostly enjoying the clear air. Jonah had bread and cheese in his bag, and found a spring to drink from after he’d got Ben back up to the clifftop. At last they strolled back from the clifftop, hand in hand until Jonah sniffed the air and warned, “Someone coming.”
Ben hadn’t thought of lovemaking on a three-foot ledge over a precipitous drop, or afterwards, when all he wanted to do was feel Jonah’s glowing pleasure in being by his side. But as they approached the Green Man, the thought of the night to come, a shared bed, leapt into his mind, and suddenly his mouth was dry.
“Jay…”
“Long time till night?” Jonah enquired, and there was the same need in his eyes.
In a safe place, they would have gone to bed at once. There was no safe place, though this was as close as Ben felt they’d find in a hurry, so instead they ate. Mrs. Linney—Dora—had put out bread and cold meats for the family, workers included, and when they’d finished Agnes tugged at Ben’s sleeve and held out The Pickwick Papers.
Ben read to them all in the parlour. He missed Jonah’s head resting against his legs, but at least he was curled in a chair opposite, listening intently. Dora and Bethany knitted, as Agnes lay on the hearthrug, staring into the fire. It felt stupidly safe, dangerously good.
“Bed,” Dora told them all at last. “Lots to be done tomorrow.”
“I might have a crack at that roof, see if I can patch it up a little,” Jonah said. “The good weather won’t last.”
“You’re right there,” Dora said. “Never does.”