“Oh, we’ll soon fix that.”
26
Alan swallowed reflexively.
Luckily, the thief he was playing would have needed this moment, too, to reconsider the situation in which he now found himself. To feel the iron solidity of this lord’s hand around his arm. To search that cold, brutal face for a single crack of weakness, and find none.
Alan needed the pause to tell his body not to climax on the spot. His entire hand still felt wreathed in the startling heat of Jack’s breath.
“All right,” he said, making it sullen. “No need for a fuss. I’ll put ’em back. See?”
He released his fingers and the cufflinks fell to the floor. Jack shook him by the arm and Alan fired off a defiant grin.
“Go on then, my lord. Teach me your lesson. You think I haven’t been thrashed before?”
“I’m sure you have,” said Jack. “Clearly a repeat hiding won’t make any sort of impression. No, I think we can do better than that.” His free hand landed on the small of Alan’s back and then slid down to take deliberate hold of Alan’s arse, which he squeezed as if testing a piece of meat. Alan nearly bit the end of his tongue.
“What—what’re you doing?”
“I know you’ve no education to speak of, common gutter-filth that you are, but I think you can guess.” Jack squeezed again, this time using that hand to press Alan up against one of his thighs. He still had Alan’s wrist captured. Alan nearly embarrassed himself by frotting against Jack’s leg, but he put his free hand on Jack’s chest instead, as if he meant to push away.
Jack, the absolute bastard, shifted his thigh just enough to make things interesting. Alan shut his mouth on a moan.
“There,” said Jack, a low and satisfied rumble. “I’ll tell you exactly what I’m doing, and what will happen to a lovely thing who has delivered himself so handily into my clutches. And I will use clear, plain words, so you understand.” Another shift of his leg, this one more definite. “I will fuck you until you scream. And then I will turn you over and fuck you some more, and by the time I’m done, you’ll remember nothing except how it feels to have my prick buried inside you.”
“You won’t,” whispered Alan. Fucking hell. He should have been taking notes. “You—you wouldn’t.”
“You’ll learn your place,” murmured Jack, mouth falling to Alan’s hair. The scent of him was all-consuming, the solidity of his thigh against Alan’s cock an exquisite torture. “One way or another.”
It took all of Alan’s self-control, but he went still and loose, as if in surrender. He made a quick decision. He directed a grin down at the polished toes of Jack’s shoes.
“Let go, my lord,” he said, making his voice small. “I’ll do what you want, but—please. You’re hurting me.”
Jack’s grip on his wrist loosened at once. Alan shoved Jack in the chest and ran for the door. He rattled the knob a few times before fumbling with the key, and was clumsy enough with the race of his pulse in his ears, the glorious anticipation of capture, that he didn’t have to pretend at dropping it. It fell through his fingers to the floor.
Before Alan could bend to retrieve it, Jack had him. One arm fell across his torso, holding his arms to his sides, and the other scooped beneath his legs and knocked his feet from under him as Jack picked him up like a troublesome sack of coal.
“Fuck,” Alan said, breathless. It came out more impressed than he’d intended. He gave a token wriggle as Jack carried him back across the room.
This time, when Jack hurled him onto the bed and stared down at him, there was none of that true anger to be seen. Only vicious, hungry delight.
Yes. This was what Alan had aimed for: a fight that would engage all of Jack’s attention, in the way he so clearly needed. And God in fucking heaven, did the weight of that attention burn sweetly. Alan would do anything for more of it. He would take Jack by the hands and drag them out further onto the cliff of this game than they’d ever been before.
The bedclothes were crisp and pale with a length of dark golden satin draped across the foot, and two round, gold-covered cushions set amidst an unnecessary number of pillows. The bed was not posted and canopied but had an elaborate wooden bedhead with inset panels of leather and brocade. Alan began to scramble back and to one side as if to try for another escape. A tiny part of him yelled that he was putting his shoes on the good fabric, and another part gleefully suggested he do it harder.
Jack caught his ankle and dragged him back, and before Alan could move Jack had one knee crossing the golden drape and then the other, climbing bodily onto the bed and using his weight to trap Alan in place.
Alan barely remembered to struggle. It felt unbelievably good: Jack’s hands shoving his wrists down into the softness of the bed, Jack’s knee planted with great deliberation between Alan’s legs, with enough weight through it that the slightest squirm of Alan’s pelvis was as good as having a hand to rub against.
“Look at you,” said Jack. He was indeed looking down at Alan, and his voice fell between them like a line of dark molasses spilling from his lips. Alan’s own lips parted. His hips twitched again against the wonderful unyielding pressure. “Your body knows what you want, even if you don’t yet.”
Alan flexed his arms against Jack’s twin grips. No give there either. “Let me up.”
“No,” said Jack. “You can’t go anywhere. You can’t run away. You can’t go and work, or steal, or even think. You have to stop, for a while.”
The race of Alan’s heart wasn’t entirely desire now. Those molasses words dripped onto him, made him hear them. A fragile shape rose in his chest: hot saltwater and thin air and a quiet, irrational fluttering that was almost panic.
“No—”
Jack bent his head and growled, a few inches from Alan’s mouth—“I’m not giving you a choice.”
And then paused. There was a silence in which Alan could have told Jack to get off him, because he did have a choice. But he didn’t want to do that. He didn’t know what he wanted. His breath was coming in rapid rasps. He was almost afraid to blink, gazing up at Jack, needing something.
Jack’s mouth twitched. His voice softened and became deliberate. “Cesare. My lovely sin-eater. You have to stop.”
The mocking name had become Jack giving him an emperor’s title, granting him power, even as the unstinting force of his body was agreeing to take it away.
The fragile thing in Alan cracked right down the middle. The saltwater crashed into his face, surging behind the skin of it, threatening tears. He swallowed hard, and then again.
“Alan.” Jack released a little of the pressure on Alan’s wrists.