It left no place to hide, no shadow to escape in. It laid Ian open and cut him to the quick at the same time.
When he thought about easing out of it—when some small part of his mind wondered what the hell they were doing—Robert’s grip on his coat tightened, his tongue sliding past Ian’s lips, and Ian kissed him back even harder than before, led by instinct and want instead of thought.
And then it started all over again. Tongue and teeth and lips. Gasping and groaning into each other’s open mouths.
He’d been starving for this.
All of his reasons, all of the things he’d clung to—the differences between them, in both their positions and personalities, Robert’s faults, his idleness, his flippancy—began to look like the excuses they were.
Because the truth was, some part of him had wanted Robert since the first moment he’d seen him. And every instant he’d spent with him after had shaken the foundations of the wall he’d laid between them. Robert’s kindness, his easy humor, the worries he kept hidden from everyone else, the writing he did privately with no thought of recognition—all of those things had battered the wall.
Robert wasn’t flippant. He wasn’t idle.
And this awareness left Ian reeling. Because if he wanted him and he respected him, how long could Ian possibly protect himself?
The handful of encounters he’d had before were desperate, furtive things, born of physical need and nothing else. He didn’t know how to be with someone in a way that wasn’t only physical. For so long, Ian had survived the only way he knew how to survive—alone. He’d relied on himself. No one else.
There’d been no one else there.
His own family hadn’t wanted him, not when his secrets were laid bare. He didn’t know why he thought Robert would be any different.
And Robert had a whole other world open to him—marriage and children and a life he wouldn’t have to hide. This thing between them, whatever it was, couldn’t possibly be anything other than brief.
And when it collapsed, which it surely would, Ian would be the one stuck in place, with reminders of Robert Townsend all around him.
This thought finally allowed him the strength of will to lay his hands on Robert’s arms and push him back.
“I’m not going to indulge your curiosity,” he said harshly.
Robert stared at him blankly, his lips dark and bruised, still kneeling but farther away now. “What?”
“If you’re curious. If ye just want a taste. If ye just want to know what it’s like. There are places you can go.”
“I’m aware of that,” Robert said.
A sharp pain went through Ian’s chest. He wasn’t sure if Robert knew this from firsthand experience, but he realized suddenly that he didn’t want to know.
“Then maybe you should leave. I’m not going to be the one you test your curiosity on.”
Even in the dim light, Ian could tell that Robert’s face had darkened. “I don’t want a prostitute. And I don’t want a fumbling handful of minutes with a stranger. It’s not curiosity.”
Ian snorted.
“But if it was only curiosity,” Robert said, sounding a little strident now, “I certainly wouldn’t have picked you.”
“What does that mean?”
He made a clipped gesture. “I would have picked someone less remote. Less difficult. Someone who wouldn’t accuse me of not knowing what I want right after I kiss them.” He pushed to his feet and stared down at Ian. “If I only wanted to know what it was like to fuck another man and nothing else, I wouldn’t have picked you.”
“If that’s how you feel, I don’t know why you’re here at all.”
“You don’t?” Robert said, sounding both weary and exasperated. “Isn’t it obvious? You do a good impression, but you can’t actually be that unobservant. I don’t just want to fuck you, Ian, I want to be your friend, too. Your best friend. The one you talk to when you’re happy and when you’re angry and the one you go to when you don’t want to talk at all. I want to be the one you turn to. I won’t settle for less.”
Ian’s mouth was dry. He didn’t know how to protect himself in the face of that kind of honesty. And he didn’t know how it could be real.
“I don’t need friends,” he finally said, flatly. “I’ve never had them before, and I don’t want them now.”
Robert looked…upset…disappointed, maybe. But he didn’t look surprised. That gnawed at Ian’s gut more than he would admit. “Very well,” he said. “If that’s how you feel, I won’t trouble you again.”
Robert turned to go, and Ian felt something he hadn’t felt in a long time. Fear. A strange sheer panic. If he let Robert go, if he let him walk away now, would they ever sit beside each other while Ian pointed out constellations? Would he ever feel Robert’s body shake from laughter that he couldn’t contain?
No. No, he wouldn’t.
If he let him go now, he would lose all of that in an instant. And he’d already come to crave it a little too much.
“Wait,” he said, voice sharp in the silence.
Robert glanced back at him.
Ian’s throat felt thick. He didn’t know what to say. He still didn’t really know what he wanted. He still didn’t entirely trust that Robert knew, either.
All he was certain of was that he wasn’t ready to lose him yet.
“Read your book to me,” he blurted out.
“What?”
“It would take me too long to read it myself,” he said. “And friends share. That’s what you told me. So share it with me.”
For a long second, Robert just stared, and Ian wanted to go crawl somewhere and hide. It was the closest thing to an apology he could muster. It wasn’t nearly enough. But then Robert smiled, slow and brilliant, and Ian couldn’t really think at all. His heart felt like it was breaking in half, which didn’t bode well for the future of the organ. If it was already breaking now, how would he ever keep it from shattering?
But it was too late. Too late. Too late.
He’d fallen. He’d fallen too hard and too fast and too far to save himself.
“All right.”
Chapter Thirteen
“I feel like an idiot,” Robert said.
They were in his bedchamber, and he had The Adventures of Constable Whitley spread out on his lap while he sat in the desk chair, turned toward Ian, who sat at the foot of the bed, taking up too much space in the small room. His face was etched in gold and shadow from the candles Robert had lit.
They’d kissed, Robert kept thinking to himself. They’d kissed, and Ian was here, Ian wanted to be here, with him. Ian wanted him.
Robert felt overheated. He pushed open the window a crack to let the cool night air seep in. When he sat back down, Ian was still watching him.
“I’m waiting,” he said, sounding bored.
Robert sighed. He cleared his throat. “‘The Adventures of Constable Whitley,’” he read. “‘Chapter One.’”
He was about to pause to say he felt like an idiot, but he realized he’d already said that. He didn’t know why he’d agreed to this. Except Ian had called him back. Robert had been walking away, devastated, certain he’d been rejected, and Ian had called him back, and this was what he’d asked of him.
And Robert didn’t have it in him to refuse any request Ian made if it meant they could spend more time together. Even if he did feel like a fool reading his own work out loud.
“‘Constable George Whitley was not, by nature, a superstitious man. There were things one could see and touch and smell, and to Constable Whitley, this was the extent of the world. But soon enough, the constable would find out that the world went far deeper, to shadowy places his rather unimaginative mind could not begin to guess at. It happened—’” Robert looked up and noticed Ian was smiling faintly. “What?”
“It sounds like you.”
“What do you mean?”
He lifted a shoulder. “Eloquent. A little ironic.”
“Is that amusing?”
“No. I can picture you writing it.”
Robert had never felt more self-conscious in his life. “It’s not a very exciting thing to picture. Mostly I alternate between staring blankly out the window and scribbling furiously. And I always manage to get ink on my clothes.”