Page 3 of The Wrong Rake
“Shut the door, there’s a good fellow,” Beaumont said, nodding at the door hanging open behind them.
Harry obeyed, but perhaps gave the action a little more force than necessary, the slam echoing through the room. And then he turned the key in the lock and set his back to the door, leaning against it and ensuring that Beaumont wouldn’t be going anywhere without his by-your-leave.
Beaumont mirrored his stance, propping a hip on the edge of his desk. He clearly meant to appear nonchalant, but his brows drew together, and the hand resting on his thigh tapped out a nervous rhythm.
“I’m your prisoner, I see,” he said, attempting lightness. It fell flat in the thick tension between them. “I beg you will not resort to anything untoward until we’ve explained ourselves. I detest fisticuffs. I’m very particular about the care of my coats.” Something in Harry’s expression must have warned him, for he added quickly, “And please recall that I invited you here despite being well within my rights to throw you out on your ear.”
“Your rights,” Harry said hoarsely, throat tight with fresh rage. How dare this bastard be quite correct on this small point? “A man like you deserves whatever his actions bring upon him. You invited me here out of arrogance and a desire not to cause a scene in this—this establishment of yours. Not out of any courtesy.”
Beaumont shrugged carelessly, though his hand ceased its tapping at last and clenched into a fist against his hip. “You have yet to tell me what my actions have supposedly been. Your name, and that of your no doubt quite respectable sister, mean nothing to me. I would be grateful—”
“Her name means nothing to you?” Harry demanded, lunging away from the door, goaded beyond bearing. “Nothing? Weeks you dangled after her before you destroyed her good name, and now you claim not to know it?”
His hands rose up without his conscious volition, and he seized Beaumont by the lapels of that damned tight fashionable coat, taking pleasure in crumpling it, in ruining something the bastard cared for more than he did for the people whose lives he interfered with so callously.
Beaumont cried out in shock, his own hands flying up to grasp Harry’s wrists.
But Harry’s grip was the stronger, and though it hurt, he wrenched Beaumont up from the desk.
“You’re a madman,” Beaumont gasped. “I’ve never met your blighted sister! If what I suspect is true, this wouldn’t be the first time my brother has posed—”
“Your brother!” Harry shouted. “This isn’t some—some Shakespearean farce, and if you think you can pawn me off with this utter nonsense—”
“No, it isn’t a bloody Shakespearean farce, it’s my own farcical life, more’s the pity!” Beaumont shouted back. “Now let me go before we bring half the household running to break down the door!”
Harry leaned in a trifle more, using his height and his bulk to pin Beaumont against the desk. They were barely touching from chest to knee, and the heat and tension in Beaumont’s slim body seeped through the layers of their clothing, a horrifying distraction. Harry’s cock stirred, a reaction to his anger.
“I can break your neck before they break the door,” he growled.
“And then the hangman can break yours,” Beaumont breathed out, squirming in his grasp, succeeding only in coming damn near rubbing himself against Harry’s stiffening cock. “Let me go.”
Harry knew he ought to. That he had carried this past the point of reason, that assaulting Beaumont in his own club was not only far from the act of a gentleman and an honorable officer but rash in the extreme.
But his hands refused to loosen their grip on Beaumont’s coat. His body wouldn’t obey his commands. Beaumont drew him in like a lodestone, with that furious glare and the set of those absurd eyebrows, and that willowy body trapped between Harry’s greater weight and the desk.
“Very well,” Beaumont said with a sigh. “Have it your way.”
And he lunged up and pressed his lips to Harry’s.
Chapter Two
What no protestations had accomplished, one touch of Simon’s lips managed with ease. No sooner had his lips met Standish’s than the man loosed his grip and stumbled back as if Simon had punched him in the stomach.
Although he likely would’ve only growled and shaken Simon like a rat if he truly had landed him one. He seemed the sort.
Standish gaped at him like a fish, flushed crimson from his almost equally red hair down to his cravat. Good God, Standish had a set of shoulders on him, and big hands—Simon’s coat would never be the same, damn it all—and the height and looming presence to match his hostility and furious accusations.
Simon’s heart beat like a kettledrum, but not from fear.
Not entirely from fear, anyway. That kiss had been a matter of desperation, but his lips tingled and throbbed from that fleeting touch.
“What the devil did you mean by that?” Standish demanded, his voice hoarse and low, eyes flashing. Those eyes. Not blue, but some indefinable shade of slate that might’ve been washed-out and dull in another man’s face.
But Standish’s eyes were anything but dull. Sharp and watchful and filled with emotion Simon couldn’t begin to define.
Simon reached up and smoothed down the crumpled lapels of his coat, for all the good it would do. More, in fact, to give his hands somethingtodo.
“You’re no longer assaulting me,” Simon said as coolly as he could manage. And he managed it rather well, he thought. “It served its purpose. And perhaps now you will listen to me: I have a brother only a year younger who resembles me damnably. He often, to my great irritation, uses my name when in society outside of London where he cannot be easily contradicted so long as he avoids any mutual acquaintance. If a gentleman who claimed to be Simon Beaumont meddled with your sister—” He had to stop for a moment, his throat going dry. For on the wordmeddled, Standish let out something like a wolf’s threatening growl. Simon forced himself to go on while he had the chance. “It wasn’t me, that’s all,” he finished rather lamely.
