Page 12 of The Wrong Rake
“It hasn’t been two days yet. Only one and a half.” He stepped closer, drawn against his will. Beaumont had brought a faint scent of something light and pleasant into the room with him, lemon or the like. Harry couldn’t possibly lean down and nuzzle into Beaumont’s throat, could he? “Did it feel longer to you?”
Beaumont’s blush deepened, until Harry imagined he could feel the heat radiating from those smooth cheeks. Beaumont took a quick step away, until his back almost hit the corner post of Harry’s bed.
“Not nearly long enough!” Beaumont snapped. “And I’m not here for—your face has no bruises, I see. I’d like to look at your hands, if you’ll allow me.”
“My face has—I beg your pardon?” Had Beaumont run mad in the interim? “My hands?”
“Humor me,” Beaumont said grimly. “Please?”
Harry held out his hands, turning them palm-up and then palm-down. “Are you satisfied? They aren’t particularly pretty, you know.”
Beaumont reached out, moving slowly as if he were reluctant to touch Harry’s hands but couldn’t prevent himself from doing so—as if he felt the same unwilling, unwelcome pull that Harry did, drawing them together. The first brush of his fingers sent a jolt up Harry’s arms, a tingle that traveled down his spine and lodged in the pit of his stomach, the clench of arousal hitting him like a blow. Beaumont had forgone or forgotten his gloves, and those long, slender fingers had clearly never been used for any manual labor. Beaumont’s skin felt as soft as silk. He ran his thumbs delicately over Harry’s fingers, as tanned and weathered as his face from years at war under the Spanish sun.
“Pretty isn’t always what matters,” Beaumont said, gazing down, a furrow between his brows. He glanced up sharply, his eyes so very dark, pools that Harry could fall into and drown in. “You’ve clearly used them for a great many things. But not for what I feared.”
He let go, and the imprint of his touch lingered, the skin Beaumont had all but caressed feeling bereft as his warmth faded away.
“What you feared?”
Beaumont nodded, sighed, and ran a hand through his hair. “My brother came to see me. He’d been in a fight, got his face well beaten in, and like a fool, I let some suspicion of you slip out. Not by name!” he added quickly, as Harry opened his mouth. “Only the most vague description. But he latched onto it at once, accusing me of having been at fault somehow. And demanding money, of course. Upon a moment’s reflection I didn’t think you could’ve done it, and Adam’s reaction was far from believable. But I had to be certain. You understand, do you not? That I had to be certain?”
With Beaumont’s pleading eyes and soft lips before him, Harry found he had no choice but to understand—although he couldn’t help a stab of hurt, either.
Of course, how could Beaumontnotsuspect him of being capable of beating his brother bloody after the way he’d behaved the other night?
“I wouldn’t have sought him out without seeing you first,” he said, his voice coming out low and husky. “And I wouldn’t have—assaulted him like that. Not if it weren’t a fair fight. Which it sounds as if it wasn’t. Even though I was too rough with you. I know I was. I owe you an apology, Beaumont. More than one. For the way I put my hands on you, for the way I gave you no real opportunity to provide an explanation or any proof.”
The air between them thickened, the world fading away. The shouts and clamor rising through the open window, the bustle of the taproom downstairs: all of it melted into an insubstantial hum, mingling with the thrum of Harry’s heartbeat.
Harry had leaned closer without realizing it, Beaumont’s face so very close.
And Beaumont had leaned up to meet him, tilting his head as if he wanted—
As if he wanted the kiss Harry couldn’t help but give him.
Chapter Five
Harry pressed his lips to Beaumont’s softly, carefully, as if he could give his apology physical form, atone with his gentleness now for his careless handling of Beaumont two nights past. Those soft lips parted beneath his, and Harry teased them with his tongue, trying to remember how to seduce, how to entice.
If he’d ever known. He’d never had a regular mistress, let alone a lover. This was uncharted territory.
But the way Beaumont sighed into his kiss and went pliant in the arms Harry found he’d wrapped around him without his own volition suggested that perhaps he’d struck on the right tactics, even if he hadn’t even begun to work out a strategy.
His hands slipped under the tails of Beaumont’s coat, one sliding around his waist and the other—with the other, he did what he’d been trying desperately not to imagine every moment since he’d watched Beaumont’s delectable arse depart his office, and took hold of one round cheek and squeezed, his fingers dipping into the crease.
Firm and soft all at once, and perhaps it would bounce as Harry—he groaned into the kiss, yanking Beaumont impossibly close, devouring his mouth as if he meant to take everything he had.
Beaumont’s lean body molded to his as if it were meant to be there, sheltered in the curve of Harry’s. A soft, keening cry came from somewhere…Beaumont, moaning into his kiss, his tongue stroking Harry’s, his hands clutching fistfuls of his shirt and fingers digging into the muscles of his back. One leg had come up to wrap around his hip, urging him closer.
Harry tore his mouth away and stared down wildly at Beaumont’s flushed face and swollen lips.
The man already looked wrecked, eyes glassy and breath coming in harsh pants. He’d seemed so self-possessed when they met at Perdition, when Beaumont had approached him and given him that searing once-over. Could that be a front, a veneer of control assumed for appearances? If the real man beneath was soft, wanting, yielding…then Harry’s behavior the other night had been nothing short of inexcusable.
He could make up for it now. He had to.
The urgency of the desire shocked him, despite how he’d dwelled on the idea. He needed Beaumont, now, before he combusted.
“Let me take you to bed, Beaumont,” he whispered, only a breath away from those sweet lips.
