Page 9 of The Wrong Rake
And now Harry had not only failed to bring Beaumont to account, but had probably scotched any chance he’d had of enlisting the man to help him in finding his worthless brother.
Not to mention the way he’d shoved Beaumont down onto his cock, more roughly and less courteously by far than he’d ever have imagined treating a whore.
The fact that Beaumont had reached his climax as he did so only made it rather worse, somehow. And fuck, but his blood thrummed faster and his breath caught as he imagined doing it again, only this time, Beaumont would be kneeling nude, gleaming in the candlelight, and Harry would watch him spend helplessly on the floor at Harry’s feet…
Damn and blast it. Harry spun again, leaning his fists on the desk and letting his head hang down, trying and failing to master himself, to bring some order to his mind.
If one were to indulge in such play, one ought to do so with the right intentions, he rather thought, and not with the wish to humiliate or to punish.
He’d have been far less in the wrong if Beaumont hadn’t enjoyed it after all. At least then it would have been more honest, perhaps.
Oh, he couldn’t make it make sense, even in the privacy of his own head.
But he knew it all the same.
And he could not possibly wait here for Beaumont to finish with his club affairs. It could be viewed as cowardice to run away before he returned, he supposed. But better to be cautious late than never. He simply couldn’t trust himself to apologize to Beaumont as he deserved in a way that wouldn’t give further offense. Not tonight, at any rate, when his blood ran so hot he might seize Beaumont again the moment he walked in the office door. He would leave his direction, he would promise to call again, and when he saw Beaumont for a second time he would admit his fault like a man.
With that in mind, he quickly rummaged a sheet of paper and a pencil out of the desk, finding them easily in the top drawer, and scribbled a hasty note, folding it and leaving it propped in the center of the desk.
That done, he slipped out, shut the door, and made his way quickly down the stairs. Some kind of commotion was going on in the card room, no doubt with Beaumont and his business partner in the thick of it. So much the better. Harry resisted glancing in the door to see if he could catch a last glimpse of the man; the whole point was to escape unobserved. He collected his hat and coat from the footman at the door, and he all but ran down the steps and into the night.
Chapter Four
A note. The bastard had accused him of trifling with and insulting a lady, spent in his mouth, called him a liar more than once, ruined his coat, forced him to ruin his breeches, and then departed without so much as a by-your-leave.
Not to mention he’d spent in Simon’s mouth.
That part of the affair loomed rather large in Simon’s mind—nearly as large as the cock that had done the spending.
The accusations of lying, and declining to meet him for the insult, ought to have been the cause of rather the greater part of Simon’s anger, oughtn’t it? And yet the fact that Standish had fled like a bloody coward rather than stay and spend the rest of the night fucking Simon through any surface they could find accounted for most of it.
He had returned upstairs eager to receive the apology he knew he deserved, and that he had managed to have faith he would be offered—and to graciously accept said apology as a prelude to said fucking—only to find…a note.
With Standish’s direction and a promise to return. But still. A bloody note.
One couldn’t get fucked by a piece of paper.
Simon was still brooding over it two mornings later as he worked his way through a pile of bills. His and Caesar’s friend and the third co-owner of the club, Jasper, had recently acquired a lover, and with him a passel of children, his lover’s younger brothers. And he had been, justifiably, so preoccupied in sorting out their mutual affairs that he had spent much less time on the club’s accounting than usual.
Which meant it fell to Simon. At least he had a decent head for figures, although he’d added them up wrong more than once when his mind refused to go anywhere but straight to Standish’s cock.
Hell and damnation. He tossed his pen down, spattering ink across a page of his ledger, and cursed aloud. He’d accomplish nothing like this, sitting about and waiting for a visit from a man who’d probably never return after all.
Standish wasn’t anything so very special, in any case. Tall, yes. And very strong. With a monstrously large prick, certainly, and a face that might not be quite handsome, but that commanded attention. A voice that made shivers run down Simon’s spine…
Enough of that. His devotion to his sister might be considered commendable. Simon possessed two sisters, in addition to his three brothers, and while he liked them well enough—with the exception of the only younger one, who liked to swan about at watering places under Simon’s name, so that he could send Simon the bills and blame Simon for any poor behavior—he wouldn’t have hared off to London to defend any of their reputations. Too much trouble.
Standish’s sister.
Simon sighed, rose, and paced the office, around the desk to the door and back again, pausing at the window to gaze out on the street below. Two boys were busily engaged in sweeping the steps and the walkway, chattering to one another, and a hack rumbled past, sunlight casting a blinding flash off of its glass lantern and directly into Simon’s eyes.
Standish’s sister. He’d been attempting, with poor results, to stem the tide of guilt that had been creeping up on him since Standish had departed the other night. Adam’s behavior was not his responsibility. Miss Standish, even if it had been Adam Beaumont who caused her social catastrophe, was likewise not Simon’s responsibility.
All of them could go to the devil.
And yet.
The youngest child, indulged by his parents and left to run wild, Adam had never faced any real check on his behavior. He had a generous allowance, but he ran through it within days of receiving his quarterly payments. And while he might not be the very worst behaved of England’s young fops, Simon had no trouble imagining him in the role Standish had given him.
