Page 13 of Ravishing Among the Roses
“Not here.” Gabby ignored the surge of guilt that he’d caused Edmund pain by running away. He’d been miserable over the last few days and now ... standing in front of Edmund again, he wanted to give him the explanation Edmund deserved. “Come to my room.”
“Your room?”
“Please. I have a dressing room. Not the one we first met in, that’s one of the club’s meeting rooms. Upstairs. I owe you anexplanation." Gabby wasn't being very clear and as soon as they were in the room, Gabby locked the door and removed his mask and headdress, carefully placing them on his dressing table like he did every night.
“I hope you don’t mind. It’ll stop anyone just walking in, and ...” Gabby wiped his hands down his dress and shook them out. “God, I’m so nervous.”
“You are?” Edmund frowned. “Why?”
“What do you mean, why? I left you in the garden without an explanation and seeing you again with your gorgeous brown eyes imploring me for the truth has my insides all twisted. This doesn’t happen to me.” He was usually detached but this man had him wanting more than he could give. He kept thinking he’d get bored soon, that his mind would flit onto something or someone else new, like it usually did, but he was growing more obsessed every time he thought about Edmund, and it scared him.
“I am confused. At first, I thought I’d done something wrong and that’s why you ran away, because I’m always doing things wrong,” Edmund breathed out with a sad flutter and Gabby wanted to hold him. “But then I thought someone who was a kind as you wouldn’t do that to me, so maybe you were finding a safe place for us to kiss, and then—”
Gabby didn’t deserve the kindness. “Yes.” He stepped towards Edmund and kissed him because this man didn’t need to have another person abandon his needs. As soon as their lips met, Gabby knew he was a fool. He wasn’t fooling himself with this twisted logic. Kissing this man was the whole world and everything else was just excuses. Edmund wrapped his solid arms around Gabby, pulling him tight up against him, and their kiss deepened. All his worries disappeared, this was the only thing that mattered, and he wrapped his leg around Edmund’s hip, just like he’d wanted to do in the garden. Edmund moaned,sending a thrill through Gabby’s throat. And when Edmund slid his hands down Gabby’s back, cupping his ass, and picking him up, Gabby closed his eyes and let himself sink into the sensations coursing through his veins. They were familiar, of course, because he’d done this with so many people, but tonight with Edmund, it was the differences that he noticed. He noticed the way his body wanted to press against all of Edmund, not just perform or respond sexually. He noticed the intimacy of their kiss, how precious it was, just for them. And Edmund’s strength was apparent when he gently lay them both on the bed. If he wasn’t already lying down, he'd swoon. Usually if he played this role where a man dominated him, it came with commands, but this was so natural that Gabby wasn’t playing a role. It wasn’t a huge bed, not like at his first job, because this bed was for sleeping after a long evening of entertainment. It wasn’t the entertainment. His favourite benefit of this job was that he didn’t have to take a hackney back to the docks late at night. He blinked.
“You stopped kissing me. Is something wrong?”
Gabby gulped. “No. Yes. I am uncertain.” He’d been thinking too much about pointless things instead of focusing on this beautiful man who lay beside him in his bed. His cock knew what this was about, but his silly brain was scattered as usual.
“You are uncertain? But you are so confident.”
“Confident?” He was a ball of nerves, wishing he could hide behind his mask. When he was on stage performing, he was confident, but he didn’t want to perform here. He wanted to be real, and that meant telling Edmund the truth. He reached out and stroked his fingers along Edmund’s jawline, across the stubble that was beginning to form, and he loved that Edmund waited for his answer.
“Before we do this, there’s something you have to know.” Gabby wasn’t ashamed of his past. He’d enjoyed the job, mostly,and he’d been lucky to have a good boss who’d made sure there weren’t any rough or nasty clients. But he knew how society judged him, and he needed to know that Edmund wasn’t going to judge him too. It would ruin any possibility of a future. He gulped. He didn’t want to begin anything with Edmund without him knowing.
“Did I do something wrong?”
Gabby’s heart twisted. “No. This is my story, and you need to know about what I’ve done before we do this. I want you know everything before you choose.” He paused. The words, ‘choose me’ were insistent, a clanging bell in his forehead. Damnation, he wanted Edmund to choose him. Edmund nodded slowly, and waited patiently while Gabby tried to make his scattered thoughts into something coherent, but he couldn’t so he just started at the beginning.
“I was a very forgetful child. I have a memory problem or something wrong with me. I get easily distracted and I’m always losing things.”
“I don’t understand.”
Gabby had to ease his way into this conversation. Usually people knew what he did for a job because that’s why they were there in bed together, or they assumed because of what he did now for a job, but he’d never really done this with someone he ... he breathed in sharply. Oh no, he wanted to be with Edmund, like his parents were together. Properly. His hands started to shake and he clenched them into fists. Edmund’s response mattered.
“My father works at the docks as a clerk and when I was the right age, he helped me get a job there. I’m too small to do the physical work, and he thought a clerk job would suit me, but I got sacked after only a month. I was always late and I kept losing things, important documents that I was supposed to file. I’d put them down somewhere because someone spoke to me and thenI’d go and do the next thing and forget about the document completely. It was a disaster.”
Edmund just watched him with those big brown eyes, and there was something in the way that he focused on Gabby, listening with intent, that was so incredibly welcoming. Sexy too.
“I tried several jobs after that and none of them stuck, and then one evening I was walking home and I was a bit lost and I saw two men fucking in an alleyway. It was so ...” He didn’t have a word for the way he wanted it to be him and his whole body had exploded in heat. “Ah, interesting and I couldn’t look away. One of them said that I’d be perfect, and I know I should’ve been scared but I was young and horny and curious. He gave me a card and told me to visit.”
“To visit him?”
“In a manner. He owned a molly club, and he used to scout those laneways for new boys...” Gabby breathed out slowly. Walt, his boss, had been his first and he remembered the tender way Walt had taught him how to use his body to satisfy a client. Walt always taught the new boys how to go about the job. “Well, that was how it started. I worked there for nearly eight years before I got the job at the King’s Book Club.” Gabby lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling, not wanting to see Edmund’s reaction. “It was good work for me. I wasn’t disappointing anyone when I'd forget something, and I could choose my own hours, and I was young and ...”
“Gabriel?”
He hummed low in his throat, not wanting to sound needy.
“Are you saying that your job was this? To do this with other men?”
“Yes. The club looked like a normal club, people came to drink, and we all worked the bar, selling drinks and we had a card room. A few of us wore dresses because some of the clientsliked that, and then we had rooms for private sessions. It was excellent money, and it suited me.”
“And you liked it?”
Gabby sighed. “For the most part, yes. Sometimes it wasn’t fun, but all jobs have things aren’t good, and Walt was very careful with the clientele. It’s a risky business, and he didn’t want any reason for the magistrates to pay attention to us.”
“He kept you safe.” The statement helped relax the odd tension in Gabby’s shoulders, and he rolled onto his side to face Edmund.
