Page 131 of Their Master

“I know what you meant.” Smith drummed his fingers on his desk. His study, so coolly neutral and comforting with its elegant gray, ivory, and black suddenly glowed a dull, pulsing red.

Smith’s body—encased in the same clothing he always wore—was hot and itchy. As if he were covered in ants or mites or filth.

He stood and Felson scrambled to his feet.

“You may go,” Smith said, distantly aware that his tone was uncharacteristically menacing—at least for use with an individual who’d done nothing to deserve it—but he found that he didn’t care. He went to the window and looked out on the day. It was a typical London spring, wet, miserable, and brown, the air as thick and slimy as treacle.

He took his watch out of his pocket; not because he wanted to know the time, but because he felt like he had to dosomething. Something that wasn’t rending and tearing and breaking things.

Moira wanted to know if sexual intercourse would damage the child. Even an idiot could figure out what that meant.

Not to mention the fact that she would haveknownFelson would come to him with the question.

Smith unclenched his jaw and worked it from side to side.

The contract had been most explicit about bringing men to her house after the child was born—he did not think it unreasonable to wish to keephischild away from strange men—but it had not occurred to him until that exact moment to include anything in the new contract aboutbeforethe child was born.

He gave a snort of laughter. “You devious little bitch,” he muttered, not without admiration.

Smith had been the one to send her away, so why should he care if she took lovers, now—whether the contract forbade it, or not? He didn’t want her.

Smith paused at the thought; it was patently untrue.

He didn’twantto want her. But he did. All the time, in fact. While it was true that he wanted to hurt her, he also wanted to fuck her.

He wanted to ask her what was wrong with him that she’d been able to throw him away like rubbish.

And he certainly didn’t want anyone else to have her.

He marveled for a moment about the unreasonableness of such a thought. He was behaving like a child who had tired of a toy but still clung tightly to it, not wanting anyone else to get pleasure from it.

But she wasn’t a toy, she was a human being with emotions and urges.

It wasn’t as ifhehadn’t been sating his urges.

He been gorging himself on sex, not just with Luke or at Bernina’s, but also with Charles. Indeed, his resumption with Charles had a somewhat frantic edge to it.

Even Charles, one of the most self-centered people he knew—an amusing observation coming fromSmith,he knew—had remarked on it the last time they’d been in bed. And bylasttime, Smith meantlast.

He’d been an idiot to even let the man step over the threshold.

As ever, they’d had magnificent sex and had been exhausted afterward, Charles absently tracing the ridges of Smith’s stomach. “You are even more exquisite than you were a year ago,” he’d commented with grudging admiration. “What sort of man becomes more youthful as he ages?”

That had made Smith smile—and preen, he had to admit.

“But I can’t help feeling there is a sort of… desperation to you now.”

Ah, Charles—the master of the barbed, subtle insult.

He’d continued when Smith hadn’t risen to the bait. “I’ve heard tales of you from a friend or two at Bernina’s.”

It had annoyed him that Charles was gossiping about him, but he’d kept it to himself. After all, he had no hold over the younger man, he wasn’t paying him. Charles could do or say whatever he wanted. If Smith didn’t like it, he could either suffer in silence or put an end to their occasional fucking.

His mood had been mellow at the time, so he’d shut his mouth and said nothing.

Charles had chuckled, not missing the tension in Smith’s body.

“You hate that, don’t you?” He’d dragged his nails across Smith’s abdomen hard enough to leave scrape marks, the action drawing a hiss of pleasure.

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