Objects Of His Obsession (13 page)

“Yeats.”

That low, sardonic voice
brought him fully awake and out of the bed. Senses on full alert, an old,
learnt habit. At the same instant the cut-crystal shaded oil lamp by the door
was lit and Benedict blinked briefly at its soft light, staring across the room
at the figure leaning back against the door.

He peered at the small
travelling clock he kept on the bedside table. Nearly two a.m. He looked back
at Evander. The cool eyes were steady on him.

“What are you doing, invading
my damned room?”

The other man didn’t flicker. “This
evening, at dinner. You were clearly distracted. Deeply. And it wasn’t because
you were concerned about you and I. What’s going on, Ben?”

Shit, Evander knew how to read
him. Was he that bloody obvious? And had invaded his room, without invitation,
when he’d done his best to make it clear this morning could not be repeated. Something
exploded in Benedict’s head. Frustration. Exasperation.

With Evander.
With himself, dammit–

He wanted the other man out of his
room.
Now
.

And he’d get him out of there
by force if he had to.

He rushed the space and aimed a
sharp punch at Evander’s ribs. Taken by surprise, Evander caught most of the
blow, the stunned grunt he gave not stopping the other man.

This was his only defense
against Evander. Not words. Not argument.

Because Evander could push all
of those aside.

But this was raw. A visceral
reaction.

He punched again, but barely
caught Evander this time. Blocked. And expert boxer that he was, somehow he could
not aim a knockout blow to his head. Could only give in to his instincts and
pummel at Evander’s ribs. Which the other man was blocking much more skillfully
than he would have thought, he realized, with the corner of his mind still operating.

It was when Evander caught him
with an expert check hook and spun him around, arm caught up behind his back,
and slammed him face first into the door panels, that he realized just how
fully the other man had been holding back.

Evidently he was not the only
man here who boxed. And was expert at it.

He simply did not look like one
who did. But then with Evander, Benedict realized afresh, nothing was as it
appeared.

Benedict slumped against the
door panels, panting.

Fingers still gripping
Benedict’s wrist, Evander rasped against his ear, “Just what the hell is this,
Ben?
Pugilism
? It’s come to this?

“
Fuck you
, Evander,” Benedict gasped.

“You left immediately after
dinner. And it wasn’t me.”

No. It was the knowledge that
the dinner was going to be the last one he spent in this house. The last
evening with the tormenting bastard.

And that was good. The sane
thing. And yet … devastating. And he despised himself for that weakness–

Evander should have sounded
furious. Benedict had attempted to pummel his ribs to a pulp. With a total lack
of success. Instead he’d sounded restrained.

Benedict turned slowly, his
wrist released, and gave in to his despair. The absolute loneliness that he had
never acknowledged, never realized existed in him until that night with Evander.
The bleak loneliness revealed to him then swamped through him now. It was drowning
him in an almost unbearable bleakness.

It
was over.
Yes, he knew he
would find another lover. Later. Much, much later.

He could not live his life
alone forever. Evander had shown him that.

But he would never find what he
had with him. Not a shadow of it. Ever again.

Even he, fool that he was in
this new world, knew that.

Still fighting to catch his
breath, he dropped his forehead in complete surrender against Evander’s
shoulder, clad in a still-immaculate white shirt. He raised a bare, muscular
arm, bronzed torso equally naked, for he simply wore striped cotton pajama pants
that hung low on his hips, and wrapped it around Evander’s neck.

Evander’s arms wrapped around
him in answer. “Benedict, what the hell is it? What’s happened?”

Benedict shook his head. Aware
of just how ravaged his emotions were.

He’d
attacked Evander
.

And all in some insane effort
to keep him at bay.
But not Evander, it
had been to keep his own hunger, his own emotions at bay.

“I’ll be leaving tomorrow.”

That tall, powerful man froze.
“We discussed this–”

“No. A telegram arrived. Hamer.
My entire trip has been cut short.” Benedict lifted his head, hair tangled,
warm brown eyes holding Evander’s. “I have to go, and…”

“Back to Egypt. You’re not
joking. This is no game.” Evander’s eyes searched his before they closed
briefly on the words. His hands came up and he cupped Benedict’s face in them,
holding him still for his kiss.

Their kisses this morning had
been devouring. Wrenching. Evander’s stamp of pure ownership.

But this … this … this tore his
soul open with its tenderness.

Eventually Benedict pulled back
and looked into Evander’s face as he spoke.

“I don’t think we’ll be meeting
again after I leave tomorrow,” he murmured. “Once I go to Egypt … I doubt I’ll
be returning for several years. And you have your life, and … as you said,
London is full of men such as ourselves. I’m sure you’ll find your
distractions. But for tonight… Tonight I will consider myself damned. My
affection for your wife or not, I cannot deny myself this one, last…”

“Last night.”

Benedict nodded.

And found himself being slammed
back against the doors solid wood panels, and this time there was nothing gentle
in that kiss.

Benedict found himself being
devoured. His pajama bottoms torn off, himself thrown back naked onto the bed
with a muscular strength that Evander’s clothed elegance disguised.

Evander had come to his room in
his shirt, trousers, shoes. As he methodically, quickly, unbuttoned his shirt
he studied Benedict, a flush across his high, hard cheekbones.

Those blue, blue eyes moved
over his sleek, bronzed skin, so sheened over the tough, cut muscle that bulked
Benedict’s shoulders and arms as he propped himself up, hungrily watching Evander
strip.

“Touch yourself,” Evander bit
out, shrugging off his shirt. “Stroke that beautiful cock for me. Get it ready
for my mouth.”

Just the look, the sound of
that low, roughened voice,
those words
,
sent a surge of blood to Benedict’s already engorged prick.

Without thought, he curled his
roughened fingers around his girth, shuddering at the pleasure of his own
touch.

Evander bent, disposed of his
shoes, socks. Still, his eyes remained on the thick, heavy cock being slowly
pumped by Benedict.

“Yes,” he muttered. “Exactly.
Draw your knees up further. Let me see everything. Everything that is
mine
.”

Benedict did so, warm amber
eyes darkened, darkened still more as he saw the reddened skin across Evander’s
ribs.

Fuck, he truly had managed to land
a few blows. That sculpted, muscular beauty somehow enhanced by that temporary
marring. He dragged his fingers up, over his cockhead, precum dribbling from
the slit.

Eyes slitted, he returned his
attention to Evander in time to see him, naked and magnificent, prowl across
the bed to him.

Evander pushed his hand aside,
caught it and pinned it against the pillow as he took hold of Benedict’s prick,
his tongue driving up the hot, silken length before rolling about the sculpted,
deeply colored head, probing at the slit, drawing out every welling drop of
salty liquid before taking him down until Benedict found himself completely
engulfed in wet heat, the velvet of Evander’s tongue doing wicked things. He
felt his cockhead bump against the back of Evander’s throat. And then the man relaxed
his muscles just enough to take him deeper, swallowed about him, massaging his
ultrasensitive flesh until he went out of his mind, arching and instinctively
trying to thrust for more.

And he got it, Evander working
his cock with long, practiced movements, concentrating on the head, sinking
down, drawing up again with so much suction that his cheeks were hollowed and Benedict
driven out of his mind.

His now freed fingers were
clutched at Evander’s short, raven hair, words torn out of his throat. Obscene
words.

Words he didn’t remember
uttering, later. Just knew that he had.

Benedict on the verge of
climax, Evander drew back and eyed him lazily, fist curled about the base of
his near-painfully engorged, saliva-slicked cock.

“Christ, Evander–”

A black brow arched. “Good?”

In answer Benedict closed his
eyes, ground his hips back into the covers. Needing more. Needing everything.

What he got was a palm against
the back of one of his thighs, pushing it further open, up, canting his hips so
that he was more fully revealed. Evander shifted, mouthed one of his balls,
then the other, tongue pausing to tease briefly, too briefly, about his
arsehole before swiping his tongue up Benedict’s length, to the incredibly
sensitive spot on the underside of his cockhead.

Benedict gave him the response
he demanded.

His fingers tightened in that blue-black
hair, the captured hand clenching on the pillows.

“Jesus, the things you do to
me–” Benedict groaned. “Fuck, Evander, please–”

His torturer drew back a
degree, with one last, luxuriant, stabbing, circling of his arsehole. “Yes,
you’re right. I am giving you what you want far too easily.” He drew back,
kneeling between Benedict’s outspread thighs. He arched a brow, apparently
indifferent to his own massively engorged cock. Leaning forwards, he kissed Benedict
briefly and drew back, caught at his earlobe with his teeth, released it, moved
down his tanned, sweat-slicked body. Ran his tongue over the bud of one small,
brown nipple. Grazed it with his teeth.

Drew back and watched Benedict
groan, arch, under his drifting fingers.

“You are so responsive,” he
murmured. That cool forgotten. Voice like gravel on black silken velvet. “How
the hell did you wait so long for this? So long before you sought what you
truly needed?”

Benedict shook his head, long
hair, half damp with sweat already, tangling on the pillow.

What could he say to that? That
he’d filled in his time quite well with women, thank you?

Or point out that his last
visit to London had been in the midst of the Wilde trials, that bloodbath in
vicious hypocrisy? News of its aftermath had reached even Cairo and numbed him
with its horrors.

Or perhaps, more fully, that
first sight of Casterwell had ruined another man for him. For there had been
chances. Furtive offers. Drunken gropings. Even more sober, considered hints.

But nothing had made him finally
admit to his true nature, and be damned to the very, very real dangers, before
he’d returned to London. Before that chance encounter with Evander at the
Athenaeum.

For a moment Evander studied Benedict,
and then in a sudden display of strength, he grasped his hips, and flipped him
onto his belly. Benedict’s cock protested and he shifted, arching with the grip
of Evander’s hands on his hips.

“You see how well I already
know what you love,” Evander taunted, holding the firm, muscular cheeks of his
arse open for the drag of his tongue. That tongue circled, then the pads of
Evander’s thumbs ran over the entrance to his body, easing it, holding him open
as his tongue drove inside.

The throb of his tightened bollocks,
the seed threatening to shoot up the length of his cock was too much.

Benedict wrenched away,
gasping, landed back against the sheets. “Can’t come,” he muttered, eyes fixed
on the flushed, beautiful face watching him. “Don’t want to. Not yet.”

“No?”

“I want your cock in me. I want
you in me then,” Benedict managed, grabbing for Evander’s broad, muscular
shoulders.

Evander eyed him tauntingly.
His hand drifted down absently to his own erection.

“When, Benedict? When do you
want me in you?”

“When I come. Want to feel you
come inside me. Then–”

Evander was grinning, the heat
in his eyes no less diminished at his mixture of arousal and amusement at Benedict’s
near-incoherence. Then he scowled.

“
Fuck
.” The turquoise eyes were blazing. “I truly did come in here
to see why you were so disturbed at dinner. Not to fuck you. I didn’t bring …
anything.”

Benedict shook his head. “Just…
Your tongue, that will be enough to ready–”

“Another time, maybe. But I
don’t want to hurt you and…”