Objects Of His Obsession (20 page)

“
You’re worried about how Juliana is feeling?
”

“Well, yes, of course. I just
walked out of there without a word. Terrible of me.”

Abruptly, Evander gave bark of
laughter. Flung his dark head back and began to roar with it.

Benedict stared at him with a
kind of fixed horror.

“Jesus, Ben.” Evander was
staring at him with a kind of wonder, jewel-like eyes gleaming. “Only you could
come out with something like that. Apologize, after…”

Benedict moistened his lips.
They were very dry. And none of this felt real.

None of this afternoon’s events
felt real at all.

“Eliza Stark,” he muttered,
shaking his head. “Of all the people… When you told me Juliana had a lover I …
I thought, I don’t know. One of your circle, someone discreet, obviously. Hell,
Evander, I am so damned conventional. So damned dull. It never occurred to me
that Juliana was involved with… Well…”

“Another woman?”

A deep flush colored Benedict’s
broad cheekbones. “Exactly.”

An image he didn’t think he’d
get out of his mind fast. Juliana tumbled back on one of the sofas in what had
clearly, he’d realized too late, been her private sitting room. With another
woman sprawled over her. Juliana winding one leg around her, her own skirts
bunched up around the tops of her wide-spread thighs and one booted foot jammed
onto the low table nearby for purchase. And her lover had a hand up, under
those tumbled skirts, petticoats, as the two of them kissed with a wild heat.

Juliana’s fingers tangling into
the rich bounty of that woman’s brown hair as it tumbled free of its pins, the
other hand wrenching at her shirtwaist blouse as if she couldn’t get enough.
Was ready to tear through the layered clothing to the flesh beneath.

Even as Benedict had stared,
dumbstruck, the door handle still in his grip, the woman had moved, nuzzled
Juliana’s ivory throat, shifted, pressed a kiss against the top of a half-bared
breast, one she was plumping up, out for her lips.

“Mmm, my darling,” she had
murmured. “So delicious. You are always so delicious… Now open your–”

Eyes still shut tight, Juliana
had cried out then, arching, the woman doing something sinfully clever with her
hand under those skirts, and Benedict had made some choked sound.

And at it, the brunette lying
over her had twisted around. And Juliana’s hazy, azure blue eyes, heated with
passion, had landed on his face.

Without another word,
confronted by those two shocked, accusing faces, he’d shut the door behind him
and fled.

Evander was watching his face
now. The flushed color in it.

Whatever he saw there seemed to
make his mind up.

“Juliana won’t mind me telling
you this. In fact, she wanted me to tell you months back, but I felt it was her
story to tell, not mine. But she and Eliza have known each other for years.
They were a couple before they were out of their teens.”

Benedict thought of those first
few days at Harkenstorn House. The house party. The firebrand journalist, Eliza
Stark he’d been happy to be seated next to at dinners. Witty, sharp, clever.
She’d teased Evander. Shown no regard for his male ego, but at the same time,
underneath it had been, he realized now, a true affection.

And Benedict had sensed none of
it, beyond what he was supposed to. Because it was a fierce game of secrecy
that Eliza, Juliana and Evander had played for years.

He rubbed at his forehead. “I
– I never would have suspected,” he confessed. “In fact, if you’d force
me to guess at any woman Juliana was involved with–”

“Firstly, you would never have
believed she was involved with a woman?” Benedict said dryly. “And secondly, if
forced to, you would have picked Lily Rosso?”

“Yes.”

“That little scene in the
breakfast room?” Evander shook his head. “It’s a discreetly held fact that Lily
likes to play games. In multiples. She would have had both Juliana and I in her
bed that weekend, if she could have managed it.”

Benedict’s mouth fell open. Now
he truly did flush. So that was the little byplay he’d witnessed. Those sly
comments of Lily’s. The hands massaging Juliana’s shoulders. Juliana’s
awkwardness. Evander’s quick chill. And dullard that he was, he hadn’t even
realized.

Hadn’t even begun to pick up
the undercurrents.

Of course, he knew such games
were played, but–

He shook his head. “Lily was
after having the three of you together? At the same time? Good God, no wonder
Juliana looked so–”

Evander laughed. “God, Ben, I
wasn’t far wrong with you, was I? You really have spent too long amongst dead
things and sand. People misbehave, Ben. People do … wicked things, in the name
of pursuing sensual pleasures. And in the pursuit of love. Life is short. Very
short. And as long as all understand the rules of the game, then there is no
harm in it.”

Every word he was saying in
that low, assured drawl was a seduction, intended or not. And it was having its
effect on Benedict’s body. His too-long denied body, senses.

He’d never been able to resist Evander.
Never.

Only by putting a continent
between them and using the massive wall of Evander’s married state, the true affection
he held for Evander’s wife, had he kept him at bay.

He still cared very much for
Juliana.

But the fact that her lover was
not only a woman, but one she’d had from years before her marriage … somehow,
that altered everything.

And in ways he hadn’t had time
to reason through.

But then maybe that was his
problem. Everything had to be weighed, reasoned.

And sometimes, life was just
too short. And incredible moments such as he’d had with Evander, too rare.

Just the thought of them together,
Evander and he … the things they’d done months ago now, made him bloodily flush,
his honey-brown eyes dark on Evander’s face. His voice came out, too rough,
broken. “You’re right. And I’m a total fool.”

“No,” Evander said softly,
reaching out a hand to stroke the ruffled hair back from Benedict’s brow, the
sudden tenderness in that lean, striking face stunning. “You’re no fool, Ben. I
wouldn’t have hunted after you as I have if you were.”

Still stunned, on some insane
switchback from this afternoons revelations to Evander’s shocking tenderness, Benedict
lifted a hand and stroked Evander’s as it curled around his throat.

And abruptly, the atmosphere in
the room changed.

It was as if had been charged.
Electrified.

Benedict’s tongue came out and
he moistened his lips. Turquoise blue eyes dropped to follow that movement. The
long, elegant fingers on his nape tightened.

Benedict somehow found the
words he needed. “I give up, Evander. All the battles, the fights. The walls. Broken,
defeated, breached.
You’ve won
.”

It was a bare, husked whisper
of sound, Benedict’s throat raw with emotion.

Those incredible blue eyes
flared on his face.

And yet, now, something he’d
never seen in Evander’s face. Not for him. Not raw triumph. But gentleness.
Tenderness.

“You mean that, Ben?”

Benedict’s head dipped a
degree. He was no submissive, but to this man, he would submit.

Chin tilting up just enough, he
lifted his thick lashed eyes to the man he loved. To his truest obsession. To
the one true love he knew he’d ever have in the short, short span of time any
of them were ever allotted.

“I mean it. Fuck me, Evander.
Whichever way you please, however you please. No more guilt. No more protests.
I am yours
.”

~~***~~

In a strange way it was almost
ritualistic. Going into his bedroom, drawing the thick velvet curtains over the
light outside. Evander switching on the lamps on either side of the double bed,
the one indulgence Benedict had allowed himself when he’d inherited this place.
In Cairo, or working on the digs, it never mattered that he slept on narrow
beds, hard beds. Sometimes in tents, under the stars. It had all been part of
the rough magic of the place.

But in London … he’d inherited
this house, the only thing of value he actually possessed, aside from his share
in Nautilus, and it had been fully furnished, if very dated. His grandmother’s
money had gone to his siblings. A wise woman, she’d known what he needed. A
roof over his head he could rely on. Money he could do without. His only two
actions had been to buy a new bed, a soft indulgence for the few times he knew
he’d be sleeping in it, and bookshelves and a desk to turn the second bedroom
into a study.

Now, as he stared down at the bedcover,
one he’d bought in Egypt, with its geometric patterning of differing shades of ivory,
black, deep bronze, metallic threads glinting through it, he felt an absurd
happiness wrench through him.

That smile was still curling
his wide, well shaped lips as he turned to Evander.

Evander, who had already undone
cufflinks, shucked off his shirt, his sleek, muscular chest bared, olive skin
like silk over those muscles, that fine smattering of dark hair arrowing down
into his waistband.

“You’re smiling,” Evander
murmured, fingers going to the buttons on Benedict’s shirt. A corner of his
mouth tugged up. “Now why would that be?”

“Because you’re here. Because …
we’re about to christen that bed. Because… I don’t have to feel guilty
anymore.”

“Because of Juliana,” Evander
said softly.

“Because of Juliana,” Benedict
admitted.

Evander shook his head, the
lamplight licking at that gleaming blue-black hair. His long lashes lowered a
degree as he stripped Benedict’s powerful torso, only a few degrees less tanned
than it had been after an Egyptian summer. “Christ, Ben,” Evander whispered,
that careless, masterful indifference completely gone as he stroked a palm over
Benedict’s smooth skin, fingertips playing with a small brown nipple. Squeezing
it until Benedict gasped, bit his lip. “Bastard I may be, but if it took you
walking in on Juliana and Liza before you saw sense, then I wish to Christ
you’d done it last year. Had I a brain, I would have directed you to exactly
which room at Harkenstorn you should have invaded. Miss Eliza Stark’s, to be
precise.”

Benedict burst out laughing,
fingers working on Evander’s trousers while the man kicked off his shoes. “Is
that so? That
would
have been one
bastard of an act, Evander.”

“You make me so.”

“Eliza would have killed you.
And me.”

Evander shook his head. “She
knows a worthy cause when she sees it.”

The man was naked now, all six
feet two of him, and Benedict fast losing his mind. “Comforting,” Benedict
managed. Somehow he kicked his own shoes off, toed off his socks, Evander
stripping him of his trousers, drawers.

There was a tangle of clothing
on the floor, and already, the scent of fresh sweat, heated male skin and faint
musk hung in the air. And then Evander was tightening his lean, strong fingers
in his hair, and kissing him as if he could devour him.

He wrapped his fingers around Evander’s
already erect cock, precum dribbling down from the slit, and slowly pumped it.

Evander had been sucking on Benedict’s
tongue, driving him insane, his hands sliding over the high, rounded curves of Benedict’s
arse, kneading the muscular flesh. As Benedict slid his thumb over the slit,
wiping the liquid weeping there over the plum dark, silken cockhead, Evander
gasped. Threw his head back. Breath hissed from between his white teeth.

“Sweet Jesus, Ben–”

The fingers digging into Benedict’s
arse had become almost bruising. Wide mouth curling into a smile of sheer lust,
Benedict walked Evander backwards and then gave him a rough shove.

Evander landed back, weight
propped on his elbows, on the bed, eyes narrowed, blazing slits. “You seem
quite … unleashed,” he purred.

Benedict wasn’t about to deny it.
Incredible how free he felt. Released from so many bonds of guilt and
conscience.

What they were doing wasn’t
wrong. What they were doing was not damaging anyone.
Anything
.

Evander’s marriage was what it
was.

Successful, if unconventional.

And Evander … must give some
kind of a damn about him. Christ, he’d pursued him hard enough. And now,
finally, Benedict was more than happy to have been caught.

He leant over Evander, a knee
on the bed, and gave him a brief, hard kiss. Let his hand stroke down over the
silken skinned chest. He caught a nipple between his fingertips and rolled it,
hard.

“Christ, Ben,” Evander hissed.
“God, yes. That,
more
–”

Quickly glancing up at the
beautiful male watching his every move, Benedict dipped his head and devoured
the other nipple, suckling it, teeth grazing at his pec, that other tiny nub
until Evander was arching, fingers wrapping around Benedict’s own cock, pumping
it as he had been pumped, the glide lubricated by the spit he’d slicked his
palm with, the precum dribbling from Benedict’s cockhead.