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"Too sadistic," Bobby read the comment from his tablet.
The refined gentleman on the nearby chaise lifted his head from the newspaper he had been reading.
Angelo Vitali was the definition of suave, handsome, and dangerous. Those three elements were combined in the elegant lines of his visage, in the dark hollows of his eyes, the thick, refined ridges of his brow, and the patrician nose matched with a hard jaw and sensual yet masculine mouth. He was silvering at the temples, but jet black sweeps of thick, wavy hair remained dominant.
Bobby, on the other hand, was a dark little void of ill-intention and vicious instincts. He was also handsome and growing ever more so as he aged past the middle of his twenties. His eyes were equally dark, but his complexion was paler due to Eastern European heritage, whereas Angelo hailed from Sicily.
Where Angelo was sitting in a respectable fashion, one leg over the other, Bobby was sprawled on the couch, just barely qualifying as dressed. He was not wearing socks or a shirt, and his pants weren't done up all the way, nearly revealing the treasure at the end of the trail of dark hair running from under his belly button to his…
They made the perfect pairing in the most imperfect of ways. It had been a pleasant and quiet afternoon thus far, and the pair of them were seated in their Edwardian-style living room. Angelo had a taste for older things, and come to think of it, given his mate, so did Bobby.
"What's that, boy?"
"They say you're too sadistic."
Angelo raised a brow and purred the questions begging to be asked. "Who are they, and how would they know?"
"Oh… uh. Well."
"Bobby…" Angelo lowered his tone, his voice taking on a distinctly stern note. His Sicilian accent came to the fore, along with a general shift in energy which boded very poorly for the stoic, athletic younger man who was now staring indignantly over his tablet in the attempt to seem as though he was not in the wrong.
"Fine," Bobby sighed when the staring battle did not lead to any fruitful return. "I've been about blogging about us. Secretly and privately. You know, what's that word that starts with c… covertly? No, confidentially!"
"You have been writing about… us… on the internet?" Angelo's tone strongly suggested that Bobby had just made the fuck up of all fuck ups.
"Not with our names, obviously. People think it's fiction."
Angelo shook his head in surprise. "I never took you for the authoring type, boy."
"There's a lot you don't take me for," Bobby replied, a smile spreading over his lips. "Anyway. The general consensus is that you're too sadistic. And I haven't even told them the half of it yet…."
Ding Dong!
Bobby's hole digging was interrupted by the doorbell.
The pair fell silent. The doorbell was mostly there for show. They never really expected it to be used. This was not the kind of house that received visitors.
The butler went to get the door. This was the first time they'd had a butler in quite some time. Mark used to get the door and do things like that, but Mark no longer lived with them, so the butler did it now.
"There's a lady at the door for you, sir," Buttles said upon his return. He was a man with grey hair, a grey face, and a grey temperament. A man who avoided being the object of discussion and certainly of description. A man who might very well never be mentioned again without anybody taking notice.
Angelo got up at that news and went to see what lady might be there. If visitors to his home were rare, then female visitors were doubly rare. Was there some small part of him which hoped that his erstwhile young bride had returned with her family in tow?
At the door, Angelo discovered that Buttles had not been lying. There was a woman there.
She was very tall and very elegant, obviously British in the way some obviously British people are. Angelo cast an appraising eye up and down her impeccably dressed form and saw a woman whose world-armor was complete. She was not slim, nor was she husky. She had an athletic build, like a field hockey player. Her hair was long and dark and pinned up in a complicated sort of way. Her nails and lips seemed to share the same pale gloss. Her coat was the only element of her attire on easy display, a dark houndstooth in a classic cut. Beneath the coat were long boots. Her hands were covered in gloves, and a broad-brimmed hat swept down to cover much of her face. She was remarkably unremarkable until she lifted her head and gave him the benefit of the full force stare of centuries of aristocratic breeding.
"Lady Willow Spencer," she said, extending a gloved hand. "I believe you are in possession of my younger brother."
