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Nothing could have made Giles happier than to see the man he…well, it was too soon to put words to it…to see Theo and his employers getting along.
Although one could argue that they weren’t, in fact, getting along, they had merely reached an agreement to tolerate each other. But whatever the case, Mr. Potts, Mr. Black, and Mr. Beaumont were allowing Theo to stay with him at Perdition until the case against his father was solved.
After that, Giles was not yet certain what he wanted to see happen. Suddenly, after two delicious years of pleasure, vice, and freedom, he was uncertain whether he wanted to continue his employment at the hell. But if he left his position there, what would the world have for him and how would he survive?
They were questions for another day. For the time being, his only concern was helping Theo in every way possible.
“Thank you, sirs,” Giles said to employers with a bright smile. He let go of Theo’s arm so that he could grasp his hand. “Now, if you will excuse us, we have vile conspirators to conspire against.”
His employers seemed amused at his high spirits and smiled at him, but they continued to glare at Theo as Giles tugged him out of the room.
“Have a care, Giles,” Mr. Beaumont called after them. “You are precious to us in more ways than one.”
“Yes, it would be a shame if we found it necessary to sully our hands, should anything happen to you,” Mr. Black said, following them into the hall.
Giles laughed. It was endearing that the men who employed him thought so highly of him that they would threaten Theo with bodily harm, implied or otherwise. They should have known better, though. They should have remembered that Giles usually caused his own trouble. He’d come to them two years ago of his own free will, and he’d had to argue his way into the men hiring him as a whore. But he’d proven himself to them many times over by assembling a devoted clientele and bringing in quite a bit of money for Perdition.
One did not have that sort of appeal unless he was extraordinarily skilled at finding trouble wherever it lurked.
“I cannot believe it has come to this,” Theo said with a sigh as Giles led him up the grand staircase from the club’s front hall to the sumptuous bedrooms on the first floor.
“Come to what, love?” Giles asked, addressing Theo in the same manner he addressed many of the other gentlemen he entertained, but feeling entirely more genuine about the words.
Theo glanced around the lurid decorations of the hallway, then at Giles. “Once again, I am homeless and dependent on the kindness of others. My position with the Runners and in society hangs in the balance, and the only place that has offered me shelter is the very gaming hell I have been charged with closing.”
Several things about Theo’s statement struck Giles straight in the heart. “You’ve been without a home before?” he asked as he took Theo to his door at the far end of the hall.
Theo’s face flushed, and he sent Giles a sheepish look. “I spent the greater part of my childhood from the age of eight in a poorhouse.”
Giles sucked in a breath as he reached for the handle of his door. Poorhouses were horrible places, particularly for children. His heart ached for Theo, and he wondered how the man had managed to stay alive and come out on top.
But then, as he turned the handle and escorted Theo into his room, he imagined that his bear had been large and strapping as a boy even before he grew into a tower of a man. He would have done quite well at whatever work he’d been given in the poorhouse, which might have earned him attention and praise, and perhaps extra food.
“How, may I ask, did you end up in such dire circumstances?” he asked as he shut the door behind them. “Why do you have so little blunt, even as a Runner, that you were reduced to living at that boarding house?”
Theo didn’t answer. Giles wasn’t certain the man was even capable of answering. His eyes had gone wide the moment he’d stepped into the bedroom, and they widened even more as he turned in a slow half-circle, taking in the surroundings he now found himself in.
Giles made no effort to conceal his naughty grin as he watched Theo’s reaction to the decorations and furnishings of the room. His bedroom was perfectly suited to the sorts of activities that took place there.
The bed was large and took up most of one side of the room. Its coverings were simple, mostly because they needed to be laundered so frequently, and it held a wide array of stiff pillows and bolsters in varying shapes that were perfect for draping himself over for ease of congress. The bed’s thick posters were carved with twining vines, and several of the larger gaps in the design contained lengths of silken cord or delicate shackles for when his visitors had a taste for something beyond the usual.
The other furniture in the room hinted at similar purposes, from a uniquely shaped sofa to a padded bench whose height could be adjusted depending on the height of his guests in relation to his arse. Aside from those items, there was a rack for drying towels that had been repurposed to hold lengths of rope of varying materials and lengths, as well as a few strips of silk he sometimes used as blindfolds.
As if those things were not shocking enough, Giles’s prized collection of phalluses in stone, glass, wood, and even one made of ivory stood proudly across the mantel of the fireplace opposite his bed. Theo’s gaze lingered on the collection for a long moment, so much so that Giles was tempted to relate a few stories of visitors who preferred to use items from his collection on him rather than penetrating him themselves, including one female client who frequently visited the club in the guise of a man.
Perhaps those stories should wait until the shock wore off, though.
“Not, perhaps, what you were expecting?” he asked Theo, glancing around the room and grinning.
Theo’s gaze had moved on to the obscene artwork that decorated the walls. Much of it was of a quality to be housed in a museum, but there was no possible way such depictions would be allowed in public. The Ancient Greeks had had quite the imagination, and more contemporary artists with an admiration for all things Greek had doubled that imagination.
“I think perhaps I should sit down,” Theo said in a hoarse voice.
Giles laughed and took his hand again, leading him over to the bed and sitting with him.
“I did tell you that I enjoy my profession, did I not?” he asked, sitting sideways and inching closer to Theo so that he could loop his arms around the startled man’s shoulders.
Theo glanced around at the sinful room for a few more moments before focusing his gaze on Giles and saying, “You did, but I had no idea….” He swallowed and glanced past Giles to the head of the bed, where a set of velvet-covered shackles hung down from the tall, carved headboard. “Shackles?”
