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Giles hummed and nodded. “Sometimes for me, sometimes for the men who pay for the pleasure of visiting my bed.” He spoke openly, unashamed of what he did. He’d already told Theo that he enjoyed it, and about the freedom that came from not feeling the need to make the profane sacred. “I think you’d rather enjoy being restrained while I had my way with you,” he went on, grinning impishly. “It would give you so much less to worry about.”
Theo gaped at him, eyes wide. “I could not…you would not…not in such a manner.”
Pure giddiness flittered through Giles. His darling bear would be so much fun to corrupt. The man likely had no idea of the sort of pleasure the two of them could find together.
Acting on that thought, Giles tugged Theo farther onto the bed, then shifted so that he straddled the man’s thighs. Theo hurriedly closed his arms around Giles’s lower back, as though he feared Giles would slip off him and drop to the floor. Giles was in no such danger, but he reveled in the embrace, particularly when Theo’s hands moved slowly to his arse.
“Now,” Giles began, taking charge and adoring it. “You are here at my invitation and at my employers’ mercy. Which means we should get straight to work.”
Theo’s cock stiffened noticeably against Giles’s own as their bodies pressed together. Giles was deeply tempted to laugh at the conclusions Theo had jumped to with his words.
“I…it is barely evening,” Theo mumbled, his gaze dropping to Giles’s mouth. “Not more than three or four hours ago, we….”
Giles’s heart throbbed with affection for Theo. “Arousal is not limited to a certain time of day,” he said resting his forearms on Theo’s shoulders and playing with the locks of his hair that curled around his collar. “And you seem perfectly capable of coming to life twice in one day.” He ground his hips against Theo’s to prove the point.
Theo sucked in a breath, a shiver passing through him. The heat between them was growing fast, but as much as Giles would have liked to forget their cares and concerns and spend the rest of the day fucking, the cause of justice for a man who deserved condemnation on several scores was at hand.
All the same, he leaned closer to Theo, arching his body seductively and exuding debauchery. He let his mouth go soft and his gaze hot, and at the last minute, he veered away from bringing his lips to Theo’s and instead said, “I have a plan for catching my father in his villainy.”
Theo flinched, and Giles was surprised he didn’t break into some sort of coughing fit. He pulled back enough to stare at Giles with a grouchy look, as though he felt tricked by Giles’s teasing. All he said in response to Giles’s statement, though, was, “Minx.”
Giles tipped his head back and laughed. “I am,” he admitted, looking straight at Theo again. “But you like me that way. You like me wicked and wily and whorish.”
Theo’s mouth worked as though he would protest, but he produced nothing but stilted, guilty sounds.
Giles laughed again and shook his head, laying a hand against Theo’s stubbly face. “You’ve no need to feel ashamed of who I am or what you like about me. I like that you adore me for who and what I am.”
Theo’s shoulders relaxed. “I do,” he admitted. “Even if I do not understand it.”
“There is nothing to understand,” Giles said with a shrug. “Except my plan to prove that my father is a criminal who deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison.”
Theo tensed all over again at the return to the matter at hand. “What do you suggest?” he asked.
Giles grinned viciously. Perhaps he shouldn’t have taken so much delight in thoughts of bringing his father low, but the man had a great deal of sin to answer for. Far more than Giles did himself, though others might argue that fact.
“You need proof that he is one of the conspirators, if not the head conspirator, do you not?” he asked.
“Yes,” Theo said hesitantly. “But I have yet to find so much as a shred of evidence that would point to him.”
“That is because you have not looked in the right places,” Giles said, smiling. “You have not looked in the man’s innermost sanctum.”
Theo frowned. “Are you saying that I should somehow obtain permission to search his house?” His frown deepened and he let out a frustrated breath. “Without other evidence, I do not think that is possible.”
“It is possible,” Giles said, his insides filling with butterflies for several reasons. “It is possible for someone who already resides within the man’s house.”
“You aren’t suggesting we somehow contact your sisters and ask them to search Pennyroyal’s private correspondence and records, are you?” Theo arched an eyebrow at him.
“No,” Giles said, frightening himself a bit with his idea. “I am suggesting that you, the great and noble Bow Street Runner, return Augustus Pennyroyal’s missing son and heir to the bosom of his family. Then I can easily search through everything my father owns to find all the evidence you might need to bring him to justice.”
“No,” Theo said, fiercely and without hesitation. “I am not taking you back to that man’s house. Not now that I know what he did to you.”
Giles reveled in the way Theo’s arms tightened possessively around him. He let himself indulge in the feeling of being claimed, since facing his father again truly did strike terror into his heart. He might have enjoyed a life of debauchery now, but it had been a very different thing when he was young and defenseless and at the mercy of his father’s depravity.
“I know that house as if it were my own because it was my own,” he argued his case to Theo. “My father is conniving and suspicious, but for those very reasons, if he has anything to hide, he will hide it in his home, in his study. I am all too familiar with that room and the secrets it holds. I doubt my father will have made any changes to the place in the last two years. I would be able to search it from top to bottom within the space of a single night, tonight, even, and have every bit of evidence you will need to convict him by morning.”
Giles was absolutely confident of that fact, but Theo clearly was not.
“I refuse to put you in a position where you could be hurt,” he said, the twist of sentiment in his tone saying even more than his words did. “I could not bear it if the man touched you.”
