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“No. Never. You—” He moved his right wrist; the makeshift restraint fell. Landed at their feet. Lay staring up at him, astonished. “Can I—do something for you? Please? You didn’t—?”
“Don’t.” John took a step back. The wry line had come back to the side of his mouth. It only made him prettier. His arousal was obvious, blatant, full under his trousers. “I shouldn’t—I didn’t mean to do that.”
“You accidentally fell onto your knees with your mouth on my cock? And your magic—”
“That’s more how I thought you’d sound.” John scrubbed both hands over his face, paced a step back to Sam’s desk, sagged onto it. “Not—not asking if you can do something for me. Not looking at me like that.”
“How do you want me to look at you?”
“Oh fuck me,” John said, and tipped his head back to gaze at Sam’s ceiling, and then a bookshelf, and then the rug. Then he went over and smoothed the corner out.
“All right.” Sam occupied himself, for a moment, with fixing his trousers; he touched his own wrist before he realized he was doing it. He made himself put his hands behind his back.
He came over to his—what were they, now? Not stepbrothers, not related, not even by law. Lover? Surely not, not even after that. Once, or one-half, or whatever they’d just done, might not count, and anyway John seemed so unhappy about it. Enemy? Not that, either. He hoped.
He’d brought John back to Mayfair, his townhome, up to his study, because they needed to talk. John had come willingly. And that was not the verb Sam’s head needed to focus on just this moment.
He attempted, “I’m not going to arrest you, and…we should talk? If I’m allowed to.”
“If you’re—” John stopped trying to flatten the already vanquished edge of the rug with his boot, and shook his head. “I forgot I said that. I didn’t…it wasn’t a command, or…I mean I wasn’t trying to push you. With magic.”
“I know. I was just trying to listen.” He bit his lip, the same spot from earlier. Heat and copper built, a sensation. He felt older, clumsy, awkward. Aware of himself, of the grey in his hair and the twinge in his hip, next to John’s fluid youthful beauty. “I’m sorry.”
John stared at him in much the same way the discarded cravat had done, and said, “You’re sorry?”
Chapter 2
The question hung in the study like a broken Midwinter wreath, a crushed bit of mistletoe, a shredded hope. The last painting, youthful artistic prodigy Victoria Rookwood’s third work, stood propped against the bookshelf near the door. Sam had set it there when they’d first come in, not knowing what else to do.
He tried for a steadying breath. “I am sorry. For not finding you. For Victoria—for that. For everything that happened to you. For not keeping my promises to you.”
John glared at him, started to lift a hand, dropped it. Framed by simple wood-paneled walls and plain carpet and heavy bookshelves, he was more lovely than the whole history of the law and regulations and known precedents. He said, “You have no idea what that even means. Whatever you think happened to us. In Italy.”
“I know.” He could never know. He hadn’t been there. For over ten years, he hadn’t been there.
“Torie—that wasn’t your fault. You were here alone. The fever—”
“It was my fault.” Sam put both hands on his desk, steadying. “I promised to take care of all of you. I know that.”
“You don’t know anything.”
Breathing, breathing; if he could do that he could get through this. Physical gifts. Kinetic. Maybe he could tell his heart to not split in two. A Midwinter miracle. “I understand that.”
“I mean—” John did the hand-wave again, exasperated and luscious. “Why the fuck do you keep agreeing with me?”
“Because you’re right, and I failed you?”
“I just fucked you, in your study, because you took me home instead of arresting me, and you’re breaking every one of your rules for me, and you’re telling me you failed me.”
“Technically,” Sam said, because he damned well liked precision, “you got on your knees and I fucked your mouth.”
John had opened his mouth to keep talking. No sound came out.
“Just so we’re clear.”
“All the fucking gods of holly and oak,” John said. “And rivers and demon-hells. Sam—you said no. And I more or less held you down and made you spend in my mouth.”
“I didn’t say no. Not to that.” Their eyes met, across the cherrywood expanse of Sam’s desk, an inkwell, the small fire-charm light from the fireplace.
