A Seditious Affair (25 page)

Up his chest. Skimming the nipple, which elicited a hoarse shout of pain. Across his throat like a murderer’s razor. Over every inch of him, slow and careful, and then faster, light slashes, and then pressing the teeth in till they left pinprick dents. Over and over, until Dominic looked like every inch of him was quivering, and he was hard as a barber’s pole. Silas had decided the steel comb might be excessive there. Perhaps Dominic might like even that, but he wasn’t going to find out, because the thought made Silas’s eyes water.

“How’s that, Tory?” he murmured, stroking the comb down the inside of one tensed thigh instead and watching Dominic shudder. Silas pressed the teeth in a little harder, forced a cry that sounded like protest. “Not that it matters if you like it or not, not if it gets you ready. And you are, aren’t you?”

Dom was thrashing now, fighting it so hard you could almost believe he was tied to the bed by anything but his own will, and the sense of power was dreamlike. Silas could take something that Dominic hated and make him need and want and plead for it. His Tory, every inch of him, belonging to Silas. He wanted to dig the comb in, to break the skin and leave a mark that wouldn’t fade.
Mine. Mine.

“God, I’d do anything,” he whispered aloud and had to pull himself together. “I could
make
you do anything. Look at you, desperate for it. Like a bitch in heat.” Dominic jerked as if struck. Silas ran his other hand over Dominic’s tensed arse. “You’ll take all the fucking you can get, won’t you? I ought to bring someone in. Rent you out.”

Dominic made the kind of anguished noise that suggested Silas had hit a nerve. Hard words could do more than steel to bring his Tory down.

“Aye, I could do that,” he went on. “Get some strong young lad in to fuck you a few times, scratch that itch of yours, till you’re begging him to stop for real. However long that takes. I’d like to see that. Sit back and watch while some big bravo makes you yell. Stroke my prick and let him do the hard work on you, and then once you’ve had enough, I’ll make you kneel for it myself. Christ.” Dom was curling up, whimpering his need, and the picture Silas had conjured was too fucking much. He nearly spilled the oil, his hand was shaking so.

He dug his teeth into his lip for control as he slicked himself. Pushed into Dom without warning or kindness, hearing the muffled cry and gripping his shoulders as if they were wrestling or fighting to the death. Dominic was arched right off the bed with need, and Silas hadn’t even meant to fuck the bugger; he’d meant to keep this going for a lot longer, but he wasn’t made of stone.

Dom’s hands came off the rail then, and Silas had a fraction of a second to think,
Hell,
before they clamped on his arse, urging him on, because—Christ—that was Dom spending, thrusting jerkily, and Silas hadn’t even touched his prick. Silas gave up the last shreds of control, driving into his blinded, muted Tory, and came himself before Dom’s shudders had ceased.

They lay together, chests heaving, until Dominic made a noise of strong meaning.

“Right. Sorry.” Silas propped himself up and untied first the gag—his neckcloth was dark with saliva now—and then the blindfold. Dominic blinked a couple of times. His face was marked by the cloth, reddened, and his eyes looked drugged. “Was that—”

“You know it was. You
know.
” Dom’s speech was a little slurred, as though his tongue felt thick.

I did that to you. Me.
Silas gave a casual sort of shrug.

“Hell and the devil. What
was
that you used?”

“Comb.” Silas fished it from under his leg, where it was digging in uncomfortably, and waved it at him.

Dominic flopped back on the bolster. “A comb. A comb and a couple of cravats, and I think you may have turned my bollocks inside out.”

“Aye, well, use what you’ve to hand, I say.”

Dominic smiled faintly. He said, after a moment, “Did you mean that? About, uh, someone else. Do you—is that something you’d like to do?”

“Mebbe. If you wanted it. Would you?”

“It’s got, shall we say, points of interest. As a proposal.”

“Ha.” Silas gave Dominic a jab in the side and settled by him, skin to skin, considering the idea. It wasn’t unfamiliar. Silas had made a third for Will and Jon a few times, and so had Lord Richard’s valet fellow, one of the few others to know Will’s secret.
We’re not like to love you,
Will had explained once, after a long night’s drinking,
and Foxy’s not going to love us.

Silas could ask Jon, if Dom still felt like it later. With Will’s agreement, of course, but Jon was trustworthy and a fine figure of a man, and after years of service, he’d doubtless love the idea of giving it hard to one of the gentry. Silas wouldn’t mind watching that at all.

Because that had been Dom saying what he wanted. Not leaving it to Silas, not silenced by shame. Dominic Frey, Silas’s own peculiar Tory, knowing his pleasure and asking for it.

Dom could give him clothes, and loans, and all the kindness he wanted, but Silas had given him that.

“What are you grinning about?” Dom asked suspiciously.

“Just making a few plans for you, pretty boy.”

Dominic gave a satisfied sigh, slinging a leg over Silas’s thigh. “I am at your disposal.”

Chapter 13

They lay together, talking or companionably quiet. Dominic’s hands hurt like the very devil at first after the death grip he’d had on the rail, but when he made complaint, Silas took one hand between his own rough, powerful ones and massaged it. The sensation of his strong fingers digging in, rubbing over sinew and bone and skin, was extraordinary, a little imprisonment all of its own. Dominic moaned his pleasure.

“Well,” Silas muttered. “That’s another thing gets you going, is it?”

Everything you do.
Dominic squirmed in lieu of reply and felt the pressure on his sensitive palm increase.

He hadn’t wanted the blindfold, had had to make himself take it, and the gag had been a genuine shock. That deep, disturbing internal reluctance, that edge of real fear—he wasn’t sure how Silas could give him those when he trusted the man so completely. With his own life, at least.

His skin felt scraped all over. A
comb,
damn it. He’d had men use floggers on him to less effect. But this was Silas, who knew him to the bone.

Thank the stars he’d been here. Dominic had expected to see Silas in the meeting room, and he didn’t want to recall the terrible fear that had gripped his heart when he looked round and found it empty. The few steps to the bedroom door had felt endless. But Silas had been here, and he was showing no signs of wanting to be anywhere else, and Dominic had started breathing for the first time all day.

Breathing hard, indeed, as Silas’s fingers continued their kneading.

It was close to five o’clock. He needed Silas here all night.

“Is there anything you want?” Dominic murmured.

Silas’s brow twitched. “What’re you offering?”

“Anything. What we do is all to my tastes. Is there anything you want, anything different?”

“Like what?”

“I’ve no idea. If you want me to fuck you?”

That earned him a look. “Not my idea of a good time, Tory.”

“Ever done it?”

“No.”

“How do you know, then?”

“Same way I don’t need to eat a plate of snails to say I don’t like ’em.”

“For a radical, you have the most hidebound view of the world,” Dominic told him. “I’ve had snails, in Paris. They were delicious.”

“Aye, but we both know you’re . . .” Silas made a turning gesture with his hand to indicate Dominic’s peculiar angle to the rest of mankind. Dominic thumped his arm. “Why d’you ask, anyway? You want to do that?”

“Not precisely. I want to give you what you want. If you want to turn things about, or fuck without games. If you want . . . I don’t know. Anything, Silas.”

Silas ran a hand over his face, brushing the tumbled hair out of Dominic’s eyes. “Not if it ain’t to your pleasure.”

“It’s your pleasure too, and in equal measure. I just would like to know that there’s nothing you’re missing.”

Silas snorted. “Missing from when? All the other beauties I’ve had in my bed? No. Or, at least—I’ll think about it.”

“Can I help you think?” Dominic suggested, trailing his hand over Silas’s hip.

Thinking led to palming, and heated murmurs, and kisses, and eventually them lying together, prick to prick and mouth to mouth. Gentle stuff, and long drawn out, since neither of them was young anymore, and this mutual pleasuring wasn’t what set Dominic’s blood alight. But it was still pleasure, because of the wonder in Silas’s mongrel eyes and because Dominic knew damned well what Silas wanted.

He wanted loving. He gave Dominic such brutal fucking, and he wanted love with the hunger of a long-starved man.

So Dominic kissed and whispered, stroked and cherished, and wove the most devious snare he could around his precious brute’s heart, and tried not to think about the clock.

They both twitched, some while later, when it chimed seven.

“You all right?” Silas asked.

“Yes, of course. I was just startled. You?”

“Aye. Aye. Thinking of . . . something, doesn’t matter. I don’t know, Tory. You say take a holiday—”

“It won’t be much of a holiday, starting up another shop.”

“No, true. Still.” He dropped an arm over his eyes. “Some people I know, they didn’t like me saying I wasn’t keeping up the work. Called me a coward.”

“Then they’re fools,” Dominic said.

“Easy said. Truth is, I am. I’m afraid. You know it.”

“Fear doesn’t make one a coward. Lack of fear can suggest one’s an idiot.”

Silas smiled briefly. “Well, there’s that. But if you’re afraid and it makes you back down—”

“You haven’t. And if you had, well, some charges are futile, and some retreats are necessary. You should hear Julius on the subject of heroic obedience to foolish orders.”

“Harry’s Julius? What does he know?”

“He was a cavalry officer at Waterloo.”

“Bollocks,”
Silas said, with force. “That fop?”

“I assure you. He returned from the war with a collection of medals and a very, uh, pragmatic attitude to heroism.”

“It’s a miracle we won,” Silas muttered. “All very well, but . . .”

“But what?” Dominic demanded, sitting up. “But you have to dedicate your life to a lost cause on the say-so of a band of beggars?”

“It ain’t lost,” Silas said. “We haven’t won yet, but the cause ain’t lost. Never will be.”

“Yes, it is. When will you see, curse it? People
want
to be ruled. That’s why there wasn’t the outcry you wanted against the Six Acts. That’s what you democrats don’t understand. Men don’t want votes; they don’t want responsibility. Look at the French. All that bloodshed, all of that Jacobin posturing.
May the last king be strangled with the guts of the last priest,
they cried. And what did they do? Exchange a king who ruled them for an emperor who wanted to rule Europe.”

“That’s not what the people wanted.”

“What people want is freedom to live their lives, and good rulers to make that possible in an orderly state. Your cries for unbridled liberty are cries for chaos. What sort of society arises from murder and upheaval?”

“I don’t call for murder,” Silas said. “What I want is to see people rule themselves, not be ruled, and for that they need teaching, and they need a voice. And if men, and women too, don’t want to rule themselves, well, let them say that. Let them who want chains stay in them, but they should have the choice. And you know why your lot won’t give us that choice, why you’d rather take away all those ancient British liberties you’re so strong on than listen to the people?” He jabbed a finger at Dominic’s shoulder. “Because you know damn well you’d find that even the men who want masters want different masters. Better ones. Ones that don’t just leave people to starve—”

“One minute you want liberty; the next you demand that the government take charge of the bread on every man’s plate.”

“Are you telling me this government rules in anyone’s interests but its own?” Silas retorted. “You say the people want good rulers. Starving in the fields and being ridden down in the streets, that’s
good
? What are we supposed to do about it, ask polite-like and wait for your convenience?”

Dominic set his teeth. He hadn’t meant to start an argument, but they were both on edge, which always made Silas aggressive, and the last thing Dominic wanted to do was discuss why.

“Mason,” he said, holding up his hands.

Silas blinked, the anger on his face warring with a smile, reluctant but there. “Giving up? Too much, is it?”

“Enough! Or too much.”
It was a line of Blake’s, and now the smile reached Silas’s eyes. “I am generally delighted to wrangle with you, but not tonight. There are other things I want to discuss, and—ah, tempers are too high. You radicals have pushed too hard, and my government has pushed too hard back, or perhaps it is the other way around, but I don’t like where any of it is going.”

“I’ll agree with that.”

“Then let us not bring it in here. We always said each would keep to his own principles—my duties, your ideals. We don’t ask each other to change them. And when I suggest you ignore your radical friends and lay down your arms, it’s because . . .” He traced a finger over the side of Silas’s face, the lines around his eyes. “Because I care about you, my beloved brute, and you’re so tired.”

Silas shut his eyes. “Dom . . .” It sounded stifled.

“Stay with me,” Dominic said. “We’ll eat, talk, or not talk. But be with me tonight.”

Silas nodded. They dressed in silence, the tension slackened a little, but Dominic felt a note of something unspoken still hanging in the air. Perhaps it was just his own guilt.

He went to the privy outside to relieve himself before they dined. When he came back to the room, the bed was a litter of yesterday’s newspapers, haphazardly flung around, and Silas was gone.

Silas ran up Swallow Street as though the devil were at his heels. It wasn’t the broadest or best lit street, but that meant fewer watch, less chance of being stopped, and he couldn’t be stopped now. It was probably too late already.