A Seditious Affair (Society of Gentlemen, #2)

by K.J. Charles

“Oh, blast it. I don’t need you to tell me what’s right. I know what’s right. I just don’t want to do it.” “I’m not going to tell you to do wrong, if that’s what you’re hoping. You can choose that for yourself.” “You’re a comfort.” “You don’t come to me for comfort,” the brute pointed out. “Tell you this, though. I never heard how the right thing to do was to betray your friends. Not ever.” “No.” Dominic tossed back the remainder of his wine, held out the glass for more. “No. I can’t quite reconcile that either.” “You got to choose your side.”

I own you. Harsh words breathed into Dominic’s ear as he strained against the padded cuffs that chained his wrists and ankles to the bed. Harsh hands digging into his flesh. Every scrap of you. You’re mine.

Silas smiled. A little, almost shy smile, not the snarling one Dominic was used to. “Love seeketh not itself to please.” His palm over Dominic’s groin, gently massaging his growing arousal. “Nor for itself hath any care; But for another gives its ease.” Other hand freeing the buttons of his breeches. “And builds a Heaven in Hell’s despair.” Silas was only quoting. Blake’s words, by the cadence, not his own. Dominic still took them and held them, deep within. Silas ran a finger along Dominic’s length. “Heaven in Hell’s despair. You’re mine, understand? Mine to the bone.”

“You blasted…ah God, Dom.” Silas’s arms tightened around him, so hard it almost hurt. “Don’t say it, eh? Don’t tell me. It’s bad enough already.” “Why is it bad?” “The more you have, the more you have to lose. Your lot have all the advantages and we’ve got one. When you have nothing, you’ve got everything to fight for.” His voice dropped almost to inaudibility, whispered against Dominic’s skin. “And you just gave me everything, so how do I keep fighting now?”

He feared in his bones that he’d give in if Dom asked, and Dom knew it and didn’t ask. Silas loved him more for that, with a heart so poorly suited and so unaccustomed to love that he felt it might burst its banks like one of London’s choked, fetid rivers. He had no idea what to do with what he felt. If you truly cared, you’d make him stop this before he runs his head into a noose. Silas told himself that every day. He might have been able to do it except that Dom had been left before, by that worthless, oversized prick who’d hurt him again and again, and Silas would not walk in that bastard’s shiny-booted footsteps.

Silas would be fearful and angry but not silent. Of course he would not be silent. He would find a way to write, somehow, of that Dominic was sure. Because Silas had true courage, which looked into the face of consequence, and was afraid, and fought on.

It was always someone you knew. It was hard to keep up the fight for the freedom of your fellow man when your fellow man was a bastard.

Silas reached for his hand. “Funny thing, I never feel weaker than when I’m with you. But after, I can keep going another week, because there’s you at the end of it.” Dominic breathed the words in, making them part of himself. Their tone, the feel of Silas’s fingers, their tightening grip. He etched it all in his memory, to be taken out and examined reverently when he was alone.

“You have no idea how much I want to. I want to make you give up your principles almost as much as I should like to give up mine. I’m afraid for you every day. I want you to be safe. I want you warm and fed. I want a thousand things for you that you won’t take from me.” “I can’t.” “I know. You can’t accept a damned thing except for the trivial matters of my heart, my soul, and my moral certainty. You’ve helped yourself to those quite freely.”

“Well, then.” Silas raised his glass, accepting the end of that conversation. “Here’s to divorce for them as need it, and the long marriage their majesties deserve.” “I shall not drink to any such thing. I don’t want to drink, I don’t give a curse for the king’s affairs, and I don’t want to waste any more time on other people’s self-inflicted miseries when we have a chance to be happy. Come to bed with me, you blasted radical. Bring me your revolution.”

“I have to find some way to provoke you.” Dominic pulled Silas close, felt his chest rise and fall, felt his own muscles relaxing in giddy relief. His precious firebrand, warm against him.