An Unnatural Vice (Sins of the Cities, #2)

by K.J. Charles

He closed his eyes, tilting his head back to expose his throat, a priestly action that had a wholly secular effect on Nathaniel.

Justin Lazarus was without question a disgraceful fraud, but as his lips moved in silent prayer, Nathaniel could not help the thought that he looked like a glorious fuck.

None of these were people who would attend so much as a harmless music-hall melodrama. If Nathaniel had suggested they pay ten shillings to have their desires teased and titillated by the sight of a bound, helpless man, he’d probably have been slapped three times and punched twice.

Look, let’s pretend you’re a good little archbishop’s son instead of a godless prick. Now do you believe in Justin Lazarus?”

"godless prick" 😈

The sheer gall of the wretch, exhorting a gentleman to honesty.

He looked like the sin of angels, like the sweetest fruit at the goblin market, and Nathaniel despised everything about him.

Not exactly EVERYthing, mind you

“Desperate people can’t afford a guinea an hour.” There was a snarl in Lazarus’s voice now. “Desperate people are scrabbling on the streets for the basic necessities of life. Desperation doesn’t dress so well as you.”

Ouch

He was well aware he’d grossly mishandled this; he wanted to wring Lazarus’s neck; most of all he wanted to know how the bastard had cut him open like a body on a slab and laid bare everything within.

“Would you like me to speak the truth now, Mr. Roy? Or will you find a way to stop my mouth?” Roy lowered his face, closer, enough to feel the heat of his skin, lips a breath away from Justin’s. He whispered, like a caress, “You are born to be hanged.” “And isn’t it fun?”

“So, when you said ‘It’s that simple,’ it wasn’t?” Nathaniel sighed. “Apparently not.” “Tea,” Clem said firmly. “Come and tell me all about this interestingly terrible person tomorrow.”

Clem SO has Nathaniel's number 😆

He could talk to Roy. The thought sauntered up on him, hands in pockets and whistling innocently.

He hadn’t mentioned the appointment to Mark or Clem. He wasn’t sure he wanted to explain letting a wretch of that stamp over his threshold.

"a wretch of that stamp" - goes right up there with "godless prick"

He had a carnivore’s smile, sharp-toothed and vicious, and when it touched his eyes he looked like a fallen angel with no regrets.

The smile that lit Lazarus’s face was a terrible thing. Vicious, genuinely amused, conspiratorial, and wickedly sensual in the parting curve of his lips. “Between us, Mr. Roy? I just want money.”

There were a few frantic seconds of thrusting, and something the same shape as kissing but nothing like it, then Lazarus pushed violently up and rolled them both over together so he was on top.

An amazing description . . .

They were rutting like animals, still half clothed, every bit as much fight as fuck.

. . . as is this.

“Fraud.” “You know it.” Lazarus’s breath was hot on the back of his neck. “And you want it. The fuck would you do with a good man, Mr. Angry?”

“Jesus,” Lazarus said at last. “This is awkward. Could we agree that was magnificent, and return to our earlier conversation?”

He’d ended his long years of celibacy by choosing someone with whom there could be no mutual liking, no care, no return bout, but he hadn’t expected a brush-off from a man still balls-deep in him. The damned nerve of it.

He needed Lazarus to take his disturbing, amoral presence elsewhere.

“I beg your pardon.” Lazarus rose, reaching for the clothes so carelessly discarded around the room. “Not being a gentleman, I had no idea of the etiquette.”

Might have let it be fun, might even have accepted it as a worthwhile interlude, a start, a something, and not treated it as though the cat had left a disembowelled rat on his doorstep.

It had to be all right, because he couldn’t stand this another minute, and the thought of flinging himself on Roy’s broad chest—metaphorically, just metaphorically—was the only thing that kept him on his feet as he fled through the fogbound, lonely hell that London had become.

“You’re welcome to a night’s shelter on my settle. But I rather think we can do better than that.” Lazarus went quite still for a second, then he looked up, and his expression made the hairs rise on Nathaniel’s neck. Or, not his expression, because his face was blank, but something in his eyes was dead, and it made Nathaniel want to step away.

Ugh.

That was the Lazarus he knew, the rat who wouldn’t stop biting even when cornered.

Nathaniel leaned forward to put his hand on Lazarus’s arm. He did it without thinking, offering nothing but comfort. If he’d thought, he wouldn’t have touched, not after the reaction earlier, but he didn’t think, and he did touch, and Lazarus’s other hand came up, equally instinctively, to grip his fingers.

“Yes, well, if I’d known you’d sweep me off on your white charger, I wouldn’t have stolen the fucking thing!”

White charger ... sounds like somebody is feeling the love 😻

“Look, everything comes with strings attached, and I prefer to see the strings, that’s all. In my experience, any helping hand is there to push you to your knees. Well, if I must kneel, I must, but I’m past pretending I want to.”

“I don’t object to fingers laid,” Justin said. “I simply prefer to have a say in the matter.”

Brilliant line.

“Hell’s teeth,” Nathaniel gasped. “If I’d known seances led to this—” Justin withdrew enough to speak. “Tell you what, my spirit guide’s a fucking tart.”

A popular favorite line and rightfully so. This would make a superb bumpersticker.

Nathaniel looked as though he was feeling much the same baffling combination of emotions. “God, you look good when you’re stubborn.” He drew a finger sideways across Justin’s mouth, pushing it softly between his parted lips. “You can’t stop fighting, can you?” Justin mouthed the finger tauntingly, spat it out. “I’m only pliable when I’m possessed.” “I like your spirit guide,” Nathaniel agreed, then bent low and added, quietly, “I prefer you.” Justin felt his face go slack. He couldn’t react, and as he stared up, Nathaniel moved a little further down and kissed him. They’d fucked before, they’d kissed before. This was something else. Nathaniel’s mouth was all the things Justin didn’t have. Tender, passionate, moving with unquestionable strength but also care, such care.

“Oh, Christ, don’t do that,” Justin said. “Don’t try to redeem me. If I wanted someone to make me a better man, I’d find myself a woman.” “You did. She left.”

Heh heh heh, gotcha there Justin

“Yes. Oh God, Justin, I wanted you. That morning—” “You could have had me. Spread me over the seance table. I’d have begged you.” “Beg me now.” Nathaniel planted a hand on his shoulder, pushed further. “Ask for it, my lovely fraud. Tell me the truth.”

“I hate what you do, and I kneel at your altar anyway.”

But this is a good kind of kneeling.

His voice was angry, defiant, threadbare. Nathaniel wanted to shake him. “Look at yourself, man. You are on your knees; does it make it any better that you put yourself there?” “Yes,” Justin said. “And you wouldn’t ask that if you’d tried the other.”

A not- so-subtle reference that makes my stomach knot up. Ugh.

“I have stood on Blackfriars Bridge and looked down into the Thames,” Nathaniel said. “I’ve been walking through fog for five endless freezing years and it has finally, finally cleared because of a damned cheating brilliant fraud with the most astonishing eyes, and you’re telling me I don’t need anything? My God, do you want me to beg?”

Justin nodded as best he could and concentrated on his breathing, in and out, feeling Nathaniel brush his hair, nuzzle his ear. He had not imagined that standing amid the shattered ruins of a life would feel like this, like safety. Nathaniel was kissing his way along his jawline now, and as their mouths met and held, Nathaniel’s lips every bit as gloriously dictatorial and possessive as his hands, Justin gave up trying to make sense of any of it. “I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing, you know,” he said several minutes later, once they had broken for breath. “That makes two of us,” Nathaniel assured him. “I’m looking forward to finding out.”

“Mmm. Maybe.” Clem made a face, contemplating the enraged trapeze artist. “Mark said he doesn’t want to be earl, which I thought seemed very odd, but…it looks that way, doesn’t it?” “I think he’ll probably cope when he gets the money,” Justin said. “If we all live that long. Do this lot ever stop shouting?” Clem looked around at his family. “No.”

Nathaniel took the floor, running over the history of Emmeline Godfrey’s fatal marriage. He made an impressive figure of it, too, in his well-cut suit. He was the tallest man in the room, his voice deep and commanding, he was in command of his material and on his own ground, and Justin had a sudden, dizzying sense of unfamiliarity. As though he’d never seen this man before, as though he’d walked into the room and set eyes on him for the first time, and thought, Yes. Nathaniel had told him, during their endless woodland walks, that he’d fallen in love with Tony at first sight. Justin had had no idea what that might be like, or how one would possibly know, but in some bizarre and entirely inaccurate way, he felt like he’d just done the same thing.

“Don’t be bloody stupid,” Sukey mumbled. “Do I have to be polite to Mr. Roy now?” “Impeccably,” Justin said. “Starting with proper etiquette. Which means, no more swearing.” “Fuck off, ratface.” Justin pulled her tight. “Sod you, too.”

So cute together. Seriously. Charles has some real magic with secondary characters.

Justin wasn’t entirely sure about that. He was well aware he paid more attention than most people, and had a trained eye for detail. Whether that would translate into the skills required of an enquiry agent…well, he’d find out. At least it would be different, and it would be action, and he’d lost his edge over the last endless grey months, before Nathaniel. It would be fun to sharpen up again. “Good Lord, the look on your face,” Nathaniel said. He sounded rather throaty. “Good Lord. My fallen angel.” Justin gave him his most dangerous grin. “Who, me, Mr. Roy?” “Oh God, no. Don’t.” “Why not?” “Because you know damn well you can do anything with me when you’re in this mood, and I want to talk to you.” “You could talk,” Justin suggested, “and I could suck you while you do it, and we’ll see who finishes first?”

“I do see,” Nathaniel said. “This isn’t an easy path you’re walking.” “Inasmuch as it involves me realising what a calamity I am?”

“Right. Listen. And listen well or I shall make you read my father’s much-applauded sermon on the topic of the Sinner Who Repenteth.” “Fucking try it.”

Hysterical 😂

“Oh God. Princeling.” Justin shut his eyes. Nathaniel tugged him closer, and he stepped forward into the warmth of Nathaniel’s arms as though he belonged there. “I don’t know how to say this. Uh…Look, there’s a thing I trot out in seances to sound meaningful: ‘One candle can light a room, or burn down a city.’ ” He pulled away enough to look into Nathaniel’s face. “Well, you light things up. It’s been so bloody dark and you kept lighting candles until I couldn’t blow the damn things out any more, and you keep doing it and you won’t stop, and…” He swallowed; forced the words out. “Please don’t burn me down.”

Heart stops

“Good Lord, the look you have when you’re fucked. I could watch that all night.”