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His name was Harold Baltimer, he was a friend of Robin’s from university, and he was fast becoming the person Jack hated most in the world.
This was not, thankfully, because he was affiliated with George Bastoke or any of his lot. That would have been real trouble beyond the likes of which Jack could handle at the moment.
No, it was because his face had lit up when he was introduced to Alan, and he’d held Alan’s hand far too long when they shook, and he kept asking Alan insightful questions that made Alan pause and think or coming up with jokes or witticisms that made the corners of Alan’s eyes crinkle when he laughed.
After dinner, they all adjourned to the parlor, where Baltimer challenged Alan to a game of chess.
“Thanks,” Alan said, “but you’d wipe the floor with me. I never could get the knack of it.”
Baltimer quirked an eyebrow. “Cards, then?”
Alan accepted, and Jack couldn’t very well tell him not to, nor make him stop playing after the first hand—which he won—or the second—which he also won.
Robin valiantly tried to engage Jack in conversation, but Jack was used to being the rude aristocrat, and he brought it fully to bear, all but ignoring Robin in favor of glowering at the card game, which Baltimer seemed entirely too pleased to be losing.
By the fourth hand, Baltimer said, with a grin, “I’m beginning to suspect you might be cheating, Mr. Ross.”
Alan feigned offense. “Me? Cheat at cards? You’ve never met a more honest man, sir, never. I should call you out for impugning my integrity.”
Baltimer’s grin turned wicked. “Oh, please do. I’ll happily take this outside. Or somewhere else, if you prefer it.”
With a huff that didn’t do much to disguise his disgust, Jack stood. “I’m feeling a bit unwell. I’ll see you all in the morning. Good night.”
He turned and strode from the room as quickly as possible, then marched up the stairs to his own chambers, where he did a poor job of not slamming the door shut.
Jack paced, his hands clenching and unclenching, his breath coming short, and his pulse pounding in his temples.
Four hours, four hours Alan had been at Cheetham, and not one minute of that time had Jack managed to get him alone.
The first hour and a half, Alan had spent down in the servants’ quarters visiting his sister and her baby. Jack couldn’t begrudge him that—didn’t, in fact. He was glad to have been able to offer Bella a good position, and more than a little pleased to have been able to help Alan and his family, even if only indirectly.
But during that time, Robin and Baltimer had arrived, and they’d managed, in that way of keen, athletic men, to take up at least twice the space and attention of any normal people.
Baltimer was staying at Cheetham Hall for a week, and Jack was meant to tutor him in the basics of magic. Baltimer had been visiting Robin at Thornley and was just as surprised as everyone else when he accidentally set fire to his dinner with a touch the second day he was there. Robin asked Jack for help, and Jack hadn’t thought to worry about Baltimer’s stay overlapping with Alan’s visit.
Jack had fallen into a bit of a default position of tutor in the new magics. Edwin knew more, but the wards of Sutton still held, and Edwin couldn’t explain a concept in less than an hour or with fewer than twenty diagrams. Jack, on the other hand, had guided all the servants at Cheetham—including Bella, newly instated in her position of lady’s maid—in the basics of drawing on the magic of the land, such that every one of them was as proficient with it as they had been with cradles—or, in Bella’s case, as any magician new to their power. Jack found that, to his surprise, he rather enjoyed teaching others this new kind of magic. After so many years feeling the loss of his magic, it was a pleasant change to feel the strength of it coursing through his veins.
Jack still went to London as often as possible, but with not only the pressures of restoring Cheetham, but also the matter of one day inheriting it—not to mention helping every damned magician in Britain understand the magic of the dusk—his time in Mayfair was shorter and shorter and occurred less and less often.
Alan could have been at Cheetham more—would have been, if Jack could bend the world to his will through want alone—but he seemed to stay away longer and longer.
It was obvious why. Not only were magicians across Britain learning to draw on the magic of the land, but people who had never shown a lick of magic before—Adelaide Blyth, Bella Rossi, and, apparently, Harold Baltimer, among others—found themselves suddenly able to cast simple spells.
But not Alan. Alan—whose magic had been channeled away, who had unknowingly carved paths around himself so that magic could never touch him—could not draw from the ley lines. Would never be able to. He would never have magic, not of any kind.
And now he was surrounded by people delighting in the novelty of magic only just discovered.
No wonder he was never around.
They were supposed to have this time together—just three days—but it had slipped Jack’s mind that Robin and Baltimer would be here as well, and even if he’d remembered, he somehow wouldn’t have banked on Robin’s university friend spending the entire evening flirting with his— his—
His what? It wasn’t as though Alan belonged to him. What claim could he possibly make on him? And even to call out Baltimer’s behavior was to potentially expose all of them. Jack didn’t know Baltimer, didn’t know the sort of person he might be. Was he the type to let resentment boil into hateful action if Jack stepped between him and Alan, and report them both to the police for perversion?
Jack’s hands were tied. All the magic in England at his fingertips, yet the one thing he wanted remained out of reach.
His fists were clenched so tight his palms stung where the fingernails dug into the skin. He made himself stretch his fingers.
“Fuck!” he yelled, as if that would somehow solve anything.
Maybe he ought to go back downstairs, keep an eye on things. Would it be better or worse, to watch Alan succumb to someone else’s charms in real time?
“Ought to put up a curtain spell.” Alan’s placid voice sounded behind him. “Heard you all the way from the end of the corridor.”
Jack whirled. Alan stepped inside the door of his bedchamber and closed it behind himself with a soft click. He was right, though—Jack wasn’t at all confident of his ability not to scream the rafters down around them. He flicked a curtain spell up around the room to muffle the sound of their voices.
“Surprised to see you here,” Jack said, hating how low and vicious his voice sounded, but unable to do a thing to stop it.
Alan’s brows rose. “Why?”
Jack waved vaguely. “You seemed to be having a great time with your new beau.”
“With my new—” Alan let out a bark of a laugh as he walked toward Jack. “Why, your lordship, are you jealous?”
Jack had no answer to that, because yes, he was jealous—he was jealous of every moment Alan spent looking at or speaking to or sometimes touching that other man. He was starving for every scrap of Alan’s attention, and some stranger had sucked it all away all evening.
Alan’s brows rose. “Christ, you actually are.” His grin became smug. “Lord Hawthorn, jealous over a common guttersnipe. Who could have guessed.”
“Maybe Lord Hawthorn wouldn’t be,” Jack growled, “if the common guttersnipe would visit him more than once a month.”
Alan’s smug grin fell. “I have duties in London.”
“You have writing in London,” Jack spat. “You could do that here, and send it in by post.”
“And miss literally every story that’s happening? Have all my deadlines delayed, get all my assignments days after the fact? I’m a journalist, I have to be where the stories are.” He looked Jack up and down disdainfully. “If His Lordship is so put out by my absence, he could deign to come to London.”
“I do go to London.” Jack waved an arm vaguely in the direction of the city. “As often as I can. But I have duties here, which, unlike writing, cannot be done from anywhere else.”
Alan’s hands formed fists and he took a step toward Jack, glaring up at him. “Oh, so if one of us is to quit his job, it should be the guttersnipe, not the aristocrat, is that it?”
“I can’t quit,” Jack retorted, glowering down at him. “I could go to the ends of the Earth and it wouldn’t stop me being heir to Cheetham.”
“Exactly!” Alan all but shouted. “You’re heir to Cheetham anywhere, you don’t have to be here for that to be true.”
Jack huffed a breath at the back of his throat. “It’s not that simple. When I’m not here, I can still feel the land calling me, like a tugging on my blood. It’s impossible to ignore.”
Alan scoffed in disgust and took several steps away from him, sneering. “Poor Lord Hawthorn, so brimming with magic he can’t bear to be away from his sprawling estate for more than a day. I feel so tremendously sorry for you.”
His words hit Jack in the gut. Jack knew that feeling—the isolation of being the only one without magic among people who cast spells as easy as breathing. Jack had hated the feeling of it so intensely he’d gone off to war about it.
Alan’s hard glare flicked over his face once more, then he huffed out a breath. “If all you mean to do is yell, I’m going to bed.”
He turned toward the door, and a cold fear gathered in Jack’s chest. Alan was leaving, and all they’d done was argue. Jack’s legs were longer, and two strides put him at the door in front of Alan, leaning back against it, his hand on the knob so Alan couldn’t turn it.
“Stay,” he said, his voice threatening to crack. “Don’t leave. Please. Stay here. Stay with me.”
Alan glared up at him, brows drawn down, eyes hot. “Make me,” he growled. “My lord.”
Something deep inside Jack responded immediately, trained to jump at the words my lord on Alan’s lips. He straightened up off the door, then shot out a hand, grabbing Alan by the throat, and used it to walk him backward across the room. Alan’s eyes went wide, and he grabbed for Jack’s wrist, trying to drag his hand away, but he couldn’t wrench back away from Jack while keeping his feet under him.
A problem that was immediately rendered moot as Alan’s legs hit the bed and he fell back onto it, sprawling on his back. He looked up at Jack, eyes wide, mouth open in surprise, and Jack’s heart thudded hard in his chest. His blood boiled hot through his veins, tightening all his muscles, encouraging his body to spring into action.
Which he was immediately required to do, as Alan leapt from the bed and darted toward the door. Jack looped an arm around him and dragged him back, throwing him bodily back onto the bed. This time, he climbed on top of him, pinning Alan’s legs with his shins and his wrists with his hands, pressing them into the mattress.
Alan wriggled beneath him, struggling against his grip, bucking his hips without getting anywhere, and the hot blood in Jack’s veins rushed to his cock, stiffening it in his trousers. Jack let his lips quirk into half a grin. “Keep struggling, Cesare. You won’t get away.”
Alan met his gaze with a heated one of his own, his eyes narrowed. “Yet His Lordship now faces a dilemma, doesn’t he?”
Jack quirked an eyebrow, so Alan clarified: “You can either hold me down or fuck me, but not both.”
Jack felt the smirk slip off his lips. Alan was, of course, entirely correct—if Jack wanted to make a single move toward getting either one of them naked, much less doing anything else, he’d have to let go of Alan.
Jack shifted his weight, hoping to find a way to free his hands so he could make a stab at undressing Alan, but the moment he let his grip slacken, Alan twisted, nearly breaking free. Jack grunted with effort and frustration, grabbing Alan’s wrists and shoving them harder into the mattress, wondering if it might be worth it to simply rut against him with all their clothes on and be satisfied with both of them coming in their pants.
But Alan stopped wriggling and relaxed beneath Jack’s hands. His gaze was molten. “Fuck me, Jack.”
With a growl that was nearly a snarl, Jack bent his head to Alan’s neck, only just holding himself back from sinking teeth into the soft skin there, and not quite holding himself back from sucking the beginning of a mark. He wanted to write a hot, liquid signature across all of Alan’s skin, to mark him as his own so that no other eyes could ever look at him, no other hands could ever touch him, no other ears could ever hear him.
Jack’s hands released Alan’s wrists to slide up his arms and over his chest, and Alan—mercifully—no longer tried to get away. Instead, as Jack’s fingers pulled open the buttons of Alan’s collar and began working their way down his shirt, his lips following close behind, Alan’s hands slid into his hair, gripping tightly as his breath came faster and shorter. Jack tugged open the buttons of Alan’s waistcoat—much more carefully than he’d have liked, but if he yanked hard and popped them all off as he wanted to do, Alan would skin him for creating extra work for Oliver sewing them back on—and then his shirt, his mouth never leaving Alan’s skin as his hands parted the fabric and shoved it off his shoulders to expose his torso.
And now Jack did let his teeth nip at the skin, and he did suck hard enough to raise a mark—several, although they made for a poor signature, just a series of red-purple bruises walking their way down Alan’s body from chest to navel. Yet signature they certainly were, hidden from the wider world but clearly visible to anyone who tried to get this close to him, anyone who might glimpse too much of Jack’s Cesare.
When he reached Alan’s waistband, he unbuttoned his trousers. Alan pushed himself up on his elbows, shrugging out of shirt, waistcoat, and braces, and Jack hooked his fingers in the waistband of Alan’s drawers and trousers and tugged them down. He had to pause to pull off Alan’s shoes and socks, but then he had him stretched out naked in his bed—what his aching chest had yearned for these many lonely weeks.
Working up from Alan’s calf, Jack continued his progress, sucking bruise after bruise into Alan’s skin. He could now observe the incredible effect this had on Alan’s cock, twitching faintly and leaking a sparkling drop of moisture onto his stomach.
Alan hissed a breath through his teeth as Jack sucked a dark bruise into the soft skin of the inside of his thigh, tantalizingly close to his cock. Jack looked up long enough to spare him a grin and a meaningful look, then left an equally dark bruise opposite, on the other thigh.
With a low laugh, Alan said, “My lord, are you trying to make it look like I’ve lost a pub brawl?”
“No, Cesare.” Jack set his lips against the jut of Alan’s hip and sucked a quick mark there for good measure. “I’m trying to leave a reminder, for you and for anyone else who might see this much of you, that you are spoken for.”
Alan went still and silent, so much so that Jack turned his gaze back up to him. Alan’s eyes were oddly bright.
“Jack.” He reached down, and Jack slid quickly up his body, his heart beginning to hammer a staccato rhythm against his ribs at the sound of his true name on Alan’s lips. Was that too far? Had he said too much? Had he laid too much claim to Alan, and thus would now lose him completely?
But Alan put his hands on either side of Jack’s face, cradling his head between them. His tongue flicked out to wet his lips. When he spoke, his voice was hushed and choked. “In all my life, I have never wanted to belong to anyone else.”
A sparkling heat rushed through Jack’s body, standing his hair on end and making his skin buzz. His throat threatened to close and his eyes prickled hot. He pressed his lips hard to Alan’s, sliding his tongue into Alan’s mouth, and Alan met him with equal intensity, licking deep against his teeth. Alan’s hands were in his hair, tugging strands against his scalp, adding to the shivers chasing themselves over Jack’s skin. Jack shuddered, his muscles twitching, his hands skittering over sheets until they found Alan’s body, one gripping his shoulder and the other pressing against his hip.
Jack was wearing too many clothes, too many layers between his own body and Alan’s. He broke the kiss and stood with a muttered curse, yanking off shoes and pulling off clothing without any care—Oliver would be glad to have an excuse to make things fit better in the mending.
Alan watched, eyes dark and hungry, cock bobbing against his stomach. His skin was gloriously mottled with the bruises Jack had sucked and bitten into it—even if they were not necessary to drive away anyone else, they were beautiful on their own, a visible sign of Jack’s singular devotion.
When Jack was fully undressed, he grabbed the jar of lotion and climbed back onto the bed, stretching out beside Alan. Scooping lotion onto his fingers, he nudged Alan’s legs apart, then began working him open as he sucked another bruise into his shoulder.
Alan hissed a breath between his teeth and rocked against Jack’s hand, pushing his finger deeper. “If this is how your lordship reacts to the presence of other men,” he said, his voice a broken rumble, “I might have to bring a friend every time I come to visit.”
Jack pulled his mouth away from Alan’s skin with a wet pop. “Fiendish little thing, aren’t you?” He slid a second finger into Alan, smirking as Alan arched his back. “Perhaps I should tie you to this bed so you can never leave, and thus never encounter such temptation.”
“Try it,” Alan countered, “and I’ll bite that pretty prick right off you, my lord.”
“My prick is pretty, is it?” Jack pressed the prick in question against Alan’s thigh, rolling his hips to rut gently against him.
“It’s fucking gorgeous,” Alan groaned as Jack’s fingers worked inside him. “Downright maddening. I think about it all the bloody time.”
“Is that so?” Jack slid his fingers in deeper, crooking them until a gasp flitted between Alan’s lips. “And yet neither my pretty prick nor I have ever shown up in the Roman’s filth.” Jack had scoured every purple pamphlet printed since he had first bent Alan over his desk, looking for any trace of himself in their descriptions, any hint that he’d personally inspired a story, but they were universally detailed in ways that didn’t describe him.
“No.” Alan’s hand sought Jack’s cock, and his fingers wrapped around it. His eyes blazed. “This is mine. I’ll not share it with anyone, not even in words.”
Jack’s heart turned right over in his chest. His ribs ached, and his throat felt tight. So Alan, like Jack, refused to share.
If a magic existed that could fold Jack into Alan’s body and let him stay there, he would have used it in that moment, would have merged them into a single being so that he would never again be apart from him. As it was, he pulled his fingers out and slicked more lotion over his cock, then climbed between Alan’s legs.
He set the head of his cock against Alan’s entrance and met his eyes. “Yours,” he growled. And he pushed into him.
Beautifully, sweetly, Alan tipped his head back, his hands making fists, gripping the sheets tightly as Jack sank into him. A litany of curses slipped from his lips, whispered and half-formed. Jack leaned down and silenced them, sucking them from his tongue and swallowing them.
“Yours,” Jack repeated into Alan’s mouth as he began to move inside him. “Yours entirely, Cesare. Every bit of me.”
“Mine,” Alan repeated. His mouth moved away from Jack’s, working down his jaw to his neck, where his teeth scraped the skin. The sparkling heat rippled outward from his mouth, spreading all through Jack’s body. Alan’s tongue flicked over the spot. “Would His Lordship be unhappy, I wonder, if I marked him up the way he’s marked me?”
Jack drove himself deep into Alan with a hard thrust. “His Lordship will be unhappy if you don’t.”
He felt Alan’s smile against his neck before his lips sealed around it and sucked hard. The sparkling heat flowed with that suction, streaming like liquid through Jack, pouring itself into Alan’s mouth. A breath escaped Jack’s lips like it had been punched out of him, and his movements became faster, pushing deeply into Alan over and over.
The mark Alan was leaving on him, unlike the ones all over Alan’s body, was on Jack’s neck. Low enough that he could hide it with a high collar, high enough that he could reveal it with a low one. A choice, then—to let Jack display Alan’s claim on him as he wished.
Alan’s fingers gripped Jack’s hair, keeping hold even as his lips released his neck. “Mine,” he said against Jack’s skin. “As I’m yours.”
Jack’s breath caught, and he nearly lost the rhythm, swept into the magic of the blood oath Alan had sucked into his skin, binding him not with force but with intention, with blood kissed rather than spilled. He pressed their lips together once more, slipping his tongue into the wet heat of Alan’s mouth as he fucked again and again into the wet heat of his body.
He had to push himself up away from Alan’s mouth to drive into him properly, and soothed the loss of his mouth on him by wrapping a hand around Alan’s cock and stroking it firmly. Alan cried out wordlessly, fucking into Jack’s fist, his body taut and tight beneath it.
“You’re going to come for me, Cesare,” Jack said, his voice a low growl. “You’re going to come for me now, and you’re going to keep coming for me. You’re mine, and your every release belongs to me. Every time you make yourself come when I’m not there, you’re going to think of this—my hand on you, my cock in you, my spend filling you up.”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Alan swore, and spurted across his torso, the thick white stripes contrasting with the red and purple bruises beneath.
The sight of it pushed Jack over the edge, spilling inside Alan, shuddering as he throbbed endlessly within him. His vision whited out and his ears rang, the world fading to nothing but the pinch of Alan around him and the heat of his body beneath him.
The world trickled back in slowly. Jack kept just enough of his senses not to collapse fully on top of Alan, but off to his side, slipping out of him as he did so. He lay beside him, sweating and fighting for breath, no thought in his head but how phenomenal Alan looked covered in Jack’s love bites and his own spend.
Alan cut him a glance. “If my lord is going to just lie there,” he said, only slightly less breathless than Jack, “I’ll clean this up myself.”
“No.” Jack’s hand shot out and caught him before he could rise, pressing his shoulders back down. He dragged two fingers through the mess on Alan’s torso, then held them up, the glistening white liquid dripping down them. “This is mine too.”
He sucked his fingers into his own mouth, licking Alan’s taste off them. The bitter salt coated Jack’s tongue, a flavor he could very quickly get used to. Alan’s eyes went gratifyingly wide, his mouth hanging open.
Jack pulled his fingers out of his mouth. “Every part of you belongs to me, Cesare.”
He leaned down to kiss Alan, surprised when Alan’s tongue slipped greedily into his mouth, licking at his own taste. And when he pulled away, Alan swiped his own fingers through the mess, then licked it off but didn’t swallow, instead holding his mouth open, a small pool of white on his tongue.
Jack fell on him at once, licking it out of his mouth, then kissing him deep and hard, folding his body around Alan’s. When they finally separated, Jack’s thigh lay over Alan’s, and his arms were looped possessively around him.
Alan settled against him with a nearly contented sigh. He looked down at the marks Jack had left all over him, tracing a few with a fingertip. “A shame these will fade,” he said quietly. “His Lordship is quite the artist.”
Jack grinned wickedly against his temple. “I could carve them into you, if you prefer.”
Alan huffed a laugh. “Maybe instead… I can come have them refreshed.” He pulled away just enough to meet Jack’s eyes. “Spend enough time here to darken them up so they don’t fade completely.”
Jack’s throat tried to close, and his arms tightened. “I would like that very much.” And if Alan was making concessions, Jack could too. “And I’ll spend more time in London. Ensure they stay nice and dark between visits.”
Alan snorted. “Rather defeats the point, don’t you think, my lord?”
“Not at all.” Jack nibbled at his earlobe. “The point is not to force you to come to me. The point is to entice you to do it.”
Alan grinned. “You’ve been spectacularly enticing tonight. Well done.”
“Good. I intend to entice you again in the morning.” He kissed Alan’s cheek. “And tomorrow night as well.” Beside his mouth. “And the next day, too.”
Alan turned into the kiss. “I’ll hold you to that,” he said against Jack’s lips.
Jack pressed his lips gently to Alan’s, then lay his head on the pillow beside him with a sigh. “Will you stay, Cesare?” he asked softly. “Will you stay with me?”
Alan nodded. “Of course, my lord.” He tucked his head beneath Jack’s chin. “Always.”
Jack slept well and deeply, Harold Baltimer completely forgotten.