Page 38 of Provoked

“On your way home, Lauriston?” Balfour said once he’d drawn level with David. The deep voice was as smooth as honey, his breathing unaffected by his exertions.

“Yes.”

“Shall we walk together, then?”

“I turn south at the end of the street,” David replied flatly. The end of George Street was scarcely fifty yards ahead, not worth the bother of catching up with someone at all.

“Till you turn off, then,” Balfour said tightly.

“Fine.” David began walking quickly, and Balfour fell into step beside him.

After a moment, Balfour said conversationally, “You never introduced me to your friend, Lauriston. Tell me, was he fucking you in that alleyway?”

David swallowed. He’d been half expecting this, and he kept his answer short, his eyes fixed ahead. “No.”

“No? Sucking you, then? Or you him, perhaps? You like that, don’t you? On your knees, in the dirt.”

David compressed his lips tightly, refusing to answer, and walked more quickly.

“Answer me, damn you!” That demand was accompanied by a hand hauling at his arm, jerking him around bodily to face the other man and witness an expression on Balfour’s face he’d not seen before. No trace of humour now.

“It’s none of your business,” David bit out.

“I beg to differ,” Balfour shot back. “You are my business.”

“What?”

Suddenly the hand gripping David’s arm was pushing, pushing him into a shadowed portico. Taken by surprise, David stepped backwards, his feet tripping a little as Balfour pressed him farther till he was swallowed by shadows and his shoulders hit the wall.

“I’ve made you my business,” Balfour muttered, bracing his hands against the wall on either side of David’s head and looking down into David’s upturned face.

“Why?” David demanded.

Balfour’s eyes glittered. “I wish I knew,” he said, and it was such a surprising response that David couldn’t think how to reply.

An odd silence bloomed between them, thick with arousal and tension. Balfour pressed closer, till his cock was nudging David’s hip. It felt as achingly hard as David’s own. David hissed in a shaky breath, all too aware of his heart tripping in his chest and of the heat invading his face. Balfour surrounded David, his breath gusting against David’s cheek, his scent invading David’s senses. He breached David’s carefully constructed walls with his deliberate physical domination, and as much as David resented it, it made him hard and desperate and lustful. It made him want to sink to his knees and take the man in his mouth again.

Lust didn’t make you forget all the reasons you shouldn’t do something. It just made you not care. It made you not care, even knowing you would regret your actions later. And so it was that when Balfour leaned in a fraction of an inch closer and brushed David’s lips with his own, David did nothing to stop him. And when the man shifted his whole body closer, when he took hold of David’s face between his gloved hands and slid his sleek tongue into David’s mouth in a devouring kiss, David groaned and gripped the edges of Balfour’s cloak for dear life.

It was a long, passionate, reckless kiss, and when Balfour at last drew back, David couldn’t speak, just stared, shocked, at the other man. Balfour stared back with dark, glittering eyes.

“I played the game wrong with you before,” he murmured. “I thought I should appeal to your reason—but I needed to appeal to your body, didn’t I? If you think about things too much, you get tied up in knots.”

David swallowed. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

“I’m doing it again,” Balfour said with a rueful smile. “Forget I spoke. Come with me instead.”

“Come with you where?”

“To my house. It’s just a few minutes’ walk away.”

“I don’t know,” David murmured, his gaze shifting away from Balfour. He wanted to go even though he knew he shouldn’t. His history was strewn with the wreckage of past regrets.

So what was one more regret? One more sin.

Balfour took David’s chin in his fingers and turned his face back, forcing him to meet Balfour’s dark gaze. “Don’t think so much. Everything gets complicated when you think about it, but this is really very simple. I want you. You want me. And when it’s over, we part.”

David just looked at Balfour in silence, but something in his expression must have altered, because Balfour smiled.