Page 42 of Provoked
“It’s just that—” Balfour looked up and fastened that dark gaze on David again. He was scowling. “I find I still want you.”
Unsure what to say, David stayed silent, watching Balfour warily.
“It’s like a sickness,” Balfour continued. “Ever since I met you. You’ve been…preying on my mind. It’s irritating. I never entertain repeat performances.”
“I see.”
Balfour gave a harsh laugh. “Do you?”
David shrugged. “You thought we’d have this, and the itch would be gone.” He understood that delusion. In the past, after every encounter he had with another man, he’d make promises to himself that it would never happen again.Just this once.
Balfour stared at him, his gaze very cold. “An itch. Is that what you call it?”
“Well, what do you call it?” David shot back, retrieving his cravat from the floor and looping it about his neck.
“I’ve never thought about it before tonight,” Balfour said tightly. “Desire, I suppose. More than anitch, anyway.”
David’s hands stilled in the midst of tying his cravat and he stared at the other man, his heart thudding. Balfour stood and glared back. He was such a contradiction, speaking those oddly flattering words in such a cold, almost affronted manner. As though he thought David had done something underhanded to make him feel that way.
After a long, tense pause, David shifted his gaze and reached for his evening coat. “We agree on one thing at least,” he said mildly as he shouldered it on. “Repeat performances are a bad idea.”
He was aware of Balfour regarding him silently for a moment while he buttoned his coat; then the larger man stalked across the room and pulled the servants’ bell.
“We agree on something else,” Balfour bit out. “It’s time you left.”
The sudden aggression in his tone drew David’s attention, and he saw that there was a tightness to Balfour’s jaw, a thinness to his generous mouth, that spoke of barely controlled anger.
David silently bent to fetch his shoes. By the time he was finished dressing, a footman was knocking at the door. Balfour opened it and stood aside to display the waiting servant. He didn’t look at David. “Johnston will see you out,” he said.
David walked to the door, pausing a moment to look at Balfour as he left. He felt he should say something—as though he’d regret it forever if he didn’t speak—but his throat felt oddly constricted, and he didn’t know what it was he wanted to say anyway. So in the end he just gave a jerky nod and went. The door closed behind him with a decisive click.
David followed the footman down the corridor, his mind teeming with thoughts. Why the hell had Balfour been so angry? David had given Balfour everything he’d wanted, hadn’t he? Allowed things he’d never allowed anyone else. The new, fierce memory of what they’d done together hit David like a physical blow: Balfour’s head bent over David’s cock, his fingers moving inside David’s body, his face as he stroked his own cock, clenched in agonised pleasure—
Oh God.
The way David had come. So hard, so unrestrained. Yelling out his pleasure.
David glanced at the footman as they descended the staircase. Had he heard David crying out? The sudden horror of that thought made David’s gorge rise.
God in heaven, what had hedone?
When they reached the hallway, the footman fetched David’s greatcoat and hat. David allowed the man to help him on with the greatcoat, his shame and mortification growing all the time.
Then, at last, the footman was opening the door, politely inclining his head. As soon as the gap was wide enough, David shoved his way out. He couldn’t wait to leave Balfour’s house. He welcomed the bruising glance of his shoulder against the wood of the doorframe. The pain distracted him for a moment from the turmoil in his mind.
Once he was out, he didn’t look back. He practically fell down the steps to the street below in his hurry to leave and started running. He ran along Queen Street, streaking past serried ranks of identical townhouses, turning off to pound up the steep hill of Hanover Street. When he crested the hill at George Street, his heart felt ready to burst out of his chest. Still he ran. Across Princes Street and all the way up the Mound. Farther, till he reached the bottom of Fleshmarket Close. Only then did he stop, at the foot of that steep alleyway, to bend over, panting and half retching, sick with exhaustion and regret.
Once he had his breath back, he slowly straightened and looked into the darkness of the close. He never came this way at night, though it was a shortcut home. The close was unlit and black as hell. He could hear the panting curses of a man fucking a whore up against the wall. When he stepped into it, when the gloom swallowed him up like the maw of a great beast, the stink of piss and ale and sour fear was overwhelming. A distant part of him knew he should turn back.
But he didn’t.
Halfway up the close, once David was as far into the dark as he could be and with the stink near choking him, a man stepped out of the shadows.
“Gi’e us your coin.”
The man’s voice was thick with drink and thrummed with the threat of violence. David knew he should be afraid but he felt…nothing. The whole situation felt unreal, but some sort of response appeared to be required.
“I think not,” he said, marvelling at how calm he sounded.