Page 35

A t the close of work on Friday evening, Silas had gone three blocks until he realized that he was heading in the wrong direction, and he had to turn and shift his internal compass toward Hackney. He had brought some papers to show Ezra, and was able to verify the address—which he’d only visited late at night and in Ezra’s company.

He arrived and realized that he had no key to the front door. He verified the address once more, then knocked.

A minute passed with no response, and he was baffled. He was sure he was at the right place. And all his belongings were inside, so there was no chance he could simply return to Bryanston Mews.

Finally, Ezra opened the door, wearing an undershirt and a pair of boxing shorts. It was either that, or the delicious aroma floating through the house, that made Silas salivate.

“Come in, sorry, I need to get you a key,” Ezra said.

Silas took off his coat and hung it on a peg by the door, then followed Ezra’s shapely buttocks down the narrow hallway to the kitchen.

“Are you... cooking?” Silas asked.

“Yes,” Ezra said. “I went to the market this morning and shopped while the maid was here. When I was a boy, I often sat in the kitchen while my grandmother cooked, so I learned how to make a roast chicken easily. And I was surprised to find artichokes at the market as well, because I do not usually see them for several months. These must have come by ship from somewhere warm.”

“Artichokes? What in the world are they?”

“Ah, they are a delicacy! I cannot wait to show you how to eat one. Right now they are boiling on the stove. Now go and wash your hands, and we will eat soon.”

Silas was surprised that the hypermasculine Ezra would deign to enter a kitchen. As a boy, if he’d dared enter his mother’s domain he would have been shooed away.

When he arrived at the dining room table, Ezra had set it with what looked like good china and silver, and two crystal glasses. A bottle of red wine sat beside a golden braided loaf of bread. “We would usually light a pair of special candles as well, but that is the job of the woman, and Rebecca took with her the silver candlesticks we were given at our wedding.”

He motioned Silas to sit, and stood at the head of the table. “This is a custom of my people on Friday night,” he said. “Before we eat our meal, we thank God for our bread and wine.” He recited a prayer in a language Silas assumed was Hebrew and then he toasted Silas with his wine glass. Then he said a second prayer and broke two pieces of bread, one for each of them.

“Did you bake this, too?” Silas asked. It was delicious, light and airy with a taste of eggs.

Ezra shook his head. “No, I went to a Jewish baker for that. It is a skill beyond me.”

After the bread and wine, Ezra presented him with a large green globe, with spiky leaves tinted purple at the edges. “How do you eat this?” Silas asked.

“You peel a leaf like so,” Ezra demonstrated. “You dip it in the vinaigrette, which is a simple mixture of olive oil, vinegar, and mustard. Then you run your teeth over it to release the fibers inside.”

The way that Ezra opened his mouth and bared his teeth over the leaf was so sensual that Silas found his cock stiffening. He followed Ezra’s demonstration and enjoyed the savory taste. “See! I am educating your English palate,” Ezra said.

Silas laughed and peeled another leaf. They ate together and Silas was surprised at how sensual it could be to eat a meal with your lover, away from any prying eyes.

Then Ezra served the chicken, which was tender and moist with some kind of exotic flavor Silas had never tasted before. “I could become spoiled by this,” Silas said. “Do you often eat this way?”

Ezra shook his head. “Rebecca cooked, and often on a Friday night we were invited to the homes of people from the shul. Or if I was boxing on an early card, I ate something at a pub near the arena.” He frowned. “But I won’t be going there again for a while.”

“You must exercise, though,” Silas said. “To keep up your strength.”

“I know. But I will have to find somewhere to do that where they don’t know me. Or where they don’t care who I am.”

They finished dinner, and Silas scrubbed and washed the dishes. “This, at least, I learned at home,” he said. “My mother was very precise about cleanliness.”

“We always had a maid for such things,” Ezra said.

“Was your family wealthy, in France?”

“In Tours, there were always girls so poor that they were willing to work for Jews,” he said. “I know my mother didn’t pay them much, and she and my grandmother did most of the work. By the time we moved to Paris, my father was more successful, and we had a proper maid who cleaned, and a girl who took care of my grandmother as she got older.”

Ezra took a cloth and began drying the dishes that Silas washed. “And your family?” he asked.

“When I was young, we lived very simply, but gradually I see my father must have brought in more money. There was enough to send me to school, and to have a woman come and teach my sister needlework and music. I never felt poor, or rich either. It was only when I was on my own that I realized the value of money.”

It was so sweet, standing beside Ezra over the sink, and Silas wondered if his parents had ever felt this way. Had they been in love? They must have been, once. By the time he was old enough to notice, his father had begun to pay more attention to the bottle than to his wife, and his mother had grown weary and old before her time.

Ezra turned and placed a damp hand on Silas’s arse. “I have been waiting for you all day,” he said, as he squeezed the muscles there.

“While I have been working,” Silas said, with his nose up in the air. He handed the last wet dish to Ezra to dry.

Ezra put it down on the counter and pulled Silas close for a kiss. Ezra had not shaved that morning, and his cheeks were rough. The feel of them sent shivers through Silas’s body.

“Your lips taste of that artichoke dip,” Silas said, when they released.

“You are my artichoke and I must peel you away to get to your delicious center,” Ezra said, as he began undoing Silas’s flies. With a tug, he had Silas’s trousers and his undershorts down. Silas’s cockstand popped out, but Ezra flipped him around so that he was facing the now empty table.

Silas bent forward, raising his arse up, and he felt so wanton in that moment, like a bitch in heat about to be mounted.

Ezra grabbed a container of oil and pushed a slick finger into Silas’s arse, which he accepted willingly. His cock and bollocks were pressed against the table, and Ezra moved his legs farther apart. Then Ezra was inside him, pushing forward, past the starburst of pain that had Silas catch his breath and whimper.

“I will make it better, mon cher,” Ezra said, as he pushed forward slowly. Soon Silas felt that magnificent fullness, as he and Ezra were connected through a rod of flesh, iron, and emotion.

Ezra flexed his muscular hips and pulled back from Silas, leaving only his tip inside, then pushed forward again. In and out, in a slow, sensuous manner, as Silas’s heart ticked and sweat pooled at his neck and under his arms.

It was hard for Silas to think clearly, but he recognized how useful all those muscles of Ezra’s became as the boxer gripped his upper arms and flexed his buttocks to push forward and then pull back. The pressure on Silas’s cock against the table grew unbearable and his bollocks contracted. The glory filled him and he spent on the polished wood.

Ezra kept going, though, whispering in French, then cursing, then finally groaning and spending inside Silas’s arse.

He slumped against Silas for a moment or two, their bodies merging on a tide of sweat and desire. “I am like an animal with you,” Ezra said. “My body is no longer my own, it has its desires and urges.”

“And I am your mate,” Silas said as Ezra backed away, and Silas could turn to face him. “We are two lions on the plains of Africa. We hunt, we eat, and we fuck.”

Ezra laughed. “I want to fuck you in each room of this house,” he said. “And when we have completed the circuit I want to start it again, and then again.”

“You will have no argument from me.” Silas leaned forward and kissed him.

Then Ezra reached under his buttocks with one strong arm and lifted him, and wrapped the other around Silas’s back. Without even a stumble, he carried Silas, his trousers still wrapped around his shoes, up the stairs to the second floor.

He deposited Silas on the floor in the bedroom and slapped his arse once after he had his balance.

They fucked twice more that night, both of them naked as the day they were born, and then slept long into the morning.

Silas woke comfortably in Ezra’s embrace. But he worried how long this domesticity could last. What if the judge refused to dismiss the charges against Ezra? What if instead he was held over on charges of sodomy? And if Silas himself was implicated, and arrested?

He squirmed out of Ezra’s embrace without waking him, and walked to the toilet. He did his business, then sat there for a few moments longer, his mind full of all the things that could conspire to keep him and Ezra apart, to perhaps even ruin his life. Then with a sigh that made him feel at least fifty years older, he rose and returned to the bedroom.

Ezra was already awake, and their stomachs grumbled nearly in unison. They dressed quickly and stepped outside. The street was so quiet Silas was alarmed. “Is something wrong?” he asked.

“Everyone is at shul,” Ezra said. “Today is our Sabbath. But do not worry, I know a restaurant outside this neighborhood that serves breakfast.”

He led Silas down one street and then another, until they had left the Jewish neighborhood behind. “You are very quiet this morning,” Ezra said. “Does this area bother you?”

Silas shook his head. “Just worried about the future.”

“I am worried, too,” Ezra said. “But we cannot change anything that will happen on Monday. Instead I think we must enjoy the time we have together.”

He smiled, and Ezra’s heart skipped a beat. At the restaurant, he noticed that Ezra asked for an extra helping of potatoes in place of his bacon. “You don’t eat pork?” he asked after the server had left.

“I tried, when I was younger,” Ezra said. “In rebellion. I ate sausages, bacon, and ham, but I never developed a taste for it.” He shrugged. “Some habits lie deep.”

They talked over breakfast, and Silas marveled again at the direction his life had taken. From rough sucking or fucking in alleys to this sweet domesticity. He did not know how long it would last, but he was determined to relish it while it did.

After breakfast they took a long walk, and Silas was surprised to see Luke on the street, play-boxing with another boy. “Do you live nearby?” he asked.

“This is my school,” Luke said, pointing to the warehouse behind him. “Even though it is Saturday and there are no classes, I came here to see my friends.”

“And to box with them?” Silas asked.

Luke nodded. “Though our teacher left and none of us really know what to do.”

“Let me show you,” Ezra said. They walked into the courtyard of the warehouse, and Silas saw several ragged young boys and girls peering at books and practicing their writing.

“Here, you shouldn’t hold your pencil like that,” Silas said to a girl of about ten. She was gripping it like the handle of a stirring spoon. He sat beside her and took the pencil, then held it between his second and third finger, steadying it with his thumb.

“Teacher showed us that, but it’s hard,” the girl said.

While Silas sat with her and a few of her friends, coaxing them through their letters, Ezra gathered a group of boys to demonstrate the proper stance in boxing. Silas and Ezra spent several hours there until the children began to leave, either to work or head home for meals.

“I enjoyed that,” Ezra said as they walked away. “It felt good to be able to pass on what I have learned.”

“You could return here,” Silas said. “Luke said that his teacher was gone. And maybe you can train another to become a new Hammer.”

“I don’t know that I can do that much,” Ezra said. “But it would give me some purpose while I wait to return to the ring.”

As they walked, Ezra said, “I have realized many things since that night when the police came for me at New Cross,” he said, as they walked. “I have been selfish for a long time. Focused only on my body and my skill, on making money and becoming successful.”

“Some might call that self-preservation. You told me that originally you learned to box to be able to fight against boys who sought to torment you because of your religion.”

“And I did. But I let it take control of me. I let my father force me into marriage with Rebecca when I knew it was not fair to either of us. I agreed to come to London with her because I thought it would be easier to find men to have sex with and keep my secrets.”

“And did that work out?”

“Well, I met you,” Ezra said. “But only in these last days have I realized how much you mean to me. How you have stood by me, and recruited your friends, and Pemberton. That is the sign of a true connection – one I never felt with Rebecca, or with any other man.”

“I feel the same way,” Silas said. “Before I met you, I was happy to be a butterfly, flitting from one man to another. When I considered that I might lose you, it felt so much worse than losing anyone else in the past. Worse, even, than my father sending me away and leaving behind my family.”

“We shall both have to work to make sure that we can stay together,” Ezra said.

They feasted that night on leftover chicken and hard-boiled eggs, and Silas was happy simply to cuddle with Ezra in bed.

Sunday morning he woke to church bells, and thought about following their sound to a place where he could ask God to look after him and Ezra. But everything he remembered from church as a child condemned the two of them for their acts. So he turned on his side and went back to sleep, trusting the world rather than asking for divine intervention.

When he finally awoke for good, he stepped over to the window and looked out at the street. The neighborhood was alive again with peddlers on the street and children playing as their mothers gossiped. Ezra showed Silas a back entrance to the house which led to an alley overhung with trees, so they could come and go without making a show for the neighbors.

It all felt like a fairy story, though Silas knew that there was danger outside the door. Despite the work that everyone had done, Ezra could still be convicted, sentenced, and sent to prison. What would happen to his accounts, his house? Would Silas be evicted, losing not just the man of his heart but the house he had already begun to think of as home?