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Authors: K.J. Charles
A Seditious Affair
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A Seditious Affair
A Society of Gentlemen Novel
K. J. Charles
Loveswept
This is an uncorrected eBook file.
Please do not quote for publication
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Tentative On-Sale Date: December 15, 2015
Tentative Publication Month: December 2015
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A Seditious Affair
Society of Gentlemen
K. J. Charles
Loveswept
New York
This is an uncorrected eBook file. Please do not quote for publication until you check your copy against the finished book.
A Seditious Affair
is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A Loveswept eBook Original
Copyright © 2016 by K. J. Charles
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Loveswept, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
Loveswept is a registered trademark, and the Loveswept colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.
eBook ISBN 9781101886069
Cover design: Caroline Teagle
Cover illustration: Vladimir Wrangel/Shutterstock
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Chapter 1
July 1819
The Tory was waiting when Silas entered the private room.
He stood as if looking out of the window, though it was covered by drapes. No prying eyes wanted. His back was to the door, and Silas gave himself a moment to look. Curly black hair that he knew to be shot with silver at the temples. A pair of shoulders beginning to round, just a little, from too long spent at a desk. Fawn breeches that didn’t hug his arse nearly as much as they might. A rich man, by Silas’s standards. Probably an important man. An unknown man.
He turned a moment after Silas entered, though he must have heard the door. Dark eyes under the black hair. Welsh blood at work, that was, that and the strong, dark features.
The Tory looked at him, unblinking. Didn’t smile. Didn’t say good evening.
Silas crossed to his usual chair, watching. The Tory watched him back.
Silas sat. It was a comfortable chair, and he’d been on his feet all day and walked here from Ludgate too. He allowed himself a sigh of contentment, then looked up at the well-dressed man who waited in silent stillness.
“Wine.” His own Cockney rasp always seemed more pronounced in the Tory’s presence.
The Tory didn’t move for a moment, as if shocked by the order, a flush darkening on his cheeks, then he went, in silence, to the little table. There was a bottle there, already uncorked, two long-stemmed glasses. He poured for them both with a hand that shook, left one glass there, came over to hand Silas his.
Silas tasted the wine. Rich, red, almost certainly costing some impossible sum. Like the private room at Millay’s, like the Tory’s coat and gleaming boots, like everything in the room except himself.
The Tory stood close, watching. Silas swung one leg over the other. He wore shoes and worsted stockings. The Tory wore Hessians and silk.
“Take my shoes off,” Silas said harshly, and then, “No. On your knees.”
The Tory gave a convulsive swallow. He went down to his knees, head bowed, and reached for Silas’s roughly stitched leather shoe.
“Look up.”
His head came up, dark eyes unreadable. His face was taut with emotion, but his mouth was a little open, lips a little red, and he took hold of Silas’s shoe like the best-trained servant Silas could imagine.
“Other one.” Silas moved his foot, forcing the Tory between his legs as the man served him. His prick was hardening already, and he could see the bulge in the Tory’s breeches. He spread his legs wider. “See that?”
The Tory nodded, a barely perceptible movement. Silas curled a leg around his back and kicked the kneeling man forward. It took him by surprise. He lurched, steadied himself with a hand on Silas’s thigh, and Silas took the opportunity to grab his face, taking a tight hold on his well-shaven chin. “I said, see that?”
“Yes.” A whisper. Forcing the word out.
“Where’s that going tonight?”
“Please,” the Tory said. “Please. Don’t make me.”
Silas stared at him, feeling the pulse beat beneath his fingers, hearing his harsh breaths. The Tory stared back, eyes full of shame and defiance, chin stubbornly up.
One of
those
nights.
“Don’t make you,” Silas repeated. “Don’t
make
you, when I come all this way to get my prick pleasured?” He set his jaw, tensing his shoulders, increasing the pressure on the Tory’s skin. “You’ll do as I say.”
“No.” The Tory’s voice was a soft thread of pleading. “Don’t.”
Silas pushed him away, hard, catching him off balance a second time so he went over onto his tailbone, sprawling on the wooden floorboards. He slapped a hand on the floor to stop himself going over completely, and stayed there, bent backward, legs folded under him. His posture suggested a man who was going to lose this fight. The bulge of muscle in his arms and the tension of his lips suggested a man who wasn’t used to losing, who had to struggle with it.
“Get up. Strip yourself. Do it.”
The Tory stood. His hands were shaking as he obeyed, pulling off his coat and waistcoat, tugging the clean linen over his head. His chest, tangled with wiry black hair. His belly, just a little soft from fine living.
“Breeches.”
The man doubtless had a valet, someone who folded his clothes and took off his boots. Silas enjoyed watching him do it himself. No opportunity for caustic comments as he struggled with a tight coat or stiff boots tonight, though. He was dressed to undress. His boots came off easily; he pushed down soft breeches, linen drawers. Such a fine gentleman.
And then he stood naked. Candles—wax candles, no stinking tallow here—burned all over the room, giving a clear light. Silas liked the light. He liked to see the Tory bare, without the fine fabrics and expensive tailoring that marked his class. Just a man, skin and flesh, a face braced against pain or humiliation, and a cock-stand begging for it.
His Tory.
Silas was tempted to have him on his knees again, but there was something about him standing in the middle of the room, bare and staring and aroused.
Like a spare prick at a wedding,
he thought, and grinned, knowing it looked wolfish. He was no fine gentleman with polite smiles to ease the social passage. No doubt the Tory could have any gentleman he desired up his social passage, come to that, but it wasn’t what he wanted. He came here.
He unbuttoned his own trousers. Two buttons, that was all, none of your fancy tailoring, and his prick sprang free. The Tory’s eyes went to it as if dragged.
Well they might,
Silas thought, giving himself a slow, complacent stroke. Not so long, perhaps, but thick enough to be sure the Tory wouldn’t forget this night in a hurry. Wouldn’t rush off to another bed before next Wednesday.
“I’ll give you something to remember me by,” he said aloud, and saw the Tory shudder. “Well? What’ll it be?”
The Tory’s chest heaved as he struggled to speak. Silas had never been much of a talker either, always thought you might as well get on with it. Get in, get on, go back to work.
Not with this man. The Tory needed words.
Silas caressed his prick, thumbing the end. “Asked you a question. Now, you can get on your knees and beg for it, and maybe I’ll let you gamahuche me. Good big prick in your mouth, just the way you like it. Might even let you have a bit of fun, once I’ve done, if you serve me well enough. Or.” He cupped his balls, a gesture the Tory called vulgar, and saw the flare in his eyes. “Or you say no to me
one more time,
and I’ll put you on all fours and teach you who your master is, whether you like it or not. Understand me?”
The Tory’s eyes met Silas’s, so dark. He said, soft and clear and very gentlemanlike, “No. Don’t touch me.”
“Get on the bed.” Silas pushed himself out of the chair, bracing his legs wide, knowing he looked intimidating. He was an inch or so shorter than the Tory, broader but not by much, but he’d been in a lot of fights in his life, and he wasn’t afraid of more.
Not that they were here to fight. But the Tory knew what he was looking at, and his eyes darkened at the idea of a threat.
Silas took another step forward, moving close to the naked man. Such clean, smooth skin, curling black hair. He reached for the Tory’s skull, cupping his head, running the soft locks, ungreased and unpomaded, through his fingers. He hated the hair stuff, and the Tory knew it.
Silas wanted to caress. Instead he tightened his fingers, so the Tory gasped with pain. “On the fucking bed!” He shoved sideways and the Tory went stumbling, over to where he should be.
“Knees,” Silas said harshly. “Hands on the rail.”
The Tory’s hands came out at once to grip the wooden bed frame, and Silas could breathe then.
Some men liked whips and chains. He had learned that here, or been told it, rather, because any bastard tried those on him would be going home with his teeth in his pocket and the butt end of a whip up his arse. Silas had been chained and flogged, and not for pleasure. It was ten years now, more, since he’d taken the whip, but the sight of the damned things—instruments of torture and oppression used as toys—still made him queasy and angry.
None of that for Silas. And not for the Tory, with him. He’d take them, Silas had no doubt, and like them too, but he didn’t need them. He needed hard words and harder treatment; he needed to be made to kneel and beg and break. The Tory’s manacles were in his mind.
He was on knees and elbows, an awkward position that let him clutch the rail, head bowed and breathing hard. “You don’t let go,” Silas told him, leaving the rest of the sentence unspoken, because they both knew it:
unless you want me to stop.
The Tory never had yet. It unnerved Silas sometimes, wondering if he ever would.
Silas walked to the head of the bed, to the curtain against the wall, and pulled the cord.
“Oh, no,” the Tory said urgently. “No.”
It sounded as though he meant it, and the odd thing was he probably did. He’d probably prefer whips. But his hands were still on the rail, albeit white-knuckled.
Silas moved back to the foot of the bed so he could see them both in the mirror he’d just revealed. He did look wolfish. Rough as hell, in his cheap fustian jacket, with his cropped salt-and-pepper hair so unlike the Tory’s well-kept locks. He’d have to mess those up.
He stripped, taking his time, eyes on the Tory’s in the mirror. Nothing but breathing in the room, and harsh need, and the smells. Other men’s fucking, the Tory’s soap, and Silas’s sweat.