Sedgwick stared at me for a very long time as the bar lights dimmed and then flashed bright again. I
refused to let anything show on my face, but I felt…shaken. Worried. Why? What did it matter if I put a price tag on it? I wanted to sleep with him again, so this was simply killing two birds with one stone. Did it matter that the birds were a pair of Christmas turtledoves?
He said at last, smoothly, “In that case, come back to my hotel. I’d like to share a bedtime story with you.”
46
Chapter Seven
I followed Sedgwick’s rental car down Sunset, my eyes on the red taillights ahead of me flying like
embers through the night. We turned left on Stone Canyon Road and I could see the trees and the clock
tower ahead, like a fairytale kingdom in an enchanted forest.
We parked and handed our keys over to the valets. We didn’t talk as we crossed the little bridge and
walked through the starlight. The woods smelled damp and mysterious. I wondered if Sedgwick was having second thoughts. I was—though not enough of them to change my mind.
We reached the private alcove of his hotel room entrance, and he let us inside the room. To my
surprise he turned on the light, which seemed very prosaic.
He said, “I won’t be able to get into the hotel safe until tomorrow morning. Will that be all right?”
His gaze was curious as the heat rushed into my face and then drained out again.
“Of course.”
“All right?” he asked quite gently.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” I asked belligerently.
His dark eyebrows rose. “I don’t know. You seem…tense. You’re quite pale.”
“It’s been a long day.”
“I suppose so.”
“Are we going to spend the whole night talking?”
“I hope not.” He was smiling. The sweetness of that grin—those dimples—took my breath away. “Do
you mind if I order us nosh from room service? I didn’t have time for dinner.”
Because he’d been too busy tracking me down across the mean streets of Los Angeles.
I stopped unbuttoning my shirt. “Of course not.”
He went to the phone, asking over his shoulder, “What would you like?”
“Nothing. I’m fine.” I sat on the sage green sofa. I felt off-stride. It had been easier the last time; the darkness and the frantic rush we’d been in had made it so.
“A nightcap?”
Now that I thought about it, a nightcap sounded like a good idea. If I was any more tightly wound,
he’d need a fishing reel to get any satisfaction out of me.
“A brandy, thank you.”
Josh Lanyon
He came over to join me on the couch, sitting next to me. That was a first and I felt inexplicably self-conscious. We’d lain together in the same bed, but sitting next to each other on the sofa fully clothed seemed more intimate. Odd.
He rested a casual arm along the back of the sofa. The brush of his arm against my shoulders unsettled me as did the light press of his muscular thigh against my own.
His lifted his arm and his fingertips lightly tickled the back of my neck. I shivered. He chuckled.
“How old are you?”
“Why?”
“Is it a secret?” He offered, “I’m forty-two.”
“You look older.”
Sedgwick chuckled. “You have a sharp tongue when you’re agitated. I’m not imagining it. What’s
wrong?”
“Nothing.” I said irritably, “I’m thirty-five.”
“Swithin is thirty-five. My brother,” he said in answer to my look of mystification. “He’s the baby of the family.”
This brought up a point I was actually curious about. “If your father’s a vicar, what does your family make of you being gay?”
“Oh.” He did a kind of droll eye roll. “They’re attempting to come to terms with it.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’ve only just come out. Officially.” At my look of inquiry, he said, “I was fully determined to go to my grave as kindly, reliable, stodgy Uncle Sedge, the perennial bachelor.”
My jaw must have dropped. But it was ridiculous. He was young, gorgeous and gainfully employed,
and he had planned to spend his entire life alone? Sedge smiled wryly at my expression.
“I know. But you have to understand how very conservative my family is—and how close we all are.
I didn’t think I could ever contemplate…shattering their understanding of me.” He clarified, “Certainly not while my parents were still alive.”
“Are your parents in ill health?”
“No. Thankfully, no. Healthy as horses, both of them.”
“So what was your plan? You’ve obviously had sex before. No amateur is that gifted.”
“Well, it wasn’t all me, you know,” he pointed out gallantly. “You’re right, though, I’ve had more
than a few…illicit encounters, but never, well, an actual relationship. By which I mean, a romantic
relationship. With a man.”
“Have you had one with a woman?”
“Er…yes. Before I realized that that was not going to be fair to either of us.”
“Jesus.”
48
The Dickens with Love
“And that, in fact, was what decided me that I should live celibate.”
“Celibate?”
He nodded gravely.
“Celibacy is your default button?”
“It seemed safer for everyone that way.”
I really had no idea what to say to him. No wonder he was determined to spend every night getting
laid. “So…this is merely a kind of sexual holiday for you and when you go back home you’ll be resuming the Depo-Provera?”
“The what?”
“It’s a drug used in chemical castration.”
“Oh. No. No, not at all. You see everything changed a month and a half ago. You probably didn’t hear
about a train crash just outside London? Six people died.”
I shook my head.
“It was a train that I frequently traveled on. In fact, I was supposed to be traveling on it that afternoon.
I was held up in traffic and missed it.”
A cold fist seemed to grab my heart at the idea Sedgwick might have died before I ever met him.
Why? People had close calls all the time and I didn’t generally suffer a panic attack over them.
“So?” I made myself say indifferently.
“So it made me see that I could have died without ever having really lived. That I had been living a
half-life. That I was denying myself everything that made life worth living: companionship, love—”
“Sex.”
“Definitely sex. But also…my true identity.” He took a deep breath, and I saw by his expression what
it had cost him to reveal the truth to the people he loved best. “When I went down to Rye that weekend, I told my family the truth.”
“That was brave.”
He looked at me as though he thought I was mocking him, but I wasn’t. Not at all.
“I told them that I wanted certain things from my life and that I had to be honest about who I was in
order to get them. And as much as I didn’t want to hurt them…I had to be true to myself.”
“How did they take it?”
“Er…it could have been worse.”
Clearly it could have been better too.
“So you came out of the closet and decided to sell the family heirloom Dickens?”
“The book is all part of that, yes.”
49
Josh Lanyon
There was a knock on the door as room service arrived. Sedge rose from the sofa and went to answer
the door. I stared down at the carpet where I had dropped the plate of waffles that morning. Was it only that morning? I could barely make out the faintest discoloration in the carpet.
I felt like I was a million miles away while the bell captain deposited the tray and Sedgwick signed his ticket. Sedgwick Crisparkle had turned out to be such a different person from whatever I had imagined.
Did that really make a difference to my plans? Could I afford to let it make a difference?
Sedgwick returned to the sofa and lifted one of the lids off the nearest plate. The nutty lemon aroma
of almond-crusted halibut wafted up. I don’t even care for seafood, but it made me realize how hungry I was.
My stomach growled, and Sedge glanced at me and laughed. “Luckily there’s plenty here. I even
ordered dessert.” He handed me the snifter of brandy.
I gently swirled the brandy, sipped it. I watched the fire and ignored offers to share Sedgwick’s
dinner. However, I was pretty hungry and when he offered a forkful of profiteroles with hazelnut gelato drizzled in hot fudge sauce, I accepted.
He smiled into my eyes as my lips closed around the sweet, nutty chocolate.
I warned myself not to get carried away. Part of this was Sedgwick acting out a romantic fantasy after forty-two years of emotional and sexual deprivation.
And part of it was me feeling a bit sentimental and lonely around the holidays.
And part of this—most of this—was we happened to be two healthy, horny guys.
Taking any of this seriously would be a mistake. I needed to relax and enjoy the moment.
So when the moment came—not many minutes later—I was in a relaxed and receptive state of mind.
Sedgwick decided he wanted the pleasure of undressing me, so I sat still and let him unbutton my shirt.
“You’re smirking,” he remarked.
I opened my mouth, but he kissed my bared collarbone, and the words dried in my throat. He shoved
the shirt back and kissed my shoulder, and the warm softness of his generally stern mouth sent tingles through my nerves.
“What would you like?” he murmured.
“What would
I
like?”
He was quite serious.
“I like it all,” I admitted. “Feel free to…er…”
He smiled, lighting up. It reminded me of something I hadn’t thought of in years: Christmas when I
was a kid. Before. Our tree-topper was a kitschy plastic angel, and when the tree lights were turned on, the angel’s face glowed happily. That’s what Sedgwick’s smile reminded me of.
He was still alight as he tumbled me back on the sofa. I caught fire from him. In a couple of kicks I
was free of my painfully constricted trousers and helping him peel out of his own clothes. He landed on me, 50
The Dickens with Love
but lightly, lithely, and he kissed me more hungrily. I’d never known anyone who seemed to enjoy kissing more than Sedgwick. But then he was very good at it, and the expert, tantalizing pressure moved from my mouth to my chin, to beneath my jaw, down my gulping throat, trailing over my sternum on the way to my belly.
His hand cupped my balls, and I let my knees fall wide, making it easy for him to do whatever he
liked. I knew I would enjoy it. Raising my head, I fastened my mouth onto one of his rose-brown nipples, and he groaned from down in his belly, his fingers delicately squeezing me, massaging that fragile sack.
His head dipped lower and he nipped the thin skin over my hip. I bucked.
“What is with you?” I gasped, letting go of his nipple.
“Can’t help it, you’re good enough to eat.”
“You’re orally fixated.
Not
that that’s a bad thing.”
We fooled around a little more, most agreeably, but it was sort of like Twister, and the near misses
were starting to get frustrating.
“Can we—?”
“Shall we—?”
We started laughing, and we carefully disentangled, picking ourselves up from the carpet and moving
toward the bed—though still hanging onto each other, kissing, stroking.
In the downy snowdrift of the bed there was more of the playful business of preparation: the colored
condoms, the chocolate soufflé body cream.
“We could try the real thing?” Sedgwick suggested hopefully at one point. “There’s still a bit of
dessert left on the dish.”
“I’ll forgo the charms of hazelnut up my ass.”
He seemed to find that breath-robbingly funny, and when he could speak again, he said solemnly,
“Your arse is delicious in its own right, true enough.”
This time we tried it with Sedgwick on his back. His cock sprang straight up, straight and shining. I
took my turn at putting the condom on him, and it was sadly like a hood over the head of an angel, but better safe than sorry.
The angel continued to blindly feel its way to the hot, candy-slick center hovering tentatively above.
“That’s it,” Sedgwick encouraged, hands on my hips, positioning me as I lowered myself onto that
silk-textured thrust. The angel spread his wings as Sedgwick’s thick shaft pushed in past muscle and self-consciousness. I ground down. And so it began again: the rush to glory.
The world spun and spun, faster and faster, a glittering blue green top, and then flew away into the
darkness.
“You’re wonderful.” He kissed my ear, drew me closer.
51
Josh Lanyon
It was nice being held. I’d always liked cuddling in bed with a lover. I’d have been happy to sleep
wrapped in Corey’s arms all night, but he disliked sleeping close to anyone. Too warm, he said. Sedge
seemed to like the closeness and warmth. Seemed to require it.
I could feel him smiling against my hair as he said, “I’ve never felt anything like this. Do you
suppose—” He broke off.
“What?”
He shook his head. A tiny movement. “You’d think I was mad. I probably am.”
Neither of us said anything. Into the silence that grew slowly but not uncomfortably between us came
a faint, faraway cry…like a squall.
“What was that?” I asked, raising my head.
“A baby?”
“An ocelot?”
We started laughing, that quiet intimate laughter of lovers. I dropped my head back on the pillow, and he rested his face in my hair.
“Sedge?”
I felt his smile. “That’s the first time you’ve called me that,” he murmured.
I realized that in the illusory emotional aftermath of really good sex I was in danger of spilling my
guts. Not only telling him about who had hired me to look at his book, but telling him how much this night had meant, how much I felt for him—ridiculous because how could I even know what I felt for him? I’d