Authors: KJ Charles

Think of England (27 page)

He didn’t think before grabbing narrow wrists and holding on, but he did twist so that the light of the fire fell on his companion’s face, and he did breathe in, hard, to see he had finally caught the fish for which he had been angling all night. For this young man had the sheepskin bag of a lyre on his shoulder and a bone whistle clutched in his right hand.

Loose curls the colour of Byzantine gold bounced absurdly around a face as thin as his master’s. Hard to see it clearly in the leap and cower of firelight, Wulfstan only got glimpses, enough to believe he saw beauty, sharp and fine. A gazehound of a man, built for speed. In the shifting bars of radiance through the door, his eyes looked full of fire, so that Wulfstan couldn’t tell the colour, though he tried.

The harper breathed out—a sigh that was also a laugh, and the ends of his lips turned up. Wulfstan couldn’t be sure, but he thought the smile mocking. It lit something in Wulfstan that snapped into sparks with a crack.

“I’m waiting for your apology, churl. Then you may step aside and let me pass.”

The laugh was a little louder this time, and the mockery more certain. “You ran into me. It’s you who should apologise.”

He couldn’t believe it. The creature had only an eating knife at his belt. He was as frail and thin as straw, and a beggar in the hall. Wulfstan had never been so affronted in his life. “Men like you get out of my way.”

He really thought the man’s eyes were that colour—all madder red and gold with fire. The thin mouth twisted up, and underneath the laughter there was pride like a coiled snake. The snap of it took Wulfstan by surprise, no more so than the shove in the centre of his chest. At some point he must have let go of those sinewy wrists, for now he found himself pushed back into the join of door and joist and pinned there, all the other man’s weight crowded against him.

He saw stars over the harper’s shoulder shining down on him like spear tips, and he knew he should push back—that this man didn’t have either the weight or the training to hold him. He should push back, and hit and hit again until the little nobody was taught how to deal with his betters. A profound helplessness seemed to have come over him. The man was beautiful in the darkness, and his body and his anger were hot against Wulfstan, and the thin fingers with their calluses that had risen to yank at his hair in childish spite were slowly ungripping and sliding down to bracket his face.

Here there was less light, their combined weight holding the door shut, the fire inside. The harper’s eyes were dark now, but they were wide open, fixed on Wulfstan’s, and everything behind them was sharp and hard and proud, demanding. Though slight, he was taller than Wulfstan.

He pulled at Wulfstan’s face, angling it, and Wulfstan let him. Just at that moment, Wulfstan would have let him do anything. He felt that someone had taken his bones out and replaced them with honeycomb, and that as long as he didn’t frighten this away, if only he didn’t move, he might burst into puddles of gold, sticky sweet.

“Huh.” That small laugh again, surprised, delighted, and the harper leaned in a touch more and the mocking lips closed hot over his own.

Breath against his mouth and the tentative press of a very daring tongue, and Wulfstan’s mind and scruples joined the wash of thick liquid gold that was oozing out of all his pores, making his heart thud slow and heavy and his loins ache deep. All the resistance in him, false as it was, melted into warm oil and left him boneless, compliant, waiting for the other man to take the lead, wanting him to.

Who knew where it would have led, but just as the young harper had shaken off his surprise, taken back his long hands and might have done something more interesting with them, the door bounced against them both, and a determined pressure began to grind it open.

Someone was coming through. The thought knocked at the gates of Wulfstan’s mind once and was ignored. The second time it battered them down. Someone would see!

Think of England

KJ Charles

Lie back and think of England...

England, 1904. Two years ago, Captain Archie Curtis lost his friends, fingers, and future to a terrible military accident. Alone, purposeless and angry, Curtis is determined to discover if he and his comrades were the victims of fate, or of sabotage.

Curtis’s search takes him to an isolated, ultra-modern country house, where he meets and instantly clashes with fellow guest Daniel da Silva. Effete, decadent, foreign, and all-too-obviously queer, the sophisticated poet is everything the straightforward British officer fears and distrusts.

As events unfold, Curtis realizes that Daniel has his own secret intentions. And there’s something else they share—a mounting sexual tension that leaves Curtis reeling.

As the house party’s elegant facade cracks to reveal treachery, blackmail and murder, Curtis finds himself needing clever, dark-eyed Daniel as he has never needed a man before…

Warning: Contains explicit male/male encounters, ghastly historical attitudes, and some
extremely
stiff upper lips.

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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

Samhain Publishing, Ltd.

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Think of England

ISBN: 978-1-61922-177-2

Edited by Anne Scott

Cover by Erin Dameron-Hill

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First
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
electronic publication: July 2014

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