An Improper Holiday (17 page)

“I did,” I admitted. He was hard despite his protests, straining against his trousers. I ran my hand over him through the fabric. He closed his eyes and reached behind him, groping for the wall. “It made me

laugh, and it made me smile, with the simple pleasure of it.”

“Arjen,” he said unsteadily and opened his eyes. He gently slid his fingers through my hair. I watched the transformation as his gaze hardened, cooled, as the smirk that hid the warmth of his true smile tugged at his lips. “Perhaps the gossips only got it backwards,” he murmured in an entirely different tone of voice.

“Perhaps it is you who cannot help but rise to the challenge of being denied. We have not even broached the subject of payment, and here you are on your knees before me—”

I rose swiftly and struck him across the cheek, hard enough to make my palm sting. He gaped at me.

“I do not want your damned money. I want you to answer me.”

Carefully, he fingered his jaw. There was something new and strange in his gaze, sharp, intent enough

to make me wary. “I do believe I’ve forgotten the question.”

I dropped to my knees once more. When he tried to move, I shoved him back against the wall. “One

small pleasure in exchange for another,” I snarled. My fingers worked deftly to unfasten his trousers. “I’ll not be beholden to you, Maikel van Triet.”

He started to speak, but stopped abruptly when I drew him out and held his phallus in my hand. I

waited, but he did not protest again.

I slid forward, bracing my hands on his hipbones to hold him against the wall. My breath washed over

him. He made a sound in the back of his throat and moved against me, hips flexing. I leaned forward,

bearing him back with my weight, and took the tip of him into my mouth.

He stopped moving, stopped
breathing
. His hands fisted in my hair, tugging, not enough to really hurt. I stroked him with my tongue, long, slow sweeps that laved the salt from his skin. On my knees, eyes closed, his hands in my hair like a demand, he might have been any patron. But even that was a lie. No one strained like this to keep me
away
.

My strength was no match to his. I couldn’t have forced anything on him if he truly wished to pull me

away. But even the pretense of resistance fueled my determination. I drew him deeper, letting him fill my mouth. My tongue played over him, drawing strangled sounds and muffled cries. His hips bucked against

my restraint. I tore his trousers down around his knees and dug my fingers into skin, forcing him still.

“Arjen.” His voice was rough, raw.

“Be quiet,” I said and took him deeper.

His head fell back against the wall. His hands slipped from my hair to my neck, my shoulders. He

grabbed at me as I stroked my tongue over the sensitive underbelly of his erection, fingers pressing hard against bone. He gave a single, sharp cry when I dragged a hand down between his thighs and cradled his sac, feeling the weight of it in my palm. He spoke again but I didn’t reprimand him, didn’t even notice the words. I recognized the tone, though. Hungry. Pleading.

Orlando’s broken memory may break his lover’s heart

Lessons in Discovery

© 2009 Charlie Cochrane

A
Cambridge Fellows
Mystery

Cambridge, 1906

On the very day Jonty Stewart proposes that he and Orlando Coppersmith move in together, Fate trips

them up. Rather, it trips Orlando, sending him down a flight of stairs and leaving him with an injury that erases his memory. Instead of taking the next step in their relationship, they’re back to square one. It’s bad enough that Orlando doesn’t remember being intimate with Jonty—he doesn’t remember Jonty at all.

Back inside the introverted, sexually innocent shell he inhabited before he met Jonty, Orlando is faced with two puzzles. Not only does he need to recover the lost pieces of his past, he’s also been tasked by the Master to solve a four-hundred-year-old murder before the end of term. The college’s reputation is riding on it.

Crushed that his lover doesn’t remember him, Jonty puts aside his grief to help decode old documents

for clues to the murder. But a greater mystery remains—one involving the human heart.

To solve it, Orlando must hear the truth about himself—even if it means he may not fall in love with

Jonty the second time around…

Warning: carries a three handkerchief rating. Contains sensual m/m lovemaking and men in kilts.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Lessons in Discovery:

Jonty finished shaving and looked at himself in the mirror. There was still a trace of redness around

his eyes and some bags under them. The doctor had promised that Orlando would be all right, although

doctors had a habit of saying any old rot if you weren’t watchful, so it wasn’t just a matter of worrying himself sick about the condition of his friend’s skull. He’d also spent the hours wondering about Orlando’s mental state.

The best possible outcome would be returning to the sick bay to find that all Orlando’s memories had

come back, and being greeted with a huge smile and a “Jonty, what kept you?”

He wouldn’t let himself seriously contemplate this possibility. That would be to tempt fate.

The worst case would see his lover still without recall of the last year and not wanting to have any

more to do with this friend who had been foisted upon him unasked. Orlando had survived for many years without a close companion, so why should he opt to choose the same route as he had done a year

previously, risking everything by letting himself become close to another person? Jonty wouldn’t

contemplate this eventuality either. Self-fulfilling prophesy and all that.

He stiffened his upper lip and put on his most dazzling suit of clothes. If he was to begin wooing all

over again then he might as well show himself to the best advantage, so he added a little flower to his buttonhole before he set off for Nurse Hatfield’s den.

He was greeted by a pinny starched to almost ramrod straightness that seemed to enter the hallway

hours before its owner, pushed forward by a bosom of such magnificence that, if he hadn’t been immune to feminine charms, would have made him breathless. There was many a poor undergraduate who had been

treated unnecessarily for laboured breathing when all he had visited Nurse Hatfield for was to have his ears syringed. She was a widow, with much speculation among the students about the reason for her husband’s demise, suffocation being the favourite.

Jonty was rather crestfallen when Nurse H informed him the doctor had insisted Dr. Coppersmith

have no visitors for the next few days.

“Now, I don’t count you as a visitor really, more like one of the family. You can see him as often as

you like if you promise not to tire him.” She ushered him into the little private room where his friend had been ensconced, although not without first checking that he wasn’t bringing in anything unsuitable that might be detrimental to her patient’s condition.

Jonty was puzzled at this, as he wasn’t sure what she could have been looking for. A bottle of whisky?

A catapult? He was pleased that he’d hidden a packet of sweets away in his inside pocket, being certain that she would have disapproved had she found them, whisking them off with much shaking of both head and

bosom. He was hopeful that they would remain secure in their little sanctuary, unless she were to insist on a body search.

Orlando was sitting up surrounded by plump pillows, browsing through the day’s newspaper, no

doubt trying to come to terms with what had happened to 1906. He looked up as Jonty entered, producing something like a smile of recognition, if not yet one of love.

At least
, Jonty reflected,
I’ve been remembered since yesterday
.

Orlando looked pale in the meagre light which was trying to penetrate the small leaded window, but

he didn’t appear to be on the brink of pegging out. His eyes seemed bright and there was no dullness in his speech or other worrying sign.

“Dr. Stewart, good morning.”

“And to you, Dr. Coppersmith.” Jonty perched on the chair by the bed, relieved to find Orlando much

perkier today. “Nurse Hatfield, may we have a cup of tea, please?”

The nurse beamed at them. She loved well-behaved and well-mannered little boys, which is exactly

how she regarded these two. “Of course, and I’ll rustle up a biscuit or three. You both look like you need nourishment.”

Once she had gone, Jonty couldn’t resist a laugh. “What is it about ladies of a certain age? How does

their eyesight change that they can look at a muscular frame and see only the sort of stick men that children draw? You may need building up after your mishap but no one could accuse me of being thin.” Jonty patted

his muscular stomach and Orlando smiled wanly. “And before the sergeant major gets back I thought you

could hide these somewhere.” He produced a packet of bullseyes from his jacket. “Put them where she

won’t find them or else we’ll both be in trouble.”

“My favourites! How did you—sorry.” Orlando stopped short. “You would have known, wouldn’t

you? If we were friends. If we
are
friends, I mean.”

Jonty tried to provide reassurance. “That’s perfectly all right. It’s going to take a bit of time to get the old status quo back, while we wait for that brain of yours to get itself organised.” He thought about the surprises that would be in store for his friend—his lover—and felt a sudden qualm.

“I feel at such a disadvantage, Dr. Stewart. You must know so much about me, yet I know nothing of

you.” Orlando managed another constrained smile.

Indeed, the location of every mole on your body, the taste of your hair, the words you use in darkest
despair or deepest ecstasy.
Jonty shook himself, trying to set aside such thoughts. “Well, I’ll bore you to death about all of that if you wish me to. There’s a fair amount to catch up on, I guess.”

The arrival through the doorway of tea and a plate of biscuits, followed shortly after by a pinafore and lastly by Nurse Hatfield herself, gave them a chance to gather their thoughts. Although it was, on the surface, a lighthearted conversation between two old friends, this was starting to feel rather strained.

When they were left alone again, Orlando continued. “I’d very much like to be brought up to date

with events over the last year. The college, the university, the world at large. Anything of significance.”

So Jonty began. He didn’t present a very orderly account, switching from place to place, now talking

about summer, then referring back to the previous winter, as thoughts occurred to him. Orlando would chip in with the odd question but it soon became obvious that he was finding the process tiring and Jonty

decided that they would need to take their time over this. Bullseyes would be fine, but no bulls in the china shop.

The discussion ended up stretching over the next few days, Jonty visiting for a short while each

morning and afternoon as his commitments allowed, gradually helping Orlando to build up a picture of a twelve months full of events. Jonty was pleased to find that, although the mental store of proceedings had disappeared, the last year hadn’t been totally lost and the benefit it had on Orlando was still in evidence.

The man chatted with more ease than he had a twelvemonth ago and there was little sign of the barrier that he’d put between himself and the world. He could even be positively forthright with Nurse Hatfield when the occasion required.

Jonty was still reluctant to divulge all that had gone on in 1906. He skirted around the matter of the St.

Bride’s murders, just saying there had been a series of killings in the college during the late winter, that the whole affair had been rather sordid
and that he didn’t think it was wise to discuss this sort of thing until Dr.

Coppersmith was feeling a bit stronger. While he was perfectly honest about their having taken a holiday

together—
you were a great one for swimming in the sea, Dr. Coppersmith—
and even mentioned that there had been another murder,
at our very hotel
, he hadn’t explained the exact sleeping arrangements.

Any hint of intimacy, of something other than a simple friendship, he passed over. He hadn’t even

explained about their adjacent chairs in the Senior Common Room—it would be too painful. While his

companion still showed every sign of wanting to carry on the acquaintance, Jonty had no guarantee that they would ever achieve their previous state of intimacy. To mention it now, at this delicate stage, would probably scupper all chances of it happening.

An old mystery brought them together. Solving it could tear them apart.

Chasing Smoke

© 2009 K.A. Mitchell

In the best of times, Daniel Gardner hates visiting his family. With his boyfriend pressuring him for a mortgage-serious commitment, Christmas in Easton, PA sounds, for once, like a welcome escape. His old

house holds more than memories of a miserable adolescence, though. It has Trey Eriksson.

At seventeen, Trey was taken in by the wealthy Gardner family after his father was jailed for his

mother’s murder. Until he left for the Army, he fought a double-edged battle—for proof of his father’s innocence and against his attraction to Daniel.

Fifteen years later, things haven’t changed. Trey is still looking for the real killer. And Daniel has never forgotten how Trey used to sneak into his room at night.

Now new clues to the murder are resurfacing—and so is Trey and Daniel’s sexual chemistry. Except

this time, Trey has come to terms with his orientation.

But their connection may not be enough to overcome the mistakes of the past. Not while a murderer

still walks free…

Warning:
Anyone who would rather not read about hooking back up with someone who broke your
heart, minor suspense, hot guys who can handle guns and each other, and lots of steamy gay sex probably
isn’t reading this warning anyway, but if you are, back away slowly and keep your hands where I can see
them.