Objects Of His Obsession (2 page)

Christ, the woman was stunning.
Eyes like jewels. A thick diamond choker about her throat, the neckline of her
ivory dress cut fashionably low and revealing the upper curves of spectacular
breasts.

What the fuck was he thinking?

The man was married to the most
beautiful woman in London. They had two children.

And here he was, having
accepted the damned invitation for Christ knows what true reason – an
inability to stay away from the man, no matter how hopeless his case was
– and he could not take his eyes away from him, nor keep his body tamed.

Well, if he’d ever needed any
confirmation of what he’d suspected about himself for a very long time, he now
knew.

It did not matter how many
women he’d had. The occasional willing housemaid, enough prostitutes in the
better brothels his elder brothers had introduced him to from the age of
fifteen.

His preference was not for
women and he could not hide it from himself any longer.

Even with work to lose himself
in, he finally, at the age of twenty-seven, had to face it. There would be no
more women. There had not been any for quite some time.

And faced with his very
physical reaction to the erotic lure of the completely unobtainable and
completely heterosexual Duke of Casterwell, he would be leaving at the end of
this week with the awareness that unless he wished to spend the rest of his
life alone and without sex, let alone love, he had better change the way he
lived his life.

God knew, he was not the only
man in London nor Oxford who preferred his own sex. The fact that his sexual
preferences were wholly illegal was daunting but he could live with that. It
would just take complete discretion.

But living a sexless life,
devoid of a lover, he would not face.

And so what was he doing here,
wasting his time on obsession with a man who may have been goddamned beautiful,
but was also utterly unobtainable?

Benedict wrenched his gaze away
from those enigmatic turquoise eyes and turned his attention to the woman to
his left. Miss Eliza Stark. She was quite the firebrand and revolutionary, he
had gathered from earlier conversation. A journalist, and not one who reported
on flower shows and society weddings.

She also had a darkly ironic
sense of humor and a witty turn of phrase.

Before long she had begun to
draw him out about life spent on the digs, and his travels through the Near East.

He had found himself enjoying
her company. It had been a relief to find someone so easy to converse with
seated beside him.

For the moment he could forget
Evander St John. For the moment.

“One of your purposes in coming
here was to go over the old inventories of my grandfather’s raidings. Revise them
and assess. I’m afraid the social madness has kept you from that. You must be
getting damned impatient,” Evander was saying. With a sharp perception,
Benedict had to allow. The collection was famous, justly so. And Benedict had
been growing, truly, more and more hungry for sight of it. Those turquoise eyes
swept dismissively about the room. “It looks as if there may finally be time
for a viewing. Come, follow me. We’ll go to the Egyptian collection,” Evander
told him decisively.

Benedict gulped back a mouthful
of port, nearly choked, and gave the man a polite smile. He was having enough of
a time fighting down his raging heartbeat and maintaining an appearance of
normality.

It was getting damned late. The
ladies had long since retired, the gentlemen having settled in to the massive
informal library come games room with cigars, port and whisky. Some had called
it a night. A few stragglers were drunkenly playing cards. Billiards.

Benedict was half wishing that
he had called it a night himself.

If he had, he wouldn’t be
standing here while the man spoke to him so casually in that low, gritty drawl,
so innately confident, at ease.

He lifted his amber eyes from
the heavy crystal glass in his hand and managed a politely interested smile for
his host.

“Certainly,” he said easily. “I
have been looking forward to this.” A vast understatement. At times he’d
believed his host had been torturing him by deliberately including him in the entire
packed litany of activities the guests had been offered. “It will be good to
finally see it.”

“There is certainly
enough
to see. My grandfather was quite
the Egyptologist,” Evander said ironically. “While he put a scientific cast on
his dealings, he could also be described as something of a raider.”

A flush colored Benedict’s
cheekbones. “I – I would say that times and methods have changed a great
deal since your grandfather’s time, Casterwell. Digs that I’ve worked on have
been most meticulous about–”

Evander was frowning, that
sculpted, beautiful face for the first time disconcerted. He shook his head,
the discreet gas lighting licking blue-black lights into his inky hair, his
turquoise eyes narrowed. “No, man. You misunderstand me. I did not mean to
impugn your profession. Merely commenting on the fact that my dear old
grandfather was something of a pirate.”

Abruptly Benedict relaxed,
suddenly aware that he had left his sense of humor at the gates of the estate
the minute he’d arrived here. Christ, it wasn’t Casterwell’s fault that he was
fucking alluring, and Benedict himself the kind of man susceptible to that
overwhelming lure. What Benedict himself needed was to relax, to enjoy what was
left of this house party, revise the inventories and assess the collection as
agreed to, and to get himself well and truly fucked once he got back to London.

Evander’s striking eyes were
moving over his tanned face, taking in the sudden decisive gleam in Benedict’s
gaze. Unlike the others, he was no heavy drinker.

Abruptly Evander grinned. His
teeth were very white in that lean, olive skinned face.

“Good to have finally brought
an expert to the place,” he pronounced. He slapped Benedict on one surprisingly
muscle bulked shoulder and walking off, flung over his shoulder. “May as well
go now.”

Benedict didn’t move, muttered
awkwardly, “You don’t need to just–”

Evander paused, glanced back indifferently
at the rag-tag remainder of his guests, scarcely able to see the cards nor
billiards they were playing, let alone employ any skill with them.

“They’re too drunk to possibly
expect me to play host,” he said contemptuously. “The footmen will help them up
to their rooms later, should they need assistance.”

Benedict nodded, running his
fingers, agitated, through his unruly, too long, sun-streaked brown hair.

One more thing he needed to do
once he got back to London.

Get a good fucking, and get a
haircut.
 

“Excellent,” Evander said
calmly. The turquoise eyes flickered, his full lips curling a little at
Benedict’s faintly bewildered expression. “Follow me. This place can be a maze
for the uninitiated.”

~~***~~

“So what do you think, Yeats?
Does it live up to your expectations?”

Benedict felt his cheeks flush
faintly, feeling as if there was a second meaning, hidden behind the first, in
that question.

He chose the safe option. Just
stood in the opened double doorway and stared down the long gallery, its
seemingly endless contents picked out by well-placed overhead lighting, and
somehow restrained himself from having his jaw drop.

Flat glass cases ranged in
neat, desk-like rows. Stunned, he could not even begin to examine their
contents. But in the distance the glimmer of gold on an otherwise jet statue of
Anubis, the jackal headed lord of death. Stone sculptures, black basalt and
pale limestone, some so large he was astonished they’d been transported up the
endless sweep of stairs to this gallery, and were not displayed downstairs. And
oh, the bas-relief mounted on one wall. And glimpsed, in the distance of the
next gallery, an exquisite selection of sarcophagi.

A scent in the air of beeswax.
And something else. Resinous, and more.

Something that came from these
ancient objects. Something that was heady to him. Wonderfully familiar.

“This is the first gallery,”
Casterwell was saying casually. “There are two more. No less interesting.”

Benedict gulped. “This is …
this is extraordinary.”

He wandered towards one of the
glass cases and stared down blindly, too dumbstruck by being alone with his
host to truly take in its contents.

Casterwell made some sound of
amusement. “I told you the old man was a pirate, didn’t I? Never let it be said
I exaggerate.”

He closed the doors behind them
and strolled over to the glass case Benedict was peering blindly into.

The case rang faintly as he set
his half empty brandy glass down onto it. “So tell me, Yeats. Do you have
someone back in London? Some beauty prepared to put up with you disappearing
half a year at a time?”

Benedict almost choked on his
own brandy. Set the glass down. He lifted his chin and made himself meet those
blandly enquiring black lashed eyes. “No. No sane individual would put up with
my working life.”

Evander lifted a black brow.
“No
individual
?” His powerful
shoulders, beneath the exquisitely tailored black evening coat, lifted in a
shrug. “So no plans to marry then? Yet the ladies must be hurling themselves at
you. You are most presentable and from a good family.”

Benedict shifted uncomfortably.
“I – I consider myself married to my work.”

Again, that sensual mouth
quirked. “Is that so?”

The turquoise gaze swept down
over him without expression.

“Yes.” Benedict’s honey-brown
eyes shifted. He uttered the words he now knew would become his polite catchphrase,
“I’m too set in my ways to be anything but a bachelor, I’m afraid. Most
boring.”

“Is that so? A pity,” drawled
Evander.

Goddammit, Benedict thought
grimly. This conversation was becoming far too intimate, too probing for his
liking. And yet it could be no more than a foreshadowing of many he would have
in years to come.

Perhaps Evander was doing him a
damned favor, getting him accustomed to it. Previously he’d always made some
half-hearted concession to marriage at a vague future point.

Fortunately, his bizarre choice
of profession and his unattractive position as the third son made him less of a
target to matchmaking mothers than his brothers. He’d seen them navigate waters
that would have scared a shark.

But he refused to bother with
polite social maybes now.

No, he would be married to his
work.

An acceptable enough brushoff,
given the demands of his profession.

Evander took a step closer and
to his complete and utter shock, stroked the unruly, sun-streaked brown hair
back from his tanned face. Slid that hand around his nape and drove his fingers
into the thick mass of it, against his scalp.

“A pity for the ladies,”
Evander said in that aristocratic drawl. “For God knows, you are a beauty. But
all the better for me, selfish bastard that I am.”

At just under six feet,
Benedict was a tall man. But Evander stood a couple of inches more. And
Benedict could only stare, mesmerized, heart beating so hard he thought would
choke, as Evander drew him closer and that utterly sexual, hard and yet lush
mouth closed over his.

It was like kissing fire.

Benedict had felt the touch of
a woman’s lips many times. He had never realized a man’s kiss would feel so
different. That the faint roughness of shaven, yet freshly stubbled skin would
be so good. And then Evander’s tongue slicked along his slightly parted lips,
slid inside to glide with his, and he felt his lungs burn for lack of oxygen.
His cock harden painfully.

Christ, he was going to come
from this alone. From the expert, assured sweep of the man’s tongue in his
mouth, the lean, powerful fingers caught at his nape, holding his head in place
as Evander’s free hand slid down, over Benedict’s chest. Unbuttoned his silk
waistcoat expertly to slide under it, undo a button of the snowy white linen of
his shirt, another, and from there … from there the pads of his fingers slid
under the cloth to glide over Benedict’s smooth, muscular chest, slowly circled
a nipple.

Damn, even just that felt so
bloody
good
. Never had before, with
the women he’d paid for pleasure. A pleasure that had only felt like a shadow
of what it should have been–

Fingertips traced over his
nipple. Pinched the flesh together to tug at it gently.

Benedict jerked, gasping
against Evander’s mouth. Nerve endings ran fire from that very spot down to his
prick, tightening his balls.

Evander stopped devouring his
mouth just long enough to mutter hoarsely, “Like that, Yeats?”

Like
it– The trance he had been in was
broken. The raw heat building up and driving out everything else.