Just a Little Heartache (The Brotherhood #5) - Merry Farmer Page 0,89

to bed and satisfy each other in every way possible, Blake wasn’t sure he would be responsible for his actions.

His humor about the situation was dented slightly when their search of Annamarie’s Egyptian parlor turned up nothing.

“Do you remember what the medallion looked like?” Niall asked, sifting through the curiosities in a glass-fronted cabinet in the corner of the room while Blake watched the way his arse stretched the fabric of his trousers instead of checking the artifacts above the fireplace.

“You’re the one who claims to remember every detail of what I was wearing that day,” Blake said, giving up his ostensible search to approach Niall from behind. “Don’t you remember what it looks like?”

He pressed himself against Niall’s back, cupping his backside and applying extra pressure to the cleft of his arse. Niall let out a shaky breath and turned into Blake’s arms.

“I remember what you looked like, naked and splayed like you were gagging for it, two nights before,” he said breathlessly, eyes zeroing in on Blake’s lips.

Blake hummed deep in his throat and grabbed Niall’s backside, jerking the two of them together. Niall sighed in acceptance, sliding his arms over Blake’s shoulders and indulging in a deep kiss that had their tongues tangled in no time.

“No. Wait,” he said a moment later, pulling away. “We have to find the medallion. Everything depends on it. It has to be here.”

“Maybe it’s in my bedroom,” Blake said, desire outweighing guilt as he watched Niall skitter across the room to get away from him, trousers tented. He should focus everything he had on fulfilling Ian’s conditions to return the children. But hadn’t one of those conditions been to expose himself and Niall? What better way to do that than to risk being caught by the servants again? “I bet we could find it between the sheets.”

“I bet we’d find something there.” Niall glanced over his shoulder as he reached the bookcase lined with fake papyruses at the other end of the room. “Two obelisks is my guess.”

Blake chuckled and started across the room to him. “I have a few ideas about where we could put—”

“What a magnificent room. I don’t think I’ve ever been in here before.”

Blake’s heart nearly stopped in his chest at the utterly ludicrous arrival of Lady Inglewood in the room. He snapped a curse before he could stop himself. The one saving grace of the nerve-splitting moment was that a high-backed chair stood between him and Lady Inglewood, saving him from the embarrassment of the woman seeing him with an erection big enough to hang a lantern on.

“Lady Inglewood,” he gasped. “What in God’s name—er, that is, what brings you to Selby Manor so late at night?”

“Is it late, your grace?” Lady Inglewood blinked obliviously, hiccupped, then laughed. “I suppose I lost track of time. Lady Fairport is hosting a ball this evening, and she dared to suggest to me that I could not coax you out of your self-imposed confinement. I told her she was off her nut, of course, and that you’d been to my house just last week for supper. She had the gall to call me a liar, can you believe it?” As almost an afterthought, she added, “Oh, hello, Mr. Cristofori. Are you still here?”

Niall had jumped behind a table piled with books about Egypt, which rested at a convenient height to hide him from the waist down. “I’m still here,” he said, face red.

“Sensational,” Lady Inglewood said, slurring the word.

Blake gaped at her. The woman was drunk. Drunk enough that he wasn’t sure she knew where she was or what she was seeing. That made it easier for him to step out from behind the chair, regardless of his state. “Lady Inglewood, who brought you here this evening, and can they take you home? I’m afraid you need a good, long rest, and perhaps some aspirin in the morning.”

“Your handsome, young butler showed me in,” Lady Inglewood said, pink-faced and grinning as Blake reached her side and rested a hand on her back to escort her into the hall. “Though I’m not sure the man knows what he’s doing. He said he was going to fetch you.” She happened to glance down at Blake’s trousers and made a sound of surprise and delight. “Ooh! Lord Selby! Cheeky!” She snorted into laughter.

Blake glanced to Niall, barely able to contain his giddiness over the surreal situation as he escorted Lady Inglewood back to the front hall. “Charles,” he called out for his