Tingles of shock swept through me. I knew Priest had held various jobs as a boy, doing this and that for the gentry. It wasn’t until he was eighteen that he found Reynolds and joined the ranks of the Brethren of the Black Flag. So hearing he’d been a male servant was no surprise.
But Ashley’s servant? Here? That was difficult to process. By God, was that why the household staff knew Priest so well? Because they’d worked together?
“He’s twisting the truth,” Ashley said to me, his bearing stiff and severe. “Priest was my companion.”
“The companion of the master of the house. I saw to your every personal need.” Priest cocked his head, idly rubbing his chin without a trace of resentment in his gravelly accent. “I dressed you and styled you, accompanied you to every tedious formal engagement, and attended to your private arrangements. All your private affairs. How many times, my lord, did I personally wash that sizable cock between your legs?”
My indecent mind hungrily grasped at the sensual image he evoked, my insides fluttering and knotting.
“It wasn’t like that, and you damn well know it.” Ashley prowled toward him, seemingly unmoved, save for flexing of his hands at his sides. “You were my best friend. My only confidant. Because of you, I learned how to laugh and play and take risks. You understood me like no one else could. Because you valued me as something other than a rank or a title.” He towered over Priest’s chair, glowering down at him. “You can talk about my cock and try to degrade our relationship, but I know that everything I just said… You felt the same about me. It went both ways, my friend. When we were together, in any capacity, we were well-matched. A perfect pair on level ground. Always equal.”
“Aye,” Priest whispered. “I know.”
They stared at each other, eyes hard and unblinking, and within the poignant, private space between them, I felt their conflict, their longing, their tortured breaths. I imagined they were thinking about the moments they’d shared. All the time that they’d lost. The rules of society that undoubtedly forced them apart.
My heart wept for them. At the same time, I felt sick with dread.
Where did I fit in? Priest was my husband, and he cheated on me with my lover. But cheated didn’t sound right. It didn’t make sense in my head or my heart.
All that mattered was that I loved them, and they loved me.
Except what they had together, the history they shared, the fraternal companionship… That was something else entirely. It didn’t include me.
I struggled to reckon all the strange, intense reactions I had to this. I was positively blindsided.
And terrified.
My chest squeezed as Priest and Ashley stared at each other in a way I’d never seen them look at anyone else. What radiated from them was more than desire and masculine heat. It went beyond the habits of possessiveness and dominance. I saw it in their eyes—their unconditional love. It blazed with a magnetic force that was too powerful to be controlled or ignored.
I clutched my throat, breathing through the terrible tightness. I was jealous. But also aghast with awe and envy. I coveted what they shared. I wanted that history with them. That brotherly bond. Without it, I felt like an outsider looking in.
With each passing second, the emotions that Ashley kept so well hidden began to surface. Muscles twitched in his clenched jaw. The hands at his sides opened and closed. His entire body seemed to lean toward Priest, his strength visibly contracting, fighting against the pull.
As his control unraveled, I tried to embrace my conflicting feelings about their relationship. I wanted them together. They would never be truly happy apart. But I yearned to be part of it, of them, of whatever they were within the walls of their stolen, private moments.
“Stop looking at me like that.” Priest’s eyes didn’t waver from Ashley’s as he rose from the chair and leaned into Ashley’s face. “Unless you intend on sticking around this time.”
“That was low, even for you.” Standing an inch taller than Priest, Ashley pivoted and strolled aft toward the bathing chamber. “I’m drawing a bath.”
A bath? At this hour?
The moonlight, skittish now beyond the windows, wouldn’t be returning tonight. Dawn was approaching. None of us were going to sleep.
Ashley moved through the bedchamber with natural grace and balance—the gait of a man accustomed to the rolling decks of a ship. But I marked the fatigue in