The Sugared Game - K.J. Charles Page 0,27
“Damnation. I’m sorry.”
“What on earth for?”
“Well, you. This looks like a rotten job.”
Kim’s face twisted, a sudden, shockingly open movement that made him look dreadfully like a child. It lasted a fraction of a second before his face smoothed over, but Will could see the tension in his jaw and neck still. “Kim?”
“You startled me with sympathy. Ah, Christ, Will.”
“What?”
Kim hesitated. “Only that I’m grateful to have you with me thus far. And.” He exhaled. “And I don’t flatter myself that you’ll care, but I ought to say that I disappeared on you in January for purely professional reasons. You deserve to know that.”
“What reasons?”
“I had—call it omens of trouble with Zodiac at the end of last year. I thought I would do well to keep my distance rather than draw attention to you, and subsequent events proved me right. I’m rather afraid things are coming to a head.”
“And you didn’t think to tell me?”
“What, and expect you to sit tamely at home, keeping out of danger, because I said so? You aren’t famous for your obliging nature.”
That phrase struck at Will’s gut. Kim had used it about himself, here in this flat. He had an exceedingly obliging nature, at least in some areas. And Kim had noticed that resonance too, because his eyes were on Will’s deep and dark.
“I’ll decide what to do for myself,” he said, hearing roughness in his voice. “Stop playing silly buggers.”
“Silly buggers is what I do. There’s no point waiting for me to do otherwise. There’s no point waiting for me at all.”
“I haven’t been waiting for you,” Will said indignantly. “I haven’t happened to meet anyone else I wanted to fuck, but that’s not the same thing.”
“No. Nor have I, since you. I wish you would. I wish you’d meet a nice girl and settle down and grow roses around the door. A decent, respectable life. Why don’t you go and get that instead of being here?” There was a strained note to Kim’s voice. “Why aren’t you doing that now?”
Will opened his mouth, and realised he had no answer.
He did want to live decently, in theory. He had always expected a respectable life with the trappings of church, children, brass doorstep, vegetable plot, just as his mother had dreamed of for him. Those were things any man, or most, would want to have.
The blood-red uncivilised streak of his nature that had blossomed in the war didn’t want them. That streak wanted someone who would ask him to infiltrate night-clubs and kick people’s heads in. That streak wanted Kim, who offered none of the things that appealed to Will’s respectable ambitions and everything that fed the wolf.
Infinitely unreliable, oddly vulnerable, painfully desirable Kim, who he could neither understand nor forget. His abrupt disappearance had been a constant, daily prickle of disappointment and hurt that Will hadn’t wanted to address because it was easier to bundle those thoughts up and shove them into the back cupboard of his mind, even if they kept spilling out again, even if they got still more tangled that way.
It was absurd that the pulsebeat of desire was as strong as ever. It was absurd that Kim was looking at him now with something raw and painful in his eyes after buggering off for two bloody months. It was absurd that Will couldn’t look away.
“Will?” Kim said softly.
“I used to have an idea what I wanted,” he said. “If you’d asked me ten years ago, I’d have said I’d be a joiner by now—I was apprenticed to the local man—and married to Mary Alice Goodman. Instead I’ve got a bookshop, and I’ve killed eighteen men.”
“Eighteen,” Kim repeated.
“Confirmed. It’s not that I’m keeping score,” Will felt compelled to add. “That would be—”
“Worrying?”
“I had the choice between remembering how many or forgetting. I didn’t feel right forgetting.”
“No,” Kim said, the flicker of humour gone. “No, I see you wouldn’t. Sorry.”
“It doesn’t keep me awake at night. I had a job and I did it. But it changed me, I know it did. I’m not the man I might have been, not any more. That’s all.” It had been on his mind since meeting Beaumont. Speaking the words aloud felt like a confession.
“I’m sure you’re right about that,” Kim said. “But I really can’t bring myself to regret the man you might have been, given the one you are.”
The breath caught in Will’s throat. He was sure Kim heard it.
“You could have the respectable life,” Kim said again. “You truly could, Will,