The Sugared Game - K.J. Charles Page 0,34
was spectacular.”
“Did you see what happened to Phoebe?”
“Safely surrounded by idiots.”
“I whacked a couple of them.”
“Good,” Kim said wholeheartedly. “You probably need witch hazel on that cut.”
“Am I cut?”
Kim indicated his own eyebrow. Will wiped his brow with the back of his hand, and saw the wet skin smeared with blood. “Blast.”
“Here.” Kim stepped in front of him, bringing them both to a stop on the dark street, and turned to face him. He drew out a handkerchief, glimmering pale in the gloom, and reached out to dab gently at his eyebrow.
“You’ll ruin your handkerchief.”
“That’s all right.” Kim pressed the handkerchief to Will’s face with light touches, eyes intent. He was a fraction taller, nothing worth noticing, but you couldn’t help seeing it up close like this. Will’s breath was coming a bit short.
“Nasty cut,” Kim said, voice barely more than a whisper. “Perhaps you should come back to my place. Let me clean it up.”
“All right.”
They walked in near silence. Will didn’t want to talk about what was going on, what Kim had found, or been looking for. He wanted them behind a locked door. Everything else could wait.
Kim led the way round to the mews behind his mansion flats without discussing it. He had keys to the back door. They went up the stairs, and Kim let them into the kitchen, relocked the door, and put on the light.
“Sit down. Let me deal with that cut.”
“Sod the cut.”
Kim touched a finger to his lips. “Sit.”
Will sat. In truth his brow was throbbing quite painfully now they were out of the rain.
Kim stripped off his topcoat, and the ugly waiter’s jacket. He fetched cotton wool and a bottle of witch hazel, rolled up his sleeves, and carefully cleaned the cut above Will’s eye. The witch hazel stank, and it stung.
“Ouch. Ow.”
“I know you’ve had worse. I’ve seen the scars.”
“I complained about those too,” Will pointed out.
He had no real reason to complain. Kim’s hands on Will’s face and shoulders were very gentle, and did not feel like a nurse’s impersonal touch at all. They both smelled of cigarette smoke and damp cloth, not to mention the witch hazel, but Kim’s subtle cologne threaded its way through everything.
“Are you done?”
“Your hand.” Kim took Will’s right hand, running a thumb over the grazed knuckles almost too lightly to feel. “Let me just—”
“My hand will be fine. I’ve got better things to do with it.”
Will stood. Since Kim didn’t move away, that put them face to face and body to body. Will ran his hands down Kim’s arms, feeling the muscle under his touch, closing his fingers round the slim forearms with their faded white lines of healed cuts.
The drink and the backwash of fighting had fuzzed his head, and he didn’t know what to say. I want. I need. His mouth tasted of blood and witch hazel and bad champagne. He wanted it to taste of Kim.
“Will,” Kim said on a breath. “There’s something I should tell you.”
“Is it going to piss me off?”
“You certainly won’t be happy.”
Will shut his eyes and rested his forehead against Kim’s. “So we wouldn’t want to fuck afterwards?”
“Well, you might not.”
Their faces were so close, Will could feel his own warm breath rebound against his skin. “Can it wait till tomorrow?”
“As long as you don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“Let’s go to bed.”
HE’D ONLY BEEN IN KIM’S bedroom a few times. It felt more familiar than it should. Kim switched on some of his many lamps as Will struggled out of his coat, then walked over and pulled him into a kiss without a word. His mouth was hard and demanding. Will got a hand on his taut arse, then the other. Kim snarled against his lips, and moved his head to bite gently at Will’s earlobes, clutching his shoulders.
“God. Kim. Can I—”
“Yes,” Kim said into his skin. “Please do.”
They both stripped quickly. Will wasn’t sure where the urgency was coming from. Maybe they were trying to outrun whatever trouble followed; he didn’t care. He kicked away his trousers and stepped out of his drawers.
Kim sucked in a breath, almost a hiss. “Every time I see you naked...”
“What?” Will was in reasonable shape—he did a lot of manual work, and he’d filled out in the last few months—but he was solid, not graceful, and he had some ugly scars.
Kim tipped his head. “Many things. Every time I see you naked, I marvel at the gift. I discover a structural weakness in my knees that makes