The Sugared Game - K.J. Charles Page 0,42
over his eyes and pushed the thought down with the rest of the more troubling Kim thoughts—how he kissed, how he smelled, how he cried out when he climaxed, how his mouth felt on Will’s cock and his fingers on his skin, and how very much Will didn’t want to know what he’d been lying about.
He needed to stop. This way madness lay, probably literally.
He sat up when he heard Kim emerging from the bathroom. He entered, hair wet and wearing nothing but a towel slung very low around his lean hips, which still bore faint red marks from Will’s fingers. “Bathroom’s free.”
Will got up, naked and badly in need of a wash. As he passed, Kim caught his face with a damp hand and kissed him open-mouthed, and he fell into the pleasure of it all over again.
Chapter Nine
Kim had run him a bath. Will had a good scrub and emerged feeling a lot more decent. He borrowed Kim’s spare gown, and poked his head into the kitchen, where he discovered his partner in crime frying sausages.
“Better?” Kim said. “Breakfast shortly, if you want to get dressed.”
Will donned his rather mud-splattered trousers and once-white shirt, regrettably aware that he looked like a treasure-hunting Bright Young Person, only not so young or bright. Kim had put on the kettle again and they sat at the kitchen table eating sausage sandwiches.
Will broached the subject first. “So are you going to tell me whatever it was from last night?”
“There is a certain amount.”
“I bet there is.”
“First of which is that our exploits had only limited success. Skyrme has a large safe with an exceedingly modern combination lock, and she’s disciplined about keeping anything of interest in there. Her desk and filing cabinet contained nothing useful. If there’s anything juicy, it’s in the safe. Which means we have to go back.”
“Blast,” Will said. “So if you don’t have anything to tell me about that, what’s going to piss me off?”
“An excellent question. What I did find was a small notebook she had left in her handbag, which I had a flick through but didn’t take for fear of giving her warning. It contained names, initials, dates, sums of money. I looked for dates that seemed meaningful to me, including those Beaumont gave us for Mrs. Appleby’s previous trips.”
“And?”
“There were two entries with dates around the times of her return, the initials FA, and very large sums of money. About thirteen thousand pounds in total.”
“Jesus,” Will said. “For furs?”
“It was never furs. Mrs. Skyrme gave Appleby’s boy friend a job to keep her sweet, then made her a lifelong enemy to force her to take this last trip. That’s not about dodging import duty.”
Will scrubbed a hand over his eyes. “Blast and damn. Dope?”
“We’ll find out.”
“A lot of money, anyway, and all of it going through Mrs. Skyrme’s hands. Which were gloved again last night, by the way.”
“I’m sure they were,” Kim said. “I think she’s Aquarius, the water-carrier. Zodiac’s money-washerwoman.”
“Jesus Christ. Let me think a moment.”
Will had half a sandwich left. He finished it while turning matters over in his head.
It looked like Beaumont’s lover was so far up a gum tree, she was liable to snap her neck on the way down. If Will was instrumental in her facing the consequences of her actions, he’d have served Beaumont a truly shitty turn.
“What about Mrs. Appleby?” he asked.
“What about her?”
“I promised Beaumont—”
“She killed Leinster,” Kim said. “When she gave him up to Skyrme, she killed him as surely as if she shoved him under the train herself.”
“She didn’t know that would happen.”
“What do you imagine she expected when she asked a blackmailing smuggler to deal with a threat for her?”
“I don’t imagine she thought about it at all,” Will said. “She thought she was paying off a bridge debt with a bit of under-the-table work.”
“She’s a grown woman. She knew she was committing an offence and abusing her husband’s position, and she knew Skyrme was a ruthless bitch when she gave her Leinster’s name. She might not have known exactly what would happen to him, but she wasn’t expecting an invitation to afternoon tea.”
“Maybe. All right, yes. But I still promised Beaumont.”
“Which is why you should have let me make the promises,” Kim snapped.
Will glared at him. “Don’t make me a liar.”
Their eyes locked, not in a good way. Kim’s lips were pressed together.
He’d known the dead man. He’d probably imagined a hand in the small of his own back, a sharp push