Page 29 of Chasing Benedict
“You do it, too, you know,” Alex had said after Benedict confronted him for staring. “You look at me when you think I’m not paying attention. Care to explain?”
Despite Alex’s teasing tone, Benedict had been overcome with sickening dread. Alex was right; he did spend an unhealthy amount of time observing Alex from the corner of his eye. He couldn’t seem to help himself either, and eventually decided to stop fighting whatever was happening to him. Benedict could hardly help that the sight of Alex’s bare throat or exposed forearms made his face heat, or that the sight of him in dishabille in the privacy of their bedchamber made a knot form in his throat.
There was nothing to be done about such inclinations but to fight them. But it didn’t stop him from wondering about kissing those plush lips, or slipping his hands into the opening of Alex’s shirt to experience the feel of that smooth, firm chest.
One evening, they had sat awake later than the other boys, huddled close to the hearth in which they’d just lit a fire. Alex had stared at him in silence for a long while, with Benedict helpless to do anything other than gaze back at him, paralyzed by fear and curiosity. Finally, Alex had moved, one hand creeping across the rug toward Benedict’s. Benedict didn’t resist when their fingertips brushed, or when Alex turned his palm over and rested his own atop it. Fingers intertwined as if by instinct, and Benedict was stunned by how right it felt, how pure and perfect. While he gaped in astonishment, Alex had merely smiled knowingly at him—as if nursing a secret Benedict wasn’t yet aware of.
Benedict had wrestled with the slow but significant changes developing between them, until they’d come to a head on a spring evening. Alex had coaxed him to take a walk into town for dinner, after which they’d ambled down darkened streets, companionable silence stretching between them. Suddenly, Alex took Benedict’s hand and pulled him into a narrow alley between a tavern and a haberdasher’s that had closed for the day. Taking Benedict’s face in both hands, Alex had leaned in until their lips brushed.
Stunned, Benedict had reared away from Alex, heart thundering in his chest. “What the devil are you doing? Are you mad?”
Leaning against the wall of the tavern, Alex had sighed. “Yes, and it would seem you are the cause. Haven’t you ever wondered why there always seems to be this … connection between us? And I don’t mean the friendly sort. You feel it when I hold your hand, or when I look at you. I know you do, because it’s how I feel.”
Benedict shook his head, though recognition niggled the back of his mind. His body had lit up like a struck match at the slight touch of Alex’s lips, and tendrils of heat now snaked through him.
“No, I don’t wonder,” he protested. “It isn’t right for us to wonder, Alex. This can’t happen. We can’t …”
Alex had lowered his eyes, shoulders slumped. “Of course. Forgive me, I … I thought perhaps you … well, it doesn’t matter. I’ve known the truth about myself for a long time. Perhaps you are yet to discover your own truth.”
Benedict clenched his teeth around a vehement denial, knowing it would be a lie. He reached up to wipe the remnants of the brief kiss from his mouth but found his fingertips lingering along the edge of his lower lip instead. He didn’t want to obliterate those small traces of Alex, despite his protestations.
“Can we forget this ever happened?” Alex pleaded. “I couldn’t bear to lose you as my friend.”
Benedict had agreed and they hadn’t spoken of it again. Yet, Alex’s overture had changed everything. Benedict’s curiosity over his burgeoning appetites had been stoked and he found it difficult to turn his mind toward the more acceptable pursuit of the female sex. He didn’t want any woman; he wanted Alex.
Alex seemed to sense this, even as he pretended not to. Now that Benedict had put a stop to what Alex began with his fleeting kiss, it was up to him to make the next overture … if ever there was to be one.
While ruminating over the possibilities and pitfalls, Benedict had made another surprising discovery. While searching for a book to borrow among Alex’s trunks, he uncovered literature and tomes filled with drawings of a scandalous nature. His mouth had fallen open as he thumbed through depictions of men with other men—kissing and lying together undressed, holding one another’s cocks, and even taking each other’s pricks into their mouths. His throat tightened at a particularly frightening image of one man on his hands and knees while another knelt behind him, his cock buried in the other man’s arsehole.
Slamming the book of drawings shut, he was then startled by footsteps. His anxiety eased as he realized it was only Alex. They were thankfully alone in the room, though the threat of discovery had been very real. His recklessness had nearly gotten them both in serious trouble.
Gaze roaming to the cover of the book Benedict held against his chest like a hidden treasure, Alex’s lips quivered with amusement.
“Keep it for as long as you like,” he said. “Perhaps you’ll find it as diverting as I do.”
Benedict had stashed that book beneath his bed, along with an erotic novel telling the story of a young man learning of forbidden pleasures with his school’s headmaster. While poring over them both, Benedict had been unable to fight his bodily reactions, the arousal that such lurid descriptions inspired. It had shamed him to frig himself to the imaginings of a mind that was now enlightened, his body awakened into a fury of need now that he knew what he truly wanted.
Now, as they took their final break before beginning their time at Cambridge, Benedict faced the possibility of knowing what it was like to give in to his needs. He could hardly believe it had come to this, but what he felt seemed as natural as drawing breath. This was who he was, and Benedict wasn’t certain he could fight it much longer.
Apparently, Alex harbored similar hopes for their time away from school, as he had brought Benedict to Mother Morton’s—a coffee-house and tavern that became an exclusive club in the evening, a place for men who desired other men to congregate.
Benedict goggled at the scene before him, stunned at the uninhibited display of men dressed as they otherwise wouldn’t have in society. Most were dressed like him, in waistcoats and breeches, though a few were as dandified as Alex in bright colors and heavy adornments. Others dressed as women, or in some odd combination of male and female attire, walking about as if they didn’t care what anyone thought of them. And perhaps they needn’t care, as it seemed Benedict was the only one staring at these men in disbelief.
Alex’s lips brushed his ear, and Benedict nearly leaped out of his skin.
“Calm down,” he whispered, his breath tickling the side of Benedict’s neck. “Being a man who prefers other men doesn’t mean you have to start wearing corsets and gowns.”
Benedict reared back to find Alex grinning, shoulders shaking with suppressed laughter. “I never said—”
“I’m only joking,” Alex crooned, giving his shoulder a light squeeze. “Being who you are is as simple as what you see in this room. We are different in many ways, but in others, we are the same. You can be whoever you want to be, but still love who you love. And, in a place like this, you needn’t be afraid to show it.”
To illustrate his point, Alex slid his hand down Benedict’s arm, then took hold of his hand. Benedict stiffened as their fingers locked together, but a quick glance around the room revealed that no one had noticed. In fact, other men could be found behaving in the same way—holding hands, kissing, leaning close to one another. Benedict had never seen anything like it. However, it came as second nature to stand there holding Alex’s hand as they waited for their ale, knowing they wouldn’t have to pull apart unless they wanted to.
As the night went on, Benedict found it easier to enjoy himself, the ale going a long way in that regard. They drank and had dinner at a table filled with friends of Alex—other young men who frequented Mother Morton’s when time permitted. They were like any other males Benedict knew, except for their natures, which were clear based on their presence in a molly-house. They came and went from the table to dance with one another, prompting Alex to turn to him with an outstretched hand.
“Well?” he urged when Benedict merely gaped at him. “I am a horrible dancer, but am willing to embarrass myself for you.”
Accepting Alex’s hand, Benedict allowed himself to be led to the edge of the dance floor, which overflowed with men twirling and spinning and clutching at one another while laughing. The song was a waltz, played at a dizzying rhythm that made Benedict’s head spin as Alex guided him through the steps.
