Page 42 of Chasing Benedict
“It’s your funeral,” Benedict muttered.
Alex returned his sarcasm with a teasing smile but said nothing.
“I won’t go easy on you,” Benedict warned as they began circling one another, taking each other’s measure.
“I would never ask you to,” Alex fired back, testing a swift jab with his left.
Benedict backed away, noting that Fisher had been right about Alex’s reach. Those long arms gave him an advantage, while Benedict had the power of his blows to fall back on.
“I am surprised to see you wearing gloves,” Alex remarked, grunting as Benedict swooped in with a right cross to his shoulder. “I thought you preferred to pound your opponents with bare knuckles.”
“If I trained without gloves, Fisher and I would both be muddle-headed and broken. I’d never be able to compete. Civility matters in training, but not in the ring.”
“Interesting,” Alex murmured, landing a blow to Benedict’s chest.
Benedict staggered back, surprised at the force behind it. They had only just begun, but Alex was proving better than Benedict expected.
Noticing Benedict’s shock, Alex chuckled. “I told you, I’ve been training. Fisher’s right … you’re slower than I know you typically are. Did your disturbed sleep make you tired?”
Benedict frowned, recalling that he’d slept like the dead all night. “I didn’t awaken once the whole night.”
Alex’s face drew into a concerned frown as he dodged a blow aimed at his chin, knocking Benedict’s glove aside with his own. “You tossed and turned, and mumbled in your sleep. You seemed to be having a terrible dream, but when I tried to rouse you, you wouldn’t wake.”
Benedict swore under his breath, annoyed that he couldn’t remember what he’d dreamed about last night. Many mornings, he woke with a heavy weight in his chest and lethargy sapping his strength. Sometimes he remembered the terrors visiting him in the night—being immersed in ice baths and held under until he was choking on frigid water, being covered in leeches, forced to swallow purgatives so that he vomited until feeling as if his organs would be purged along with the meager contents of his stomach. However, most times, he woke only with the lingering fear those memories inspired, aware that he had dreamed but uncertain of what exactly his sleeping mind had conjured.
“I don’t remember,” Benedict hedged. “I apologize if it bothered you. It would be best for me to sleep alone from now on.”
“I was only disturbed to see you so distressed.”
“It was nothing for you to worry over.”
“Just as that hole in your study wall doesn’t concern me? Or how what happened to you during our separation is also nothing for me to worry over?”
“Precisely,” Benedict growled, going for a vicious uppercut to Alex’s middle.
Alex bowed at the waist, staggering away and protecting his stomach with his gloves. Benedict went on the offensive, but Alex recovered, coming to meet him. They locked together, grappling and trying to free themselves while avoiding one another’s swinging fists.
“How much longer are you going to put yourself through this?” Alex panted, his forehead pressed to Benedict’s shoulder as he squirmed to get free of his hold. “The intense training, the brutal fights? Your face is just healing, and in a few weeks you’ll run out to let someone batter it all over again.”
“What difference does it make to you?” Benedict challenged, easing a fist between them and bringing it up beneath Alex’s jaw.
Alex fell away from him, swiping the sleeve of his shirt across his mouth. He glared at Benedict and raised his fists. “You may choose not to believe this, but I care if you go into your twilight years without your teeth, a deformed face, and a punch-drunk mind.”
They danced around one another, the intensity of their sparring adding a thread of tension to the tapestry already woven between them.
“My life is my own to do what I please with,” Benedict argued.
“That may be so, but there are people who would be distraught if you were truly hurt. People who love you, who wouldn’t want to watch you fall apart before their eyes.”
Benedict threw a jab that Alex side-stepped before delivering his own blow. Benedict registered the hit to his left shoulder, one that had been injured years ago and still pained him on occasion. It was an unpleasant reminder that he wasn’t as young as he once had been.
“Don’t,” he warned, rolling his shoulders and resuming his stance.
“I wasn’t only referring to myself. What about Aubrey and Nick? What about the other Gentleman Courtesans you call friends?”
“They have wives now, and have started making their own families. None of them needs me anymore.”
“Having wives and children doesn’t change the fact that they need you,” Alex argued. “Do you resent them for it?”
