Page 5 of Chasing Benedict
“I should think that was obvious,” he replied, slowly approaching Ben from his side of the room. Surely you’ve heard the news. Katherine, she … died.”
His throat constricted on the last words, grief twisting violently in his belly and clutching at his heart. Alex had been aware of his inclination toward men since boyhood, and that had never changed. His marriage was one of convenience and necessity, but his wife had been the best of women. Katherine might not have appealed to him in a carnal way, but she had been his friend, his confidant, his solace after being forced to give Ben up. Her death had been a devastating blow.
Ben sneered at the mention of Alex’s late wife. “So I have heard. You have my most sincere condolences, though I fail to understand why her death would bring you to my doorstep.”
Alex couldn’t help a smile, hearing the strain in Ben’s voice. He took no delight in the other man’s anger or pain, but knowing he felt anything at all boded well for Alex. “Oh, Ben … you were never any good at hiding your emotions.”
“I’ve changed. You’d know that if you hadn’t run off to Kent with your blushing bride.”
“Ben—”
“What did you expect?” Ben snapped. “That I would have spent the past three years sobbing into my brandy and wishing to have back what was lost?”
“Of course not.”
“Then you hoped to be welcomed back into my life as if you didn’t betray me?”
“That isn’t it, either.”
Ben had begun advancing on him throughout their exchange, and Alex soon found himself hauled forward by his waistcoat. Longing heated his belly as he was snatched closer to Ben … so close Alex could smell the cold night air and light hint of the sweat glistening on his neck. The scents tangled with his signature Bay Rum and the clean whiff of starched linen. Slumbering desires roared to life within Alex in a powerful surge.
“I knew you wouldn’t have forgiven me,” Alex managed, fighting a losing battle against the urges melting his resolve. “But I had hoped we might talk. You don’t even have to listen to me. You can berate me and call me every horrible name you can think of, and I will sit and listen. I just … when I had settled my affairs in Kent, I found myself wandering around this cold, empty house, and … I had to come. Even knowing you hate me, even realizing I have no right to intrude on your life.”
Ben’s fist tightened around his waistcoat as he closed his eyes and issued a harsh sigh. Were it any other person manhandling Alex this way, he would have fought back, perhaps berating the offending party for ruining the starched perfection of such fine silk. However, this wasn’t just anyone; this was Ben, and he could do anything to Alex he wanted if only to bestow the touch of his hand—whether harsh or gentle.
“Say it,” Ben demanded, yanking Alex closer until they were nearly nose-to-nose. “Tell me why you’ve come.”
Alex gripped Ben’s hand, holding it tighter against his chest, desperate for closeness of any sort. His heart lodged itself within his throat as he held Ben’s gaze, feeling as if he stood on the edge of a steep precipice. One false move and he would fall to a slow and agonizing death, mourning what never was.
He could bear it no longer. Ben was here before him, whole and warm and real—not just some figment of his imagination, haunting his dreams and waking him in a feverish sweat.
Their lips brushed, and Alex trembled, suspended somewhere between the past and the present, and yearning as he never had. “I came for you,” he whispered just before he pressed his lips against Ben’s, tentative and questioning.
Alex was sent reeling when Ben slammed both palms against his chest, his lower back meeting the edge of the heavy, oak desk. Bracing his hands on the thick wood, he waited for Ben to make the next move—to either cast him out bodily or … or, what? Ben had no reason to let Alex kiss him, no reason to trust him after what he’d done. Alex’s heart sank with the realization that he had gone too far, as Ben swiped the back of his hand over his mouth. It was too soon for such intimacies, with broken promises and shattered dreams scattered at their feet like shards of glass.
But then, Ben was on him faster than Alex could blink, pushing him tighter against the desk and caging him with powerful arms. His kiss was harsh and punishing, unrelenting and forceful. Alex’s skin erupted with sensation, his entire body enlivened by the nearness and taste of Ben. Pure joy swept through him, as the past converged on the present moment. A tortured groan echoed in the cavern of Ben’s chest, vibrating through Alex from the outside in. A night’s worth of stubble abraded Alex’s skin, bringing so many memories flooding through his mind. He used to tease Ben about his facial hair and how hopeless it was for him to shave when a dark blond shadow always made an appearance by the end of the day. His gut clenched at the memory of what that stubble felt like against his neck, his chest, his thigh.
Cupping Ben’s jaw, Alex returned the fiery kiss with years’ worth of suppressed desire, dipping his tongue between parted lips. The taste of Ben, wild and heady, flooded his senses, familiar and yet somehow new again. Alex felt like a fumbling, desperate boy, wanting everything at once and having no notion where to begin. He drowned in the kiss, which soon became a battle for dominance as Ben’s tongue pushed against his. The hands gripping his hair were downright painful, but Alex accepted the pain with the pleasure because it was coming from Ben. Alex would take whatever he could have.
It ended far too soon for his liking, Ben jerking away with a low growl and leaving Alex leaning against the desk, cold and bereft.
“Ben,” he pleaded, no longer caring how desperate he might sound. “Would you hear me out? I can explain—”
“Explain what, exactly?” Ben interjected, though where he might have bellowed, he merely whispered. He kept his back turned and braced his hands on a cabinet holding several decanters and clean glasses. “How you made me agree to run away with you so we could be together before changing your mind and deciding to marry a woman instead?”
It was exactly how they had ended, but there was so much more to the story that Ben didn’t know, so many reasons marrying Katherine had been the right thing for Alex to do at the time. He hadn’t been able to go to Ben and explain afterward, even knowing how it would hurt him.
“It wasn’t what it seemed,” he replied, taking a step toward Ben, then thinking better of it. “I just want the chance to make things right.”
“There is nothing to make right,” Ben replied, head bowed and his voice still lowered to that ominous, steely whisper. “You made your choice, and I think we are both better for it. I like my life the way it is and I won’t have you intruding on it. Until tonight, I’d quite forgotten all about you. Perhaps you ought to do the same and forget about me.”
Alex didn’t believe that for a moment, but now was not the time to push Ben. He must suffer the shock and anger he had caused by catching Ben off guard. However, it had been his only recourse. Any letters he sent would have been tossed unopened into the fire, just as Ben had destroyed his father’s letters during their college years. Ben needed to know that he was here and would not give up so easily.
Smoothing his palms down his rumpled waistcoat, Alex squared his shoulders. “I’ll leave now, but this isn’t over. You will see me again.”
Ben hadn’t so much as turned his head when Alex left the room, didn’t come after him once he left the house and set off for his own lodgings. It had been foolish to hope he would, but Alex had hoped all the same.
He blinked as he ascended from the haze of his memories, his vision swimming while the world around him solidified. He’d told himself to give Ben time and space, but seeing him once had heightened Alex’s sense of urgency. Having stayed away from Ben and London for nearly four years, the time had come to fight.
