Page 28 of A Gentleman Never Keeps Score
“I’m going to sit by the fire and put some salve on my shoulder before I get dressed,” Sam said. He was making it easy, Hartley knew. He watched Sam take a jar out of the canvas satchel he had arrived with, and he knew that he could offer to help. Easier still, he didn’t have to offer. He could just take the jar, which, after filling his lungs with a shaky breath, was what he did.
Sam held his gaze for a moment, then took the hint and climbed onto the bed.
“Probably most people you go to bed with aren’t this much trouble,” Hartley said.
“Maybe I like trouble,” Sam said, lying on his stomach, his voice muffled by the pillow. “I like when you take what you want. What you need. That’s not what men usually expect from me.” And then, after a moment of quiet, “I didn’t know it could be like this.”
Hartley went utterly still as he contemplated how thoroughly ruinous this was going to be for both of them. This, he supposed, was the moment he could turn back. He could step away, send Sam to his own bed, keep his heart protected and Sam’s life intact. Instead he uncorked the jar of salve and slid the dressing gown off Sam’s shoulders. “Neither did I,” he whispered.
The salve smelled lightly of herbs, but nothing flowery or overtly medicinal. He scooped out a bit and rubbed it gingerly onto the dark, smooth skin of Sam’s shoulder blade. He hadn’t ever been this close to so much bare muscle and it took his breath away. Clothed, Sam was impressive. Unclothed, he was beautiful.
“It’s the right shoulder,” Sam said. “Put your weight into it.”
Hartley complied, first rubbing circles with the liniment and then using both hands to work the stuff into Sam’s flesh. When Sam wriggled his arms out of the sleeves of the dressing gown and folded them under his head, Hartley began touching and rubbing down the length of his back. The only sound in the room was the crackling of the fire and the pounding of Hartley’s own heart.
“Do you still box?” Hartley asked, wondering how Sam had acquired this degree of musculature.
“No. I was glad to give it up.” His shoulder tensed beneath Hartley’s touch. “I broke men’s noses and knocked out their teeth. It’s hard to tell yourself that you’re a decent person when the floor is wet with blood you’ve spilled.”
“You’re more than a decent person.” Hartley realized he had stopped rubbing Sam’s shoulder, his strokes having devolved into mere pets. He resumed pressing slow, firm circles.
“Have you ever been to a boxing match?”
“No,” Hartley admitted. Large groups of rough, rowdy men were not his idea of a good time.
“The crowd is usually more than a bit drunk by the time the boxing starts. And one of the things they do, I suppose it’s a tradition, or a way of getting the men to put up a good fight, is to harass the boxers. They really let their tongues loose. It was bad watching it happen to my da, but I always thought he was invincible. When it was me, I knew I wasn’t.”
Hartley’s stomach turned at the thought of what revolting epithets a crowd of half-drunk men might shout at a black man. “I’m glad you don’t do that anymore.”
“Easy now,” Sam said. “You don’t need to strangle me.”
Hartley loosened his hands from where they were perhaps a bit too firmly massaging Sam’s shoulder muscles. He scooped up more salve and rubbed it into the top of Sam’s back until he felt the muscles relax.
“I stopped boxing when I nearly killed a man,” Sam said, in a voice so quiet and low Hartley could almost pretend not to have heard it. Sam hadn’t ever confided in him before. All the confessions and embarrassments had been on Hartley’s side. Hartley suspected that he was being offered this truth as compensation for the secrets he had shared and those he had hinted at. But he was being offered it all the same, and he didn’t want to brush it aside.
“I’m glad you didn’t,” Hartley said, rolling his eyes at his own obviousness.
“I think the crowd would have torn me apart if I had killed that fellow.”
Hartley sucked in a breath. He had read about another black boxer who had been injured when an angry crowd, annoyed by his victory against a white fighter, stormed the ring.
“If I had been smart,” Sam went on, “I would have gotten out of boxing altogether after that. Instead, I trained a friend. David. Davey. He was younger than me, strong, angry as hell. He was killed with a single punch.”
Sam’s entire upper body was taut with tension, the sinews in his neck standing out. Hartley futilely smoothed his fingers along Sam’s shoulders. “That wasn’t your fault.”
“Somebody paid Davey to throw the fight, and he did. I knew matches were fixed all the time. Backers had offered me money to pull punches or take hits. Knowing that, I shouldn’t have let Davey anywhere near the game.”
“So why did you? Why did you train him?” Hartley asked.
“He was shaping up to be a proper young ruffian, and I thought he’d be better off in the ring than at the end of a rope.”
Hartley knelt on the bed to get a better angle. “It sounds to me like you did the best you could with the tools you had. If you had been a butcher or a baker you might have taken him on as your apprentice, but you were a boxer, so you trained him to fight. You’re a good man, Sam.” Hartley heard the earnestness in his voice, and decided they were quite done with the soul-baring portion of the evening. He gave a dramatic sigh. “It’s really very tiring to be surrounded by saints. You ought to meet my brothers. Sickeningly decent, every last one of them. Makes me feel such a villain.”
Sam let out a breath of laughter and relaxed slightly under Hartley’s touch. When Hartley shifted his weight onto his hands, Sam groaned. “God, that feels good, Hart.”
Hearing his nickname on Sam’s lips sent curls of warmth spiraling through Hartley’s belly. Feeling reckless, he swung a knee over Sam’s back, straddling him. Now he had a proper grip on Sam’s shoulders, fanning his fingers and watching how his hands were dwarfed by Sam’s body. He shouldn’t feel so safe, alone in a room with a man this large, a man who wanted him. But Sam Fox really was a good man, and Hartley knew he had never been safer. In the kitchen that night Alf had stumbled in with Sadie, Sam had instantly positioned his body between Hartley and what he assumed was an intruder. Any strength Sam had, he’d use for Hartley, not against him.
He slid his hands lower still, skimming his fingers along the length of Sam’s spine, dragging down the dressing gown as he went, but stopping at the small of his back.
