Chapter 10
Miles had clearly made the man’s year, albeit at the last minute, by literally leaning in to Lord Delacour’s obvious desire. He’d also checked himself for any lingering doubts, but had Delacour suggested they skip the party for somewhere more private, he wouldn’t even have minded donning this absurd getup for nothing.
Turned out that Miles was much, much more comfortable in the role of friend—and maybe, hopefully potential lover—to the most powerful man in New Angouleme than he’d ever been at playing personal assistant. As he exited the limo amid the flashes of camera bulbs, he found himself moving easily in his own body for the first time since the accident. He straightened his coat and extended his hand back to—
Not Lord Delacour. Not even Henry. Being his true self meant acknowledging the other man the same way.
“You with me…Hal?”
Hal’s brilliant smile as he once more accepted Miles’s hand outshone the fanciest party in the city. “All the way.”
None of the waiting photographers shouted questions wanting to know about Hal’s date. They already knew who Hal was, which meant they also knew who Miles was. Their sudden appearance together might not be front-page news tomorrow, but they would be news. In the oversized and likely overpriced car on the journey to the gala, Miles assumed the expectations Hal set out for their evening to be mostly wishful thinking. But Hal gave Miles no time to second-guess his place at the nobleman’s side, keeping their hands firmly clasped together as they made their way up the ornate steps to the glass pavilion nestled among the city’s dormant public gardens.
All eyes turned their way the moment they passed from chilly winter air to the balmy interior of the pavilion, and a visible wave of gossip swept through the crowd. Ignoring the attention, Hal cocked an eyebrow. “You haven’t seen my one party trick yet. Let’s see…. Wheat beer?”
His spot-on guess surprised a chuckle from Miles. “You offering to buy me a drink? Though I think they’re free, so maybe I should buy you one.” He planted his feet instead of letting Hal lead him toward the bar. This evolution in their relationship would never work if they ignored the financial and social imbalances between them. Stares and whispers pricked at Miles’s awareness, for all that Hal pretended obliviousness. The nearby clusters of tropical plants offered spots for him to hide away. Preferably with Hal, because this had seemed so much easier in the privacy of the limo.
As Hal opened his mouth to respond, Bradford Seaver jostled through the mass of partygoers. He broke between them, snatching up their arms and dragging them into the nook that had seemed so tempting moments before. While Miles caught his balance with his cane, the cousins spun on each other.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Seaver hissed.
“We were about to get drinks,” Hal said, smoothing the fabric of his coat sleeve, “before you caused a scene.”
“You think I’m the one causing a scene? I warned you before about the way you’ve treated this…this pet .” Seaver scoffed.
“He’s not my pet.” Hal’s eyes flashed, his words reverberating with a low growl, and Miles grew hot and cold at the same time. “He’s my—”
“Don’t you dare say it,” Seaver interrupted.
“I don’t need to say it. I believe I’ve already made his position here tonight quite clear.” Hal shoved past Seaver and this time, he was the one to extend his hand. “I believe you were about to buy me a drink?”
He’d simultaneously shut down his cousin and picked up the gauntlet Miles threw down before Seaver’s interruption. With renewed determination, Miles linked their fingers once more. “Let’s go.”
They stepped back into the crowd, side by side.
The rest of the evening, Hal never once allowed Miles to fade into the background. Through circling the room with drinks, through the numerous dinner courses, and yes, even through one dance, before they retreated to their table and awaited the countdown to midnight.
Tradition dictated a kiss, but Miles wasn’t sure he wanted his first kiss with Hal while surrounded by the city’s inebriated elite. When the crowd erupted around them, Hal proved once again how well they’d come to read each other. He brushed his lips to Miles’s cheek once, then tipped their foreheads together and whispered, “I’m ready when you are.”
Miles never wanted to leave this moment of tranquility laden with potential. He also wanted to get the fuck out of here. “Let’s go home.”
They slipped out of the pavilion unnoticed and were soon whisked away through the celebrating city. The silence in the back of the limousine was refreshing after the loudness of the party, and neither man broke the charged quiet between them. Instead, they let their hands do the talking, teasing their fingers together while they traded gentle kisses in deference to the driver’s presence. Miles was hyper aware of Hal’s proximity, his heat and musk stealing all his focus and all his blood rushing to his cock.
Finding them in his neighborhood when the limo drew to a stop came as a shock. Miles shifted away from Hal on the seat, confused and a little betrayed. He recognized a clear dismissal. This was the world Miles belonged to. Alone in his cramped apartment, not ending the night in Hal’s bed. “Got it,” he said. He didn’t get it. Hal hadn’t shied away from him in public, so why drop the act now? “Good night, Lord Delacour.”
“Miles, look at me.” A hand to his cheek drew him back, and Hal’s eyes glinted in the low streetlight. “Tonight was the best date I’ve had in years. The first time in even longer that I’ve felt truly able to be myself.”
Twisting his walking stick between his hands, Miles asked, “Then why are we here?”
“Because I want you.” Hal’s bluntness settled some of Miles’s unease but didn’t answer the question, until he continued, “But I don’t want to pressure you. I may be many things, but I’m still a gentleman.”
Miles wanted every version of Hal, and he might be no gentleman himself, but he could be gentle with Hal. If that meant playing to Hal’s sense of honor, he’d oblige. “I think a gentleman would walk me to my front door.”
“I’d be delighted.”
Would he be so delighted once on Miles’s damp and grimy doorstep? Maybe this was better than rolling straight into Hal’s luxurious penthouse bed, where they’d remain in the fantasy. Here, in the working-class neighborhood Miles called home, he’d find out exactly whether everything tonight was real—or whether it would fold like a house of cards once Hal came face-to-face with Miles’s reality.
Their expensive shoes crunched glass shards on the sidewalk as Miles led them toward the entrance to his building. The front door had been propped open with a brick, but the security lock had been broken since he moved in anyway. Loud music boomed from one of the units upstairs, but the main floor hallway remained empty as Miles paused at his door.
“This is me.” Did he ask Hal inside his shitty apartment? Hal was a gentleman, as he’d said, and had no place here. Hal also claimed that Miles saw the man behind the suits…did Hal see Miles, too? Only one way to find out. He unlocked his door and pushed it open, then raised his eyebrows. “Still feeling like a gentleman?”
In answer, Hal hooked his arm around Miles’s waist and practically dragged him inside. Miles kicked the door shut in the moment before Hal crowded him against the wall of the tiny foyer and slammed their mouths together. Miles’s two worlds coalesced into one, as the echoes of chocolate and expensive wine on Hal’s tongue met the hints of cooking spices that seeped into the apartment from the holiday feast Mrs. Kappel had cooked next door.
The walking stick clattered to the floor, but Miles steadied himself on Hal’s narrow hips as a different sort of weakness settled in his knees. He sucked in much-needed air when Hal released his mouth and licked his way down Miles’s throat, his clever fingers attacking the buttons of Miles’s shirt.
He gasped at a sharp nip, his hips stuttering forward and meeting a matching hard length in Hal’s trousers. Hal chuckled as he smoothed his hands down Miles’s bare chest. “Where’s your bed?”
Miles stilled, once again jerked out of the moment. “To your left.” Easy directions for a studio apartment, so unlike the labyrinthine expanse Hal called home and yet another test for whatever brewed between them.
Hal’s gaze flicked to the side, taking in the rumpled, mismatched blankets. This his attention returned fully to Miles, both hands coming up to cup his cheeks. “Hey,” he whispered. “We come from different worlds. We are different. And we both know that.” He drew Miles into another kiss, this one gentle rather than frantic, but no less heated than what came before as their hips pressed together in a dirty grind. When he once again had Miles breathless, he said, “But you see me.”
With those simple words, Hal settled the whirlwind in Miles’s mind. In answer, Miles bit at Hal’s lower lip, then peeled off his coat and shoved him backward. In the confines of the tiny apartment, Hal flopped onto the bed with a startled laugh. With his tie askew and his pants tented at his groin, awash in the dim light from the single lamp, the werewolf nobleman was…just a man. And the most delicious thing Miles had ever seen.
He dropped Hal’s coat to the floor, followed shortly after by his own coat, shirt, and pants. His bare legs might have been another moment to pause, but he pushed through. After all, Hal had been present when the injuries happened. He’d be shocked if Hal batted an eye now at the gnarled scars that decorated his skin.
Hal drank him in like a starving man, pulling open his shirt as Miles stripped him of his tie, then his belt. A cufflink pinged across the floor to locations unknown, but that was a later problem. Right now, Miles indulged in finally burying his face in the silky fabric of Hal’s boxer briefs, then stripping Hal of those as well.
Both of them nude was a dream come true but posed Miles with a new issue. His knees didn’t work the way they once did. But as he drew up one of Hal’s legs and kissed the inside of his knee, Miles realized that might not be the problem he feared. Especially not when his bed, lofted a few inches for extra storage, proved the perfect height for what he had in mind.
After all, his original job might have been to give Hal whatever he wanted, but Miles had changed the parameters. His new job was to give Hal whatever he needed. Miles trailed a finger down the inside of Hal’s thigh, brushing his softly furred balls until he teased at his crease. Once again, this was Hal’s chance to prove him wrong. But Hal’s soft gasp, and the way he tilted his head, eyes rolling back in pleasure, showed Miles was once again on the money.
“It’s been—” Hal’s breath hitched when Miles pressed the pad of his thumb against his hole. “—Fuck, it’s been years. Yes. Just like that.”
Spurred on by the praise, Miles wet his fingers in his mouth and returned his hand to Hal’s entrance. He gently teased at Hal’s cock with the other, partly for pleasure but more because he’d never actually been with someone who wasn’t one hundred percent human. Despite the rumors, though, he found no obvious differences to Hal’s gorgeously thick cock. “Years, huh?”
As Miles reached toward his dresser, to retrieve the bottle of lube that had practically grown a layer of dust in the last half-year, Hal settled his dazed expression on Miles. “It’s almost like everyone expects me to be some sort of toppy bastard.”
“Are you?” Despite asking, Miles already knew the answer. He slicked up his fingers and returned them to the vee of Hal’s legs, which wrapped around Miles’s hips in a display of flexibility he mourned.
“Nope. Totally vers.” Hal groaned as Miles slipped one digit inside him, then another. “But you figured that out.”
Miles crooked his fingers. Hal’s resulting whine wasn’t quite human, though Miles was pleased to find that certain bits of anatomy worked the same way for werewolves. “I had a good guess,” he said, “and I’m basically vers too. But lucky for you, I’m also a toppy bastard.”
He eased off the pressure long enough to add lube to his aching cock. He teased the tip against Hal’s hole for a beat, but when he moved to lean back and return to opening Hal up with three fingers, Hal’s legs tightened around him. “Please. Now.”
“Now?” Miles wasn’t a small guy, and if Hal said it had been years…
Hal pinned his glazed eyes on Miles, piercing and pleading at the same time. “Werewolf, remember? You can’t hurt me.”
Right. This wasn’t one of Miles’s hookups, infrequent even before his life-changing accident. This was Hal. Wanting him, trusting him, Miles eased forward again and notched his head against Hal’s heated core. With a single thrust, Hal welcomed him inside. He urged Miles deeper with his heels until Miles bottomed out, both of them moaning in sheer pleasure at the intense connection.
Miles paused a moment to readjust his stance. He drew back slowly, then surged forward once more. Again, faster. And again.
“Yes.” A hint of growl echoed in Hal’s voice, and Miles laughed, almost losing his rhythm. Hal might not be a toppy bastard, but he was clearly a power bottom.
Luckily, Miles was more than happy to indulge. He caught the correct angle after a few more thrusts, sending a silent apology to his neighbors as Hal’s pleasured moans grew in volume each time Miles tagged his prostate. Miles himself had never been a particularly vocal lover, but it had been so long…
And Hal was so fucking perfect.
And perfect for him.
His orgasm crept up on him, but he wouldn’t leave Hal behind. And Hal was way ahead of him. Their hands tangled together along Hal’s cock, stroking his steel-hard length in time to Miles’s jerking hips. He held off long enough for the first burst of thick cum to erupt from Hal’s tip, and the tight pulses within Hal’s core dragged Miles off the edge soon after.
He swore his soul left his body. Or he lost consciousness. When he returned to a state of semi-awareness, his knees had given him up as a lost cause. He’d collapsed atop Hal, who clutched Miles tight to his broad chest, heedless of the mess between them. As gentle kisses rained across his forehead and crown, Miles nuzzled deeper into Hal’s arms. He luxuriated in the werewolf’s heat, in his strong arms, in the sheer lack of awkwardness between them despite all the lines they’d just crossed.
Hal might be his boss, but Miles had made the right choice. And it felt like Hal had chosen him in return.
He needed to be a good top, and a good host. But for a moment, he’d enjoy the sheer contentment of lying in Hal’s arms. The last two days of stress had evaporated as if he’d always been meant to be right here.
He’d get up in a moment.
In a moment.