Chapter 21 #2
Looking back, it was a miracle they didn’t fuck each other blind on that first day.
Beckett’s caution and Jack’s control managed to keep them apart for a whole week, until Jack tracked Beckett down when Beckett was clearing the supper tray in the library, he pushed Beckett flat against the wall, and he growled in Beckett’s ear, “Well? Are you going to come and get it or not?”
Beckett had gaped at the flocked and gilded wallpaper.
He couldn’t believe another alpha had got the drop on him.
Sheer astonishment kept him immobile for three long seconds, during which his cock went from minding its own business as he went about his duties, to hard and raring to go.
He broke out of Jack’s hold and turned the tables.
Jack being a duke and all, Beckett didn’t quite have it in him to slam the man face-first into the wall and ask him how he liked it. He settled for shoving Jack back against it instead, pinning him there with a hand at his sternum.
Jack’s eyes glittered. “Is that a yes?” he said.
Beckett glared at him. “Want a fucking, do you, Your Grace?” He dragged an insolent gaze up and down Jack’s tall, muscled frame. “Yeah, all right. I’ll do you.”
The look on Jack’s face at that?
Priceless.
And it was a handsome face. Black eyes, eyebrows, and lashes. Smooth, warm olive skin. A generous mouth that Beckett hadn’t been able to stop thinking about from the moment Marl had introduced him to the man. He had a snooty, aristocratic look to him that Beckett both loved and hated.
Beckett stepped back and gave the man a second, more thorough, looking over. “You going to be able to keep up?” he asked, aiming his gaze pointedly at the small scatter of silver flecks in Jack’s dark hair, and the fine lines beside his eyes.
Jack followed him, moving into his space and ducking down the extra two inches he had on Beckett to say in his ear, “That’s something you’ll have to find out.”
Beckett turned his head, the rough catch of Jack’s cheek over his making him shiver. He reached up to grip Jack’s jaw and bring him in for a testing kiss.
Jack caught his wrist before he made contact, and squeezed. He wasn’t gentle. His lips curled in an irritating smirk. “When you’re ready,” he said, “come to my bedchamber. We’ll see who can keep up.”
Beckett snapped his wrist free, leaned in and bit at Jack’s mouth, making Jack groan. “I ain’t comin’,” he said as he pulled back. “So when you get tired of waiting for your fucking, how about you come to my bedchamber, eh?” he said. “Your Grace.”
Jack grinned at that, and slung an arm around Beckett’s waist. “Mhm. You come to me. I’m not the one who’s getting fucked.”
Beckett stared at him, then said indignantly, “You’re not fucking me.”
“Am I not?” Jack’s big hand drifted lower and gripped a buttock. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah,” Beckett grunted, even as he pushed his hips into Jack’s.
“That is a shame. There are few things I like more than getting an alpha beneath me and holding him down. Making him take it for me. Making him beg for more.”
Beckett’s gut twisted at the thought of it. Of him beneath this man. Bigger, older, more powerful than Beckett. Fighting him for the right to fuck him, then taking it.
The thought was arousing.
Just the thought.
He looked Jack square in the eye, and shook his head once.
Jack didn’t seem too surprised. And since Jack was the one who started this off, Beckett decided to go ahead and treat him as if he was any other alpha, not the master.
He snaked his own arms around Jack’s waist and gripped both buttocks.
Gods, he was built. Thick with muscle, hot and hard, and so round.
Beckett couldn’t hold back the filthy sound of appreciation that crawled out of his throat.
Holding Jack’s interested gaze, he massaged unsubtly. Jack hissed lightly through his teeth.
“What about you?” Beckett said. “Are you sure?”
Jack smiled regretfully. “Yes.”
Beckett didn’t stop touching him. He didn’t know how much longer he was going to get to do it, seeing as they’d hit an impasse, and he was hungry for this man. He moved his hold to Jack’s hips and tilted his pelvis into Beckett’s. Jack’s cock pressed against his own. Beckett flexed into it.
“It’s a good job there are plenty of other things I like to do to an alpha,” Jack said, “besides getting my cock in his arse.”
“Oh?” Beckett walked him slowly back against the wall.
Jack allowed it, pulling Beckett in those last couple of inches to bring their bodies together. “Indeed. Would you care to hear about it?”
“Don’t have to be in the servants hall for another half an hour.” He shrugged. “If you want to tell me, Your Grace, I s’pose I’ve got time to listen.”
“Oh, you’re a difficult one, aren’t you?
” Jack breathed. Beckett bared his teeth at Jack in a feral grin, and Jack loved it.
His jaw tightened and his eyes heated. It went to show how much control Jack had over himself that his voice was still light and teasing when he continued, “I like to get an alpha on his knees—”
Beckett made a rude sound.
“—and get my dick in his mouth—”
Beckett snapped his teeth at Jack, and Jack laughed out loud.
“Or I like to get him on his belly—”
Beckett heaved an impatient sight.
“Cards on the table, lad,” Jack said, abruptly growing tired of the game. “I want you. What will you allow me?”
“Depends what you can earn, Your Grace. I’m not one for planning ahead. Me, I like a tussle. We’ll see who can get on top, and we’ll go from there.”
Jack’s breath caught.
“Yeah?” Beckett said. He drew his hips back, worked a hand between them, and rubbed Jack’s hard shaft. “You like the sound of that?”
“I do.”
He squeezed warningly. “You can’t stick this in my arse. Anything else you fancy? Fight me for it, Your Grace. And I’ll fight you for it.”
Jack’s black eyes glinted in the falling dusk.
Beckett leaned in and said, “By which I mean, if I pin you, I’m going to do whatever I want to you, short of getting inside you. And you’re gonna let me. Hear?”
“You’re welcome to try.”
“All right then. Same.”
If Jack had his way, they’d have gone to his bed and wrestled it out right then.
Only Beckett peeled himself off the big, aroused man, stepped out of reach to rearrange business in his breeches and straighten his waistcoat, and informed His Grace that he had duties to attend to. Curtains to draw, lamps to light.
It was a test. Both of them knew it.
Jack let him go.
If he’d insisted, Beckett would have gone with him. He’d have tussled with him and no doubt come multiple times that night, and they’d have been done. One night only.
He wasn’t any man’s plaything.
Fucking was easy to come by. Jobs like this were not.
Jack had guests for dinner the next night, and Beckett made sure to be the one standing at Jack’s chair, though Marl had assigned Hapton the position. Beckett and Hapton had a running dice game going, and Hap jumped at it when Beckett offered to zero what Hap owed him if he’d switch.
Jack didn’t like having Beckett behind him one bit.
Good. That was the whole point.
He didn’t like it, but for a disappointing while, Beckett thought he wouldn’t cave.
After Beckett had leaned over him a few times, deliberately breathed on the back of his neck, brushed an arm alongside Jack’s while removing his empty plate and replacing it with the next course, Jack leaned back in his chair and looked up into Beckett’s face with burning dark eyes and enough heat in them to set Beckett’s breeches on fire.
Beckett somehow had the poise to murmur inquiringly, “Something you need, Your Grace?”
“Change places with Hapton, please,” he ground out.
“Very good, Your Grace.”
For all the good it will do you, Your Grace.
He spent the rest of the night staring at Jack from the other end of the vast, candlelit dining room. Hapton served him, Jack chatted with his guests, but his attention was on Beckett all night long.
The waves of his want, of his focus, thickened the very air in the room. There wasn’t a soul in the place who didn’t sense it. You could tell by the nervous laughter. By the way the guests shifted and prickled in their seats. The two omegas present were the most affected.
Not, Beckett thought smugly, that Jack spared a look for either of them.
The female omega gritted her teeth against it.
She was a lovely woman in late middle age, all grace and poise and silver-streaked hair.
She was there with her husband, a beta who had the half-guilty, half-excited look of a man who knew full well that he would be mauled the second they climbed into their carriage.
The male omega was struggling, poor lad.
He was a spindly thing, perhaps a handful of years older than Beckett, and he clearly hadn’t experienced the force of an alpha in a mood before. He was dazed and slow, drunk on it. Beckett felt bad about that, he did.
Jack lifted a lazy hand to bring Hapton to his side.
Hapton stepped back into the shadows, and a few discreet minutes later, while pouring the omega lad’s wine, Hapton ‘knocked over’ the omega’s glass, apologised profusely for drenching his coat sleeve, and escorted the limp and relieved lad out of the room.
Beckett was going to pay for that.
Couldn’t fucking wait.
Except wait he did. And wait, and wait.
The evening dragged on long enough for Beckett to regret his little scheme, because instead of standing at Jack’s back, he was stuck in the shadows directly opposite the duke, watching him in the dancing candlelight; watching that big body sprawl in the carved wooden chair, watching the casual way he played with the stem of his wineglass—for Beckett’s benefit, he assumed, unless His Grace normally jerked off the glassware—the way his strong throat arched when he laughed, the way he tipped his head closer to give the woman seated next to him his full attention as they conversed.
Beckett wanted to challenge him.
Position be damned, he wanted to challenge this man.
His intention, if he could survive this endless fucking dinner, was to go up to the duke’s bedchamber, get him on the ground, or the bed, or against the wall, and make him moan.
Course after course was served, until the party finally left the dining room and retired to the drawing room, at which point the footmen all slipped off their stiff frock coats, rolled up their shirtsleeves, and got down to clearing the mess left on the table.
The dining room set to rights, all the servants who’d been on duty trooped down to the kitchen where Cook had put together a late supper for them. Beckett should have been right knackered by then.
He wasn’t.
He was energised.
He sat at the kitchen table cradling the mug of expensive chocolate that Cook liked to treat them to after particularly long nights, and bade people goodnight one after the other until he was the only one left save the yawning scullery maid banking the fire and Cook knocking back the dough for tomorrow’s bread.
He rinsed his mug in the sink, took himself up the back stairs, and strode boldly through the corridors until he reached the master’s bedchamber.
The door was open, and he smiled to see it. Soft lamplight spilled through the doorway, and he trod quietly as he approached, hoping to catch a glimpse of the duke unaware.
The duke was not unaware.
The duke was lying in wait.
Before Beckett even moved into the spill of amber light, he said in his deep voice, “Finally.”