Chapter 4
JON
I couldn’t decide if Iggy was trying to make a point to annoy me or if it simply came naturally for him.
The banging and knocking between our suites were becoming comical.
The man was over six feet of slim, strong muscle, so I had no trouble picturing him in the cramped quarters of a train car lavatory.
But when I heard him bark out one of his favorite curse words and knock something over, I had to roll my eyes at the dramatics.
“Not my problem anymore,” I murmured to myself.
“Sorry, sir?” the butler asked from the half-open doorway to my suite where he’d come to offer me assistance dressing.
The irony of this wasn’t lost on me. I was getting a taste of Iggy’s life.
I hadn’t expected it to be so heartbreakingly lonely.
“Nothing. I was simply noticing my neighbor was awfully frustrated about something. It seems not everyone can relax on holiday.”
He gave me a polite nod, but I could see the tiny curl of a smile. “Between you and me, sir, I believe he’s attempting cufflinks for the first time. I told him I’d be in directly once I help you.”
I stifled a laugh. There was no way Iggy would let a stranger touch him.
Not only was his pride way too great to accept help under the best of conditions, but he’d also experienced an attempted kidnapping at age ten that had given him an aversion to being touched or cornered by people he didn’t know.
There had been many times he’d called me in tears to come rescue him from uncomfortable situations. Thankfully, his aversion to touch had never included me.
“Good luck with that,” I murmured with a smile.
But as the butler left, my gut began to churn with guilt. If Iggy needed help and he wouldn’t accept it from the butler assigned to our carriage, maybe I…
No. I no longer worked for him. It wasn’t my job to help him with cufflinks.
But as a friend…
I bit my lip. I needed to remember that Ignatius Corbridge and I weren’t really friends. We’d been employer and employee for years. Yes, we’d been close. Intimate, even. But he’d pulled away. Shut me out. It wasn’t my place to offer to help him with—
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, it’s just cufflinks,” I spat into my empty suite. I moved quickly down the hall to Iggy’s open door just as the butler escaped with an apology.
We exchanged awkward, polite smiles before I slipped inside.
“I said no, thank you,” Iggy said between clenched teeth, looking down at his mangled cuffs.
“Alright then,” I said primly, turning to leave. “I guess you don’t need my help.”
“Wait!” I heard a footstep before he stopped himself from coming after me. “Jon. Wait. Please… would you mind? You know how I am with these blasted things.”
I moved closer and reached out a hand for the sterling silver cufflinks. When I saw they were my favorite pair, intricately detailed octopi with a tentacle for a stud, memory assaulted me.
“No mortal can do his own cufflinks, Jon. He’d need eight arms like this little creature. See?”
“Or he’d need to start buying button cuffs,” I’d said practically, grateful for the excuse to hold his thick wrist in my hands and praying he never made that choice.
“Or they could get a Banks. It’s the reason I keep you around, you know.” His affectionate smile had told a different tale. “Sadly for them, I’ve got the only one.”
I swallowed hard and reminded myself that had been before.
“Poor choice for traveling alone,” I murmured.
“Mmph.”
I concentrated on attaching the cuff while trying not to take a creepy, desperate inhale of his scent. While trying to ignore the warmth radiating off a body that had always run a full degree warmer than others. While trying not to meet his honey-flecked eyes.
It was nearly impossible. Keeping my calm with the man I wanted most in the world this close was going to break me.
“Why did you leave me?” Iggy’s question was laid carefully into the air between us as if too delicate to be flung in my direction.
I took a deep, painful breath.
I’d known I’d have to explain myself if he ever happened to find me. Had prepared a polite answer to just this question. But the me on the end—not just why did I leave, but why did I leave him—hit my heart like a shrapnel bomb, and too many truths swamped me to force the lie out of my mouth.
Because I want to run my hands up your chest to your neck and cheeks and hair. I want to feel for once what it would be like to touch you as a lover instead of as a valet. I don’t merely want to run your home; I want to be your home.
My fingers fumbled the cufflink, but Iggy caught it in the air, saving me from the degradation—and temptation—of getting on my knees at his feet to retrieve it.
While I secured the cufflink, I tried to ignore his long, strong fingers, the healthy veins under his tanned skin, the worn-out, faded cotton of a friendship bracelet that a child had made him at an outreach event.
I had no doubt the boxer briefs he wore under his dark suit trousers were bright, brain-melting colors or novelty prints meant to give a laugh to anyone lucky enough to see them.
No matter how formal Ignatius Kirkwood Corbridge appeared, he remained the same caring, fun-loving Iggy underneath his clothes, and that reminder would be my undoing.
I ground my teeth and forced myself to remember how many people must have seen his underwear in recent years. He had very few limits when it came to who he slept with. Men, women, groups of both… it didn’t matter.
To him.
It mattered to me though. Very much. And that was one of a thousand reasons why leaving was the right choice.
“There you are,” I said, flashing him the same fake grin he’d pulled on me earlier. “Right as rain.”
“Answer me,” he demanded through his teeth. “Can’t you just answer me?”
“You don’t need me anymore.”
“You’re wrong,” he gritted out. “So incredibly, mind-fuckingly wrong.”
“Surely you can learn to dress yourself. Button cuffs are a simple solution.”
He yanked his arm away, and I knew he was remembering the same conversation I had. “It’s not about the cuffs, damn it. I don’t need a valet, Jon. I need you. It’s always been you. Don’t you know that?”
Iggy searched my eyes. God only knew what he was looking for because I didn’t.
“You’re the only thing that made it bearable,” he said softly.
His words slithered into my ears and took root like an unwelcome parasite. The parasite lied. But it was a seductive liar, one whose sibilant come-ons could very easily lead me down a dangerous path.
I saw a video once, of a machine whose sole job was to crush cars in a skip yard. I felt like my heart had somehow found its way into one and was being squeezed into nothing.
He didn’t mean this… any of it. Iggy was simply lonely. It didn’t have anything to do with me specifically, and I could prove it.
“You don’t know me,” I insisted. “Not really.”
“Try me.”
“What was my first car?” I asked.
His eyebrows came together. “You didn’t have a car for a long time. You had a bicycle and then a motorbike. Your first car was probably the Lexus my father supplied when we lived in the States.”
I swallowed. Lucky guess.
“And who was the first man I kissed?”
Iggy’s signature cocky grin appeared. “That’s easy. That wanker from Birmingham who tried to convince you to quit your job. You’d waited to hook up with another man all through the military and our time in the States only to end up with that sad sack.”
“False. You don’t know as much about me as you thought, Ignatius.”
His eyes flared. “I didn’t count the time I tried kissing you when I was in college. I was hardly a man at the time. Or so you said.”
My face heated. I needed to get out of his room. Immediately. “And I was right.” Even though it remains the most beloved kiss in my memory because it was you.
“Have dinner with me.”
It wasn’t a question but a command, and I longed to yield to it.
“No, thank you. Have a good evening, si—Iggy.” I’d almost called him “sir,” something I refused to do anymore…
At least outside of my fantasies.
I nodded awkwardly and left. When I made it safely into my own suite again, I let out a breath and clenched my hands into fists.
Why was he doing this? Why come here? Why ruin my great escape? For all his wealth and privilege, my Iggy had never been a spoiled brat.
He’s also never been a liar.
I pushed that thought away. He couldn’t possibly mean the things he was saying.
Could he?
I thought of the question I hadn’t had the guts to ask Iggy when he’d tried to prove how well he knew me:
What would I do for love?
The answer was as wide as the ocean and as vast as the wild lands surrounding us as we raced through the South African night.