Chapter 21 #3
There was a groan.
Ezra couldn’t tell if it was from him or Vincent.
There was both pleasure, and pain, as the other man took Ezra’s bottom lip between his teeth.
Tongues darted. Hands wandered. Familiar terrain, for the most part, though Vincent’s muscles felt even sharper than before.
And his touch? Well, that had become more honed too.
His fingers knew just where to graze: Ezra’s collarbone, his earlobe, his waistband.
“Careful,” he gasped, reflexively pulling back.
“We’re about to go chasing wizards into a cursed tomb and you want to be careful?” Vincent laughed. “Don’t you understand, Bright? We’ve got carte blanche now, thanks to Biz. We can be ourselves. Your sister will cover for us.”
Ezra took a wobbling breath. What was it like, to have a blank check life?
He wanted.
He ached.
He knew Biz felt these things too. “I can’t ask that of her.”
“Even if she’s giving it freely? Well, not freely.
Your sister has awfully expensive taste, but both she and I knew what we were signing up for when I bought that ring.
She practically gave us her blessing…” Vincent scanned Ezra’s expression.
Whatever he saw there caused him to pause.
Recalibrate. “But this isn’t really about Elizabeth, is it? ”
No.
And maybe it never was… “When I met you at Oxford, I was a mess. And you? You weren’t.
You were full of jokes and careless joy.
You were everything I wanted. Everything I couldn’t be: sweeter than wine and cheaper than opium and so very damn addictive.
I obliterated myself with you. I never quite recovered. ”
“Christ, Bright. You know how to make a boy swoon.”
“It’s our truth,” he said. “And now I must face mine. Alone. I need to understand who I am. I need to find my mother’s relic and finish that part of my story. Then… maybe, I can start a fresh chapter.”
Light from the window scattered across Vincent’s stubble. “I can respect that,” he murmured. “As you know, I’m not a patient man. But for you? For this?” The other young man leaned in, not for a kiss, but to rest their foreheads together. “I’ll wait.”
Ezra let himself rest a moment. Nothing inside him screamed.
Vincent lingered too, long enough for a smile to unfurl.
“Besides, if we recover that relic, it could make all the difference! You and I will be free to host dinner parties for the actual Cleopatra. I wonder if she likes fish. I imagine she would, living right there on the Mediterranean like that. My real point is that no laws or magicians could touch us, if we were powerful enough. We wouldn’t have to hide our love.
We wouldn’t even need Biz to cover for us! We could just… be.”
Ezra swallowed. “Why does that sound even more outlandish than caviar with Cleopatra?”
The man across from him let out a humorless laugh that tickled Ezra’s cheek.
“But what about Celia?” He felt Vincent stiffen then.
Pull away. The spot where their foreheads had touched was filmed with sweat; almost, but not quite, sticky.
Ezra wiped at it and quickly continued. “I mean—what if she was right? What if she really saw something awful in that basin? What if the warnings on the pyramid are real? What if…?”
This isn’t a happy ending.
The other man raked a hand through his sun-struck hair.
“You know, when my father started Cain Munitions, he was told he was being a fool. The Boer War was over—and it looked like the world was heading for a perpetual peace. La Belle époque! People really believed that. They believed that my father would lose every last farthing.” Vincent shook his head. “None of it came true.”
Rum-dum-dum-dum. Ezra could hear his pulse in his eardrums. More sweat trickled from his hairline. “Millions of innocent people died instead. Including my brother.”
Vincent Cain did not apologize.
Ezra really didn’t expect him to—after all, the war hadn’t been his sin.
It wasn’t even a cross to bear. It was just history, as mythic to him as the stories stashed in Ezra’s pocket.
There was no sorrow in those ocean eyes.
Just glints: Desire. Want. Need. These cut through Vincent’s gaze with dorsal fin depth.
He leaned closer to Ezra once more. “The brother you can bring back, if you’re brave enough.”
Their hands were brushing again, same as they had in the tailor shop and outside the Cotswolds dinner party. The heat between them didn’t hurt, like Celia’s cigarette.
“Fear kills futures, Bright. We can call off the camels and stay in this hotel room together, but then what? It’s back to rosebushes and costume parties and Hugo Pratt becoming an insufferable necromancer.
He’s the type that would probably try to resurrect Genghis Khan.
” Vincent threaded his hand into Ezra’s and squeezed. “I’d much rather meet George.”
They’d had this discussion before, in the dark of the train car.
It felt different now.
Closer.
Right-around-the-corner real.
“Me too,” he said, holding Vincent’s hand tight.