An Improper Holiday Read Free Page A

lowered in grief, drawing Ian’s gaze to the candlelight’s sheen on Nicky’s
    cheek, the wide curve of his lips. That mouth. The mouth that had—
    Ian tore his gaze free of the fascination, a wrenching separation that shared the aching emptiness of
    his left arm with all of his bones. Charlotte’s gold plume had moved off, nodding near a lacey cap adorning the head of a tall slender blonde.
    “And at the moment, my lord, I am failing in my new commission. I beg your leave as I must see to
    my sister.”
    “Then as always, I shall stand aside and permit you to do your duty.” Nicky’s voice held a rough edge
    quite unlike any Ian had yet heard from Nicky’s lips.
    When Nicky turned and strode off without another word, Ian was forced to a surprising conclusion.
    Amherst was furious.
    12
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    Chapter Two
    Stiff-necked, infuriating, whoreson bastard. Nicky allowed himself eight strides along the gallery and back to try to contain his explosion of frustration. With Ian and with himself. He had convinced himself that Ian only stopped answering their carefully worded letters because of battlefield conditions, that Ian’s feelings were still as strong as when he had acceded to his father’s wishes and taken up his commission.
    Above all, Nicky had promised himself that Ian’s injury, his dreadful loss, wouldn’t matter. Instead Nicky had let show the terror and pain he had felt when he had heard the details of Ian’s wound. Well-played indeed, Amherst.
    Despite that cold intonation of his title, it was clear Ian was not entirely indifferent to Nicky. In the past five years he had learned to discern when a man regarded him with a certain sort of interest. But the past five years had also taught him there was a great gulf between simple companionship and the
    gratification of lust and what he and Ian had shared in those two years of sweet, slow discovery.
    With the way Ian’s gaze had moved to Nicky’s mouth…no, Ian had not renounced his desire, even if
    he clung ever more tightly to his restraint. In that moment just past, Ian’s hunger had been a nearly palpable yoke to bind them.
    Had Ian learned as much as Nicky had these years apart? The idea of another man lavishing on Ian the
    kind of attention that would bring the color to his cheeks, his throat, his chest, blasted Nicky with a surprising surge of arousal. He would have thought to find himself jealous. Instead, his too vigorous
    imagination provided a tactile and visual feast. Ian’s back against Nicky’s front, the prickle of hair over hard flesh as Nicky’s hands stroked the broad chest, the heat between Ian’s thighs as Nicky’s cock slid through the tight space, pressing up against the heavy sac, driving Ian forward so that his own cock slid deeper into the throat of the faceless man kneeling before them.
    There would be no returning to the salon now. A stubborn cock-stand was not at all the thing to
    introduce in a room full of family and guests, certainly not in trousers as close-fit as those he wore. Nicky strode down the gallery’s full length to the portrait of the first marquess, wishing he dared run out into the snow to cool his face—and other overheated areas.
    “Nicholas? Whatever are you doing out here? What is the matter?”
    His four-years-elder sister Lady Anna had stepped into the gallery. Since their mother had passed
    away after giving birth to the twins who were still in the nursery, Anna had taken over running the
    household, maintaining her grip even after her marriage to the Bishop of Warwick several years ago.
    K.A. Mitchell
    “I am—” Hell, taking the air was something only females did. He could scarcely tell his sister he’d
    stomped off in a fit of pique because of a romance gone awry, and he certainly couldn’t tell her he was trying to tamp down the pulse of blood in his cock. “I wanted exercise.” Under the circumstance, it wasn’t difficult to affect a limp.
    “Exercise?