Jackdaw (10 page)

Ben couldn’t stop watching.

Jonah didn’t seem to notice. He ran the wet cloth under his arms, over his chest, and lower, over his muscular thighs, the nest of black curls. He was half-hard as he rinsed the cloth, wiped it over himself, rinsed it again. His skin shone with damp in the candlelight.

He wasn’t looking at Ben. If he had, if he just looked…

Ben stood, helpless, staring. Jonah’s body was as compact and muscular as ever. He looked so quick and sleek clothed, so powerful naked. Ben had wrapped his legs over those strong shoulders so often…

No. That was madness.

Ben moved to the big bed. It was a four-poster, evidently once equipped with curtains to pull round and keep the heat in. They had doubtless long rotted away. There was just a pile of quilts and blankets now, sheets warmed by a pan of coals, a bolster, and enough room for two.

Ben crawled in and lay in the bed, facing out.

Jonah blew out the candles and moved round to the other side of the bed, which dipped as he got in. The bed was very cold, except for the almost painfully hot, slightly crispy feel of the linen where the warming pan had rested. Neither of them had a nightshirt—he had a dim recollection of Jonah making some casual remark about lost bags to the landlady. Ben could feel the heat of Jonah’s body from here.

It was very dark, and very quiet.

“Ben?”

He could pretend to be asleep. God knew he was tired.

“Ben,” Jonah repeated.

“Mmm.”

Pause.

“I know it’s all gone wrong.” Jonah’s voice was very quiet. “And I know you probably still hate me—”

“I don’t hate you.” Ben stared into the dark. “I did, before. When I thought you left me because you didn’t love me, or didn’t love me enough. I hated you then, but I was wrong, and I am so sorry.” His voice shook on the words but it was time and past to say them. “What I did in that bloody place—”

“Don’t. It doesn’t matter.”

“It does.” Ben forced the words out. “I wanted to—to hurt you. Me. That’s what happened to me, that’s what this has done to me. I’ve become the kind of man who—”

“Who doesn’t do bad things, even if he wants to,” Jonah came in swift and sharp. “Have you forgotten that? You never had a reason to want to do something horrible to me before. And when you did, it was a good reason, but you
didn’t do it
. Look, I know we’ve done things to each other and, even if you don’t hate me…well, it’s not like it was any more.”

“No.” Because what they’d had, that golden idyll, had been a fantasy. Reality lay beside him, flawed and irresponsible and very warm.

“I just wondered,” Jonah said. “Could we pretend?”

Ben stilled. He could hear his own deepening breathing. Jonah’s tension was palpable. “Pretend?”

“Or forget. Or ignore even, but could we not be a thief and a copper, or two people who did bad things to each other? Just for tonight? Could we just be Ben and Jonah, in the dark? It wouldn’t change anything, or mean anything tomorrow. I promise I wouldn’t think that it did. But I miss you.” Jonah swallowed audibly. “I missed you when you weren’t there, and now you are here and I can’t touch you and I miss you even more.”

“I miss you too,” Ben whispered.

Jonah’s body was quivering with readiness, Ben could feel it, but he didn’t reach out, and Ben realised he was waiting. Letting Ben make the choice. Letting him decide if he wanted to be sucked back into the maelstrom that tore his existence apart, over and over.

Naturally Jonah would think this was a good idea. He lived in the moment, never looking ahead. Ben could see consequences looming on every side, and most of them were terrible.

They should split up, that was obvious. It would have been obvious days ago, if Ben had been able to think properly. His mind was clear now, and he could see it all. Jonah would never change, would never be responsible, quite blatantly intended to steal again should it become necessary. Ben couldn’t live like that, waiting for the next disaster, not after Jonah’s love had already plunged him into hell. He’d say goodbye tomorrow, and go, before they hurt each other more. It was the only sane thing to do, for both their sakes.

But if this was to be the last night…

He rolled over, under the heavy bedcovers, and reached out, and felt Jonah’s whole body twitch as his hand closed on Jonah’s shoulder.

“Ben,” Jonah whispered, and then he was in Ben’s arms, and they were kissing.

Jonah’s lips were soft, his beard unfamiliar and prickly, scratching against Ben’s own stubble. His tongue met Ben’s, sweeping round, tasting of ale and himself. His hands came up, running through Ben’s hair, sending shuddering sensation across his skin, and Ben lost himself in being kissed and held and loved.

It was utterly dark in the small room, with its shutters closing out the night. No sight of each other. No sight of the white streak marring Jonah’s hair, or the brutal ridge of scarring on Ben’s face. No evidence visible of what they’d done to each other and to themselves. It could have been five months ago, when everything was innocent, and Ben let himself believe that it was.

His hands were all over Jonah’s skin, remembering by touch, sliding down the muscles of his back, relishing the whisper of the wiry hairs on those strong legs. Jonah gasped in his mouth, tipping his head back, and Ben leaned into the kiss, gripping Jonah’s hips, pulling their bodies close together. They both hissed as cock slid along cock.

“God,” Jonah whispered, speaking into Ben’s mouth rather than breaking the touch. “Will you fuck me?”

“Yes—no. If we leave, uh, evidence—”

“We’ll be gone tomorrow.” Jonah’s hips pressed forward, against Ben’s pelvis. “Who cares what they think.”

Ben, policeman of a rural town, had a fairly firm idea that leaving sheets stained by illegal acts would be a mistake, of the kind that led to questions, pursuit and amateur justice. He remembered the wild glow in Jonah’s eyes, defending him, that sudden sense of how ruthless his laughing lover was under threat. “No,” he repeated.

“But I want you,” Jonah whined, wriggling up a little.

Ben wrapped his hand around Jonah’s solid cock and his own, holding them together, brushing a thumb over both tips and feeling their mutual shudder. “You’re going to get me. But we’re going to destroy the evidence.”

“What?” said Jonah, with some alarm. “Oh, I see. Good plan. One should always have a copper along when committing illegal acts.”

Ben rocked against him, curling a slither of dampness over the head of Jonah’s cock with his thumb. “God. Jonah.”
My Jonah, mine…

“I want…” Jonah kicked and shoved at the covers to loosen them, making space for movement. Ben rolled him over, pulling him effortlessly on top so Jonah was straddling him.

“Do you do something?” he asked. “Make yourself light?”

“A bit of a boost,” Jonah admitted. “Which…” His hands came down, cupping Ben’s arse, and pulled, and Ben felt himself lift off the sheets, astonishingly weightless for a second, grinding his groin to Jonah’s.

“God!” he yelped as he thumped back down to the mattress.

“I can’t keep it up for long. The
power
, I mean.
Oh, shut up.” Jonah ducked down to kiss the smile off Ben’s lips, and they were clutching each other once more, skin to skin, so very hot and close. His tongue was licking inside Ben’s mouth, fingers probing, hard arousal driving against Ben’s, as though he wanted to possess every inch at once, and it was all Ben could do not to cry out his pleas. The thought of Jonah pushing his legs back, of wrapping his ankles behind Jonah’s neck and feeling the man inside him once more…

Not safe, not sane. This wasn’t the cottage they’d shared, where the sheets were their own concern. He held on to that thought by his fingernails, and instead pulled Jonah towards him. “Come up here.”

“Oh. Oh, Ben, my Benedict.” Jonah settled over him so that Ben could run his tongue up his erection. It was sticky-damp and salty already, Jonah always leaked quickly and copiously, and Ben relished that familiar taste, and the familiar sounds. He wished he could see Jonah over him, watch the expression of bewildered, blissful surrender that he knew he wore. Jonah was an active participant in lovemaking, pushing back as strongly as Ben thrust. He had taught Ben there was no real difference between who gave and who took, and until that horrible night at Runciman’s, Ben had never felt anything of submission or domination between them, no matter who fucked who. But when he sucked Jonah, it was different. Then the blue eyes glassed over, and his face became naked, helpless, showing him a slave to Ben’s mouth.

God, he wished he could see that one last time.

But he could at least hear Jonah’s whispers, broken as they were, as Ben took him deep in his mouth, using tongue and fingers, spreading Jonah wide open. “Ben, my Ben, my own. I’ll do anything. Oh God, Ben, I swear. Whatever you want. Please. My Ben. Oh God.” He was leaking hard now, about to come. There was salt in Ben’s mouth, and dampness, and there was salt wet on his face too, as he worked Jonah’s erection, because this was unbearable.

Jonah made a noise in his throat and came, filling Ben’s mouth. He gagged slightly—it had been a long time—swallowed, kept Jonah there, feeling him, memorising every ridge and vein of him.

Jonah was over him, hands on Ben’s shoulders. His breath was close and warm, his hair tickling Ben’s forehead. A little splash of damp hit Ben’s cheek, where the skin was already sticky-wet. He hoped it was sweat, knew it wasn’t.

Jonah was still and quiet for a moment, then he crawled backwards, without a word or a kiss, down Ben’s body.

“Don’t,” Ben said, because he knew bloody well he wasn’t hard any more, and he didn’t want Jonah to know that.

Jonah crouched there, over him, in unfamiliar silence. His fingers ran very lightly over Ben’s thighs.

“Everything I say is wrong.” His voice was very low. “Everything I do is wrong. I don’t know how to get it right. I think I could, if you told me.”

“Jonah…”

Jonah’s hands delved, a finger sliding over Ben’s balls in the touch that had never yet failed to bring a reaction. He clenched a hand in the sheets.

“I never learned how to do things properly. I don’t think.
You
think. You’d have known what to do in autumn, if I’d told you.”

Ben would have known nothing of the sort, but he couldn’t speak to deny it. Jonah’s hands were all over him, probing, stroking, gliding.

“I know I said this wouldn’t mean anything.”

Lips closed around the head of Ben’s cock, bringing him to full attention, moved away again.

“I lied.”

Fingers ringing the base of his erection, nesting in the coarse hair.

“I don’t deserve another chance. But if you gave me one, I would earn it, Ben. I would. I swear.”

“Don’t,” Ben managed. “Please. Please don’t.”

“I don’t want you to pretend now,” Jonah whispered, breath tickling Ben’s tight, hot skin. “We both know it’s not then any more. I’m not who you thought. I’m the worthless, illiterate fool who lied to you and used you and ruined you and…I want you to let
me
suck you, the person I am. Stupid, stupid me.”

Was he asking for forgiveness? Acceptance? Ben didn’t know which, didn’t know if he could grant either, or if he deserved to. He had no idea what to say, but his hands were in Jonah’s tousled hair, pushing his head down, and Jonah gave a moan of pleasure and sucked Ben hard into his mouth.

And Ben did as he had asked. He thought of flawed, lying Jonah, with his assurances of “contract work” and questions about Ben’s investigations, and the burglar in the Tring Museum, and that dreadful last kiss in the carriage, Jonah’s wet eyes as he left Ben behind. He thought of Jonah running from the law, and flat on the bed in a whorehouse, pretending helplessness to let Ben slake his anger. He thought of all those things as Jonah sucked and licked and served him with mouth alone, fingers gripping Ben’s thighs, letting the anger and misery build along with the arousal, a boil to be lanced. He gripped Jonah’s hair tighter, pushing his head down, thrusting up into his mouth, but he couldn’t force Jonah harder than the man was forcing himself, taking Ben’s substantial cock to the root, groaning around it, and when Ben came, it was with a rush of pleasure and pain and love and hate that emptied his soul along with his balls.

He flopped back onto the hard bolster, shaking. Jonah crawled up next to him, and put a tentative hand out, and Ben pulled him into his arms, felt him shudder and held him tight.

Chapter Ten

The next morning, he woke alone.

It was a shock to find the bed empty. That was absurd—it was months since he and Jonah had slept together, he should be used to it, but Jonah’s scent was around him and for a moment he had believed himself back in the cottage on the lane. The reality thudded into him like a stone weight.

He lay there, breathing, until a thought came that made him jerk upright.

Had Jonah gone?

Surely not. Ben was going to leave, he’d decided that, and last night had made it all the more necessary. Too sweet, too dangerous. He was crawling back into Jonah’s web, mindless as any fly, and the fact that the spider intended him no harm didn’t make his embrace any safer. So Ben was going to leave.

Ben, not Jonah.
He
couldn’t go, couldn’t have left without saying goodbye. Surely to God he wouldn’t have done that.

Ben was pushing back the bedclothes in a sudden panic, just as the door opened and Jonah came in.

“Morning.” He had an earthenware mug in each hand, both steaming. “Tea?”

Ben slumped back against the bolster and the chilly plaster of the wall. “Thanks.”

Jonah handed him a mug and came to sit on the bed. He smiled at Ben, but he looked a little nervous. About last night, what had been said in the dark.

Do it. Spenser, you coward, do it.

“Jonah,” he said, as Jonah said, “Ben—”

They both smiled, awkwardly.

“You first,” Ben said.
Coward. You’re just putting it off.

“Well, what it is, the thing is…I talked to Mrs. Linney.” Jonah spoke in a rush. “You know, after last night, with everything she told us—”

“Wait. Who?”

“Mrs. Linney. The landlady? She was telling us about her situation—I
knew
you weren’t listening.” Jonah gave a theatrical sigh. “She can’t afford help to keep this place up, and we don’t have anywhere we need to be, and I thought—well, what I suggested was, we could do it. For a couple of days. We can fix things and chop wood or what have you. And she can’t pay us, but she can feed us and let us stay here and lend us clothes, she says, and I know it’s not money, which we need, but actually, I need a few days of not running. We can always choose a place to go later, we’re in no hurry, and nobody will find us here. And I don’t know how to do household tasks and mend things, as such, but you do, and you can show me, and I do wish you’d say something. Ben? Was that wrong?” He looked deeply uncertain. “You don’t have to— If you don’t want to stay, that’s all right. But I thought we could work for our keep here—”

“It’s not wrong,” Ben managed. “It’s brilliant. I didn’t realise—were you planning this last night?”

“I had an idea,” Jonah said, somewhat smugly. “I thought I’d see. And it worked.” His face stilled, looking at Ben. “I meant what I said,” he went on. “I’m not assuming anything. We’ll do whatever you want.”

“And the landlady, Mrs. Linney, she’s agreed?”

“Yes, although I suspect she’ll be watching us like a hawk,” Jonah said. “Though I may have, uh, helped her to feel that she can trust us. Just a bit. Well, she can. Neither of us will be pouncing on Bethany, will we?”

“Who’s Bethany?”

“The older daughter. There’s a smaller one called Agnes.”

“Right. Right.” Ben didn’t give a damn about daughters. All he could see was Jonah, with that open, hopeful look in his eyes, coming up with a proposition of honest work, and a chance for them to rest at last, somewhere safe.

Obviously, he ought to be leaving. He’d decided that. But he needed rest and food and time to recover, and he could always go later.

Mrs. Linney did keep a close eye on them, but she was as good as her word with clothing. She lent them garments belonging to her deceased husband—rough, baggy things a little short on Ben and a little long on Jonah, but serviceable—and took their own clothes off for sorely needed cleaning, and Ben immersed himself in physical tasks. There was plenty to do. The old inn had been deteriorating for years, he guessed, struggling to keep the dwindling clientele who were probably put off by its shabbiness.

He loved working with his hands, though, and was a talented carpenter. Mr. Linney had had a good store of tools, and Ben eyed up the chairs and tables that needed a bit of mending with the pleasant anticipation of something useful to be done. There were days of vital work here, in his estimation, more like months of upkeep.

Jonah was predictably unacquainted with a chisel. He did, however, know what to do with the chickens and the pigs, somewhat to Ben’s surprise, and cheerfully obeyed Bethany’s orders in the vegetable patch.

By noon, when Mrs. Linney provided an excellent lunch of rabbit pie with a jug of home-brewed ale, Ben was pleasantly conscious of sore muscles and a good morning’s work done by both. Flighty Jonah, working. He tried not to let himself believe too hard in that.

“You’re a wonderful cook, Mrs. Linney.” Jonah swallowed a mouthful of pie. “I haven’t eaten so well in weeks.”

She accepted the compliment as her due, but made a wry face. “Better cook than landlady. Baking and brewing, that’s easy enough. The rest…well, it ain’t the employment I’d have chosen.”

Ben believed that. She was stern-faced, silent, not a welcoming presence even when she smiled. It didn’t create the sort of atmosphere that would drive the men of Pellore up the steep hill, except that this was the only inn for miles. Even so, custom was sparse.

“Why do you run it?” he asked.

“It was Linney’s. Now it’s mine, and in time it will be my daughters’.” She nodded at Bethany, who ate with them. “Linney left us nothing else, and he’d let it go to rack and ruin as it was. Mebbe I should have sold it when he died, but old Linney loved this place, my father-in-law, and I thought I could make something of it, for the girls’ sake. Well.” Her weather-marked face was lined with weariness, and Ben, watching it, realised with a shock that she was much younger than he’d thought last night, probably less than forty.

“You’ve done your best, Ma,” Bethany put in. “Tain’t your fault there’s no more’n twenty-four hours in a day. You’d have us working more if there was.”

“None of your cheek.” Mrs. Linney gave her daughter a severe look. “Well, we keep on, and it’s good to have some help.”

“For a meal this good, you may have all the help your heart could wish,” Jonah assured her, with his glorious smile.

“Tackle the chimney if you’re that grateful,” Mrs. Linney retorted, but it was clear she was holding back a smile of her own.

After they had eaten and the women had gone to the kitchen, Ben went to have a look at the chimney. “It must be blocked,” he said, squinting fruitlessly up into the dark. “I suppose we could try rods. I’d rather leave it to a sweep, honestly.”

Jonah sauntered over to the great hearth. “Let me have a look?”

Ben moved back but Jonah didn’t attempt to look up the flue, instead putting his hand on the stone of the chimney, over the black beam of the mantelpiece. His eyes lost focus, the pupils widening.

“What on earth are you doing?”

“Um…there’s something—broken. Sticks. A nest, I think. And something dead. Cat?” Jonah mumbled the words to himself, staring at nothing. Ben took a step back, the hairs on his forearms rising. “It’s very…solid… Ooh, there you are, that’s it— Bollocks.”

His eyes snapped back into focus, wide with alarm, just as what seemed like pounds of soot cascaded into the hearth with a soft thump. A black cloud billowed up into the room. Ben leapt back, a picture of disaster forming in his mind—the entire pub coated in soot, the hours of cleaning, Mrs. Linney’s fury—but before he could speak, there was a sudden sense of suction, pulling at his skin and hair for a second as air rushed by him, and the dusty cloud curled back on itself.

Ben stared, astonished, as the soot shrank in little eddies under the pressure of an invisible wind, heaping up as a black mound in the fireplace. Jonah’s eyes were wide, face still with concentration. His mouth moved without sound, hands making a gentle sweeping gesture, pushing the dust back.

Ben twisted frantically around, convinced that Mrs. Linney would be just over his shoulder. She wasn’t, thank God. He grabbed for a chair and sat heavily.

Jonah was still a moment longer, until the soot was all piled in the hearth and the air almost dustless, then turned to him. “Are you all right?”

“No.” Ben ducked his head against the sudden dizziness. “You’re a magician. Christ almighty. You can do magic.”

“Um…yes? You knew that. We walked on air, remember?”

“But…” Ben groped for words. “I didn’t know you could do
this
.”

“I can do lots of things.” Jonah looked puzzled. “I can move things around and apply force to things and so on. It’s quite convenient.”

“Dustsheets are convenient,” Ben said. “You put them around the chimney and they trap the soot. That’s convenience. This is
magic
, and you use it to do household tasks?” He had a sudden flash of memory, a small domestic disaster averted by what had at the time seemed a startling feat, Jonah holding a collapsing shelf up by a finger. “Is that how you held that shelf up, when it came off the wall?”

“Well, yes. All the china would have smashed, so I—what? What’s wrong with that?”

“You were using magic at home,” Ben said. “Around me. And I never saw you do it, and I never knew. How?”

“Because you didn’t expect it?” There was a wary look in Jonah’s eyes, the expression of a child who knew he was in trouble and wasn’t sure why.

“Because you hid something you did every day, in our home. You were lying to me with every breath you took.”

“But I had to.” Jonah sounded slightly panicky. “How could I have told you that?”

“How could you not? How could you— In our
home
, Jonah.” Ben groped for words, unable to convey the depths of the shock. He had come to terms with Jonah’s hidden life, but as a thing that had been outside them, quite separate to their charmed existence together. The idea that Jonah had been quietly, secretively using his powers all the time, with Ben blithely unaware, made him feel sick and disoriented.

An awful thought dawned. “Did you—did you ever do that thing, with your voice, to make me believe you?”

“Fluence? No! God, no, I swear to you. Never. I only tried once, in the carriage. I wouldn’t.”

“What else haven’t you told me? What else can you do?”

“I don’t know!” Jonah yelped. “I don’t understand why this is any different to me windwalking—”

“Sssh!” Ben hissed. Footsteps sounded in the passage, past the door, moved away again. They stared at each other, locked in mutual incomprehension.

“Fine,” Ben said at last. “If that’s all you have to say about treating me like a fool for months—”

“Ben—”

“—then we’d better start work. You do understand you can’t let anyone see you do things like that?”

“I am aware of it, yes,” Jonah said, voice tight.

Ben grabbed his wrist. “I mean it. People talk in places like this. For all I know they’d burn you at the stake.” He paused, horrified not so much by his own words as by Jonah’s shrug of agreement:
Obviously.
Ben made himself go on. “But also, if they talk about a magician with a white streak in his hair, suppose word reaches London? The justiciary?”

“Yes, but nobody’s seen me, have they? For heaven’s sake, I am used to this. Oh, listen—” Jonah reached for him. Ben jerked his hand away, a flinch of pure instinct, because he hadn’t forgotten Jonah’s hissing words to the policemen on the bridge.
Listen to me…

Jonah’s mouth opened in raw shock. “I was not going to fluence you,” he said, low and outraged. “I never have. Don’t start treating me like a monster. I’ve had that all my life. I don’t want it from you too.”

Ben felt a stab of shame. That wasn’t fair. It was surely Jonah in the wrong here. “So stop doing things like—” He gestured at the hearth.

“I
can’t
.” Jonah spoke through his teeth. “I am what I am. I can’t be anything else. I can’t be like everyone else, because I’m
not
.”

“Well, I am,” Ben said. “I’m ordinary, and you’re—” Extraordinary. Astonishing. Able to walk on the wind and shape men’s thoughts and control the air around him, and he had hidden all that power and strength away to live in the cottage with Ben.

Hidden it, or Ben had been, again, wilfully blind to the glaring truth.

That wasn’t something he could think of now. He held on to his anger, rather than face Jonah’s frustrated misery, or his own complicity.

“Just don’t get caught.” He rose and turned his back. “And you can explain to Mrs. Linney what happened to her chimney.”

Apparently Jonah’s explanation was plausible. There were no questions, and that night Mrs. Linney extended the offer of bed and board for another night, should they wish it. They accepted, because it was so much easier than going somewhere else, but that night Ben lay facing away, obstinately refusing to turn and take Jonah in his arms, and Jonah curled on the other side of the mattress in silence.

Ben kept up his silence the next day, knowing it was childish, but raw with hurt and, more, with Jonah’s lack of understanding. Apparently he couldn’t see the difference that Ben felt as a real and stabbing thing, between what he had done outside their home and inside it. Or perhaps he thought Ben should have realised what it meant to be a magician, a practitioner, at once.

Or perhaps, a wheedling voice suggested, Ben was being a sulky prick when Jonah was trying his best. He couldn’t help his nature. And it
was
his nature, that glittering vital spark of joy that made him so glorious to be with, and that Ben’s own solid, earthbound, unhappy temperament could extinguish like cold ash on a fire.

Jonah was uncharacteristically silent in response to Ben’s quiet, but he plunged into the work without hesitation, chattering away to the girls, leaving Ben on the outside, watching his smiles, wishing they were for himself. There was a lot to be done, and Ben took refuge in that too, relishing the approval in Mrs. Linney’s eyes. It seemed a long time since anyone but Jonah had looked at him without pity or contempt.