“What do you want to do?” he asked softly, the anger vanished from his voice as if it’d never been.

  “I want to hold you.” When had I lost the ability to keep the truth to myself?

  “That’s all right, then. ’Cause I want you to.” He closed the distance between us and slipped his arms around my waist.

  I almost sobbed with the release of tension. I melted into him, our bodies moulding to each other and my head sinking to rest on his shoulder.

  “That’s better,” he whispered, his words like a caress.

  It was a chaste embrace, his hands moving rhythmically up and down my back, as if I were a colicky baby. I felt safe with him, safer than I’d felt anywhere since the accident. But the warmth of him, the scent of him, the sensation of his hard body against mine all worked their devilment with me, and I felt myself half harden. He had to be able to feel it too.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Just ignore it and it’ll go away.”

  “What if I don’t want it to go away?” he whispered, his breath searing hot in my ear, and suddenly, shockingly, I was so hard I ached. Jem’s hands were no longer soft—now they pulled me tight against him, and I felt his answering hardness pressing into my belly.

  “Jem,” I breathed, words like you don’t have to and are you sure? dying on my lips. He knew he didn’t have to, and he wasn’t the sort to do anything he wasn’t sure about. Especially not this.

  “We don’t have to,” he said, and I laughed a little at the way his words mirrored my unspoken ones.

  “Are you reading my mind?”

  “Wish I could,” he said; I could just see his smile in the borrowed light. “I bet there’s all manner of marvellous things in that mind of yours, Ted Ennis.”

  “Only you,” I said, running my hands up and down his sides, daring to explore his hips, his arse.

  “Proper silver-tongued charmer, aren’t you?” He slid a cool hand inside my jacket and began to unbutton my shirt.

  I gasped as his chilled fingers met my heated flesh, crept across my chest and found a nipple, which they gently squeezed. My hips bucked of their own accord, grinding into him, and I moaned.

  “All out of words already?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I breathed, my head swimming with desire. “No more words. Kiss me.”

  Our mouths found one another, first in chaste pecks and then with ever-greater hunger. I wanted him to devour me, surround me, take me in and keep me safe. He thrust his tongue into my mouth, and I sucked on it greedily. His hands grew more adventurous, more demanding, one of them continuing to bruise my nipple while the other slipped down, down, past my trouser waistband to cup my arse and squeeze it gently.

  It was too much, but not nearly enough. I broke the kiss, panting. “Take me to bed,” I pleaded, my heart pounding. “Take me. Please.”

  Jem stared at me, his gaze intent, serious. His chest rose and fell. I longed to touch it. Touch him, all of him, skin to skin. “You don’t have to beg,” he said. “You don’t never have to beg.” He tore off his jacket and shirt, flinging them to the floor, then started to unbutton his trousers.

  I watched, mesmerised, as that hardness I’d only felt through fabric came springing into view in the dim light that spilled in through the window. “You’re beautiful,” I said, my voice so hoarse and thick I worried he wouldn’t understand me.

  “Not as beautiful as you. Let me see you, Ted. Take off your clothes and let me see you.”

  My fingers shook as I scrambled to obey. Jacket, shirt, scarf, trousers and boxer shorts—all fell to the floor. We stood there, naked before one another, the icy draught from the ill-fitting window teasing our skin to goose bumps but doing nothing to cool our ardour. We gazed at one another, then at the exact same moment, each took a pace forward to meet in the middle in an electric spark of heat and desire, as if we were two wires in a circuit wrongly disconnected but now complete once more. I felt Jem’s lips on my hair, my face, my neck—and then he claimed my mouth once more with his, even as his hands staked their claim to every other part of me.

  Jem urged me onwards with him, towards the bed, and pulled back the thin blankets. The sheets were a chilly, almost damp shock to our skin as we slipped between them and wriggled our way to the centre of the bed. Springs protested.

  “You’ll have your landlady up to complain,” I warned, only half joking.

  “Nah, she’ll save it for tomorrow morning and give us a proper ear-bashing. She’s a sport, Mrs. M. is. She wasn’t any better than she ought to be when she was a girl. Tells me about it sometimes, when she’s on the gin.” Jem laughed. “God, she’s got some stories, that woman.”

  “Don’t tell me them now,” I warned, rubbing myself up against him and holding him so close that not even a hair could have slipped between our bodies. Gradually, the warmth stolen by the sheets began to return.

  “We’ll make our own stories,” he agreed. “When you asked me to take you...”

  My breath caught. “I want you inside me. If—if that’s what you like.” I wriggled down in the bed so I could catch his nipple in my mouth, and my hand crept lower, to stroke his lovely, long cock.

  Jem groaned. “I like it so bloody much there’s a danger I’ll spend before I get there. So hold on a minute, Ted.”

  “I’d rather hold you,” I protested, but I released his hard length and instead ran my hand over the smooth, flat planes of him. Here, in his bed, I could make believe I was the only one for him, as he was for me. I could pretend the masculine curves of his body, the dip where leg met hip, were mine and mine alone.

  I shivered, and his arms tightened around me. “All right?” he whispered.

  No. But I couldn’t tell him that. “I need you,” I said instead. He drew in a long, shuddering breath and rolled over to reach into the nightstand. He brought out something small and dark—a pot of some lotion or cream, I realised as I heard him unscrew the lid. There was a faint, medicinal smell.

  “This’ll help,” he said, his voice as unsteady as my heartbeat.

  Remembering myself, I leaned over the side of the bed to scrabble for my jacket, and the condoms I had in my breast pocket. “You should wear one of these,” I said, tearing open a packet. “It’s safer.”

  “I ain’t going to get you in the family way,” Jem said with a smile. Still, he lay back on his elbows agreeably enough as I rolled it onto him with fumbling fingers.

  He seemed less surprised about it than I’d expected. “You’ve used these before?” I couldn’t help asking.

  “French letters? A couple of times. They weren’t like these ones, though. Thicker, and not so soft.” He didn’t say anything about the men he’d used them with, for which I was grateful. “Come here and kiss me,” he said instead.

  I crawled back up the bed. Jem’s arms and lips welcomed me back, his skin smooth and warm. We kissed, our tongues seeking each other, darting and teasing. Burning with need, I ground my erection against his and was rewarded with a moan.

  “Lie down next to me,” he whispered.

  I slithered off him as directed and lay facedown, breathing hard. For the first time in a long while, I felt truly naked. He slowly stroked down from my shoulder to my buttocks, leaving a tingling, a yearning in its wake. I pulled up one knee, making myself even more vulnerable, and tried not to shiver as I waited to feel him penetrate me.

  It was a shock to feel, instead, the warmth of his breath and the press of his lips against my exposed skin. “You smell so good,” he whispered, his words working their way inside me and warming me from within. “So perfect.”

  I gasped as he kissed me again then nipped at the skin of my buttocks with his teeth. He darted his warm tongue out to soothe the skin he’d just teased, delved deeper, down into my cleft, seeking my core. I whimpered into Jem’s thin pillow. It was too much—he was laying me bare, and I clenched my teeth to stop myself begging him to stop, to take me, because while the feel of him rimming me was agony, it would be worse if he stopped.

  But he had to stop. I felt a pang of grief, of loss as his tongue left me. There was cold slickness at my entrance.

  Jem whispered, “Promise you’ll tell me if it hurts?” and then there was heat, incredible, searing heat, stabbing into me for the first time since—

  —but I could hear Alasdair’s voice calling me an idiot for thinking of him at a time like this. My thoughts flickered instead to Jem’s crooked smile and bright blue eyes. Rough hands stroked my side, soft lips pressed kisses to my neck, and Jem filled my mind as he filled my body.

  “Ted,” he murmured. “Oh, God. Does it feel good? Tell me it feels good.”

  “It feels...marvellous,” I panted, and I reached awkwardly to link my fingers with his.

  “Can’t frig you like this,” he protested.

  “I don’t care. Just fuck me. That’s all I want.”

  He took me at my word, pulling out a little then thrusting back in, again and again, our bodies parting only to meet again in a slap of sweaty flesh and ecstasy. It burned—it burned like a phoenix burns, new life rising from the ashes of its funeral pyre. I held Jem’s hand while he seared me from within, both of us trying and failing to stifle our helpless gasps. Sensation ebbed and flowed, an unstoppable tide.

  I teetered on the brink for what might have been seconds or hours. When I couldn’t hold back any longer, was almost delirious with stimulation and need, I let go of his hand and whispered, “Now, Jem. Now!”

  His weight shifted, and he pulled me back up to my knees, dropping a kiss to the back of my neck that melted me inside. Then his hand left my hip, crept forward. Jem had barely touched my cock before I was coming, my whole body racked with pleasure I thought would never end. I heard Jem’s groan in my ear, felt him shudder as I carried him over the edge with me. We subsided into sheets no longer cold, but sweat-warm, and I pillowed my head on his arm, blessed relief quivering through every fibre of my being.

  “All right?” Jem whispered.

  I couldn’t help it, I laughed aloud at the absurdity of the understatement. “More than all right,” I assured him, still chuckling.

  “Me too,” he said, and kissed the top of my head. “Me too.”

  Gradually, though, the euphoria faded. We still clung together, his touch still warmed me, but my mood turned ever colder. Now that I wasn’t blinded by desire, the discomforts of the situation were loudly making themselves known. The bed sagged, the covers were too thin for the season and something was making my skin itch.

  Christ, were there fleas in here with us? Or was it just my imagination? If I never got home again, could I stand to spend the rest of my life here in squalor and poverty?

  Jem tightened his arms around me, and somehow the horror of my lurid imaginings paled to black and white. If I was doomed to stay here—well, I had Jem, didn’t I? How bad could it be, with him by my side?

  It nagged at me, though. Why hadn’t I been able to return this evening? I racked my brain, trying to think what I’d done differently this time. I’d stayed longer, certainly, until the performance had finished for the night.

  Was that it?

  Did there have to be a performance going on, actually on stage at that moment, for the theatre to act as this strange gateway into another world? Trying to puzzle it out was making my head ache.

  “Jem?” I whispered.

  “Yeah?”

  “Talk to me, will you? Please?”

  He chuckled against my neck. “You’re a queer one, ain’t you?” He nuzzled in further. “You smell nice. Like perfume.”

  “I don’t wear—oh.” Not cologne or aftershave, no. But soaps, deodorants, shampoo—even basic men’s grooming products in the twenty-first century typically contain scent. To a Victorian nose, I probably smelled like a tart’s boudoir. I twisted in Jem’s arms until we were face to face, and I could breathe in his own aroma, a heady, earthy male scent. “You smell better.”

  “Doubt that.”

  He smelled of sex, too, I realised, and probably of other men as well as me. I didn’t like to think about it. “Do you hate what you do?”

  Jem was silent a moment. “Sometimes. Sometimes not. When a man’s good-looking, or he pays me just to frig my cock, or to kiss it—but you don’t want to hear that, do you? You want me to say I hate all them buggers what rent me, and I only do it ’cause I’d starve, else.”

  He was right.

  But I was wrong to want that. “I’m an idiot,” I whispered. “You shouldn’t worry about what I want to hear.”

  “Can’t help it,” he whispered back, stroking my hair. “Can’t help wanting you to like me.”

  “How could anyone not like you?” I wondered aloud.

  “There’s that silver tongue again,” he murmured then yawned. “Sleep now, love.” He snuggled down in the covers and in my arms, and I was left to lie awake and wonder if I was a fool to make anything out of that last word.

  In the end, even I slept.

  Chapter Five

  When I woke in the morning, I didn’t recognise the room. Sunlight streamed in through the window, highlighting the worn state of the blankets but showing, too, the cheerful paper on the wall, enlivened here and there by prints that were more well-meaning than artistic. The jug on the dresser might be chipped, but it looked clean and had a jaunty design painted on the side. I stretched cramped limbs, feeling a soreness inside me that sent a thrill coursing through my body.

  Jem’s eyes flickered open as I stirred. He smiled. “Thought I’d dreamed you.”

  We kissed, our stubble rasping together. In spite of everything, I felt ridiculously, deliriously happy.

  Jem’s eyes widened as I rolled on top of him. “Early riser, are you?” he asked with a smirk.

  I chose to misunderstand him. “Give me a reason to stay in bed, then,” I teased.

  “Oh, I got a reason. I got a big reason. Getting bigger all the time.” He pulled my hand down to show me just how big it was. “That reason big enough for you?”

  “I think it could get bigger.” I was stroking it up and down all the time.

  “And how would it do that?”

  “Oh...” I pretended to think. “Maybe if I were to do this?” I rubbed my thumb over his glans. Jem gasped. “Or maybe this?”

  I slung one leg over his hips, straddling him, then shifted forward until our cocks were rubbing together. I wrapped my hand around us both and carried on stroking. Jem’s eyes glazed over with pleasure.

  “Or maybe,” I continued a little breathily, “I should slide down in the bed, take you in my mouth and give you a good, hard—” I didn’t get to say the last word, as Jem’s whole body convulsed, hot wetness spurting up between us. He was beautiful when he came, his eyes flicking wide just at the moment of climax as if it was something he’d never expected, his blood-red lips open and panting.

  When my own orgasm came, it was almost secondary to the pleasure of watching him. Almost. I bent down to kiss him, our come smearing together, mingling between our bodies.

  “You always this chipper in the morning?” Jem asked, laughing.

  “Only when I wake up with you.” Right then, I didn’t care whether I ever got home again.

  We cleaned up as best we could, using the cold water in the jug. Jem ran downstairs to fetch warm water, and I let him shave me with his old-fashioned cut-throat razor, visions of demon barbers dancing in my head.

  “Don’t know a Mrs. Lovett, do you?” I asked.

  “Don’t think so. Who’s she? Oi, hold still—I’ll nick you if you keep laughing.”

  “Sorry. She’s no one. A fictional character. She made pies.”

  “Ah! She wouldn’t have a gentleman friend by the name of Sweeney Todd, would she?”

  “That’s the one.” I wondered what he’d make of Johnny Depp’s portrayal. Or of Helena Bonham-Carter, for that matter.

  “Think I’d waste you on pie fillings? ’Sides, ain’t nobody allowed to get a taste of you but me,” he added.

  I felt a pang in my chest, as I wished I could say the same about him.

  Once we were what Jem called respectable, we went downstairs for a late breakfast in Mrs. M.’s parlour, where we sat at a table with a coarse-featured man and a slovenly young woman. Jem introduced me, truthfully enough, as a friend who worked at the Cri. They looked me up and down, probably wondering if I’d raided the wardrobe department for my outfit.

  “Bess here’s a barmaid at the Cheshire Cheese on Fleet Street,” Jem told me. “And this is Harris.”

  She smiled; he nodded.

  “What do you do?” I asked to be polite.

  Harris narrowed his eyes over his cup of tea. “Deal in goods, mostly,” he said after a long pause.

  He didn’t look much like a shopkeeper—and if he was, what was he doing keeping as late hours as the rest of us? I was willing to bet the goods he dealt in were mainly ones he found in other people’s houses.

  Shirts and sheets hung above and around us. Mrs. M., I gathered, was a laundress as well as a landlady. The soapy smell I’d noticed last night seemed to have crept into the food, but I was too hungry to care.

  “What d’yer do at the theatre, then?” Bess asked, leaning over the table so that her breasts almost spilled out of the top of her dress.

  Harris turned red—or at least, redder—and couldn’t seem to keep his eyes off her.

  “Just general dogsbody, really,” I said.

  “Oh. So yer not on the stage, then?” She slumped back in her chair, disappointed, although probably not as much as Harris was at her spoiling his view.

  “Ted’s the theatre assistant at the Criterion,” Jem said, buttering some cold toast. He managed to make it sound like something to be proud of.

  “Can yer get us in to see the show for free?”