A Seditious Affair(94)
“Nor me.” Silas gave him a wolfish grin. “The difference is, I don’t have to. Get on your knees, Tory. I’ll spoil your supper for you.”
In half an hour, he was due to be in the drawing room. He’d be flushed, his hair disarranged; he’d have Silas on his breath and an ache between his legs that would render the entire evening a torture. “You can’t do this to me,” Dominic protested. “You swine.”
“That right? And here was me thinking I can do anything I want to you. Going to tell me otherwise?”
“No.”
“What can I do?”
Dominic shut his eyes. “Anything you want.”
Silas’s lips, open and demanding, met his. There was a tongue in his mouth, hard knuckles digging into his chest, a hand between his legs working his straining prick, and Dominic gave himself up to those long, commanding, hungry kisses. Anything at all, my brute. For the taking.
Silas pulled away too soon, looking dazed, though his grip was unmerciful as ever. “That’s for later. A lot more of that. For now…got anything to say?”
Anything meant Mason, which meant No. No, I don’t want you to fuck my mouth and send me off with swollen lips and an aching prick; I don’t want my friends quietly speculating about what I’ve been up to; I don’t want to spend the night shaking with anticipation…
“Nothing at all,” Dominic said.
Silas smiled at him, that look of conspiratorial understanding between the two of them, and Dominic felt his own lips curve in response. “I’m glad to hear it, Tory. Now get on your knees.”
Author’s Note
This is a romance, but the tragic farce of the Cato Street Conspiracy was real. I have taken all the details and much of the conspirators’ dialogue from the accounts given at the trial. They really were that deluded, that desperate, their plan really was that bad; and they really were set up by George Edwards, acting as agent provocateur for a reactionary government, and a judge who ensured their trial could go only one way.
Arthur Thistlewood, James Ings, Richard Tidd, John Thomas Brunt, and William Davidson were hanged on May 1, 1820.
For May Peterson, who is definitely Team Radical
Acknowledgments
Slang lexicographer Jonathon Green is extraordinarily generous with his help, and his slang timelines and dictionaries are invaluable to any lover of historical slang, swearing, and abuse. Follow him on Twitter @MisterSlang. Tim Heath of the Blake Society was very kind and helpful in explaining the production of Blake’s illuminated books. I have been heavily reliant on John Stanhope’s book The Cato Street Conspiracy, a detailed and comprehensive account of this sorry affair, and Iain McCalman’s Radical Underworld. Any errors on the topics they cover are of my own making.
As ever, I owe a great deal to my agent, Deidre Knight, and everything to my family. (Except the cat. He’s useless.)
BY K. J. CHARLES
Society of Gentlemen
A Fashionable Indulgence
The Ruin of Gabriel Ashleigh (short story)
A Seditious Affair
A Gentleman’s Position (coming soon)
About the Author
K. J. CHARLES is a writer and freelance editor living in London. She has two kids, one cat, a shed to write in, and a big mug for tea—she’s not sure what else you need in life. Find K. J. all too often on Twitter or on Facebook.
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The Editor’s Corner
Happy Holidays from our hearth to yours! This month we’re sending you some hot Loveswept romances to keep the fire burning:
USA Today bestselling author Bronwen Evans’s new Disgraced Lords novel is about a marriage of convenience and its delightful pleasures—and mortal danger in A Whisper of Desire. K. J. Charles turns up the heat in her new Society of Gentlemen novel, A Seditious Affair, as two lovers face off in a sensual duel that challenges their deepest beliefs. Samantha Kane’s Birmingham Rebels series proves that three’s never a crowd…at least not for the hard-bodied football all-stars who give teamwork a sexy twist in Calling the Play. Welcome to Forever, new from author Annie Rains, introduces a small coastal town where America’s best and brightest risk everything for love. Jackie Ashenden ups the ante in the seductive Deacons of Bourbon Street series, co-written with Megan Crane, Rachael Johns, and Maisey Yates, with Hold Me Down, a story about what happens when the biker who broke Alice’s heart rides into town and she must choose between passion and duty. Another story for MC fans is Violetta Rand’s irresistible novel about a sexy-as-sin biker who tempts a good girl to go bad, Persuasion.