There Will Be Phlogiston Read Online Free

vulnerability of skin.
“Say no, and I’ll stop.”
    Lord Mercury twisted helplessly like a heretic on
the rack. Unable to utter the word that would end his torment. No , and he would be a gentleman again, and Anstruther Jones
would be nothing but an upstart. His unshapeable Galatea. A sordid
fantasy for endless solitary nights.
    Jones gripped him. Even through fabric, he could
feel the warmth of the man’s hand, and it was beautiful,
horrifying, blissful. Then he stilled. “Say yes, and I’ll
continue.”
    He shook his head frantically. He couldn’t say that
either. One thing to have this happen, in darkness and in shame, an
act perpetrated between unaccountable strangers. Another entirely
to ask for it. Be part of it.
    “I don’t bed the unwilling.”
    Lord Mercury couldn’t quite restrain the pleading
tilt of his hips. He wasn’t unwilling. He wished he was.
    “Or people who don’t know what they want.”
    Jones was going to let him go. Let him go and walk
away. Leave him like this.
    And it didn’t matter . . . It didn’t matter . . .
because he would go out tonight. Find a Jack tar or a soldier or
airman. Acts, they were nothing but acts, the things he craved. It
would be the same.
    It wouldn’t be the same.
    He wouldn’t be held like this. Or touched like this.
It wouldn’t be Jones. With his grey-sky eyes and his smile-hiding
mouth, his certainties and convictions, his heedless kindness.
    Jones’s other hand came round him, brushed the edge
of his jaw. Found the piece of skin above his collar. Stroked him
there.
    Where it shouldn’t have meant anything.
    “Tell me,” he whispered. Not command, not demand,
not plea.
    And Lord Mercury was undone. “Yes. If you must know.
Yes.”
    To his bewilderment and his quick-flaring horror,
Jones let him go. It had been a trick, nothing but a trick, some
further mortification, blackmail perhaps, or—
    “Where’s your bedroom?”
    “That’s . . . that’s not necessary.”
    Jones laughed. Leaned down and—of all things—pressed
their brows together. “I’ve spent most of my life on airships,
making do. You can be damn sure it’s necessary.”
    Lord Mercury was never quite sure why he allowed
it.
    But, somehow . . .
    In his own bed. With Anstruther Jones.
    It was not like it had ever been before.
    He thought of pleasure as something to be snatched
from whatever was done to him, but Jones lavished him with it. Made
him wanton.
    And, afterwards, Lord Mercury hid his face in the
crook of his elbow and cried with shame.
    “You’ve done that before? I didn’t hurt you?”
Jones’s fingertips skated lightly down his sweat-slick spine, the
sweetness of his touch spreading a kind of sickness in their
wake.
    Lord Mercury shook his head.
    The bed shifted as Jones settled on the coverlet.
“That good, eh?”
    “No . . . I mean . . . It’s just now I am truly your
whore.”
    There was a long silence. Even muffled by his arm,
Lord Mercury could hear his own breaths, too loud and ragged.
“Well,” said Jones, “this is awkward because I don’t remember
agreeing to pay you.”
    Lord Mercury sat up, feeling more naked than his
nakedness warranted, and tugged a pillow over himself. “You already
bought me.”
    “I didn’t buy this. You asked me for it.”
    Heat gathered horribly under his skin—it burned in
his cheeks, spilling down his throat, over his chest, a spreading
scarlet brand. “I . . . I know.”
    “And I didn’t buy you either.” Jones stretched out,
unabashed and magnificently naked, sweat glinting on the dark hair
that curled across his chest and thighs. “Trade is trade. I don’t
see the rush to make it something filthy.”
    “But I’m a gentleman.”
    “And my mothers were whores. I don’t think any less
of either of you.” He reached out and pulled the pillow away from
Lord Mercury’s body.
    He thought about resisting, but it would have been
undignified. Covered himself with his hands instead.
    Jones grinned at him. “You’d