Wicked Gentlemen Read Online Free Page A

"Don't be taken in by a priest's collar. We in the Inquisition dance with devils more often than most whores in Hells Below."
    "Well, if I ever need a partner, perhaps I should look you up, Captain Harper." I swallowed my shot and placed the glass in Harper's gloved hand. He filled the glass, drank, then poured another and placed it in front of me.
    "We're already partners of a kind, aren't we, Mr. Sykes?" he asked.
    "Of a kind," I agreed.
    "Of a kind," he repeated, as if there were some other meaning in the words.
    I matched him and he downed another. Steadily, we made our way through the entire bottle. We gave ourselves up to the act of going on. We drank shot after shot of searing gin. Sinking down into drunkenness, the constant rhythm of passing the glass and drinking became our purpose.
    When you drink like that, it isn't for pleasure. It's because your thoughts have become diseases. You do it because it's the only easy cure you can find.
    Captain Harper moved slowly and carefully, as if his body had become a mechanism that required all his concentration to navigate through the bar. His eyes were hardly open. He leaned against me and moved with my steps as I steadily lead him out of the dark solace of the bar and up into the city streets. The night was wearing thin. I could feel the golden light of the rising sun streaking the horizon with its heat.
      Behind us the bar owner peered out between his doors, pretending that he was locking up. He watched to see what business there could be between a Prodigal like me and a man of the Inquisition.
    "You know, Captain," I whispered, "staggering drunk down the street with me can't do much for your reputation."
    "Fuck em," Captain Harper slurred softly into my ear, then pulled his cap off of my head.
    I let him have it back. His breath brushed against the back of my neck. His lips just touched my skin for a moment as he sagged into me. It had been months since I had taken a lover, even for a night. It had been too long, I realized. I sank back into my temptations. Captain Harper didn't seem to care, and at the moment neither did I. By my nature, I am a creature caught in the grip of my desires. At times they make me unwise, but it has never been in me to deny them.
    I led Captain Harper back to my rooms and peeled off his black coat and his priest's collar. Slowly, I worked his gloves off, exposing his long fingers. His nails were as pink and glossy as the insides of a seashell. Each was tipped with a perfect white crescent. I kissed the soft skin of his palm. His stainless body was everything my own would never be. I hungered for that perfection.
    I slipped Captain Harper's pistol out of its holster and had all that I wanted of Harper that night. I did not worry over the next morning or the lies we muttered as our bodies twined together. For one evening, the gin had cured us of our thoughts—that was enough.
     
    Chapter Four
    Old Ink
     
    Roffcale's letters smelled of dried blood and very cheap cologne. I pulled in his scent while my fingertips brushed over the clumsy lines of his reform school script. He was young and passionate. He poured himself into each word with absurd intensity. With every letter he set down, he fell in love and was overwhelmed with rage. His odes to Joan Talbott's beauty were terrible. Roffcale stacked cliche upon cliche until they achieved a staggering tower of artless adoration. Roffcale's miserable poetry acquired poignancy with its absolute conviction. He meant every word.
    Roffcale's desperate warnings to Joan were just that: attempts to protect a woman he could not even approach in public. Joan Talbott was from good society and Peter Roffcale was an underage con man with nails as black as any demon's.
    I leafed through the pages of his letters, touching the paper where Joan's hands had moved over Roffcale's words.
    Roffcale had pressed his palms into the pages to hold them still as he wrote. He had run his fingers under difficult words, checking