Ashton Laytham was a happy little boy until, at the age of seven, he lost his parents. Sent to Fayerweather to be brought up by his uncle and his uncle’s wife, he was perceived to be an unhappy, unlovable child. Shunned by family and servants and permitted no friends to visit, he grows to adulthood alone and aloof, with only an occasional illicit rendezvous to lighten his days. When his uncle dies, leaving the estate virtually bankrupt, it’s left to Ashton to make good on his uncle’s gaming debts and save Fayerweather. But how? The family talisman, worth thousands of pounds, has been stolen and the suspects vanished in the night, leaving Ashton to face the loss of the home he’s come to love. Geo Stephenson, who works in His Majesty’s civil service, has ghosts of his own. The product of a marriage of convenience, Geo has known all his life his father never loved his mother, and he vows that will never happen to him. Marked by a physical scar earned in battle, none of his previous lovers could bear looking at it without shuddering; his mental scars are due to the many friends lost in useless battles. Geo arrives with a fistful of Sir Eustace Laytham’s IOUs and a solution: Ashton accommodating him in bed, thereby paying off the debt. Attracted to Geo in spite of himself and desperate for any human kindness, Ashton agrees ... never expecting to lose his heart to a man who has sworn he’ll never give his. Can these two men find a measure of happiness together?

Bless Us With Content

“Well done, Ash.” He sauntered to the bed and trailed a fingertip from one nipple to the other. I was startled by their responsiveness, by the way they tightened and almost ached to be pinched. He sat beside me on the bed, his hip snug against mine, and his palm followed the path of hair down the centre of my body to where my prick rose proud and thick from the thatch of pale curls that grew around it.


I raised a hand to touch his hair. “Let me—”


“No,” he said. “Let me.” And his mouth came down on mine.


I wound my arms about his neck and drew him closer. If it had been anyone else, I would have been embarrassed by the low, hungry sounds I made as I fed on his mouth. What was it about his kisses? I’d had more than a week to mull over my reaction to them but had been unable to come to any satisfactory conclusion beyond the fact he was the first ever to have kissed me.


Chapter 55