Whistling in the Dark by Tamara Allen

Author:Tamara Allen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: gay, queer, romance, manLove, m2m, gay romance, music, jazz, 1920s, historical, historical romance
ISBN: 978-1590210499
Publisher: Lethe Press
Published: 2009-01-02T05:00:00+00:00

- Twenty-Four -

Submerged to his chin, Jack watched the sliver of soap float across his line of vision. Standing to with unflinching valor was the tin soldier he had found in his coat pocket. With every ripple, the S.S. Ivory whirled and tipped, but the soldier remained steadfast, his loaded gun at the ready—a useful item when other people with loaded guns were emptying them in your direction. But gun and bayonet were an extra burden when a fellow already had a wireless kit to look after. Rough work that had been, hauling the equipment from place to place, constantly setting it up, taking it down, and keeping it in good repair under the most miserable conditions—and he wouldn’t have traded the job for any other the army might’ve offered.

Putting soap and soldier aside, he leaned back and closed his eyes. The apartment was quiet, but it didn’t feel deserted. Sutton lay still abed, probably as beat emotionally as physically. A smile crept up on Jack. Sophisticated Mabel, deciding that love affairs were meant to be just for fun, and all the while he acted as if he’d stumbled upon paradise. The worst of it was that Jack liked seeing that look in his eyes, that adoration. He liked the kisses that were too tender to be purely lust. He liked that voice, laughing and affectionate, in his ear.

He could have happily tossed Lewis into the river last night and waved from shore as he floated with the sewage out to sea. Lewis could say what he liked about Jack, and maybe some of it deserved, but he wouldn’t hurt Sutton again—and Jack supposed Lewis knew as much, by the look Jack had given him when they’d come back down for cookies and cocoa.

When the party had broken up, Jack was glad to leave. It had been a pleasure to scurry through the cold, knowing he wouldn’t be coming back to an empty apartment and a lonely bed. Maybe it wasn’t going to last long. Sooner or later, Sutton would want something more than pounding out popular music on an old piano in the back of a novelty shop. Jack knew it, even if Sutton didn’t—yet. And when his respectable world swept him back in its arms, there were things he would feel obliged to leave behind.

So it wouldn’t last, but while it did, he would enjoy it. Before the shop, afloat for the moment, went under for good, before the nightmares ran him to ground and forced Harry to send him away somewhere locked and padded, he was going to have the best time he’d ever had with the sweetest guy he’d ever met.

He pulled the plug but stayed put until the water drained. He didn’t recall the particular nightmare that had snapped him awake at the ungodly hour of six and he didn’t want to. He was just glad he hadn’t awakened Sutton. Wrapped in a towel, he left the warm bathroom for the cold bedroom, wanting to crawl back under the blankets and banish the chill.

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