Bone Idol by Paige Turner Page A

most extraordinary hoax.
    And he didn’t want to believe that Henry—upright, clear-eyed Henry—had fallen for it, had believed the dig site held an extraordinary discovery, and had been ambitious enough, wicked enough, to destroy it.
    Henry stalked over to him, his eyes never leaving Albert’s, the tension palpable in his straight spine and the set of his shoulders. Then he yanked Albert’s head towards him, taking his mouth in a crushing, brutal kiss. Still holding him in place with a fierce hand in his curls, Henry moved his other hand to take Albert’s upper arm in a bruising grip, pulling him forward so hard that Albert had no choice but to fall against him. When Albert refused to open his mouth, Henry bit him sharply enough to taste blood, pushing his tongue inside when Albert’s lips parted in a little cry of pain and surprise.
    Then, with an abruptness that left Albert shocked, shaken and, strangely, bereft, he stepped back, setting Albert away from him, standing with his head lowered, breathing hard.
    When he spoke, his voice was so low that Albert had to strain to hear it. “How could you?” He raised his head, his dark blue eyes full of pain. “How could you believe it?”
    Albert touched his hand to his lip, and stared at his fingers for a long moment when they came away stained with blood. “I didn’t know what else to believe,” he mumbled, shame-faced. He felt an urgent upwelling of love and relief that threatened to choke him.
    “He said he saw you last night…”
    Henry stared at him. “You little fool,” he said, not altogether unkindly. “I was coming to your tent. I was coming to you.”
    “So you didn’t…?”
    “Of course I didn’t!”
    Albert had never heard Henry raise his voice before. Not when he had argued with his father. Not when Albert had accused him of deliberate cruelty. Not when he had woken, all innocence, to find himself in the centre of a maelstrom of fire and accusations. But he was shouting now, his usually placid and controlled features lined with anguish.
    “Why didn’t you defend yourself?” Albert wanted to weep.
    “How could I? Should I have told them that I was on my way to make love to you?
    Dawlish knew what he was doing when he made that accusation.” His face twisted into an www.total-e-bound.com
    expression of bitter grief. “And it seems he knew his man when he thought that you would believe him, would believe the worst of me.”
    Albert’s relief was swallowed up by guilt and regret, and he moved towards Henry, wanting to touch him, to comfort him. But Henry stepped back, moving away from him as though he was caustic, or poisonous.
    “How could you accuse me after all we have been to one another? After all we have done?”
    Albert felt thick blood rush to his face. “I didn’t mean to accuse,” he faltered. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. Henry, what else was I supposed to believe?”
    Henry’s face had resumed its accustomed stillness, but that quietness, that impeccable, implacable control, was almost worse than his anger. “Anything else,” he said, in a voice that was perfectly steady and perfectly calm. “You were supposed to believe anything else. You were supposed to suspect anybody else. Not me.”
    “Suspect whom?” Albert began to feel exasperated. He was tired and confused. He had swung from despair to powerful, confusing, reluctant arousal, to relief, to guilt, and he wanted to cry.
    He wanted to go to Henry, to lay his head against his chest while he stroked his hair, to tell him how sorry he was and be told in return that it was all right, that he was forgiven.
    He wanted to tell him of the discovery he had made among his father’s papers, but the thought of it made his spine crawl with guilt and shame. He thought of Henry on the train, defending his decision to expose his father’s mistake with Streptosaurus boundrii . He thought of him saying, “I had no choice.”
    Then Henry reached out and touched the curve of