“What do you have to say for yourself now, sir?” Jopson is soft-voiced, every vowel achingly correct.

Their rooms here in Bond Street are like a ship’s cabin, narrow and gloomy, and this is how Crozier prefers it. Small, neat, cramped, tight, and above all solitary but for the clatter of traffic, with no callers. The pair of them may carry out their games of catharsis here in private, far from the careful eye of neighbors and housemaids. Jopson is immaculate; a shadow catches at his smooth cheek, turning his heavy-lashed eyes dark and forbidding. In one light he can be a chaste-faced schoolboy and in another he can be very cruel. It is this cruelty that Crozier likes best, when he is in such a mood as he is in tonight.

“I did what I could,” Crozier rasps. “I did all I could.”

Jopson frowns at him, but his handsome face is opaque. “Thighs apart, if you please.”

Naked without shame on the Turkish carpet with Jopson astride him like a titan. Jopson wears exquisitely brushed blue wool, with an epaulet at each shoulder and shining boots of black leather. Crozier has polished those boots to a mirror shine; he has kissed the spatters of mud away and worshipped them with his tongue. The tip of Jopson’s boot nudges into the softness of Crozier’s thigh, pressing lightly. Crozier sucks a desperate breath and waits for what he knows is coming.

“Are you ready now, captain?”

Crozier’s voice is a thin croak, issuing from a dry throat. “Yes.”

Jopson sets his foot against him and treads with purpose — treading on his cock and balls, pressing them under his foot until the swell of pain eclipses everything. Crozier’s stomach is quaking, and his prick is stiff as an iron poker, even as the weight of Jopson’s foot grinds his balls into oblivion. His knees are pinioned apart by strength of will and his hands are braced together in front of his chest, white-knuckled with the effort of not flinching away. It’s only natural for a man to shield himself from such intimate blows, however much he has resigned himself and however much he may desire the pain of them, but he will not allow himself to shirk his punishment.

Crozier’s hoarse groans issue forth heavy and heated, and Jopson steps and treads with the diligence of a man doing his work. The pain is exquisite, but there is pleasure in it too. It is the schoolboy’s private pleasure at a smarting palm or a sore backside, the destructive frisson of a pressed bruise. Francis craves the pain of it, but more than that he craves to be laid low, to be crushed like an insect beneath a better man’s boot heel. Jopson is a better man than he has ever been.

“That’s enough, lad,” Francis finally permits himself to say, when the pleasure-pain has reached its zenith. His voice is breaking, and his arousal is its own agonizing pain. “Enough.”

Crozier is breathless and scarlet-faced, and when that hard square boot heel is lifted from his privates he finally lets himself cringe into a heap on the carpet. Jopson kneels between his legs, taking his aching prick in one gloved hand. He draws him off with excruciatingly steady strokes, drawing back the red aching foreskin and slicking Francis’ prick with its spend. If he would only kiss it and take it in his mouth, then Crozier could expire happily here.

“It’s a pleasure to serve, sir.”

Jopson looks him in the eye, bracing with his arm against Crozier’s naked chest. His sturdy youth all flush against Crozier’s stout age, the dark stubble shining through his white cheek — but in his eyes there is all love, all the tenderness there is in this God-forsaken world, and all duty. From him the word sir is as good as a caress.