“You didn’t think I was going to let this go, did you?” Tris demanded, yanking the boot from Charles’s hand and throwing it across the room.
“I’m not one of your inamoratas.” Charles’s teeth were clenched. “I’m not going to treat you like a man-whore, Tristan. Either you want to lie with me because it matters or you don’t.”
“I have
never
met a man like you before,” Tristan said. “If any of my friends were in this position with a woman, they’d already be in bed with her skirts up around her ears. You—well, what I’d like is to box your ears until they ring. Pray explain to me what is the difficulty? Do you want me or not?”
“Of course I want you,” Charles snarled. “My
God
, I’ve wanted you from the beginning.”
“You want me. So if loving me is what’s stopping you from fucking me, then stop loving me, for God’s sake. You have me confused, Charlie. All I know is that I want you and you want me, and for some reason you’re keeping me from acting on it.”
“I’m sorry,” Charles said and lay back on the bed, running his hands through his hair. “It’s just that, well, this is the first time in years that I’ve wanted to go to bed with someone I care about. And I remember what happened the last time, and, bugger, Tris, I’m terrified.”
“What happened last time?”
“He changed his mind. He said he loved me, but then just a few days after our affair started, he changed his mind. Said he’d had a crisis of conscience and that the feelings he had for me were
unnatural
, that he had to stop for both our sakes. Asked to be transferred to another company so we wouldn’t be together so much. So I could see him occasionally, pass him on sentry duty, even speak to him once in a while, but never touch him, never kiss him, never know what it was like to hold him again.”
“And you think that will happen with me,” Tris surmised. “So you don’t trust me.”
“And when you say things like it’s just lust, or sex, or fucking, it makes it sound so shallow and cold. I’ve had those kinds of encounters, Tris. I’ve had to: the furtive coupling that eases nothing but physical need. I don’t want that from you. So if that’s all it is for you, then I’d rather go back to my regiment.” Charles’s voice was hoarse from unshed tears.
“You don’t trust me.” Tristan thought he might cry himself.
“I do trust you,” Charles said. “I’m just… afraid.”
“The brave soldier.” Tristan sat down on the bed beside him, laying his hand on Charles’s belly. “I’m supposed to be the one who’s afraid. And I am. But not of lying with you. Not of taking you, even though I can’t quite figure out how it’s not going to hurt. I’m afraid of losing you.”
Charles reached up and took Tristan’s hand, drawing him down on the bed beside him. They lay across the coverlet on their backs, gazing up at the canopy, their only physical contact their intertwined fingers. Finally Charles said, “But that’s exactly what I’m afraid of, Tris. Losing you. Of you deciding that this isn’t what you want. Because maybe it will hurt, and nothing I do will give you pleasure, and you’ll decide it’s not worth it. That I’m not worth it.”
Tristan shifted to his side, resting his head on his hand and studying Charles with faint amusement. “I could say the same,” he pointed out. “Perhaps I won’t give you pleasure, and you’ll decide to run away with one of the footmen. It’s a risk you take, Charlie.” He gave him a wry grin. “I dare you.”
“You and your dares.” Charles lay still a moment, then rolled over in a rush, taking Tris with him and under him. He sank his teeth gently into Tristan’s shoulder, not hard enough to break the skin, but firm enough to hold him. Tris gasped and his heart started pounding wildly. Charles shifted his weight so that his legs pressed Tristan’s thighs apart and he settled into the space, rocking gently against Tristan. Heat flooded Tristan’s veins and he groaned, raising his legs and wrapping them around Charles’s hips, locking his ankles to hold Charles to him forever.
Charles made a noise against Tristan’s shoulder and his mouth turned gentle, kissing up the curve of his shoulder and throat, suckling his earlobe and then flicking his tongue into Tristan’s ear. Tristan shuddered and reached for Charles’s head, pulling him up so that he could kiss him again, hungrily, then twisted his body, rolling them back the other way until he was pinning Charles, straddling him. Then he broke the kiss and sat up, settling on those strong thighs, and pulled his banyan and nightshirt over his head and tossed them onto the floor. “I hope your door is locked,” he said, bending to kiss Charles’s chest.
Charles groaned and buried his hands in Tristan’s hair. The feel of those long, powerful fingers against his skull made Tris shiver in delight. Charles’s skin was warm and salty; Tristan licked him, tasting him, even as his hands slid down that muscled abdomen to the fastenings of his trousers, finding and dispatching the multiplicity of buttons.
And then, for the first time, he lay hands on another man’s cock.
He knew what it should feel like; he’d handled his own often enough. But somehow, the hard, velvety shaft in his hands roused him even more than Charles’s hands on his own had; he felt the rush of blood to his own staff, felt the surge of heat to his face and lips and breast. He glanced up to see Charles’s back arched, his head thrown back, heard the rasp of harsh breaths and thought,
This—this is what I want. What I’ve always wanted….
The last of the fear bled away and it was with nothing but desire and love that he bent to lick the little pearl of fluid from the tip of Charles’s cock. It tasted of salt and spice, faintly bitter and addictive as the best brandy. Tris licked the round head, the edge of foreskin, the drop that eased from the tiny slit to replace the one he’d already tasted, then set about exploring Charles intently with his lips and tongue. He licked along the shaft, tasted the warm, furry weight of Charles’s ballocks, nuzzled up Charles’s groin into the musky warmth of the nest of hair there. His fingers played alongside as he licked back up to the tip again, then took Charles into his mouth, sliding down deep as he could without gagging, his fingers closing around the base. He drew back, his lips tight over his teeth and his tongue and cheeks sucking hard, all the way back up to the head, then back down again.
“Oh,
God
,” Charles groaned.
Tris released him long enough to say, “I bloody
love
the way you taste, Charlie,” before closing his mouth over Charles’s cock again. He recalled the times he’d had whores take him like this and tried to remember the things they’d done that felt especially good; it became a game for him to see what ones made Charles whimper, what ones made him groan. Charles’s hands had fallen away from his head and were clenched in the coverlet beside him, hanging on as if he thought he was going to fly off the bed. His fingers felt Charles’s balls tighten even before Charles’s strangled “Tris!” and he went down deep again, his other hand pulling up on the loose velvety skin as he took Charles in and swallowed the hot seed that burst against his throat. Then he licked the remnants from Charles’s shaft until it went soft, and then, only then, did he raise his head to meet Charles’s dazed eyes. The sight made a slow, deep warmth begin to glow in his chest, a warmth that was like, yet unlike, the feeling he had the first time he’d seen Jamie.
Oh.
He smiled and said honestly, rawly, “I love you, Charlie.”
He eased up next to Charles on the bed, curling up against the solid, sweat-streaked chest and resting his head on Charles’s shoulder. Charles said, “That wasn’t supposed to be how it went.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. I was supposed to make love to you, not the other way around.”
“You did that once, a few days ago, as I recall. Turnabout’s fair play, don’t you think?” Tristan turned his head to look at Charles. “Did you like it?” he asked, suddenly uncertain.
“Oh, love,” Charles said fervently, “it was
astounding
.”
“No running off with the footmen?”
“Well,” Charles said thoughtfully, “they are bruisers, aren’t they? You did hire them for their looks, I’m sure.”
Tristan dug his fingers into Charles’s ribs and Charles yelped, then wrapped his arms around Tris and rolled over, covering him, enveloping him, encasing him in warm flesh. Tristan sighed and ran his hands up Charles’s muscular back. “Charlie,” he said in contentment. “
My
Charlie.”
“Yours,” Charles said agreeably and kissed him, his mouth soft, with the odd but wonderful contrast of bristly whiskers on Tristan’s cheek. Tristan closed his eyes and returned the kiss, feeling like at last—at
last
—he’d found home.
The
clock on the mantel chimed softly; Tristan lay in the darkness of the drawn bedcurtains and counted to himself. At five, the chiming stopped. Early, then.
He turned his head into the warm shelter of Charles’s shoulder. It was too dark to see his lover, but the lack of light only made his other senses stronger: he could hear Charles’s quiet, regular breathing, smell the warm herbal scent of his skin and the stronger, more pungent smell of their lovemaking. And felt the rough, sandy stubble of Charles’s cheek against his forehead. Soon, too soon, he’d have to creep back into his own room. Last night, after Reston had finished tidying up, Tristan had drawn the bedcurtains on his own bed, to give the illusion that he was still there, and come here, into Charles’s arms.
They’d spent the night exploring each other, finding out what made each other respond. Tristan had discovered that Charles was quite ticklish and took advantage of it; Charles, for his part, had found out that the soles of Tristan’s feet were amazingly sensitive and that licking them made Tristan insane with lust. Despite Charles’s determined exploration of every inch of Tristan’s skin, and Tristan’s of Charles, they’d kept it simple. They’d sated their desire with hands and mouths, stifling their cries in the bedclothes and each other’s skin. Then they’d both fallen asleep, exhausted and content.
He’d never slept with a lover before, except Charlotte—and then only during their honeymoon. Even when they were benighted when traveling back and forth from their country house, he’d always arranged separate rooms at whatever inn they’d ended up.
He’d dozed in a lover’s bed every once in a while, but never for more than a few minutes. And yet here he was, after a good six hours of steady, dreamless sleep. Dreamless. Sleep. He smiled to himself. Was this all it took? To lie in the arms of a man? Or just
this
man? Because he felt relatively sure that it was this man who made the difference. While he’d admitted to himself that he’d found other men attractive, it was men in general, not anyone specific. Charles was different. It wasn’t just attraction; he
liked
Charles as well as loved him.
There was a faint scraping sound in the room. Curious, he crawled to the foot of the bed and peeked out through the curtains, careful not to reveal himself. It was just one of the scullery maids, come to build up the banked fire and warm the room before Charles would rise. He smiled to himself, wondering if she’d already done the fire in his own room, thinking the master was deep in his usual drunken repose behind the blue velvet curtains.
Then the bed shifted and a warm pair of lips dropped a kiss in the small of Tristan’s back. He jerked in startlement and bit back a gasp; it seemed that he’d been quiet enough, though, as the maid kept on with her work, undisturbed.
Then the chaste lips turned wicked, hot and wet; a tongue flicked over the dimples of his arse, and hands settled on his hips to raise him to his knees and hold him immobile. He clenched the curtains in his fist until he realized that if the maid turned around, she’d see him; then he released them and grabbed instead for the bedcovers, drawing them up and into his mouth to bite down on them, stifling a cry as those wicked lips moved lower, the hands moving to part his cheeks and the sweet, wet tongue sliding between to flick over his opening before dropping to lick at his ballocks.
Oh, God
, he thought helplessly as Charles nuzzled there, and at the insides of his thighs, and then back again at his entrance, pushing at it with his wet tongue. The sensation was indescribable; he thought perhaps his eyes rolled back in his head, and he
knew
he felt dizzy. They hadn’t done
that
last night.