Chapter 24 #3
Ash shut his eyes tight as Olly deftly undid the ties of his breeches and slid his hand fully inside. Ash jerked into his grip and, emboldened, Olly shoved the fabric down and let his prick spring free. Ash groaned. From somewhere – from everywhere – Agnes gasped.
‘Oh.’
Ash felt the weight of Olly above him shift, one hand now playfully trailing up and down the length of Ash’s shaft.
‘Do you wish to sit?’
He was speaking to Agnes, Ash realised.
‘I … I cannot decide.’
‘What did you do—’ Olly said, breath catching. ‘Last time?’
Agnes took a moment to respond. ‘I watched,’ she said. ‘I only watched.’
‘Nothing else?’
Another long pause. ‘Not until after.’
Olly gasped out a laugh then ducked down, running his lips over Ash’s thighs. Ash was struck with the image of Agnes locked in her chambers, the door bolted, her skirts discarded. Or Agnes on her back, her lithe archer’s hands thrust beneath the fabric of her clothes, seeking, finding, pressing.
‘Tell me,’ Ash breathed.
It sounded so needy. It was too much; too fragile, too embarrassing, words that would damn him come dawn. But all he could think was how much he needed to know, how much he wanted to hear her describe bringing herself to completion.
Olly laughed again. He sucked an open kiss to the sensitive skin of Ash’s inner thigh, teeth and tongue, then rose higher to brush his lips against Ash’s prick.
‘I say we give her something to watch, my Lord,’ he teased.
Before Ash could respond, Olly took Ash’s cock into his mouth. Ash arched against the bed with a curse as the wet heat enveloped him, the delirious pleasure. Agnes gasped – almost a moan.
Still he could not see her. Even had he opened his eyes, his view would only have been of the canopy above. Part of him was glad for it; if he could see her watching him, he may perish from it, from the realisation of what he was doing. What they were all doing, together.
He heard her take a breath. ‘I returned to my chambers.’
Agnes’s voice was clear but quiet. Olly stilled a little, his movements less fervent than before. But he did not pull away.
‘And then I brought myself to release,’ she breathed.
Olly released his prick with a soft noise. Ash groaned.
‘My, my.’ Olly turned his head, peering towards Agnes, Ash assumed. ‘What a sinful little sodomite you are.’
‘Says the man with my husband’s prick in his mouth.’
‘It is not currently in my mouth.’
‘And that is the part you take umbrage with?’
Even hearing them bicker was enough to make Ash squirm.
‘Olly—’
‘It appears I am needed,’ Olly drawled.
‘By all means.’
Without further warning, Olly once again wrapped his lips around Ash’s cock. Ash gasped, bucking against him. Olly laid a deft, strong hand on his stomach, forcing him back down onto the mattress, keeping him from moving.
It was so much. It was too much, knowing that Agnes was watching, that she was there as Ash fell to pieces. He felt Olly move, the loss of one of his hands – then a groan, a doubled sound, one from Olly’s mouth that vibrated down Ash’s prick and one from Agnes’s, that vibrated into his soul.
Olly had taken himself in hand. Ash felt his arm move against his leg in desperate jerks, and wished he could reach down and see Olly off himself.
But he could not; he was too lost as it was, too close, too trapped.
He stuttered out a noise into the dark, a curse, a prayer.
Olly hummed around his cock. Agnes gasped again.
Ash could not see – but he could guess. He could picture it.
His pleasure peaked.
Olly made a low noise as Ash spent into his mouth. But he did not let him go, did not lean away, not until he made a muffled sound that indicated he, too, was close. Olly stiffened, and Ash felt his mouth slacken and his lips part as his spend striped across Ash’s thighs.
Finally, Ash opened his eyes. Agnes was right above him, peering down at his supine form, leaning against one of the bedposts with a wide-eyed, exhausted expression. Her hair was wild about her head, her skirts in disarray about her thighs.
‘I should go …’ She started awkwardly towards the door.
‘Wait—’
She hesitated. Ash turned to Olly. They shared a brief look – a tilt of the head, a raise of the eyebrows – and Ash knew that Olly approved of what he was about to do.
‘You may stay, if you like,’ he said. ‘Just to sleep,’ he added hastily, spotting her expression. ‘But if you wished to … we would like that.’
She lingered in the doorway. Just as Ash thought she was about to dismiss him, she took a step towards the bed.
‘Are you sure?’ she asked. ‘Both of you?’
‘Of course,’ Ash said, just as Olly mumbled, ‘Get— bed,’ looping an arm around Ash’s middle.
‘I will assume that means yes?’
Without waiting for – or needing – a response, she crept back towards them. Ash quickly wiped himself off on a discarded undershirt before getting himself and Olly back beneath the covers, watching her – waiting for her.
After a moment’s thought, Agnes removed her kirtle, leaving her standing in just her loose underdress. Ash could see the curve of her breasts, the stiff peaks of her nipples.
Realising he was staring, he forced himself to look away.
She slid into the bed beside him, back into the space she had occupied when Ash first entered the room.
Ash relaxed, feeling Olly shuffling closer, pressing his stomach to Ash’s back and looping his arm sleepily around his middle.
Ash couldn’t help but melt into the touch, sliding his fingers between Olly’s, keeping him close.
From only a few inches away, Agnes was peering at him. Her eyes darted over Ash’s shoulder to Olly, then back to Ash. She was about to say something, when Ash quickly spoke over her. ‘Sleep,’ he whispered.
She gave him a nervous sort of smile – which he returned – then he tugged the fur tighter over their shoulders and let the reeling in his head overtake him, slipping into darkness.
There was a tight pain, like a sharp rock, lodged behind Ash’s eyeball. He groaned, then attempted – and failed – to roll over.
His body was caught in a tangle of limbs.
He opened his eyes properly, the blur around him solidifying, the confusion sloughing away like rainwater.
Agnes to one side, Olly to the other. Olly’s arm was caught tight around Ash’s middle, Agnes’s feet slotted between his own. He shifted, almost unsure of how he had come to be here.
As he stirred, Agnes’s feet twitched, moved, and then her eyes too slid open. As he caught her gaze, it came flooding back: a torrent of hot memory and blurred boundaries and sweaty, satiated lust.
‘Good morning.’
Both he and Agnes jumped; Olly, clearly, was also awake. He heaved himself over Ash’s body with a clammy, clumsy grip.
‘Did you sleep well?’
Agnes sniffed at him as Ash rolled over. He had been attempting to shrug Olly off, but succeeded only in lying on his back with Olly now sprawled across his chest.
‘Yes,’ Agnes said, looking half amused, half lost. ‘Quite well. Did you?’
Olly made a self-satisfied humming noise, stretching out across Ash’s torso. ‘Exceedingly well.’
Agnes appeared unsure. She looked how Ash felt: like she did not know how to navigate this new reality.
‘I suppose I should return to my chambers.’
Ash found himself wishing she wouldn’t leave.
He and Olly could lie abed for hours, and he had half-imagined Agnes joining them for a long morning of idle chatter and slow rising.
Perhaps she just needed a moment alone, if only to gather her thoughts before they were reintroduced to normal life beyond his chamber door.
She rose, clambering from the bed. She looked tousled in the dim morning light, her hair all at ends and her clothes rumpled.
‘I will see you both in the hall?’
‘Yes. Yes, of course.’
She gave them a smile and slid from the room through the servant’s quarters, gently closing the door behind her.
‘That was … enlightening,’ Olly said.
Ash turned to face him. ‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning I enjoyed that very much. And I think you did too.’
‘I did, yes.’
‘Enough to do it again?’
Ash barely gave his answer any thought. ‘Yes.’ And then added quickly: ‘If you are keen to, that is. And Agnes, of course.’
‘Oh, I think she would be.’
Olly looped his arm around Ash’s chest, nestling back down into the position they had slept in.
‘Are you going to insist we get up as well?’ he asked.
‘My head hurts,’ Ash replied. ‘I intend to sleep until I can think straight.’
‘What a wonderful idea.’
When Ash awoke again, the blinding morning light now streaming in through the windows, his head felt a little lighter. He reached out, then remembered that Agnes had already left. There was a space where she should have been.
‘Come,’ he said, shaking Olly awake. ‘It is time to rise.’
He untangled himself from Olly’s grip and rose with a stretch, aware that Olly was watching his every movement. As he began to dress, he heard Olly too get out of bed, padding softly around the room.
It had been an interesting night. His head still pounded, but the fog that had settled around him had lifted.
He had feared that in the cold light of day he would be gripped with guilt.
But there was no guilt, no shame, no regret.
Just a tingling sense of fulfilment and an eagerness to not let the feeling fade.
He did not notice that Olly had snuck up on him until he heard his voice over his shoulder.
‘I think you have feelings for her.’
Ash froze with the laces of his tunic gripped in his fingers. ‘What?’
‘You heard me, Ashel.’ Olly looped his arms around Ash’s waist and rested his chin on Ash’s shoulder. As he spoke, he slid a hand beneath the tunic, brushing his fingertips above the waistband of Ash’s breeches. ‘I think you have feelings for Agnes.’
‘Do not be absurd. I love you. You know that.’
‘That does not mean you cannot wish to bed her, too.’
‘Oliver!’
‘What? After what we did last night – what we all did, I remind you – surely you cannot pretend that you only think of her as a friend? Or as a sister?’
‘Well, no—’
‘You are a wonderful man,’ Olly said, ‘but I fear that matters of the heart lie somewhat out of your reach.’
Ash huffed. ‘Does that surprise you?’ he said, more bitterly than he had intended. ‘I am rather out of practice.’
‘But it has been years,’ Olly said, brow furrowing. ‘Surely, in all that time … ?’
Ash stilled.
‘After France, I couldn’t. I couldn’t bring myself to get close to anyone. I did not want to get close to anyone. It was—’ He shut his eyes, a useless dam against the sudden river of feeling. ‘It was you,’ he said. ‘It has always been you. It would always be you, forever.’
Olly frowned. ‘There was no one else? After?’
Ash shook his head. His lip shook. ‘No. I … I tried, I paid for it, but—’
‘But?’
‘But they weren’t you.’ His chest was torn open, exposed, ready to be prodded at. ‘It was not the same. It was never the same. I spent, and then after, it was like … it was like nothing. I hated it.’
‘Ash …’
‘I knew there would never be anyone else. And I did not want there to be anyone else. Ever. And yet now you are returned to me, and Agnes is … I do not know what she is, it’s like something new has woken within me and I—’
‘And you’re scared?’
Ash’s eyes burned. The weight of it all crashed upon him: the loss of Olly’s death, the release – in more ways than one – of his return, the sudden thing that had begun to blossom with Agnes.
Something Ash had never found before, apart from with Olly.
He crushed his face into Olly’s shoulder, hiding the tears.
Olly gently moved his hand up and down Ash’s back.
‘It is all right,’ he said soothingly. ‘If it is too much, we never have to do it again.’
‘I did not say that,’ Ash muttered. He leaned back so he could see Olly’s face and read the truth there – or a lie. ‘Olly. Are you happy with this? Are you happy with having Agnes join us? Are you happy with this arrangement? Because if you are not—’
‘Ash!’ Olly spoke sternly. ‘Ashel, my love. It was my idea to have her join us. And I may have been a thief and a peasant since returning from France, but before that I was a lord’s son.
I understand how these things are. We always knew that one day you may need to wed.
And as I said, now you are, you will have to produce heirs. ’
Ash hesitated. His chest hurt.
‘Please tell me you had considered it, Ashel?’ Olly said, exasperated.
‘I did!’ Ash insisted. ‘But … not of late. And in truth …’
‘Yes?’
‘Before all of this, I had rather expected that whichever woman I married would find … someone else. My contribution would not be required.’
‘Someone else?’ Olly was aghast. ‘You are telling me you would name some other man’s bastard as your heir?’
‘It seemed better for everyone,’ Ash said, weakly. ‘And …’ he glanced at Olly, shame bubbling in his chest ‘… I did not intend to burden them with my presence for very long.’
It was a confession couched in allusion. Yet still Olly knew what he meant, his eyes going wide, his hand nervously stuttering over Ash’s arm. ‘Ash …’
‘I apologise,’ Ash said quickly, the shame spilling over. ‘I should not have … I was not—’
But he was. He could not force the denial from his lips. Olly opened and shut his mouth a few times, eyes shining, then wrapped his arms around Ash with renewed vigour.
‘My Ashel …’ he muttered against him, not letting go. ‘My love.’
There was nothing else he could say. Ash let Olly hold him, sinking into the warmth of his embrace, trying to push those thoughts back into the dark of his mind where they belonged.
‘We do not have to talk of heirs. Not right now.’
Ash nodded, eyes tight shut. He felt Olly kiss his head, his cheek, the scar.
‘I wish it was easy as it once was,’ Ash said. ‘Now … now it is all a tangle.’
Olly held him tighter. ‘There is no one better to be tangled with.’