Chapter Twenty-Five
The pretence of separate rooms hadn’t survived. Lex’s bag had been carried upstairs by the same housekeeper who’d turned down the bed, and she’d put it on the luggage rack in Barnaby’s room without comment.
He’d spent the morning on a horse. This was Barnaby’s doing. Barnaby had led him out to the yard at nine o’clock in a pair of borrowed jodhpurs that were too tight across the thighs and too short in the leg, making him look like a children’s TV presenter from the seventies.
The horse was called Clover. She was a stocky bay mare with kind eyes and a temperament that Barnaby described as “bombproof; we need to make sure your neck stays intact for your fight with Morozov.” Barnaby stood in the centre of the schooling ring with his arms folded, calling instructions and clearly enjoying himself enormously.
“Heels down, Lex. Heels down. You’re gripping with your knees. Stop gripping with your knees.”
“I’m on a horse, Barns. Gripping’s the only thing keeping me alive.”
“Gripping destabilises your seat. Relax your thigh. Let your weight drop through your heel.”
Lex had let his weight drop through his heel. Clover had plodded on, unbothered, her ears flicking back occasionally to check whether the large man on her back had any intention of doing anything interesting. He did not. He was concentrating on not dying.
By the end of the hour, Barnaby had conceded that Lex’s rising trot was “not actively dangerous,” which was the most fulsome praise he’d ever received from a Fitznorman-Bicester that didn’t involve an orgasm.
Lunch was a picnic near the stables. Mrs Farrow had packed a hamper with cold roast chicken, a wedge of cheddar wrapped in waxed paper, crusty bread, and a jar of chutney that Barnaby said was from the estate’s own orchard.
They sat on a blanket in the grass with their backs against the paddock fence, eating with their hands, and Lex watched Barnaby tear bread apart with his long fingers.
Florence lay between them, her nose resting on her paws, twitching in her sleep.
The afternoon sun was warm on Lex’s face.
Barnaby talked about Meridian’s dressage scores, a hedge that needed replanting, a fox that had been getting into the hen run.
Lex listened. He had opinions on none of it, and yet wanted to hear every word, because these things mattered to Barns.
They walked after lunch. Across the parkland, through the copse the Duke’s grandfather had planted, along the brook that had flooded in 2014, and up through the western fields where the Herefords stood in their loose, placid cluster near the water trough.
Barnaby’s trajectory adjusted. It was just a subtle drift to the right, away from the fence line, a course correction that looked casual if you didn’t know him.
Lex stopped walking. He leaned on the fence. The nearest Hereford raised her head from the trough and regarded him with wet-eyed indifference. “Come here, Barns.”
“I’m perfectly fine where I am.”
“She’s not going to charge you. Look at her. She’s half asleep.”
“Cows are deceptively fast. I’ve told you this. It’s well documented.”
“You ride a horse over solid fences at thirty miles an hour, and you’re scared of a cow standing still.” Lex held out his hand to Barnaby.
Barnaby crossed the three metres of grass between them with the rigid dignity of a man approaching a firing squad, and took Lex’s hand.
Lex guided him to the fence rail. The Hereford hadn’t moved. Her breath came in slow, warm gusts through her nostrils, and her white face was placid and stupid and kind. Lex reached over the rail and scratched the flat plane between her ears. She leaned into it.
“Touch her nose.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Barns. Touch her nose. They like that.”
Barnaby extended his free hand over the fence with the caution of a man who expected it to be bitten off. His fingers made contact with the broad, velvet muzzle, and the cow blinked once, slowly, and did nothing at all.
Barnaby stroked once. Twice. His fingers spread across the soft skin, and his grip on Lex’s hand loosened by a fraction.
“She’s quite warm,” he said, as though reporting an important finding to a committee.
“They are, yeah. Warm-blooded mammals, cows. Whole thing about it.”
Barnaby’s mouth twitched. He gave the nose a final, tentative stroke, withdrew his hand, and stepped back from the fence with the air of a man who had survived an ordeal and expected recognition for it.
Lex kissed him on the temple. Barnaby made a show of wiping it off in disgust, and they kept walking.
Dinner was quieter than the last visit. Just the two of them and the Duke and Duchess, Perry away at a friend’s.
The conversation was easy, the wine was good, and the Duchess told a story about a neighbour’s daughter who had attempted to keep a pygmy goat in a London flat and been reported to the council by a downstairs neighbour who thought a child was being murdered, which made the Duke laugh so hard he had to put his fork down.
Afterwards, upstairs, Barnaby walked into the bedroom ahead of him and flung himself onto the bed.
It wasn’t a controlled descent. Barnaby threw himself backwards onto the white duvet with his arms out, his stockinged feet hanging off the edge, and lay there with his hair fanned across the pillow, looking up at the ceiling.
Lex leaned against the doorframe. Barnaby’s shirt had ridden up past his navel. The strip of pale skin caught the lamplight, the fine blond trail of hair disappearing beneath his waistband, and his ribs expanded with his slow, even breathing.
Barnaby’s hand drifted to his stomach. His fingers traced the line of hair downward, unhurried, and settled over the front of his trousers. He pressed the heel of his palm against himself and exhaled through his nose.
Lex didn’t move. He watched Barnaby’s fingers curl, watched the slow roll of his hips up into his own hand. The fabric tightened and shifted as he hardened beneath it. Barnaby’s head tipped back into the pillow. His throat was pale and long, the tendons standing taut as his breathing changed.
Six months ago in Tokyo, Lex had asked Barnaby to touch himself.
Barnaby had gone rigid, his jaw locked, the suggestion that he might want something badly enough to reach for it while someone was watching landing on him like a physical blow.
He’d said I have self-control, and after that they hadn’t talked about it again.
And now here he was, on his childhood bed, in a room with horse rosettes on the shelf, stroking himself through his trousers with his eyes half-closed while Lex stood six feet away and watched.
Lex crossed the room. He sat on the edge of the mattress, and the dip of his weight made Barnaby’s hip roll towards him. He put his hand over Barnaby’s, pressed it down, felt the hard line of his cock beneath the wool and the heat of him through the fabric. Barnaby’s breath hitched.
“Don’t stop,” Lex said. “I just want to get these off you.”
He unfastened Barnaby’s trousers with one hand, the button and the zip, and Barnaby lifted his hips without being asked.
Lex tugged the trousers down his thighs, past his knees, and dropped them off the end of the bed.
Barnaby’s hand hadn’t stopped moving. He was palming himself through his boxer briefs now, the outline of his cock pressed against the pale grey cotton, the wet spot already darkening at the head.
Lex hooked his fingers into the waistband and pulled.
The elastic dragged across the ridge of Barnaby’s cock and it sprang free, the foreskin drawn back from the slick pink head.
Lex peeled his briefs down his thighs and off, and then Barnaby was bare from the waist down, his shirt still rucked up to his ribs, his hand wrapping around his own cock.
His grip was loose, his thumb circling the head on each upstroke, smearing the precome that beaded there.
His hips worked in small, tight rolls, and his stomach muscles clenched with each one, the lean lines of his torso pulling taut and releasing.
He wasn’t looking at Lex. His eyes were closed, his lips parted, and his left ear was going pink.
Lex put his hand on Barnaby’s knee and spread it wider.
Barnaby let him, his thigh falling open against the duvet, and the shift in angle changed everything.
Lex could see all of him now, the tight draw of his balls, the pale crease of his inner thigh, the muscle in his forearm flexing as he stroked.
This was good. This was so far beyond good that Lex’s brain had stopped supplying adequate vocabulary for it, which was fine, because the only word he had left was fuck and it covered the situation comprehensively.
Barnaby brought his free hand up to his face. He bit down on the knuckle of his middle finger, his teeth pressing white dents into the skin, and the sound he made around it was muffled and desperate. With his other hand he pointed at the bedside table.
Lex knew what he was asking for.
He opened the drawer. The Murano glass dildo was in its velvet pouch, alongside the bottle of lube that Barnaby kept in there. Lex pulled both out, unzipped the pouch, and the glass caught the lamplight, the blue-green and gold spirals glowing warm in his palm.
He uncapped the lube and slicked the shaft in long, even strokes, turning it to coat every ridge and swirl. The glass warmed fast in his hands. He wiped his fingers on his thigh and shifted down the bed, settling between Barnaby’s legs.
“Give me your hand, Barns.”
Barnaby released his cock and held out his palm. Lex squeezed lube across his fingers, enough that it pooled and dripped, and guided Barnaby’s hand between his own legs.
“Get yourself ready. I want to watch.”