Chapter Twenty-One
“Alright, sweetheart. Come in.”
Connor stepped back to let him in, the tea towel still slung over his shoulder from the washing up he’d been halfway through when the knock came.
He’d been expecting Vidal at some point today, just not quite so early and not quite so quiet about it.
Vidal was a man who announced his arrivals.
He usually came through the door already mid-sentence.
This morning he simply stopped in the tiled entryway. Mercè was tucked under one arm, her bald head pressed against his ribs. “Give her here.” Connor held out a hand. Vidal surrendered his dog without protest, which was the first thing that told him the day had gone sideways for the poor dear.
Connor carried Mercè through to the kitchen and set her down on the sheepskin he’d bought for her the week after Vidal first invited himself up to his flat. She turned three tight circles on it, dropped into her usual crescent, and was asleep before he’d made it back out to the hall.
Vidal hadn’t moved. He was still standing in the entryway with his hands at his sides and his overcoat buttoned right up to the collar.
The young prince took one step forward and put his forehead against Connor’s collarbone.
He didn’t quite collapse, but it was a near enough thing that Connor had to brace himself belatedly against his sudden weight.
Connor got one arm around his back and the other up to cup the back of his head, holding him there in the quiet of the entryway. “Alright,” he said. “What’s this then, love?”
Vidal’s breath went out of him in a long exhale. “Connor.”
“Yeah?”
“I would like you to take me into that room, and I would like you to put me on my back on your dining table. Then I would like you to service me, my darling, in the most literal and unglamorous sense of the word. I will just lie there and be a body that you are fucking, and I would like not to have to hold up my end of anything at all for the next hour of my life.”
Connor pressed his mouth against the crown of Vidal’s head and breathed in deep, taking in the clean smell of him.
It wasn’t the request he’d have expected, but he understood it. When Vidal’s energy for performance ran out, this was what was left underneath it: a man asking to be looked after. The fact that he felt safe enough to come to Connor for that gratified him.
“Alright, sweetheart.” He kept his voice level and his hand steady against the back of Vidal’s neck. “Dining table it is. You go on in and get yourself comfortable. I’ll fetch what we need.”
Vidal pushed himself gently upright, and pressed a brief kiss against the side of Connor’s jaw.
Connor took the corridor to his bedroom, pulled the bottle of lube from the top drawer of the bedside table, and came back through to the dining room archway.
The dining table was a long oak slab that Connor had bought from a salvage man in Bethnal Green years ago, and Vidal had laid himself out along the length of it like a feast. He was naked on the oak with his dark hair spilled behind him and the gold crucifix caught in the hollow of his throat.
He hadn’t arched his back, or cocked a hip, or done any of the twink in a porno nonsense Connor had been treated to over the weeks.
He just lay there, open and quiet, and Connor found he liked this side of him best of all.
“Look at you,” Connor breathed. “Bend your knees for me, sweetheart. Feet on the table. There you go.”
Vidal brought his knees up without a word. His feet settled on the oak as his thighs opened for Connor. He stepped between Vidal’s parted feet and laid one hand on the inside of his thigh, just above the knee, stroking his thumb along the smooth skin there. “You tell me if anything’s not right.”
“I will.” Vidal’s voice had gone soft around the edges. “I promise, Connor. But you will not need to change anything. I trust you entirely.”
Connor had to take a breath against that gut punch of a statement. He tipped the lube bottle, warmed a generous measure of it in his palm, and brought his slick fingers down between Vidal’s legs.
He circled Vidal’s hole with one fingertip, felt the reflexive clench and then the give as Vidal breathed out and let him in. Connor sank the finger in to the second knuckle in one unhurried push, and Vidal’s body took it easily, hot and slick and already wanting more.
He took his time, intending to honour Vidal’s request. He wasn’t about to rush through the prep the way he might have any other morning when Vidal was shoving back onto his hand and swearing at him in three languages to get on with it.
Vidal wanted to be looked after, and looking after him meant pressing the first finger in deep until his hips rose into a slight upward tilt, then drawing it out and adding the second with another careful measure of lube.
Vidal’s breath caught on the stretch.
“Still alright?”
“Connor.” Vidal’s voice was barely there. “Please stop asking me that and fuck me.”
Connor huffed out a laugh and bent his head to press a kiss against the inside of Vidal’s knee as he kept working him open.
He scissored his fingers gently, then added a third when Vidal’s body began to yield around him in the easy way that meant he was ready.
He crooked his fingers forward and found the spot inside him that made Vidal’s hips lift off the table.
Connor kept his fingers there and worked them on the same spot in short presses, watching Vidal’s face. His cock had filled against his stomach in a steady rise that Connor tracked with satisfaction. “Now you’re waking up for me, sweetheart.”
Vidal didn’t answer. His head had tipped to one side against the oak, and he’d let his arms fall out loose across the table, his palms still turned up to the ceiling.
Connor withdrew his fingers with a last, lingering drag across that spot and reached for the bottle again. He slicked his cock, then took himself in hand and lined up, pressing the head of his cock against Vidal’s slick hole.
“I’m going to go slow for you, love. All the way in, in one go. You don’t have to do anything. Just let me in.”
Vidal made a sound of agreement.
Connor went in steady and all the way. One long thrust that sank him to the root in the wet heat of Vidal’s body. Vidal’s breath left him in a shuddering open gasp, his hands fisted against the oak.
Connor stilled inside him and took a long moment just to look.
Vidal’s knees had fallen open on either side of his hips, and the tight wet clutch of him around Connor’s cock was already making it hard for him to think straight.
Vidal’s cock was hard and flushed, leaking against his belly, untouched and aching for it.
Connor laid one hand against the centre of Vidal’s chest and let it rest there. He drew back and pressed in again, finding the angle that made Vidal’s breath catch. Then he braced his free hand against the table beside Vidal’s hip, and began to fuck him in earnest.
He kept the rhythm steady and unhurried. Easing into him in long deep strokes that carried all the weight of his hips behind them. The oak was solid under his palm and Vidal was loose and accepting beneath him, his head turned to one side on the table, his dark hair fanned out around him.
Connor got both hands under Vidal’s thighs, hooked them up over his own forearms, and dragged him down the length of the table onto his cock.
The new angle took him even deeper, and Vidal’s whole body slid across the oak with the force of it.
Connor did it again, pulling Vidal’s hips into his next thrust, and watched the man’s cock jump against his stomach with each bounce.
He could move him around however he wanted.
Vidal was keeping his end of the bargain, lying there open and pliant, letting himself be handled, and the knowledge of it was doing something filthy to Connor’s restraint.
He tightened his grip on Vidal’s thighs and fucked up into him.
Vidal’s cries had climbed in volume, and his cock bounced wet against his belly with every snap of Connor’s hips.
He reached down with his free hand and closed his fingers round Vidal’s cock, finding it wet and hot in his palm. Vidal made a helpless sound at the first stroke. Connor matched the pull of his hand to the drive of his hips, and watched Vidal come apart on the table under him.
Vidal’s breathing went ragged. His hands, which had been lying pressed against the table, finally moved: one of them came up and closed loosely around Connor’s wrist where it rested at his throat.
“Connor.” His eyes had opened, glassy and unguarded. “Harder — ”
He tightened his fist on Vidal’s cock, pressed in deep inside him and held, grinding against that spot inside him. Vidal came with a long unbroken sound. His hand clenched against Connor’s wrist, and his cock spilled hot over Connor’s knuckles in a succession of slow pulses.
Connor worked him through it, keeping his hips moving, and didn’t let up until Vidal’s body began to go boneless beneath him.
He let himself go then. He’d been holding the pace back for Vidal’s sake, but now his hips snapped forward harder, faster, chasing the heat building at the base of his spine without bothering to dress it up as anything else.
The oak rattled against the boards. His breath came ragged out of him.
Vidal took every stroke without a sound, and Connor fucked him the way he’d been wanting to from the moment he’d walked into the dining room and seen him laid out waiting.
He came deep inside Vidal with a low bitten-off sound against the crown of his dark head, his hips pressed flush against the backs of Vidal’s thighs, and his forehead dropped to rest against Vidal’s sternum.
Connor could feel Vidal’s heart under his forehead, hammering away. Vidal’s hand was still loosely closed around his wrist. He allowed himself a moment to enjoy this closeness, then he lifted his head and pressed a kiss to the centre of Vidal’s chest.