Chapter 9
Chapter
Nine
Your pertness is quite frankly over the top nowadays.
ONE WEEK LATER
Niall
I lean against the fence that surrounds the bottom field, watching the tractor plough the ground.
Neat lines draw back from it, like the tracks on a railway, and it’s oddly fascinating.
I hear the crunching of leaves and even before Boris, the golden retriever, bounces up next to me, I know it’s Silas.
“Took you long enough,” I say wryly. “I was expecting you a few days ago.”
“Blame getting settled back into work and home life again or I’d have been out here within half an hour,” he says, standing next to me and leaning against the fence. For a few minutes there’s a companionable silence that’s as familiar to me as the image of my childhood home.
I’ve known Silas for nearly all my life.
We met at boarding school at the age of seven when we were set to room together.
Within minutes of meeting the gentle dark-haired boy I’d known we were going to be friends, and it’s a conviction that’s never waned.
We’ve lasted through schooldays, university, different partners on his part and hook-ups on mine.
With both of us being bisexual it’s amazing we’ve never hooked up, but I think there’s always been this tacit understanding that it might wreck us, and that us was far more important than a singular.
He’s my closest friend in the world. I can and do tell him everything, knowing he won’t judge because that quiet boy has grown into an honourable and warm man.
It’s why I’m amazed we haven’t had this discussion yet.
It’s also why I’m hiding out at the bottom field watching Phil plough a field when even he could do that in his sleep.
It’s why I’m ignoring my paperwork which is at Mount Etna proportions and just as ready to explode devastation all over my office.
My secretary Barb has taken to leaving waspish messages on my mobile and I know she’ll force a reckoning soon.
I just don’t want to talk about Milo. I want to keep it to myself.
Part of that is a vague feeling that Silas will not approve of what we’re doing, and despite my casualness with people, Silas’s good opinion matters to me.
However, the largest part is that I can find no words to describe the last week.
They come to my tongue, fumbling and hesitant, but then die away instantly in the maelstrom that is Milo.
That first night with him was like nothing I’ve ever experienced before.
He might have been a bit awkward and fumbling, but the awe with which he touched me brought moisture to my eyes, and I’ve never felt so wrecked by the sexual act.
I don’t bottom easily. I find it difficult to give someone that trust, and it wouldn’t have been there with any of my hook-ups because I hardly knew them.
Yet with him I did it, because a deep-seated part of me trusts him.
I feel like I know him on some sort of cellular level, and that hesitant man had taken me apart so thoroughly that when I came, I had tears in my eyes.
He’s no longer hesitant and he seems to have woven a spell on me.
Normally the daylight hours find me at work where I can easily blot out everything and get through the jobs of four men.
This week I’ve hardly been there because of the temptation of Milo in my home.
He never went back to the main house. Instead we brought back some of his equipment from his studio and he ensconced himself in my study, his wavy hair pulled back in a bandanna and his face lost and dreamy as he worked on the portraits.
The knowledge of him there has drawn me back constantly and as soon as I walk in, I know that his dreamy expression will clear instantly and he will walk towards me, his movements sure and languid now like coloured dye moving through water.
He will take my hand and we’ll vanish upstairs to the bedroom.
Up there it’s as if time stands still, as if I’ve become trapped in a magic house in the woods, locked in a room where sensual pleasure is paramount and where the air echoes to the sounds of our moans and cries.
I shake my head to try and dispel the flowery images, but they linger there where I know they will grow in intensity and I will once again find myself on the threshold of my own house, shaking like a heroin addict and blowing everything away for the sake of a few fevered hours.
Silas’s voice breaks into my thoughts and I turn to him, grateful for the intervention. “So, I can’t help noticing that Milo isn’t in his room at the house. Do you know where he is before I contact the emergency services?”
I shake my head. “You know where he is.”
“Hmm.” He leans on the fence with his chin resting on his hands, looking like the teenager I knew so long ago. “Then I suppose my question is what is he doing?”
“I’m pretty sure you know the answer to that too. One more question and you’re done.”
He gives me a swift grin that quickly dies away to concern. “Then I have to ask, what are you doing?”
I turn to face the field again, my brow furrowed, unable to meet his steady eyes. “I don’t know,” I say quietly. “It’s taken me a bit by surprise.”
“Niall, I know you love to live up to the image of the Lord of Misrule, but this is going a bit far.”
“Didn’t the Lord of Misrule only reign over Christmas?”
“Don’t distract me.” He pauses. “But you are right.” He shakes his head. “No. Stick to the subject, Silas.” I smile but it dies with his next words. “Niall, this is serious. You were fucking his brother last month and now suddenly you’re with him. Does Gideon know?”
“No,” I say sharply. “It’s none of his business.”
“Says you. Gideon might say otherwise.”
“Gideon can,” I say firmly. “But we have no ties and we’ve never made any promises.”
“Niall, I’m pretty sure that covenant didn’t include fucking his brother. I know Gideon is relaxed but that’s ridiculous.” He stares at me. “And what about Milo? What’s he going to do when this collapses around you like a paper card house?”
“Perhaps you’d be better off being more concerned about me,” I say curtly.
“Milo is just experimenting and getting his feet wet.” I look at Silas.
“You know what Thomas did to him.” His face clouds with anger and I nod.
“Well, those scars go deep, and Milo hasn’t got the experience to know that what he had with that wanker is very far from a healthy sexual relationship.
” He winces, and I nod. Anything else is Milo’s secret, not mine.
I shrug and turn back to the field. “He’s just trying things out with someone familiar.
Someone he trusts enough not to belittle or hurt him. ”
“Why does he trust you?”
The question is gentle, but it stings me like he’s taken a blade to my flesh. “I may be carefree, Silas, but I’m not fucking cruel. I would do anything for him. Anything,” I repeat fervently.
There’s a short – and I just know that it’s shocked – silence. Then he taps me on the arm until I turn to him. He has a wondering expression on his face. “Oh my God,” he says quietly. “You care for him.”
“Of course I do. He’s my oldest friend’s brother and he’s my friend too.” The latter is said a little too hard to be convincing. He shakes his head. He’ll allow me to get away with this now, but I know we’ll return to it later. Silas is big on friendship and taking care of people.
“Even so, please be careful, Niall. I’m even more worried now.”
“Why?”
“Because Milo, despite being shy, has an ability to bounce back from things. He’s not aware of it but it’s always there. It’s like he’s made of a very quiet and unassuming India rubber. But you .”
He pauses, and I turn. “What?”
“You are very different,” he says softly. “For all your flippancy, you’re still the boy I first met who was loyal and honest and believed in true love. Wasn’t it you who told me that it would come?”
I feel a flush on my cheeks. “Silas, we were ten. I still thought Father Christmas was real, albeit rather creepy with all that letting himself into strangers’ houses and helping himself to food. Obviously, I didn’t know a lot.”
“Or maybe you were the one who really did.”
I shake my head. “Silas, I hate to tell you this, but he doesn’t live in the North Pole and elves did not organise your Christmas presents.”
“That certainly accounts for the year I got a bottle of gin for Christmas. I always thought Santa had been having a bad day. My mother obviously forgot to go to the shops.”
I laugh but sober quickly. “I don’t believe in true love and that’s patently obvious. I’ve had too many partners to count, unless we’re using your fingers and mine and the villagers after that.”
“You haven’t had partners. You’ve had hook-ups,” he says sternly.
“A partner is someone you trust and someone who trusts you. Someone to make you laugh and someone who can make you so mad you want to leave, but at the same time so happy that you know you’ll never go.
A partner is someone who is there for you in good and bad times and all the in-between stuff. ”
“Well, that’s lovely. Excuse me for not wanting to sign up for all that. It sounds positively exhausting.”
“You’ve never signed up for it because you’ve never met anyone worth doing that for.” He pauses. “Or maybe you’ve just been waiting for Milo. Waiting for him to get well and for your time to come.”
“Ugh! You should give up veterinary medicine and take up writing romance. You’ve got appallingly and embarrassingly Mills and Boon since you met that small Irishman.”