Chapter 37
BECKETT
“What’s all this, then?” Beckett asked, catching Arden’s hand in his as they walked together through the dim corridor leading to Arden’s bedchamber.
Arden’s fingers were cold and they trembled in Beckett’s. He squeezed Beckett’s hand. “I’m a little nervous.”
“A little?” Arden had been nervous from the moment they’d sent their letter off to taunt Jack. It came and went in waves.
Poor lad. He was trying to be brave. He didn’t need to be. Beckett was there. He’d help him out. He’d help Jack out, too.
Beckett was there to watch over them both. Jack wouldn’t hurt Arden, Arden wouldn’t be afraid of Jack, and Beckett would get to see something beautiful.
“You’ve got nothing to be nervous about,” he said to Arden.
He turned to walk backwards, drawing Arden after him.
“You, and Jack, and me,” he said, leaning down for a quick kiss that had Arden stumbling.
He steadied him, kept him moving. “We’ll learn as we go, right?
” He couldn’t stop himself from stealing another kiss.
Arden said against his mouth with a little laugh, “What are we learning?”
“What we like. What we don’t. What we’ll give. What we want to take. All sorts.” His back came up against Arden’s door and Arden pushed against his body, laying his smaller frame against Beckett’s as if he was pinning him there.
As if he could.
Arden ducked in and nipped Beckett’s throat. Beckett laughed and tipped his head, allowing him access. “Now,” he said, “my suggestion here is, you don’t try this one on Jack.”
“Won’t he like it?” Arden licked daintily at a patch of skin and nipped him again.
“Oh, he’ll like it. Problem is, he’ll do it right back, he’ll do it harder, and you’ll be walking around for the next week with bite marks on your neck for all to see.”
Arden looked both startled and intrigued.
Beckett opened the door and drew Arden over the threshold with an arm looped around his waist.
Since he’d returned to Avendene and found Arden sketching under the chestnut tree, he’d made sure to touch him as much as he could. It was no hardship. No hardship at all.
He’d talked to Jack about it briefly one night in Sevennis as they lay in bed together, gasping.
“He’s touch-starved,” Jack had said.
They’d been talking about Arden. It was what had ended in them fiercely thrusting against each other with legs locked, bodies heaving.
Gods, when Jack got the wild in him he could knock the breath clean out of you.
Beckett had taunted him, whispering things about what it had been like to be buried deep inside Arden, to be moving in him, over him, all while Arden’s limbs wound around him and drew him closer, while his beautiful eyes had been wide and disbelieving, as if he’d never imagined such pleasure existed.
Whispering that, one day, he and Jack would have Arden between them like that.
Jack had growled at him, bit at him, and fought him onto his back and then flipped him to his belly, got his cock between Beckett’s cheeks, and lost his mind.
“He’s touch-starved,” Jack had said, “and I worry that it will end in him allowing things that hurt him or frighten him, just to know what it is to be touched.”
Yes, it was a good thing, Beckett thought for the hundredth, the thousandth time, that they had him around.
Unwinding the arm around Arden’s waist, Beckett gave him a little nudge in the direction of his dressing room. “You get yourself undressed, and come and find us when you’re ready.”
“Oh. Not here?”
Beckett shook his head. “Jack’s bed is bigger.”
Arden pressed his lips together, which did absolutely nothing to hide his answering smile.
Beckett chucked him under the chin. “We’ll have fun,” he said. “Right?”
He waited for Arden’s nod before he left, pulling the door closed with a gentle click.
Then he bolted for Jack’s bedchamber, barely managing to suppress the whoop that threatened to burst its way out. Sometimes, although not often, he still felt like the lad Jack called him.
This was one of those times.
He ran into the room and hopped first on one foot then the other as he yanked off his boots and dropped them by the door. He strode to the dressing room, loosening his cravat and shrugging off his frock coat as he went. Tossing cravat and coat onto a small side table, he unbuttoned his shirt.
He paused when he saw that instead of one, Jack’s valet had put two ewers of steaming hot water on the large washstand.
Well, it wasn’t as if there was a soul at Avendene, or at any of Jack’s properties, come to that, who didn’t already know Jack was his lover. No need to feel awkward about it.
Besides. He’d given himself a good scrubbing at the end of the day before dinner with Arden as usual, but the wreaths of steam rising from the pot-bellied ewers looked inviting.
He stripped quickly, gave himself a thorough if brisk going over, and snitched a clean towel off the stack to dry himself. He was pondering whether or not to pull his breeches back on when his skin prickled.
Gods, Jack was a sneaky bastard.
“Done filling your face with pies, Your Grace?” Beckett said, and looked back over his shoulder.
Jack leaned in the doorway, big arms crossed over his chest. He, too, had lost his frock coat and cravat, and was in shirtsleeves. His black eyes glinted in the low candlelight.
Beckett was suddenly, viscerally aware that Jack was blocking the only exit to the room.
“Not here,” Jack said. “Not even as a joke anymore. All right?”
Beckett frowned, securing the towel around his waist.
“I’m not Your Grace. I’d rather you didn’t call me that outside of our bedchamber either, but I understand if you want to. But not here.”
Beckett crossed the room to stand before him, toe to toe.
They gazed at each other. Jack was taller, older, bigger, more powerful.
Where it counted, they were equals.
Beckett leaned in. He didn’t touch. Didn’t grab. Just brushed Jack’s smile lightly with his own. “As you command,” he said.
Jack caught the back of his neck and held his mouth for a savage kiss. “I was trying to have a moment there.”
“Yeah,” Beckett said. “Gonna be a night for it, I reckon. Got to have someone keeping their perspective.”
“That’s you, is it?”
“It ain’t going to be our little duch, now, is it?”
Jack’s smile widened. “No,” he said softly. “I suppose not.”
“Come on, then. Your water’s gettin’ cold.” He ran a hand down Jack’s arm and then his fingers somehow tangled themselves with Jack’s. Must be all that time he’d spent with Arden, he thought crossly.
He didn’t let go, though.
He tugged Jack over to the washstand and set about stripping him. He’d meant for it to be brisk and teasing. Instead, his movements were slow and…and gentle…as he unbuttoned Jack’s shirt for him, and eased it out of his breeches.
He kept his gaze on Jack’s the whole time.
They didn’t do this, but—
They hadn’t done this. They did now, he decided.
He wanted to.
Beckett moved behind Jack and slid the shirt from his shoulders, easing it down the length of his arms. Beckett’s breathing slowed as he uncovered the beautiful, heavy musculature of Jack’s back.
He hummed, and ran a hand gently down the channel of his spine to the small of his back, stopping at the upper swell of his arse, which rose now above the loosened breeches. Jack’s skin shivered under his touch, tensing and relaxing in quick succession.
Beckett pressed his smile into the hot skin between Jack’s shoulder blades, and let it become a soft, lingering kiss.
He stroked Jack again, another full sweep of his spine from shoulders to arse.
Strange to think that he hadn’t really taken the time to ogle his lover like this before, though they’d been knocking boots for years.
Oh, he’d seen the front of Jack plenty, as they fought to pin each other, and he’d seen the back of him now and then, but on those occasions he’d been busy sliding over him, fucking between his thighs, biting at him.
He hadn’t gentled him like this before, and Jack—
Jack shivered under his touch again and snapped out a hand, catching Beckett’s wrist as he turned to face him.
Beckett grinned.
Jack didn’t like it.
“All right,” Beckett said. “Enough o’ that. Bet you’ll let Arden do it, though.”
“I wouldn’t allow him anything I wouldn’t allow you,” Jack said, sounding appalled.
“We’ll see,” Beckett said comfortably. He slapped Jack’s hands out of the way and, since he wasn’t going to be allowed to do it all tender-like, yanked his breeches down quickly enough to make Jack suck in a sharp breath.
“You wait. He’ll get you stretched out in the sun on the grass, or on a bed or a sofa, and he’ll say, Oh, I just want to draw you, may I do that, is that all right? ”
Beckett crouched down and smacked the outside of Jack’s thigh, telling him without words to lift his leg. Jack caught his balance with a hand on Beckett’s shoulder as Beckett wrangled his boot off.
“He’ll have you on your belly before you know it,” Beckett continued, “and then he’ll be all heavy breathing behind you, scritching away in his little sketchbook.
Oh, may I, do you mind, can I adjust you here?
he’ll be saying. For the light, you know.
Next thing, he’s got his little hands all over you and you’re purring for it like the kitchen cat.
” He took Jack’s other boot off and stood. “You wait,” he said darkly.
Jack looked thoughtful behind the obvious amusement. He tilted his head and kissed Beckett without touching him anywhere else. “You may have of me whatever you will, my love.”
“Even if it makes you grit your teeth and want to shake me off because you don’t like an alpha behind you, touching you like that?”
“Yes.” It was fierce, instantaneous, and genuine. “If you want it.”
Beckett ran a hand down the long, lean front of him, and tweaked his hard cock. “I can be so tender and gentle you’d be writhing for me. Ask Arden.”
Jack stared at him, unblinking.