20. Please, Your Grace
PLEASE, YOUR GRACE
Connor led the way, fingers trailing along the stair banister as if he had to touch everything he passed. He might also be humming, but quietly.
Jonathan left the blouse and the jewelry box on the bed, and herded Connor into the bathroom. “Start the shower for me.”
“Yes.” The word sounded like a soft blanket wrapping around them.
While Connor followed his command, Jonathan dropped his shirt and pants on the floor, something he’d never done here, and wouldn’t normally do, but he wanted to know what was happening in Connor’s imagination.
The way Connor immediately bent and reached for the clothes, with a small smile and a little puff of sound that fell somewhere between surprised and happy, gave him the sense that perhaps Connor was pretending to be a valet. The type of man who would kneel at a duke’s feet.
He watched Connor fold the clothes and place them in the hamper. Eyes downcast, his long sandy eyelashes seemed to almost brush his cheeks.
I took them off of you, he’d said.
When Jonathan pressed his fingertips into the cool tile of the counter and balanced on one leg, silently lifting a foot, Connor knelt and removed Jonathan’s sock.
He settled quietly on his heels and waited for Jonathan to switch positions, then removed the other.
Each motion was slow and focused, as careful and precise as if he were writing a poem with the fleeting touches of his fingers across Jonathan’s skin.
He seemed to have dropped into a different place.
If Jonathan believed in auras, which he did not, Connor would be emitting a happy golden glow. He was a man who seemed to want to be of service.
Jonathan needed to handle him carefully. Connor showing him that he would kneel and listen and delicately fold his clothes, that he would serve Jonathan like this, was a present wrapped in trust that was so much larger than a clothing box and infinitely more valuable than jewelry.
He couldn’t screw this up. It would be the biggest honor of his life to be careful with Connor’s trust.
He took a deep breath but kept his voice even and unhurried. “If you are my valet, you may remove my briefs.”
Connor’s slow blink reminded Jonathan of waking up from the pleasures of a deep sleep.
His fingers were steady, almost languid as he rubbed across the waistband of Jonathan’s briefs and then tugged them slowly down the length of his body.
Time itself tiptoed around them, the steam blurring his thoughts as well as Connor’s movements.
When Connor finally raised his face and met his gaze, Jonathan gestured at the cascading water. “Is it ready?”
He looked so content performing the small task of standing and thrusting his hand in the water that Jonathan’s own nerves eased. Connor shook his arm in the shower enclosure, but stubborn droplets clung to the golden hair that swirled from his wrist up his forearm. “It is.”
He thought he could hear a silent milord or perhaps a your grace appended to Connor’s statement, but he hadn’t yet voiced his fantasy, so Jonathan didn’t want to make assumptions.
“You will drink a glass of water and stand here, right here,” he pointed at a spot on the tile next to the bathmat, “And watch me.”
A pleased flush lit Connor’s face and neck, and he half-bowed toward Jonathan.
The hot cascade covered Jonathan, removing the dirt but no substitute for Connor’s hands and mouth or for their bodies pressing against each other in the water.
He squirted body soap in his hand, not bothering to do his hair, aware of Connor gulping water as directed, aware of Connor’s eyes following him through the steam, aware that Connor had stopped moving.
Only his gaze tracked Jonathan’s hands.
He left the shower and stood on the mat with his arms raised.
The man who even remembered the buttons on his shirt from the night they’d met already knew Jonathan’s routine, and handed him the small towel he used to blot his face and hair, then held a bath sheet.
His face was open and dreamy as he stared at Jonathan’s wet body and half-hard cock.
“You look like magic. A river sprite. A nymph? Is it a nymph?”
“My towel.” He let his tone be a tiny bit severe.
The sound from Connor’s throat was perhaps equal parts excitement and apology, and no parts an actual word, but he wrapped Jonathan in the towel.
Jonathan pointed at the running water. “Take your shower and get ready for me.”
Connor undressed and put his own clothes in the basket while Jonathan combed his hair. He hurried, because Connor never took long when he showered alone.
Even blurred by the steamy mirror, he could tell Connor’s hands were soaping the same circle over and over while he watched Jonathan.
He was robed in steam, and Jonathan loved the way his cock, red and flushed with need, bobbed in front of him.
Connor hesitated as he rubbed his stomach, but before his hand dropped to his erection, Jonathan flicked the hairdryer off.
Either the evening had slowed around them, or they had slowed, because speech seemed thick and sticky in his throat and he had to force the next command out of his chest.
“I do not wish for you to touch yourself more than necessary to prepare. Do you understand?” Being this careful with his words, treading the line between imaginary lordly hauteur and a caring lover, was stretching his own nerves.
Connor’s hands fell to his sides, and his entire body shuddered.
His hair wasn’t even close to dry, but tonight he wanted Connor too much to care what happened when he slept this way. “After you finish, wait outside the bedroom until I call for you.”
Connor nodded, the dreamy look making his cheeks slack and his eyelids fall partially closed. Was he oscillating too much between sleepy and obedient? Was taking Connor to this level tonight, after their drinks, a mistake?
He watched for another minute.
Connor didn’t look wobbly, he looked content. That cock didn’t lie.
Jonathan would have to do this right, but he could. He would. For Connor.
Leaving Connor in the bathroom scooped out Jonathan’s chest, but he held the soft-focus image of the man in the shower close as he crossed the hall and closed the bedroom door behind him. It would only be a moment before they were together.
The tag snapped easily off the blouse. The chiffon sleeves whispered across his arms and the crisp, unworn cotton cloth skimmed his nipples as he buttoned it.
His back was a bit damp, and the fabric clung momentarily before the weight of it made it fall away.
The bottom edge skimmed just above his cock and revealed the lacy black legs of his newest short briefs.
He checked the fit in the mirror above Connor’s dresser, standing on his toes to see how it nipped in at the waist. At home, he could alter it to have less feminine lines in the top portion, but for tonight it was perfect.
Tying a cravat was not in his skill set, and these two even length pieces of fabric permanently stitched to the neckline were probably as authentic as romance literature’s nine hundred and counting dukes, but he’d do his best. That turned out to be wrapping one end twice around the other, pulling that end through the loop he’d created, and then tucking it all into the neck of the blouse so it poufed at the top.
After he fluffed his creation into a reasonable shape, he attached the pin, its slim shaft seemingly close to snapping when he pushed it through the heavy cotton, but it pierced the fabric and he didn’t drop the tiny cork backing.
As if the birthday presents were colluding with Connor to tell him to shed his worries and enjoy, he’d managed the pin without breaking it or losing it.
The shower had stopped, and he was taking too long.
Connor needed him.
He left one lamp on dim and situated himself on the bed, arms spread along the pillows, the front of the blouse skimming above his manhood.
Tying a fake cravat had deflated that appendage, but if he was wearing fabric tied at his neck, he was damn well going for the immersive role play and calling it his manhood.
But not, under any circumstances, out loud.
“You may attend me, Connor.”
The door opened immediately. Connor was pink and fresh, wearing only a towel, and he brought bathroom steam into the room on a wave of excitement. “What do—oh. Oh.”
Connor stopped in front of him. Standing beside the bed, he towered over Jonathan, and yet vulnerability lurked in his wide eyes and parted lips. Water dripped from his towel-dried hair to dot his shoulders, and other droplets clung in the damp mat of his chest hair.
Connor sank to his knees beside the bed, not quite as quickly as a dropped toy, but also not slowly. His teeth caught his lower lip for a moment, and he leaned forward to fold his arms on the mattress. His gaze never left Jonathan’s body. Or specifically, Jonathan’s torso and the blouse and pin.
“Do you like them?” His voice sounded too small to have emerged from that chest.
“I do.” He reached across the mattress and gripped Connor’s chin.
Connor’s eyelids fluttered closed, which even Jonathan knew was not the way to conduct an important conversation.
“Look at me.”
On command, those eyes opened wide. His dark pupils had chased away the green-gold of his tawny irises. He already looked done, and they hadn’t even begun.
“When the weather turns cool, we’ll go to a candlelit restaurant.
I’ll wear my presents. With black velvet trousers.
The candlelight will gleam on this pin.” He stroked the stone and its tiny silver ropes with the index finger of his free hand, while he watched Connor watch him.
“And you will know how much I like them.”
His head grew heavier in Jonathan’s palm, as if his neck had relaxed beyond performing its job.