Chapter Twenty-Nine
THEY MADE IT as far as the nursery, then Lyndon could hold back no more. Desperate hunger for the touch of his lover’s skin burned through his own. He pushed Rollo against a wall, and they kissed madly in a clash of lips and teeth and tongues. He began tearing at Rollo’s clothes.
“I need to take you, pup.”
“It’s been far too long,” gasped Rollo. “Eight weeks and a day.”
He wrenched off his cravat and wriggled out of his linen, exposing the milky-white skin of his chest. His small rosy nipples pebbled; Lyndon pinched one between his thumb and finger, tonguing, biting and sucking at the other.
Rollo groaned his approval, his hands busy at the fall of Lyndon’s trousers.
“I need this.” He ran his hand along the length of Lyndon’s jutting prick. “I need you inside of me, tearing my soul apart with every thrust. These weeks without you, I have hardly imagined anything else.”
Lyndon yanked down Rollo’s trousers and drawers, scattering buttons. He swept his hands across Rollo’s flat belly and over his jutting hips. So smooth, so perfect. A body made for brazen display and wanton loving. But, above all, for Lyndon’s mouth.
Sinking to his knees, he ran his tongue along the length of Rollo’s slim, elegant cock. As Rollo writhed with pleasure, Lyndon’s mouth watered. “Already, I’m destroying you in my head, pup.”
His tongue travelled lower, and he sucked one of Rollo’s tight ballocks into his mouth.
“You’re already destroying me in the nursery too,” Rollo moaned. His cock pulsed; when he made to squeeze it, Lyndon slapped his hand away.
“No. Keep away. I licked it; I believe that makes it mine.”
Rollo chuckled hoarsely. His hands tangled in Lyndon’s hair.
“My spoiled, highhanded lord.” He canted his hips, head tipped back, and his wet lips parted in surrender.
Again, Lyndon tongued the crown of his cock, breathing in the musk of him, savouring the bittersweet pearls. Feeling it throb against his tongue.
“You’re shameless, my love. How you thrust into my mouth.”
He sucked harder and deeper, tracing a path behind Rollo’s ballocks with his finger. Then he broke off, sitting back on his haunches to watch his lover’s face. Another silvery pearl dripped down Rollo’s shaft. “How do you get so wet for me?”
Rollo moaned again, biting on his lower lip.
“I have no control over it. When your fingers touch me there, dignity and I readily part company.” He hissed as Lyndon cupped his ballocks again, squeezing gently, then teased his prick with his mouth.
“And if you persist, I shall also part company with my sanity. It shall stream down your throat.”
With a last, lingering lick along the hard line of Rollo’s shaft, Lyndon pulled off to plant bruising kisses the length of Rollo’s body until, finally, he met with his lips.
One day, he would manage a calm, measured seduction.
He would unveil his lover’s body with exquisite care.
He would carry him to bed, whereupon they would tenderly pleasure each other until reaching a leisurely, shared crisis. But not today.
Clutching a fistful of blond hair, he spun Rollo to face the wall. “Spread for me, pup,” he whispered hotly against Rollo’s nape.
By God, the boy was beautiful. It was all he could do not to fall to his knees again, torn between the urges to sink his teeth into Rollo’s juicy rump or his cock into the channel within.
He licked his finger, then swept it across Rollo’s hole, up and down, up and down, up and down, teasing the entrance.
Then, without warning, he sank two thick fingers inside.
A moan locked his throat at Rollo’s shuddering response.
“You want more?” Lyndon breathed. “You want my prick?”
Rollo sucked in a gasp, pushing back on Lyndon’s fingers, and he crooked them, finding the nubbin that made his boy cry out. “Yes,” Rollo panted. “Yes.”
Lyndon rubbed his bare shaft up against Rollo’s arse, grasping Rollo’s cock with his other hand. He pressed a path around the curve of his lover’s perfect ear with his lips and nipped at the soft lobe. “Then you must ask me nicely, pup.”
“Please,” Rollo gasped. “Please. I beg you. My lord and captain.”
In one short thrust, Lyndon slid inside. Even with oil, it was tight, so damned tight. He fought for control, his thoughts splintering. Rollo gasped.
“Am I hurting you, pup?”
“Yes. A little.” Rollo sucked in a deep breath, then let it out between clenched teeth. “But it is exquisite. Indistinguishable from joy.” He threw his head back on a long groan, and Lyndon felt something give. “You have stretched me to the fullest.”
Rollo braced his hands on the wall as Lyndon cradled him.
Though his little rocking movements grew in purpose, he wouldn’t hurt his lover.
Not even if he begged. Instead, he steadied them both, one hand wrapped around Rollo’s chest, the other around Rollo’s cock.
Clasped against the warmth and weight of his body and hardly moving inside it, the raging, savage force of Lyndon’s climax raced towards him.
“I could die like this, pup,” he breathed on a long slow thrust. “And I would never regret it. You against my hips, your taste on my tongue.”
“Please don’t,” gasped Rollo. He twisted, his eyes flashing with amusement even as he winced. “I did not clamber upon that roof for you to die fifteen minutes later with me impaled on your cock.”
Half a minute later, and his man was underneath him, cossetted from the hard floor by a dusty old dress, red as blood against the white of Rollo’s skin.
Linseed oil’s earthy scent filled the air.
Arguably a better use for it than daubed on Lyndon’s useless canvases.
This time when he slid inside, Lyndon’s eyes never left his lover’s.
“Spend with me like this,” he urged. Lyndon pushed Rollo’s knees higher, moving his dainty feet around the back of Lyndon’s neck and pulling him in.
Nothing lay between them except the sweat from their bodies.
Rollo’s damp hardness rubbed against his belly and Lyndon’s ballocks tightened.
As long as he had this—this creature in his arms—he was saved.
“Spend with me now as I can hold back no more.” Lyndon thrust deep and long, unravelled, unfettered, and undone. “My dearest pup, my love.”
*
ROLLO WRIGGLED DAMPLY. “The entire Duchamps-Avery clan is here,” he said.
“What?”
The entire clan? Knowing that Rossingley had witnessed him dancing around his chimneys was enough.
Never mind the others. Lyndon very much prayed he’d misheard.
Or was still half asleep and had dreamed it.
Whilst the immediate effects of his morning’s brandy excesses had evaporated several hours ago, its afterbite was catching up with him.
His fabulous, insane exertions had left him limp, woollen mouthed, and craving his bed.
“The entire Duchamps-Avery clan is here,” Rollo repeated.
Lyndon groaned. “Yes, I was afraid that’s what you said.”
Of all the words he yearned to hear spill from his lover’s lips after Lyndon had bled him dry, he was not prepared for those.
“My father has brought along his lover, Kit Angel,” Rollo added, as if that made it all better. “And you’ll meet Willoughby at last. Half of our bloody servants have accompanied them, of course. My father doesn’t travel light.”
Lyndon would have been quite happy if the Earl of Rossingley never travelled at all.
“And…ah…if I’m not mistaken,” Rollo continued, “As you were feasting on my ballocks, I believe I recognised the sound of another coach and four heading up the driveway. Admittedly, I was a tad distracted, but…could it be your own brother perhaps? His visit was due about now, was it not?”
Lyndon closed his eyes. Perhaps he could feign illness and avoid all of them. Particularly the ones who’d witnessed his theatrics on the roof. In honesty, he felt terribly foolish about it all and furious that he managed to let his black thoughts get the better of him.
That he came so close to losing all he held dear.
Lyndon groaned again. “Benedict will be accompanied by Tommy bloody Squire, I’d wager.”
“I jolly well hope so,” answered Rollo cheerfully. He delivered a sloppy kiss, then laughed with delight as Lyndon wiped it away. “Having everyone together will be such fun.”
Lyndon gave a mournful sigh, refusing to let himself be so easily mollified by scrumptious kisses. “A slew of sodomites awaits me.”
Rollo snorted. “You say it as if gangs of us roam the countryside.”
“I’m starting to believe they do. Claiming unsuspecting, women-bedding lords as one of their own.” Lyndon gathered a giggling Rollo up in his arms and kissed his forehead.
“You are one of our own,” Rollo said. “You simply haven’t come to terms with it yet. Don’t worry. We shall have fully indoctrinated you by the end of the week.”
“I’m surprised they’re not here now, making a start. Certainly, they’ll be wondering where the devil we’ve got to.”
“I suspect that once Papa saw me safely in your arms, he retreated.” Rollo giggled again, happily. “He’s not widely known for racing up three flights of stairs.”
“Bloody tulip.”
Rollo’s frivolous little waistcoat, a peach stripy thing, hung from the old rocking horse, flung there in a fit of lust. Lyndon had never owned an item like it. He never intended to either. “Can one…” he began, then hesitated.
In the past few lonely weeks, convinced Rollo would never return, his unhappy mind had brooded on this very subject a great deal.
“What I mean is…I label myself no more a sodomite than I would label myself an astrologer or a…a horticulturalist. I am a man who enjoys those things—stargazing and plotting my summer flowerbeds—as I enjoy sodomising you. Enormously. But…am I defined by it? So that I must carry that label in all that I do? One is not defined by a love of hydrangeas, for instance. Nor by a passing fascination with…with the Flaugergues Comet.”
Rollo frowned as he considered. “Why do you ask? Does it concern you? Do you view us as lesser? Is that why you hid your urges for so long and made trouble for Benedict?”
“No,” Lyndon answered truthfully. “Especially as I have come to accept, nay embrace, my own desires. This…” He gestured around the room at the discarded clothes and the rumpled red dress on which they lay—it made for an excellent blanket.
“Is the most pleasure I have attained in my life thus far. My love for you and how we…make love to each other is a…a source of great pride as well as comfort.”
Rollo tilted his head on one side, studying him, no doubt seeing scruffy whiskers, skin sallow from poor living, and two eyes resembling dark, bloodshot wounds.
All redeemable though. Lyndon would turn over a new leaf starting tomorrow.
As he’d rushed to Rollo’s rescue up on the roof and the boy had lain faint in his arms, he’d decided he would jolly well like to live to a ripe old age, after all.
“For some of us,” Rollo began carefully, “our sexual predilections imbue our every action. In our walk, in our speech, in how we view the world. My father, for example, is of that nature. As am I.”
“You think nothing of donning a dusty old dress.”
“Yes.” Rollo smiled. “Though I am still a man and, should the occasion arise, I would willingly fight for our country alongside every other full-bloodied male.”
He paused, choosing his words. “Your brother, Benedict, however, is not of my nature. He presents a more sober face to the world, befitting his standing as a duke. He does everything in his power not to draw attention to his private predilections. That is his choice, and because of it, the ton views him with fondness, as a man married to his estate. In so doing, the gossip mongers leave him alone.”
He stroked a soft hand across Lyndon’s chest and its thicket of russet curls. “You, my lord, are a man built in your twin’s mould. You would not wish to flaunt your desires for a man outside of this household any more than you would covet living as a monk.”
“No.”
“And I wouldn’t want you any other way.”
As Lyndon indulged Rollo petting him, he mused on his good fortune.
Being stroked and kissed was all well and good, but if he lay really still, his sated lover might nod off again.
They could postpone leaving the nursery until they absolutely had to.
Alas, after Rollo’s mouth nuzzled his neck, he wriggled from Lyndon’s grasp.
“You smell,” the boy declared and wrinkled his nose charmingly.
“Like a troll,” Lyndon replied, sniffing his bare armpit. “I haven’t bathed for days.”
“I adore your scent. But one can have too much of a good thing. Especially where guests are involved.”
Lyndon scratched at his bristly chin. “I fear the state of my hair and whiskers might frighten our visitors too.”
“Not half as much as the sight of you swinging from the chimney pots. But you might want to…ah…tidy them. Everybody will be congregating in the drawing room soon. It is time we went your bedchamber and spruced you up.”
“I suppose we’ll have to feed them all? And find them beds for the night and so forth?” Lyndon pouted. He wanted his lover all to himself and preferably spreadeagled on the hearth rug.
Chuckling, Rollo clambered to his feet, pulling Lyndon up by the hand. “It is traditional when people have travelled a certain distance to visit a person, yes. It is also traditional that one refrains from taking pot shots at them. But I’ll leave that to you, my lord. As master of the house.”