Chapter 5
Earnest could get used to a life like this; waking up next to someone who took full advantage of his morning wood.
He wasn’t sure which of the babble he’d said that made Horden relax and he wanted to know because it was so special when Lord Horden was like this.
Earnest tossed back the blanket; it was too warm with Horden’s body pressed up against him.
He spread his hands all over Horden’s body, reaching down to hold that magnificent cock, all engorged and granite hard under his palm. Horden moaned into their kiss.
“Yes.” Earnest wanted Horden’s massive member inside him. “Your member is so big, it could have its own seat in parliament.”
Horden laughed. Actually laughed, and Earnest didn’t realise his heart could swell so much. God. He wanted to make Horden laugh over and over again.
“That was terrible.”
Earnest chuckled. “See how you inspire me.”
Horden responded with another kiss. A deep one with tongues tangling, and Horden brought his hands up to cradle Earnest’s head.
Damn. He loved this feeling of connection with someone; these first few tendrils of love as they grew and entwined the two of them.
He was going to be lost in it, and he knew, just knew, that when this ended—no matter who ended it—he was going to do something more dramatic than camp on Horden’s lawn.
He wanted to tear his heart out and gift it to Horden.
Perhaps not. Even he had a smidgeon of self-awareness to realise he’d gone a little overboard.
Until then, he could make the most of the moment.
So he used all his skill and brought Horden closer and closer to the edge, toying with that massive erection, then sliding down to bite his nipples.
The gasps and moans and the way Horden clutched his head sent spirals of heat through his veins.
“Yes?”
“Yes. Earnest. Yes. Please.” Horden panted through each word and Earnest knew that finally, finally, Horden had stopped thinking. Yes.
“Come all over me.” Earnest wanted it all.
“How?”
“Kneel over my thighs.” Earnest lay on his back and waved his hands. Horden complied and Earnest couldn’t help bending up to suck the end of Horden’s thick length.
“Earnest.”
“Do you like that?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” He lay back down and licked his lips. “Stroke yourself for me.”
Horden’s eyes widened but he reached down and palmed himself.
In the dim light of the fire, most of Horden’s body was hidden in shadow with an almost eerie glow cast around him.
Earnest wanted to do this again in the bright light of day.
Could he convince Horden to do this outside?
Under a tree on a picnic blanket, or in a river with cool water trickling over their skin—light and dark—with the sun playing over their muscles, or .
.. Later. He could dream later because right now, Horden’s enormous johnson was proudly pointed towards him.
“Faster. Harder.” Earnest wanted to see Horden handle himself. His hands were like the rest of him, oversized with the same tense control which infused Horden’s entire being.
“I’ll...”
“Yes. I want to see it. I want it on me.”
Horden threw his head back and came in great spurts that landed on Earnest’s chest and stomach. It was the hottest thing he’d ever seen. And he waited until Horden opened his eyes again before swiping his finger through it and tasting it.
“Earnest.” Horden reached down and stroked Earnest’s cock, hard and fast, and rough, and damn it, it shouldn’t be this good, but Earnest rocked into Horden’s hand until he came too, adding to the mess on his stomach.
He pulled Horden down onto his chest needing to be surrounded by him as pleasure shot from his balls all the way up his spine and he saw stars in the back of his eyes.
He kissed Horden everywhere, little kisses of thank you all over his skin, every tiny piece that he could reach, and he didn’t even care that the display of love was too much.
Sir Earnest Pashley—always too much. It would be his epitaph.
Earnest’s wonder at Horden’s lifestyle continued after they cleaned up, got dressed, and went to breakfast. Earnest usually ate oats to break his fast, whatever time that happened to be, so this spread of various choices was quite incredible.
“My compliments to your Cook. These eggs are cooked to perfection.”
“Yes.” Lord Horden glanced around the room.
“Are you expecting someone?”
“Surely you recall that I had several guests for dinner last night. At some point they will wish to break their fast as well.”
Earnest rolled his eyes. Who cared if they ate breakfast?
“You shouldn’t be sitting so close to me.”
“Are you nervous? No one will care.”
Lord Horden’s brown cheeks paled and he glanced down. “What we did was illegal. No one can know.”
Earnest leaned back in his chair. “Bosh. It wasn’t.”
“It was.”
He rolled his eyes. “For a Lord, you have a poor understanding of the law.”
“Excuse me.” The colour was back in Horden’s face as he sat up straight with his arms folded.
Unfortunately his jacket hid his impressive chest muscles but Earnest had seen enough now to imagine them squeezed together by his forearms. He blinked and refocused on the discussion, because it wasn’t often that he had the opportunity to educate an Earl.
Basically never, so this was a brand-new and exciting experience for him.
“It’s a common misunderstanding about the sodomy laws. It’s the act of sodomy that is specifically outlawed, not the rest of it. I could kiss you in Almack’s and there is nothing the law could do about it.”
“No?”
“Obviously, we’d both risk being blackmailed if I did such a thing, but yes, it’s not against the law.
And for someone like you, even if you were caught in the act of sodomy with the required two witnesses, you’d only be fined by the court.
I would likely get transported.” He shuddered.
The antipodes were no place for a delicate poet like himself.
“I thought hanging was the punishment?” Horden’s gaze flicked to the door and back several times.
“Only for repeat offenders who are lower class.”
“How can you talk so freely about this?”
Earnest shrugged. “Talking is important. The reason people get away with believing the wrong information is because no one talks about it or only the people who want you to believe mistruths talk about it. I’m not saying that I am not careful, of course.
..” He knew that if he kissed someone—Horden—in Almack’s, he’d be opening himself for the very real possibility of being blackmailed by people who liked to use the threat of being ‘witnesses’ to sodomy as a reason to get money from people.
Luckily he was a poet and had no money. “Why should I hide who I am because it’s associated with a bad law? ”
Horden blinked several times. “A bad law.”
“Come on, Mister Lord Who Sits In Parliament, there are several bad laws, like the one that says only peers can vote, or that women can’t own property, or...”
“That slavery exists, and people can profit from owning others.”
“Yes. You see. Just because something is the law doesn’t make it right.”
Horden gulped. “Are you a radical?”
Earnest recalled that Horden had asked him this once before, and he wasn’t inclined to answer this time either. Some things truly weren’t safe. The sedition laws scared Earnest more than the sodomy laws. “I’m a poet.” As if that explained everything.
Horden looked all around him, his gaze hovering nervously on the door. “Can I tell you a secret?”
“Sure.” Earnest wanted to cheer for this secret, whatever it was.
Surely this meant it was love between them if they were sharing secrets?
Or maybe he’d leaped too fast? Again. He wanted to leap.
When combined with great sex, learning about someone and what they secretly adored was his favourite thing about falling in love.
“I think I’m a radical.”
Earnest held his breath, suddenly realising he needed to tread carefully. Horden wasn’t like his artistic friends who talked frequently about radical concepts in private safe spaces. This was a man who’d been raised to be an Earl, whose peers likely bullied him into keeping the system as it was.
“Why do you say that?”
Lord Horden glared. “Look at me, Sir Pashley. The line of the Earldom is completely English, except for my mother’s mother who came to England from the Africas.”
“Your grandmother was a slave?” Earnest hadn’t been surprised to hear that Lord Horden had a relative from another part of the world. Horden’s darker skin, rich brown eyes, and tight curly black hair gave that away, but he hadn’t wanted to pry about the details.
“No. She was lucky enough to be beautiful.” Vitriol coated Horden’s tone.
“I don’t understand.”
Horden sighed. “Neither do I. My grandmother was brought to England as a lady’s maid. It was very fashionable back then to have beautiful Black servants.”
“Did she have a choice?”
“I doubt it but I ...” Horden stared at Earnest, and he forced himself to hold Horden’s gaze and not flinch away just because he was uncomfortable.
“There is no evidence either way. She caught the eye of my mother’s father, who was an industrialist, and they married.
It was a happy marriage according to my mother, but I’m not sure I believe that. ”
“Why not?” Earnest could get behind the fairytale of a man falling for a maid and elevating her in society.
He wished for the same for himself on occasion; to be elevated, that is.
A knighthood gave him access to society, but he still had almost no money.
He needed a benefactor to support his poetic efforts, otherwise he’d be doomed to be Dickson Hurquim forever.
“My grandfather may have been happy in his own marriage, but he also married his daughter, my mother, off to the Earl of Horden for status. If he was happy in his own marriage, why force his daughter into an unhappy situation?”
“Did he know it was going to be unhappy?”
Horden shuddered. “I don’t know. By all accounts my father was a charming man. I just never saw it.”
“Perhaps your father loved your mother? Or maybe they loved each other at first, and then it faded with time.” He wanted to think of people being in love; it was much more pleasant than the alternative, even if all the evidence was contrary to that.
Most peers seemed to marry for financial or status reasons.
“Earnest, you haven’t been listening. My grandfather was an industrialist. The Earldom was able to pay all its debts, thanks to my mother’s dowry.”
That certainly burst his bubble around the notion of love. “Why does this make you a radical?”
“Look at me. Isn’t it easy for someone who looks like me to say that people shouldn’t own other people who look like me?”
“Interesting choice of word; easy.” He didn’t think it was easy at all to decide to embark on changing a system that so many of Horden’s peers profited from.
Earnest was an avid reader of the newspapers, and he knew it had taken twenty years for Wilberforce to get the smallest ban on the slave trade.
By all accounts, there was a long way to go before the appalling practice was abolished globally.
Why on earth did Horden think this would be easy? It sounded incredibly challenging.