Chapter 6
Exeter backed him against the hallway wall, knocking the breath out of him and upending the hat stand. Virtue squeezed his eyes closed and braced for the cold crack of knuckles to his jaw.
Instead, soft lips captured his mouth. Exeter’s large hands tilted Virtue’s face up to meet his own. Virtue’s mouth opened on a gasp and he kissed him back. The unmistakable swell of Exeter’s hardness pressed against his hip.
Exeter broke away first, his hand still fisted in the lapels of Virtue’s coat. “Do we understand each other?” There was an urgency to his tone and body. “I need to know that you understand what this is.”
Understand what? That his friend was kissing him? If he said no, would Exeter stop whatever this was? Well, he didn’t want that to happen.
“Not quite. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want you to keep kissing me.”
Exeter looked momentarily frustrated by the answer, but then he slipped his hand between them, feeling the aching stiffness in Virtue’s trousers.
“So you do.”
Exeter’s brow relaxed, but not enough. What wasn’t he getting? But he couldn’t dwell on it when his prick had gone from confused and interested to rock-hard the second that Exeter had cupped his groin. He swallowed nervously under Exeter’s charged gaze.
“You said your man, James, is not in. Anyone else?”
“No one.”
Exeter made a pleased sound.
He worked his knee between Virtue’s legs and pressed his thigh into the gap. His mouth found Virtue’s neck as he worked his thigh against him.
No one had ever kissed him there before.
He’d kissed a woman’s neck but—
Oh.
Good Lord, it was astonishingly pleasant.
“Awfully bad manners on my part, not to sort you out in the shop. Allow me to make amends to you now.”
“Christ don’t apologise for that!” He gave a shaken laugh. “You don’t owe me anything.”
“I very much do.”
Virtue wasn’t sure he wanted it to be tit for tat. It would be back to them one-upping one another.
“Have you done this before?”
Exeter’s gaze evaded his to study the red-and-gold swirls of birdcages and pagodas on the admittedly rather nice chinoiserie wallpaper that he’d pressed Virtue up against.
“Once or twice at Oxford. A couple of times after.”
Virtue had been the one to ask, but there was still a pinprick of discomfort at the answer. For a moment he felt that he did not know the man holding him. Who was this stranger with another life and how had he kept it hidden for so long?
They’d met when Exeter was two-and-twenty and had long since finished Oxford and established himself as a gentleman in society.
Virtue had only been nineteen and rather cowed at first by how much more worldly and experienced his new acquaintance had seemed.
His eyes were truly open now to just how many more things Exeter had done than he… and how brave he was.
“I try not to.” Exeter continued. “Hard to trust someone.”
“Understandable. It’s a never for me. I’ve never…”
“And you trust me?”
Virtue nodded with embarrassing eagerness.
The way Exeter’s smile broke across his face, it could almost be called sweet.
“Then where were we last time? Both of us had fewer clothes and your cock was rubbing up against mine.” He smirked. “I’ll play valet.”
Exeter tugged Virtue’s coat from his shoulders and flung it aside.
“I’m glad you’re not my actual valet. What would Mr Dibden say?”
“I know exactly what Mr Dibden would say.” Exeter’s grin widened.
“Lucky bastard. About both of us. But don’t worry, he’ll keep his mouth shut.
My secretary’s seen him down Vere Street with a bootmaker, so I doubt he wants to attract that kind of gossip.
Besides, I went back and ordered an entire new wardrobe and said I’ll pay for it in quarters.
Alas! No more Weston’s of Bond Street for me, I fear. ”
It took a moment for him to digest that rather large titbit of gossip about Dibden’s preferences. It dawned on him that he might not be very good at reading people.
“Good thinking, but you didn’t need to as I’d already put down a deposit with him for the same.”
“That sneaking bastard!”
Exeter crushed his lips to Virtue’s as a fit of giggles threatened to spill forth.
Exeter hooked his gloved fingers under Virtue’s braces and worked his shirt free.
“Gosh, I’ve changed my mind. You’re much faster at undressing me than James. He can drag it out for a quarter of an hour.”
Exeter, who had sunk to his knees, gave him a disturbed look, shook his head and unbuttoned Virtue’s falls. The inside of his falls was sticky. The air against his bare cock and balls was a relief.
Exeter took him into his mouth. Virtue’s left knee buckled with the surprise. He’d have stumbled if not for the one hand threaded into Exeter’s hair and the other clutched tight round the collar of his shirt.
“Christ, I thought you just meant hands.” His voice a gasping whine, that would have been terribly embarrassing if he weren’t getting the gamahuching of the century.
“I’m trying to make such an impression that you’ll want to do it again.”
Virtue’s long answering groan signalled that it was working.
His heart threatened to beat its way out of his body, it was thumping so violently, he could feel the pulse in his neck.
It was all too much, too quickly. Everything careening forward with the momentum of a carriage racing on a broken axle. Thrilling, terrifying, and—
Exeter wanted to do this again. He’d said as much. They could slow down.
With some effort, he gathered the will to gently pull Exeter back. Eyes, soft with lust, looked up at him. The perfect swell of his shiny pink lips parted in surprise.
Virtue ran his knuckles down the side of his friend’s face, afraid that such a tender, unguarded touch would give him away, but too weak to stop himself. Exeter leaned in, his eyes shutting in pleasure.
The lamplight from a passing carriage shone through the front room’s bay window. It was unlikely that anyone peering in could see into the dim hallway, but all the same, Virtue tensed.
Exeter evidently had similar thoughts: “Where are my manners? Let’s find somewhere more comfortable,” he said in the most shockingly unaffected, urbane manner, one that Virtue could never hope to emulate.
He took a discomposed Virtue by the hand and led him to the bedchamber at the back of the maisonette. Virtue’s aching cock jutted and leaked as he walked.
Exeter blocked him at the threshold, putting his arm across Virtue’s chest. “Wait one moment.” Only after Exeter had crossed the room to close the curtains and shutters did he nod for Virtue to enter.
“I feel like a spy. Isn’t this rather silly? You’ve been in here before. You’ve slept here before!”
Many of his friends from the club had slept in his bed, choosing it over a restless night spent on an uncomfortable chaise with their feet hanging over the edge.
“Old habits.”
For a man whom he admired for being so free, Virtue did not like these habits of skulking. Darn the law.
He pushed Virtue back towards the bed, where he landed with a flump on the mattress. Exeter remained standing between his legs. He made short work of Virtue’s shoes before slipping off his braces and tugging off his trousers.
Within moments, Virtue lay naked save for his short stockings.
“Can I take anything off for you?” he asked, eager for more of what he’d seen in the shop.
Exeter shook his head as he settled down on his knees.
“I’m not putting aside the toy I’ve just unwrapped to attend to myself. Later.” With that said, he flipped Virtue’s legs over his shoulders, pressing Virtue’s knees towards his chest.
Virtue’s breath stalled.
Was he going to—
“Don’t worry,” Exeter murmured, having read his mind. “Not this time.”
So, it was going to happen again. Whatever this was.
Exeter undid the buttons on his own gloves with his teeth. He bit the leather tip of each index finger to slowly peel them off. Virtue had half a mind to tell him to keep them on. A gloved hand round his cock was a fascinating thought.
Then Exeter grasped him with his bare hands and Virtue could think of nothing better than being enveloped in his warm, masculine grip.
A gentleman’s hands. Powerful enough to control a team of horses.
His nails buffed to a subtle sheen by his valet, and his signet ring flashing its crest with each tug.
Exeter gently lapped at his sac, taking one of his balls into his mouth. He circled the backs of his knuckles against the small strip of no man’s land between Virtue’s sac and arse.
“You touched yourself here.”
“Feels good there,” Virtue admitted breathily. “You can be firmer. I like it.”
“I rather thought you would. Your face did a thing in the shop.”
With the way Exeter was smiling at him, all teasing and warm, Virtue could have melted, flustered and undone, right into the feather mattress.
“That face exactly. When your jaw goes slack, it makes me want to slide my cock right into that pretty mouth of yours,” he teased.
That painted such a picture for Virtue that his jaw dropped open a little more at the audacity.
The thought of that thick prick in his mouth turned him red from embarrassment.
Oh, he’d take it all right. Virtue squirmed, his prick aching for friction.
Why couldn’t Exeter get his out right now?
He wished he would. The hard outline in Exeter’s trousers was enough of a reminder of what he was hiding away.
“Oh, do shut up, Exeter,” he spluttered once he’d recovered enough to speak.
Exeter laughed deeply. Then, Virtue could think of very little apart from the rasp of Exeter’s stubble against his inner thigh. Then Exeter’s mouth was on him; thick lips wrapped tight around the crown. He couldn’t tell what was more flushed, his ruddy prick or Exeter’s shiny, wet mouth.
Christ, he’d heard of men paying hundreds of guineas for some beautiful creature with an eager mouth to give them the sucking of a lifetime.
He’d never understood the appeal of a kept mistress and had always dismissed out of hand those who maintained them as strange, dishonourable perverts with a peccadillo for frittering their money away in a most extravagant fashion.
But now the gifts of furnished apartments in Marylebone, deliveries of fresh flowers, Parisian wardrobes, and jewellery all made sense.
If one couldn’t marry the person who made one feel that way, what, in God’s name, did one give the most eligible gentleman of one’s acquaintance to make him want to do it again?
He’d need to dwell on that later. At present, all his thoughts were slowly being sucked out of his prick… and it felt so good.
He whimpered.
Heavens above. He whimpered?!
His hand tremored as he reached out. Exeter’s blue eyes, slitted like a cat’s, turned to track the motion. Virtue settled for touching Exeter’s soft gold curls.
“You’re so very lovely, you know.” He didn’t think he could even be embarrassed at having said it; he was completely undone by Exeter.
His next words were rather less romantic.
“Fair warning. I’m going to spend like a Roman candle if you don’t stop.”
Exeter’s languor had vanished beneath the sudden flush of colour across his cheeks. Even his forehead had gone pink. He broke away with a gasp.
“I think I had better take my clothes off.” For the first time since kissing him, Exeter looked uncertain. “If that is amenable?”
“Amenable? Please do.”
Virtue cuffed the base of his cockstand so as not to spend while Exeter stripped his clothes off in a button-ruining fashion.
He was not surprised to see one fall from his trousers and roll across the carpet.
When it settled, he realised it was not a button, but the acorn from the shop.
He turned to ask Exeter why he had it, when his words were stolen from him.
Virtue had always known his friend was a handsome devil, but in the glow from the oil lamp, his body gleamed like marble.
Exeter’s face was anything but cold; it was warm and dazed with pleasure, his lips soft and swollen, his hair disordered.
If Virtue’s face could be accused of doing a thing, he could lay the same crime at Exeter’s door.
Oh, how much he’d wanted this, and he still didn’t know quite what he’d finally done right to warrant it.
His friend, usually so cocksure, was now flustered and somewhat shy as he climbed naked into Virtue’s bed. Together, they shuffled up the sheets, all nervous smiles and lingering touches.
Virtue ran his hands over the solid breadth of Exeter’s chest. His nipples tightened beneath his touch, and Exeter shuddered helplessly when Virtue circled one with his thumb. Sensitive, just as he’d guessed.
“Come here, Julian. You’re going to get me too excited,” Exeter said unsteadily, pulling him in, till Virtue’s back settled against Exeter’s wonderfully solid chest. It was rare for anyone to call him Julian.
Exeter normally reserved the use of his Christian name for taking the piss out of him, but it had been said with such tenderness that he almost felt glossy eyed.
Exeter’s prick, insistent and hard, pressed into the cleft of Virtue’s arse.
He cursed as he pushed his thick prick between the tight press of Virtue’s thighs.
“Just like that. That feels—yes. You feel so good to me.”
Virtue hardly knew what to think, apart from to be thrilled that Exeter was frigging himself between Virtue’s legs.
Then one of those big beautiful hands wrapped around Virtue’s prick and convinced him he’d gone to heaven.
He wriggled and bucked with the pace Exeter set, determined to show him a good time.
“Oh, George. George,” he cried.
Virtue’s knee locked and shook as he reached a crest.
“That’s it. Let go,” Exeter coaxed him to his peak. He spent with a cry into Exeter’s hand, a juddering mess of a man, as his lover wrung him dry. A moment later, Exeter groaned into Virtue’s neck, coming in a hot rush between his thighs.
“I could do that again,” he blabbed into the quiet.
Exeter laughed, breath ruffling the sweaty curls on the back of Virtue’s neck. “Sometimes I forget that you’re four years younger. Give me a half an hour.”
“Well, I shan’t say no, but I meant again-again. Another time?” Virtue turned his face, hiding it in the pillow.
It felt like an awfully long time before Exeter spoke again, and when he did, it was with a soft humour. “A long-standing social engagement for fucking? Followed by vingt-un and Almack’s?”
Ah. Sometimes the softest of blows could hurt the hardest when the target was true.
If he tried very, very hard, Exeter might not see how the rejection upset him.
He’d been quite sure that Exeter had hinted at wanting this…
whatever this was…to go further. But perhaps he had misunderstood, and he’d only meant for this to be one long, wild night.
He was too tired to think, but he was certain now that he’d had Exeter—it would be impossible to go without.