Page 33

It wasn’t jealousy, not truly, although I know it may sound as much.

We were both grown men with entire lifetimes behind us, and Arthur and Rudolph had assured me things were over, but the estate was nevertheless haunted—however inaccurately—by their relationship.

I would just need to use the next month to overwrite those memories with ones of me instead.

He dug his fingers into my inner thighs and pressed down further, my cock hitting the back of his throat, and yet he did not try to pull away.

He breathed out through his nose, looking up at me through his long eyelashes, and swallowed.

The pressure it created sent shocks of pleasure through my body and I cried out again, this time a little louder, and there was some devilry in his eyes as he slid his tongue over the sensitive spot on the underside of my cock.

When he pulled back, there was a thick rope of saliva connecting me to his lips, which glistened in the moonlight and made my stomach go tight with desire.

Lazily, as though his every move wasn’t driving me near mad with desire, he moved his right hand to the base of my cock, stroking it slowly and with purpose.

My back arched off the bench, and I grabbed the arm of the marble seat to brace myself, more because I was unable to breathe as I was seized by a paralyzing need for more.

“Arthur,” I managed, looking down at him, and he looked back at me, dragging the thumb of his free hand over his lower lip to collect his own spit.

It was an image I would never forget, a perfect snapshot of how incomparably beautiful Arthur was: his blond hair, dark in the night with one lonely curl falling on his forehead, his lips plump and wanting, his entire being seemingly crafted solely to give and receive pleasure in that moment.

He did not answer me when I called his name softly, instead taking the opportunity to swallow down around me once again.

Something near to a whimper tore from my throat, my inhibitions having gone out the window the moment he had begun to undo my shirt, and my toes curled in my boots, some long-dormant part of my brain remembering that we were doing this where we could easily be found but no longer caring.

I did not last much longer under his skilled tongue, my climax coming upon me with only a lurching wave of pleasure to warn me of its arrival.

Arthur pulled back, my seed pearled on his lower lip, and without considering the depravity of the act I grabbed him by the collar and pulled him up into a bruising kiss.

His mouth, salted as it was with my orgasm, was a familiar taste by now, and he allowed himself to be pulled essentially into my lap, returning the kiss with similar hunger.

I was about to pin him against the bench and have my way with him when he moved away, cocking his head to one side to listen like a particularly well-bred dog.

“Wait,” he whispered, and the spectacular rasp in his voice caused by what we’d just done was a distraction I could ill afford at the moment. “Do you hear that?”

I was quiet for a moment, listening intently for what he may have heard, and for a few long moments I heard nothing but the usual sounds of night.

I was preparing to go back to the activity that had rapidly become my favorite pastime—defiling the lips of the master of Ashford Hall—when I finally heard what had startled Arthur moments before: the distinct barking laugh of Charles.

“Oh no,” I hissed as soon as I realized what danger we were in.

Arthur quickly stood up, and I realized with some satisfaction that he was hard, his trousers bulging as though in invitation, but now was no time for me to take care of that problem for him.

I was mostly nude aside from my clothes dangling from one ankle, and to be caught by Charles of all people in the garden would be a sure end to our friendship.

Charles knew nothing of my proclivity and would not take it well if this was how he found out.

Hurriedly, I yanked on my underclothes but found that my trousers were impossibly tangled and time was rapidly running out.

We could now clearly hear Ida, and as she was not a loud woman, it was all too apparent that they could not have been more than ten or fifteen feet from where we now were.

I cast a desperate eye on Arthur and he, thinking rapidly, grabbed my shirt in one hand and my wrist in the other, barreling across the small courtyard we had suitably defiled and through a hedgerow just as Charles and Ida stepped into the space behind us.

We tumbled against the cobblestone—my elbow still scarred to this day from the fall—and Arthur yanked on my loose trouser leg that had become entangled in the hedge.

We sat there for a moment, listening, Arthur still holding my wrist.

“Did you hear that?” Charles was asking, and I could picture him craning his neck to see where we had disappeared to. I could only hope that the moonlight was not illuminating the part of the hedgerow we had tramped during our escape.

“It was a cat or a fox, most likely,” Ida said, as sensible as ever; then again, to suspect the noise of hedges being pushed through as a result of two grown men fleeing the scene of a tryst was pure madness, even if it was the truth. “Come and sit and don’t bother with the wildlife.”

A long pause followed by Charles’s familiar footsteps moving away from our direction, and Arthur and I exchanged a glance as we simultaneously realized he must have been directly across from us past the hedge.

A few more feet of investigation and we surely would have been discovered.

Murmuring voices reached our ears and I began to redress, this time successfully untangling my trousers and getting them on without further difficulty.

I was in the process of doing up my blouse when the murmuring stopped and a silence fell, except… .

“They’re kissing,” Arthur whispered, barely audible even with our close proximity.

Indeed, I had thought the same thing, but a quick look through the hole I’d left in the hedge during my escape confirmed it.

I was struck by a sudden sensation of pride; Charles had never wanted for female interest, but I liked Ida quite a lot, and they were well-matched.

The pride was immediately replaced by concern, however, as I recalled Ida’s betrothal to Arthur.

She had once been engaged to a lord, and while Charles was rich and handsome, he was not titled.

Worst of all, I could not even comfort him without revealing that I’d been out in the gardens at that time of night.

“Let’s go,” I said, getting to my feet, and with a resolute nod Arthur rose after me, the pair of us returning to the estate in comfortable silence.