Page 16 of Centerpiece (Infinite Grace #2)

Remi kept his hands where Holburn had pinned them both because it pleased him to and because he knew Holburn thought Remi pretty in such a pose.

“No.” He had to answer truthfully and wanted to answer truthfully, even if the truth was strange.

Holburn shook his head to get his curls out of his eyes, then placed his hands on Remi’s chest, stroking Remi’s nipples and cupping his flat breasts while watching his face.

“Ali wanted—and needed—you with her while she evaded preaching priests and monks, and found ruins to sketch.” Aside from his flush and his stiff cock, Holburn could’ve been sitting at his desk discussing tenants and crops and plans to redirect streams. “You would have liked seeing their gardens, which were truly incredible.”

“Oh.” Remi bit his lip and Holburn paused in his attentions to his nipples to draw Remi’s bottom lip out of the way of his teeth.

“They had a library, and some wonderful wine—I brought some back with me, and you might like it. And I would have found you in that library, or in those gardens, or among those ruins, and taken care of you. As Ali would have, monks or no monks. Anyway,” Holburn moved one hand to the base of Remi’s throat but let it rest there, a whisper of a promise, “you should have heard what those monks got up to. Of a hundred men all sworn to chastity, I’d say only ten or fifteen actually managed it. ”

His lips twitched with his amusement.

“Oh,” Remi said again, once more out of breath. “Do you think they would have taken me?”

“You could tempt a....” Holburn stopped, then pursed his lips. “Are the guards still afraid that I’ll be angry if they touch you? My poor Remi.” He stroked the side of Remi’s face. “No one to please you all this time?”

“They’re so handsome,” Remi complained. They could bugger him or have him as their girl. He wouldn’t mind either. “But it wouldn’t be right anyway.” He drew Holburn’s hand back down to his nipples, elated when Holburn smiled at him for asking and wanting instead of merely agreeing.

Holburn gave him a pinch. “Why wouldn’t it be right?”

Remi blinked up at him. “You have to be first and last. Just like in the capital. You have to be there. And they’d never do it with you around.”

Holburn opened his mouth, said the first several words of the Lord’s Prayer, then shut his mouth again. His hands stopped.

“And you believe that I would tire of you?” His voice was rough and he leaned in again to hold Remi to the bed. “What of Aliette? Do you believe she would?”

Ali, petting Remi’s face and cooing at him in encouragement while he was thrust forward and drawn back onto yet another cock, and then, while he was shaking and tired and so sated and pleased, and everyone else was gone, she would do the job herself with a well-polished beast on a belt around her hips before letting Holburn step in to finish him.

But there was also Ali, who had wanted to take Remi into some ruins with her while she drew. Remi knew that would have ended with her forgetting the hour, and him pulling food from a pack for them, and then falling asleep on her skirts and waking to her sketching his face.

She had a lot of sketches of his face. Angel studies , she called them.

“Holburn.” Remi took a breath. “I didn’t mean it to hurt. Only that it would be sensible to prepare.”

Holburn’s quick smile left him uncertain.

“You don’t have to prove you’re sensible to me.

As you don’t need to prove anything to the servants in this house—although there you won’t believe me yet.

But look around, Remi, and recognize that your efforts to belong to this house have not gone unnoticed by the others.

People, honest people, can’t help but adore our saint. ”

A saint waiting for a tumble. Remi gave Holburn a suspicious look. “And your new priest?”

“Priest s .” Holburn announced it with pleasure. “Two of them. And considering what I caught them getting up to, I doubt they will have anything to say about you. Providence .” He nearly purred it. “You should have come with us.”

Remi could maybe see that now. He had studied, but he sometimes thought there were not words enough for the emptiness in him when his graces were away. The itch, the ache, were all a part of the same longing. Love, he knew it was now. But a centerpiece had no place to speak of it.

“I missed you.” A fraction, a mere whisper, but it brought Holburn down to kiss him. First Remi’s mouth and then down his neck as if Holburn was in no hurry. Remi squirmed. “Holburn, please. Am I not wet for you?”

A soft snort against his skin made him shiver, then Holburn backed off him altogether and Remi’s shivers were more about the cold.

Holburn stilled him with a look. “We couldn’t wait. We left early and travelled all through the night to get to you.”

Remi’s lips parted on a shocked breath. “I’m your hole, though you care for me.”

It shouldn’t have made Holburn twitch a smile, not with his gaze burning.

“You are, but you are not only that. Come here. There’s a good lad.

” He sighed when Remi immediately shifted to kneel in front of him.

Holburn slid his hands into his hair. “Ali, a mage as she is, as inclined as she is, as uniquely lovely as she is, has never been widely welcomed. Not at first. Not even among the classes you call your betters. She keeps some of herself from them. But not from you.” He pressed a kiss to Remi’s cheek and then to the tip of his nose.

“Where is she?” Remi wondered softly, voice trembling.

“Distracted on her way to undress in her rooms, I am sure.” Holburn was gentle. “‘I missed you,’ you say, with your beautiful eyes telling me it was much more than that.”

Remi closed them, a foolish move before Holburn’s cleverness. But Holburn allowed it, petting him and granting him more kisses before leaning to one side to call out. “Ali?”

Remi opened his eyes and turned toward the door connecting the Duke’s rooms to those of the Duchess in time to see Ali push through it, an open robe hanging from her shoulders and her hair half pinned and half loose. He reached out without thought.

Ali, more naked than dressed, fluttered over to the bed to kneel next to them and seize Remi for a kiss. When he was breathless, she inched back to peer at him. She looked pale to Remi’s eye, with shadows on her face that spoke of their long night of travel.

“If you will not wake your maid, allow me to tend to your hair,” he offered, but was ignored.

“Remi missed us,” Holburn told his wife, pecking the tip of her nose as well.

“Did you?” Ali kept her attention on Remi, noting as much as Holburn undoubtedly had. She clucked her tongue when Remi glanced away. “Close to a fortnight away from you. We shan’t do that again.” She seemed very certain.

Remi darted a look to her breasts, to her stomach, curved but not with the weight of a child. Not yet. “You must leave me someday, even if you don’t want to.” He would allow that much; Holburn would insist. “If it risks you...”

“Holburn,” Ali turned to her husband, “fuck some sense into her, please.”

Holburn faced Remi with fires still in his eyes. “On your back, Remi.”

Remi obeyed without grace, falling backward and hiking his nightshirt up to his neck to bare himself for their taking.

He looked between the two of them and lost his breath as Holburn spread his legs and bent his knees for him while Ali stepped from the bed to grab what was needed.

When she returned, she watched for several moments, gaze intent on Holburn’s fingers within Remi, before she leaned in to press kisses to Remi’s open mouth.

“I meant...” Remi tried to tell her but he was shushed and kissed.

“I know what you meant,” she whispered in response to his whining. “But do you not understand Holburn yet? Your husband has worried over you in return.”

“Husband?” Remi blinked several times and moaned into Ali’s mouth when she kissed him again.

Her smile as she drew back was clever and mean, and Remi whimpered for it.

When she looked at him like that, it meant she had a gift for him, something fair and soft for a good lass to wear, or that she was set to have him be used as he hadn’t ever been used before.

Then Holburn was pushing inside him and Remi’s back arched as he shook for it, and Ali kissed him again, harder now. She was enjoying the sight, and chiding him while Holburn made a home between his legs.

“Irritating though it can be, does your husband not always know what is right for you? Do I not care for you as your wife should?”

“I told you.” Holburn grunted, deep inside Remi with his hands gripping Remi’s hips tight, all while Remi panted.

“You are married.” Remi couldn’t manage more than the simple fact. Holburn yanked him down to keep him seated on his cock and then Ali’s hands were in Remi’s hair and she was turning his face for longer, deeper kisses.

“ We are,” Holburn rumbled at them both, “and will vow it in the chapel with you if you prefer.”

“We’ve brought you a gift as well.” Ali drew one of Remi’s hands down to her cunny, where she was as wet as Remi felt. “Whenever you feel like wearing it. A ring. Though in pewter, since Holburn says you wouldn’t want the other servants to fuss. Our little saint.”

Holburn pulled back just to snap his hips forward.

Remi bit his lip in pleasure and had even that solace taken from him.

“But I am...”

“Ours,” his beloved graces finished for him, using him and loving him, and Remi had no protests left that they could not steal away if they wished.

“I have always been yours,” he admitted, shuddering and weak, “and you have always known that.”

“But now you know it too.” Ali was breathing harder. She’d be all over him the moment Holburn was through with him, kissing and rubbing wherever she pleased.

Remi looked up to Holburn, who watched them both and burned as he did, as he now said he always would. “ Do you know that now?”

Holburn held still, waiting for an answer or to make Remi itch and ache and beg. But Remi would get what he begged for and then some.

Remi curled his fingers to please his lady and shifted up to encourage his lord.

His voice was soft. “I do.”

The End