Page 27 of To Defend a Damaged Duke (Regency Rossingley #2)

“Then he must be truly courageous.” Tommy dipped his hand amongst the folds of white linen wrapped around the duke’s prick, presenting it like a gift. With his other hand, he unfastened his own breeches.

“I want to pleasure you too, Tommy,” said the duke through a hot breath, “As you pleasure me.”

“Or—” Tilting himself forward, Tommy spat on his palm, then wrapped it around both cocks. “—we can do it this way.”

“Oh, God, yes.”

More than spit slicked them both. Too many bloody layers of linen were getting in the way for Tommy to see the damned things, but he could feel the duke’s prick, rigid and scorching hot against him.

“By God, you feel good,” Tommy said.

The duke clamped his own hand around Tommy’s, and together, they found a jerky rhythm. Tommy nipped the damp skin at the duke’s neck, suckling the sensitive flesh as their pricks rubbed against each other. He pulled harder, twisting up and over his lover’s swollen crown.

“Oh,” the duke rasped. “Oh, oh yes.”

So that was how he liked it. “It meets with your approval, Your Grace?”

“I don’t believe I have ever felt so hard.”

“Iron sharpens iron,” Tommy gasped. “Didn’t you know?”

The duke let out a whimper. “Then I believe that iron has fast become my favourite of all the elements.”

Both were close to spending, Tommy sensed it from the faltering of the duke’s hips, from a tiny cry, fraught and wanting, carrying him back through time.

A fresh wave of heat cantered down his spine, flooding between his legs.

He sped up the shuttling of his wrist, licking the duke’s neck, then sucking down hard.

His lover cursed, tipping his head back for more.

“Now, Benedict, now.”

“God, yes. Now.”

They spilled almost as one, scrappily coating hands and linen. Uncaring. They spilled until the duke winced and stuttered and pulled Tommy’s hand away. He held it up to his mouth, pressing his lips to it like a charm.

Tommy’s eyes shuttered closed. He sagged, breathless and mindless, against the duke’s broad chest, swaying as it heaved.

In a moment, after permitting himself a few seconds to recover his senses, he’d recover his clothing and take his leave, a habit rooted in self-protection.

One never knew when a madge could turn violent.

Best to be out of range and closest to the door.

He made to clamber off and away from the mess cooling between them, but the duke hauled him back again.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“Nowhere, apparently.”

The duke exhaled in a lazy, self-satisfied sigh. “Good. I haven’t had my fill of you. You can stay there a while longer.” It sounded very much like a ducal order.

“If your intention is a demand for seconds, I may have to demure, Your Grace,” Tommy was still breathless. “I believe I have been bled dry. You have mastered rakery over the course of one evening.”

“I have.” The duke’s eyes danced. He held Tommy’s hand more tightly. “At least, with you. I…I feel I can do anything with you.”

For a long minute, they contemplated each other.

Tommy made good use of his pocket square, using one hand as best he could, considering Ashington was clearly reluctant to part with the other.

As the duke toyed with Tommy’s fingers, his gaze turned wistful.

His smile faded. Now it was over, he seemed more like the diffident duke again.

“That’s a melancholy face for a man who has recently had his ballocks drained,” Tommy teased.

The duke chuckled softly. “Melancholy is not my intention. I…” He ran his fingers down Tommy’s arm, almost absently.

“Given the juxtaposition of what we have shared and the invidious situation in which I find myself, I feel trapped between a rock and a…a place of utmost calm. And it is a most peculiar sensation.” Cautiously, he glanced up as if braced for rebuttal.

Nothing was further from Tommy’s mind. “That our lives have circled back to each other is a curious miracle, indeed, Your Grace,” he agreed.

“Unwittingly, Lyndon has done me a huge favour.” The duke toyed with Tommy’s sleeve. “Despite the hellish mess he’s created.”

“If that were true, I would rejoice. But I cannot see how.”

A mother-of-pearl button at Tommy’s cuff commanded the duke’s utmost attention. “If it were not for his actions, I wouldn’t be here with you. He has forced me to cease being scared of the unknown and start being more scared of never knowing.”

Tommy frowned. “Never knowing what?”

The duke shook his head. “Would you mock me, Tommy”—he moved his favours onto the next tiny button along—“if I confessed that I do not, that is to say, I have…I have never had a successful coupling with a woman? To completion?”

“No. In the course of my life, I have sought my pleasure lying with both sexes,” answered Tommy truthfully. “But I would not make fun of any man who has had to endeavour to be that which he is not.”

“You are a compassionate man.” A sad smile played at the duke’s lips. “Your forgiveness of me is testament to that. But what if I confessed that I have never been with a man either? I have… After we—after you and I were no longer— I…I have only ever been with you.”

When the duke dared look up into Tommy’s eyes, his own were full of anguish.

“Would you mock me now? And mock the pretence I have just executed, pretending to be a rogue? When I am no closer to that than…than a Franciscan friar? The sting of my brother’s bitter accusation wounds me ever more, does it not? ”

Stunned, Tommy said nothing. He’d bedded countless men and women. In his distant past, he’d have done anything with anyone—man, woman, or beast—if they were willing to part with a few coins. Everything he was and everything he owned to this day had come at a high price.

Did he envy the duke’s innocence? No. The horrors of his murky past had served Tommy well, making him stronger and more determined than ever. To never have done any of that? To have never known the sensation of skin on skin, that precious little death, that fleeting moment of perfection?

“Say something, Tommy? Please?”

Pushing back a lock of hair, Tommy looked down into a pair of brown eyes flecked with shards of gold. Eyes brimming with pain. He then pressed his mouth against each tender lid. “Why? Why have you not?”

“Because on that dreadful day, not only did I tie your sweet hand behind your head, but my own too. And I have lived with it bound tightly there since. Too guilt-ridden to set it free, too undeserving. And too aware of my own desires, desires unfitting for a future duke. Too fearful of what would happen if I did.”

“But not now,” urged Tommy. “Not now we have found each other.”

How could someone feel so familiar, like a favourite pillow or the knotted wood grain of his desk, and yet so new? Like his home, and yet be part of a strange and untouched place, a place he’d yet to explore. But God, how he wanted to.

Tommy reached for the duke’s wrist and kissed it as he had kissed his eyelids. Unbinding it in his mind, setting it loose.

“No.” The duke allowed himself a cautious smile. “Though our timing is despicable. How can I woo women when my heart is wooing you? If not for Francis and Isabella, I do not think I’d have the strength for the plan.”

“You don’t believe you can appeal to Lord Lyndon’s better nature?”

“I do not believe he has one.”