Page 20 of Vanquished by a Viscount (Tales from the Brotherhood #3)

He forced himself not to look at Grayson. Doing so would give the game away to anyone who had even the slightest inkling of their inclinations.

Gray evidently sensed the need for subterfuge as well, though he took an entirely different tack than Charlie. “It was misery,” he said. “To be confined in a damp, leaking conveyance with a man like Lord Broxbourne for more than an hour is more than I thought I would be forced to endure.”

Charlie was in the process of setting down his soup spoon, but the vigor of Gray’s comment caused him to drop it loudly against the bowl. He scowled down the table at Gray. Subterfuge was one thing, but making it sound as if he was an ogre was entirely different.

“The time would have been more happily passed if I had been stuck with someone capable of intelligent conversation,” he fired back.

Gray’s expression hardened and his blue eyes lit with fire. “One is only as adept in conversation as one’s companion,” he said curtly.

If the man was playing some sort of game, it needed to stop. Although Charlie believed it was more likely that Grayson was merely reverting to his usual, odious self and that the interlude of peace they had experienced earlier was just that, a fleeting interlude.

Unexpectedly, their short exchange opened floodgates of another sort.

“There was no conversation at all to speak of in our carriage,” Lady Patience said with a sniff. She picked up her cutlery and stabbed into a vegetable on the plate that had just been placed in front of her while staring across the table at Lord Iverson.

“Truly?” Lady Winifred said, her back going straight. “I found the conversation delightful.”

“Yes, I suppose you would,” Lady Patience mumbled.

“There was a slight misunderstanding,” Lord Iverson said in a tight voice.

“A misunderstanding, was it?” Lady Patience said, biting down sharply on the vegetable she’d speared.

Even Charlie felt the pain of that gesture in his groin.

Lady Patience wasn’t the only one with a complaint about the failed excursion.

Moments later, Lady Winifred’s Aunt Violet said something about the hunger pangs she’d experienced from going so long without sustenance.

Mr. Lindhurst lamented the loss of his favorite pair of boots.

And when Miss Kennedy, Lady Patience’s chaperone, declared that she had never endured such an unpleasant morning in her life, the scales tipped too far.

“I cannot control the weather,” Barbara sobbed, standing so quickly her chair nearly tipped back. “I have done everything I can, but I cannot wish the rain away and force the sun to shine.”

All conversation at the table ceased. The prickly guests stared at Barbara as if she were the one who was at fault instead of them for airing their complaints.

Charlie felt the slight acutely. He stared across the table at Robert, willing him to do something.

“My dear,” Robert said with too much impatience in his voice.

Barbara did not stay where she was long enough to receive whatever censure Robert intended to give her. She burst into tears, clapping a hand to her mouth, and dashed from the room, leaving a table full of stunned guests behind her.

“Well,” Lady Sandridge said, summing up everyone’s thoughts for them.

Robert quietly got up and left the table as well. Charlie thought about going after Barbara. Indeed, that was his first inclination. But his earlier thoughts about the necessity of Barbara learning to seek out the solace of her husband above her brother won out.

The meal continued in awkward half-silence.

The few conversations that filled the tense silence were short and contained mostly dull platitudes and comments about the rain stopping.

Even the footmen serving at table seemed motivated to get the meal over with as swiftly as possible so that the guests could retreat to their rooms to put the awful day to bed.

The end of supper came quickly, and once it did, the exodus was swift.

“That might be the most awkward supper I’ve ever attended,” Gray muttered to Charlie as the two of them fell into step as they made their way up the stairs and off to the family wing of the house.

Charlie stared at Grayson with wide eyes. “You did nothing to help the situation and everything to make it more awkward,” he snapped.

“Me?” Gray recoiled.

“You would rather have been trapped in a carriage with someone capable of conversation?” Charlie demanded incredulously.

“I had to say something,” Gray hissed.

“You did not have to say that,” Charlie grumbled as they approached their bedchamber doors.

“Would you have had me speak the truth?” Gray asked, glaring.

“Of course not, but you could have said anything else.”

Charlie stopped in front of his door. Gray did the same.

“So does this negate our arrangement?” Gray asked, peeking up and down the empty hall.

Charlie considered for a moment only. Blast him, but arguing with Gray had only fired his desire further.

“No,” he said, grabbing the front of Gray’s shirt and tugging him forward.

He reached behind him to turn the doorhandle, then pulled Grayson through the door with almost enough force to have them both spilling to the floor.

They managed to stay upright, though, and as soon as Charlie had the door shut, he shoved Gray up against it then dove into him, slamming his mouth over Gray’s.

The aggressive gesture felt good. More than good. He threw himself into the role, bruising Gray’s lips with his kiss and thrusting his tongue into the frustrating man’s mouth as commandingly as he could, all while scrambling to undo the buttons of Gray’s jacket.

Gray countered Charlie’s forcefulness by melting against the door, submitting to Charlie’s aggression. That only encouraged Charlie in his efforts to kiss the air out of Gray’s lungs and to undress him as quickly as possible.

He finished with the buttons and tugged Gray’s jacket from his shoulders so hard something ripped. The excitement of that sound spurred him on. He stepped back, tugging Gray away from the door and toward the bed.

Somehow, they managed to shrug and struggle out of their clothes between powerful kisses.

As they stumbled across the room to the bed, they left a trail of shoes, shirts, and trousers behind them.

Charlie did not care a bit about any of it.

He wanted his hands on Gray’s skin, his fingertips digging into his flesh.

He wanted to feel the heat and leave bruises.

“I missed this,” Gray gasped between kisses as they reached the bed.

Confusing feelings of anger and heartache welled up alongside Charlie’s blind lust. How dare Gray interrupt what was supposed to be a base exchange with that sort of expression of feeling? And how dare his rebellious heart beat faster upon hearing those words.

“On your knees, then,” Charlie growled in response, pushing Gray downward.

Gray sank to the floor in front of Charlie eagerly, gripping his hips and going straight for what they both wanted.

He scooped his hand around Charlie’s heavy balls and lifted his already rigid cock to an angle that allowed him to wrap his mouth easily around the tip.

Charlie made an inadvertent sound of pleasure as Gray swallowed nearly his entire length, choking a bit when his lips were near his groin.

Gray pulled back slightly, sucking as he did.

Charlie hissed, grasping a handful of Gray’s hair and urging him to plunge down again.

When Gray did just that, his throat convulsing around his tip and sending indescribable pleasure through him, Charlie tilted his head back and closed his eyes to revel in it.

This was what he wanted. This was what he adored.

It was pleasure he was after and the sense of power he had over Gray, all while knowing it was what Gray wanted, too.

Tell-tale signs that he wouldn’t last long snapped Charlie out of his revery, and he opened his eyes to look down.

The sight of Gray handling himself vigorously while bobbing on his cock, lips pink and wet with saliva, did nothing to ease the sense of impending explosion in Charlie.

The two of them were so well-suited for each other’s tastes that it was any wonder they hadn’t both come as quickly as they had in the carriage.

“No,” Charlie panted, pushing Gray back so that his cock popped wetly out of Gray’s mouth. “Not this fast.”

Gray nodded as he panted, clearly understanding what Charlie was saying and sharing that sentiment. “I want to come with you inside me,” he gasped, pushing himself to stand.

Gray hooked a hand behind Charlie’s neck and yanked him close for another kiss. The slight musky taste of Gray’s mouth had Charlie groaning and gripping his hip tightly. They lost themselves in smashing their mouths together, no tenderness in their kiss where none was needed or wanted.

They both still had wants and needs, however. The hotter Charlie grew, the larger those needs loomed within him. He pulled back, leaving them both panting, and stepped to the side to grab the small jar he’d made certain to acquire during a brief excursion out of his room earlier.

“Bend over,” he ordered Gray. When Gray attempted to climb onto the bed, he said, “No, bend over where you are. I want to fuck you standing.”

A flash of a greedy smile lit Gray’s face before he did what Charlie had asked, and with wicked perfection, he bent over the bed, pressing his chest to the coverlet and spreading his arms. He moved his legs apart and lifted his hips, all while grinning at Charlie with challenge in his blue eyes.

Just the sight of Gray posing and spreading for him nearly made Charlie come.

Gray always had been an eager bottom, but it appeared his years of experience had enhanced that.

Charlie scooped a generous amount of grease from the jar, spread some on his throbbing erection, then pushed the rest of it over and into Gray’s hole.

Gray panted and moaned desperately as Charlie worked and stretched him.

Charlie was surprised how tight Gray was after all the stories of debauchery he’d overheard Gray whispering about in the last week.

Even with that initial tightness, Gray rocked back on Charlie’s fingers eagerly, making sinful sounds of abandonment as he relaxed into what Charlie wanted from him.

It was all too much, and Charlie couldn’t wait a second longer.

He lined up, took himself in hand, and slowly pushed into the warm embrace of Gray’s body.

They both cried out loud enough to disturb whomever might have been in the next room, if Barbara had given those rooms to anyone at all.

It felt that good to be joined with the only man he had ever really loved again.

Sinking into Gray wasn’t enough. Charlie needed more. He adjusted his stance, grabbed Gray’s hip with one hand and his shoulder with the other, and began to thrust as if the world might come to an end if he eased up one bit.

“God, yes!” Gray cried out, shifting a hand under him to grasp his own cock. “Harder! More!”

Charlie gave his lover what he wanted. He threw everything he had into fucking him until the heavy bed shook and jerked under them.

It was rough and mean, and he’d never enjoyed anything more.

The sound of skin slapping against skin was only outdone by their twin, ragged breaths and increasingly pitched sounds as climax grew closer.

Then it all came crashing through him. Charlie came with a victorious sigh, spilling the first of his seed inside Gray before pulling out so that he could stroke the rest of it across the pink, lifted mounds of Gray’s arse. It was the best orgasm Charlie had had in as long as he could remember.

Gray was already done by the time Charlie completely spent himself.

No doubt there was a wet spot on the coverlet that explained why Gray’s body was so loose and warm and sated.

The man was utterly gorgeous in that newly spent state, traces of Charlie’s cum already seeping from his hole.

Charlie’s heart leapt at the sight before exhaustion overtook him.

He collapsed to the bed on his back by Gray’s side, fighting to catch his breath as he shoved a hand through his damp hair. Their arrangement was brilliant. It was everything Charlie needed and more.

Until he made the mistake of turning his head to smile at Gray and found his lover smiling adoringly back at him.