Much as Lysander liked the sound of his given name in Freeman’s—Adam’s—mouth, he couldn’t bring himself to look at the man as he answered his question. Staring at his feet, he forced himself to admit his lack of experience.
“I sucked a man off once. And there was a boy at school. We used to”—he mimed the familiar jerking motion with his hand—“together, I mean. That’s it. Oh, and I tupped a woman once. To try it.”
“Lysander, look at me.”
Burning with shame and longing, he did as he was bid, and there it was again. That look. That passionate, intense look that made Lysander feel like parched earth getting rain after a long drought.
“You could not please me more,” Adam said softly. “I count it a privilege to be chosen by you for this. To be allowed to give you this pleasure.” He smiled. “And it will be a pleasure, Lysander, of that you can be sure.”
He plucked Lysander’s glass from his hand and set it aside, then he reached for the buttons of Lysander’s coat.
“Let’s have this off.”
Adam took his time undressing Lysander, removing this final layer between them.
He was a beautifully made young man. Straight, strong limbs and long, lean muscles. That frankly handsome face became truly devastating when he smiled his incomparable smile, and Adam loved the lock of golden hair that flopped endearingly over his forehead.
Naked, there were even more things to enjoy—his smooth chest and small, tight nipples, his pale, muscled arse, and the slender curve of his mouthwatering cock. More innocent things too. The high arches of his well-made feet. The sweet dip at the small of his back. The tender nape of his neck, so recently hidden by the mathematical precision of his cravat.
Adam wanted to worship all of him.
He removed his own clothes more quickly, ripping them off and tossing them aside, enjoying the frank appreciation in Lysander’s gaze even as he smiled at his own vanity.
At last they were both naked, and he took Lysander in his arms, pressing their bodies together, head to toe.
Lysander gasped. He opened his eyes wide. “Jesus. I’ve never—I feel like I’m going to spill now—”
Adam just smiled and dipped his head, touching their lips together in the lightest of kisses, inhaling the scent of the man—wine and pomade and the clean, good fragrance of his skin.
Lysander kissed him back, tentatively at first, touching the tip of his tongue to Adam’s mouth, then groaning when Adam parted his lips to allow him full entry. Growing bolder, he thrust his tongue into Adam’s mouth, and Adam met it with his own. It was a surrender and a rout, both. Push and pull and give and take. The most pleasurable of tussles. Parry, thrust and riposte.
Adam raised his hands to gently cup Lysander’s face as he explored the man’s mouth. He stroked the tender tissues of Lysander’s soft palate with his tongue, then drew back to feast again on his lips, his kisses now shallow, now deep, his fingertips drifting through the blunt ends of Lysander’s golden hair, messing it up thoroughly.
Canting his hips, he ground his cock against Lysander’s as best he could with his hands otherwise engaged. He desperately needed more contact, a harder press. The glancing strokes they were managing now were maddening him, and at last he dropped his hands to Lysander’s hips, pulling him in hard and driving their pricks together.
Lysander grunted and copied him, taking hold of Adam in the same way, his strong hands drifting further down to grip and knead at Adam’s arse.
Oh Christ, but this was going to be quick, far too quick, if Adam wasn’t careful.
He pulled back and grabbed Lysander’s hand. “Come on,” he said, and his voice was hoarse with lust and need. “Come to bed.”
He towed Lysander to the other side of the room—to the door that led to the master bedchamber—and drew him inside.
Urging Lysander towards the bed, he murmured, “Lie down. I want to feast on you.”
Lysander settled himself on his back, his eyes wide as he watched Adam crawl over him and press kisses to his thighs, hips and belly, circling in tighter and tighter till at last there was nothing left to do but slide his mouth down over Lysander’s beautiful cock.
At the first hot pull of his mouth, Lysander cried out, raising his fist to his mouth to muffle his groans as Adam worshipped him with licks and suckles and deep diving pulls. He teased him to the brink only to draw back, gripping Lysander’s ballocks firmly to stop him spilling, then going back in to kiss away the offence. He moved lower, tracing the tender skin between Lysander’s balls and his hole with teasing licks that made the man shudder and grunt. And then he went deeper still, pressing Lysander’s thighs apart with strong, determined hands, touching the very tip of his agile tongue to the impossibly tight entrance to Lysander’s body.
Lysander bucked against his hands. “Jesus, Adam—you can’t—”
Adam raised his head. Lysander had levered himself up onto his elbows, and his expression was a bewitching mix of shock and lust.
For a moment, Adam stared at him, arrested by the captivating sight of all that debauched innocence.
“It’s all right,” he murmured. “You’ll like it. Let me.”
Lysander stared at for him a long moment, then he groaned and thudded back down to lie flat on the mattress, draping his arm over his face in helpless consent.
Adam smiled and bent his head again, this time licking Lysander’s twitching hole, then anointing the tender skin all around with kisses till Lysander was panting and reaching for his own cock, groaning with what sounded like real pain when Adam batted his hand away and took his ballocks in another firm grip.
“Do you want to come?” he asked lightly.
“Yes—oh, God, Adam, yes, please. It’ll take nothing at all.” He was babbling, his blue eyes wide and pleading and God, Adam loved seeing him like this. That perfect, buttoned-up English gentleman from this morning, clothes gone, all dignity gone, begging for release.
“The truth is, I’d like to fuck you,” Adam said quietly. “But only if you want it too. If you don’t, we can finish this another way.”
“Oh but I do. I do, I do, I do! Adam, please—” Lysander canted his hips up, his cheekbones stained with the flush of sex, eyes dark with lust and begging.
Adam leaned to the side of the bed, fetching the oil bottle out of a drawer and removing the stopper. Pouring a generous pool into his palm before setting it aside again. Heedless of the linens, he rubbed the dripping oil into Lysander’s opening, pushing into the man’s tight channel with his fingers, gently stretching the muscle, watching in awe as his young lover groaned, accommodating him.
Christ, but he was an eager boy.
Adam used the rest of the oil on his own neglected cock, briefly enjoying his own practiced touch before leaning forward and pushing Lysander’s legs back, exposing him shamelessly. He took a moment to enjoy that abandoned sight, then helplessly pressed forward, piercing Lysander’s hole with the thick head of his cock.
Lysander let out a growling sort of a yelp, a fascinating sound of mingled pain and pleasure that made Adam stop moving. He searched Lysander’s face for a clue to his thoughts, his body shaking with the effort of holding back when all he wanted to do was fuck like an animal.
“Do you want me to stop?” he whispered.
“Christ, no!” Lysander grabbed at his hips with desperate hands. “Fuck me, Adam. I’m so very close—”
Adam drove into Lysander’s body then, snarling with approval and lust. He’d only thrust a few times before Lysander was reaching his crisis. And God, but the boy was incoherent with pleasure, a babble of senseless words and more primitive sounds falling from his lips as his seed finally erupted from his ruddy shaft. The first surge of his spend went high, hitting his shoulder, making them both gasp out with laughter.
The rest of Lysander’s come pulsed out over his belly, and just the sight of it, that unmistakable evidence of his delight, was enough to send Adam flying too. He thrust hard, once, twice mor
e, and then his vision was greying, pleasure suffusing every part of him as he spilled himself inside his lover.
His lover.
This man lying under him, stripped and exposed, just like Adam himself. The two of them, each unveiled to the other, right down to their very skins.
And Adam knew, right then, that he’d been wrong earlier, when he’d told Lysander he’d done this many times. Those other times had been something else entirely.
With Lysander, everything was new.
Afterwards, Lysander felt like he couldn’t move. He watched as Adam rose and went to his dressing table, pouring water from the ewer into the bowl to wash himself. Watched as he returned to Lysander with a damp cloth to do the same for him, wiping the oil and semen from Lysander’s body with tender swipes.
What happened now? Was Lysander expected to dress and leave?
He was about to ask when Adam slid back into bed beside him and drew the bedcovers over them both, rendering the question redundant, for now at least.
Lysander shifted and turned so that he was facing Adam. He yawned, a great jaw-cracking yawn that made Adam smile.
“Tired?” he murmured.
“Yes.”
“Sleep, then. You’re welcome to stay the night. I can assure you no one will disturb us.”
He spoke with the certainty of a rich man with well-trained servants.
“Thank you,” Lysander said, adding after a pause, “Strange, isn’t it, to think we were only introduced today? When I woke up this morning, I was not looking forward to the day ahead, but it has turned out . . . very well.”
“Yes, it has.” Adam smiled. “And what of tomorrow? What do you have planned for me? More afternoon calls? Driving in Hyde Park? Perhaps a rout or a musicale in the evening?”
His words were light, but Lysander heard the faint tension in them. The vaguest hint of dread.
“What would you like to do?” he asked.
For several long moments, Adam considered the question, then he said, “I would like to take you to Edgeley Park. I would like to hear what you have to say about it—what you think I should do with it.” He paused, then added, “We could go, too. We could pack our valises and be off. The wedding’s not for weeks. What do you say?”
Lysander found that his throat was suddenly aching. It was as though Adam had opened the door of his gilded cage and invited him to hop out. And as wonderful and exciting as that was, it was terrifying too.
The incipient excitement in Adam’s gaze dimmed a little. “You don’t have to—” he began.
It was that that decided him.
Before Adam could say another word, Lysander grabbed the back of his neck and pulled him into a swift, fierce kiss, releasing him just as quickly.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I’ll come with you.”
And just like that, Adam’s smile was back, and his sherry-brown gaze was warm and affectionate, and a little wondering too.
“Would tomorrow be too soon?” he asked.
“No,” Lysander said. “Tomorrow can’t come soon enough.”
About Joanna Chambers
Joanna Chambers always wanted to write. She spent over 20 years staring at blank sheets of paper and despairing of ever writing a single word. In between staring at blank sheets of paper, she studied law, met her husband and had two children. Whilst nursing her first child, she rediscovered her love of romance and found her muse. Joanna lives in Scotland with her family and finds time to write by eschewing sleep and popular culture.
Contact
Website: joannachambers.com
Twitter: twitter.com/chambersjoanna
On the morning of his destruction, Lord Gabriel Ashleigh woke up with Satan’s own head.
He lay in bed, eyes shut, as he swam dizzily into consciousness, trying to control his rebellious stomach. It roiled with nausea from the wine, the brandy, the gin, and then, as waking crept over him, from the terrible, cold-sweat realisation of what he had done last night.
Surely he hadn’t . . . It was a dream. It had to be a dream. Please let it be a dream.
It wasn’t a dream. Vomit rose in his throat.
What have I done, what have I done?
He was ruined. It was as simple as that. He had wagered everything at the gaming tables and lost it all, and left himself only a choice between fleeing to the Continent or ending it here, now, in a room alone with a pistol.
The devil fly away with that. Ash was ashamed, and angry, and despairing, but he was also just twenty-six years old. He didn’t, despite the throbbing pain that speared his eyeballs, want to die.
No, he would leave the country. Take passage to France, find a place among the other men that England had broken, live with disgrace. It would still be better than the alternative.
But to have ruined himself in a single night. To shame his sisters . . . Eleanor’s engagement was due to be announced. If he made a bolt for it, what would that do to her? Her intended was the Duke of Buckstead’s eldest son, and that family was as high in the instep as his own. Surely the Ashleigh blood would count for more than the peccadilloes of one black sheep?
He could go to his father, he supposed, but the thought was chilling. The Duke of Warminster was not a kindly man. His limited affections were mostly reserved for his heir, Lord Maltravers, with very little for the other children, and none at all for Ash, who he openly despised. It was the Duke’s will that his unsatisfactory youngest son should join the army and remove himself from the family, and without Great-Aunt Lucinda’s legacy to make him independent, Ash would have had no choice but to obey.
The legacy he had gambled away last night. His home, his comfortable life, his independence from his father. Everything staked on the turn of a card, and lost.
His father would probably buy him a commission, if only to prevent an Ashleigh joining up as a private, but Ash knew he could expect nothing more helpful from that quarter, and, God help him, he didn’t want to join the army. No soldier, he: Ash was a wastrel, a rattle, and a damned fool to boot.
He attempted to sit up. That was a mistake. It took a moment of carefully shallow breathing to control his stomach as his brain bumped gently against the inside of his skull. He slackened his muscles again, lying back on the bed, trying to grapple with his predicament.
Might Mal intervene on his behalf? Was that a chance? Unlike their father, Mal was a drinking man who enjoyed the tables. He would understand how Ash had come to this pass. But he would not understand, would never understand, why his brother had chosen to play with Francis Webster.
Maybe he could be made to see it as an act of loyalty instead of defiance. Ash rehearsed the arguments: The fellow was insolent. I could not let him win. I staked everything rather than accept defeat.
I lost anyway. That was the sticking point. Mal disliked being on the losing side.
Still, it was worth a try, although at best he would be sent back to Warminster Hall, deep in the country, for months or years under his father’s joyless eye. Death might be preferable.
Any hopes Ash had harboured of Mal’s support wisped away like smoke when his brother thundered up the stairs at the ungodly hour of noon.
“God damn you, Gabriel!” Mal’s voice was never pleasant, but to a man with a head like Ash’s it was downright grating. “You gull, you sapskull, you addle-pated fool. I hope you don’t expect me to help you. You brought this on yourself, mixing with that wretch Webster . . .”
Ash shut his eyes. He had managed to get out of bed, and to consume some of a plate of ham and eggs, but he was still in his dressing gown. It was silk damask, most gorgeously embroidered, and had given him great pleasure at its purchase—pleasure that now withered under his brother’s contemptuous gaze.
Contemptuous gazes seemed to be Ash’s lot in life, he reflected, as Mal bellowed on. That was what he remembered about last night. Well, no: he remembered the clouds of smoke, the brandy glass by his elbow, constantly refilled. He remembered, as though it had happened to someone
else, the strange fervour that had gripped him to wager and wager again, disregarding Freddy’s urgent representations, and the dizzying panic, once he realised what he had done, that had led to him consuming much of a bottle of Stark Naked. But most of all, he remembered the steady, scornful regard of a pair of hazel-green eyes opposite him, their gaze spurring him on to defy the cards and Fate itself rather than walk away, and that was a memory that made him sweat as much as the gin that oozed its way from his skin.
“Spider Webster!” Mal shouted, seemingly realising that he’d lost Ash’s attention. “Spinning Jenny! That scoundrel! And you lost Chamford House to him! Our family’s property!”
That was Mal’s true objection, Ash reflected, observing his brother’s bulging eyes. He had been furious not to be named Great-Aunt Lucinda’s heir, although he had paid the slightest possible lip service to that embarrassing relic of bygone days. Aunt Lucie had still sported the ludicrous fashions and blunt manners of her youth well into her eighties, and had lavished on Ash all the affection the rest of his family never showed, or felt. Ash had loved the outrageous old woman dearly. He missed her now.
But Mal was the eldest; everything came to him by right. Despite having a very neat property of his own, and the Warminster estate awaiting him when their father turned up his toes, he had wanted Chamford House too. And he would not wish it to be owned by Francis Webster.
Mal went away eventually, after advising Ash that he could go to the devil, recommending that he take himself there forthwith, and assuring him that their father would feel the same. It was no more than Ash had expected, really.
He was staring out of the window, wondering what to do, when the note came.
Ash looked again at the paper in his hand. Mr. Francis Webster begs to request Lord Gabriel Ashleigh’s company at nine o’clock.
It wanted a few moments to nine now, and here he was, outside Webster’s home, a town house on Bourdon Street. Elegant, well located, but off the main thoroughfare of Grosvenor Street. Just a little set back, a little reserved.
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