The Jackal's House

by Anna Butler

  Our jackets were on the floor somewhere, long abandoned. Now all my attention was on tugging Ned’s shirt out from his trousers and running my hands up underneath it and over the heated skin beneath. Ned moaned and bucked his hips so hard that, laughing, I pulled my mouth from his. “Ah, you liked that, did you?”

  Ned moistened his lips and pulled me in closer. “It wasn’t entirely disagreeable.”

  Pfft!

  My shirt was open and hanging off my shoulders now. Ned’s finger rubbed over a nipple. It shot a bolt of lightning down right to the pit of my belly, and my cock, already hard, jumped. Once again I found myself making those awkwardly unsophisticated sounds in my throat, my fingers reaching to tweak Ned’s nipples in retaliation. I tugged the shirt over Ned’s head without undoing the buttons, tossing it down to join everything else on the floor, and leaned back a little, my gaze on Ned’s chest. My mouth felt unaccountably dry. Perhaps because the lamplight lit one side of his face, leaving the other in shadow, and he was very good to look at.

  It was a joy to undo the buttons of Ned’s trousers and slip my hand into the gap in his drawers to plant little touches on the length of his cock. Not least because Ned was reciprocating every move, and every touch of his fingers was like a flame.

  I have no great memory of getting out of the rest of my clothes or getting Ned out of his. I remember pulling off trousers and undergarments, and Ned’s cock springing out of confinement, the thick shaft bobbing and bouncing in its nest of dark blond hair. I don’t really remember Ned getting me out of my own clothes, but in a moment, it seemed, we were naked and pressed up against each other again. I may have remarked before that we were the same height. That is such an advantage when everything lines up delightfully well. Chest to chest, warm skin to warm skin, cocks aligned and rubbing together, kissing him almost senseless without the risk of an aching neck… no. Not an advantage. That is perfection.

  I’m not entirely sure how we got to the bed, shuffling across the floor with mouth glued to mouth. I gave him one more hard kiss and abandoned him for a moment, running to find the little phial of oil I’d secreted in the room earlier. I wanted Ned’s big cock inside my backside before I was very much older, and wasn’t prepared to brook any sort of delay. But when I turned to the bed, Ned was lying on his back, and I got a full view of his long lean body, all muscle and sinew, his upward-tilted cock seeming to strain toward me. The lamplight gleamed on a drop of moisture on the broad head of it.

  I think I stopped breathing altogether. Adonis, taking the form of an English gentleman, couldn’t be more beautiful than Edward Fairfax Winter, lying naked on a bed awaiting the ministrations of a lover. His lover. The man who loved him.

  Ned propped himself up on one elbow, watching me. There was only one thing to do. I took up a pose, throwing out one arm and settling the other hand on my waist, like the muscleman at a circus. “Like what you see, Ned?”

  Ned snorted out a laugh. “Come to bed, you fool!”

  I laughed too, something deep and throaty. I put the phial ready on the chair beside the bed, and before Ned could speak, I was on top of him, my tongue in his mouth and my hands exploring his body. For a few moments, we kissed and rolled together, Ned’s hands smoothing down my back and over my backside. My eager, waiting backside. His hands burned like fire.

  I told him what I wanted, panting desires and needs into his ear between kisses that robbed my lungs of air and my brains of sense. He rolled me onto my back, holding me so cock stroked against cock. His hands were clamped about my upper arms. He didn’t even have them on my cock and I was almost incoherent with heat and desire.

  I didn’t need long, complicated ministrations to get me ready. I was fairly thrumming with want. The kisses were enough, the slight rub of his cock against mine was enough, making the heat build in my groin and sending lightning flashing through my veins. I think I may have said so, although perhaps not clearly, gasping out the words between kisses that had me melting.

  Ned laughed and sat up, lunging to grab the phial from the chair, and returned to his ministrations before I could do more than open my mouth to complain at the loss of his lips on mine. So I fisted both hands in the sheets and pushed my groin up invitingly.

  Ned’s hand, slick with oil, slid down across my hip and, as I lifted up my backside to give him room, smoothed over my hot skin until he could press a finger inside me. More than one. Two at least, widening and stretching and pumping in and out of me.

  I could only shiver and shake and let him do what he wanted. What I wanted.

  He pulled away from me, kneeling between my spread legs, and with a suddenness that made me gasp, his oil-slicked hand grasped the shaft of my cock and worked it with hard, brisk strokes. I suspect my moan shook dust from the ceiling. For a few moments, he teased me, touching me inside and out. My whole body heaved, and I was breathing rather fast. He leaned forward to plant a kiss on my open mouth. His fingertips found the right spot inside me.

  “Ye gods! You’ve got such lovely long fingers!”

  He laughed. Keeping his fingers busy—there were three now, moving and twisting inside me—he licked and kissed his way up my body and used his other hand to keep up a gentle pumping on my cock. “Turn over, love. Turn over.”

  Somehow he kept his fingers in my arse as I obeyed. As I moved, he let go of my cock to smear his own with oil. Oh rapturous joy! At last!

  He straddled me as I thrust my backside up and back in what I hoped was an invitingly provocative and seductive manner. His fingers slid out of me, but before I could voice my outrage, he took me around the hips and pressed his cock against my opening. He pushed forward in one smooth movement.

  Ye gods. Ye gods. Ye gods!

  I pushed backward, trying to get all of him into me. Ned got one hand underneath us and raked his fingers along the skin on the inside of my thigh. Lord, it was all I could do not to shout so loud I’d wake every dead pharaoh in Aegypt.

  He was all the way inside me now, my buttocks tucked neatly into his groin. The rough hair rubbed against the skin of my arse. He pressed me down, lying on me, pinning me in place. I loved the weight. Loved the feeling of giving up control. He pulled out and surged back in again, stretching me almost unbearably.

  Ned’s voice in my ear was the companion to each thrust. He whispered my name, murmured about love and passion and desire. He took me slowly and steadily, kissing the back of my neck and shoulders, his right hand underneath us both, stroking my cock to the same rhythm.

  Pinned down, I couldn’t move very much, denied even that relief as Ned’s cock, surging up into me, stroked that sweet spot inside me. I could only try to push back on every thrust, and gasp and sigh at the intensity of being loved so thoroughly.

  “You are so beautiful, Rafe,” Ned said. “I love you so dearly. So very dearly.”

  I could just manage to tell him how very much his sentiments were reciprocated.

  The kisses on the back of my neck became little bites, nothing that hurt, nothing that would mark the skin, but each little bite came just as Ned’s cock surged up inside me, just as his hand slid back on my cock, pulling me harder against his groin. His movements quickened, the thrusts coming harder and deeper, the biting caresses faster.

  My stars! The pounding was delicious. Just so… oh Lord, so good. Someone—I am not ashamed to say it was me—had abandoned moaning for sharp little cries at each thrust, muffling them in the pillow, the loudest cry ripped out as my whole body felt as if it were exploding. I came into Ned’s hand, shuddering and trembling with every pulse. Ned gasped with each drive forward and, an instant later, came with that familiar growl of passion, shooting his seed high up into me.

  Breathing heavily, he collapsed on top of me, kissing my bare shoulders, licking at the sweat running down my neck. It was a moment or two before he slid out and lay beside me, still gasping to get his breath controlled. I winced and grumbled at the loss. I rolled onto my side to kiss him and steal his returning breath from
him.

  “I love you too, you know,” I said when I could.

  “I know. I am a very lucky man.”

  “I think that’s my line.” I wrapped arms and legs around him to hold him close. “The Lancaster Luck, remember?”

  He grinned and nodded toward the communicating door to the vestibule. “Which we can thank for keeping Sam deaf to all our cries.”

  I laughed and wriggled to get even closer, to press skin against skin, and suggested we have a little rest and try again, harder.

  We owed a lot to Lancaster’s Luck, Ned and me. Avoiding the wrath of an irate House guard was merely the icing on top of the fairy cake.

  WAKING UP beside Ned is a boon and a benison. Most times we meet, he doesn’t stay the entire night. He normally aims to be home by 2:00 a.m. at the latest. He has his responsibilities, you see, in the form of Harry and little Jack. They have to be his first priority, and I’d be a cad of the first water if I jibbed at that. I get as much of Ned as he’s free to give, and that’s enough. It has to be enough.

  So stretching and yawning, then turning onto my side to see Ned beside me…. Yes. A true benison. It was a pleasant sight to wake up to. Somewhere, very far off, the voice of a muezzin greeted the new day. A very new day. Only the faintest shade of predawn gray sidled past the drapes at the window to limn the edges of Ned’s profile. He smiled as he slept.

  He shivered when I trailed a hand down his cheek, but didn’t wake. His hair, a touch overlong for fashion, curved over one eye in a pale gold wing. I could barely see the thick eyelashes resting on his cheek, quivering as he dreamed. I hope he dreamed of me, that he smiled because of me.

  I was warm inside, a small sun taking up residence underneath my breastbone, threatening to burst out of me and spill light and heat over us both. Time to wake Ned in the way that would show him the most sunlight. I had just raised myself on my elbow and traced the line of his cheekbone with my lips, while he stirred and murmured and smiled, turning his sleepy face toward me, when—

  —when Thor’s hammer crashed against the connecting door in a series of thunderous claps and percussions.

  Startled out of sleep and jackknifing up, Ned emitted the impressive squawk of a parrot having a fit. I made a manly sound indicative of my surprise and chagrin.

  Another ponderous, reverberating blow, and the door opened a foot or so. Sam’s voice bellowed through the gap. “Right, you two! I’ve got my eyes averted ’cause I don’t want to see nothing, but up you get. No time to waste, if we’re to get back to Abydos today. Shake a leg!”

  Remonstrance was useless. Sam closed the door with another crash. We groaned and duly shook legs.

  As well as sundry other appendages.

  ABYDOS.

  Behind us as we walked to the temple in the dawnlight, ibis and bittern called in the reeds edging the canal. The white mist pulled from the water by the rising sun curled low among the rushes, twisting over the canal’s unruffled surface. Ahead came the chatter of many voices, the calls of delighted greeting. The men clustered around us, offering their hands to shake, their bright smiles welcoming our return. Old Mr. Bakhoum fairly beamed with joy, quick to invite us to see how much work they’d done while we’d been away, how much they’d managed to clear up from the cave-in, and how much farther they’d progressed along the entrance tunnel to the Osireion.

  “What he means,” Tom Causton said with a wide grin, “is that we got on very well without you.”

  Ned laughed and sent him on his way with a cheerful slap to the shoulder.

  I couldn’t take Ned’s hand, not here in public, but no one could balk at a brief touch to his shoulder. Ned looked so happy that I got a glow watching him. It was clear he found a peace here he couldn’t find at home. He belonged here, not in a business suit in the Treasury counting the contents of the Imperium’s coffers.

  He paused on the edge of the excavation. Ahead of us, facing west, the air was clear as proverbial crystal over the wide sands to the cliffs and hills marking the high desert. The cliffs glowed a soft brown, the gullies cutting through their faces deeper russets, ochres, and coppers. To our right, the ruined mass of Seti’s temple was clean-edged, sharp—browned and broken teeth pushing up from sandy gums.

  “It’s worth everything, that view.” Ned swept an arm out toward the temple and the unknown, unknowable wastes beyond. “Everything.”

  “Yes. It is.” But I wasn’t talking about the scenery. Ned’s profile, etched against a sky of such clarity that the light was fractured glass, was vista enough for me.

  We shared a smile, one that spoke of quiet intimacy. Then Ned slapped one hand against his pocket and withdrew a small package. “Oh, I almost forgot! I had this made for you.”

  The package enclosed a jeweler’s box, which had me raising an eyebrow. If Ned got down on one knee, I’d have to haul him back to the expedition house and have him treated for sunstroke. And take care of him, of course. In my own inimitable way.

  My little faience scarab sat cushioned inside the box, clasped by a neatly contrived gold bezel set onto a broad ring band.

  “You don’t normally wear a signet. So I thought this could commemorate your first dig.”

  I was hardly likely to forget it. I grinned back at him and slipped the ring onto my right hand. “I won’t ever forget what happened, Ned.”

  “Nor me. I regret what happened, but not what I gained from it.” His smile widened. “Enough romantic chitchat. We have the Osireion to excavate.”

  He lifted his hat and waved it around his head, and with that signal, the lines of men started to move, lifting the baskets of earth and moving them from man to man, until at the end of the long lines, the older boys took them and trotted away to the new spoil heaps. Someone started a song, and in an instant, the land was ringing with it, an echo of the long-dead men who’d built this place with so much labor and reverence.

  It was so familiar a scene. No longer strange or exotic, it felt like home. The way that having my hand shaken with such cordiality by everyone, accepting the hugs and backslaps, felt like home. The team were grouped nearby, and they, too, were a part of me now: the familiar sharpness of Lansbach’s nose, Tom Causton’s wide grin, Baumann’s smiling chuckle, and Archambault’s face, ascetic as a saint’s… all of it added up to the sense of belonging here.

  Odd that Aegypt was beginning to feel as much like home as the coffeehouse.

  Ned turned his head, and the glowing yellow of the new-risen sun lit the side of his face with gold. The breath stuttered in my throat. It wasn’t just that Aegypt suddenly felt like home, or that I could have a role here. It was that Ned was here. He was my deepest, most essential home now.

  Ned laughed, and we smiled at each other. Both of us, I think, were perfectly happy at that moment, perfectly content.

  And please God, with luck—with the famous Lancaster Luck—we’d keep the promise for the rest of our lives.

  We started toward the tunnel entrance together, side by side.

  Far off, on the edge of the western hills, a jackal yipped and howled its counterpoint to the singing, greeting us in Anubis’s name.

  Steampunk Glossary

  Actinic Rays—

  (i) UV/IR light.

  (ii) dark light.

  Aegypt/Aegyptologist—archaic spelling of Egypt/Egyptologist.

  Aegyptian Exploration Fund—the organization founded by Amelia Edwards (1831–1892) to fund and support the exploration of ancient sites in Aegypt and the Soudan.

  Aero Corps—the air arm of the Britannic Imperium’s military, with aerocraft of all sizes.

  Aerodrome—airport.

  Aerodreadnought—a large military aeroship, a carrier ship in Her Britannic Majesty’s Imperial Aero Corps (nb. Rafe Lancaster served as a squadron leader on the dreadnought the Ark Royal). Dreadnoughts act as carriers with squadrons of small, bi-winged fighters. Smaller ships—aerofrigates, aerocorvettes, etc.—are also in service.

  Aerofighter—a small, bi-wi
nged fighter craft powered with aether/phlogiston/petroleum distillate engines operating either from a military aerodrome or from the decks of an aerodreadnought such as the Ark Royal.

  Aeroship—generic name for aircraft, but most particularly applied to commercial and privately owned passenger and freight transports.

  Aeronaut—pilot, aviator.

  Aether (or Ether)—a classical physical element. In some versions of alchemy (and for the purposes of the Lancaster’s Luck world) aether is the fifth element in addition to air, earth, fire, and water. In Lancaster’s Luck, aether, in its light-bearing (luminiferous) form, is an inexhaustible power source. See Luminiferous Aether.

  Alembic—an apparatus consisting of two vessels connected by a tube, formerly used for distilling liquids. In Rafe’s coffeehouse, his slow-drip coffee machine uses alembics and has its own cold-fusion furnace; it creates fine coffee overnight using cold water and coffee grounds.

  Analytical Engine—archaic; as conceived by Charles Babbage (1791–1871), a more advanced version of the Difference Engine (a mechanical device to compile mathematical tables). The analytical engine would perform any calculation. In Steampunk literature, any mechanical computer.

  Apothecary—a person who prepares and sells medicines and drugs.

  Artificer—skilled worker; craftsperson; one who contrives, devises, or constructs something.

  Autocar—a passenger vehicle powered by an aether/phlogiston/petroleum distillate mix, with the driver in an exterior cab protected by transparent aluminum. Of various types, including:

  (i) autophaeton: sporty vehicle for 2–3 passengers.

  (ii) autolandau: large, commodious vehicle for 5–6 passengers, guard stations on rear.