A Gentleman's Position

by K. J. Charles

  David looked just slightly uncertain. He took the seat, correct and upright on the edge of the chair, then leaned back crossing his legs in a deliberate pose of relaxation.

  Richard handed him a glass of brandy and stayed standing by the chair. “What else have you planned?”

  “I don’t want to tell you.”

  “I can’t have that. You are doing extraordinary and unprincipled things for me, at my request. This is not like blacking my boots, a thing to be hidden from sight. I want to be with you in this. In all of what you do.”

  “Well, thank you, but I meant that I don’t want you to know because I want some things to surprise you, for effect. You’re a good liar, but not a patch on Lord Gabriel or Mr. Norreys. You’ll find out,” he added, grin sharpening. “That should start tomorrow. You may not see Silas around for the next couple of days.”

  “I feel a decided sense of apprehension. Do I want to know how much slander I should expect about myself?”

  “I am playing fast and loose with your name to Lord Maltravers. It’s what will get me into his house. I don’t think you need fear scandal attaching permanently to you, if we can scotch this business of the letter, of course. Your reputation is its own shield. There is nothing for slander to stick to.”

  “Well. Yes.” Richard sighed. “I rather wish I had not admitted illicit affections to my brother.”

  “What?” David sat up, brandy splashing the sides of his glass. “You did what?”

  “Not that. He thinks it is a lady I cannot marry and have enraged with my damn fool principles. I just—ah, I felt so tired of lying. I could not pretend to be a happily single gentleman any longer, and I have had all the conversations about marriage I can stomach. You have no idea how I envy you your mother.” To his own shock, his voice broke on the words. “If Philip—if I could just talk to him—”

  David jerked as though he had started to get out of the chair and stopped himself. “I’m sorry.”

  “It is absurd. I have been lying about my affections since I was old enough to have them. Why should it matter so much now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I do. It is because I wish I could tell him about you.”

  “There is nothing to tell,” David said, but his eyes were wide and dark.

  “Not true. And it will still not be true if you never touch me again. I should still like him to know that I have given my heart to someone who deserves it even if he does not want it.”

  “Burn no bridges, my lord. Not on my account.”

  “I shall do as I damned well see fit. Just as you will. David…” Richard extended his hand. “Why did you come back?”

  “I told you. Silas and Mr. Norreys made me.”

  “You did tell me that, but unfortunately for you, Julius’s version of events does not tally with yours. Try again.”

  David narrowed his eyes. “Well then, if you will have it, pride. Half a dozen lords and gentlemen desperate for a valet’s help?” He lifted a mocking brow. “I could not resist the opportunity to show off my skills.”

  “That is more plausible,” Richard agreed. “You certainly have Satan’s own pride. I don’t know why I never saw it before.”

  “It’s marked well enough.” David tugged at a lock of red hair. “The devil’s hue.”

  Richard reached down, not asking permission but slowly enough that David could move his head away if he wished. He didn’t, but Richard felt him stiffen as he ran his fingers through the straight, smooth hair. “I assume nothing, and I will not press you to anything. I hope you know that.”

  “Yes.” David’s damned unreadable face was closed again, but he wasn’t quite looking at Richard, and there was tension in his jawline that would have been invisible to anyone who had not watched him for so long.

  “I am also sure you would not put up with any such thing. You have, after all, walked away from me twice now, and I can hardly pretend that you’re in need of my protection when I am so much in need of yours.” Richard carefully hooked a few strands of hair behind David’s ear. “I cannot think of any better course than to tell you the truth and leave it in your hands.”

  “What truth?” David’s voice was a little husky.

  “That if you should care to have me come to you, you need but crook a finger.” Richard stroked David’s cheek with the backs of his fingers, feeling the very slightest prickle of stubble. “If you tell me no, I will be silent. If you prefer, I shall never ask again. But you should know that I would plead on my knees if I thought you wanted me there.”

  “To win my help?”

  “Be damned to your help. I want your mouth, and your hands, and your hair, and your eyes. I want to stop feeling as though half of my world has gone missing. That puts no obligation on you, none at all, but it is the truth. Do as you wish with it.”

  David’s lips were parted, but he didn’t speak. Richard wanted to deal with David’s mouth for him, but that would not do. David had to come to him, or not. “If you want me to go now, I will,” he went on, rolling the lock of hair between his fingers. “But I would so much rather stay with you.”

  David looked up, meeting his eyes at last. “Then why aren’t you kissing me?”

  “Be bold, be bold, but not too bold.” Richard ran his thumb over David’s lips, felt a tiny movement. “Will you be with me tonight?”

  David’s mouth moved, lips closing over Richard’s thumb. He felt a tongue on the sensitive pad and shuddered as David sucked harder, scraping his teeth over skin. “God. My fox.”

  David dragged his mouth away. “I want this. You.”

  Richard nodded. Neither of them moved for a second, frozen together in front of the fire. Then David made a noise in his throat and rose to stand on tiptoe, grabbing a handful of Richard’s hair. His lips hit Richard’s fiercely, and Richard took equally hard hold of him, pulling him close. They kissed in savage silence, breathing hard. Richard dug his fingers into David’s arse and thigh, making damned sure he knew he was needed, and opened his own mouth to kisses that bit.

  At last, Richard pulled away. “Bedroom?”

  “Floor.”

  “The floor under our feet?”

  David’s fingers twined through Richard’s hair. “That very one.”

  The floor of the Ricardians’ private meeting room, the space reserved for Richard’s most intimate friends. Richard looked down into David’s eyes, which were filled with dancing devils in the firelight. “I have not made love outside a bedroom in…” Not since his youth; not since Dominic.

  David didn’t look away, but his other hand moved, and Richard heard the soft slip of buttons. He swallowed. He couldn’t look away either, not with David’s gaze so intent.

  David took Richard’s hand, gently pressed it to a very solid cock-stand. His fingers curled around it, apparently of their own volition, forcing a breathy gasp from David, and that was all Richard needed.

  He went to his knees on the rug, one at a time because he was too big to do that easily, his eyes still locked with David’s, David’s hand still tight in his hair. He didn’t move for a long, silent moment, letting both of them absorb what was happening, feeling his heart thump, then he leaned forward and took David’s prick in his mouth.

  “Christ.” David’s fingers tensed. “Oh yes.”

  It was the noises he made. That first time, Richard had thought his uncontrollable excitement had been due to his pent-up need for David or even just the sheer relief of handling another man’s body again, but he’d been wrong. It was those little whimpering breaths, the tiny moans, the sound of David’s control fracturing, which acted on Richard’s own prick like the stroke of a hand. He could feel himself straining against his breeches, painfully needy, and he’d be damned if there would be a repeat of that first absurd schoolboy spilling, but God, the pleasure of sucking David, of making him curse and groan, and of feeling that stiff length in his mouth…He wrapped his tongue around it, working his lips, relishing the sensation and the taste o
f firm flesh.

  “Sweet Lord. Stop.” David tugged at Richard’s hair. “Not yet.” Richard released him with a sound of protest, and David gave a breathless laugh. “My God. You like a cock in your mouth.” He slipped to his knees with effortless grace so that they faced each other, sliding a hand down Richard’s side and over the bulge of his arousal. “Where else do you like it?”

  Richard’s breath caught in his throat. David’s hand stilled, and his eyes widened sharply as if his mind had just caught up with his mouth, because to have said that to Lord Richard Vane….

  He did not want to be Lord Richard now, and to have David watching his words was not tolerable. He brushed his thumb over David’s lips, steadily and carefully, felt the flick of tongue. “I think…I very much think I should like it anywhere you choose to put it, my fox.”

  David closed his lips over Richard’s thumb with deliberate, tight suction, then released him. He spoke without hesitation, with almost a little too much control. “Shall I fuck you, Richard?”

  “Yes. God, yes. Uh…it’s been a long time, though.”

  “I’ll be delighted to remind you of the steps.”

  The thought was a little unnerving, in truth. Dominic had always wanted to be fucked; Julius did not take either part. Richard’s only experience on that side of things had been years ago, with the tall and cheerful captain of a hussar regiment. They’d enjoyed several unsophisticated but enthusiastic weeks before the man had gone back to the wars, never to return. That felt a very long time ago now.

  Richard hadn’t imagined playing at all fours for David. The few furtive thoughts he’d allowed himself on the subject had all been the other way about, as had seemed only natural for their positions and their relative sizes. Richard could not have pictured David asking to fuck him, still less himself asking David for it.

  And now it had happened, it would happen, and Richard couldn’t think of anything else. David’s fingers were at work, groping through Richard’s breeches with dizzying expertise, and he felt suddenly weak with the need to put himself in David’s hands and throw over all responsibility. “Please,” he said abruptly. “I want this. Come to bed.”

  “No. Here. I want to have you in this room.” David’s hand was almost painfully tight.

  “Why?”

  “Because I want you to remember.” His eyes looked very dark in the firelight. “Every time you come here, I want you to think of us. I want this room to smell of me forever.”

  “You are the very devil,” Richard said hoarsely.

  “I’ll make it good. Believe me, I’ll make it worth it.”

  Richard caught a handful of David’s hair, jerking his head back, exerting his strength just enough to make David’s eyes widen. Enough to remind them both who was the bigger man, who was bending now.

  “Then fuck me, you redheaded bastard,” he said, and felt David’s fierce, foxy grin like fingernails on his skin. “But at least let us lock the damned door.”

  David went to do that, then to the adjoining bedroom. Richard stripped off his coat and cravat, threw them with deliberate carelessness onto a chair, and had shrugged off his waistcoat by the time David returned with his own coat and neckcloth removed. Richard pulled the shirt over his head and discarded that as well so that he was standing bare chested in candlelight, watching David watching him.

  “Richard.” David reached to put a bottle of oil on the mantel, paused, then tipped some into his palm and rubbed it into his hands. He stepped forward and stroked his slick hands over Richard’s chest, tracing pectoral muscles, abdominal muscles, the curve of his ribs. Richard stood still under the warm, slippery touch, trying to control his breathing.

  “There is so very much of you.” David’s eyes were on Richard’s torso as he circled a nipple with a finger. The oil matted Richard’s chest hair, tangled it. “I want all of it.”

  “You have it.”

  “Tonight.” David gave a fleeting smile.

  “It’s more than I thought we’d have. I did not mean to offend you with my offer, David.”

  “I know. We are of different worlds, and that is nobody’s fault. I was unreasonable to expect you to understand.”

  “No, you were not. But I have had almost thirty-eight years as a lord and one night as your lover.” He tipped up David’s face with a finger under the chin. “Can you allow me to stumble now and then?”

  David made a stifled noise. “When you say things like that, you make me almost believe—”

  “In us?” Richard bowed his head to brush a kiss over his lips. “I wish you would. I wish I could see our way or that you would find it.”

  “I don’t know how. We have tonight,” David whispered. “That will do for now.”

  Richard took David’s earlobe in his mouth, gently tonguing the soft flesh, feeling David’s shudder. Julius and Harry were sporting matching earrings now, which Richard found foppish beyond bearing, but he could understand the urge to adorn his lover’s ears, because David’s were beautiful. Porcelain pale, the curves sharply defined at the top where they rose to a noticeable point and softer and gentler on the lower parts. He sucked on the lobe and heard David gasp.

  Richard released the ear with some reluctance. “Did you mention fucking me?”

  “I think I did. In due course.” David tilted his head, inviting attention to his neck, which Richard gave, kissing his way down until obstructed by the shirt. They stripped slowly, David declining to touch Richard’s boots or buckskin breeches with oily hands so that Richard had to undress them both, until they lay together on the great rug in front of the fire, kissing long and slow, with David’s slick fingers sliding over Richard’s thighs and beginning to delve between.

  “When you say a long time…?” David asked.

  “Seven years.” Richard saw the red brow tilt and turned up his palm. “Two since I have had anyone at all. I don’t, can’t bed men for whom I don’t care. I dare say that’s unusual, but honestly, I feel I have deprived myself of nothing but the pox—oh, God damn it.” He could have kicked himself for saying such a thing to David. “I beg your pardon.”

  David’s fingers had stopped briefly, but now they moved again. “I cannot be too sensitive on the subject. It is how it is. And I don’t want the pox either, truth be told.”

  “It wasn’t that, really. My brother says I am sentimental, and perhaps I am, but I simply cannot find joy in rutting for its own sake.”

  “I used to,” David said. “And then I entered your service, and even that was taken away from me, because every time I fucked, it was not you.”

  “It is now,” Richard said, and saw the smile in David’s eyes. Richard allowed himself to be pushed onto his back, and David climbed over his body, settling between his parted thighs with an intent look that made Richard shiver.

  “Let me make it you.” David’s fingers were rubbing and pressing between Richard’s legs in intimate touches, slithery with oil. “Can you tense yourself for a few seconds?” Richard did as bid and, as he relaxed, felt David’s finger sliding in without resistance.

  “Clever,” he said breathlessly.

  “The muscle can only stay tight for a little while, then it can’t help loosening. It’s a—an old trick.”

  A whore’s trick, Richard would have wagered he’d meant to say. It didn’t matter with David gently working him, dipping his mouth to Richard’s prick, rolling his balls, creating a blinding flood of sensation. David served him and commanded him at once, and Richard surrendered to his ministry, gasping out his praise and pleasure and then, urgently, his need. “Please. Now.”

  “At your pleasure. Tense up for me now. Or—are you happy like that, on your back?”

  “Extremely,” Richard assured him, and they were both smiling as David pushed into him. Between the muscle trick and the oil, it barely stung, and that proof of David’s care brought a painful tightness to Richard’s throat. “God, that’s good.”

  “I told you.” There was something disturbingly
intent in David’s eyes, something hungry. “I told you I’d make it good.” His fingers closed on Richard’s shoulders, digging in, still slippery with oil. “I want to make you remember me.”

  As if he’d ever forget. David’s smell; his hair, loose strands lit to wild vividness by the firelight that shone through it; his eyes, fixed on Richard’s as though to look away would be to end the dream; his body, taut with urgency, muscle and bone and sinew picked out by shadows. The feel of his back, smooth under Richard’s clutching hands. And the way he fucked, with a careful, controlled precision to the movement of his hips while his betraying fingers dug desperately into Richard’s skin.

  “More. I won’t break.” Richard curled upward, angling his neck so he could reach David’s mouth. It was an awkward position, but David’s hand was supporting his skull, the other on the floor bracing them both. David thrust with an upward motion, and Richard felt the internal pressure send pleasure jolting through his nerves. He made a muffled noise into David’s mouth, and the lips on his pulled away.

  “I want to hear you,” David rasped, and plunged down to press his sharp teeth where Richard’s neck met his shoulder. An actual bite, a sharp pulse of pain, and David was moving harder and faster now, over and in him, so that Richard felt absurdly cradled.

  “Christ. David, my fox, my flame. Please.” He didn’t even know what he wanted except more of this, more of David, more of them together with no barrier between them but skin.

  David bit again, then pushed himself up so he could get a hand to Richard’s prick. “I want to see your face. I want to see you spend. Make you. I want…” He was moving carefully again, playing Richard’s body, and Richard stared into his brown eyes and groaned his pleasure, feeling David shift and respond as though his only goal in life was Richard’s joy.

  He had no idea if he was being served or mastered now. Both, or neither, it didn’t matter. His red fox was in his arms and between his legs, where he belonged, and Richard gave himself up to the mounting sensation of David inside and over and around him, stroking and fucking and kissing at once until Richard could no longer hold back the pleasure. He arched so hard he lifted David off the floor with the movement as he spent against David’s belly. David hissed through bared teeth and shoved him back down, thrusting with a clumsy urgency that suggested he’d finally run out of control, and the raw need in his face triggered a final unexpected pulse of climax in Richard that almost hurt. He took a brutal grip on David’s arse, urging him on, and watched his face distort with what could have been pleasure or agony as he cried out.