by H. E. Trent
“You wouldn’t, but Precious would. She’s not outright heckling me over this shit, but if I let her take enough breaths while she’s in front of me, she’ll probably try.”
“She said she was going to have your mother call Autumn and that she’d get rid of her.”
Luke snorted and climbed up the steps. “Ma would sure as shit try. She doesn’t care if my boyfriend can’t publicly claim me so as long as he’s rich.”
“Mrs. Cipriani didn’t say that,” Owen said with a groan.
“Nah.” Luke lingered at the railing and tapped his chin contemplatively. “Actually, what she said was that if I let that one get away, that I was dead to her. No Cipriani is ever going to get so close to royalty again. According to her, we’re just big-mouthed peasants in comparison.”
Owen grimaced and disappeared into the kitchen. “Yeah, she’d say that.”
After one more worried look at Luke, Ais followed her husband.
Luke shoved his hands into his pockets and walked the few steps into bedroom nearest the staircase.
Duke had dropped his bag onto the armchair beneath the window. His boots were lined up beside the dresser, his jacket draped over the top of the chair.
He shook out the bed’s fitted sheet and gave Luke a speculative look. “Peasant, are you?”
Luke shrugged and nudged the door closed with his foot. “Nothing any Cipriani would be ashamed of. We’ve always been hardworking folks.”
“Huh.” Duke managed to wrest the sheet onto the mattress without too much trouble.
Luke watched just to see if Duke could do the job. He didn’t know what kind of training royals got with such mundane things. He stepped forward to help with the flat sheet, though.
“Didn’t you once tell me you had a manservant to take care of this kind of stuff for you?”
Duke grunted and tucked the bottom of the sheet beneath the mattress. “Whenever I check my messages from Earth, there’s a new one there from him. He averages approximately one missive per day, scolding me for my independence.”
“Telling you to go home?”
“Unsubtly insinuating that he would come to Jekh. I think he grows bored waiting for me to return. I suggested that he go to Oslo and that my mother would certainly find him something to do.”
“That sounds like something you’d say to someone you want to fire, so I’m going to guess he didn’t respond the way you hoped.”
“You guess correctly. He went, though.” Duke tilted his head to the folded quilt on the dresser.
Luke went to fetch it.
“If he really insists on coming here, I would find some way to accommodate him,” Duke said, taking one edge of the quilt from Luke. “But technically, he’s under my father’s employment, not mine. I didn’t hire him. I simply didn’t ask for his contract to be reassigned after I moved out of my parents’ household, and he went with me.”
“You don’t want him here if he’s working for your father, huh? I guess his allegiances would be split.”
“Something like that.” Duke fluffed the pillows and then looked down at his hard work. “Probably best that he stay put if circumstances are in flux, especially with Ais being here. I don’t want to have spies reporting her activities back to my mother, given how jealous she is of her.”
“Or your activities?”
Duke looked up at that. “I suppose I let myself forget for a moment that I haven’t been behaving myself.”
“I don’t believe for one minute that you’ve ever behaved yourself.” Luke perched on the edge of the ottoman and untied his boots.
“Perhaps I haven’t, but now I have a certain instigator goading me to all sorts of new ways to get into trouble.”
“Mmm.” Luke pulled him forward by his belt loops and tucked his fingers into his waistband. Rolling his gaze up to Duke’s face, he said without humor, “I haven’t even gotten started showing you the ways I’m going to get you into trouble.”
Duke’s jewel-toned eyes glittered with heat. “Filthy peasant.”
“Yep. So fucking filthy. It’s almost a shame we made the bed.” Luke unfastened Duke’s pants and kissed his belly just over the top of his waistband. He’d been with numerous fit men—most just as fit as him or in even better shape—but none of them had been as naturally sculpted for perfection as Duke. They didn’t have all his interesting bends and nooks. Didn’t respond with the same shudder of pleasure when Luke played his fingers along the slopes of their obliques.
He put his mouth against Duke’s hipbone and kissed downward, following the muscles like an arrow toward what he really wanted.
Duke drew in a deep breath and shoved his fingers into the back of Luke’s hair. “No use expecting you to be patient, hmm?”
“Want you.”
“Oh. I see.”
“That all right with you?” Luke asked.
“I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t.”
“Okay, good. So we’re on the same page.” Luke seesawed Duke’s pants down along with his briefs, exposing the dark thatch of hair and the base of his soft cock. He paused there for a bit of play. He lanced his tongue around the top and refamiliarized himself with Duke’s salty taste, inhaling deeply through his nose as he licked, as he worked Duke’s pants more downward.
“I believe I’m fond of your oral fixation.”
“Not the only fixation I have,” Luke muttered. He yanked Duke’s pants down past his thighs and pulled his whole cock into his mouth. He wouldn’t be soft for long, and sometimes Luke liked the feeling of a flaccid member in his mouth. He liked making the blood surge forth and to feel the organ thickening between his teeth. He liked keeping it in his mouth until his choices were letting it fall or choking on it.
He sucked all the briny liquid from the slit and ran his hands around to Duke’s hard ass.
With his belly spasming, Duke muttered something that wasn’t in English under his breath and tightened his grip in Luke’s hair.
Luke was probably the only person who’d touched him intimately without holding back, and Luke still had so many places he wanted to push him to. He wanted to explore all his limits and learn when he’d submit and when he’d say no. Then he needed to learn the natures of those refusals—whether they were “No, I don’t like that” or “No, I’m afraid of that.”
Duke never had to be afraid with him. There was no one better for him than Luke.
He liked the sounds Duke made when he sucked him hard, so he did that while running his fingertips down Duke’s crack again and again. They probably wouldn’t go there anytime soon. Duke needed prep work, and Luke was too impatient. There were other things they could do, though. Things neither were too tired for.
He let Duke’s steely erection spring from his mouth and stood, nudging Duke back a foot. He yanked the bottom of Duke’s shirt. “Take this off. Rest of it, too.”
He didn’t wait and watch. Luke undressed as well, and then guided Duke to the bed. Before laying him down on his belly, he unfurled a towel onto the bed. If Luke did his job right, neither of them was going to want to get up when he was done.
Luke grabbed a tube of lotion from the basket of toiletry odds and ends on the dresser and squirted some onto Duke’s back as he straddled his thighs.
“Are you going to massage me?” Duke asked. “I’m long overdue for a good rub. Focus on the knots in my shoulders, please.”
Luke scoffed and tossed the lotion beside him. He wasn’t quite done with it. “You’ll probably have a few new knots by the time I’m done.” He sat on the backs of Duke’s thighs and warmed the lotion beneath his hands. He rubbed it into his tight shoulders, acknowledging the muscles were tighter there than they should have been. That wasn’t good.
He shouldn’t be so stressed out.
Luke dug his palms into the knots and rubbed. “That better?”
“Mmm, yes. More of that, please.”
“How about here?” Luke worked his thumbs down the sides of Duke’s spine, massaging a
t the edge of each vertebra as he went.
“That’s nice, too.”
He went lower, to the bottom of Duke’s back. He pressed eight fingertips against the base and massaged. “And here?”
A slight nod from Duke. Falling asleep.
Fine with Luke.
He poured lotion onto his hands and eased down Duke’s legs to palm his ass. Rubbing the cream over the muscled cheeks and parting them, he dug his teeth into his bottom lip and prayed for restraint.
That virgin hole tempted and teased, but patience was the name of the game.
He massaged the muscles and kept prying his thumbs between the cheeks, brushing the tips of them against Duke’s clenching hole. “Greedy bastard, aren’t you?” Luke murmured, squeezing more lotion into the crevice and also onto himself. “That’s what you are. You want to take everything I can give you, don’t you?”
Duke didn’t say anything, but he’d opened his eyes and looked back warily at Luke.
Luke fitted his cock into the crevice between Duke’s cheeks and laid on top of him. He toyed with his hair and peppered the side of his face with kisses before he started to slowly writhe.
Leaning onto his forearms, he worked his hips up and down, gliding his cock through Duke’s seam in a painstakingly slow rhythm, lingering every so often with the head at the hole. Not entering. Just teasing.
Duke clutched the sheets near his face and let out a ragged, yet controlled, exhalation as his cheeks clenched around him.
Luke grabbed the lobe of one of his ears between his teeth and sucked the bead of flesh into his mouth while twining his fingers through Duke’s.
“How do you…” Duke grimaced at another teasing tap of his hole. “Know to do these things?”
“Told you before. You do what feels good. You don’t wait around for folks to show you what to do. You just work it out. Does it feel good to you?”
Duke dragged his tongue across his lips and, closing his eyes, nodded.
“What part of it feels good?”
“All of it.”
“Yeah? Feeling pretty good to me, too.” Luke pressed his face between Duke’s shoulder and jaw and attacked his neck. Tugging and sucking, tasting the salt of him and savoring the resistance of flesh as he rolled his hips and sped his thrusts.
The lotion wasn’t the best lubricant and was already becoming drier, tackier, but the friction was nice, too. He liked the small drags and the resistance—liked the wanton sounds Duke made when Luke’s crown dragged slowly past his hole.
He knew what that felt like, that exhilarating anticipation of something he didn’t know if he was ready for. The anus had sensitive nerves, and sometimes the line between pain and pleasure blurred. Luke thought Duke would enjoy some purposeful pain, but not there.
Setting his teeth into Duke’s shoulder and tightening his grip on his hands, he rocked and thrust, faster and faster and encouraged the pinpricks of electricity in his body to coalesce and meld. He wasn’t going to chase away the pleasure or to try to draw out his consumption of Duke. He wanted relief. He wanted Duke to see what he could do to Luke in just a few desperate minutes. He wanted him to understand that the mess they were in was harder on Luke than anyone.
“Why couldn’t you just…deal?” he ground out. His breath faltered and belly burned with heat. One more stroke past Duke’s quivering hole and he released his fire. He kept thrusting until Duke’s crease was slick with it and he rolled off before he had a chance to catch his breath.
“I wish I could have,” Duke whispered as Luke’s fingers probed him.
Two fingertips, then more, gently stretching the tight entrance. Luke worked his fingers in and out up to his second knuckle and mashed his lips against Duke’s. “Hate you sometimes. Really fucking hate you.”
Duke’s eyelids drifted downward and his breath came out in a startled puff as Luke claimed more of his hole. He nodded, though. “Hate to love me?”
He began to grind as Luke worked his slick fingers into him, hungrily gripping them as he worked his cock against the rough towel.
“Yeah,” Luke said in a rasp. “I guess that’s about right. I guess you always thought you’d be the married one with a side piece.”
Duke scoffed. He didn’t have anything else to say, except with his body.
Pinning Luke with a large-pupiled stare, he ground against the bed and against Luke’s fingers. Clenching and bucking faster and faster.
“Want a little more?” Luke spread his fingers apart inside him and massaged the hole some more.
Duke nodded and bit into the sheets.
Luke gathered up a little more of his slick spend and crammed three fingers into Duke’s hole. No hesitation, just a quick slam all the way down to his knuckles.
Duke cried out with some incomprehensible plea, but Luke didn’t speak his language. If he wanted Luke to change course, he knew which words to use, so Luke kept on as he was, sitting up a little to get a better view of Duke’s fine ass and his fingers in it.
“So hot, my fingers in you like this. My cum all over your ass.”
Duke didn’t say anything, just ground some more and clenched some more, and Luke knew he had to be close because his arms were shaking in that way of bodybuilders trying to go for one more lift even when they had nothing left in the tank. He’d stopped clenching his ass and was instead bearing down onto Duke’s fingers again and again, lifting one knee higher to improve the friction of his grinds and to give Luke more room to work.
Then he yanked the pillow down to his face and shouted into it as his channel convulsed around Luke’s fingers.
Luke pulled his hand back slowly because he wanted to see.
He raised Duke up by the hips and noted the glistening on the head of his cock, the ruddy flush from the towel’s friction against his smooth shaft, and the large wet spot on the terry cloth.
He pressed a kiss to the small of Duke’s back and whisked the towel away. “You do wonderful things for a man’s self-esteem when you aren’t totally killing it.”
“Shut up, Luke.”
“Nah, you don’t want me to stop talking.” Luke shuffled, sated and tired, to the bathroom and cleaned up. “If you can’t hear me talking shit, that probably means I’m nowhere near you. I don’t think either of us wants that.”
Duke rolled onto his left side and propped his head up on his fist.
Luke liked seeing him like that—with his hair mussed and cheeks red from exertion. Duke could probably run three miles without breaking a sweat, but he didn’t leave anything in reserve when it came to Luke.
At least physically.
Luke settled into bed behind him and instructed the house computer to kill the baseboard lights.
He slung his arm and leg over Duke’s body and, being relaxed for the first time in weeks, closed his eyes.
He was in the euphoric straddle between sleeping and wakeful states when Duke said, “You can get it annulled, Luke.”
Luke opened his eyes. “And then what?”
“Marry me.”
“Don’t start that hypothetical shit right now.”
“I’m not trying to frustrate you. I mean it. If there’s fallout, so be it. No one in my family deserves to come through this Jekh mess unscathed, so perhaps this is karma’s way of righting things.”
“I hardly think a little scandal makes up for some of the shit your father sank money into. People’s lives were ruined here, Alex.”
“I know that. I see it every time I go out to clean up the messes—every time I seek out people he’s had on his payroll before and who are still up to no good here.”
“I’m not a punishment. I’m not revenge.”
“No, you’re not. You’re the man I love, and I’m simply trying to get you to understand that…I’m ready.”
“I hear you.” Luke kissed the back of his head and planted his palm against Duke’s warm belly.
He didn’t know what to do with that information, so he just closed his eyes again and
tried to call back sleep.
It eluded him.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Autumn read the electronic correspondence three times and still couldn’t believe what she was looking at. She’d never been so confused by bureaucracy before, and that was what construction was, in a nutshell—an annoying shitpile of bureaucracy. Still, she’d thought she had all her I’s dotted and T’s crossed well in advance of her accepting the Jekh relocation spot.
She raised her hand to get the coffee shop server’s attention, and the Jekhan woman whose name she thought was Fastida padded over wearing her usual dour expression.
On any other day, Autumn might have been nervous at that sort of chilly reception. She didn’t know who knew whom on that damned planet and in that damned town, and she had to believe that she was categorically disliked. But she found caring difficult when her investment was at risk of being yanked out from under her.
“What do you need?” Fastida asked. “Another cup of coffee?”
Autumn rolled her eyes. She’d only had three. “Yes, more coffee please.”
“Perhaps you’d like to switch to actual sustenance at some point.”
“I’ll keep that under advisement, thank you.”
“Your funeral,” Fastida murmured. She padded away after tapping the order into her palm-back computer interface. An odd bit of technology. Autumn had never seen them before arriving on Jekh. A tiny projector mounted in a ring worn on the middle finger could create an input field on either the back or front of the hand. The computer the accessory actually fed into was likely in the back of the shop somewhere.
At first, Autumn thought that tapping the back of the palm was some kind of Jekhan tic, but then she noticed that all of the shopkeepers and restaurateurs did it. She’d finally had to ask Cree what it was about. Of course Cree knew.
Autumn scoffed and tapped her fingertips against her plain-old glass-screened tablet. Cree knew more about Little Gitano than Autumn did. She was a moving target, and Autumn rarely saw her except at bedtime. Cree would return to the lodge and fall sleepily into bed with little more than a, “’Night, Autumn.”