Ashton rallied enough to pitch in as Gillian, standing in a pose befitting an Egyptian queen, suffered herself to be washed by her men. This may have taken longer than was strictly necessary, but the thoroughness of her cleanliness at the end could not be disputed.
Owen began undressing as Gillian pulled Ashton upstairs to help her into more commonplace, respectable clothes that could pass unnoticed through the streets.
Once Gillian left, Ashton returned to the bathroom to find Owen clean and the water still hot.
Men who had gone through boarding schools together had no modesty in each other’s company, no matter what else their history together. Ashton undressed as Owen began drying himself.
Men who have spent so much time as boon companions do not miss when something is amiss.
Owen began dressing thoughtfully, wondering how or if he should broach the subject.
Ashton cracked first. “Blazes take it! Owen, I told Gillian about Angela and Cristina.”
Owen, intent upon his fly buttons, very carefully closed them before responding.
Ashton’s face assured him the breach of sacred trust had not been taken lightly.
“I trust you too much to jump to conclusions, dear boy.”
“She caught me by surprise, then she started teasing me... Look, I just didn’t manage to hide it. All she had a wild guess, and then she read my face.”
“Women can do that. How on earth did she surprise you?”
“She kissed me. Then she said how grateful she was we weren’t jealous of each other...”
“Wouldn’t risk it,” Owen murmured.
“Then she started wondering why I didn’t object to kissing her when she had just been with you, and, well...”
“Ah. Of course. Understandable. Understandable question, of course. Difficult.”
“Then she started going on about how, us being such good friends...”
“So.”
“Yes!”
“But you did tell her.”
“Owen, I had no choice! She...”
“Ah. Sanctions were invoked.”
“Yes!”
“My dear chap, I completely understand.”
“Owen, you’re a prince.”
“I’d like to think I’m better than some measly prince, Ashton.”
“Quite right, my apologies. You have far more honour than that.”
Owen waved this away. “Think nothing of it.” He paused to think for a second. “I have to ask, when you told her, did she...”
“She enjoyed hearing about it”
“When you say...”
“Absolutely.”
Owen nodded respectfully. “Well, there is that.”
“I couldn’t say no.”
“No man could.”
Owen settled his feet into his slippers.
“There is one thing, though,” Ashton said with blatantly contrived casualness.
“What’s that, old boy?”
“I did let her know that the school had been, well...”
“Strict attitudes to that sort of thing.”
“Exactly! The thing is, she was rather more forthcoming with me.”
“You don’t mean!”
“Repeatedly! It must have been every man’s dream of a Turkish harem, in there!”
“The devil you say!”
Both men shared a moment of quiet reflection that painted upon their faces looks of wistful delight.
Owen emerged first. “I say, you don’t think she might have been putting it on a bit thick?”
Ashton looked shocked. “She was very insistent upon not keeping secrets. She was making threats over it. Pass me a towel, would you?”
Owen nodded slowly as the cloth changed hands. “I do sincerely hope we can take her at her word in this matter, then.”
Both men sighed, their faces wistfully dreamy.
Finally, Owen said, quietly, “You know what this means.”
Ashton nodded.
There was a longer period of silence.
The looks between them became calculating.
Owen sighed. “We’ve both come a long way.”
“Not the same people at all.”
“Not the same beliefs at all.”
Ashton nodded again as he reached for his drawers.
Owen took a deep breath.
Ashton nodded again.
“Of course, we can’t just...” Owen began.
“Of course not.”
***
By the time Gillian returned, a covered basket in her arms emitting steam and mouth-watering smells, the men were, to her great disappointment but not surprise, dressed and sitting in separate chairs in the drawing room.
The thought of convincing both men to join her in bed had kept her distracted for her entire time out of the house. Even if they took it in turns with her but stayed each to his own side, it would be a start. Even the thought of that was making it difficult to walk normally.
Dinner, in the furnished but otherwise quite unused kitchen, passed pleasantly, but too slowly for Gillian.
She tried several times to steer conversation to the status of their living arrangements, now they were beginning to settle into the house, but somehow every time she tried, they ended up at furniture, necessary repairs, or possible modifications.
By the time Owen and Ashton leapt to their feet to argue over who would clear the table, Gillian was nearly grinding her teeth with frustration. She was ordered back to the drawing room to rest while they washed up.
She checked the curtains and lamps in a futile attempt to use up energy.
By the time she heard them leaving the kitchen, she was ready to order them to sit together on the couch and kiss, just to see what would happen.
She stood facing the door, torn between sitting like a queen and standing like an icily outraged headmistress.
She had just decided upon sitting, and was about to throw herself backwards into the chair, when the door opened.
She froze in shock, mouth hanging open, when they marched through the door with stern faces but not a stitch of clothing between them.
“Gillian Canly Ledwich, we need to have a word with you,” Owen said. “Sit down.”
Gillian found herself, for possibly the first time in their company, completely tongue-tied. She looked wildly between them, torn between the fact she was staring at a dreamed-of desire, and the fact it was not going to plan.
“Sit down!” Owen said, more sharply.
Gillian folded at the knees, landing on the edge of her chair.
“Gillian, we are very disappointed,” Ashton said severely.
Gillian felt herself briefly back once more in the Headmistress’ office. The fact she was being addressed by two naked men in a clear state of sexual excitement, induced emotions that completely destroyed her ability to think clearly.
“You have been keeping things from us,” Owen said, a trace of disappointed sadness in his voice.
“Things that forced us to keep things from you,” Ashton added, his voice sharp.
Gillian’s mouth dropped open. Her wits began to rally.
“It seems you could have avoided us all a great deal of soul-searching and secrecy by being honest when we were setting the terms for this relationship,” Owen said.
Gillian nearly exploded like a boiler’s release valve. “How dare you accuse me...”
“Silence!” Ashton said, in a tone so unexpected that Gillian’s mouth closed of its own accord.
“My dear friend Ashton told me about your conversation,” Owen said, now sharp.
“It was the honourable thing to do,” Ashton said.
“I was frankly appalled t
o discover after all this time that you had been keeping such a desire private from us!” Exasperation slid easily into Owen’s voice.
“We can understand,” Ashton said, with enough sympathy in his voice to unbalance Gillian anew. “In most circles it would be a disgusting thing to ask of a man. I am afraid you put me in such a shocking position I responded the only way I felt I could.”
“However, you have failed to consider the position you put us in by only now revealing this, and doing so in such a way,” Owen said kindly.
The contrast between them, their changing moods, their nudity, the fact they were criticising her in this way while standing side by side with every evidence of sexual eagerness: Gillian found it impossible to grasp onto any point of stability.
“For us to ever suggest such a thing: We couldn’t risk it,” Ashton said. “Without any idea of how you might react, we felt we had to go any lengths necessary to keep such a thing secret.”
Gillian stared at them, her mouth dropping open. “You are not telling me...”
“I won’t ask again!” Owen said sharply.
Gillian visibly shrank back in upon herself.
Owen’s face softened into kindness. “We can understand why you maintained your silence, we really can, but you have to consider the burden this placed upon us! You! You, the central point in this triangle - I apologise for the mangled metaphor - you were in a position to raise the question, or even mention a rumour, to try to gauge our reactions, to test the waters, as it were.”
Ashton was shaking his head sadly, his eyes fixed on Gillian, who did not know whether to burst into tears or laughter.
“To say nothing,” Owen continued, “of the way you have kept from us the lurid details of your own time among your fellow young ladies! Stories that could have kept us all entertained for weeks on end!”
“To think of the nights we could have had, with such fuel to stoke our passions!” Ashton said, a note of glee creeping unbidden into his voice.
This was too much for Gillian. Unable to choose between laughing and crying, she tried to do both at once.
Caring but not guilt-stricken, the men waited for her to stop.
“You swine!” She managed to get out, “you pair of cussed swine!”
Neither man looked at all repentant as she lost control of her voice again.
“That was cruel!” She finally managed to say.
“In discussion with my colleague,” Ashton said, “we consider it was justified.”
Gillian shook again, but more with laughter than with tears this time. She managed to fumble a handkerchief out of her sleeve.
“You lied to me!” Gillian said the next time she had breath.
“Not a bit of it!”
“You told me you two had never...”
“Not since that night,” Owen said smoothly.
Gillian stared at him, then broke down laughing again. The distinction between laughing and crying had ceased to be relevant - the one had caused the other. “You buggers!”
“No, not at all, actually,” Ashton said smoothly.
“You may not have taken it,” she shot back, beginning to recover her wits, “but you have certainly been giving it! Just as I was thinking I knew why you liked that so much, you... Oh, you swine, the pair of you!”
She scrubbed at her face.
“The least you could do,” she said pointedly, “is tell me truly - never?”
They both shook their heads. “Never,” Owen said.
“Why not? Damnation, why not, you’re both gorgeous!”
They both shrugged. “I told you we were not short of partners,” Ashton said. “Maybe if we had been, we might have been curious, but we were not. We left that house willing to look each other in the eye. We only dared to discuss it when we knew our secrecy was absolute.”
“But we did discuss it,” Owen said quietly. “We could not dare to so much as think about it openly at the school, but ... well, perhaps the reason why not is that nobody has asked us for the opportunity.”
Gillian sat on the edge of her chair, staring at her two lovers as she roundly cursed herself for a fool, a timid girl and an idiot.
She blew her nose - the final task that handkerchief would be able to perform - then took a deep, steadying breath.
“I may be prepared,” she said, her voice a little unsteady, “to take what I have just received as fair penance for not being even more, gentlemen, I stress ‘more’, forthright than I have been.” She took another calming breath. “I am sorry. I could have said many months ago that the thought of seeing you both as you are now has kept me warm on cold nights, and given me release on lonely days.”
Cocks which had begun wilting for want for attention began swelling again.
It was on the tip of Owen’s tongue to say they were happy to know they had been of service, but he desisted.
“Yes, Devil take you both, I would like to have you both in my bed, on every opportunity that presents itself, starting right now!” She pointed a shaking finger at them. “So I think the least you could do is let me finally see you two kiss!”
Owen looked at Ashton. Ashton looked at Owen. “Well, the lady has commanded,” Owen murmured.
To Gillian, the two naked men looked like marble statues, their chests naturally hairless, their legs as smoothly shaved as hers in response to the climate, leaving only that upon their groins. She could see muscles shift under skin as bodies built by enforced athletic pursuits at school then honed by hard manual labour in a workshop turned towards each other. She may have given voice to an exclamation found in instincts but not dictionaries.
“Now, how was it? Kiss like you’re men kissing a woman?” Ashton murmured.
Gillian might have noticed a little more hesitation from Ashton than from Owen, but she was hardly paying attention to that. She was trying not to scream at them to get on with it.
Lips met. Ashton’s eyes were shut. Owen’s, merely hooded. Hands moved to the other’s waist as they kissed firmly, defiantly, proudly.
Gillian, her cheeks flushed and her breathing rapid, released a small gasp from between parted lips. She remembered the feeling of both men kissing her like that and the simultaneous memories made her dizzy.
The men drew back slightly.
“I say, sir, you do kiss well,” Ashton said, his voice betraying a shaky laugh but his body up to his eyes clearly excited.
“Not as well as you, sir,” Owen murmured.
Owen put his arms around Ashton. Ashton put his arms around Owen. They both seized the other by the back of the head as they pressed their bodies together.
Gillian could scarcely stay upright. Every cell in her body seemed to be screaming to be between them. She squeezed her hands between her thighs.
Her gaze roamed over the two men, desperate to see everything at once. As it dropped down their bodies, she saw their cocks pressed firmly between them.
She made a sound normally only heard in the deepest throes of ecstasy.
Both men heard, drawing apart by mutual agreement. Cheeks flushed and eyes wide, they turned their heads to look at her.
To Gillian, their combined gaze was a like a blowtorch that nearly made her spend there and then.
“Stand up,” Owen commanded.
She tried, but her legs would not work.
They pulled her to her feet. She managed to stay standing as, with the speed and skill of experienced lovers, they stripped her naked.
They steered her towards the stairs. Staring and swaying as one mesmerised, she staggered ahead of them until they steered her into her bedroom, the only one already fully furnished, tidy, and containing a full-size bed.
She collapsed onto the bed more than she lay upon it, somehow managing to turn onto her back.
As
graceful as cats and without saying a word, the men moved onto the bed on hands and knees, stalking forwards until they loomed over her, arms, shoulders and legs pressing against each other unheeded.
She looked up at them, helpless under her own lust, whimpering softly.
They could not kiss her mouth simultaneously, so they lowered their heads to her breasts first.
Gillian gave voice to a helpless “Oh!” even before their mouths touched her.
She had not thought her nipples could be any harder, but they proved her wrong.
Owen had always had a smoother, more predictable touch, progressing through licking, sucking, then light biting, paying attention to the nipple itself to find the most effective way to slowly drive Gillian wild, making her feel joyfully submissive as she was driven to orgasm.
Ashton had always been a little more restrained before sex, then more aggressive during it, taunting Gillian’s flesh with unexpected touches, his teeth biting her nipple too sharply, his hands and mouth behaving in a dominant way to make her feel helpless as her orgasm was wrung from her.
To have both at once was threatening to destroy her sanity, her breasts each recognising the individual touch upon them but her body responding to both simultaneously.
She spread her knees apart, feeling them press into the bodies on either side of her.
Two hands dropped onto her thighs. Her hips lifted off the bed in response.
The hands slid up towards Gillian’s aching centre as she continued to twitch helplessly. They arrived there at the same time, touched, hesitated briefly, then smoothly split, one going down to the bottom of her already damp lips, the other rising to the top. She had no idea which was which until she felt Owen’s subtle, progressive touch upon her clitoris and Ashton’s firm, authoritative penetration inside her.
Gillian opened her mouth to scream in ecstasy, screaming that did not stop until she spent with a convulsion that lifted her bodily off the bed.
As she lay gasping on the edges of delirium, she barely registered Owen saying “You first, dear chap.”
She was not able to see Ashton about to object before he realised that this was no time for affected modesty or self-effacing humility.
Valves & Vixens, Volume 2 Page 15