by Cooper Davis
Alistair tossed the glass back, muttering, “Ah, but he certainly touched the handsomeness of you.”
“I can’t undo what is already done. But you know that,” Marcus said firmly. “Are you simply trying to bait me? Circle round and round until I walk out of here and never look back or—“
“My heft is not enough to dissuade, nor my addictions. Then what of my lack of title? My . . . my dissolute character?” Alistair slammed his highball down so hard, Marcus braced for shattering glass. “Bloody fucking hell, I should never have opened our doors the day you came scratching.”
“What,” Marcus whispered, desperately working to keep his composure, “do you wish me to do, Alistair? Leave you be? It would pain me, but I would do my best to comply. If I were capable of it. Although I doubt I could walk away now, even under this duress.”
Alistair removed his spectacles and flung them onto his desk. “Has it occurred to you—determined pup that you are—that your appreciation of me has proved difficult to grasp? When the only men willing to bugger me have always expected one thing beforehand. The generous opening of my purse.”
“I told you in the garden.” Marcus slid a hand to cup Alistair’s neck. “You never should have had to pay for such favors.”
Alistair shrugged off Marcus’s hand. “Of course I must pay!” he bellowed, the pain raw and aching in his voice. “I’ve been forced to do so since I was barely of age and became . . . so . . .”
Alistair sank down onto the edge of his desk, broad shoulders slumping. “I always pay. Always. For that way, I can ensure their compassion, when my fine clothes are peeled away, and the fullness of my form is starkly revealed for the first time.”
Marcus frowned. “I would pay for you to become my lover. I would spend a bloody fortune for even one night in your arms.”
Alistair’s mouth parted on a gasp, as if he meant to argue, but Marcus pressed silencing fingertips to those lush, full lips. “However, that is not the problem here.” Marcus cupped Finley’s face in both hands, tilting it until their gazes locked and he had the other man’s clear focus. “You are the problem, Alistair. Not your size, not your imbibing, nor my past. You are our problem because for all your supposed insight, the one thing you cannot see clearly is yourself.”
Marcus slid a palm across the man’s waist, making it a caress of acceptance—and of true desire. “You,” he said, “are gorgeous. You’ve the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen. And dimples that make me half-mad and swoony.” Marcus ran his hand along Alistair’s waistband. “I want to claim you, full-hilt.”
Alistair winced and made a small sound of dismay, but Marcus moved closer before he could protest any further. Finley’s dark gaze roved downward, his eyes widening. And then Alistair’s manhood surged in unmissable reaction, the center of his expensive trousers swelling significantly.
Marcus slid urgent palms down Finley’s flanks, fondling his broad hips. Alistair hissed tightly in reaction, those hips cantilevering off the desk, chasing Marcus’s caress. But then, Alistair tensed; with a muttered curse, he slid his hands atop Marcus’s own. “Please, I implore you, do desist. I need to . . . I must protect you, Marcus.”
“P-protect me?” Marcus sputtered uncomfortably. “From what?”
“Scorn. Shame. Scandal. I need to push you off me and out my door. I am”—Finley seized Marcus by the shoulders—“beseeching you to walk away whilst you still can.”
“I see. That’s why you brought me into this small private office, latched the door, and invited me to gaze at your full body—without a chaperone.” Marcus sidled a step closer to the man. “Because of your supreme concern for my reputation and its potential tarnishing. No, on the contrary—you opened that door and led me here for another reason entirely. You had every intention of allowing me privileges. Intimate, damningly scandalous privileges. Not forcing me away.”
“I left yestereve because I intended to break things off and—“
“Without even a word? You’d never be that callous with me.” Marcus shook his head. “If you’d truly meant me gone, you’d have penned a missive this morning.”
Alistair gestured to a sheaf of letters on his desk, several crumpled into balls. “I tried.” The words came out deflated. “I bloody well tried.”
Marcus moved to grab one of the discarded notes, but Alistair blockaded him with his arm. “Lord Marcus, I can no longer entertain this suit, nor welcome your social calls.”
“Were that true,” Marcus told him flatly, “you’d not have invited me into this inner sanctum, nor half undressed yourself for me. You crave me like your next breath, your next drink.”
Finley blinked at him, silky black brows knitting together uncertainly. “You’re an impossible tide, impossible to swim against.” An adorable huffing exhale escaped the man’s lips.
Marcus planted a hand on Alistair’s shoulder. “I am simply determined. After all, I spent two years asking about you, praying I had even the slimmest hope of capturing your attention.”
Alistair looked up sharply, fixing him with his hot gaze. That glance became so much tenderer as the intimate moment persisted. “Marcus, I noticed you from the moment you entered that ball two seasons ago, and I wanted you. Desperately. And then I wanted you gone, so I wouldn’t crave what I could never have.”
Marcus poked Alistair in the chest forcefully. “You made yourself into a fortress, hiding behind your glasses of champagne and port and wine. You still do. You’ve turned dissipation into your shield and protection, but it needn’t be that way. You can cease your consumption of spirits.”
“I’ve fucking tried!” The words, loud as a rifle report, echoed off the wood-paneled room. Then the man’s words became an agonized whisper. “Don’t you think I’ve tried?” Alistair blotted at his forehead, hand shaking horribly. “You’re asking me to soar to the clouds, to move through that wall there.” Alistair gestured wildly about the room. “I’m half-foxed now, and I wish to be blindly inebriated by evening. That is my life; that is the gentleman you’ve wished to know for two bloody years!”
“Alistair, I am confident in you. I am aware of your fine character, your strength. You can end the habit.” Marcus reached a palm to the man’s lightly stubbled cheek. “And you will feel so much better for it—and trim down, if that matters to you. Not that it does to me.”
“I cannot change,” Alistair said. “Not even for you, Marcus. And if not for you, then how? I am the gentleman you have watched these two years, no different now than last week or last month, and thus you must realize one thing. I shan’t cease the imbibing . . . ever.”
“I won’t ask you to quit, then. Only that you become my lover. Today, not later. Now.” Marcus traced the length of the other man’s jaw. “You cannot deny me intimacy and privileges any longer, Alistair. No more than I can deny you the alcohol you insist upon.”
Heat flared in Alistair’s eyes. “You cannot simply pluck me, as if I’m some merry rose in your family’s garden. Nor may you willfully determine to make me your lover, with no regard for my own will in th-this . . . this affair of ours!”
“Oh, but my darling. You are of the greatest concern to me. As are your desires.” Marcus stroked his beloved’s cheek with painstaking tenderness. “I mean to fulfill your truest longings, petal by petal, like one of those flowers plucked from our gardens—I shall tease you open, delicate moment by delicate moment. And tease your thighs open to me, as well, and have you spread for me.”
Marcus moved in closer, palming Alistair’s thighs until they obediently parted. Alistair canted himself upward invitingly, shifting on the desk until the heavy mahogany complained beneath him.
Alistair splayed his palms on the desk, levering himself to give Marcus better access. “You have pursued and chased me, Marcus; you have not relented. And I am only made of so much starch and iron.” Alistair tossed his head back until he appeared downright
wanton. “I’ve no further will to resist your pursuit.” Finley shivered, parting his thighs even more in an indisputable invitation. “Claim me, my lord. I am lost to you. And . . . I surrender now.
Chapter Fourteen
Papers went askew beneath Alistair’s buttocks and hands; there was the loud clatter of falling ink pens, a ledger, and, somehow, the man who always worried about royal duties swept the lot of it to the carpet with one powerful hand.
Their kiss became combustive, a lead-in to the lovemaking they both desired to follow. The taste of whiskey on Alistair’s tongue was tangy but also backed by another, uniquely masculine flavor entirely the gentleman’s own. Almost as if the redolent flavor of cigars, long ago smoked, mingled together with something far more dangerous. When Marcus tipped Alistair’s head back to deepen that kiss, Alistair began purring and all but falling to pieces beneath Marcus’s attentions.
Marcus unclasped one of Alistair’s braces, and it snapped free. He then began to work at the front pleat of Alistair’s trousers, shocked at how his own hands trembled and shook. Finally, one pearl button unfastened, then another grudgingly gave way. But then Marcus couldn’t jigger the next buttons, and huffed in frustration, glancing to Alistair.
His lover laughed, and with an easy flick of his hands, had his own trousers fully opened for Marcus. “Thank God.” Marcus sighed and then they both laughed with breathless giddiness. Marcus’s eager hands met the soft linen of the man’s underthings, and he couldn’t deny himself a quick glance downward. Astonishingly, the man’s smallclothes were fastened with lavender silk and trimmed in satin.
Marcus broke the kiss, fingering that satin admiringly. “How risqué of my schoolmarm! You’re in the habit of bits of silk and satin on your drawers?”
“I only recently adopted it—once I began hoping you’d make love to me.”
Marcus swallowed, reaching unsteady fingers to the silk tie. “I—I quite like your decision.” He swallowed again, his knuckles grazing the other man’s stiff cock. Marcus began giving the satin ribbon a tug, but Alistair prevented the motion. With a vulnerable lift of his eyes, Alistair whispered, “Please, just . . . let me unfasten my own smallclothes.”
Clearly, even as Alistair was submitting to the seduction, he remained deeply self-conscious—even as the man was afire with arousal. His body trembled against Marcus’s, his chest rose and fell quickly. Alistair fumbled awkwardly with the fastener of his own drawers, until finally Marcus stilled his hands. “You want this, Alistair. You want me.” Marcus slowly untied the ribbon, gaze locked on Alistair. “You’re just feeling a wee bit nervy, that’s all.”
“God help me, but I do want you. And this.” The man’s deep voice rasped the words. “Please,” he murmured again. But this time, the word was a submissive plea.
Marcus unlaced the man’s smallclothes and moved his hand beneath the fabric’s indulgent folds. His roving hand found an extremely heated, velvet-hard cock. Alistair stilled, his entire form strung tight like a bow.
Marcus gently trailed his thumb against the tip of Alistair’s swollen cock, a honeyed dampness forming when he stroked the slit. He glided that caress all the way to the man’s base, giving his heavy sacks a tender squeeze, rolling them between his fingertips and in his palms. Alistair barked a cry and arched against the desk, murmuring a softer cry in the wake of that first. Hips rolling upward, Alistair seized one of Marcus’s shoulders, his fingers digging into the flesh as he hissed at Marcus’s ministrations.
Marcus leaned closer, answering with even rougher friction along the man’s turgid cock, using the dampness to ease his strokes. Alistair suddenly glanced down at his opened garments, and his own throbbing cock, held so deftly in Marcus’s grasp. Alistair drew a sharp breath, his lips parting before he whispered, “I can’t believe your touch. You hold me like a treasure.” The man’s gaze lifted to Marcus’s, his expression turning wondrous. “You do indeed want me. I believe you now, Marcus. I understand.”
I understand.
No words could have made Marcus fall more swiftly in love than those two simple ones. And he did fall—so hard, so desperately—that all he could do was laugh. Perhaps he’d been in love with Alistair all along, although it hardly mattered when he’d fallen. Marcus only knew then that he did love the man who was laid out before him on his desk, with spectacles and papers and inkpots askew.
Marcus began to laugh, alit with pure joy. “I have never—and I do mean never—wanted any man the way I do you.” He swiftly liberated the man’s other suspender, and began unfastening Alistair’s cufflinks, shoving shirttails out of the way as he worked.
At those words, Alistair silently cocked his hips upward, and met Marcus’s gaze, waiting. Eager. The fellow might be big as a barn, but clearly craved to be buggered—not do said buggering. Alistair was hardly alone in that sentiment. Alistair continued making his desires understood—he dragged Marcus by the hips, pulling him into the eager vee of his parted thighs. And then set about working at the front of Marcus’s own trousers, neatly unfastening buttons and loosening fabric. His hands, those big, sturdy hands, did not shake at all.
“I have . . .” Alistair panted as Marcus’s trousers fell open, revealing his own tidy drawers. “I—I have oils in my desk, hidden away.”
Marcus barked a laugh. “Are you jesting? The uptight, extremely formal king’s secretary keeps oils for buggering in his office?” Then he recalled last evening, and Alistair’s subtle gesture with his gloved hand, his admission that he sometimes found his own release, in this very room.
“I may have paid handsomely for my favors, but I do own some experience.”
“In this particular office?” Marcus frowned, jealousy biting at him. Had there somehow been more than just self-pleasuring here?
“My only experience in this room,” Alistair said, reaching to unfasten Marcus’s smallclothes, “is endlessly entangling myself in fantasies of you.”
“I obviously should have paid a social call sooner.” Marcus laughed, afire with merriment and arousal.
Alistair answered him by shoving Marcus’s drawers down about his thighs, dragging their hips together. They tumbled backward slightly, Alistair’s full weight coming to bear upon the desk. He flung one arm overhead, and the delicate mahogany groaned so egregiously that Marcus momentarily feared the thing might collapse beneath them.
Alistair murmured, “I’ve kept oils here, in the deepest hope—the absurd fantasy, I was sure—that you’d seize me across this very desk.”
Marcus pressed them cock to cock, then palmed their lengths together within a tight clasp. Alistair arched atop the desk, howling in pleasure, all but writhing in reaction. “Marcus. Dear God, help me.”
“I think I shall,” Marcus answered coyly, working their united erections together in a frictional rhythm. “In fact, the oils would make this even better.”
That mere suggestion caused Alistair to fling his other arm out, and a last stack of folios went careening to the floor. Alistair’s hips rode off the desk, as Marcus worked their stiff cocks in a dizzying momentum.
“I don’t mean to have you spill so soon, darling.” Marcus paused in his ministrations, meeting his lover’s agitated gaze. “Trust me?”
Alistair drew a staggering breath and nodded once. His eyes were dark with arousal, his face flushed deepest russet, his massive body shivering.
Alistair was mostly untouched; he would spend prematurely if Marcus didn’t ease the pace—and he wanted to draw out their first coupling. Certainly not end prematurely in a thrashing of quick, explosive sparks.
Marcus ran his fingertips along Alistair’s erection. “You are supple and warm and gorgeous.” Marcus thumbed the man’s slit appreciatively. “Dear God, but you’re beautiful, every glorious inch of you.”
“Beautiful?” Finley sank back upon his desk, staring up at Marcus through dazed eyes. He was breathing heavily, his big ches
t rising and falling. A dusting of black hair peeked out from beneath the hem of his linen shirt, narrowing down to a neat line along his lower belly.
Marcus traced that line languidly, but when he reached the lowest part of Alistair’s dusky midriff, the man winced. “Turn me over,” he barked, the russet in his cheeks growing painfully intense.
Marcus caressed that abdomen again. “Yes, you are a beauty, one conjured from the glorious imaginings of an Old Master painter, a nude god that I’d admire at the King’s Gallery. Yet you’re here, yielding to me.”
Marcus traced his touch along the underside of the desk, finding a drawer latch, never dragging his gaze from Alistair. “This one?”
His lover shook his head. “Next . . . drawer.” Alistair’s voice was a hoarse rasp, as if the words were being ripped from his throat.
Marcus nodded and while maintaining a hand upon Alistair’s hip, he unlatched that drawer. A dainty, pearl-covered bottle, stoppered with elegant crystal, lay on its side. He smiled to himself, thinking how Alistair proved predictably sophisticated, even in his private passions.
Marcus removed the stopper, and splashed oil into his palm, swiftly slickening his own cock, readying it before attending to Alistair anew.
Marcus hooked a hand just beneath the man’s right knee, and hitched it upward, angling his prick against Alistair’s opening. Finley tensed his upper thigh against Marcus’s side. “I won’t be claimed,” Alistair complained, “with you atop me. Facing me.” Despite the argument, Alistair reflexively lifted his other knee, as well.
Marcus stroked a lock of glossy black hair away from Alistair’s forehead. “Well, well, a man of certain opinions. Color me hardly surprised that you know what you want—and how you wish to have it.”
“You behind me,” the gentleman told him, pupils gone entirely dark.
Yet one pesky leg of Alistair’s was already hitching slightly around Marcus. The man’s body was begging for one thing, even as his mouth was complaining and barking all the way.