by Cooper Davis
The duke shrugged, before returning his attention to his wineglass. “I always said—and Finley will attest to this fact—that large-arsed spinsters have their appeal. Apparently Lord Marcus concurs with me.” The duke gave Alistair a strange, lingering glance. “It’s the stuffy ones who often surprise.”
Marcus rankled, even though the comments seemed to be in true jest. After all, it had been Lord Mardford who’d urged Marcus to approach Alistair at Lady Elsevier’s ball. The gentleman turned to Marcus then, and observed, “Lord Marcus, you likely never succeeded in procuring Finley’s dance card, yet good on you for winning his hand. Well done. As for Finley”—Mardford lifted his glass in Alistair’s direction—“despite the fellow’s high-strung ways, he clearly has impeccable taste.”
Alistair reached for Marcus’s hand beneath the table, squeezing it. “That,” Alistair said, “is one remark I won’t brush off. Lord Marcus is a diamond of the very first water, and I’m one fortunate fellow that he’s consented to be my husband.”
“Yes, you sly devil,” agreed the duke. Then he gave Marcus a wicked grin. “My foster cousin is enormously fortunate.” The stress on the word enormous could not be missed by any. When Marcus cut a glance at Alistair, he saw him flushing painfully. But then the duke continued, “Although, Finley, you’ve trimmed down. Love clearly agrees with you, as you do cut a very striking figure tonight.”
The flush on Alistair’s cheeks heightened, yet this time, Marcus could plainly see it was at the compliments. He let out a tense breath he’d not quite realized he was holding. Lord Mardford gave Alistair a jolly smile, and if Marcus weren’t mistaken, the duke appeared a bit foxed. The man was absurdly handsome, with a flirtatious grin in nearly every direction—including not only for his wife, but another peer who had joined the party, Viscount Colchester. The gentleman was the duke’s neighbor and someone Alistair likewise seemed to enjoy. Although it was bluntly obvious that the person who most enjoyed the viscount was the duke himself—despite clearly being besotted with his wife, as well.
The duchess was seated on Marcus’s other side, and murmured softly, “Please ignore my husband’s rascally behavior. He’s fond of Alistair, and is an audacious, ridiculous flirt. Thus, he forever needles our poor Fin. But he means no harm, I can assure you, my lord.”
“Oh, Your Ladyship, I’ve not doubt.” But the longer the duke drank, the more he teased Alistair—about everything from his stoutness to his so-called “spinsterhood.” The longer the jesting went on, the more Marcus realized that the duke was quite a handful.
“I say, Lord Marcus,” the duke asked, turning toward him, “shall you force ole Finley into a kilt when he visits your estate up north? I’ve heard that’s all the rage. Although it’s hard to quite picture Alistair draped in tartan, hmm?”
“Oh, I can picture it,” Marcus fired back, “along with what he wouldn’t be wearing underneath. We do adhere to tradition, you must know.”
This bawdy joke got a rumbling laugh out of the duke, and Alistair didn’t even seem embarrassed. He reached for Marcus’s hand, squeezing it again, and whispered in his ear, “Tonight I shall give you a preview when you glimpse me in my altogether. I have such plans for you, darling mine.”
Marcus twined their fingers together and trembled within the other man’s grasp. “You torture me,” he whispered back.
“Oh, stop conspiring, lads,” the duke admonished them with a playful wink. “We know how randy you must be, awaiting the bridal bower and forced into polite courtship.” The duke waved at King Arend. “Cousin, keep these courses moving. The newly minted lovebirds are practically buzzing to be done with the lot of us. I quite undid them with notions of kilts and bare arses underneath.”
“I daresay,” King Arend replied with a hearty laugh, “it’s not just bared arses underneath. There’s something on the front side, as well.”
Marcus was shocked at how scandalously the conversation flowed at the king’s own table. But Alistair laughed, relaxed and happy, palming his midriff. “As this is me, you can be assured there’s quite a bit on the front.”
The duke let his jaw drop with great exaggeration. “Do you mean to say that—Just how well-gifted are you, Finley?”
Alistair’s ears turned scarlet, and he stared at his lap with adorable shyness. “That’s for my husband to learn.”
“Oh, bollocks on that!” the duke exclaimed. “You can’t possibly mean you’ve not had a good tumble already. Then again”—Mardford made a long study of Alistair—“you are an infamous spinster. So perhaps you’ve saved yourself.”
“I’d prefer to save myself from your infernal occupation with my spinsterhood,” Alistair shot back, still laughing. “You’ll have naught to converse about once I’m married to Lord Marcus.”
There were more jests, and Alistair positively sparkled throughout the meal. His self-consciousness, once so pronounced, was mostly vanished. That new confidence only made Marcus want his fiancé more. The length of the meal, anticipating whatever it was that Alistair had in store for him, proved nearly interminable.
* * *
* * *
At last, after seven courses of dinner, with coffee after, their stolen moment arrived. Alistair held Marcus’s hand, leading him along with gallant concern down a moonlit path, toward whatever destination his lover had in mind.
“Just ahead, sweetheart.”
Sweetheart. Whenever Alistair called him that? Marcus went a bit weak in the britches—or more accurately, tight in the front flap.
Marcus followed him down the path. “You have my heart on edge. I can’t imagine what you’ve planned.”
Alistair squeezed his hand, pausing between a thatch of bushes. None were about, there was only the full moon overhead. In the shadowy light, Finley looked regal and beautiful. A lock of raven hair fell over his brow as he suddenly dipped his head, kissing Marcus lightly on the lips. Marcus brushed that silky bit of hair back, staring for one heart-stopping moment at the man who would soon be his husband. “I love you, you know,” he murmured.
Alistair smiled, caressing Marcus’s cheek. “And I,” he said, “am about to show you exactly how I feel about you.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
The destination, it turned out, was the royal carriage house, a large, elegant building crafted in a style reflective of the palace itself. They entered quietly through a massive set of double-paneled doors, greeted instantly by the scent of sawdust and leather, redolent in the air.
“Have you guessed what I’m about yet?” Alistair asked, latching the doors behind them.
Marcus squinted, as the trailing moonlight was the vast structure’s only illumination. The silhouettes of carriages of various sizes began to form more clearly. Even in the dark, it was clear these conveyances belonged to a king, with their opulent sizes that most ordinary gentlemen couldn’t afford in such number.
Alistair took his elbow, guiding Marcus down the open lane. Out of the darkness, another silhouette formed, and Marcus instantly realized their planned destination. “The sleigh!” he exclaimed. Alistair had promised—months ago—that one day he would tup Marcus in the king’s very own sleigh. Tonight, that promise would become reality.
Alistair slid his fingertips along Marcus’s nape, tenderly fanning his hair. “I did promise, you know.”
“Aye, so ye did.”
They mounted the sleigh, its springs creaking as they climbed upon the leather front bench, which was expansive and open. The seating was so plush, in fact, it almost rivaled Alistair’s large townhome bed. The bench was made of softest leather, trimmed in equally soft velvet along the headrest.
There were also mounds of silky-soft furs, and even a feather pillow, all undoubtedly brought in advance by Alistair. His lover moved the pillow, setting it to the side. “That’s for later,” was all he said, and Marcus’s pulse instantly thrilled. He imagined gently easing that pillo
w beneath Alistair’s hips, preparing to take the man to the hilt.
Only two other times had they made love, and over the past month, the waiting and yearning had become downright agonizing. Now, the visceral anticipation of claiming Alistair Finley for a third time quickly hardened Marcus’s manhood.
As soon as Marcus was settled, Alistair knelt between Marcus’s parted legs. Splaying big palms on Marcus’s thighs, Alistair eased Marcus’s legs open farther, utterly in command. Marcus’s heart began a wild staccato. Alistair’s manner of controlling this moment was different than their previous times together. Marcus’s bollocks tightened at the thought of being rendered submissive beneath this big man.
Is that what Alistair intended? To finally take full control of Marcus, and claim him?
Alistair found Marcus’s gaze in the half-dark; resting his forearms on Marcus’s thighs, he said, “We are alone. Only the two of us, with the key to that latch”—Alistair dipped a finger inside his jacket pocket, then dangled the ring on the end of his finger—“in my own possession.”
Alistair dipped his head forward; his wavy hair, longer and looser than ever before, tumbled free as he pressed his face against Marcus’s belly. He inhaled, then made a softly helpless sound as he stayed just so. Treasuring Marcus. Loving him.
Loving him. Marcus’s breath caught, as he recalled Alistair’s words on the path. I am about to show you exactly how I feel about you.
After a moment of Alistair cradling Marcus’s hips, nestling his cheek against his abdomen, Alistair knelt tall. Bands of moonlight limned his lover’s muscular shoulders, brightly reflecting off his white linen shirt. The frock coat and waistcoat had already been abandoned with barely a glance, tossed across the front of the sleigh.
Wordlessly, his shadowed gaze never leaving Marcus, Alistair deftly unfastened the fall of Marcus’s trousers. It folded open, allowing Alistair to slide a hand within, to begin work at the fastener of Marcus’s smallclothes. “So many layers,” Alistair complained with a laugh, rubbing a tender thumb over Marcus’s hip bone.
He then eased Marcus’s dress shirt upward, exposing his abdomen. With devoted care, Alistair pressed the linen tails out of the way. “So much separating us,” the man clucked. “When all I truly wish . . . have you a notion yet? What I’m about tonight?”
“Se-seducing me?” Marcus barely managed to gasp, bracing his palms against the leather beneath him.
A rumbling, brazen laugh was Marcus’s only answer—meanwhile his linen drawers were slid down about his hips, curling into a roll of fabric. Instantly freed, his heated erection bounced heavily into Alistair’s welcoming hand. One large thumb began to tease the tip of his cock, until Marcus rode right off the bench, pushing himself into Alistair’s grasp. The heels of Marcus’s hands tensed downward, flexing against the leather seat, bracing his weight.
“Oh, yes. Lovely,” Alistair murmured as Marcus’s seed dampened that big thumb. “Sweet pearls for me?”
Alistair bowed his head low, teasing his tongue along the droplets, lapping them up. “Consider them”—Marcus whimpered in ecstasy—“a courtship offering.”
“Jewels?” His lover murmured against the slit, then licked again.
Marcus was blind with lust, and could only groan and buck upward once more, riding the exquisite heat of his Alistair’s tongue as it slicked the rim of his head.
“Tastes like salty nectar. It’s such a delicious discovery.” Alistair kissed his tip, his tongue divinely textured against Marcus’s tender flesh.
The whores hadn’t wanted Alistair to suck them, no doubt. Marcus experienced a stab of emotional pain that he forced aside. He focused, instead, on the beautiful innocence of Alistair’s limited experience. He ran his fingers through the man’s hair, wanting Alistair Finley to know he was a priceless treasure. “Dear God, but you’re beautiful, Alistair.”
This earned him a rumbling sound of delight. “You’re my first, Marcus. My only.”
First? They were already lovers; could it truly be possible that Alistair was finally going to take him? Here in the sleigh. Marcus daren’t hope, not this soon, not with the demons that dogged his beloved when they became bared to each other. That vulnerability had chased Alistair both times previous.
Oh, but dearest heavens, let him finally make love to me.
Alistair worked at Marcus’s trousers, rolling them lower about his hips, and then slid his palms beneath Marcus’s bared arse. The moment Alistair did so, he lifted and dragged Marcus upward, taking his cock into the warm cavern of his mouth, mimicking the thrusting of their loins. Suckling. Teasing. In and out, increased thrusting that grew faster, and faster still.
But when Alistair lazily rubbed light fingertips across the top of Marcus’s pubic bone, while sweetly suckling his cock, Marcus almost spilled his seed. Nearly went off, like some battlefield cannon, spurting down the devoted gentleman’s gullet.
“Wh-what are you about? Is this more than”—Marcus curled fingertips along the under edge of the bench—“seduction?”
Alistair’s warm laugh rumbled through Marcus’s cock, but he never ceased his attentions long enough to answer otherwise. His lover kept caressing his pubic bone right above his cock, using that pressure point to spear Marcus with ever-crescendoing stimulation.
It was something about that caress, the gentle way Alistair worked his thumb and fingertips over Marcus’s pubis, almost absently. But Marcus had lain with enough males to realize that nothing about that devoted, tender stroking was casual. Quite the contrary, it was perhaps the most attentively sweet devotion any lover had ever bothered showing him.
Alistair intensified his pressure on the rim of Marcus’s erection, and at that precise moment matched the pressure upon Marcus’s pubic bone, creating twin intensities. It was a delicious combination of pain and superb pleasuring; his bollocks tightened like a bowstring. He surged upward, thrusting deeper into Alistair’s mouth, murmuring the man’s name repeatedly, like some incantation.
In answer, the man’s big thumbs massaged that tender area along his pubic bone even more intently. Until Marcus became insensate, begging his lover and murmuring frenzied, conflicting pleas. For Alistair to cease—to pray, continue—to work him harder. A veritable chattering nonsense prattled forth, and Marcus was vaguely aware that he’d begun to shiver and tremble, simply from the raw-tight tension his lover had created in him.
“Please. Alistair, oh . . . I can’t take it. I’m going to lose myself.”
But Alistair Finley did not cease with the sucking and erotic attention; all he gave in reply was a moan of his own, nearly helpless in its own carnality.
And that sound? Well, it had Marcus twining the man’s silken dark waves within his grasp until he could barely bite back the orgasm building in his loins. Not yet. Too soon.
Alistair pressed his forehead to Marcus’s belly, dragging his cock with him.
Marcus was wild, fevered. Dreadfully afraid his seed would soon spill, and he wanted to draw the moment out, spin it endlessly like the most mystical canopy of stars. He clenched downward, trying to halt the escalating demand in his groin. Clamping down on his muscles in an effort to delay his climax.
Alistair sensed the change and adjusted his pressure, easing up on Marcus. He roved his expansive, gentle hands and cupped Marcus by the hips, rubbing anew with infinite tenderness, massaging the bands of muscle there. This new caressing took Marcus even farther, tightened his groin to a knife’s edge of readiness. And wave upon wave of lust spiraled anew inside Marcus, layering upon the last, until the whole of his manhood was almost unbearably taut.
“Oh! Oh! Oh . . .” Marcus was barely in command of himself, hardly responsible at all. “By God, darling . . . I’m . . .”
He felt Alistair’s full mouth pull into a smile about his blunt head, one last flick of the man’s teasing tongue, then he released Marcus’s cock with a slick pop.
“You . . .” Marcus panted, staring down at his lover. “Have me on the fucking brink.”
“That’s the point.” Alistair laughed huskily, staring up at him with swollen lips. “God, but you’re the hellion.”
“I? The hellion? I haven’t tipped your pelvis back and begun lavishing your cock with my sweet tongue, rubbing my way down a path of wicked torture. I am the innocent. And I’m younger.”
“Doesn’t signify. You’ve the experience on me.”
“I . . .” Another rubbing of those thumbs along Marcus’s hips, trailing inward, back to his lower abdomen. Marcus rode off the bench with a barking shout. “I shall lose myself in another stroking or two!”
Alistair grinned at him, his lovely smile flashing bright in the shadows. “Then I shall slow down. I wish to take my time about this.”
What was Alistair intending, other than a most splendid suckling of Marcus’s aching cock?
In the shadowed darkness, he caught a glimpse of those long-lashed, gorgeous eyes, lowered into a siren’s song of seduction. “You still have no notion as to my dangerous plan?”
Marcus swallowed, watching as Alistair sat tall on his knees and stripped his arms out of first one, then the other suspender.
“Other than making me blind with want and lust?”
Alistair unfastened his tie, then draped it over the back of the sleigh’s seat, and swiftly undid his collar. With a bearlike stretch, he was shed of that linen dress shirt, his chest exposed and beautiful. Muscles rippled beneath the man’s softness, bands of new strength obvious even in the moonlit darkness. More and more of his handsome form was being revealed lately, as if the sculpted beauty was being freed from a block of artisan’s marble.
Outside the windows, branches swayed in the late spring breeze, and as they moved, more moonlight fell upon Alistair. That dappling chiaroscuro revealed Alistair’s striking face, the wicked devotion in his shadowed features. “I mean to claim you, and spill my seed deep within you, my Marcus. Tonight, I shall ensure that I’m the last man to ever know the pleasure of what I will finally offer you.”