It felt as if all the air had been sucked from Lucius’s chest, making it impossible for him to draw that air back into his lungs so that he might speak. If he did this, if he gave Toby what he asked for, then Lucius knew he would no longer be able to deny what he felt for the younger man. That he would belong to Toby as irrevocably as Toby would belong to him. The two halves of a single whole. An us.
But was that not already true?
Was the thought of Toby no longer being with him as companion and lover already too devastating to even contemplate?
To be inside Toby, to be a part of him, to be joined to him as one, to be an us, was a temptation Lucius could not deny either of them. “Yes,” he answered quietly instead.
Toby’s eyes widened. “Yes?”
Lucius chuckled his relief at being able to hear that lilt of happiness return to Toby’s voice.
Keeping his distance from the younger man be damned. “Yes,” he repeated firmly.
Green-gold eyes glowed with anticipation. “Then let’s leave all of this here for now.” He waved a hands in the direction of his drawing book and the papers on Lucius’s desk. “And go upstairs together.” He stepped back to hold out his hand in invitation.
“Let’s.” Lucius grasped that hand, allowing Toby to blow out the candles and take him up the stairs. The fright he had received earlier at the thought of Toby leaving him now made it imperative, urgent, he claim Toby in every way possible.
Once extra candles had been lit in Lucius’s bedchamber and they slowly began to undress, the two men kept their gazes locked on each other.
Toby’s breath caught in his throat, as always happened when he gazed at Lucius’s naked body: magnificent wide shoulders, a defined chest that tapered down to even tighter muscles either side of his aroused and leaking cock, between long and powerful legs.
“You are so beautiful,” he breathed as he moved a step closer to the older man.
Lucius curved one arm about Toby’s waist and cupped the side of his face with the palm of his other hand, the soft pad of his thumb stroking along his lower lip. “And you are like an angel, kissed by the sun in daylight and bathed by the moon in candlelight at night.”
“If that is so, then I was a naughty angel this evening,” Toby acknowledged ruefully. “Perhaps I deserve another spanking?” he added suggestively.
The other man chuckled. “Is that what this evening was all about?”
Toby nodded. “And no matter how badly I behaved, you did not pick up on a single indication I wished for another spanking.”
“Nor shall I spank you now.” Lucius’s lips nuzzled the side of Toby’s throat. “For this evening, it is enough that you look like an angel.”
“Is it?”
“Oh yes,” Lucius confirmed softly as he gently claimed Toby’s lips with his own. “We will take our time over this, Toby,” he promised. “And if, at any time, you change your mind, then you must tell me to stop. Do you understand?”
Oh, Toby definitely understood. He just had no intention of ever telling Lucius to stop. He knew Lucius liked to tease him during their lovemaking, to make him wait or beg for release, but he didn’t have a single doubt that Lucius would never do anything to hurt him.
Lucius kissed and caressed him until Toby thought he might scream or go insane, breathing a sigh of relief as his lover took a bottle of lotion from his nightstand. He applied the soothing cream first to his cock and then to Toby’s fully stretched and prepared hole.
But, as Toby had requested previously, Lucius remembered his desire to be allowed to remain lying on his back when the other man moved to kneel between his parted legs.
The intimacy of staring into each other’s eyes as Lucius slowly but surely pushed the head of his cock against and then through that tight muscle and inside Toby took much of the sting from that invasion.
“You are being so good for me,” Lucius encouraged when he saw Toby bite his bottom lip to stop from crying out as Lucius’s long thick cock began to enter him one slow inch at a time. He knew from previous lovers that his cock was longer and thicker than most. “So, so good,” he praised again once he was completely seated inside Toby, his balls resting against the younger man’s bottom cheeks.
Lucius held still, breaking their gaze as he closed his eyes to drink in the sensation of being sucked in and held inside Toby’s hot and welcoming body. The feel of that hot, hungry channel surrounding and squeezing his shaft had Lucius on the edge of release already.
It felt heavenly to be inside his naughty angel.
To have his cock squeezed as if in a vise by Toby.
His Toby.
The man Lucius knew he loved with all that he was or ever would or could be.
“I am ready for you to move now.” Toby gazed up at Lucius almost shyly.
Toby felt so tight, so hot, Lucius remained on that fine edge of release as he first pulled out slowly until only his cockhead remained before thrusting just as slowly back inside that engulfing heat.
“Harder,” Toby encouraged after several minutes of this measured and excruciating torture.
“I do not want to hurt you.”
“You could never do that,” Toby assured. “Now please, fuck me harder, Lucius. Please!” He lifted his hips, impaling himself on that thick cock before lowering himself again and then repeating the motion, his movements becoming more and more desperate.
Lucius needed no further encouragement, taking over the rhythm of that invasion, pushing in to the hilt before withdrawing and then thrusting in again, harder still. “No.” He pushed away Toby’s hand as his fingers would have curled about his own cock. “That needs to remain hard to go inside me, remember?”
Toby gasped with excitement at the thought of being inside Lucius. “Are you sure?” The velocity of Lucius’s thrusts, fiercer and longer now, pushed Toby farther up the bed. “We can save it for next time.”
“Tonight,” Lucius grated between gritted teeth. “You now belong to me, and I wish to belong to you in the same way.”
Toby could find no argument with that. Indeed, he had no words at all when Lucius’s cock began to stroke that sensitive place inside him and the pleasure ricocheted through his entire body. All he could do was hold on to Lucius’s arms as the other man’s cock hit that same spot time and time again, thrust after thrust, until Lucius cried out and his body stiffened while throb after throb of his cum pulsed and heated inside Toby’s channel.
The two of them continued to stare at each other for long trembling minutes until Lucius finally nodded and began to withdraw his softening cock slowly and carefully. “You now, love,” he invited before moving to kneel on all fours on the bed beside Toby. “Use the lotion,” he encouraged gruffly once Toby had moved to kneel behind him.
Toby was unable to stop staring at Lucius’s arse as he rubbed the lotion up the length of his own cock. It was more muscular than Toby’s and the rosette between those bottom cheeks was a dark and inviting red.
Lucius groaned, his arms collapsing and the side of his face resting against the bedcovers, the moment Toby’s lotion-covered fingers stroked against that sensitive flesh. Reminding Toby, if he had needed any reminding, that Lucius had never allowed any other man even this amount of intimacy, let alone the one that was to come.
Again and again, Toby stroked until the muscle, and Lucius, relaxed enough for him to be able to slip a finger inside. He thrust that finger slowly in and out before adding another.
“Now, Toby,” Lucius pleaded.
“I have no wish to hurt you by hurrying.”
Lucius had no patience for hearing the same words as he had spoken to Toby earlier. “Not being able to feel you inside me is slowly killing me!”
“God…” Toby groaned achingly. “Do you mean that?”
Every word, Lucius inwardly acknowledged. This, being completely open and vulnerable and aching for Toby’s possession was a torture Lucius could never have imagined.
“Yes,” Lucius confirmed
fiercely. “I want you inside me now, Toby. Now, damn it!” he rasped in desperation, knowing his newly revived and throbbing cock was going to betray him and burst with release if he did not have Toby inside him in the next few seconds.
“This may hurt a little still,” Toby warned as he stopped stretching Lucius’s arsehole and moved to kneel behind him.
“I do not care!” He groaned at the feel of the velvet wetness of Toby’s cockhead against his sensitive flesh, that groan becoming an indrawn and hissing breath the moment the bulbous top breached the outer ring of muscle before popping inside.
Dear God, that fucking hurt!
Nor was Lucius concerned any longer about releasing prematurely. His cock had deflated at the first sign of pain and now seemed to have lost its enthusiasm for what they were doing.
How the hell could Toby have let Lucius fuck him with his fingers and tongue day after day, night after night, without protest? Then tonight have allowed Lucius’s long and thick cock to stretch and breach him until Lucius had been seated fully inside him?
Damn it, if Toby could do this to please his lover, then Lucius could do the same for Toby!
“More,” he encouraged when the pain had dulled to an uncomfortable ache and his cock showed signs of twitching back to life. “I want you fully, not half, inside me.”
“I will not hurt you,” Toby protested.
Lucius’s chuckle lacked humor. “Now you know the reason for the reluctance I have felt to breach you.”
“Yes, but— Dear God…!” Toby groaned as, impatient with the younger man’s hesitation, Lucius pushed himself back onto that beautiful cock, their mutual slickness allowing it to glide easily inside.
It was, Lucius realized instantly, the greatest intimacy he had ever experienced, to be joined in this way with the man he loved beyond everyone and everything else.
It became even more so as Toby gently eased Lucius first onto his side and then onto his back, all while keeping his cock buried fully inside Lucius. “I want to be able to look at you as I make love to you.” Toby moved down, taking his weight onto his elbows until their chests were aligned, their faces only inches apart.
Lucius felt fully seen. Totally vulnerable. But there was no possibility of him looking away from the beauty of Toby’s eyes, not even if his life depended upon it. Their gazes remained locked together as Toby slowly began to withdraw and thrust inside Lucius’s lubricated hole, bringing a return of arousal and pleasure such as Lucius had never known before.
It went beyond physical pleasure as their bodies continued to move in harmony together, no longer separate but forever joined.
It was beyond a shared intimacy.
Their lovemaking somehow ascended into an ecstasy Lucius had never experienced before.
To become both profound and beautiful.
“Come inside me now, love,” Lucius encouraged. “Take me harder and deeper and let me feel the heat of your essence releasing inside me.”
Toby had been fighting a losing battle for some minutes against the increasing need to both claim and mark his lover.
His cock now jerked inside Lucius’s heat, as indication Toby’s fight was about to be lost, the pleasure of his imminent release coursing through every single part of him. The moment Toby felt that heat pulsing inside his lover, he bit down on the juncture between Lucius shoulder and throat, hard enough to bruise but not to break the skin.
Claiming and marking Lucius as his.
Forever, if Toby had his way.
Chapter Thirteen
Toby eyed his lover with shy uncertainty from beneath his lashes the following morning. He felt more than a little tongue-tied as the two of them were served and ate a late—very late—breakfast together in the small family dining room.
To Toby, the intimacy the two of them had shared the previous night had been absolute. Perhaps neither of them had spoken words of love, but as far as Toby was concerned, they had experienced something beyond that.
A melding of souls.
Creating an invisible but unbreakable bond between the two of them.
Except this morning, Lucius had barely spoken a word to him.
Admittedly, there had been very little opportunity for them to do so, but Toby still felt the lack of emotional, rather than physical, closeness.
Lucius had already been up and in his dressing room bathing when Toby woke, nor had Toby wished to alert the older man’s valet to the fact that he had been asleep in the duke’s bed.
Returning to his own bedchamber to bathe and dress, Toby had come downstairs to find Lucius already seated at the breakfast table, being served by the attentive butler and a footman.
Having two other people in the room with them was not conducive to having Lucius greet him with a kiss. Even the tolerance of Lucius’s household servants could not be expected to accept such open displays of affection between the two men.
Instead, Toby now sat silent and opposite Lucius at the small round table, drinking a cup of tea while Lucius occupied himself by going through the letters that had already been delivered from London earlier this morning. When what Toby really wanted, ached for, was to kiss and be kissed by Lucius, to be assured of Lucius’s happiness before the two of them returned upstairs—
“Fucking bastards!”
Toby reared back slightly at the vehemence in Lucius’s tone. The other man stared angrily at the letter he had just opened and read. “What is it?”
Instead of answering Toby immediately, Lucius turned to the butler and footman. “Leave us,” he bit out, waiting until the two men had left the room. “You need to see this.” He threw the letter across the table for Toby to read.
Toby literally felt the color drain from his cheeks as he read the words written on the thick vellum. “No!” He dropped the letter on the table and pushed noisily to his feet. “No,” he shouted again. “I shall never agree to reside at the home of the Barfords ever again. My aunt is only interest in the money they might steal from my inheritance so that her husband is kept happy, and he—” He shuddered. “I would rather live on the streets than live with either of them again.”
Lucius rose to walk round the table and take Toby in his arms. “Calm down, love.” He ran soothing hands up and down Toby’s back. “No one is saying you ever have to see either of the Barfords again, let alone live with them, if you do not wish to do so.”
“But that letter—”
“Is nothing but scaremongering,” Lucius dismissed. “The contents of your father’s will, giving your guardianship to me, means the Barfords have no legal right to make a claim on you or your fortune.”
Toby looked up at him through tear-wet lashes. “Are you sure?”
“Very,” Lucius said, having already confirmed that fact with his own solicitor the day following the reading of Daniel’s will.
“But you seemed so angry.”
“I am merely angry that we should have our idyll disturbed. But rest assured, love,” Lucius soothed. “I have no doubt this is only a move on the Barfords’ part intended to extract some sort of monetary payment from either you or me so that they will agree to go away.”
“I… You… No,” Toby spoke out strongly. “I will not allow either of us to do that. This has to stop. He has to be stopped,” he added vehemently.
Lucius frowned his displeasure at the return of that haunted look in Toby’s eyes.
The previous night had been the happiest and best of Lucius’s life. The closeness he had experienced with Toby, the beauty of the two of them being joined, first Lucius inside Toby and then Toby inside Lucius, had been and always would be the moment Lucius gave his whole heart to his young lover.
He had wanted nothing more than to continue their lovemaking this morning where they had left off the previous night, but the arrival of Lucius’s valet with his bath before Toby awoke had prevented that. By the time Lucius returned to his—their—bedchamber, Toby was gone, he presumed to bathe and dress in his own suite of rooms.
In retrospect, Lucius had decided that perhaps it was as well. He felt a little sore from their lovemaking the previous night, and no doubt Toby felt even more discomfort than Lucius did. It was a pleasurable soreness and one that reminded him constantly, along with the bruising from Toby’s teeth at the base of his throat, of how the young man had claimed him. But a few hours’ respite before they made love again would not be amiss.
Just to be able to look across the breakfast table and see Toby opposite him filled Lucius with a contentment he knew he would never grow tired of.
That contentment had evaporated the moment he read the letter from the Barfords’ solicitors.
Toby’s violent reaction to the letter, and the way in which Lucius could now feel the younger man trembling, filled Lucius with trepidation. “By ‘he,’ are you referring to Clifford Barford?”
The wildness returned to Toby’s gaze. “Of course I mean Clifford Barford.” He pulled out of Lucius’s arms. “He… I… When I was fourteen years old, that fucking monster tried to rape me!”
A red haze of rage appeared in front of Lucius’s eyes, his chest having tightened to a degree, he was finding it difficult to breathe.
Barford had attempted to violate a fourteen-year-old child?
Had attempted to rape a fourteen-year-old Toby?
It made sense when Lucius considered how Toby had run away from the Barfords’ home all those years ago and hidden himself at Bishop House until Daniel returned, and then adamantly refused to ever again stay in the home of his aunt and uncle.
He had done so because Barford had tried to violate him!
The mere idea of that man’s hands—or any other part of his anatomy—touching Toby’s silky smooth skin sickened Lucius to a degree he needed to drink down some of the water from one of the two glasses on the breakfast table.
It was no help. How could it be when that fucking bastard had attempted to defile Lucius’s angel!
He would rip off the bastard’s cock before ramming it down his throat. Poke out his eyes so that he could never again gaze on the beauty that was Toby. Tear off his balls and—
Hidden Lover: Regency Men In Love 1 Page 11