Page 56 of King's Man

In that sheltered space, they stripped each other with slow and tender care, full of unhurried kisses. It wasn’t even dark yet — they had all the time in the world. Sam threw back the sheets, tumbling Nate onto the bed, and it was glorious: the coarse linen, the heat of Sam’s body, his weight bearing Nate down into the straw mattress, caressing and kissing, bodies entangled.

Outside, a bell tolled eight and a handful of raindrops rattled against the window. Inside, Sam bathed him in butterfly kisses to his eyelids, lips, to the base of his throat, his chest. Nate buried a hand in Sam’s hair, traced fingers over his back, exploring the scars on his shoulders.

God, that they could go back and live unscathed in the world of before.

“Nate?” Sam propped himself up on his elbow, looking down at him. He threaded a hand through Nate’s hair, brushing it off his face. “What’s wrong?”

He shook his head. “Just thinking.”

“Well stop.” Sam leaned down and kissed his lips, cupped his face. “There’s nothing to think about but this.”

Wrapping his arms around Sam’s neck, Nate pulled him down until they were flush together, until Sam’s weight crushed everything but sensation from his mind. He felt airless, drowning, and he welcomed it. Nothing else in the world existed. He wanted nothing but this.

Pinned by Sam’s body, he couldn’t move much but managed to rock his hips, his cock pressing into Sam’s belly. With a groan, Sam began to move too, lifting his weight onto his arms, settling between Nate’s legs. God, it was delicious. Nate ran his fingers down the length of Sam’s spine, found his hip, the curve of his ass. They could spend like this and it would be perfect. But tonight, Nate wanted more.

“I have a confession,” he said, looking up into Sam’s flushed face. “I stole something from MacLeod’s kitchens.”

“What, in God’s name?”

He ran a hand across Sam’s chest, rubbed the pad of his thumb over a taut nipple and watched Sam’s eyes flutter closed, reveled in his stifled moan. “Salad oil.” He grinned as Sam’s eyes flew back open.

“Fuck.”

Nate gave a slow smile at Sam’s rare obscenity and stretched out languorously beneath him, arms above his head. “Only if you want to…”

“Hellspawn.” Sam grinned, knotted his hand into Nate’s hair and claimed him ungently. Christ, Nate almost spent right then, legs wrapped around Sam’s thighs, grinding into his belly. But Sam let go in time, pushed back to sit on his heels, chest heaving and eyes aglow. “Get it.” He had a restraining grip on the base of his cock. “Hurry.”

Nate slipped from the bed, making something of a show of it as he crossed the room to where his portmanteau sat on the table, bending over to rummage around for the oil.

“Mother ofGod.”

Sam’s choking curse made Nate grin and he gave a coquettish glance over his shoulder. “Everything all right?”

With a groan, Sam flopped onto his back. “If you don’t damn well hurry, you’ll be too late, you gorgeous bastard.”

Nate laughed. And hurried. Where the devil had he put the oil? He dumped out his muddy shirt, stockings, his book — anything that was in the way — until eventually his fingers closed around the little glass bottle. He sent a silent, somewhat profane prayer of thanks to Mrs. Sturge. Then he was back on the bed and straddling Sam’s lap, the bottle warming in his hand as he slid forward, chest-to-chest, and kissed him with a languid ease he didn’t feel. His blood was burning. “Fuck me,” he whispered, biting Sam’s ear. “For God’s sake, Sam, fuck me.”

With a groan, Sam rolled him onto his back. Sitting up, he took the bottle and unstoppered it, pouring a little oil into his hand. Nate watched through the rush of blood in his head, the painful pounding of his heart. Christ, he wanted this and didn’t know how to bear its ending.

“Nate.”

His gaze had been riveted on Sam’s hand, on the glow of the golden oil, and he lifted it to Sam’s face instead. His hair fell forward over his forehead, sweat-damp and dark, his flushed lips the same dusky pink as his nipples. But his eyes, they were full of shadows.

“How do you want it?”

In your arms, held close, seeing everything in your face.

But no, that would be unbearable. He swallowed and rolled over, his rigid cock pressing into the mattress. “Hard,” he said, voice muffled into his forearm. “I want it hard.”

Sam made a stifled sound, paused, then nudged Nate’s legs apart with his knees, slick fingers starting to open him with infinite care even as his other hand tightened on Nate’s hip. “Hard?” he rasped. “I’ll give you hard.”

Nate bit his response into his arm, swallowing his groan as Sam’s fingers worked him in the way only he could. Christ, but no one had ever known his body like Sam. Every turn of his fingers made him whimper. Sam’s breathing grew ragged and then his fingers were gone. For a moment, the emptiness was unendurable, but then Sam was hauling him to his knees, one hand between his shoulder blades, pressing his chest down onto the bed — keeping the weight off his injured arm; the carefulness of that hurt much worse than the wound — while his other hand ran once more over his ass. And then Nate felt a blunt pressure pushing in, slow but unremitting as he buried his face into the mattress and cried out at the intolerable intensity.

Nate horded breath as Sam snugged his hips against his ass and stopped. With one hand, Sam gripped his hip while the other swept a caress along the bow of Nate’s spine to seize his shoulder, his name floating on a broken whisper Nate doubted he was meant to hear. And then Sam was moving, slow strokes that pierced Nate to the core. Neither pain, nor quite pleasure, it was simply an overmastering of his senses. His heart pounded frantically against his ribs, lungs burning, throat too tight to make a sound as he strained toward release.

Sam’s fingers flexed against his shoulder and he began to move in earnest. Hard, as Nate had said he wanted. Hard, because tender would break him. Hard, because he wanted to be marked, branded. He never wanted to forget.

It went on forever, a timeless building of sensation and need and pressure. Nothing was real but their bodies, the satiny slide of Sam’s cock, the bruising grip of his hands on Nate’s shoulder and hip, the low grunts of Sam’s thrusts, the hot wash of his breath, and the desperate ache of Nate’s untouched, rigid stand. The sweat on his skin, the flush of his face. Hovering on the brink of a release he wanted desperately, and desperately wanted to stave off forever.

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