Page 42 of Once a Gentleman
Andrew looked like something out of—well, out of Mrs. Radcliffe’s fevered imagination: rakishly disheveled, with his hair all mussed and his broad chest on full display, shoulders and arms muscled and strong, and with the air of a man about to complete a thorough ravishment.
Though perhaps Mrs. Radcliffe would have had too much circumspection to describe the way Andrew’s prick tented the placket of his trousers, the bulge thick and obscene.
Self-consciousness came rushing back as Andrew stood there, quite still, tracing all the contours of Kit’s body with his eyes. He fought the urge to cover himself, with his hands or with his waistcoat, perhaps, which hung half off the bed beside him. Instead, he fisted his hands in the coverlet beneath him and endured it, his face flushing scarlet, by the heat he could feel flooding his cheeks.
When he bit his lip, Andrew’s gaze flicked up to his mouth and lingered there.
“If you’ve changed your mind—” Kit began, rather unsteadily, and Andrew cut him off.
“I’m merely unable to make it up. Good God, Kit,” Andrew said, and his voice shook nearly as much as Kit’s. “I don’t know what to do with you first.” He stepped forward, prowling, almost predatory in the way he moved to stand between Kit’s knees, and the desire to clap his hands over his groin only grew. “A veritable feast,” Andrew murmured, and reached out to trail his fingers down Kit’s thigh, lightly, raising goosebumps on his skin and sending tiny shocks through his nerves.
And abruptly, Kit abandoned the last of his qualms. That tone of hungry wonder and heartfelt appreciation could be practiced too…and if it were, so be it.
Kit would bloody well enjoy it, that was all, and allow himself to pretend it could be real, here in this sunny bedchamber with the world held at bay. He owed himself that, in payment for a life likely to be singularly devoid of real love.
And so rather than attempt to hide or to deflect, he sank into the fantasy.
He smiled up at Andrew, allowing himself to take pleasure in showing how much he wanted him, how much he wantedthis. And he spread his legs, hitching himself back further onto the bed so that he could brace his heels on the edge of the bolster, arching his back a little as he did so that the long, slender line of his torso showed to its best advantage—such as it could.
No, no, he wouldn’t think that way, because as he opened his knees, exposing himself lewdly and completely, Andrew’s eyes widened and his mouth actually fell open. The hand on Kit’s leg slid to his knee and gripped it, hard, fingers digging in convulsively.
“Bloody hell,” he said at last. “Bloody…”
He dropped to his knees with his face only inches from…everything, and Kit yelped, all his newfound boldness slipping away. He tried to close his legs again, skin crawling with mortification, but Andrew seized hold of his ankles and wrenched him back into position, leaving Kit gasping and squirming.
“None of that.” Andrew’s voice had dropped to a register that vibrated up Kit’s spine and had his bollocks tightening and his cock standing up and begging for attention. “Don’t try to hide yourself from me. You have an arse like a perfect ripe peach, soft and round and sweet, did you know?”
No, he hadn’t, he’d never even imagined that anyone could describe any backside in such a way, let alone his, and he let out a helpless little whimper of confusion that rose into a cry as Andrew leaned in and nuzzled the junction of his thigh, breath hot on his bollocks.
“The sweetness is only an assumption at the moment,” Andrew went on, murmuring the words directly into Kit’s skin, every syllable a fresh assault on his senses. “But I intend to test the theory.”
Oh, great God in Heaven, he could not possibly mean—but he did, and an instant later he bent his head an inch further, and his tongue traced a hot, wet path around Kit’s hole. And then flicked at it, and then licked a flat stripe over it, from the crease of Kit’s arse up to the tender bit of skin behind his bollocks.
Kit’s face and scalp and hands and feet went light and tingly, his heart beating so fast it shook him. “You can’t, oh God, you can’t—it’s wrong to—you—oh God, Andrew, please—”
Andrew chuckled against his hole, the vibrations of it making his cock throb and the center of his body clench, and Kit let out something akin to a wail. And then Andrew pushed his tongue actuallyinsidehim, and Kit made a sound of pure shock and horror and tormented ecstasy that echoed from the ceiling.
He had his mouth—his tongue—stretching Kit open, penetrating his flesh and spearing into him, all in the light of day, shameless and filthy, with Kit writhing and now unable to stop himself from pushing his arse down into Andrew’s eager mouth.
Everything blurred into a choppy haze of desperation and want, with Andrew pinning his legs open and devouring his hole, nibbling at the delicate skin of it andkissingit, as he might have kissed Kit’s mouth, his tongue pushing in and out with no resistance now.
“You’re sweeter than any peach,” Andrew said, and then bit the inner curve of his arse cheek—and it was too much, far too much. Kit tensed, black spots swam in his vision, and he spent, his cock jerking untouched in the air and spurting hot stripes onto his belly and his chest.
He reeled from it, weak and shaking in every limb. He managed to open his eyes a little, enough to peek under his lashes at Andrew as he rose up and rubbed his forearm over his mouth, pulling it away to reveal lips still swollen and shiny with spit.
Andrew gazed down at him avidly, eyes sharp and expression set.
“I’m going to have you now,” he said, voice low and rough.
He swiftly unbuttoned his trousers and stripped those and his boots with daunting speed. And then he turned away.
What in God’s name…but Andrew merely went to Kit’s dressing table, opening a bottom drawer that Kit had never troubled to use and emerging with a small bottle in his hand, letting out a triumphant, “Ha!” He turned back, already uncorking the bottle. “I asked Samuel to see that this room had been properly arranged for your arrival, including removing anything—incriminating, but I thought he might have missed this at the back of the drawer.”
How many men had Andrew brought to this room and fucked in this very bed? But Kit had only a moment to spare for hurt and indignation, because he blinked, and suddenly Andrew was kneeling between Kit’s splayed thighs, the open bottle in one big hand and stroking his cock with the other.
That hand wasn’t quite big enough to hide how very large his cock was, though, and Kit felt the stirrings of something like fear join the mess of other feelings brewing in him. The lover whom Andrew had accused of thrusting between Kit’s thighs had indeed penetrated him—but not deeply, no more than an inch or so before he spent, before Kit could feel more than a burning discomfort that hardly amounted to real pain but also didn’t even approach anything like pleasure.
“I won’t hurt you,” Andrew said. “I can see in your face—I would never hurt you, Kit. I promise you.”
