Page 51 of Once a Gentleman
Andrew glared down at him, his expression hard and set.
“Listen to me, Kit,” he gritted out. “That is the last time I will tolerate being called a liar. From the very first day you set foot in this house, when you refused to accept my word, you’ve doubted me in the most insulting possible way. I have fallen very much in love with you, against my will and most inconveniently, andthatis the truth. And you are the first man or woman I’ve had in here. Every other bedroom in the house, yes, I’ve fucked someone in each of them, including in the one you currently occupy. You were far from the first to suck my cock in the drawing room, either. I make no pretense of being better than I am. But I am not,” and he shook Kit, not too roughly but not gently either, “a bloody liar.”
“I apologize, sincerely,” Kit managed through his suddenly very tight throat. The thought that he might truly be the only one Andrew had brought here, into what seemed to be his private sanctum—it gave too much credence to his protestations of love. Except that Kit had shown up at his door, had he not? Andrew hadn’t properly invited him in. He tried to harden his heart. “But—”
Andrew shook his head and laughed, a bitter sound. “Of course there is a codicil to your apology. Excuse me. Do go on.”
“But there are two kinds of truths,” Kit said, glaring in return. He did feel that he had wronged Andrew, to an extent, but really! “Those that are factually true, and those that depend on one’s own perception of an event. If you tell me that no one else has shared this bed with you, then I am sorry, and I will of course take your word for it. But as for the other…you may feel as if you love me,” and he had to force the words out, his voice shaking betrayingly, “but that is something that could change at any moment. You say you make no pretense. Very well. Can you tell me honestly that you haven’t been fickle in your affections? That you have ever loved the same man for more than a few hours together?”
Andrew’s jaw clenched so tightly Kit was afraid he would crack his teeth. Finally, he said, with obvious reluctance, “I thought myself in love once before. It lasted some little time, but it did not survive a separation, and it was not—Kit, it wasn’t the same. My love for you won’t fade.”
“Thought yourself in love,” Kit repeated, now so angry he felt his blood might boil in his veins. “Thought yourself. And since then, and presumably before then, you have had dozens or hundreds of lovers, and cared for none of them beyond a night’s pleasure. Andthisis the basis for your insistence that you know your own mind? Your protestations of future constancy?”
If he hadn’t been lying down, he thought he might have been sick; as it was, he had to swallow hard, his esophagus spasming. Being placed in the position of arguing the man he wanted, so badly, out of his feelings for him was…well, indescribably painful, and he would be lucky to escape this conversation without humiliating himself entirely by weeping, or perhaps vomiting after all.
“It’s different.” Andrew sounded harassed now, a little desperate, and the flush on his cheeks had deepened to crimson. “I’m older, and I do know my own mind. And does it not say something that after so many lovers, none of whom have caught my attention, I have been unable to think of anything but you since you came into my house?”
“I think it says that it has been so long since anyone said no to you that you could not help rising to the challenge. I am neither sufficiently appealing, nor interesting, to attract any unusual attention. It has nothing to do with me at all.”
Each word burned in Kit’s throat like acid. He could possibly bear hearing Andrew tell him he was unremarkable, a pleasant-looking young fellow like any other, but saying it himself felt like the very last straw.
“Indeed you could not be anyone,” Andrew retorted, going from angry to indignant in an instant. “How dare you speak of yourself in such a way! If anyone else described you like that, I’d have it out with him. You’re lovely, Kit, so lovely you take my breath away. And clever, and witty, and everything a man could—”
“Oh, do please stop,” Kit moaned, and covered his face with his hands. His eyes prickled, and if Andrew saw the tears escape he’d never recover from the mortification. “You’re only making it worse.”
Silence fell; Kit could hear Andrew’s rough breathing, and his own hitching exhales, but nothing else.
“Very well,” Andrew said at last, very quietly. “Promise me you’ll stop calling me a liar, if you would be so kind? And I will—cease complimenting you, and telling you I love you. Since you find it so distasteful.”
Andrew’s obvious unhappiness felt like a stab to the heart; he believed himself in love, at least, and how much must Kit’s reaction to it pain him? But what could Kit do but agree? He nodded, his hands still over his face, because he neither trusted himself to speak nor to show his expression.
“Thank you,” Andrew said, still in that low, restrained tone, so clearly an attempt at disguising deep offense and hurt. Kit felt like the lowest, most miserable worm. “Then—since I’ve made it worse, I suppose now I ought to make it better. I hear a kiss is the proper way to achieve that.”
He slid his hands from Kit’s shoulders, bracing his weight on the bed instead, and pressed a kiss to Kit’s chin, the only exposed part of his face. Andrew worked his way down, kissing every bit of skin above Kit’s shirt and then pushing it up from the hem so that he could move to his ribs, to his belly, breathing hotly on his navel and then pressing his face to his waist. He nibbled there, making Kit squirm beneath him, his cock filling yet again.
Kit couldn’t rein in his body’s responses, couldn’t seem to repress the desperate need that welled up in him every time Andrew touched him. Those soft kisses, the firmness of Andrew’s hands on his sides, mastering him, all laid waste to his control.
His legs parted seemingly of their own accord, thighs spread to accommodate Andrew’s body. Kit could not possibly take him again. He could not. And yet, and yet…the very center of him felt molten with desire, and even the ache in his well-used arse felt like arousal, a yearning for more of the same treatment.
Andrew opened the buttons of Kit’s trousers and nuzzled his abdomen. “I’ll end by having you again,” he murmured into Kit’s skin. “You must tell me if that would hurt you.”
“It might, a little,” Kit replied, roused beyond any hope of dissimulation. “But I want you to all the same.”
Andrew’s breath hitched, a tickle against the hollow of Kit’s hip. His hands tightened around Kit’s waist, where they had slid down to rest. “Beg me. Otherwise I might doubt your sincerity.”
Kit’s cock hardened painfully at that, a reaction that had his head spinning with mortification. Oh, God. This, then, would be Andrew’s requital for his lack of faith and his rejection of Andrew’s feelings.
He would not beg, he could not…but Andrew found the tip of his cock with his mouth and began to flick it with his tongue, and suddenly he found that he must.
“Please,” he gasped, spreading his legs further, pressing his body toward Andrew’s ministrations in a way that would have been shameful if he were not past the point of shame. “Andrew. Please.”
“Anything for you,” Andrew growled, and sat up, flipping Kit by the hips and tossing him face-down on the bed, where he bounced once, flailing his arms into the sheets. Good God, he was strong, he had turned Kit like he weighed nothing, and he would be on top of him and having his way…
Andrew seized Kit’s trousers and yanked them roughly down to his thighs, taking his smalls with them.
“Anything for you,” he repeated, and leaned in, his hot breath brushing over the crease between Kit’s buttocks.
Kit moaned, and fisted the sheets, and pushed his arse in the air as Andrew’s tongue began to trace its way toward the center of him, one hand pressing firmly down on his lower back and keeping him precisely where Andrew wanted him.
That clever tongue found its mark.
And Kit lost himself in it, the pillow muffling his screams.
