Page 43 of The Ruin of a Rake
“Don’t stop,” Courtenay pleaded. “Julian. I’m going to—”
And he did. He came, Julian’s name on his lips, shuddering around Julian’s fingers, his body tense beneath Julian’s own, his arms straining and his mouth parted in pleasure.
That was all it took to bring Julian off, the sight of Courtenay’s release along with the friction of his erection rubbing between them.
“That was—”
“Julian.” Courtenay whispered the word into Julian’s hair. “Julian,” he repeated, and he sounded almost wondering. He lifted his head to look at Courtenay’s face. Courtenay raised a single eyebrow, as if asking a question they both knew the answer to.
Julian buried his face in Courtenay’s neck, a halfhearted attempt to prevent Courtenay from seeing the emotion Julian suspected was written all over him.
“Shhh,” Courtenay whispered soothingly, even though Julian hadn’t said anything. Probably Courtenay knew what a person looked like when he was a welter of half-resented emotions. Probably this sort of thing happened to Courtenay all the time. Julian almost laughed, because he realized he could tell Courtenay every bizarre notion flitting across his brain and Courtenay would likely have heard stranger things. He could probably have told Courtenay everything—except about the book, of course. He went rigid at the thought.
“It’s not that bad,” Courtenay said, misunderstanding Julian’s reaction. “Happens to people every day.”
“Oh, Courtenay,” Julian sighed. “You don’t know.”
Reluctantly, he pulled away from the warmth of Courtenay’s body. He got a wet cloth and cleaned them both up before finally untying Courtenay’s bindings. He rubbed and kissed each wrist as he released the knots, even though the time for tenderness was gone and if Julian were half as clever as he thought, he wouldn’t let it happen again. But he couldn’t resist, and when Courtenay pulled him down, he realized how much he had missed the feeling of those sure hands on his body. He sank on top of Courtenay, reluctant to leave his arms before he absolutely had to.
Chapter Seventeen
When Courtenay woke, it was still dark. He was surprised to find Julian still in his arms, their limbs intertwined, Julian’s open eyes colorlessly reflecting the moonlight.
“Trouble sleeping?” Courtenay murmured.
“I told you I’m in the habit of waking early.” And then, in a softer tone, “It’s when I get most of my thinking done.”
It was very early, so early it was more accurately late. No sounds rose from the street—no costermongers calling to one another on their way to the market, no servants pattering back and forth in the mew, no hoof beats or cart wheels in the street. Nothing.
But Julian seemed to be wide awake, and judging by the look in his eyes, he had been thinking for a while. He hadn’t gotten up though, he hadn’t pulled away from Courtenay’s embrace. Whatever he was thinking about—interest rates, taking over the world, whatever it was that flitted through the minds of financial geniuses in the small hours of the morning—he could have done his thinking in his sitting room, fully clothed, far away from Courtenay.
Instead he was here, tucked against Courtenay’s side. Courtenay pulled him close and Julian melted against him, his head nestled into Courtenay’s neck.
Last night had perhaps been the strangest sexual encounter of Courtenay’s life. If anyone had asked him yesterday afternoon whether there were things he didn’t know about pleasure, he would have laughed in their faces. He had spent years pursuing pleasure as his only real goal and it might be the only field of knowledge he could be said to have made a study of. But tied up, helpless, with Julian ruthlessly forcing him to say aloud everything he wanted? That had undone him completely, even though nothing they had ultimately done together was so very exotic.
It had been the combination of Julian’s mastery with his own grudging awareness that Julian had somehow found out a secret he had kept from himself: he had, more or less, drifted from pleasure to pleasure without any real thought as to what he really wanted. The world, as far as he could tell, was filled with people who would happily take him to bed; once they got there, Courtenay tended to defer to the other person’s pleasure. He wasn’t entirely devoid of strategy: obviously scrupulous attention to a partner’s pleasure made it more likely that rumors of one’s prowess would spread, making it easy to keep one’s bed warm in the future.
But at some point he had lost sight of what he really wanted, lost the ability to name and demand and beg for things. And throughout it all, anchoring the entire experience, was the sight of Julian’s barely checked passion, watching him so carefully not touch himself, so thoroughly devoted to simultaneously annoying and pleasuring Courtenay.
Something changed in Julian’s breathing, and when Courtenay looked down, he saw that the man’s eyes were once again shut. He was sleeping, and Courtenay felt like it was a benediction, or maybe proof that he wasn’t the only one whose heart had taken a dangerous turn.
When Courtenay woke—after procuring and delivering the required buns for Julian—he went to Eleanor’s house.
That infernally high-hat butler could hardly conceal his delight in informing Courtenay that the lady of the house was not at home to visitors.
Courtenay refrained from rolling his eyes. “I’m staying here, Tilbury. And I have been for the past week.” Upon leaving the house yesterday morning, optimistic about his prospects with Julian, he had left a note for Eleanor informing her that he had business that would take him out of London until perhaps the next day.
“Let him in, Tilbury,” said a deep voice that came from behind the butler. The door swung open, revealing Sir Edward Standish.
Courtenay bowed and wished Eleanor’s husband good morning as the butler shuffled off.
“Care to have some brandy, Courtenay?” There was a flash of something unpleasant in Standish’s eye.
It was eleven o’clock in the morning and Courtenay had no intention of drinking brandy at any time, but Standish’s words sounded like a challenge. Courtenay had never been wise enough to stand down a challenge. “Yes, I’ve been meaning to speak with you.”
Standish led the way into a room Courtenay had never known Eleanor to use. It was a small book room of vaguely masculine character: the walls were papered in a dark green stripe and the furniture appeared to have been chosen more for comfort than for style. The bookcases were filled with elegantly bound volumes, each row arranged in the orderly fashion that books acquire only when they are not read. Eleanor’s own study had shelves that looked like they had been arranged by a hurricane. This room, he realized, had been put together as a study for the master of the house, at a time when Eleanor hadn’t realized her husband’s absence would stretch so far into the future. Unlike the rest of the house, which in its strict adherence to rules of fashion was unmistakably the work of Julian, in this room he thought he saw Eleanor’s hand. On the chimneypiece, instead of the symmetrical and pristine arrangement of clocks and figurines, a jade elephant stood next to a whittled tiger. Neither object was particularly interesting in its own right, so Courtenay supposed they had sentimental value to Eleanor and perhaps to Standish.
Courtenay thought he could almost smell the aroma of hopes gone stale.
