Page 19 of It Takes Two to Tumble
Worse still, he felt like they’d both have a jolly time, and go happily to bed where Dacre could show Ben what he’d been missing out on during these years of celibacy, and then they could both be properly resentful and awkward in the morning. No thank you.
And then Ben would be the sort of fellow who was engaged to marry one person and went to bed with somebody else. And that would never be right. But looking over at the captain, he couldn’t help but think that touching this man, seeing what happened, might carry its own kind of rightness. This wanting felt like such a part of Ben’s soul that it had to mean something, had to carry with it its own kind of moral gravity.
Damn it. The icy water must have frozen his conscience. He could almost hear a line from the poem that had made his father’s name, something about turning your face to beauty like a flower to the sun, and that being the only righteousness the world could ever know. Never had Ben been able to figure out what good a sentiment like that could do anyone on a day-to-day-basis. But when he saw Captain Dacre, when he watched the moonlight glint off his bare shoulders and the water drip from his dark hair, when he felt within his own chest something stir that had been asleep so very long, he thought he might know what his father had meant.
The fact that he was finally understanding his father’s poetry was not, he thought, a good sign. He sighed and ran a cold-stiffened hand through his hair. The trouble always was that there was nobody to talk to about his peculiar predicament. He didn’t know how to live as a man who desired other men, and he didn’t have anyone to look towards for guidance.
“You look like you stepped on something suspicious.” Dacre’s voice pulled him out of his reverie. “Wait, did you?”
Ben felt his mouth twitch upward in the beginnings of a wry smile. “If I told you I was thinking of the Bible, would you believe me?”
A slight hesitation. “I daresay you ought to think about it sometimes. It’s your job.”
Ben laughed despite himself. “You say it like it’s the most unsavory part of my job. As if I’m the rag collector. ‘Oh, I do suppose you ought to sort through that dirty business sometimes. It’s your job, after all.’”
“Well, I don’t think it’s themostsordid part of your duties.”
Ben smiled. He knew all the arguments against religion, had learned them at his father’s knee, in fact. But he didn’t want to go into that now. “I’ll race you back to the shore,” he said, and took off without waiting for the captain’s go ahead.
Dacre won anyway, and soon they were dripping and shivering on the grass.
Ben immediately peeled off his shirt, regretting that he didn’t have a dry shirt to put on. “You were right about the shirt.” He made for the boathouse, thinking he could at least find one of the blankets the children had stowed there.
“I have a lot of experience jumping into cold water,” the captain said, following him towards the shelter. “Usually you want to be as naked as possible, but...”
“But?”
“I felt like it would be a good idea to keep on as much clothing as possible tonight.” He fell silent, and the moment stretched out dangerously. “We’d better have a couple layers of fabric between us at all times, vicar.” On the last word, the door to the boathouse snapped shut, and Ben was very aware of how there was very little of anything between them now. They stood inches apart, bare chested in the gloom and seclusion of the boathouse.
Ben felt his chest tighten. Dacre’s admission of desire was uncharted territory for him, and he didn’t know how to respond. He settled for irony, and knew it to be a cheap substitute for sincerity. “You fear my roving hands,” he intoned. “My reputation as a libertine precedes me.”
The captain’s huff of laughter was barely audible, mingled as it was with the soft sounds of night birds and rippling water. “Not precisely. How on earth did a man like you wind up a vicar?” The way he spoke the words wasn’t quite a question. He didn’t expect Ben to supply a reasonable answer; he asked the question because he didn’t think there was a reasonable answer, and Ben wasn’t in the right frame of mind to justify his choices.
“Do you know, you’re the second person I’ve spoken to today who said much the same thing.”
“Good God, if you have conversations like this more than once a day, I’m surprised you don’t have a reputation as a libertine.”
Now Ben laughed in earnest, and it did something to ease the tension that was building in his chest. “Not precisely like this.”
“Good,” the captain said, and it was a rumble. When he stepped closer, Ben didn’t move away, because by that point he felt well beyond any need to pretend that he didn’t want Captain Dacre within touching distance. They were so close Ben could hear the water dripping from Dacre’s hair, could hear the other man’s breathing, and any reason Ben might have had to step away seemed very distant and abstract.
It was dark in the boathouse, too dark to communicate by glances or gestures. That left only speaking or frank touches, and Ben didn’t think he was capable of the former. He had always been better with his actions than with his words anyway. So he took his hand and stroked his fingertips down Dacre’s forearm, learning the sinews and hairs by touch. He heard a sharp indrawn breath, then Dacre’s hands were on him, tugging his hips close.
When their lips met they both went still, and Ben had the fleeting impression that Dacre was more startled than Ben was himself. Ben wasn’t startled at all, come to think. Dacre’s mouth felt right on his, as if Ben had been waiting all his life to taste the stern line of this man’s lips, as if this was what Ben’s mouth was for and he was only now realizing it. He slid his hands from the captain’s shoulders to the lean muscles of his upper arms, pressed his own bare chest against the other man’s, gave an experimental lick along the seam of the captain’s mouth, and it all felt right. He was waiting, he realized, for this to feel wrong, for it to feel shameful or traitorous, but it only felt good, and safe, and honest.
Dacre made a noise at the back of this throat, a sound of capitulation that was somewhere between a moan and a groan, and then he was kissing Ben in earnest. One of his hands was at the back of Ben’s head, holding him steady for Dacre’s devouring kisses.
“Oh, damn it,” the captain said against the sensitive skin of his neck. “Sedgwick. Are you—”
Ben cut him off by taking his mouth in another kiss. Dacre steered him so Ben’s back was against the rough wood wall of the boathouse, one of Dacre’s arms braced on the wall beside him. There was nothing but the wall behind him, Dacre a solid mass in front of him, and the desire growing deep within his belly.
“Won’t do,” Dacre breathed. “Splinters.” And then they were on the floor, side by side, trousers discarded and a blanket beneath them.
It was all so much easier than Ben could have imagined. Dacre’s hands exploring, waiting a moment for Ben to object, then grasping, stroking. Ben might have thought he’d find it strange, maybe overwhelming, to be touched so intimately by another person. It was neither of those things, and that itself was surprising. Dacre’s hands felt like they belonged on Ben’s body, and when Ben thought to return the favor, fumbling with the backward logic of another person’s body, his hands felt perfectly right there as well. His fingers wrapped around Dacre’s shaft as his face nestled into Dacre’s shoulder, a carpenter’s joints fitting together perfectly, as if this had always been the plan for their bodies.
They were quiet except for necessary whispers.Yes. Shh. Please. I have you.Ben tipped over the edge into bliss and felt Dacre follow, and all he could think was that it had all been so easy, so right, and that it would have been a good deal simpler if that hadn’t been the case.
Chapter Nine
