Page 29 of A Gentleman Never Keeps Score
“Whatever you like, Hartley,” Sam said softly. Hartley tugged the dressing gown down further, and then threw it aside entirely. The strange thing was, he wanted his hands all over Sam. He wanted to feel every inch of him. Getting another dab of the salve, he smoothed his way back up Sam’s broad back and down his arms.
“You’re touching some irrelevant parts there Hartley,” Sam said, calling back to Hartley’s pronouncement that he wanted to confine their contact only to places that were relevant to orgasms.
Hartley pressed his lips together to keep from smiling, even though Sam couldn’t see him. “I suppose you think you’re terribly droll.”
“Yeah, that’s right, I do.”
He wrapped both his hands on one of Sam’s biceps and couldn’t make his fingers touch. Incredible. “Is that your way of asking me to touch more relevant areas?”
“If that’s your way of asking me whether you can fuck me, the answer is yes.”
Hartley stilled his hands. That hadn’t been what he was asking, but the idea made his head spin. “That’s not my—I mean, I would if that was what you fancied. I’d oblige. But it’s not my favorite way to get off. At least, I don’t think it would be. I haven’t. Never really wanted to, either.” His cheeks were hot and his heart pounding.
“I can take it or leave it. What is your favorite, then? Or, what would be your favorite, if you...”
“If I could? God, I liked getting fucked.” The past tense was bitter in his mouth, but it felt good to say it aloud, to admit what he had lost. “Not that I’ve done it much. I just think I would, if I could.”
“Ever do it to yourself? With fingers or with something else?”
“Something else?” he echoed. “If you think I’m sticking a vegetable marrow up my rear, you can guess again. As for fingers, of course I have, but it’s a bit of a hassle.”
Sam’s shoulders were shaking with laughter and Hartley hadn’t been trying to be amusing, so he pinched Sam’s arse. That made Sam gasp and then squirm in a very decorative manner. Hartley rubbed the place where he had pinched, and since that felt good he kept doing it. By the time Sam shifted on the bed to spread his legs slightly further apart, Hartley was already hard.
He dipped his fingers in the salve and traced them down the crease of Sam’s backside, his eyes on Sam’s face to see if this was what he wanted. He had said Hartley could fuck him, but maybe he’d be interested in this instead. Sam’s eyes flickered shut, his lips parted on a sigh. He brought his fingers lower still, circling the pucker of Sam’s entrance. When Sam stilled for a moment, Hartley could almost feel the touch on his own body.
“You’re teasing me,” Sam mumbled.
“That’s right I am,” Hartley agreed, and proceeded to do it again. Sam parted his legs further, giving Hartley unfettered access and providing an unsubtle clue. He slid in the tip of a finger. God, it had been a long time since he had touched a man this way. Because just as Sam’s lovers had expected certain things of him, so had Hartley’s few lovers, and touching like this wasn’t it. Adding more salve, he probed deeper. Sam’s hands were twisted in the bedsheets, and Hartley remembered those same strong hands gripping the velvet curtains in his library. But this time he wasn’t holding himself back; he was letting himself go, letting himself have what he wanted. Hartley added another finger and twisted, causing Sam to swear into the pillow and tilt his hips up, rocking back into Hartley’s touch.
“Yes,” Hartley said, “just like that.” He reached underneath Sam’s body and took hold of his cock, which was already hard and wet. Hartley still had all his clothes on, but he pressed his aching length into the back of Sam’s thigh for some relief.
“I’m close,” Sam groaned when Hartley started thrusting his fingers in with purpose and stroking his cock in rhythm. He realized he was rocking into Sam’s leg with the same rhythm, as if this were something they were doing together.
Sam groaned when he came, strong arms spread out on the bed, eyes shut in pleasure. The image would be seared into Hartley’s mind forever. His heart still pounding and his prick absolutely furious with him, he got off the bed and wiped his hand off. Then he brought a cloth for Sam and cleaned him too.
“Is your shoulder all right?” he asked.
“Every part of me is all right. Come here.” Sam patted the bed beside him. “If you like.”
Hartley wished he were the kind of person who could leap unreservedly into his lover’s arms. Instead, he gingerly climbed onto the bed and arranged himself about eighteen inches away from Sam.
“I wouldn’t mind if you touched me,” Hartley said. Sam gave a sleepy smile and stroked Hartley’s hair. “I meant my cock.”
“You touch your cock while I make a fuss over you.”
Hartley unfastened his trousers and pulled himself out, then sighed in relief as he finally touched himself. It wasn’t going to take much. Sam smoothed a hand down his arm, then up his side, covering him with lazy, tender caresses that somehow weren’t too much, didn’t ask for things that he couldn’t give.
His climax washed over him easily. Everything with Sam was, if not precisely easy, at least not impossible, at least not a constant reminder of things he couldn’t have. Being with Sam gave him the hope that he could perhaps live contentedly alongside the demons he would never vanquish.
Chapter Twelve
Away from London, in the crisp autumn sunshine and far from everyone he knew, Sam could almost pretend that he hadn’t lost his entire mind. He could pretend that it was reasonable and sane to have given over a solid portion of his heart to thinking and worrying and caring about Hartley. He was used to caring about people, to offering whatever aid or protection he could. He tried to tell himself that was all he was doing with Hartley, but he knew he was lying to himself.
If he had truly wanted to protect Hartley, he wouldn’t let him attempt a burglary, that was for certain. He wouldn’t let the man do what they had done last night in Hartley’s bed. He wanted to keep Hartley safe, but Hartley was a man who couldn’t be kept safe. His very existence was dangerous; he had been exposed for what he was, for what he and Sam both were. Not only could he not be protected, but being around him meant Sam was courting danger too.
Sam had spent the past ten years watching nearly everyone around him marry and settle down. First the lads he had grown up alongside, now Nick and Kate, who were plainly in love, whether or not they saw their way to getting married anytime soon. He had been raised by parents, who, however awkward he had found it in his youth, had been thoroughly in love with one another. He remembered his mother worrying the hem of her apron while waiting for his father to come home after a fight. He remembered them staying up late, laughing and whispering, when they thought Sam and Nick were long asleep. His mother had died holding his father’s hand; his father died not too long after, his late wife’s name on his lips.
He hadn’t held out any hope of that happening to him. Since he was fourteen, he had known that he wasn’t one for the girls, and while he knew it must be possible for two men to pair up the way men and women did, he didn’t know any who had done so. He could count on one hand the number of black men he had ever even seen in the places frequented by men who preferred men. Besides, the odds of finding a fellow he was really fond of were long when you only met for expeditious pleasure in dirty alleyways and the seedy edges of parks.
