Page 53 of Vine

It must have been a great response. Under the duvet, Caspian’s fingers threaded through mine, and his unhappy mouth turned up at the corners. If he kept that sleepy little smile going for much longer, he was going to get himself kissed.

A warm foot hooked around my calf. “And how do you plan on doing that?”

“I haven’t worked out yet.” And I never would if his foot climbed any higher. “But we could stay here in bed and see if either of us comes up with something.”

He gave a sexy, soft laugh, and his foot wheedled in between both my calves. A restful night had done him good. The dark circles hadn’t gone away, but he’d calmed. Through the fabric ofmy pyjamas, his knee nudged my optimistic morning erection. A purring sound I wasn’t used to making escaped my throat. Caspian’s sleepy smile changed into a naughtier one. “Well, that didn’t take very long.”

Raising himself onto an elbow, he folded back the duvet from around my shoulders until it bunched at my waist. Halfway through the night, I discovered that sleeping next to another man was hotter than the inside of a McDo apple pie, and I’d flung off my pyjama top. The tip of Caspian’s tongue poked between his lips. Very deliberately, he walked his fingers across my collar bone and down my bare arm, before circling his palm around my bicep.

I flexed it, and he chuckled. “I reckon you could take on the world with these.” He gave the muscle a squeeze. “Maybe that’s where I’m going wrong. I should build my muscles up.”

He didn’t need to; he could borrow mine. “I like you exactly as you are,” I blurted, and my face heated. “Let me do your heavy lifting.”

He smiled into my eyes, and my belly squished. “Perhaps I should.”

We kissed, even though we hadn’t brushed our teeth. So not with tongues. Caspian pestered my erection with his knee. “Do we need to do something about this, big boy?”

“Big man,” I corrected, and he laughed, an excellent morning sound. Usually, the weather report on the radio filled the gap between sleep, masturbation, and my first coffee. Caspian’s gravelly, just-woken voice was much warmer and sweeter. If I could persuade him to recite the shipping forecast for southwestern France, my erection would take care of itself.

Duvet-warmed fingers smoothed up my flank. As he watched my reaction, the tip of his tongue poked between his teeth again. If eyes could talk, his would be shoutingI’m horny too.Mind you, they’d be competing over the clamour of my own. As hisknee pressed into my achy, heavy balls, his mouth teamed up with his eyes. “Not sure you should be carrying this extra weight around with you all day.”

In a sudden move, I pushed him onto his back. “That’s it.” I grunted. “Enough talking. We’re going to have sex now.”

Climbing all over him, I wrenched down his underwear. Unlike me, Caspian didn’t wear comfy boxer shorts. He wore small elasticated briefs, and they were the most stupid but sexy scraps of fabric ever sewn together. At a little tearing sound, he burst into laughter. “Oh my god, you’re so…” he searched for the word in French, “toppy!”

I withdrew like I’d been slapped. Merde, what was I doing? He wasn’t here for sex! He was here because he needed rest and care. And help and advice from Colette.

Caspian’s eyebrows pulled into a frown. “You’d better only be stopping to grab lube and a condom, Max.”

“What?”

“You know, those things men like us use to … um… ease the passage, so to speak?”

“What passage? You’re supposed to be resting.” His words were firing into me, but my brain was spitting them out again. The shipping report and coffee began to seem more attractive.

Caspian chuckled. Taking my hand, he guided it under the duvet. At the same time, he brought his knees up and tilted his hips forward. As our joined hands bypassed his dick, he rearranged his hold, so that my index finger prodded the divide between his bum cheeks. Blood rushed to my groin. “This passage, bigman.”

“What, you mean, now?”

His eyes danced. “Yes, now. Unless you have something urgent to do first. Or need to light a few scented candles to get yourself in the mood.” This time when he thrust up again, histhigh made proper contact with my erection dangling over it. “Though it’s my impression you already are.”

With a flash of his quite good teeth, Caspian jerked his chin towards my bedside drawer. “Come on. Lube? Condoms?”

Some of the blood rushing to my cock diverted to the skin of my cheeks. “Yes, there are both in there.” I focused on his left ear. “But I’ve never performed penetrative sex. Or been penetrated myself,” I added for clarity, in case he was proposing we do it the other way around. “Except with a gloved finger by a doctor when I had appendicitis aged twenty-one. It was… unpleasant.”

As was a painful experiment with a lubed carrot, but that was private. I waited for Caspian to laugh. Instead, he pressed his lips against my beard.

“Well, I’m asking you to penetrate me, bigman.” His thigh and my erection edged closer. “A dose of Vitamin Max might be just what the doctor ordered.” Now he did laugh, but only in a teasing, friendly way. “And before you say it, I am well aware you are neither a vitamin nor a prescription item.”

CHAPTER 20

CASPIAN

Making Max horny might be only a short-lived distraction from my perpetual state of frozen panic, but, no lie, it was a bloody good one. I hadn’t thought about my razor, my arms, nor any of the other unhelpful gate crashers squatting rent free in my head since that gorgeous needy moan when my knee checked out his dick. As though Max was my anchor and, as long as I held onto the rope, I was safe.

And now in that intense, shy way of his, he confessed he’d never fucked anyone before. Which was preposterous; French twinks should have been queuing up outside his gatehouse in a hungry line stretching from Calais to Marseilles. The guy was built for topping. Not only in a stereotypical physical way, although he was all of that too. But in ways he hadn’t even fucking realised. Ripping off my undies, for a start, and that syrupy growl of a voice, rumbling through his entire body before ever escaping his lips. In the way he threw me around a little this morning. And, last but not least, his giant man wang.

My point being, Max La Forge was everything I ever craved, and he was all mine, if only I could keep my shit together.

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