Page 50 of A Gentleman's Wager
“What is it that particularly concerns you?”
“What is it?” he gasped, as if that wasn’t the epitome of ludicrous questions. “How can you even ask? I’m afraid of what it will mean. For us, for everyone around us. It’s too risky, its absolute insanity, not to mention illegal and likely to see us both hanged.”
“What exists between us is a private matter of no consequence to anyone else. How shall they ever know, unless one of us blabs. Lucerne, we have been friends since school, it is not as if anyone will question our sudden attachment. And I’ll note that you are not denying the attraction. So, I ask you, are you really going to set aside all that could be out of fear? I did not think you such a coward.”
Nor did he care for the implication he was behaving like one, although maybe… maybe it was the truth. Maybe it wasn’t being found out that terrified him so much as venturing into unknown territory. There were certain tenets one was raised to expect of life, such as marriage and the production of offspring, neither of which could be part of any sort of relationship he formed with Vaughan.
“Always so damned stubborn.” Vaughan traced one long finger along the edge of Lucerne’s jaw.
“As are you.”
“True. I’m also persistent, so I ask, for the sake of my dignity, might we not negotiate your surrender?”
“Vaughan.”
“Lucerne, you are thinking far too hard about all of this. Stop trying to make a decision of the heart with your head.”
“I fail to see how that will aid me.”
“Then perhaps allow me to demonstrate.” He grasped Lucerne’s shoulders, and kissed him, quickly and fiercely. Lucerne opened his mouth to protest. They were in a tavern for heaven’s sake, where anyone might walk in. However, he found his protest silenced by the press of Vaughan’s tongue. Any notion of fighting against it thus vanished. Vaughan’s mouth tasted of wine and spices. He coaxed with lips and tongue, raising a groan in the back of Lucerne’s throat, and quickening his pulse. When their hips met, and strong hands caressed him through the seat of his breeches, he trembled with fear and longing, while growing simultaneously fiercely erect. With each sinew, each fibre of his being, he craved additional contact. Vaughan’s scent, of rosemary and bergamot surrounded him. As for the notion they might be come upon, that danger seemed only to magnify the thrill.
Vaughan reached down and stroked him from the base of his cock to the tip.
“That’s damned unfair,” he protested, pressing into the touch
“I know. Say you want it, Lucerne. I’ll give you everything. You’ve always been my world.”
Lucerne closed his eyes and offered no resistance to Vaughan’s intimate caress. So, it had all come down to this. He could sometimes deny his attraction to the other man, but he didn’t have the willpower to force him away. The muscles of his stomach tightened; his mouth opened but he didn’t make a sound. Vaughan’s thrilling attention was worth the risk of weathering discovery here or gossip at court. He reached out to Vaughan and met his desire with an urgency of his own. “I want it.” Beyond the snug, the muted hubbub of the inn went on. He hoped the latch was firm.
“Show me.”
They clawed at each other’s clothing, grinding their pricks together, while locked in increasingly deep and frantic kisses. Lucerne tried not to think too hard about what they were doing, but to allow his emotions free rein instead. Three years of pent-up desires of stifled longing, and fevered dreams surfaced. He had to touch. Wanted the kisses, the exploration, the sensation of skin against skin.
He pushed his hand inside Vaughan’s pantaloons, filled his palm with his prick and basked in the euphoria produced by the sound of Vaughan’s choked gasp.
“Easy, now.”
“I don’t think that’s what you want.”
Lucerne allowed Vaughan to pull away long enough to loosen his falls. “You’re right. It’s not. Kiss me.” He shifted the lower half of his shirt aside, tucking the cambric up under his waistcoat so that it stayed aloft.
Lucerne’s lips pulled into a nervous smile, excited and unsettled by the prospect of performing fellatio. “Wait.” He crossed to the small, grimy window, and drew the curtain tight across it, thus plunging the room into a twilight of bronze shadows.
They fell upon each other again, as if mere closeness was not enough. Lucerne sank to his knees. He eyed the erect cock before him uncertainly. This would be a first. He cautiously kissed the shaft, then tickled the underside with his tongue. He was rewarded with a bead of fluid at the tip. It tasted salty against his tongue.
“You’re a godawful tease,” Vaughan muttered, tangling his fingers in Lucerne’s hair.
Lucerne closed his mouth over the head.
“Christ!”
Vaughan inhaled sharply and sagged against the panelled wall for support, holding Lucerne’s head to his cock as he moved. He didn’t speak, but Lucerne didn’t need him to. He knew how this felt. Knew exactly how incredible such focused attention was. What surprised him was the pleasure he derived from the friction against his lips. There was an addictiveness to having his mouth repeatedly filled too. It didn’t take him long to figure out how best to utilize his tongue.
“I swear you were born for this.” Vaughan’s fingers tangled in his hair. His hips rocked slowly. Lucerne knew he was resisting the urge to thrust deeper. He’d seen Vaughan bed enough whores to know how the other man enjoyed things. Consequently, he tried to swallow a little more, but the brush against the back of his throat set his eyes watering as he fought off the instinctive urge to cough. That, it seemed, would take time and tutoring. Still, he was hearing no complaints, only quiet croons of contentment.
In Italy, it had been Vaughan on his knees. What Lucerne couldn’t get out of his head was that remark about all the other times. What other times? There had never been any other occasions of intimacy when it had only been the two of them alone. He did not count the times when a whore had come between them. The focus then had not been on one another. Although perhaps Vaughan thought differently. If he revisited those past events from Vaughan’s perspective, had each and every one been about them? Could he even swear with any certainty, that they had not been thus for him? He’d certainly never shied from such actions, or from Vaughan’s touch if it happened to stray in his direction while they were simultaneously entwined around a woman’s body. Maybe he’d simply been denying what was obvious all along.
Pointlessly… needlessly, given that he was now on his knees, and growing more stubbornly erect with each thrust of Vaughan’s cock into his mouth.
