Page 8 of A Lord's Chance
“What is the matter?” Lawndry asked.
“The orphanage named me Nobert. My friends call me Nobbie.”
Lawndry grinned, leaning his head back against the wall. “Both of us have unfortunate monikers.”
“Oh?”
“Lord Lloyd Laurentius Lawndry.” Lawndry twisted in the chair and kissed Nobbie before he had time to react to the mouthful of Lawndry’s full name. The contact of his warm mouth on Nobbie’s lips was a shock. He’d never been kissed; it’d never occurred to him to do that. And then Lawndry sank his hands through Nobbie’s hair, pulling him closer, and they were kissing. Lawndry kissed like he had knew what he was doing, like he’d spent hours practicing. A rope twisted around Nobbie’s chest, pulling tight with jealousy—thinking of all the other people Lawndry must have kissed like this—and it almost ruined the kiss. Except it didn’t. Because someone was willingly kissing him, and it was fucking glorious. Now he simply needed to work out how to do this every day. Nobbie closed his eyes, his brain never quiet, even while all his senses were engaged in his first kiss. Lawndry tasted like salt and sex and whiskey—a sinful combination—and was that a hint of metal? No, he didn’t taste like Nobbie’s watch. That would be ridiculous.
Nobbie was almost completely certain that he could convince Lawndry to help him figure out why his watch had been left with him. He still wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer, but he definitely wanted to have an excuse to spend more time with Lawndry. Anything for more kisses...
Chapter 7
Logically, Lloyd assumed Mr Gilbert—Nobbie—had kissed someone before. He was an adult with his own rooms; except Nobbie was hesitant, copying Lloyd rather than leading like he had when he’d asked Lloyd to kneel. It was lucky that Lloyd enjoyed both; leading and being led. He couldn’t quite make sense of it though. How did Nobbie know to ask Lloyd to kneel like that? But not know how to kiss? Lloyd pulled back from the kiss to think. Did he want to know the answer—he liked answers—or would it confuse him even more? He almost shrugged—people were often illogical—he could just ignore it and so he went to kiss Nobbie again, because kissing was marvellous.
“Where did you learn to kiss like that?” Nobbie’s voice was taut. Why? Lloyd must’ve missed something. Like usual. He answered the question, rather than ponder the oddities of tone.
“Eton. Like all good lordlings, I was sent to boarding school, and some of the boys...”
Nobbie frowned, shaking his head as he interrupted. “I have friends who are also only interested in men, but I would never kiss them.”
“Why not? If you like the same thing?”
“They are friends, not lovers.”
Lloyd knew his brain sometimes worked differently to other people, but he wasn’t sure of the difference. “Isn’t a lover simply a friend that you also kiss?”
“Not in my experience.” Nobbie’s face was all screwed up with fierce wrinkles everywhere.
“Are you mad at me?” Lloyd couldn’t figure out what Nobbie wasn’t saying or what his expression meant. He’d missed something.
“No. Why the fuck would I be mad at you?”
Lloyd tried not to flinch but likely failed. “You are scowling and shouting. It adds up to mad.” He hated it when people were mad at him. Uncle Baldric was always angry at him.
Nobbie growled under his breath. Lloyd couldn’t help it. He tensed waiting for the spray of mean words.
“Who hurt you?” Nobbie’s whisper was fierce.
“What?”
“Someone hurt you. I’ve seen this before.” Nobbie, Mr Gilbert, kept his voice quiet and calm and Lloyd was grateful for that. He tried to breathe slower.
“I’m a Lord. No one has ever hit me.”
“I said hurt, not hit. Not all hurts are physical, my Lord.” When Nobbie used his title like that, he emphasised the ‘my’ and Lloyd wished he could belong to him. He shook his head. Just because he was in possession of a magnificent cock and he was kind to him... it didn’t mean anything.
“No, I suppose not.” Lloyd needed to spend some time thinking about that idea, to let it percolate for a while.
“And no, I’m not mad at you. I was jealous.”
“Jealous? Of me? Why?”
Nobbie sighed and Lloyd supposed he had asked a lot of questions. He shouldn’t be such a nuisance. Just another of life’s confusions; his parents hadn’t minded his questions but Uncle Baldric had hated them and Lloyd had slowly learned that his parents were the anomaly. Generally people didn’t like the way he talked.
“It never occurred to me to kiss you. I should’ve kissed you.” Nobbie looked like someone had thrown rotten fish at him which didn’t line up with his words.
“I don’t understand.”
