Chapter 27

Given their respective roles, Rufus’s hesitation made a certain degree of sense, and he bit his lip in an attempt to convey someone torn between shame and passion. In actual fact he was trying to decide what to say. Something he thought would gratify Gil and amuse himself. Something he might have welcomed ... needed ... ached for when he was younger.

He cast his arm across his face again. “I ...”

“Yes?”

“I wish ...” He allowed his breath to hitch. “I wish to know how to please a man.”

Gil laughed, fond and mocking, and clearly satisfied by the answer. “Well, aren’t you sweet beneath your finery?”

“You asked,” retorted Rufus, pouting with well-kissed lips, and trying not to laugh as well. “And I told you.”

“That you did. But you are pleasing me. Who would not be pleased by such spirit and beauty?”

Rufus covered Gil’s hand with his own. “I want more. I want ...”

“You want to touch me?” Gil’s voice had grown a little ragged, and Rufus did not think he was acting. “You want to feel how I ... how pleased I am with you.”

“Yes.” It did not take much acting for Rufus to sound breathless either. And he bit his lip once more because he didn’t think you could do too much of that kind of thing.

Wrapping his fingers around Rufus’s wrist, Gil drew him down to his cock, which was definitely rigid beneath his breeches.

Rufus made a little sound of shock and curiosity. “Can I ... can I see it?”

“Of course, sweeting. You may have of me whatever you covet.”

“Jesus Christ,” exclaimed Rufus, forgetting his part as Gil uncovered his part. “Do you need a coachman to drive that for you?”

Pushing himself onto his elbows, Gil peered down at his own body. “Um? Is everything all right?”

“What?” Rufus was staring. “Yes. Sorry. Just, how do you not fall over.”

“Oh, you mean—well, yes, I did sometimes wonder if it was ... excessively dimensioned. But it does seem on par with what is represented in the illustrations and etchings to which I have access.”

“Yes, but that’s porn, man. You’re not supposed to have one that looks like porn.”

“Is, um, is it a problem?”

“God no. Though next time you attempt to arrange anything by correspondence, you should make sure to mention this.” Then he dropped, with very little effort, into a breathier, more awestruck register. “It’s so big. And hard. Is that because of me?”

Gil gave a cough that might have been a laugh. “Indeed it is.”

“May I touch it?”

All Gil managed in response to that was a nod. And Rufus trailed his fingers up the—far from inconsiderable—length of his cock, trying to strike the right balance between eagerness and nervousness. In any case, the technique mattered little, for Gil slumped back onto the bed, a strained groan forcing its way between his teeth.

“Am I hurting you?” asked Rufus, with innocent concern, making a tight fist about Gil’s girth.

Another sweetly agonised sound from Gil. “N-no, my jewel.”

“Oh, look”—Rufus pressed his thumb against the head—“you are making pearls of your own.”

“Perhaps I should have surrendered to your father’s guards, for I fear you’re going to be the death of me.”

Rufus was enjoying himself to an outrageous degree. “May I kiss it?”

“Huuuhhnnhhhh,” said Gil.

Which was a yes in everything but name. So Rufus spent a happy handful of minutes festooning Gil’s cock with entirely chaste kisses, while Gil panted into the rafters and curled his fingers into the bedclothes and appeared to subject himself to all manner of anguish rather than rock his hips or demand more. At last, Rufus took pity on him and dropped onto his knees by the side of the bed.

“What about like this?”

Gil struggled into a sitting position, his cock flushed and painfully hard. Then he caught up a pillow and laid it down, something it flatly hadn’t occurred to Rufus to do. Once he was re-positioned, Gil put his legs on either side of him and took Rufus’s face between his cupped hands. The tenderness of the gesture was only slightly impeded by the monstrous member that stood between them like a sea serpent rising from the deep. “It’s truly what you want?”

“Yes,” said Rufus, gazing helplessly up at Gil, faintly mortified by his own awful sincerity. And then, trying to bridge the gap between truth and character, added, “T-teach me how?”

“Do whatever is comfortable.”

“What if I don’t mind if it’s uncomfortable?”

“Then that’s your choice, but I will be captivated regardless.”

Something hot and shuddery was travelling through Rufus’s skin at this half-real gentleness, leaving him abruptly more naked than his nakedness should have warranted. He knew how to suck a cock—had, in fact, sucked many with great efficiency—but he was feeling oddly as though he didn’t, in fact, know how to suck a cock. “How will I know what you like?”

“Because”—Gil was smiling like Gil—“I’ll make sure you know.”

And Rufus did know because Gil gave of his reactions with unrestrained generosity. It was an abundance of praise, almost to the point of embarrassment, but secretly Rufus relished it all. Every harsh gasp and broken moan, and the words that came in an incoherent stream, telling him how good he was, and how beautiful, and how his mouth was hot and tight and perfect. Rufus was trapped somewhere between the past and the present that was yet neither of them, almost wanting to believe the fiction they were spinning around each other. He’d always liked this act, even those first times, when it had seemed inextricable from shame, and later when it was so often rushed or enacted with little consideration. Something to do with the power and the powerlessness, and the sheer, all-consuming physicality of it, for, as far as Rufus was concerned, a cock never felt hotter, harder, or more demanding than when it was in your mouth.

This was especially true of Gil’s, which stretched him wide, left his jaw aching, and blotted out his senses until all that remained was salt and skin, his own abbreviated breath, and the intimate taste of Gil. It was its own kind of blissful, overwhelming and a little base—for he could feel the moisture slipping between his lips, wetting his chin and coating Gil’s cock—but he felt free to be imperfect, to struggle and lose himself, because he was pleasing Gil, because there was nothing to rush for and no guilt awaiting either of them. And because, in some kinder world, it was the first time he’d done this.

Eventually he drew back, with a wet gasp, discovering his eyes were wet, too, and his own cock, leaking and throbbing between his legs. “Can you,” he managed to get out, “can you ... help me?”

“Like this?” asked Gil, somehow still functional, resting his hands lightly upon Rufus’s head.

Rufus nodded and allowed himself to be guided into position. The touch was anchoring and delicately threatening, stripping away a further layer of control, which was exactly what Rufus needed and was a little frightened of needing. Sometimes brutality excited him—giving over his body could feel, paradoxically, like something he was taking for himself—but Gil’s cock was brutality enough on its own, and Gil seemed to recognise this, as he did not force Rufus down upon it. Instead, his hands were mostly encouraging, easing Rufus past his natural limits until that punishing crown pushed into the deepest part of his throat. He had a split second to feel ridiculously proud he’d taken such a beast and then his airway was convulsing, Gil was drawing him back up, and he was left coughing and drooling on his knees. Except the discomfort and the indignity were nothing in that moment. Not compared to the giddy wash of triumph and pleasure.

“Again,” he rasped.

“Is it not too much for you?”

“Yes.” Impatiently, Rufus blinked his streaming eyes. “But I like it.”

Gil gave a nervous laugh. “It might be too much for me.”

“You don’t want me to—”

“No, I do. But I ... I shan’t last.”

Re-settling his pillow, Rufus moved in even closer, feeling almost sheltered by having Gil’s thighs pressed tight against him. “I don’t care,” he said. “Give me everything.”

And this time, as he pushed himself down, he did not hesitate. He took the girth and the length, and opened his throat, letting Gil fill him completely. Despite his best efforts to breathe through his nose, the lack of air made him instantly lightheaded—his body wanting to panic but having no way to express it, and instead whirling him away to some sparkle-filled wonderland where fear and pain were bright and beautiful and wholly his. He did not know how to move, impaled so devastatingly upon Gil’s cock, his whole world reduced to it and overthrown by it, but then Gil took control for him. His motions were oh so gentle, barely thrusting, but even that was enough for fresh tears to spill down Rufus’s cheeks. To make helpless cries bubble in his throat, reduced instead to threadbare moans and choked-off whimpers. He wasn’t sure he’d ever been so utterly used without the expectation of contempt. And it was one of the purest things he’d ever experienced.

Suddenly, Gil’s hands tightened in his hair. It was probably a breathless hallucination, but Rufus was sure he felt the pulsing of his cock. And when he came, which he did with a sweetly heedless “Oh God, oh Rufus,” he was buried so deeply down Rufus’s throat that it wasn’t even necessary to swallow.

Afterwards, he pulled Rufus onto the bed, Rufus apparently having lost all control of his limbs, and held him with no diminution of conviction. He was saying things again, and Rufus was sure they were lovely, but he was still adrift, far away even from his own body, which was riven with a trembling that would not cease. He was conscious only of his well-fucked throat and un-fucked cock, the former flayed gloriously raw, the latter thrumming hotly with unanswered need. He went to give himself relief, the instinct as unquestioned as a man in the desert reaching for water, but Gil caught his wrist and prevented him.

He made a fretful questioning sound.

“Do you think I’m done with you yet, my jewel?”

He made another fretful questioning sound.

“Ten minutes and I’ll be yours and you can be mine all over again.”

Oh, to be in your early twenties. “Or,” Rufus managed, his voice little more than a whisper, “you could use your hand right now.”

Seeming to recognise the time for games had slipped quietly away from them, Gil dropped his highwayman persona. “If that’s what you prefer. But I’d love to fuck you.”

“In ten minutes?” It seemed, to Rufus’s present state of mind, important to establish that.

“Five, if you keep looking at me like you’ll die if I don’t touch you.”

“I could very well die.”

Gil stroked the outside of Rufus’s thigh, the touch falling somewhere between soothing and inflaming. “Did what we—did it rouse you so much?”

“No,” snapped Rufus. “I’m exaggerating for my own entertainment.”

“Sorry. I’m ... flattered, that’s all. It felt so very much for me I was worried I’d been selfish.”

Somehow Rufus managed not to grind his teeth or sigh or shove Gil out of bed. “No, I ... I like being able to give ... something to others.”

“What a wonder you are.”

“Yes, yes. I’m a hero among men.”

“But that makes it even more important that I don’t neglect your pleasure now.”

“I told you, I got my pleasure. Or rather, I will when you let me—” He made a more energetic attempt to reach his cock, and, on this occasion, Gil did not stop him.

Instead, he just turned those expressive brown eyes upon Rufus and said, “Please.”

“What do you mean”—Rufus felt oddly agitated—“please?”

“I mean, please let me give you pleasure too.”

“You want to fuck me that badly?”

Gil nodded.

“All right. Fine. But at least get your damn clothes off.”