Chapter 28

Gil shucked his garments in less than thirty seconds, emerging from them like a selkie from its skin. He was slim and smooth, and a little too pale, perhaps due to a career spent poring over lost and forbidden books. But having his faced fucked seemed to have made Rufus sentimental because words like lovely and exquisite insinuated themselves into his mind. He was a man of contrasts was Gil, the dark and fair, awkward and resolute, endlessly soft of heart and relentlessly hard of cock. A beguiling cupbearer who would bend any persuadable god over his own throne.

“I hope,” he said aloud, “you didn’t think you needed to stay dressed to enact your menacing.”

Gil shrugged, a little shyly. “Maybe. But I also liked the”—he indicated Rufus, then himself—“difference? Having you naked when I was not. Did you mind?”

“No.”

“Oh. We’ll need ...” Crouching down, he rummaged through the pockets of his coat until he found a vial of what looked to be oil, holding it aloft with an “aha.”

“Very prepared of you.”

“Well, you probably wouldn’t last long as a highwayman if you weren’t thinking several steps ahead.”

Gil put the vial on a nearby table and re-joined Rufus on the bed. He was already well on the way to tumescence, and his first act was to snake a hand between Rufus’s thighs. Without the game between them, he found himself, unexpectedly, a little at a loss—his body, stirred almost past bearing, trapped behind his mind. After what could have been seconds or long minutes, Gil reached for the vial again. His touch was exquisitely cool and slick as silk when he caressed Rufus’s cock.

“Are you with me?” he asked, his eyes flicking up to Rufus’s face. “Is there something else I—”

“No. I’m sorry. No.” He was not used to being noticed when he slid away, as long as the rest of him was there, giving or taking, pressing or yielding, depending on what the moment demanded. Truthfully, he did not always notice himself doing it. Back in his skin, he re-discovered the sweet, lingering pains of use and the deeper ache of unfulfilled arousal. “I ...,” he began, more than a little horrified to discover he was speaking. “I do not mind to take this part. But the first time, it was not ... I did not especially enjoy it.”

Gil stilled above him.

“It was not intended to be ...,” Rufus went on quickly, only to discover he did not know how to finish, “... that way. But I was young. Neither of us knew what we were doing. We were fearful of being caught. I, ah, I think of it sometimes when I do not mean to. It was a long time ago.”

“Rufus ...” His name on Gil’s lips should not have meant anything. And yet it enfolded him. “Would you rather my mouth or my hand? I’d offer to trade places, but I get so little out of it.”

“Then we certainly should not.”

“It’s not,” Gil over-explained anxiously, “a problem . I’m just not responsive to it, as I understand others can be.”

“That’s probably a blessing.” Reaching for Gil’s cock, Rufus palmed the shaft lazily. “If you were responsive there and with all this, too, it might be the end of you.”

“I can imagine worse ways to go.”

“Better, I think, to live.”

“I like this plan.” Gil rolled on top of him and kissed him a little more tenderly than before. It was not usually the sort of thing he had much patience for, but Gil was as demanding in sweetness as he was in command, and Rufus was still not quite together. Not that this, skin all over skin and a cock burning like a brand against his hip and a tongue at play within him, was liable to aid that. “But what would you like?”

Rufus raised a knee to better encompass Gil, letting him settle naturally between his thighs, against the cradle of his pelvis. “This is fine.”

“Perhaps you’d rather be ravished by a highwayman?”

It was honestly tempting, which was in itself slightly astounding, since a handful of days ago, he would have scoffed at the very notion. Except the alternative was, in its own way, equally astounding. “I think I’d rather be ravished by you.”

Despite having recently stuck his cock as far down Rufus’s throat as it could go without causing actual injury, Gil blushed. “I ... I can do that.”

“You know, you can still menace people as yourself.”

Gil got that not-unhighwaymanly glinting look. “People?”

“Me. You can menace me.”

Seconds ticked by, Gil doing nothing, and Rufus—impatient, aroused, and trying not to feel too exposed by all this—not appreciating Gil doing nothing. Then Gil bent down and scooped his cravat from the cottage floor, looping it between the slats of the headboard. Rufus’s face must have done something because he said quickly, “Just hold the ends.”

“You can—”

Gil shook his head. “No, I’m going to want your arms around me sometime soon. This is enough.”

In truth, Rufus was relieved as he took hold of the linen. He felt safe with Gil in this context, more than he had felt safe with anyone for a long time, perhaps ever, and he was mindful of Belle’s encouragement, to be generous with others and to himself, but his feelings were sufficiently complicated that he was glad to have the decision made for him and glad for that decision to have gone the way it did. He knew he hadn’t lied . He would probably have found ways to enjoy being bound, at least with Gil. But the sensation of being stretched out, his hands occupied, was vulnerable enough, even when voluntary.

“I love how you look like this,” murmured Gil.

“Frustrated?”

“Available. At my mercy. Like a wild thing, bespelled.”

Turning his face into the side of his arm, Rufus muttered, “Oh, stop your nonsense.”

“And”—gripping his chin, Gil forced his head back—“somewhat hard-used.”

The shudder seemed to roll through Rufus’s whole body, making him tighten his grip upon the cravat. “Use me more?”

“Not this time.” Gil grinned, far too wickedly for a demure bookseller. “This is all for you.”

And Rufus would surely have delivered some kind of retort about Gil getting something out of it, too, except Gil took the opportunity to press a slick finger into him, and every word Rufus possessed fluttered away like starlings in autumn. He knew his body well enough these days to easily accommodate intrusions to it, but this one, anchored by a cravat he clung to of his own volition and a string of prior choices—choices to give, to hope, to share, to trust—he felt deeply. He wasn’t initially certain if it was a bad deeply or a good deeply, and then it became such a very good deeply that he threw back his head and canted his hips and all but begged for more.

Which Gil gave him, with one finger, two, one again, three, filling him and fucking him, teasingly, roughly, unpredictably, far beyond anything he thought he needed. He tried to protest—he was not, after all, the delicate flower he had fleetingly pretended to be—but other than a kiss pressed against the groove of his thigh, Gil ignored him.

That was when Rufus realised he was being spoiled. Petted and pleasured into a receptiveness he would have given of his own accord. The feeling this engendered was sharp and unfamiliar, perilously close to humiliation. It made him want words and clothes and walls and distance. Because it turned out that being given what you needed was one of the hardest things in the world to take.

But he would take it.

For Gil. And for himself. And for Arabella Tarleton, who saw him and had married him, and believed he deserved good things.

By the time Gil had replaced his fingers with the head of his cock, Rufus was halfway to ruined, his body in constant motion, sweat running in rivulets across his skin, hands locked tight upon Gil’s cravat. The stretch of entry was intense to the point of violating, but he just melted into it, wanting that sense of fullness—of completion and connection—so profoundly that there was barely a struggle.

In many ways, the touch of pain made it better.

Made it real.

Because while not everything in life had to hurt, he thought the best things, the ones worth fighting for, should a little.

Once he was fully sheathed, Gil seemed to go to pieces somewhat himself, falling over Rufus’s chest with a sound that could almost have been a sob. Releasing the cravat, and ignoring the prickling sting in his arms, Rufus embraced him, and, for long minutes, they stayed like that, breathless and entwined and locked together.

It did not, in the end, take much more to finish them both. A handful of only half-heard words. Some clumsy thrusts from Gil. Rufus’s legs thrown about him. The messy collision of mouths that, in that moment, rapturous and straining and losing themselves, passed for the most perfect of kisses.

Rufus was hardly aware of his climax approaching until he was already in the throes of it. He was used to it being the goal, the point, the conclusion which rendered all that preceded it worthwhile (assuming, of course, that it did). This time it was something else entirely. It was triumph and annihilation and completion. It was stepping back from a tapestry to see the whole picture revealed at last and yet knowing the colour of every thread and the placement of every stitch.

For a long time after, he floated on the pleasure, a shipwrecked sailor cast upon the mildest seas. And Gil, still in his arms, still inside him, floated with him. In languid harmony their pulses slowed, their breaths softened, and Rufus told Gil to get that damn thing out of him before it split him asunder.

“I need to get better at that,” said Gil, having settled back down, with his head upon Rufus’s chest.

Currently, Rufus was engaged in the act of tracing idle curlicues upon his companion’s arm, not the sort of impulse he was prone to experience, nor to be indulged in. “From my point of view, you’re already extremely good at it.”

“I mostly meant the ... the ending sequence?”

“The what?”

Gil made an extremely peculiar gesture that Rufus interpreted as representing a dick going into an arsehole. “I had no notion how overwhelming it would feel, despite my best attempts to practice.”

“You might need to explain that.”

“Practice in general, not practice for you specifically.”

“You still might need to explain that.”

“Oh. Well. I created a sort of device?”

“A sort of device?”

“Yes, a sort of ... tunnel? Out of leftover binding leather. Lined with silk. Which one could oil. Why are you laughing?”

“I’m not,” lied Rufus. “I’m celebrating your ingenuity.”

“With laughter?”

“Exactly.”

“In any case,” Gil went on placidly, “it was a meagre substitute for the reality.”

Thrown off guard even by implied praise, Rufus did his best not to squirm. “Glad you, ah, enjoyed yourself.”

“Oh, I loved it. You were so warm inside.”

“I should hope so. Otherwise I would probably be dead.”

Gil made a sound of lustful yearning. “And soft yet also strong. Smooth from the oil and clenching —”

“We really don’t need to discuss my interior in quite this much detail.”

“My apologies. But you do have a delectable interior.”

“It would be a shame, wouldn’t it,” mused Rufus, “if someone was smothered by a pillow right about now?”

A comfortable silence fell between them, during which nobody’s innards were subject to debate and nor was anyone murdered.

“In all seriousness, though,” said Gil at last, dropping a neat kiss upon one of Rufus’s nipples. “Thank you.”

And there were a million facetious things Rufus could have replied, but he wasn’t, in the end, capable of any of them. “No, Gil. Thank you.”

“Come by the bookshop sometime?” Gil picked up his heavily creased cravat from where Rufus had discarded it and let it dance across his skin. “Perhaps we can explore this more thoroughly?”

Rufus’s heart knocked hard and insistently. There was curiosity there, and desire, but fear also that could have been the right kind of fear. “I might not be able to, but I’m willing to try ... with you.”

“And if you have any friends . . . ?”

“You want me to bring them?”

“What?” Gil laughed, biting lightly at his shoulder. “No. How insatiable do you think I am?”

“Substantially insatiable.”

“That’s ... not inaccurate,” Gil admitted. “I would, however, still prefer to menace my gentlemen friends sequentially rather than simultaneously. And over and above that, I should like to know more than one person like me, without the need to rely upon correspondence.”

“Understandable. But I should probably note at this juncture that I do not have a good history with friends myself.”

“Your friends have been bad to you?”

“I have not been in the habit of seeking friendship. And I do not think I have always honoured it or recognised it.”

“You have me. And Miss Tar—that is, Lady Comewithers.”

“Yes,” Rufus told the ceiling, inclined to blame the hearty fucking for the sudden onrush of emotion.

Gil tilted his head to better see Rufus’s face. “Are you all right?”

“Mmm.”

“Are you sure? You aren’t regretting your—”

“No. God no.”

“Then perhaps you’re missing her?”

“I saw her only this afternoon.”

There was a pause. “Rufus? Would you like me to get her for you?”

At that he sat up abruptly, drawing Gil with him. “I did warn you I did not treat my friends well. Forgive my ... my unpleasant manners. I am happy to be with you. I would not throw you from my bed, only to replace you with—”

“Your wife?” Gil was laughing. “And your manners are far from unpleasant, believe me.”

“I would not have you feel unwelcome.”

“I do not. All things being equal, I would choose to stay but mostly—in candour—from the ulterior motive of hoping to have my way with you again in the morning.”

“Then do stay. And you shall.”

“Tempting, my jewel. Another time.”

“Please don’t feel—”

Gil was already pulling his clothes on. “I cannot linger. The king’s men are tracking me.”

“Gil. Stop.”

It was enough, in fact, to make Gil stop. In shirt and breeches, he tumbled into Rufus’s lap. “God, your sweetness.”

“I am not fucking sweet,” protested Rufus, horrified.

“You haven’t hurt me. You’ve given me the night, well, the evening, of my life. I’m happy, I’m grateful, and I rather like the idea of slipping away as such characters do in the ballads.”

“What happens to me?”

“I suppose you see your wife and then go home to wherever you live and come and visit me again sometime?”

“No, I mean ... you stole away with this innocent lordling, deflowered and seduced him. How is he to return to his sheltered life now?”

Understanding flared in Gil’s eyes. “Such thoughts definitely haunt you, but return you must. Awakened to desire as you are, you are still who you were raised to be, and duty beats strong within your breast.”

“So that is my future? Convention and obedience, and the memory of a single night?”

“Not at all. Your husband—”

“My husband?”

“Yes indeed.” Gil nodded eagerly. “Our story takes place in a world where such things are possible, common even. While it was a match arranged by your parents, for your family’s betterment, you find your husband unexpectedly handsome, charming, and kind. He is immediately captivated by your beauty and spirit, and in the bedroom ... well, far from being shocked by your passion, he is delighted by it. He treats you as his equal in every way, except when you wish otherwise behind closed doors, and very soon you are utterly in love. Bar a single incident where—on the very cusp of achieving everything you wish with each other—it feels as though you will break up, you live happily ever after.”

“And yet,” asked Rufus, “I still occasionally seek the company of my highwayman?”

“No, you have no need.”

“But I thought you said—”

“Let me tell you something else about the highwayman.”

Charmed, in spite of himself, Rufus reached out to try and tease some order back into Gil’s curls. “Please do.”

“He has an enemy.”

“As of a few minutes ago, he had many.”

“He has a particular enemy. One who has sworn personally to bring him to justice.”

“A determined gentleman indeed.”

“But”—Gil wagged a finger—“a talented rogue always has a plan. I have set a trap for this determined gentleman. He will find himself taken, bound, and entirely at my mercy.”

Rufus’s cock stirred curiously. “Surely you do not expect him to yield to a blackguard like you?”

“Perhaps”—Gil’s smile was brilliant—“we shall find out.”

Then he kissed Rufus one last time, hard and swift and certain, pulled on his boots, picked up his cloak, and vanished into the night without a backward glance.