A Private Gentleman (31 page)
Read A Private Gentleman Online
Authors: Heidi Cullinan
lover was rigid, his knuckles white in the moonlight as they gripped the sheets.
Wes shifted his erection away from Michael’s leg, put a hand over those
clenched fingers and kissed the side of his head. “It’s all r-r-ight,” he whispered.
Michael’s voice broke on a soft sob. “I’m sorry.”
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“Shh.” Wes eased himself down beside Michael on the bed and drew him
into his arms. “It’s all r-right.”
“No.” Michael settled onto Wes’s shoulder, but his right hand closed angrily
over the center of Wes’s chest. “No, it’s not. I hate that I’m like this. I hate that I’m like this with
you.
”
Wes weighed his words before speaking. “Is it y-your past?”
“Yes,” Michael admitted wearily. “It is. Which is why it makes me so furious.
Why? Why can’t I let it go? Why must I be beaten by something so stupid? It
never upset me before. Why now? And most of all, why when it isn’t angry
revenge or cold-hearted, empty fucking—why with you?” He shuddered as his
voice lowered to an angry whisper. “Why am I so
weak
?”
“You aren’t weak, Michael,” Wes said firmly, and sealed the statement with
a kiss against Michael’s hairline.
Michael sagged into him. “You said all that without a single stammer.”
Wes smiled to himself and stroked Michael’s arm. “I am c-comfortable with
you.”
“You love me,” Michael repeated.
“Yes,” Wes agreed, drawing him closer for a brief, affirming embrace. “I l-
love you.”
“Even though I am a complete idiot and fall to pieces when you try to make
love to me?”
“You aren’t an idiot.” Wes stroked his arm again. “You are w-wonderful.”
He gentled Michael with a few more strokes. “Y-Your fear isn’t unlike m-my st-
stammer. Be g-gentle with it.” He thought of his confession to Penny about the
thief, about Penny herself, huddled beneath the wagon, and of Michael, young
and vulnerable and finding out his mother had sold him. “Treat that p-part of
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you like a y-young child you find w-w-weeping. It isn’t f-far from the truth, I s-
suspect.”
Michael seemed to consider this a moment. “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”
He lifted his head to smile at Wes and place a kiss on his chin. “I didn’t take you
for such a sage.”
Wes felt himself flush, and he shook his head with a wry smile. “N-Not my
w-wisdom. I’ve b-borrowed it from a f-f-friend.”
Michael leaned back to rest in the corner of Wes’s shoulder, staring up at
Wes’s face. His fingers drifted up to trace delicate trails as he spoke. “Even that
frightened part wants to make love back to you, and be made love to.” His face
clouded. “Rodger told me this morning that I don’t make any decisions for
myself. Said, essentially, that I’m waiting for someone to rescue me. That I can’t
care for myself.” His fingers circled Wes’s lips. “The sad truth is that I think he’s right. It makes me feel so ashamed. I’ve harbored this image of myself as so
above what my mother made me, told myself I’m better even than what I would
have been had she limited her exchanges to selling her own flesh.”
He laughed sadly. “I felt so independent and smug. But I’m not. All I do is
hide in my attic, in my books, and I whore for who Rodger picks out for me. He
even told me”—another laugh, this one quite black—“that he ended our affair all
those years ago because he didn’t want me to attach to him nor he to me, that he
wanted to be able to keep objective and protect me within reason and that he
didn’t want me to fixate on him. Then he said it hadn’t worked, that even with
that I’d turned over my life to him. No, it’s true,” he said, when Wes grimaced
and sputtered angrily over an objection. “He wasn’t polite about how he said it,
but I know what he means, and it’s true.” His expression grew fierce, though still
crowded by desperation and futility. “I want to change that, Albert. I want to
conquer that fear—both how it manifests between us and how it has, I’ve come
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to see, ruled my life ever since that night my mother sent me up the stairs. I just
don’t know
how.
”
“B-Begin with me,” Wes said.
Michael frowned at him, and the truth was Wes wasn’t sure himself exactly
how this would work, but he didn’t try to form the words, just let them flow as
easily as he could manage directly from the germ of the idea in the back of his
mind.
“Ch-Change it with m-me. Y-You say you w-want me.” He stroked Michael’s
hair. “You may h-have anything of me you d-desire. If y-you wish to m-make
love with m-me, you may make love t-to me. I w-will lie quiet, or wh-whatever
you wish. I w-will serve y-you, or d-deliver y-you. S-Support you.” He drew
Michael’s hand to his mouth and brushed his lips over his lover’s knuckles. “Y-
You are s-safe with m-me. Always.”
He liked that Michael seemed to consider him, that he didn’t just dismiss
him out of hand. He liked the way Michael’s eyes sharpened and darkened, the
way his frustration and weariness seemed to bleed away, replaced by the
beginnings of eagerness and desire.
“Make love to you,” Michael repeated. He blushed just a little. “I am so used
to being the object of sex. I feel ridiculous for not thinking of it myself, to reverse the roles.” He stroked Wes’s cheek a moment. “The truth is, I think I might
like
being the object. I think, sometimes, the shame of that is where the fear starts.”
“It isn’t sh-shameful,” Wes countered gently. He kissed Michael’s fingers
again and threaded theirs together. “W-Work up to that, however. D-Don’t begin
there.”
Michael’s thumb traced the side of Wes’s hand. “Yes. I suppose that makes a
sort of sense.”
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“P-Perhaps I should light a fire and get us some t-tea while you p-plot your
course.”
“No.” Michael sat up, disentangling himself. He turned to straddle Wes, his
now-soft sex resting against Wes’s thigh. There was a look of determination on
his face.
“No?” Wes echoed.
“I think,” Michael said, his voice growing stronger with each word, “I think,
my lord, I should like you to keep still and quiet, for I’d like to make love to you
right now.”
Michael loomed over Wes like a conqueror, moonlight making his pale face
and hair shine blue-silver in the dark. He was beautiful. Confident.
Powerful.
Wes smiled. “As y-you wish, sir.” He pinned his arms to his sides and
waited to be told what to do.
Michael didn’t do anything at first, but Wes didn’t rush him. He had a great
deal of patience, an appreciation gleaned from years of people impatient for him
to complete a sentence and speaking over him to hurry things along, guessing his
intent or disregarding him entirely. Michael could stammer over lovemaking as
long as he cared to. Wes certainly wouldn’t hurry him along.
He held still and watched as Michael considered Wes’s body, looking
uncertain and charming as he bit absently at his bottom lip and surveyed. After
several minutes, he ran his left hand down the center of Wes’s chest, a
delightfully soft touch that ended just an inch above his belly button. At this
point, Michael looked up at Wes’s face and frowned.
“I feel ridiculous,” he confessed.
“You d-don’t look it,” Wes assured him. He shut his eyes, deciding he would
keep them closed. “T-Take your t-time.”
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Michael did. For many, many minutes all he did was touch Wes’s chest,
exploring tentatively at first and then more boldly. His touches became strokes.
When he strayed too close to a ticklish or sensitive area, Wes would spasm, and
Michael would stop, but when Wes only continued to remain still, Michael
would resume again.
The hands departed, Michael’s weight shifted, and Wes felt the soft, damp
press of Michael’s lips on his skin.
It became harder and harder to remain still, and so Wes gave in to the urge to
shiver, to arch, and he suspected most importantly, to moan. It wasn’t difficult
for him to play the passive role. In his amorous encounters, he’d largely split the
difference between giver and receiver. Sometimes the arrangements sorted
themselves out, and sometimes he’d negotiated his preference. But never had he
been with someone where pleasure was so shared. Where he knew his gasps and
tremors would be received not as fuel for further ardor but as an
acknowledgment of Michael’s power over him, of his trust for Michael. It made
him feel vulnerable, but in a very good and safe way. He hoped the reverse was
true for his lover.
It seemed to be. Michael used both hands and mouth upon him now,
tweaking his nipple as he licked at the pit of his elbow, kneading his shoulder as
he trailed his mouth down Wes’s abdomen. When Wes’s weeping erection
nudged Michael’s throat, Michael laughed, a soft, playful sound that made Wes’s
heart tumble over itself. When Michael took Wes’s cock in hand and laved his
way up to a nipple where he sucked and nipped in concert to his long, tight
strokes, Wes clutched at the bedsheets and gasped, thrusting mindlessly as he
gave himself up to Michael’s pleasure.
Michael’s erection poked his thigh, and his mouth teased Wes’s throat.
“Would you let me fuck you?” he whispered, his voice rough with passion.
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“Yes,” Wes rasped, no hesitation at all.
Michael nipped at Wes’s jaw as his strokes on Wes’s cock became more
intent. “I don’t know that I’m ready to do that,” he confessed. “I never have. But
I’d like to, someday, with you.”
For some strange reason that made Michael falter. Wes longed to quickly
affirm his eagerness for such an event. “Wh-Whatever day you wish.” He bucked
and gasped as Michael’s thumb pressed in just the right spot at the base of his
cock.
“I want you inside me. I want to feel you pounding hard inside me.” His
hand that didn’t hold Wes’s cock gripped desperately at Wes’s shoulder. “I want
you so much that I ache, Albert.”
Wes ached as well. His cock, long past ache and well into blind yearning,
took over most of his thinking and gained control of his mouth. “M-Mount me,”
he rasped. “H-Hold me down and f-fuck me w-with your body. T-Take me. I am
h-helpless beneath you.”
Michael shivered and thrust against Wes’s leg. “I want to. I want to fuck you
so desperately.”
“Use me,” Wes urged him. “Use my b-body. I am y-your slave, M-Michael
Vallant.”
Michael’s grip in both hands became tight. “I have no unguent.”
“Use all of m-me.” Wes drew his right hand to his mouth. He sucked hard on
his fingers, then withdrew them, letting the saliva drip onto his neck. “I am y-
your s-slave,” he repeated.
Michael shuddered again. Wes’s eyes opened, slowly, heavy with lust. He
watched as Michael loomed over him, his hair falling like a silver curtain around
his face as he bent to take Wes’s mouth in a carnal kiss.
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“Then prepare me, slave.” Michael rose, turned and placed his spread hole
before Wes’s mouth.
Wes obeyed. Leaning forward, he made sweet love to Michael’s hole once
more, kissing it, spearing it, easing the muscles and filling him with slick spit. He held back none of his groans and cries at how much he loved his task, and when
Michael’s hands began to torment him, he twitched and shuddered in happy
helplessness. When Michael turned back around and positioned himself over
Wes’s straining cock, he tried to open his eyes, but he couldn’t, he was so lost in
passion.
“Fuck me, Michael,” he rasped, thrusting his hips into the air. “Fuck me, p-
please.”
He felt Michael positioning over him, teasing the tip of his penis, rubbing it
ruthlessly against his opening. “Tell me you love me, Albert,” he demanded.
“I love you,” Wes said obediently.
“I love you too.”
Michael drove them both home.
Wes forgot everything. He forgot to worry for Michael, to soothe his fear—he
only cried out and fucked, chasing as Michael rode him. He shuddered and
gripped at Michael’s legs, begging and pleading, so helpless, so wild with need
as he sought that tight heat over and over again. But when he came toward the
edge, he stopped, not letting himself cross over, determined to wait for Michael
to find his release first. And he did—bucking hard and crying out, jerking hard
on his own cock and calling out to Wes, “Albert, Albert,
Albert!
” He spent hard against Wes’s chest, shooting cream all the way up to his neck, a few droplets
landing on his chin. He wanted to let go then, but he still held back, not wanting
to take even this from Michael, not without his permission.
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