A Fashionable Indulgence (Society of Gentlemen #1) (15 page)

Harry moved off a little, gently sliding his fingers out. Julius stared up at the ceiling, obeyed Harry’s instructions and the push of hands against thighs. This was…God, absurd. Undignified, and fleshy, and all the things that had sat stewing in his gut for so long, but it was Harry, too. So simply cheerful, as though nothing could be more happy or more normal.

This is what people do. They kiss and fuck.

I can do this.

“Here we go,” Harry said. “Tell me if you want to stop. I love you.”

It hurt. It did hurt, but Julius had fallen off enough horses to know about pain. He breathed out as Harry pushed in, keeping the little mental distance that allowed control.
Feels too tight. Relax. Other people do this. Won’t kill you.

“How does it feel?” Harry asked.

“Strange.”

Harry leaned forward. He pushed again, and Julius felt his prick sliding a little farther in—yes, oil was quite clearly the trick here, should have thought of that at Eton. One more, and something inside Julius gave way.

“There we are.” Harry’s eyes were intent on him. “My God, you feel good.”

Julius nodded, because he couldn’t entirely return the sentiment. Harry leaned forward. He braced one hand on the floor by Julius’s face, the other to his shoulder, and began to move. Slow thrusts, careful, almost reverent. Trying to make it good. Julius pushed back, just a little at first, and then again.

“God. Do that again.” Harry came down to his elbows, closing the gap between their bodies. Julius closed his arms around him, holding on to his powerful shoulders, moved under him, picked up the rhythm.

Ride,
he called it. Julius knew how to ride. And Harry’s face was intent and alive with pleasure, and his body was taking over Julius’s, leaving him no space and no barriers. Flesh to flesh, sweaty and hard and grossly physical. Harry’s mouth came down on his, kissing hard, tongue thrusting, and Julius took the intrusion and welcomed it, clutching and rocking against him.

“Uhh.” Harry pulled his mouth away and reared up a little so his hand enclosed Julius’s prick. “Is it good?”

“Yes. Yes. Oh God.” Harry was changing the angle of his strokes now, shallow ones that pressed against whatever the devil it was that sent pleasure quivering through him, stroking Julius’s prick in time. “Oh sweet Jesus. You—”

“I knew you’d like it,” Harry whispered. “I knew I could make you feel.”

There was no shortage of feeling. Julius’s skin was hot and tight, his body open and invaded, Harry’s hand and prick wringing sensation from him, and no resistance left anywhere now. He arched helplessly into Harry, giving it up, giving it all up to him.

“Oh my God.” Harry’s voice was thick, his grip sure and knowing. “I could spend just watching you. My beautiful Julius. I wanted this so much and you look so good, you feel so good when I fuck you.”

Julius cried out. Harry gave a hiss of pleasure, and even as Julius was spending in his hand, thighs and arse clenching round his lover, he thrust. Far deeper this time, not the shallow strokes that had brought Julius off but an overwhelming drive that knocked the breath from his tortured lungs. And that was uncomfortable now, Harry grabbing and shoving into him, face transfigured with lust. His grip was clumsy, too hard, and his cock was too big and all of him was too much, and he said in a rush, “Oh Christ, I love you, I’m going to come.” Then he was jerking and gasping as he spent, and all Julius could do was hold on while every part of his body throbbed, and his eyes watered with Harry’s need.

Harry collapsed forward, landing on Julius’s chest with a force that made them both grunt.

“Ugh,” he managed at last. “I couldn’t wait.” He pushed himself a little up to look into Julius’s face. He was flushed and tousled and glowing with the pleasure that Julius had given him. “You know, I’ve always thought you were beautiful. But I must say, you’ve never looked better than with my prick up you.”

“God damn you,” Julius managed. “And get that thing out.”

Harry withdrew with care. It was, undeniably, sore. Julius realized he was shivering only when Harry wrapped his arms round him. “Are you all right?”

Julius slumped into him. He felt as though several layers of skin had been flayed off every part of him, including his brain.

“Julius?”

“Tired.”

“Stay there,” Harry said. “I’ll just clean you up, and then I’m taking you to bed.”

There were things they had to discuss, and he didn’t have people in his bed, and it was all too confusing, but he was so tired. He’d just shut his eyes for a moment, and it would all make perfect sense.

Harry woke in Julius’s bed. At least, he thought he did.

The uncertainty arose because he’d never been there before. Julius had never invited him to fuck anywhere but on the settle. He hadn’t precisely been invited to stay last night, come to that. He’d fucked Julius till those frosty eyes had been blind with sensation, and wrestled him, drained and semi-conscious, into the bedroom afterward with a distinctly nervous feeling that he’d gone too far, too fast.

He opened his eyes to see the man in question sitting up with a book.

“Good morning,” Julius said, glancing down. “Sleep well?”

“Ugh.” Harry blinked. “What time is it?”

“Eight o’clock.”

“God, really?” He burrowed back into the bolster, and felt a finger-grip close on his earlobe. “Ow!”

“Get up. My valet arrives at ten and we have a great deal to discuss. And you loll about in bed far too late. You ought to ride with me in the mornings, it would do you good.”

“Not this morning,” Harry groaned. He could feel the effects of Silas’s gin.

Julius snorted. “No, I don’t think I’ll be riding today either.”

I bet you won’t.
Harry sat up, rubbing the crust of sleep from his eyes. Julius regarded him with a slightly odd, almost self-conscious expression, then leaned closer and brushed a kiss over his lips. Harry blinked, then grinned, and Julius smiled tentatively back.

It felt like summer dawn.

“I’d love to go riding when you’re ready.” That sounded like the most wonderful idea he’d ever heard. “I can borrow one of Richard’s hacks—oh.”

“Yes.” Julius was watching him. “I think we have quite a lot to discuss, don’t we?”

Harry flopped back against the bedstead, feeling his situation close around him again. “God. I actually forgot about it all last night.”

“I want you to forget some of it,” Julius said with a frown. “Particularly this plan of renouncing the world. Tell me again about Miss Vane. You think she wants you to cry off?”

“I can’t see any other explanation. If she was always like that, she’d be notorious as the most unpleasant woman in London. But people seem to like her. She always seems so friendly with everyone else.”

“She seemed very frank and open to me,” Julius agreed. “But she accepted your proposal and has raised no objection.”

“She did ask for a longer period of waiting than Gideon wanted. She said it was so she could have an engagement ball when she came out of mourning.”

“Hmm. Tell me something: Why is she financially dependent on Gideon? Was she not her father’s heir?”

“I don’t know.” Harry had toyed with the idea of asking Ballard, but it had seemed terribly mercenary. “He certainly seems to hold the purse strings for us both.”

“Odd,” Julius said. “Very odd. I shall ask our glorious leader.”

“Richard’s going to be very cross about that argument, isn’t he?”

“It’s good for him to be cross occasionally. Prevents complacency.” Julius drummed his fingers on the quilt. “What was that business last night, with Rawling?”

“The man who attacked me? I’ve no idea. I’ve never seen him before in my life. He told me to stay away from Verona, said he’d break my neck if I tried any rake’s tricks with her.”

“Given my experience of your rakish ways, I can see his point. What in God’s name has a mutilated veteran to do with Miss Vane?”

“I don’t know. Who is he? Is he…could he be a suitor?”

“Hardly an eligible one. He’s Sergeant Edward Rawling, late of the First Foot Guards. A brave man, but not wealthy and of no family. You think there’s an
affaire
there?”

“Well, it did cross my mind,” Harry said. “She’s so uninterested in me—”

“That
is
damning.”

“Be quiet. But she’d never get Gideon’s permission to marry anyone else unless I cried off.”

“Does she need his permission? Perhaps, if he controls the money. Well, now. I think you need to speak to her. Find out if Rawling is an accepted suitor or an unwanted one. Ascertain whether she can call him off. I can’t have him breaking your neck in a fit of pique.”

“I’d rather he didn’t do that either,” Harry said. “So, you were in the First Foot Guards, then?”

He saw the shock on his lover’s face, and felt a twinge of guilt, but that unexpected attack had been deliberate. Julius might have given up his body last night, but Harry had a strong feeling that this would be another struggle, and a harder one. “Julius?”

“Thirteenth Light Dragoons.” Julius’s voice was clipped.

A cavalry regiment. Of course. Harry knew the name, anyone who had read the newspapers did. “You fought at Waterloo?”

“Indeed.”

“Why was Sergeant Rawling so frightened of you?”

Julius hesitated, clearly reluctant. Harry waited. Rawling had been huge and intimidating, and a veteran of bloody battle, but the look on his face when he saw Julius had been sheer terror, as though he’d seen a ghost. It made Harry just slightly nervous to think of it. He needed to know.

“He thought I was my brother,” Julius said at last. “My twin. Lieutenant Marcus Norreys of the First Foot, Rawling’s regiment. Everyone but our parents struggled to tell us apart, even in adulthood.”

So Rawling
had
thought he’d seen a ghost. “Waterloo?” Harry asked, and wasn’t surprised when Julius nodded. “I’m sorry.”

“So am I. It’s a hard thing to be a twin, and then…to not.” Julius lay back on the bolster and dropped one arm across his face, hiding his eyes. It didn’t quite convince as an accidental movement. “People claim that a twin will know when his counterpart is injured or dies. I didn’t. I had no idea. I had lived through the battle, made it back to camp. It didn’t occur to me that Marcus might…Someone handed me a note from his commander. I was laughing as I opened it.”

“What happened to him?”

“Some French cunt put a sabre through his face.” Julius sounded very remote. “Cut his nose and half his jaw off and left him choking on mud and blood. But not dead. He didn’t have that courtesy. I came to the field hospital, and he…he looked like—” He shifted his arm away, staring up at the ceiling, or through it. “We didn’t look the same then. We didn’t look the same when his wound got infected and he rotted under my eyes and took three days to die, stinking and choking. If I were a man I’d have cut his throat, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t do it.” Julius’s face was rigid. “I can still smell it sometimes, the stench. At least he couldn’t smell himself. No nose.” His lips twitched in a parody of a smile. “And then he died and I was so bloody glad. Except he isn’t dead.”

“What?”

“He can’t be dead,” Julius said thinly, “because he’s there every time I look in a mirror. Christ, I hate mirrors.”

“But you’re always—” Harry began, and then, “You look at the clothes.”

“Marcus was a great admirer of Brummell. We dressed in his style, always. Sober restraint. But afterward, I couldn’t…”

“No.” Harry put a tentative hand on his shoulder.

“My mother sees it too. They all do. There’s a great Marcus-shaped void around me, like a missing limb. I didn’t take a single wound in the battle, you know, just cuts and bruises. But I’m as crippled as any veteran.”

Harry thought of the men he’d seen, far more damaged than Rawling: blinded or limbless, hobbling on crutches, twisted with pain and scars, begging along the streets. Silas had written with increasing fury of that scandal, soldiers used and discarded by a government that ceased to tax the incomes of the rich as soon as the war was over, then claimed England could not afford to support the men who had suffered in her service. Julius’s wardrobe of disguises and distractions would have fed a regiment’s worth of true cripples for months. Silas would not have sympathized a great deal with Julius now, for all that Harry’s heart ached.

“It must be a comfort for your parents, though?” he suggested. “That you weren’t injured.”

“Hardly. It was my fault, you see.”

“What?”

“I wanted some time apart. We’d always been together, at school and Cambridge. When Marcus engaged himself to marry Lucia, my mother’s great regret was that she had no sister. It was a little…close, and I wanted to see what life was like without Marcus in it. We tossed a coin for cavalry or infantry, and I called heads. Mother was furious. We had to go together or not at all, she said. But Marcus stood by me, and we parted, and—well, I found out what life was like without him. My fault. If I had not insisted—”

“It was war. It was Waterloo, for God’s sake. If you’d been together you could have both been killed. Or he could have been killed anyway, or anything could have happened.”

“Yes. I do know that, really. Unfortunately, a visit to my parents tends to shake my conviction. That’s where I went last week, you understand.”

“Your parents blame you?” Harry felt rather sick.

“For Marcus dying. For looking like him. For not marrying Lucia in his place. She’s married now, very happily, but if I’d stepped into Marcus’s wedding shoes, Mother reminded me, at least she could have had his son.”

“I think,” Harry said carefully, “perhaps you shouldn’t visit your parents very often.”

“I don’t. I had to on this occasion. It was Marcus’s thirtieth birthday.”

Harry took a moment to work that out. Then he sat up, tugged Julius upright, and wrestled his stiff body into an embrace, holding him, rigid and awkward as he was.

“They can go to the devil,” he said fiercely into Julius’s ear. “I’m very sorry about your brother, but good God, people die. And it’s
your
birthday.” He grabbed Julius’s jaw, feeling the soft rasp of unshaven skin, a little imperfection, kissed him. “Let’s do something. Celebrate. Because you’re not dead and I’m bloody glad of it.”