A Proper Lover (Ganymede Quartet Book 2) (6 page)

There was a long section told from Dooley’s point of view where both Theo and George were described in admiring detail. Shirtless George’s many scars were described anew, along with his hard muscles and his long blond tail of hair. Theo’s dashing air, his commanding presence, and his fortitude were duly noted. His evident strength and grace were remarked upon, as well as his manly beauty. Dooley seemed quite in awe of them and was especially impressed by their mutual high regard, their clear loyalty to one another.

Martin seemed amused. “Dooley is quite a fan, don’t you think, Sir?”

The
Ruthless
sailed closer and closer but heaved to outside the harbor. Captain Theo was prepared to fire upon the
Ruthless
should it threaten either the
Dauntless
or the town itself, but there were no signs of aggression from DeSade. Theo set men to watch the
Ruthless
and turned in for the night.

“Do you think he sleeps with George, Sir? Aren’t beds on ship very narrow? It might not be practical.”

“He’s the captain,” Henry reminded him. “He has the best cabin, I imagine. I think he can have a big bed if he wants.” He thought about it a moment more. “I like to think they’re in the same bed, but I don’t really know. It’s never made clear.”

It was no clearer when, a few paragraphs later, George shook Theo awake and they went out on deck to watch hooded figures leaving the
Ruthless
in a dinghy and rowing into port under cover of darkness. Dooley was there, too, alert and watchful and interested.

“Is he going to be in
every
scene from now on?” Henry asked petulantly. “Theo already
has
a companion—he doesn’t need another one.”

Martin was in agreement. “I’m sure there’s a point to him, though, Sir. We’ll just have to wait and see.”

The point of Dooley was, apparently, to be the damsel in distress. Tagging along on a reconnaissance mission in a shadowy dockside warehouse with Theo and George, Dooley managed to get himself captured by DeSade’s henchmen, and immediately gave up the information that he was associated with Captain Drake and the
Dauntless
. He was smart enough, at least, not to volunteer that Theo and George were also in the warehouse at that very moment, allowing them to steal back to the
Dauntless
to enlist reinforcements.

“They should just let him stay caught,” Henry said, disgusted. “Why should they care what happens to him, anyway? He’s practically a stranger. It wasn’t so long ago he was their
enemy
.”

“But from what you’ve told me, Sir, they always help the underdog,” Martin pointed out. “It won’t matter that they don’t know him well.”

“He’s too stupid to live,” Henry insisted. Dooley felt like a diversion when all he wanted was Theo and George saving each other’s lives and making speeches.

The crew of the
Dauntless
, as it turned out, felt much like Henry, wondering why they should risk their own lives to save some grubby pirate boy, and Captain Theo gave them a good speech about helping the weak and downtrodden. He reminded them that he’d saved many of their lives in just such situations and they’d repaid him with strength and courage and loyalty, and surely Dooley would do the same. After that, the crew agreed that Dooley was worth saving.

“Well, all right then, I suppose,” Henry said grumpily. “I guess that’s how he got George, for that matter.”

“To be continued,” Martin concluded with a sigh. “That’s it for another month, then, Sir.” He checked his watch. “I might as well go down for my dinner. I’ll talk to Mr. Tim for you, too, Sir.”

After Martin had gone, Henry rolled around on the bed, restive and feeling disgruntled. It just didn’t feel like Dooley had earned his place of prominence in the story, and Henry worried that he would somehow come to supplant George in Theo’s affections if the current trend continued. Sighing, he knew he should try to take it less seriously. But even the tiniest threat to the Theo-George relationship seemed terribly personal.

Henry fretted about Theo and George all through his own meal and the family hour following. Martin did not seem nearly so bothered by the turns the story was taking, and Henry found that he wanted him to be, that he was a little annoyed that he was not.

In bed, in Martin’s arms, Henry found it difficult to curb his obsessive thoughts and was tense and restless.

Martin inclined his head, his mouth close to Henry’s ear. “Don’t worry about Dooley, Henry. Theo won’t turn from George so easily.”

It helped to hear it from Martin. It was Martin’s reassurance that allowed him to relax enough to fall asleep at last.

The Briggses were having their annual Halloween party and of course Henry was invited, as he had been every year that he’d known Louis. All of the Briggses of every age invited all of their friends and, like every Briggs party, the Halloween festivities usually got out of hand. James would be at home this year, being in some sort of trouble at his college yet again, so the house would be full of his hard-drinking friends for the second time in a month. The actual holiday fell on a weekday, so the party was being held the Saturday before, which would give the guests more license to become exceedingly drunk. Louis' older sister Susannah was inviting her school friends, and Louis and Henry's classmates were excited for the opportunity to socialize with girls near their age. Now that Louis and Henry had slaves, they were to be included in the adult party for the first time; all of the younger Briggs children and their guests would be relegated to the nursery upstairs.

During their nursery years, Henry and Louis had been happy to wear costumes—often stitched up by the costume departments of the theaters where their fathers were generous benefactors—but they felt too adult for such frivolity now. Still, Henry felt the urge to dress up a little. On Friday after school, picking through the old costumes stored in the trunk room, Henry came across a harlequin costume he’d worn at age 11.

“I rather liked this one,” he said, holding it up for Martin to see. “Very colorful, but not too fussy. It was easy to play in.”

Martin sat on a trunk, elbows on knees, leaning forward to see what Henry was doing. “It’s lovely, Sir. Did you wear a mask?”

“A half-mask,” Henry told him, holding up a little black velvet mask with ribbon ties.

“It would be fun to have masks, wouldn’t it, Sir? Not a full costume, of course, but just a mask.”

“We could do that, maybe,” Henry said slowly. It seemed possible that some of his friends might wear masks even if they weren’t wearing costumes. He wanted to make Martin happy, but he didn’t want the two of them to look stupid or childish.

He pushed aside a miniature pirate captain’s braid-trimmed jacket and found what he was looking for. “Take a look at this, Martin.” He held up his favorite childhood costume, the plumage of a red bird, worn at age 7. “You can look down into the side yard from the nursery, and I used to watch this cardinal come to eat the crumbs that Cook scattered for him. I thought that little red bird was the most beautiful creature imaginable.”

Martin looked as though he thought Henry was the most beautiful creature imaginable for saying such a thing. “Oh, Sir, that’s so sweet, the idea of little you watching a little bird.”

Henry blushed, but did not otherwise respond to what Martin had said. “Father had the opera’s costume department make it up for me,” Henry continued. “See, my arms stuck out under the wings, so I could make them flap, but I could still play games. And here’s the hat.” The hat had a cardinal’s crest, eyes of jet, and a red-orange beak that stuck out like a banker’s visor. The costume was still very charming, though it was shedding feathers and clearly a little the worse for wear after years in a trunk.

“Did your parents have your picture made in your costumes, Sir? I’d love to see those if they did.”

“No, they didn’t do anything like that. I used to get my picture taken every year around my birthday, though.”

“You used to, Sir? Not any more?”

Henry wrinkled up his nose. “I didn’t like doing it,” he explained. “I don’t like posing. My mother wanted me to do it, but my father said I didn’t have to, so I stopped when I was 14.”

“Some masters get portraits done with their slaves, Sir, did you know?”

Henry raised an eyebrow. “Do
you
want to do that?”

Martin looked embarrassed. “It’s just an idea, Sir.”

Henry bent over the trunk again. “Hmm…I’m not finding what I’m looking for…”

“Can I help you look, Sir?”

“I’m looking for the most recent costumes,” he said. “They have half-masks, too. We could wear those.”

“Let me help, Sir.” Martin got up off of his trunk. He stood looking around the narrow little room. “If it had been me putting them away, I’d have put them…here!” He swooped down on the trunk in question and opened the lid. It was empty, and Henry had to bite back a laugh at Martin’s disappointed frown.

They went through the room opening everything, and Henry eventually found the most recent costumes in the trunk that had been Martin’s seat. At 14, he’d dressed as Buffalo Bill, with cowboy hat and fringed jacket and, of course, a half-mask. At 15, he’d been a pirate again (he’d been a pirate at 6 and at 12, as well), with a bicorne hat, a papier-mâché parrot on his shoulder and another half-mask.

The pirate costume had been made by the opera’s costume department—his best costumes had been made by the opera, he thought—and the man who’d fit him had been a very handsome fairy with the sort of coloring Henry liked who’d said, “Well, aren’t
you
a big boy?” and had taken every opportunity to put his hands on Henry’s body. Henry realized
now
that the man had been flirting with him. He understood
now
that he could have asked the costumer to suck his cock and the man would have complied readily, but he’d known nothing a year ago, and it would never have occurred to him. Instead, Henry had blushed and gotten angry, aroused and confused, not understanding that the man’s intentions were quite in line with his own desires.

The black velvet masks were nearly identical. “Here,” Henry said, handing Martin one of them. “Try this.”

They went to stand before the wardrobe mirror, shoulders and elbows bumping as they held the masks up to their faces.

Henry turned his head from side to side. “I look a bit foreign like this, don’t you think? Mysterious. Spanish or Italian or something like that. Tie this on me, will you?”

Martin tucked his own mask under his arm and stood behind Henry to tie a bow in the mask’s ribbons. He looked at Henry in the mirror. “You look very handsome, Henry. A little menacing, too.”

“You like that?”

Martin laughed, self-conscious. “I do, Sir. I think it’s a little exciting to be scared.”

“Let me tie yours on.” Martin took off his glasses and stood obediently still while Henry did so. “Is that tight enough?”

“I think so. It feels good, Sir.” Martin peered at the mirror. “Does it look all right? Everything looks a little blurry to me, you see.”

“Oh, I didn’t think about that,” Henry admitted. “That you’d need your glasses to see. Can you wear it, do you think? Can you see well enough without your glasses?”

“Well enough, I think, Sir,” Martin said, squinting a little through the eye holes of the mask. “Everything's a bit blurry, as I said, but I can see things up close.”

“Well, you look wonderful,” Henry said. “You look…magical.” He didn’t have the words to express how alluring Martin seemed, how otherworldly. He also looked sly and dangerous and Henry was surprised how well he liked this impression.

“Magical, Sir?” Martin laughed, pleased. “Maybe I’ll grant you a wish.”

Henry had no doubt that he would. “Then I
wish
you’d take off everything but the mask and get down on your knees.”

Martin began undressing immediately, and Henry watched him do it, alternating between just looking at him as he did it and watching him do it in the mirror, a different angle. As he watched Martin reveal more and more of his pale skin, he also saw his own cock thickening, revealing itself through the fabric of his trousers. Martin had shed his trousers and drawers but still wore his shirt when Henry pulled him close for an urgent kiss, needing to feel the press of Martin’s body against his own.

Henry’s mask shifted as they kissed, obscuring his vision, and he adjusted it as Martin rubbed him through his trousers. His breath was hot in Henry’s ear as he asked, “Do you want me to suck you while I’m down on my knees, Sir?”

“Yes,” Henry said firmly. “I definitely want that.”

Martin stripped off his shirt and undershirt, and straightened his mask and stood naked looking at himself in the mirror, his cock coming fully erect.

“Do you arouse even yourself?” Henry asked, reaching out to burnish Martin’s flushed cheek with his thumb. “Seeing how beautiful you are?”

Martin laughed and shook his head. “No, Henry. I’m thinking ahead. I’m thinking of your cock and how you’ll be fucking my mouth any minute now.”

Not for the first time, Henry wished there were two of him, one to fuck Martin’s mouth and the other to fuck his ass. And maybe a third self to suck Martin’s cock, for that matter.