Provoked (3 page)

Moments later, the landlady was back with two small jugs, one of whisky and one of water, and two dram glasses. She poured the two men a generous nip each and left the rest on the table, promising, at David’s insistence, to add the cost to David’s bill. As soon as she was gone, David threw back the first measure, relishing the burn down his gullet. Balfour was right, the first dram was always the best.

He poured himself another, fighting the urge to throw that back too, letting it sit in the glass untouched. He told himself he’d not take another drink till Balfour had finished his own dram, but that was easier said than done. Balfour sipped slowly, contemplatively, his long body relaxed and comfortable.

At last David gave in. He picked up the second measure and swallowed that too, setting his glass down with a small bang on the mahogany table. He made no immediate move to replenish his glass, but his forbearance was to no avail—Balfour picked up the jug this time and topped David’s small glass off, doubling the measure this time.

“Before the landlady came in, I was about to ask you something,” Balfour said as he added a little water to his own glass, diluting the spirit.

“Oh yes? What was that?”

Balfour smiled, as relaxed as though he were proposing a game of cards. His dark gaze grew languid and inviting. “Do you really need to ask?”

David’s heart began to race. He was almost sure what Balfour was alluding to, but there remained a hint of doubt, and the dangers attendant upon such misunderstandings were great.

“I would appreciate some—clarification,” David replied carefully.

Balfour’s grin deepened. “How’s this, then? I noticed the way you’ve been looking at me.”

David flushed at this directness but forced himself to keep looking at Balfour, despite his burning cheeks.

Balfour leaned back in his seat, appearing supremely comfortable. “And I know that look very well. I believe I know what manner of man you are, Mr. Lauriston.”

David bristled a little both at the man’s easy assumption and at how he expressed it. Had David really been staring at him all that much? He was usually so careful. Perhaps his defences were lower than usual today. Or perhaps it was Murdo Balfour—the man made David feel supremely off-balance.

“You don’t know anything about me,” David said, determined to restore a polite distance. “We’ve only just met.”

He expected Balfour to back off then, put off by David’s refusal to bite. But he didn’t. Quite the opposite. Instead he put his elbows on the mahogany table and leaned forward, his dark gaze fixed on David.

“I may not know you,” Balfour said softly. “But I’m confident that you and I are similar, in certain ways.”

“I don’t know what—”

“Come now,” Balfour interrupted, more gently this time. “We are fellow travellers, heading in opposite directions. Just passing ships. Tomorrow we will be gone and will not meet again. There is nothing to fear from letting your guard down a little.”

David stared at him helplessly. “You don’t know me,” he repeated, though less firmly this time.

“I think I do, a little. The part that’s similar to me anyway.”

David didn’t respond to that, but perhaps the fear he felt at being so easily discovered showed on his face—for the first time, Balfour’s expression grew troubled.

“I’m sorry if I’ve offended you,” he said. “I mean no insult. Quite the opposite. The truth is…”He paused, as though considering precisely what that truth might be. “I can’t remember the last time someone intrigued me as you do.”

He spoke the words as easily as you like, quite conversational as he leaned back in his chair and his dark eyes wandered over David’s tense form. Then he smiled, a wide attractive smile. “And it has to be said—you’re the prettiest lad I’ve seen in a long time.”

“
Pretty?
” David protested, mortified, but even as he rejected Balfour’s assessment, it reached some part of him, buried deep, that was like parched earth. He searched Balfour’s face for contempt or shame. Mockery. But there was none, and nothing furtive either. Nothing furtive or careful or even goddamned
prudent
. What was Balfour thinking to speak to a man, a stranger, as he was speaking to David? It was so reckless that David would have suspected some kind of trap if their meeting could have been anything other than sheer coincidence.

David stared at the other man, breath held as he considered his reply. There was something raw and powerful in Balfour’s dark gaze. David saw desire and determination. He saw that Balfour wanted him.

Beyond anything else, that decided him.

He was going to lapse again.

He would hate himself in the morning, but that didn’t matter right now. After several tense heartbeats, he dropped his gaze and muttered, “We can’t do it here. The walls between the chambers are paper thin.”

“Come with me,” Balfour replied. “I know a place.”

Outside the inn, there was a faint mizzle of freezing rain. David huddled deeper into his coat. It was a dark and moonless night, every star in the sky obscured by clouds.

“This way,” Balfour whispered. He tugged at David’s sleeve, drawing him towards a nearby alley. David considered resisting for an instant, alarmed by Balfour’s straightforwardness, his apparent disregard for risk. But in the end, David allowed himself to be led, half manhandled, actually, into a narrow close so dark he could no longer see the other man’s face.

Balfour pulled David deep into the close before he stopped and turned towards him. He backed him into the cold, damp wall, and David let himself be pushed, welcoming Balfour’s bulk and certainty.

The close smelled of piss and rotting refuse, but when Balfour crowded into David, he banished those smells. He smelled clean and healthy and male, and David inhaled deeply as his cheek pressed against David’s own, experiencing a moment of intense excitement at the combination of sensations—Balfour’s scent, the power and warmth of his body, the faint roughness of his jaw. Even so, when Balfour’s lips sought his own, David turned his head away, reaching instead for the placket of the other man’s breeches.

Balfour gave a soft laugh. “You object to kissing?” he murmured in David’s ear. The heat of his breath sent a shiver down David’s flank. “Such a shame. Your mouth was made to be kissed.”

David made an impatient noise of rejection at that absurd declaration. The compliment was almost enough to put him off his stride altogether. But having agreed to come out here, casting all his reservations aside, he was determined to make it worth it and refused to be distracted. His busy fingers undid the buttons of Balfour’s breeches, and his hands slid inside, pushing down the other man’s drawers to expose his swelling cock. When David grasped the thick shaft, Balfour gave a deep sigh of pleasure that gusted against the side of David’s face.

David lightly caressed the hard rod of flesh, then let his fingers drift down to the balls hanging below. The man’s cock was like velvet, the prickle of hair on his scrotum a provoking contrast that made David’s pulse pound and breath come quick. David closed his fingers around Balfour’s prick again and dragged upwards. A bead of moisture on the tip spread stickily under David’s thumb while Balfour murmured incoherent encouragement.

The wall was cold at David’s back, but Balfour radiated heat and strength. For a few brief moments, David allowed himself to enjoy without guilt the feeling of being warmed and protected, but that was not a weakness he would allow himself to indulge in for long. Instead he dropped to his knees, enveloping the plump head of Balfour’s cock in his mouth and quickly swallowing the length down.

The cobbles under his knees were hard and wet, but he didn’t care. He took Balfour to the back of his throat, loving the way the man filled his mouth, the pulse of musky flesh pressing insistently on his soft palate. Above him, Balfour groaned and his long, strong fingers tunnelled into David’s hair, dragging on the short silky strands. David’s hat was gone, probably sitting in a puddle. He didn’t give a damn. All he cared about was this. Bringing Balfour to completion in his mouth. Even if David didn’t climax now, he would be able to do so later, just from remembering this.

His own cock was painful in his breeches, swollen with desire but constricted by the tight fabric and his kneeling position. In an odd way, he relished the uncomfortable sensation. Strangely it almost enhanced the delight of pleasing Balfour. And he was pleasing him, if the man’s moans were anything to go by. Balfour’s fingers tightened on David’s skull as he began to reach his crisis, his cock thickening and hardening just a fraction more. David consciously stilled and opened his jaw and throat as well as he could.

“Christ,” Balfour moaned. “Yes, that’s good.”

And then Balfour was fucking his mouth in short, efficient jabs. David did his best to stay still, to accommodate all that hammering flesh. He tried to spare Balfour the scrape of his teeth but it was impossible to avoid the occasional catch and the resultant loss of rhythm. Impossible too not to gag, not to choke and drool a little. But it didn’t matter. Somehow, it was the imperfections of this that made it so very good.

Balfour stiffened and froze, his cock right at the back of David’s throat now. And all David needed to endure was one long, last breathless moment as the other man jerked out his crisis, spilling his semen down David’s willing throat. David’s head swam, vision blurring. He felt an odd sort of ecstasy in his physical discomfort, a muddling up of his honest worship of Balfour’s body with a deep-rooted belief that he deserved nothing more. Pleasure and torment together.

When Balfour finally withdrew his prick, David stayed where he was, half expecting the other man to do up his breeches and walk away. It wouldn’t be the first time. But before David knew where he was, Balfour had yanked him to his feet and pressed him back against the wall. And then Balfour’s lips were on his, his tongue pressing inside, tasting hungrily.

Still dazed, and now weak with longing, he didn’t turn away this time, but allowed Balfour to ravish his mouth.

After a while, the bigger man drew back a little, his mouth gentling. David almost regretted allowing the kiss because he knew one day soon he would look back at this moment and wish he’d been strong enough to turn away from it. But for now he pushed that thought to the back of his mind and returned Balfour’s kiss, revelling in the conflicting sensations of warm, soft lips and rough, scraping jaw.

Eventually, Balfour broke the kiss and pulled away, smiling, a glint of teeth that David could just make out in the darkness.

“I think that was the best cock-sucking I’ve ever had,” he said. The crudity of his words was softened by their teasing tone and that shadowy, piratical smile. His hands moved lower, tracing the shape of David’s backside. “I only wish I could fuck you.”

David shivered, saying nothing. That, he would never allow. Thankfully it seemed the danger of it was past now. He distracted himself from the uncomfortable thought by throwing his head back against the wet bricks while Balfour unbuttoned his breeches and drew out his aching member.

Stroking David’s prick with one hand, Balfour yanked at his cravat with the other, exposing David’s throat, his mouth descending in a hot kiss that turned into a bite and then a kiss again.

“Yes, yes, God please—” David muttered, hips jerking as pleasure and need built intolerably. A powerful climax brewed at the base of his spine as Balfour’s mouth savaged his throat again and his big hand worked. His brawny body shoved at David, warm and assertive, pushing him harder into the wall. Demanding and taking. David was being conquered by a relentless force. Routed utterly.

Balfour kissed up the line of David’s throat and whispered harshly in his ear, “God, but I want to do everything to you. I want you in my hand. I want you in my mouth. I want to bury my tongue inside you and fuck you forever.”

Christ.

David’s orgasm, when it came, was the most intense he could remember. And through it all, Balfour was there, enveloping David with his warmth and strength.

For a few moments after, they stood, David’s head resting on the other man’s shoulder as he came back to himself. The blissful aftershocks gradually faded away and he became aware, once again, of the cold wall behind him, the dreich, mizzling rain.

Balfour brought out a handkerchief and used it to clean David up, his smile glinting again in the darkness. David felt embarrassed by the attention, but when Balfour tucked the handkerchief away and began to attend to his own breeches, he experienced the oddest sense of loss. After they’d fastened themselves up and David had roughly retied his cravat, Balfour bent down, straightening again with David’s hat in his hand.

“I wouldn’t put it on if I were you,” he said, offering it to David.

“No,” David agreed with a weak smile, taking it. God only knew what was on the ground under their feet.

They exited the close together and paused at the opening onto the street.

“I’ll let you go ahead,” Balfour said.

David nodded briskly, hiding the melancholy that had suddenly settled on him like an old familiar coat. “Good night then,” he said. He began to turn away.

“Lauriston—”

He stilled at the sound of his name on the other man’s lips and looked over his shoulder. All he could see in the darkness was Balfour’s bulky outline, yet even without seeing his expression, David somehow sensed a hesitance in him.

“Yes?”

“That was—good. I hope it was for you too?”

David swallowed, wondering why that simple question should make his chest ache so.

Before he could answer, the door of the inn burst open and a group of men exploded onto the street, talking and laughing loudly. The light and noise broke the strange fragile spell between them.

David imagined going to Balfour, pressing his lips against the other man’s and whispering in his ear,
Yes, it was good. Better than good
. And,
Come to bed with me
.
Stay the night.

Instead he nodded once, his expression carefully blank. “Good night, Mr. Balfour.”