Think of England (8 page)

He looked decadent beyond belief. He looked as though someone had been about to fuck him right there against the door, and as though he’d have liked it.

Someone
, and it would be obvious to the servants who that was.

Curtis felt the blood flame in his cheeks and forced his gaze away, back to the guns.

“Put those down.” He managed something like a note of command.

“Beg your pardon, gentlemen,” said one of the older men woodenly, lowering his shotgun a fraction, so that he could not quite be said to be pointing it at a guest. Curtis wasn’t reassured. “An alarm went off. Were you leaning on the door just now, at all, sir?”

“The door,” da Silva repeated, mouth curling in that secret smile. “Ye-e-es, perhaps a trifle. That set an alarm off, did it?”

“Might have. If you was leaning very heavy-like. Sir.”

“Or if someone else was—” began Wesley, smirking and allowing his gun to droop. The grizzled man made a low, warning noise. Wesley’s grin vanished and he muttered, “Sorry, Mr. March,” as his shotgun swung back up. Curtis wanted to order him to put it down at once. He was held back by the thought that he didn’t know what he’d do if the man refused.

“Unfortunate accident,” he said instead. He ought to help da Silva’s brilliant, unspeakable improvisation somehow, but it was as much as he could do to get the words out, choking with embarrassment, the bare-chested man lounging in the corner of his vision. “Sorry for any trouble.”

“Sir,” March said flatly. “Excuse me.” He strode towards the storeroom door as he spoke, lowering the shotgun but keeping himself ready, not bothering to apologise as da Silva was forced to shift out of his way. The other two men waited in position, weapons still raised.

March tried the door, checking it was locked, and looked up at the contacts with a frown. “It shouldn’t have done that.” He gave it a small push, then shoved harder. “Doesn’t seem to be loose. Now, why would that have gone off?” He looked round at Curtis again, eyes assessing. “There’s nobody else in here, is there, sir?”

“I’d suggest there’s a generous sufficiency of people as it is.” Da Silva sounded light and mocking, without a hint of shame or guilt. “An excess, even, so I shall remove myself at once. I do beg your pardon for, ah, arousing you from your beds.” He gave Wesley the briefest flutter of his long lashes. “And I shall return to mine. Or someone’s, anyway. Come, my dear.” That was to Curtis, with a taunting smile.

March gave him a long look, which da Silva ignored, and nodded to his underlings. “Wesley, Preston, make sure the gentlemen find their way.”

Da Silva tapped Curtis on the arm in summons and led the way along the corridor and to the main stairs, hips swaying outrageously. Curtis followed. He could feel March’s suspicious look until he left the room, and the gaze of the others as they tracked him up the stairs, along the corridor, past the glass cases of dead hunting birds. The presence of the guns seemed almost physical behind his undefended back. The hairs on his neck were standing straight.

The servants stopped at the entrance to the east corridor, watching them as they headed down the dark passage in silence till they reached the two adjacent bedrooms. Curtis opened his own door and switched on the light.

Da Silva shoved him in, kicked the door shut with his heel, and launched into a low-voiced and uncomplimentary assessment of Curtis’s intelligence, abilities, sexual tastes and parentage. For a poet, he had the vocabulary of a costermonger.

“I
know
,” Curtis got in, when da Silva was forced to stop for breath. “I’m a damned fool. I forgot all about the alarm. That was jolly quick thinking of yours, we’d have been sunk otherwise.”

“We’re not watertight yet. Listen.”

Curtis listened. There were very soft sounds of movement, but not from outside the door. The noise was coming from the other side of the opposite wall, the side with the mirror, the secret spy corridor. He heard a slight scrape.

“They’ve come to watch,” da Silva said, voice low and tense. “I’m not sure March believed me. You’re too bloody soldierly.
Shit
.”

Curtis set his jaw. He’d got them into this; he’d get them out. He kept his voice very quiet, turning away from the mirror so his lips couldn’t be read. “If it comes to a scrap, I’ve my Webley in the wardrobe. Are you armed?”

“I don’t use guns. You think you can fight our way out?”

Two armed men watching them and another waiting downstairs. His revolver packed away and unloaded. A thirty-mile night trek over rough unfamiliar terrain even if they got out of the house without pursuit. And da Silva was not the partner he’d have chosen for either fight or flight. “The odds aren’t good,” Curtis admitted. “But if it comes to that—”

“If it comes to that, we’ve lost. We might get away, but the evidence will be long gone.” Da Silva hesitated. “Oh, hell. Get on the bed.”

“What?”

Da Silva snaked an arm round his neck, gave him a provocative smile, hooked a foot round his ankle and shoved him backwards. Curtis stumbled, and sat heavily on the mattress.

There was a whisper of silk as da Silva shed his dressing gown and stood, naked to the waist. The little ring gleamed silver against his dark nipple.

“What the devil are you doing?”

“Smile, we’re being watched.” Da Silva sank to his knees and tugged Curtis’s gown off his shoulders. “Just try to enjoy it, I’ll do the work.”

“Work?” said Curtis hoarsely. “What—?”

“If they decide we were faking, that you were at that bloody cabinet, we’re probably dead.” Da Silva ran his mouth up Curtis’s neck, towards his ear. “So we’re going to make it convincing, understand? Or”—he trailed a finger back down Curtis’s chest—“you can sit there like a sack of potatoes till they decide you
weren’t
poncing me in the library and come back with shotguns.” He looked up, head tilted at a flirtatious angle. “Do you have any better ideas? Because I don’t.”

Curtis had no ideas at all, because da Silva’s hands were on his waistband now. He made a choking noise in his throat.

“It’s only a mouth. They’re all the same,” da Silva hissed. “Come on, you did this at school, didn’t you? Pretend you’re back at Eton.”

“You can’t do this!”

“What’s your alternative?”

Curtis didn’t have an alternative. Da Silva was kneeling before him, dark eyes snapping, that outrageous ring twinkling with the rise and fall of his chest, skilful hands hovering over Curtis’s buttons and the hard swell of his groin.

“Well?”

Curtis shook his head, the smallest movement. He wasn’t sure what he was refusing.

“Then lie back and think of England.” Da Silva tugged at his trousers, and Curtis shifted up to allow him to pull away the fabric. He shut his eyes, felt da Silva’s hands on the buttons of his drawers. Light fingers brushed the tip of his cock.

“Oh God.”

“Relax,” murmured da Silva. “I won’t bite.” And with that, Curtis was engulfed in warm, wet sensation.

His eyes sprang open, and he saw himself in that conveniently positioned mirror, face flushed, leaning back with his legs spread, and the dark man kneeling between his thighs, head bowed.

Someone was behind that mirror, watching.

“I can’t,” he hissed.

Da Silva made a noise of exasperation. “I’m doing the hard part. Just shut your eyes.”

Curtis couldn’t have shut his eyes on a bet. He was looking at the mirror, and he should have been thinking of what was happening on the other side of the wall, but he was transfixed by the contrast between the slender lines of da Silva’s smooth olive-skinned back, and his own much paler chest, thickly furred with dark blond hair over the broad, powerful pectorals. And da Silva’s mouth was on his stiff length, working hard, tongue dipping and curling and licking, and it was becoming impossible to think of anything else but that.

This was not the slobbery fumbling he remembered from school, or the awkward manoeuvring at college. Da Silva’s cheeks, lightly scratchy with stubble, rasped against his thighs. His clever tongue ran over the head of Curtis’s cock, pushing and nudging, then his mouth closed over him completely, and his lips slid down along the rigid length, taking him deep in his throat, all the way down.

Curtis made an animal noise. It was obscene, and astonishing, and he had no idea how da Silva wasn’t choking. He leaned back, staring down at the dark head and—he had to make it look convincing, da Silva had said—reached for his hair, tentative at first, then running his hands through the brilliantined sleekness, feeling the movement of the man’s head as his cheeks and throat worked. Da Silva rubbed the side of his face like a cat against the leather of Curtis’s glove. His throat vibrated with a soft purr that hummed against Curtis’s flesh and sang through his blood. Curtis bit his lip.

Make it convincing
. His hips were moving now, almost without his volition, pushing himself into da Silva’s clever, pretty, filthy mouth. Da Silva’s fingers were running over his flanks, and his mouth worked impossibly, clenching and sucking, up and down, and Curtis forgot the watchers, and Lafayette, and everything else. He felt nothing but the hot mouth on him, saw nothing but the mirrored form of a dark angel between his legs. He drove harder, gripping the man’s hair to keep him close, and da Silva moaned with what sounded like pleasure, fingers digging into his thighs to pull him on, taking the thrusts without recoiling. God, he actually liked it, he liked having Curtis’s big, engorged prick in his mouth…

Curtis felt his balls tighten painfully, far too soon, and dimly remembered his manners. “Going to come,” he warned hoarsely.

Da Silva dragged his lips upwards, away, and Curtis had a second to regret his own chivalry before the other man plunged down again, taking his whole length in a single smooth movement, sending waves of sensation crashing across his skin.

“Christ, da Silva, stop, I’ll come in your mouth!”

Da Silva grunted, sucking even harder, and did that thing with his throat again, muscles rippling and clutching, and Curtis came with a stifled shout, gripping da Silva’s head hard, not caring if he choked him, hips jerking frantically as he spent in jet after fierce jet.

He released his grip on da Silva’s hair, feeling the oil on the bare skin of his left hand, and flopped back, stunned. At his crotch, he heard the kneeling man swallow.

Curtis stared up at the ceiling.

Da Silva stood and moved to pour himself a glass of water from the nightstand, sloshing it around his mouth.

The bed creaked as da Silva came and sat on it, not touching. “All right?”

Curtis had no idea if he was all right. He looked over at da Silva. His dark hair was tousled and tangled, falling forward, so that he no longer looked sleek and self-possessed, but rougher, more real, loosened by intimacy. His lips were swollen with pressure, or arousal. The silver ring glinted against a nipple that was tight and erect.

Did he want Curtis to reciprocate?

“You look like you’re about to have a heart attack,” da Silva remarked. “I’m not sure whether I should find that flattering or the opposite.”

Their situation crashed down on Curtis then, driving out the madness of the last few minutes. “Dear God,” he hissed. “Don’t you understand—they’ll have bloody photographed that!” He sat up as he spoke, grabbing for his dressing gown, suddenly desperate to cover himself.

“No, will they?” Da Silva rolled his eyes. “That was the
point
.”

Curtis spluttered. “We could both be arrested!”

“Better than dead. Don’t panic, for heaven’s sake. We were playing cock in cover in the library, we had no idea they would photograph that interlude, therefore we don’t know what they’re up to,
therefore
it was a false alarm. We’re out of the woods, as long as you don’t raise anyone’s suspicions by having a conniption now.” He gave Curtis a slanted, not quite real smile. “No need to thank me.”

Curtis couldn’t believe he’d said that. “And what if they use the photographs? Hand them to the police?” Christ almighty. Five minutes of da Silva’s mouth and he was looking at two years for gross indecency.

“They’re blackmailers, you idiot, they don’t call the police. I have to get the films back, that’s all.” Da Silva sounded infuriatingly unruffled. “Calm down. This is trivial.”

“
Trivial?
You might not care about being caught in some ghastly compromising situation—”

Da Silva’s face tightened. “I care less about that than about being caught with my hands in our host’s till. Which, let me remind you, was what you brought on us when you blundered straight through that wire.”

“I know that, damn it!”

“Keep your voice down,” da Silva hissed. “And have you a better idea of how I could have deflected suspicion away from your stupidity, before you rant at me for sullying your inviolate body with my dirty ways?”

Curtis was sure he hadn’t said that, and didn’t much appreciate da Silva putting words in his mouth, but he was in no state to conduct an argument on two flanks. “Well, how the hell are we better off now?”

“We haven’t been knocked on the head and buried under the redwoods?”

“I might as bloody well be!” Curtis had to fight to keep his voice to a whisper. “
You
might be used to posing for filthy photographs—”