Will placed his palms on the other man’s torso, spreading his fingers over his ribs, and kissed him some more. He had the notion that it would be worth anything, anything in the world, to regularly watch Martin melt from prickly irritation to soft capitulation like this. He could imagine weeks and months and years of easing Martin’s irritability away with kisses and nonsense words and gentle pets.
“What would happen,” Will said, barely lifting his mouth from Martin’s, “if I got to my knees?”
“I’m not certain.” Something in the tone of his voice suggested barely checked desperation.
Will kissed him again. “May I try? I like having my mouth on you.” For emphasis, he pressed a wet kiss behind Martin’s jaw. “And I’d like to do that, if you think you might like it too.”
Martin swallowed. “All right.”
Will cupped Martin’s cheek with his palm. “If you change your mind, will you tell me to stop?” When Martin was silent, Will kissed him. “If you’re not sure you can tell me to stop, then let’s do something else. I need to know that you can tell me to stop. For me to enjoy this—to enjoy any of it—I need to be certain that you’re comfortable. Otherwise it’s—bad memories, all right?”
Martin looked at him sharply, but nodded his head. He didn’t ask any questions, because he never did, thank God; he just treated Will like all the traps and snares in Will’s mind were a normal part of the terrain. Will shucked his coat and threw it on the floor where Martin’s clothes had landed, then began kissing down Martin’s chest. He ran a thumb over one pink nipple, and when that earned him a curse and a shudder, he followed it up with his tongue. He took his time, because time was the one thing they had in any quantity. When he got to his knees, he didn’t right away undo the falls of Martin’s trousers, instead contenting himself with kissing and nuzzling the fabric on either side of a very obvious erection. All the while, Martin carded a hand through Will’s hair, sometimes so bold as to tentatively hold him in place for a moment but never directing his movement.
“Will.” Martin’s voice sounded ragged. Will looked up and saw Martin gazing down at him, eyes wild. “I—just wanted to tell you I like this. I’m—comfortable.”
Will felt something warm and dangerous slither around in his chest. When he finally mouthed along the hard line of Martin’s erection, the hand in his hair went rigid. Will went motionless, waiting for a sign that this was all right. He raised his eyes and Martin nodded.
He unfastened the falls of Martin’s trousers, waited for a nod, and then lowered them a few inches, watching the flushed length of him spring free. Martin made a choked noise that sounded like begging, and Will kissed the bare skin beneath his navel, the crease where his thigh met his torso, pretty much anywhere he could get his mouth other than the erection that was right in front of him. He remembered how Martin had reacted at first to Will’s hand on his length, and supposed a mouth would not be any easier. Finally, he began mouthing around the base of the shaft, then slowly up, and by the time he had his lips wrapped around the head, Martin’s hands were tight in his hair, his body taut with tension.
“Will,” he ground out. “I need more—please.”
Will pulled off. “You’re doing so well. So good for me.” Martin made a broken gasping sound as Will drew him into his mouth. Will had been telling the truth when he said he liked this—the taste and the feel on his tongue, having to work to take it all in—but he also liked the sense that he was taking care of Martin in this way. He felt Martin’s body go tense, climax approaching, and gentled him through it, feeling like he was giving himself over to something.
Martin’s hands were on his collar, pulling him up. “Let me,” he said, his knuckles brushing the front of Will’s trousers.
Will swore and fumbled his way through opening his trousers, then groaned in relief at the pressure of Martin’s hand.
“I don’t know how you stand it,” Will babbled. “You’re incredible. I was kissing you for ages and touching you everywhere but your cock and you just waited. I’d have gone raving.” He gasped as Martin did something with his thumb. “Do that two more times and I’ll be gone.” And so he was, shaking and swearing into Martin’s shoulder.
This time it was Martin who got them cleaned up, Martin who led them into bed. Somehow the jug of ale even made it into the bed with them.
“It’s not self-restraint,” Martin said after taking a pull from the jug and passing it to Will.
“What isn’t?”
“The . . .” He gestured in the vicinity of his trousers.
Will raised his eyebrows. “Then what is it?”
“I just . . . don’t. I don’t toss myself off.” Martin spoke with a nervous tightness that made Will want to cover his face with kisses. “Is that unusual?”
Will was certain it was highly unusual, if his time living among men his own age in the navy was any indication, but he wasn’t going to say so. “Everybody’s different,” he said. “Why don’t you? You don’t seem to have any difficulty getting hard. Or coming, for that matter. Everything seems to be in, er, top form.”
“I just . . . try to make it go away.”
“Why, though?” Will remembered what Martin had told him about not wanting to want sex. He expected it had something to do with residual shame over wanting to shag men, but didn’t want to assume.
“For one, I don’t . . .” Martin snatched the jug away from Will and took a long drink. “This is enormously stupid.” He swallowed. “When you touch me, my first thought is sometimes that I don’t deserve it. No, shut up, I know you’re going to tell me that I do deserve it, but you’d also tell me I deserved the crown jewels if I had just come back from robbing the royal vault, so your opinion on this matter is not required.”
“Grumpy,” Will said, and bit Martin’s shoulder.
“The other reason, and this is even stupider, is that it doesn’t seem right to think of someone like that without their permission.”
Stunned, Will propped himself onto his elbow and looked down at Martin. “You think it might be . . . unethical . . . to toss yourself off while thinking about someone who hasn’t given their permission to be used in your fantasy.” That had never, not even once, occurred to Will, but it seemed like a not totally insane proposition; besides, Martin seemed pretty dedicated to overcorrecting for his father’s sins—Sir Humphrey had certainly not been one to put much stock in concepts like permission, Will recollected grimly. “All right, fair, but why not just imagine some faceless bloke?”
“That’s not how it works for me. I don’t want to shag faceless blokes,” Martin said, his face very red.
Will kissed his forehead. “Who do you want to shag, then? I mean, I’m assuming you want to shag me because here we are, and consider permission granted. Play with yourself until your hand goes numb.”
“Oh, go to hell. Can we talk about something else? Tell me all your masturbatory oddities and I’ll judge you for them.”
Thinking that was a fine segue, Will pulled off his trousers and rolled on top of Martin, taking himself in hand. “I’ll give you masturbatory oddities,” he said, leering down at him. And that made Martin dissolve into laughter, which was rare enough that Will could only laugh in return.
Martin woke with a start. For a moment he didn’t know what had interrupted his sleep, but then he felt Will twitching beside him. As Will usually slept like a stone, this wasn’t a good sign. Martin nudged him. “Will. You’re having a bad dream.”
Will mumbled something garbled and unintelligible. The sharp edge of panic in his voice made Martin shake him more urgently. He remembered those first months after Will had come home—he hardly slept at all, and when he did it was broken up by nightmares.
“Will. William!”
Finally William sat up, gasping.
“You had a nightmare. You’re safe in bed.” Martin sat up beside him, stroking a tentative hand up and down Will’s arm. “You’re in England. It’s 1819. You’re safe.”
/> Will stared straight ahead of him for long enough that Martin wondered if he had somehow fallen asleep sitting up, with his eyes open. But then he passed a hand over his mouth. “Fuck.” He was shivering.
Martin put his arm around Will’s shoulders and drew him back down to the bed, covering them both with blankets.
“A bad one?” Martin asked.
“Just the usual. I mean, they don’t happen very often anymore, but when they do it’s always the same.”
“Do you want to tell me about it?” He kept his arms wrapped tightly around Will, leaving as small a gap as possible between their bodies.
For a moment there was no sound but their breathing. “It’s the kids.”
“The kids?” Martin repeated, baffled.
“I didn’t care if he wanted to have me flogged, but some of the others were young enough to call for their mothers. Thirteen, fourteen years old.”
“I hadn’t realized.” Martin knew that children of that age were in the navy, and he knew Will wasn’t the only person aboard the Fotheringay who had been tortured—no use putting a fine point on it—by the captain. But he hadn’t thought about what it must be like for Will to have to watch other people enduring the same treatment.
“I’m so sorry,” Martin said. “I’m so sorry that happened to all of you.” He was also sorry that it was his own fault that Will had been sent to the navy in the first place, but he didn’t think this was the time for him to pour his heart out on that topic, not when Will’s heart was just beginning to slow down.
“I really don’t think about it much during the day. It’s just a thing that happened. At night though . . . well, it helps to wake up next to someone. Especially you.”
Martin stroked and caressed him, whispered soft foolishness in his ear, did whatever he could to help. He wanted to be there the next time, if that would mean Will had it easier. He wanted to be there anyway, beside Will in bed, always, forever.
Right when he thought Will might be about to fall asleep, he felt something press against his thigh. “That thing is relentless,” Martin whispered admiringly. Will had managed no fewer than three orgasms last night. Martin hadn’t known such a thing was even possible, and had been startled when he managed to come a second time. Will laughed, and Martin didn’t think he had ever heard anything that gave him such relief. “What should we do about it?” Martin asked, nudging his own hips forward so Will would know he was interested.
“How’s this?” Will murmured, rolling on top of him.
“I like it when you’re on top of me.” Martin wondered when saying things like that would stop feeling so bold.
“I know,” Will said, with a roughness in his voice that made Martin wonder how many other things Will had guessed for himself. Did Martin have no secrets? He ought to have known that Will would see him exactly as he was. “I like when you’re underneath me,” Will went on, moving his hips. “So I suppose that works out well.”
“Yes,” Martin said. Will got a hand behind Martin’s knee and hitched it up, and then Martin (again feeling idiotically bold) did the same with the other side, so his legs were wrapped around Will’s middle as Will gently rocked against him. They were pressed together, safe and alone in the moonlight, neither of them particularly well but both were something like happy and it felt like a miracle.
Chapter Thirteen
“We’re getting crumbs all over the bed,” Martin said, tearing off a piece of bread and popping it into his mouth, then doing the same for Will.
“True,” Will conceded after swallowing. “But I’m not moving.” They were reading in bed at an hour they probably ought to be embarrassed to not yet be up. But Will’s head was very comfortably cushioned on Martin’s lap while Martin stroked his hair, and yesterday’s bread had not yet gone stale, so as far as he cared there were very few incentives to go anywhere. If he turned his head just so he could see the cup of primroses on the table. From time to time he caught Martin looking down at him with a sort of dazed contentment that made Will feel smug in about a dozen different ways.
“We could shake the sheets out later,” Martin said, as if puzzling the matter out. Watching Martin discover housework was a source of never-ending delight. “We could even put fresh sheets on the bed.”
“That’s right, love,” Will said absently, and felt Martin’s hand momentarily still in his hair. The word had come out absently, as it had dozens of times in the past. He hadn’t meant anything by it. And of course he loved Martin—he had loved Martin for years, and assumed Martin loved him in return, in the way friends did love one another. This—hair petting and flowers—this was something different, though. This was something both tender and sharp that had been growing and growing in the pit of his belly. He had tried not to think too much about it, afraid that whatever this thing was, it would change his life irrevocably once he acknowledged it. But hearing the word love come out of his mouth had made it impossible to hide from the truth.
Martin’s hand had long since stopped carding through Will’s hair, and when Will sat up he found Martin glaring at him.
“What?” Will asked.
“Don’t you dare,” Martin said. “Don’t you dare act like you’re figuring it out now. Like you just realized there’s a name for this. What did you think it was?”
“I didn’t—”
“Did you think I just wanted to get off with someone and thought, oh, I’ll vanquish all my bizarre sexual inhibitions with my best friend on a lark? That was all fucking difficult.”
“You said you didn’t want to wait anymore,” Will protested, not entirely certain what they were fighting about.
“I wasn’t talking about sex. I was talking about letting myself love you, you arsehole. Letting myself be loved by you. I thought you understood.”
There it was, the thing he hadn’t wanted to think about. This wasn’t just love: it was being in love, and it made him greedily hungry for things he couldn’t have. “You’re going to get married!” Will said, seizing on the first and most obvious problem. “You told me so.”
“Not tomorrow! Not even this year, if I can avoid it. And even when I do, it doesn’t mean—”
“Yes it does,” Will said, his teeth clenched. He had told himself that he could walk away from the physical part of their friendship when Martin ultimately got married, and so he could. He couldn’t walk away from this, though—this feeling, grasping and needy, was going to follow him wherever he went. “It fucking does. How is it that you’re allowed to be jealous but I’m not? What does it matter whether it’s tomorrow or next year? It’s worse if it’s next year, or two years from now, or even further. Don’t you see?”
“I see that you’re not willing to compromise.”
“You can’t get married and then carry on an affair.”
“You don’t get to tell me what I can and can’t do.” Martin buried his face in his hands and groaned. “Fine,” he said, throwing up his hands. “What do you suggest, then?”
Will twisted his hand in the sheet and took a deep breath. Martin was right. This fight was premature. Will had just been surprised to discover how angry he got at the idea of being separated from Martin. He didn’t usually let himself feel anger or resentment, afraid that if he started down that road there’d be no coming back. “I’m not suggesting anything. I’m going to keep loving you and just occasionally be cross and dramatic about it, all right? Is that acceptable?”
Martin stared at him.
“What did you think I was going to do? Leave you?” Will asked. “Idiot.” He passed a hand over his jaw. “It would probably be better if we could go back to the way things were, but we can’t, so here we are.”
“Here we are,” Martin agreed, not meeting his eyes.
Martin knew he should never have told Will about his aunt’s plans. Martin himself was able to forget them for days at a stretch, and instead believe in a fantasy where he lingered forever in the country, feeding pigs and doing the wash. The alternative seemed v
ery distant, contingent on a future in which he stayed healthy enough to be a reasonable candidate as bridegroom. It was just the sort of arrangement Will would find distasteful—an exchange of money for looks and breeding. It had more than a whiff of the marketplace. He hadn’t expected Will to actually object, though, at least not beyond a few minor aesthetic quibbles about marrying without love. If Martin thought about it at all, which he tried resolutely not to, he would have imagined that Will would be glad to see Martin set up in a household with ready access to things like money and food.
But Will loved him and would be jealous, two things that would make Martin almost ecstatic with delight if not for how miserable they seemed to make Will, and how very trying it was to watch Will stumble into a realization that had been the central fact of Martin’s existence for more years than he cared to acknowledge. For Will, loving Martin was fresh and new, probably easily undone; for Martin, loving Will was as basic a premise as gravity and just as easily reversed.
He hadn’t expected Will to love him, not in that way. He had told himself that Will would be able to part with Martin as amicably as he had parted with the former lover who had visited him weeks ago—they would still be friends, but no longer lovers. He had told himself that all the fondness and care Will showed him was nothing more than what he’d give to anyone. Which, really, would have been the sensible thing for Will to have felt. It figured Will had to go making things as dramatic as possible. Martin ought to have known the minute he read that play that Will would need to indulge himself.
Two Rogues Make a Right Page 13
