by Clare London
As he reached out to take a closer look, Matt sucked in a heavy breath beside him.
“Two laurel leaves,” Joel said slowly, astonished at the detail carved into such a small item. “Intertwined. Like your design. Oh, Matt… wouldn’t that be a wonderful model for the wedding gifts?”
Matt sat down heavily in the seat opposite. “We only found it last week, and Gary left it with me to clean it up and investigate what it might be. He wasn’t very interested in it. I didn’t think you would be either.”
Joel raised his eyebrows. “What? I’ll make my own decision on that. And it’s perfect! A small, beautiful container that could be useful or kept for ornament. Something totally unique, very special. I can see it reproduced in several sizes, all of them with the golden crown motif on the side. How apt, to bring Roman design to a modern world!” When had his excitement taken him from “could” to “can”? Ideas were buzzing in his mind, and it was only when he looked back up into Matt’s face that his enthusiasm faltered. “That may not be your plan for it at all. You may think something completely different—”
“No,” Matt broke in. His voice was thick, his gaze intense. “That’s exactly what I thought of when I found it. And when I saw the Roman art at Hampton Court, it crystallized the idea in my mind. I should have known you’d see it too. Joel….”
Joel waited, but Matt didn’t continue. “Can I see where you found it?” Joel asked.
Matt started to laugh. “Of course. But you realize it’s—”
“It’s at the far side of my land” came Gary’s voice from the door, as he and Caro stamped their way back in. Their coats were damp, but their hoods were down and their hair dry.
“Yes, if that’s fine by you.”
Gary glanced at Caro, then back to Joel. “There are no roads there, man. We can go out in the four-wheel drive, but only to a point.”
“We don’t want to disturb the site too much,” Matt added. “In case there are more valuable finds.”
“Right.” Gary nodded, looking Joel up and down. “And from there, it’ll be on foot.”
“I understand that. Oh.” Joel suddenly realized what Gary was hinting at. “You mean I’m not dressed for it.”
Matt frowned. “To be fair, you had no idea you’d be asked to go cross-country. There’s no need for you—”
“No,” Joel said firmly. “That’s okay. Just let me go back to my car for a moment.”
He trudged back across the yard in his muddy shoes to where he’d parked, opened the back, and hauled out his waterproof jacket. Then he swapped the shoes for a pair of sturdy green Wellington boots. Matt had come out into the yard and watched him, eyebrows raised.
“You came prepared.”
“Teresa warned me it could be a dirty visit. As if I didn’t know that already.” Joel was delighted when Matt grinned back at him. “And you asked me along to share the experience, not just to talk about it. Right?”
“Right,” Matt said slowly.
“You did the same for me at the reception. Came prepared, I mean.”
“Wearing that bloody suit.”
Joel was afraid he blushed. “You looked damn good in it.”
Their eyes met.
“Let’s get going, then!” came Gary’s cheery cry from beside the Land Rover. “More rain’s forecast within the next hour.”
THE field was filthy. Joel wondered how the hell they ever found their own feet, let alone any treasure. His wellies sank into the furrows, and for each step, he had to yank out his foot and start forward again, accompanied by alarming sucking noises. The ground was wet from previous rainfall, and any bare ground had turned to mud.
“This was the pigpen,” Gary explained, clapping Joel’s shoulder a little too heartily. “Ground never really recovers.”
“But every time we dig a little way down over here, we find something new.” Matt was standing near a fencepost. A plastic tent had been erected over a patch of ground, abutting the post. He glanced over at Joel, gave a grin, and ducked down to enter the tent.
Joel wriggled in behind him, but the space was very limited. He kept brushing up against Matt, though it took all of five seconds before he realized how much he liked that. When Matt leaned over to lift some plastic sheeting on the ground, Joel took the opportunity to steady them both with a hand at the small of Matt’s back.
He craved the touch; he needed to be close. He didn’t think he’d ever felt this way about anyone before.
And Matt didn’t move away.
With a grunt, Matt hauled the sheeting into his arms, revealing a small trench in the ground, cut deeper than the surrounding plow furrows. Joel shifted forward to look over Matt’s shoulder. There wasn’t a lot to see, he had to admit. Just more earth, more bloody mud.
“This is where we’ve been digging.” Matt sounded very enthusiastic, so he obviously saw more to the exposed ground. “All the discoveries have been within this small area. It’s like a store of some kind—as if the burial was deliberate.”
“Do you think the items were hidden here?”
Matt nodded. “Smart thinking. Yeah, we reckon the merchant was either robbed or fell from favor and had to leave the county at short notice. But he couldn’t take his treasure with him when he left, or maybe didn’t want to be found with it on his person. So he buried stuff here, maybe hoping to come back for it at a later date, but he never did. Records in the local church show the ownership of this farm changing a lot, at least until the nineteenth century when it fell into the hands of Caro’s family.”
“Yeah” came Gary’s loud guffaw from outside the tent. “I married her for her money. Pity it was all in the bloody ground!”
Matt grinned at Joel, rolling his eyes.
A sudden hammering on the tent above their heads heralded the return of the rain. Gary grumbled he was going back to the Land Rover and would wait for them there. They heard him squelching away over the field.
“We’ll have to make a run for it, if you want to avoid getting soaked,” Matt said. “There’s no cover between here and the car.”
“And it’s too cold to wait it out?” Joel had meant it as a question but then shivered involuntarily. The plastic tent held no warmth, and the wind had picked up in the bad weather. He tried to move out of the way as Matt stepped around the trench, then was shocked as Matt drew him into his arms.
“Sharing body warmth?” Joel joked. His voice sounded hoarse. The smell of Matt’s coat was a mix of waterproof wax, chill damp air, and a sandalwood soap. Combined with the physical memory of their kiss, he knew he was in danger of getting hard. In this enclosed space, Matt would surely feel him pressing against his leg….
“Just making sure you’re ready to go, the same time as me.” Matt chuckled, though Joel didn’t think he imagined the brush of Matt’s lips against his ear or the fast heartbeat vibrating through Matt’s chest. “Come on, let’s run!”
Matt darted out of the tent opening, pulling a startled Joel by the arm behind him. The rain was sheeting down by now, from nought to full pelt in a matter of seconds, at a vicious, slanting angle. Cold and harsh, it bit into Joel’s face, and he barely had time to pull up his hood. Matt was calling out to him, maybe still laughing. He could see the Land Rover as a blur in the distance and feel the tug on his wellies from the mud underfoot. Matt’s hand grabbed more tightly, then suddenly started to slip away.
“Wait!” Joel’s word was whipped away by the wind. He took another step forward, but his back foot stuck deeper than before. He tried to snatch at Matt’s coat, but he couldn’t get any purchase on the slick fabric. The rain spat in his eyes, and the foggy air whistled past his ears as he tried to keep his balance, but he was fighting wind, rain, the mud underfoot, and his own weight. His arms pinwheeling, he gave a single yell for help that he knew wasn’t coming, and toppled face-first into the field with a wet, muddy splat.
BACK at the farmhouse, Caro made Joel strip to his underwear, bundled him in a large blanket that smelled s
uspiciously of animals, and escorted him up to the guest room, which had its own bathroom. Matt followed and stood at the doorway with a look of concern, though Joel reckoned he could see a smirk threatening.
Joel felt the biggest, stupidest, muddiest, dirtiest idiot who ever lived. And what was worse, Matt had seen him fall over his own bloody feet in a flat field in nothing but a bit of rain.
“Bloody stupid,” Caro snapped at Matt, “trudging across that field with a city type like Joel when you weren’t even tending to animals. You’re both in a mess.”
“I did ask to take a look at the site,” Joel protested quietly, then had to spit out a tuft of grass that had been stuck between his teeth.
“Get in the shower,” she snapped again, though less fiercely to him. “Matt uses this room when he stays over, but he can use our shower or wait ’til you’ve finished.”
“I’ll use yours.” Matt held his hands up as if in surrender. “I’m just wet, not… well.” His gaze flicked over Joel. “All covered in that stinking stuff.”
Yes, that was definitely a smirk.
“Gary’s going out with the dogs to settle the sheep.” Caro peered at Joel. “You’ll be okay on your own if I go with him?”
“Of course I will. I’m fine,” Joel said.
“He’s a bloody adult,” Matt muttered. “He doesn’t need help washing himself.”
And then, to Joel’s surprise, Matt flushed a deep scarlet and looked quickly away. What on earth was Matt imagining? With a final huff of disgust, Caro turned on her heel and stomped back off downstairs.
Matt stared awkwardly at Joel for a moment, then cleared his throat. “I am sorry, you know. I probably tugged too hard—”
“I wasn’t keeping up.”
They both fell silent. “I’ll leave you to it. To your shower, I mean.” Matt was still a bit flushed. “Towels are on the bed. Plenty of hot water. Just watch the dog. She’s an old ’un and doesn’t often go out on the farm now. She can get under your feet if you’re not careful.” And he strode away along the landing, presumably to Caro and Gary’s bathroom.
Another dog? Joel had never had a pet. He wasn’t sure what to make of the shaggy, bright-eyed, panting animal that he now noticed lying on the floor at the end of Matt’s bed. It didn’t bark at him, but its gaze was wary. He took a cautious step across the bedroom, and the collie raised onto its front paws, back legs scrabbling on the carpet, as if preparing for engagement of some kind. Joel swallowed carefully. “Easy, there. Let’s deal with this man to… er… dog. Okay?”
“Pestle!” came Matt’s call from along the corridor. “To me, girl!” To Joel’s secret relief, the dog scrambled to all four feet and darted past him out of the room.
Chapter Fourteen
JOEL was still smiling about the dog as he peeled off his briefs and socks. There was some kind of clammy stuff between his toes. How the hell had the mud got this far? Caro had thrown his clothes into the washing machine downstairs, but luckily he always traveled with a change of outfit. In the kitchen, he’d passed Matt the car keys and asked him to fetch them. Now he set the shower running over the old-fashioned bath and tried to relax through his humiliation. Soon the room was full of delicious, hot steam, and he stepped eagerly under the surprisingly strong jets. There was only a curtain around the bath, and no lock on the bathroom door, and he hoped no other dogs would appear and follow him in.
What an idiot he’d been! Matt would think he was some rarified city type who couldn’t cope in the countryside. What on earth had he hoped to achieve? He’d been nosing his way into Matt’s private life, trying to discover what made the guy tick. Trying to connect. Joel let his head hang back under the spray. That was all he’d ever wanted with Matt, since the day he met him. If he couldn’t be honest with himself here, bared body and mind in a private bathroom, what kind of honesty was it? He wanted something more than the uneasy truce they had at work. He wanted…
Him.
The desire snagged through him fiercely. As he soaped his body with a gel that smelled tantalizingly of Matt himself, his cock shifted and grew heavy. Not now. Not here! He clambered quickly out of the bath and roughly dried himself on the huge bath sheet. Had Matt delivered his clothes to the bedroom yet? Joel hadn’t heard him come in, but the pipes had made such a clanking noise, he doubted he’d have heard the Land Rover if it had driven up the stairs. Bracing himself to face the drop in temperature away from the steam, he wrestled the towel around his waist, eased the bathroom door open, and got ready to make a dash across the carpet.
Someone else was standing at the foot of the bed, setting a small bundle of clothes on the covers. Joel realized it was Matt in the split second it took him to halt in shock.
Matt stood there, stark naked. Mouth open, staring at Joel, eyes wide with equal shock.
Matt. Naked. Joel’s mind couldn’t seem to get past that fact.
“Jesus!” Matt said.
Joel worked his dry throat to answer. “Um. No, just me.” He couldn’t help admiring the way Matt’s blush ran all across his shoulders and chest. Couldn’t tear his gaze away, actually. “You’re… I mean, you’re not dressed.”
“I just got out of the other shower,” Matt said quickly, defensively. “I thought you’d be much longer in yours.”
Matt didn’t attempt to cover up, which Joel admired in principle. Also in reality, because a naked Matt looked really, really fine. Joel had suspected he was built, but here was the proof. Matt was broad-shouldered, with firmly muscled arms and chest. His waist and hips were similarly broad, and his thighs were solid. As Matt straightened, Joel’s eyes were drawn to the impressive flex of his stomach muscles. It was only a visual step from there to Matt’s groin. He didn’t shave, not down there anyway. His dick nestled in a bed of dark curls, between well-proportioned legs, resting on heavy balls. Did it shift, as Joel tried to look anywhere else at all? Did it start to fill, as Joel’s was doing right this bloody minute?
“Matt?” he said softly, not sure exactly what he was asking.
“I… shit.” Matt gave a frustrated growl. “I realized I hadn’t brought up your change of clothes. Thought I’d quickly pop them in while you were washing.” He gestured weakly at the pile on the bed. “And I needed to come back in for….” He laughed brokenly and waved something he was still gripping in his right hand. “For a clean pair of socks.”
Joel glanced at Matt’s bare feet—large, strong, bare—then back up to his face. He couldn’t help it; he started laughing.
Matt frowned, but his mouth was twitching too. “What’s so funny?”
“Just… you. Stark naked. With a pair of socks in your hand.”
“What about you, then?” Matt raised his eyebrows and pointed at Joel with the dangling socks.
“Me?”
“Stark naked too, in case you’d forgotten.”
“No, I….” Even as Matt spoke, Joel felt the towel shift at his hip. Horrified, he grabbed for it, but too late. The twist at his waist had worked loose and the fabric slid quickly down his legs.
The silence was suddenly much more intense. Joel didn’t know whether to cover his crotch—how stupidly coy that would look!—or accept that his towel had been dislodged because his cock had hardened fast at the sight of Matt.
That fact hadn’t escaped Matt either. His gaze flicked quickly down to Joel’s groin. And stayed there.
“So, sue me.” Joel sighed. He gave up attempting to grab the towel and relaxed, arms outstretched. “I never said I didn’t find you attractive. That I didn’t want you.”
“You want me?”
Joel glanced down at his rising erection. Matt’s nude body was still there in front of him—the attractive, well-formed limbs, a really delicious-looking dick. “I couldn’t deny it, even if I wanted to.”
Matt licked his lips slowly, though Joel didn’t think he was being deliberately seductive. “And do you want to?”
Joel took a deep, desperate breath. “No. And I never have.”
Matt nodded, just once. His gaze looked unfocused. “You should get dressed.”
“Yes.” The disappointment slammed into Joel’s gut like a physical blow. “Sure, I’ll—”
“But I don’t want you to,” Matt said raggedly.
“I—what?”
Joel’s heart skipped a beat, or maybe it beat suddenly faster. Whatever the symptom, they both moved at once, covering the space between them in two simple steps. When Matt’s hand snaked around the back of Joel’s neck and pulled him in for a kiss, Joel’s throat tightened with astonishing excitement. Matt’s lips were firm and very demanding. He claimed Joel’s mouth the same way he had last night outside the palace, yet it was a whole new sensation today. Joel liked it—no, he loved it. The assertiveness made his whole body thrum. He reached for Matt’s biceps, gripping them hard, pulling him into a clinch. Matt’s skin was cooler than Joel’s, a vibrant contrast as they came together. Matt’s chest heaved with increasingly heavy breaths. Joel’s nipple flicked the tip of Matt’s as he shifted against him. When Joel slid his hand down to grasp Matt’s hip, Matt grunted and pushed a thigh between Joel’s legs.
“Jesus.” Matt lifted his head away briefly and sucked in a breath, the sound sharp in the quiet room.
Joel groaned, needing the kiss to come back, and now. “Oh God. You taste so good. And better, every time.”
Matt gave something that might have been a laugh if he’d had the breath. “The same for me.” His hand captured Joel’s waist, pinching the skin there.
They were as close as they could be, their skin acclimatizing to the same temperature, Joel’s still damp from his shower. Matt’s thick cock pressed on his lower belly, and when they shifted, Joel’s cock dragged a trail of sticky precome across Matt’s groin. He had a sudden, horrifyingly desperate need to rut against Matt’s lower body. “This is going to go fast,” he gasped. He’d never been one of those guys who went for hours like they were competing in an Olympic sport, but he was so excited, he was afraid he’d embarrass himself by coming all over Matt’s thighs at the slightest direct touch.
