Gentleman Wolf

by Joanna Chambers

  He turned to Nicol. “Let me help you off with your coat,” he said. “Wildsmith will take it away to mend when he brings the salve.” As he reached towards Nicol, the man stepped back, as though panicked at the thought of Lindsay touching him.

  “I can manage,” Nicol muttered, shrugging the garment from his shoulders, though he winced noticeably as he pulled his left arm free.

  “Does your arm pain you?”

  “It’s nothing,” Nicol said dismissively. “I wrenched it a bit during the scuffle, that’s all.”

  “I’m sorry,” Lindsay said, struck by sudden regret. As much as he’d enjoyed watching Nicol fight, the fact that Nicol was hurt bothered him—it was all too easy for Lindsay to forget how fragile humans were, especially when his blood was up. Now he remembered that knife glinting in the darkness and he felt sick

  “Why are you sorry?” Nicol asked.

  “If I’d asked for a sedan at Dalkeiths as you suggested, this wouldn’t have happened.”

  “True,” Nicol said dryly, settling his coat over the back of a chair. “Well, perhaps you’ll listen the next time someone offers you some sensible advice. May I sit down?”

  “Of course. I’m being a terrible host, keeping you standing. Come and sit next to the fire where it’s warm.” He pointed Nicol towards one of the deep armchairs that sat on either side of the fireplace, then crossed the room to the sideboard where the brandy decanter stood. Pouring two generous measures, he made his way back to Nicol and passed him one of the glasses, settling himself into the opposite armchair.

  Lindsay took a swallow from his own glass and gave a heartfelt sigh of satisfaction. “Ah, now that is a very fine indeed.”

  Nicol took a more careful sip, though he closed his eyes in obvious pleasure when the spirit met his tongue. When he opened them again, he said simply “Yes. It’s very good,” and perhaps for the first time that evening, a real smile touched his lips.

  The smile transformed him—he was always handsome, grim expression notwithstanding, but when he smiled... he was devastating. Even the cool grey-blue of his irises seemed somehow warmer. Lindsay’s heart stuttered at the sight and quite suddenly, he couldn’t look away.

  Nor, it seemed, could Nicol. He stared helplessly back, his smile slowly fading. Lindsay cleared his throat to say something—anything—but before he could utter a word, a soft knock sounded at the door.

  God damn it, Wynne.

  “Come in,” Lindsay croaked, and Wynne entered, fully dressed now, even his periwig in place.

  “I have the salve you asked for, sir,” Wynne murmured, setting a small glass jar on the occasional table at Lindsay’s hand. “Shall I take your guest’s coat away for mending?”

  “If you would be so kind,” Lindsay replied. “It’s on the back of the chair, there.”

  “Of course, sir. Is there anything else? Do you require any refreshments?”

  Lindsay glanced at Nicol who shook his head.

  “No, thank you,” Lindsay said. “The brandy will suffice.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  Wynne crossed the room, lifting the damaged coat from the chair it was draped over. He held it out at arm’s length, examining the tear with a critical eye before saying, “This shouldn’t take above half an hour, sir.”

  Once Wynne had left, closing the door quietly behind him, Lindsay lifted the jar of salve from the table and prised the lid off. The paste inside was yellowish and waxy and it smelled of camphor, with a trace of arnica.

  “Let’s see to your hurts. This is marvellous stuff.” He smiled at Nicol and rose from his chair. “It’ll stop your face bruising and soothe the soreness. Here, let me.” He stepped towards Nicol, dipping his forefinger into the salve to extract a dab of the stuff before setting the jar aside.

  Nicol shrank back in his seat. “I can do it myself,” he said, his voice husky.

  “Don’t be silly,” Lindsay said, dropping fluidly to his knees in front of Nicol’s chair. “There’s no mirror in here and I can see the marks. It’ll only take a moment.”

  As he leaned forward, he saw the telltale bob of Nicol’s throat as the other man swallowed and the tense clench of his jaw, but he made no more verbal protests.

  When Lindsay’s fingertip touched his reddened cheekbone though, Nicol inhaled sharply and their gazes clashed again. Lindsay couldn’t look away. He held his breath as his fingertip glided over Nicol’s cheekbone in a slow sweep and Nicol’s pupils grew, swallowing up the cool grey irises and darkening his gaze.

  Lindsay’s whole being was fixed on the single point of contact between them, the tip of his forefinger smoothing the waxy salve over the incipient bruise on Nicol’s face.

  And then Nicol shuddered, his whole body seeming to tremble.

  Lindsay stilled. “Did I hurt you?” he whispered.

  Nicol swallowed hard. “No.”

  Their gazes caught again and this time there was something new in Nicol’s eyes. Longing. Yearning. Lindsay should have felt triumph to see such naked need—and in a way he did—yet it made his chest ache too. Nicol was torn by this, torn between desire and fear. And Lindsay couldn’t seem to stop pushing him. Tempting him to let Lindsay satisfy his yearning.

  “God, I want you,” Lindsay whispered.

  Nicol closed his eyes. His head moved minutely from side to side in apparent negation, but his expression was pained with knowing.

  “I think you want me too,” Lindsay added.

  Nicol’s eyelids flew open. “I am not—” he began, then broke off, leaving the thought unfinished. His gaze was anguished, his scent suddenly sharp with need and with a more complex tangle of emotions that Lindsay’s human side could detect but not decipher.

  “This is wrong,” Nicol muttered, an edge of desperation to his voice. But there was a note of surrender in there too. An acknowledgement that, whatever he thought of the morality of this, it was going to happen.

  Lindsay set his hands gently on Nicol’s knees and slid them up his thighs, keeping his movements slow and unhurried. He paused when he reached the placket of the man’s breeches, giving Nicol the chance to push him away. But Nicol did no such thing. Only let his head fall back and his knees fall open, permitting what was to come.

  Lindsay shifted into the space Nicol had made for him and began unfastening buttons. Nicol did nothing to stop him, groaning low in his throat when Lindsay peeled back the fabric to reveal the slick tip of his hungry cock poking out of the pale linen of his drawers.

  Christ, the scent of him! Lindsay loved that smell—male desire, clean and musky at once, overlaid with Nicol’s elusive, mineral scent. Christ.

  Lowering his head, Lindsay inhaled deeply then touched his tongue to Nicol’s tip, collecting the sticky wetness there, relishing Nicol’s flavour bursting in his mouth.

  “Jesus Christ,” Nicol near-sobbed and thrust his hips upwards, as though begging for more, even as he threw an arm over his face in denial.

  “You need this, don’t you?” Lindsay murmured, stealing his hand inside Nicol’s drawers to stroke his length and push the folds of linen aside. “You need this so badly.”

  Nicol’s only answer was another broken moan. His right hand clutched the arm of his chair so tightly his knuckles showed white, and that sight—Nicol in an agony of indecision—made Lindsay’s chest ache again with a tender feeling he couldn’t put a name to. He was not a creature who usually suffered from an excess of scruples, but in this moment, he found himself wishing he could fulfil Nicol’s physical desires without increasing the man’s obvious inner torment.

  Sitting back on his heels, he forced out words he did not want to speak, his voice harsh. “Do you want me to stop? I will if you want.”

  Nicol dropped the arm that covered his face and met Lindsay’s gaze. His eyes burned. “Is it not enough for you that I submit to you?” he snarled. “I have to beg for it too? Is that what you like?”

  Lindsay studied him for a long moment. “No,” he said slowly. “I jus
t need to be sure you want this.”

  “Fine,” Nicol bit out. “I want it.”

  Lindsay didn’t respond to that, just leaned back in, lowering his head to take Nicol’s cock fully into his mouth.

  Nicol’s groan sounded like it was wrenched from the depths of his soul. He arched up into Lindsay’s mouth with a helpless lurch, one hand coming down on Lindsay’s head. As Lindsay explored the length of Nicol’s shaft with his tongue, Nicol’s strong fingers tunnelled into Lindsay’s hair, destroying Wynne’s earlier handiwork and taking a firm grip. The wrench of those fingers made Lindsay’s eyes water, even as his own shaft swelled impossibly harder in his breeches.

  Nicol had an elegant flagstaff of a cock, long and plump-headed with a ruddy tinge to it. It twitched and swelled in Lindsay’s mouth, prodding deep as it sought out the secret hollows of his mouth and throat, almost as though it had a separate existence from the man it belonged to.

  It certainly seemed to harbour far fewer qualms over what Lindsay was doing than its owner.

  Now Lindsay set about sucking it in earnest, loving Nicol’s deep groans and whispered imprecations more than he’d have thought possible. Generally, he regarded this sort of service as a means to an end, a prelude to some other, more exciting outcome, but bringing this pleasure to Nicol felt like an end in itself. It occurred to him that merely serving Nicol in this way would probably be enough to bring about his own climax.

  After a couple of minutes of sucking Nicol deeply, Lindsay realised he was already fit to come. He pulled his mouth off Nicol’s cock with a rude slurp, staying the rise of the man’s spend with a firm grip to the base of his shaft.

  “What are you—” Nicol gasped, only to subside with another a groan as Lindsay yanked Drew’s breeches further down and nuzzled his face against the man’s balls, sliding his own knees wide to get himself low enough to pay Nicol’s scrotum closer attention.

  Impossibly soft skin, prickled with coarse hair—Nicol’s balls were a contradictory landscape that Lindsay mapped for all he was worth, painting every inch with his worshipful tongue, loving Nicol’s helpless noises and the tension in his rangy frame as Lindsay tended to him. And Christ, but his scent was good here. Headily good. That scent made Lindsay’s head swim with pleasure and his wolf howl with satisfaction inside him.

  Lindsay thrust one hand down between his own legs, ripping the placket of his silver satin breeches open and yanking out his needy prick. He had one of Nicol’s balls in his mouth as he did it, teasing the tender orb with his tongue, and as he settled his hand about his hot, desperate shaft, he moaned, making Nicol moan too, and yank again on his hair.

  “Fuck,” Nicol gasped, “Your mouth, I can’t—Jesus! Suck my prick again, please—”

  Lindsay obliged him, his fingers working his own cock as he slid up to engulf the wet, ruddy head of Nicol’s in his mouth again, this time setting up a steady rhythm designed to bring the man the completion he craved.

  Lindsay’s hand moved in time with his mouth, each sucking draw on Nicol’s shaft accompanied by a fierce pull or twist of his own cock so that soon, he too was moaning. Was, in fact, moaning in tandem with Nicol, their voices first syncopating, then coinciding, as their individual pleasures twisted together like ribbons on a maypole. It was a matter of moments till their mutual delight climaxed, semen rising, then spilling like boiled milk, a sudden, uncontrollable flood that filled Lindsay’s mouth and flowed over his hand, at once sticky and exuberant.

  Lindsay swallowed Nicol’s seed, loving the salt, the tangy flavour, the background mineral hint of Nicol himself. His own seed, he wiped off on the linen of his drawers. Only then did he sit back on his heels and raise his wary gaze to Nicol.

  The man looked wrecked. Beautiful and wrecked.

  He lay back in the armchair, his long legs stretched out and splayed apart, his spent cock limp now, but still exposed. He met Lindsay’s eyes, saying nothing, his face expressionless. The unmistakable scent of desire had dissipated, leaving a sour trail of regret.

  Lindsay rose fluidly to his feet. He drew a silk handkerchief out of his pocket and dabbed at the corners of his mouth, snapping the mask of the worldly fop back into place.

  Nicol began to tuck himself away, saying nothing.

  “Well,” Lindsay said brightly, “you certainly seemed to enjoy that.”

  Nicol flushed, deep red colour suffusing his face. “Of course I did,” he muttered. “It was—beyond what I’d imagined it could ever be.”

  Lindsay had half-expected anger at this point, maybe even physical violence. Nicol’s unexpected honesty unsettled him. It drew his wolf’s attention too. The beast surged up inside him, robbing him momentarily of words so that he struggled to voice his human thoughts.

  “It was thy”—he stumbled at the antique word, made himself take a breath and concentrate—“It was your first time? With a man?”

  Nicol nodded. He didn’t seem to notice Lindsay’s brief slip. “There has only ever been my wife. No one before, or since.”

  “You loved her.” It wasn’t a question.

  “She was the mother of my child,” Nicol said hoarsely, and there was a wealth of grief in those words.

  “You have a child?”

  Nicol’s gaze shuttered entirely at that. “Had,” he said shortly. “My daughter died a few hours after she was born. I lost them both in one night.”

  Lindsay’s throat closed. He couldn’t imagine the horror of such a loss. The man’s child, a newborn babe, and his wife too, within hours of each other. It was a common enough tragedy, of course, but tragic for all that.

  Abruptly, Nicol rose to his feet, and began fastening the buttons on his breeches. “I should be going,” he said. “I have intruded on your hospitality for too long.”

  Though his voice was calm, Lindsay caught an edge of sudden desperation that spoke of an urgent desire to flee. Nicol wanted no more of Lindsay tonight, and though the realisation was painful, Lindsay knew it would be a mistake to try to detain him.

  Even so, the words came with difficulty.

  “Of course,” he said, inclining his head politely. “But please, make yourself comfortable till Mr. Wildsmith brings your coat. He will only be a few minutes at most. As for myself, I will take my leave now, and give you some privacy.” He made the briefest of bows before adding politely, “Thank you for your company this evening, Mr. Nicol, and goodnight to you.”

  “Goodnight,” Nicol replied.

  The note of relief in his voice as Lindsay turned and left the room was like a knife in his side.

  WYNNE WAS IN HIS CHAMBER, bent over Nicol’s coat, a needle and thread in his hand. He looked up at Lindsay’s entrance.

  “Is your guest leaving?” he asked. “I’m nearly done”

  Lindsay sank down on Wynne’s narrow, monkish bed. The wolf stalked restlessly within him, making his words come stiltedly. “Mr. Nicol is... fretful. When the coat is ready, take it to him and show him out. I have already taken my leave of him.”

  Wynne raised a brow and turned his attention back to his sewing. “He is anxious to be gone, I take it. Did you frighten him?”

  Lindsay laughed without amusement. “Thou art too quick, Wynne.”

  “You are thee-and-thou’ing me, sir.”

  “I know it.” Lindsay sighed. “Let it be.”

  Wynne nodded and stitched on, while Lindsay watched, soothed by the simple domestic rhythm, his beast gradually settling till he felt calm again.

  After a few minutes, Wynne set his needle down, shook the coat out and held it at arm’s length, examining it critically. “It will do,” he said at last. “Shall I take it through now?”

  Lindsay got to his feet. “Wait a minute or two. I am going to shift and wait outside for him.”

  Wynne frowned. “You are going to follow him? As a wolf?”

  “Yes. These streets are very dangerous. Would you believe he insisted on seeing me home safely?” Lindsay chuckled. “The least I can do is reciprocate.”


  Wynne smiled in return, though he looked uncertain “Be careful, sir,” he said. “There are so many people around.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Lindsay said. “Trust me. I know this place.”

  “It’s been a long time since you lived here,” Wynne said quietly.

  “Maybe so, but it hasn’t changed so very much.” Lindsay patted Wynne’s shoulder and made for the door. “Wait till you hear me go out,” he said.

  In his own chamber, he stripped off his clothes till he was quite naked, then padded noiselessly down the narrow hallway, past the closed door of the sitting room where Nicol waited for his coat and out into the darkness of the stairwell. Moments later, he was slipping out of the building and closing the stout front door quietly behind him.

  Moving into the shadows, he dropped to his hands and knees and let his wolf take over. It was already so close to his skin that he didn’t need even so much as a glimpse of moonlight. The wolf rippled to the surface and he yielded to it gracefully. Gratefully. Sniffing the air, he slunk through the narrow close out into the dark night beyond to wait for Drew Nicol.

  Nicol emerged from the mouth of the close a handful of minutes later. He didn’t notice the dark-pelted wolf hunkered down in the shadows, but no human would have. It was late now and profoundly dark, a cloudy sky veiling both moon and stars.

  Nicol set off at a brisk pace up the High Street and after a few moments, Lindsay followed. He did not need to keep Nicol in sight—the man’s scent was a vibrant, silver thread that he followed with ease.

  Two watchmen strolled at the top of the Canongate, where the old Nether Bow gate used to be, but they were looking out for ne’er-do-wells sneaking into the Canongate rather than respectable gentlemen leaving it, and so they spared barely a glance for Nicol.