As if in answer to his unspoken wish, Lindsey stepped into the bath.
Water sloshed up to the rim. Commodious as the bath was, fitting two grown men in its confines required they touch knees, at the very least. Lindsey had no qualms about coming closer still, much to Aubrey’s delight.
Lindsey slid between Aubrey’s thighs to wrap his long arms around his sore shoulders and deliver a slow, seductive kiss to his lips. Aubrey let himself melt into it. He willingly surrendered to Lindsey’s further ministrations, as Lindsey broke off the kiss to lather up a sponge and tenderly scrub the hard-won sweat from Aubrey’s skin. The whole world felt warm and soft, and by the time the last of the soap had been rinsed from both men, Aubrey’s relaxation matched his exhaustion to make him thoroughly drowsy. He felt more rag-doll than man as Lindsey helped him out of the tub, towelled him off, wrapped him in a dressing gown, and led him back into the bedroom.
It took a strong force of will for Aubrey to not fall face-first onto the bed. He made a more careful and dignified descent instead, his movements halting thanks to the slow return of his aches in the absence of the warm bath, though he ended up in much the same position, lying prone atop the mattress. He felt Lindsey’s weight sink into it soon after.
“Better?” Lindsey asked, laying a hand on his shoulder.
Aubrey made a noncommittal noise. Lindsey’s hand began rubbing a slow figure-eight around his shoulder blades. Aubrey’s muscles, made more pliant by the warm waters, greatly appreciated the attention.
“Lower,” Aubrey mumbled into the pillow.
He half-expected to go unheard, yet Lindsey obliged him, clever fingers diving further down his loins to knead the knots in his lower back.
Something in Aubrey’s spine cracked. He groaned in relief.
Lindsey immediately stopped his hands. “All right, there?”
“Better if you kept at it,” Aubrey assured him.
Lindsey did so, working wonders upon Aubrey’s flesh—and taking the opportunity to caress still lower.
Aubrey turned his head against the pillow just far enough to glimpse Lindsey over his shoulder. “Cheeky.”
Lindsey bit back a cheekier grin to apologise with a kiss. “Turn over, and I’ll see to the rest of you.”
Aubrey obliged him.
Using the Vaseline for its intended purpose, for once, Lindsey smoothed the viscous grease over Aubrey’s chafed thighs. The touch of his soft fingertips did as much as the balm itself to soothe his wounds. They did still more, as Aubrey’s prick returned to the half-hard state it’d assumed in the bath.
Lindsey flashed a conspiratorial look up into Aubrey’s eyes, then let his slick hands roam further north, tracing the line from Aubrey’s thighs up to his hipbones. Tantalising. Aubrey’s hips bucked instinctively, seeking more direct contact. Lindsey obliged him by wrapping one hand around his cock, the long fingers curling around him, applying a soft and teasing pressure before resolving into a good hard jerk.
Aubrey groaned and bucked up into his grip again. His eyes fell shut, all his senses concentrated upon Lindsey’s swift, sure strokes.
Lindsey gave a breathless laugh. Then the mattress shifted underneath them, and Aubrey felt Lindsey’s weight settle onto his hips, straddling him, their stiff pricks aligning as Lindsey adjusted his grip to accommodate them both. He rolled his hips in tandem with Aubrey, riding him as easily as he’d ridden his steed in the paddock, rising and falling with assured grace.
Aubrey opened his eyes just long enough to shoot a pleading look up at Lindsey, who answered it in an instant by swooping down to kiss him, to press against him and trap their cocks between their bellies, leaving only the slide of slick skin upon skin to bring them both to climax. Aubrey grabbed his arse in both hands to pull him in closer, harder, faster. He kissed Lindsey with furious passion, devouring him, fucking his mouth as much as his cock, and had the satisfaction of feeling Lindsey’s astonished gasp echo in his own throat. Lindsey’s cock pulsed against him, adding his seed to the slick mess between them, and the sensation sent Aubrey spilling soon after in a full-bodied shudder.
The heady combination of exhaustion and bliss meant Aubrey didn’t notice much around him for many moments. When he regained his awareness, he found his head nestled into Lindsey’s collar, and Lindsey beside him with his long arms around him.
“So much for getting clean,” Aubrey murmured, testing to see if Lindsey was awake.
The test proved successful. Lindsey softly chortled into Aubrey’s hair, a laugh more breath than voice. “How d’you like riding so far?”
In the comfort and safety of their shared bed, Aubrey felt bold enough to admit, “I’m afraid I’m not much good at it.”
“Of course not.”
Aubrey couldn’t help raising an eyebrow at that.
Lindsey coughed. “That is to say—I mean, you’ve only just begun. And nobody’s any good at anything when they’re starting out. So of course you’re not posting the trot or jumping hedges or playing polo. Nobody is. Not when they’re new at it.”
“Most people begin as children,” Aubrey pointed out.
“Because they have the opportunity to,” Lindsey insisted. “You didn’t then. But you have it now. And I think it’s rather silly to come down on yourself for not mastering something new on your first day out, just because other people were fortunate enough to learn it when they were young.”
Aubrey conceded the point. Lindsey happily returned to his gentle caresses—stroking Aubrey’s hair, tracing his cheek, kissing his temple—equal parts tender and casual. Thus soothed, Aubrey fell to musing. He recalled Lindsey’s ease upon horseback, and the dashing figure he’d cut as he posted the trot. Such a handsome vision owed as much to Lindsey’s suit as it did to his skill. Riding clothes seemed designed not only to give comfort to the rider but also to flatter the rider’s figure. That trim waist, those supple thighs, the polished gleam of the high leather boots…
Realisation dawned, and Aubrey lifted his head from Lindsey’s collarbone to look him straight in the eyes.
“Is it possible,” Aubrey asked, “that you merely wish to see me in riding costume for your own satisfaction?”
A charming blush bloomed in Lindsey’s sharp cheeks. Aubrey raised his eyebrows. Lindsey coughed.
“Humour me?” he asked with a sheepish smile.
Aubrey grinned back at him. “I just might.”
~
The next morning, Aubrey’s chafed thighs weren’t quite recovered enough for a second riding lesson, so he resigned himself to a full day of modelling.
“Can’t say I’m disappointed,” Halloway said when informed of the plan over breakfast. “Though I suppose you must be.”
To his own surprise, Aubrey was. He wanted to capitalise on his newly-acquired horse sense while it remained fresh in his memory. But his own joints strongly disagreed with this notion. As did Lindsey.
“A day’s rest won’t do you any harm,” Lindsey assured him. “Might do you a great deal of good, in fact.”
Lindsey, meanwhile, felt perfectly able to continue riding, and, moreover, eager to get back to it. Aubrey sent him down to the stables alone and followed Halloway to his makeshift studio.
Through a combination of yesterday’s sketches and referencing the chalk marks upon the tarps, Halloway guided Aubrey into the appropriate pose. Aubrey felt fortunate that the position didn’t aggravate his chafed thighs, though the angle of his hips produced a twinge he hadn’t noticed yesterday.
Halloway, meanwhile, returned to his easel. Rather than begin upon a canvas, he instead brought out yet another sketchbook and started whipping up watercolours.
“To test the colour palette,” he explained in response to Aubrey’s unasked question.
Aubrey supposed if he gained nothing else from this exercise, he would have a better understanding of the mechanics behind art. Still, he doubted even Graves would feel satisfied with hours upon hours spent lounging around as a dead mythological figure
.
The distant chiming of the grandfather clock in the foyer marked the passing of another hour. Halloway, apparently satisfied with his watercolour sketches at last, set them aside. From behind the makeshift background, Halloway pulled out an enormous canvas which Aubrey felt quite certain hadn’t been there yesterday.
“Stretched and gesso’d it last afternoon,” Halloway said in response to Aubrey’s bewildered look. As Aubrey’s confusion didn’t immediately dissipate, he then went on to further explain how he’d transported the rolled-up canvas and disassembled frame—four wooden slats that Aubrey had disregarded before as spare bits of easel. Then, whilst Aubrey had his horseback-riding misadventures, Halloway had hammered the frame together, unrolled the canvas, stretched it tight over the frame, nailed it into place, and slathered the whole surface in a preliminary coat of primer, alias gesso.
“Now that’s it’s dry,” Halloway concluded, “we can move on to the final stages.”
Through sharing a lodging house with Halloway, Aubrey had grown familiar with the distinctive chemical smell of the oil painting process. The smell of Halloway’s studio didn’t permeate the whole house, thank God, but it did waft out into the hallway, and whenever Aubrey had passed by the door on his way down from his garret out into the street, he’d caught a whiff of it, sharp and strong.
Even so, upon watching Halloway prepare his palette, Aubrey discovered some of his assumptions had proved false. It was not the paints themselves that smelled—it was the thinner.
Halloway, explaining the chemistry behind the art as he squeezed dollops of paint from their tubes, told him how the pigment was suspended in plant-based carrier oils such as linseed or walnut. These, as Aubrey could detect in that very moment with his own nose, had little smell—though Halloway admitted cadmium red had a heavy metallic tang.
The paint thinner, however, smelled quite strong. And as Aubrey watched Halloway pour it out into a jar, he realised he’d spent years wrinkling his nose at common turpentine.
“You get used to it,” Halloway said in his typical off-handed way.
Aubrey wondered if Halloway could still smell the stuff, and if not, whether Halloway could smell much of anything at all anymore.
However, the Wiltshire house ballroom was a far cry from Halloway’s rooms in the Manchester lodging house. The sheer enormity of the space allowed the fumes to disperse almost as well as if Halloway had chosen to paint en plein air. Even just cracking open a few of the French windows did wonders for ventilation.
Aubrey quickly forgot the scent of turpentine as Halloway swirled the blunted palette knife through the dollops of paint, blending the base colours to create new and brilliant hues. The process proved transfixing beyond Aubrey’s expectations. Oil and pigment swirled in a dizzying array. Halloway’s brush flitted between the palette and the canvas, laying down swathes of colour which, before Aubrey’s eyes, transformed into a blurred yet recognisable representation of the rocky seashore Icarus was supposed to have washed up upon. Almost as if viewed through a clouded lens, or a window lashed with rain. The mere impression of an image.
Then Halloway gently suggested Aubrey might return to the faux seashore so the painting could truly begin, and Aubrey settled back down upon the sheets and cushions to let Halloway get to work.
“How are you enjoying riding?” Halloway asked.
It rather amazed Aubrey how effortlessly Halloway could carry on a conversation whilst he worked. He supposed it came after years of painting portraits—a task which must prove awkward for the two parties involved if carried out in total silence. “Well enough.”
Halloway chuckled, still not taking his eyes from his task. “Damned by faint praise.”
Aubrey, having intended nothing of the sort, hurried to correct Halloway’s impression. “I’m still trying to get my seat right in the saddle. Haven’t even picked up the reins yet. But Lindsey’s been very patient with me so far. And Fletcher’s a fine teacher.”
“Fletcher?”
“The groom.”
Halloway made an affirmative sound. Silence grew in its wake. With nothing to distract himself, Aubrey’s mind continued alone down the increasingly treacherous path of their conversation.
“Not a bad way to spend a holiday,” Halloway observed as if their conversation had never lapsed.
“I suppose,” Aubrey replied without thinking. Then his thinking caught up to his tongue, and he found himself confessing, “I’m afraid I’m rather useless.”
Halloway’s brush stopped daubing the canvas. “How so?”
“Converting the Rook Mill to electricity has to wait until Emmeline returns. Likewise installing electric lights in the Manchester house and the London house and here. So I can’t do any productive engineering, but instead of looking for other work, I’m either lying on cushions or falling off a horse.”
Halloway gave him a considering look. “Have you ever taken a holiday before?”
Giving a straightforward answer felt too much like admitting defeat for Aubrey’s taste. “I don’t like not working.”
“With all due respect,” Halloway replied gravely, “you are working.”
Aubrey furrowed his brow in confusion. “Beg pardon?”
“You’re modelling.” Halloway shrugged. “It might not be hard labour, but it is labour. It requires skill—the ability to follow instruction and to maintain a pose, both of which are harder than you might think, and dashed difficult to find in a muse—and it earns a wage.”
“No it doesn’t,” Aubrey replied without thinking.
Halloway raised his eyebrows at him. “It most certainly does. At least in my studio. And in that of any other respectable painter.”
“But you’re not paying me,” Aubrey protested.
Halloway balked. “I most certainly am!”
Aubrey stared at him.
Halloway continued. “Very first day we met, I offered you compensation for modelling. At the time, you declined. More recently, you accepted. Same offer. Same wage.” Halloway hesitated. “At least, that’s how I understood it. How did you?”
“Thought I was just doing a favour for a friend.” It sounded stupid, once admitted aloud.
Halloway, too, appeared abashed. “Oh. That’s—very kind of you.” A shy smile twitched at his moustache. “Very kind indeed. I’ll not press the wage on you if you don’t want it, but… I really do prefer to pay my models.”
“What about your portrait subjects?”
“They pay me because they keep the painting. And because they come to me to paint it in the first place. I didn’t paint Mrs Bellingham because I thought she had cheekbones worthy of Olympus. I painted her because her husband wanted her likeness preserved for the ages by the hand of master.” Halloway twirled his paintbrush in his fingers. “If it’s not too bold of me to say.”
“Oh.” It occurred to Aubrey just who Halloway thought might have cheekbones worthy of Olympus. Those same cheeks blushed all the harder for it.
“I suppose you can keep the painting in lieu of wages, if you’d prefer,” Halloway conceded. “Though I’d really hoped to exhibit it. Show off my talents, drum up business, that sort of thing. Make a bit of a ripple in the greater artistic pool, if I’m lucky. Sell it off to someone who shares my appreciation for Classical legend and the male form—though hopefully with deeper pockets.”
Until now, Aubrey hadn’t given much thought to what would become of the painting once Halloway finished it. He’d assumed it might go into a portrait hall not unlike the one full of Lindsey’s ancestors in this very house, rarely exhibited, and only privately examined. Halloway’s revelation—that he’d intended the work for public exhibition and sale—rather threw a wrench into Aubrey’s assumptions.
But rather than admit his own misapprehensions, Aubrey asked, “You’ve exhibited other paintings previously?”
“Indeed I have—Contrary to popular belief, it would seem!” Halloway replied in good humour. “They do tolerably well. Garner some rev
iews in more out-of-the-way publications. And they sell, which is a rarer thing for art than you might think. But more importantly, the interest they generate encourages new portrait clients, which is the real bread-and-butter of the business. And,” he added with a mischievous twitch of his moustache, “I rather enjoy painting them.”
“Are they usually of Classical scenes?”
Halloway furrowed his brow as he considered the question, his brush flitting between canvas and palette all the while. “You know, I’ve never quite broken it down mathematically. But if I had to estimate, I’d say about half of them are Classical, a third medieval, and whatever’s left a sort of vulgar hodge-podge.”
Aubrey, who’d spent the last few minutes trying to find a delicate phrasing for his most pressing inquiry, gave up. “Are they all nude?”
The question which so strained Aubrey’s personal sense of propriety didn’t appear to give Halloway anywhere near so much strife. “Certainly not the medieval ones. Absolutely smothered in velvet, they are. But one can get away with a great deal more when it comes to the Classical. I suspect that’s a great part of why they’re so popular.”
The thought of such popularity made Aubrey feel somewhat queasy. He’d been popular once before, as a telegraph boy, amongst men who greatly desired his naked form. Returning to such a state after having worked so hard to escape it didn’t sit well with him. Furthermore, whilst he’d been called strikingly beautiful as a youth, he knew his appearance hadn’t been so distinctive as to remain recognisable long after he’d grown out of the trade.
But now, in the wake of the boiler explosion at Rook Mill, his steam burns had left him with a face that shocked passers-by into open-mouthed horror. Such a face would burn into the memories of all who saw Icarus Fallen. He couldn’t hope for anything like anonymity with the new and far more distinctive likeness he wore now. Not only his face, but his naked body would once again be on display, with the same unmistakable scars running all along it.
Throw His Heart Over Page 6
