A boulder settled in his throat at the kind understanding, the sensual musicality of an unchecked Irish accent caressing the air. “I should be used to it.”
“I doubt we ever get used to hatred and bigotry,” said Joseph quietly.
Seconds later, a warm, firm hand settled lightly on his back, and Clayton shuddered. At last, Joseph was touching him. The Fates were cruel, giving him something he’d wanted for the longest time but twisting it into goddamned pity. “D-don’t.”
The hand didn’t lift away. Instead, it began moving in gentle, wonderfully soothing circles. Fuck. If this continued he would break down. Show exactly how weak he was.
“I said don’t,” he snarled, and pivoting on his heel, he gripped Joseph by the cravat and slammed him up against the music room wall. Joseph’s chest rose and fell rapidly as he gasped, and guilt surged through Clayton so intensely it was several moments before he could bring himself to meet the baron’s gaze.
But when he finally did, what he saw froze him in place.
For it wasn’t fear in Joseph’s eyes, but tenderness, compassion…
And pure, unvarnished lust.
He’d known touching Clayton would be a risk. And yet after what he’d heard from the man’s vile family, seen the silent agony that had screamed from every square inch of him as he stared out the music room window, his head bowed and shoulders stiff, Joseph hadn’t been able to stop himself.
Now Clayton was ready to strangle him for the audacity. Or perhaps rearrange his face. And warped fool that he was, all he could concentrate on was the strength in that grip. The broadness of his shoulders. The scent of sandalwood and the oil that Clayton used to scrub the charcoal stains from his fingers. Christ, he wanted to kiss him. To hold him close and stroke his hair. To sink down, open Clayton’s trouser flap, and suck that mouthwatering cock down his throat. Taste his come just as Susanna had. His knees actually trembled with the need.
“I’m sorry,” he said hoarsely, instead. “So sorry.”
Clayton’s hold tightened. “For what?”
“They caused you terrible pain. And not for the first time.”
Emerald eyes seared into his soul. “What did you hear, my lord?”
Far more than I should have. Unthinkable cruelty from a man and woman utterly unworthy of being your father and mother. Also words that gave me hope and courage for what I am about to say.
“That they want you to stop painting and instead become a vicar,” he said. “So I know they don’t understand you at all. Or care about what you cherish. And…”
“Yes?” Clayton growled, practically emanating with rage and a bone-deep pain.
Joseph swallowed hard. “That you were beaten and starved and doused with icy water to cure your, ah…attraction to gentlemen.”
“Ha! Tis indeed true, I fuck men as well as women. Are you going to report me, my lord? Have me arrested? You hold such power now, life and death even. My parents have kept my wicked secret because they know they would be tainted by the scandal. But you could reveal the entire conversation. Unless, of course, you have a wicked secret of your own…”
And there it was. The moment he’d waited for since stepping onto English soil, an opportunity to share his dark past with someone who might just understand. Who might be able to provide an answer to the question he’d never been able to wrap his mind around: how he could possibly have the desire to bed both men and women.
Exhaling heavily, his gaze not leaving Clayton’s, Joseph lifted his hand until it brushed the other man’s. His skin was cool and soft, like a fine satin. “It is always surprising how much you see. Yes, I have a secret. You aren’t the only man who craves both quim…and cock. But I’d wager my past is far more scandalous than yours. Definitely more sordid.”
Clayton’s grip loosened. “You have taken a man as a lover in the past. I did wonder when you got hard looking at my sketches. And took your cock out in front of me so Susanna could suck it.”
Joseph laughed bitterly, and the harsh truth began to tumble from his lips. “Not a man, many men. And I wouldn’t call them lovers exactly. More…customers. Five men who each had an allocated day, and made me suck their cock, or bend over and take it however they wanted.”
“They forced you?” His eyes glittered dangerously.
“No. They were well-paid, consensual arrangements,” he replied, as the all-too-familiar shame and hurt and lust coiled together inside him, and he bowed his head. “I liked being fucked by men. Needed it. And yet I hated it, too. We never shared a bed or ate a meal together. Never kissed or spoke of the world outside that small, shabby room. Afterward I would crawl into my cold bed alone and make myself come. Just once, I wished we could have kissed until our lips ached. That a man would take my cock in his hand as he fucked me, we would climax together, and in the morning wake up wrapped around each other to watch the sun rise and talk ourselves hoarse. Do you know, that day we both spilled on Susanna’s breasts is the closest I’ve gotten to pleasure with a man? Watching you take her while she sucked me…Christ. I was in heaven…and hell…”
“Oh?”
Joseph took a deep breath. Now or never. “Because I envied her.”
“Did you?” said Clayton softly, and he released the cravat and moved his hand, so his palm rested almost possessively on Joseph’s chest. “Tell me exactly how.”
His heart began to thud at the overt changes in the other man. The relaxing of his shoulders and easing of his furrowed brow. A faint smile playing at his lips. The ownership in that warm touch. “Susanna knows how it feels to be kissed by you. To have your mouth on her skin and your fingers inside her. To be filled and fucked hard by your cock. To taste your come on her tongue.”
“Is that what you want, my lord?”
Joseph’s breath hitched at the subtle emphasis on ‘my’. Susanna had made a declaration of sorts at the theater. He could do no less, especially when it seemed a bloody miracle was happening right now and Clayton desired him in return. To have him and Susanna...
The three words slipped to the tip of his tongue and launched themselves out: “More than anything.”
“Then I’m going to kiss you now. Until your lips ache,” said Clayton, as he slid his hands up to cup Joseph’s face, before leaning down and brushing that skilled mouth against his.
Joseph moaned as a fierce jolt of pleasure arrowed through him, even from the light touch. The kiss deepened quickly, and soon Clayton’s tongue flicked at his lips, demanding entry. He surrendered at once, and a guttural sigh escaped as what had been sweet and tender became nothing less than carnal. Their tongues tangled, and Clayton’s hand moved to cup his ass, pressing them together so their rapidly hardening cocks rubbed back and forth, separated only by thin fabric.
“Yes,” Joseph groaned, panting for breath. “More.”
Clayton laughed, and the delight in the sound warmed him to the soul. “Greedy. Just like your beautiful wife. What a wicked pair you are.”
Boldly, he wound his arm around Clayton’s neck, and delved his fingers in that golden hair. “We…we are a pair, and yet we don’t quite work like that. What Susie and I really need is someone else to manage us. Someone strong and forthright to master both quim and cock. Someone…who cares.”
The other man made a rough sound, and his hand moved from Joseph’s ass to between his legs, fumbling with the buttons at his waistband before tearing the fabric in his haste to cup and massage Joseph’s swollen cock. The sensation was incredible, so hot he felt burned, and he could only grip Clayton’s shoulders like a lifeline as a whirlwind threatened to overwhelm him.
Shamelessly, Joseph thrust his throbbing erection against the other man’s fingers. “Please. Please.”
“Like this, my lord?” Clayton whispered harshly, as he expertly fondled and teased, as he found a space between Joseph’s jaw and cravat to suck and nip. “But you cannot ruin these trousers, now. Shocking waste of quality fabric. You must wait until we’re upstairs with Susanna. We�
�re going to take turns feasting on those gorgeous nipples and that sweet, hot cunt of hers, and then you’re going to suck my cock until I come in your mouth. Aren’t you?”
“Yes,” he said in desperation, yanking on Clayton’s jacket lapel in an unspoken plea for another drugging kiss. Moaning in bliss when the request was granted.
“Wh-what is going on here?”
They both froze at the sharp feminine voice. Joseph turned his head, a wave of horrified guilt surging through him at the agony on Susanna’s face. He was a damned bloody fool. They should have explained their dual desires to her as best they could before even attempting an embrace. Despite the things they had done together with Clayton, his wife wouldn’t understand this. The two of them kissing would be an almighty shock when they hadn’t touched each other before.
“Susanna,” he said swiftly. “Let me explain.”
She choked on a sob. “There’s nothing to explain, is there? All this time you two really wanted each other. Not me. Never me. I’m just around to provide the funds, isn’t that right?”
“No,” said Clayton fiercely.
But it was too late.
His wife spun on her heel and fled the room.
Stupid Susanna. Too-trusting Susanna. Oblivious Susanna.
The words had thudded around her head for hours as she lay curled in a tight ball of misery on her bed. Knocks had sounded on the latched door. Then prolonged thumps. But she refused to let the men in. Not after two weeks of blatant lies.
To think she had been so anxious and troubled at having such strong feelings for Clayton when she loved and was married to Joseph, lying awake at night wondering how a future between one woman and two men might be possible when only she stood to benefit. And all this time they had been carrying on behind her back. Not truly wanting her, but pretending so she wouldn’t suspect that they actually wanted each other.
How could she not have known her husband desired men?
And yet, if she were brutally honest with herself, a part of her had known. Their lackluster marital relations. His reluctance to pleasure her until the day Clayton instructed him. Her husband’s words in the carriage as they returned from the warehouse: I bet he makes his lovers beg for his mouth and fingers and cock, and always satisfies. His willingness to be undressed in front of another man…
Oh God. No wonder Joseph had never wanted a child with her. Bedding his unattractive wife had been a chore. But with his lover nearby, he had been able to feign enthusiasm. And now she knew the truth about them, they had no more reason to pretend and no further use for her. Just like before she would be unwanted, reduced again to lonely yearning as she watched others be pleasured in that secluded alley. Trapped in the hell of a loveless marriage, knowing she couldn’t leave, knowing Joseph wouldn’t grant her a divorce, knowing the trust they had always shared was gone forever…
A monstrous crash had her jerking upright. She stared in shock at her bedchamber door hanging drunkenly from its hinges, and Clayton and Joseph each holding the side of a large urn they had just used as a battering ram.
Susanna shrieked. “You broke down my door!”
“You didn’t give us much choice, darling,” said Clayton, as they set the urn down beside the east wall. “Ignoring our knocks and entreaties to be let in. I’m just relieved that was far more robust than it looks. The next option was tied sheets and a rock to break the window, and dangling from a great height is not at all the thing.”
“The latched door wasn’t a significant clue that I didn’t want to see either of you?” she replied waspishly.
“Well, we needed to see you,” said Joseph.
“Why, dear husband? Do you require funds for a lover’s jaunt to the seaside, perhaps? You know where the key to the safe is. Destroying my door was quite unnecessary.”
“Susie—”
“D-do not call me that,” she choked out around the boulder now lodged in her throat. “Pet names are for those in love, like my mother and father were. Not us.”
Joseph flinched, but he walked toward her bed, Clayton right behind him. Oh. This was altogether too much. Why couldn’t they just leave her alone to pick up the pieces of her shattered heart?
“I need to apologize,” he said, as he sat on the side of the bed near her feet.
“We need to apologize,” said Clayton firmly as he dragged her dressing table stool over and perched on it. “I can only imagine what you are thinking of us right now.”
“Why?” she said hoarsely to Joseph. “Why have you lied to me all these years and pretended you cared, when you truly wish to be with a man?”
“It’s difficult to explain. And you’re a lady,” he said awkwardly.
All at once her tears dried, as a fierce wave of anger swept through her. “Don’t you dare. I bloody well am not! Just because I have a fresh title and dress well…you put me up on this bloody pedestal as though I’m some delicate miss from a ton ballroom, when I was mostly raised in the warehouses of the London docks!”
“Susanna—”
“No! You hush and listen. After my mother died, my father buried himself in work. So I spent my days watching people. Dockhands. Clerks. Sailors. You think I haven’t seen things? I know sometimes men love other men. Or, lust after them at least. You could have told me. Then I least would have understood why you bedded me so rarely…”
Her husband’s shoulders slumped, and he rubbed a hand across his jaw. “Because that’s not the case. Or at least not the entire case. I do care. Very much. And I want you to be happy. Secondly…it is difficult to explain because I don’t really understand it myself…I lust after men and women.”
Susanna stared at him blankly. “What? How can that be? Why can’t you make up your mind?”
Clayton sighed. “A fair question, but I am the same as Joseph in my lusts, and honestly, I am just attracted to both. Always have been. Pretty breasts and broad chests. Cunts and cocks. For years it caused me a lot of confusion, and I asked myself that very question: why couldn’t I settle to wanting one sex? My parents tried to assist by cleansing the male attraction out of me. It didn’t work. No matter what, the desire for both remained. So eventually I decided to just accept it.”
She reeled back, her mind whirling. “Cleansed you? Like you had a fever?”
“Indeed. It was…it was not pleasant.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she whispered, shuddering at what he might have endured. Rabid did not begin to describe those who took it upon themselves to judge and punish others based on their own rigid beliefs. “But you and Joseph lied to me. You’ve been meeting in secret.”
“No. We haven’t.”
Joseph shuffled down on the bed and tentatively took her hand. “What you saw…that was our first kiss, I swear. Everything else has been with you. And that is the way we want it to be. The three of us in bed together as a real ménage. The only difference being that Clayton and I would touch and kiss and fuck the way we each do with you. That is…if you agree.”
“A real ménage?” repeated Susanna slowly. Her mind had turned to mud. It was simply too much for one day, seeing them kiss and her world upending, and then this startling but seemingly sincere explanation that people could lust after both their own and the opposite sex.
“Yes,” added Clayton, more serious than she’d ever seen him. “I would never forgive myself if I ruined your marriage. And I know being a trio asks a lot of you and Joseph. Few will understand, and the potential for scandal and trouble is high. But…I am selfish and want so much more than a few stolen interludes. I’ve never felt this way before, and it’s not one or the other, it is both of you. Equally important. Equally precious. If however, you don’t feel the same, or if Joseph and I being lovers will cause you distress…I will…I will walk away.”
Her mind and heart recoiled violently at the thought. Before Clayton, she and Joseph hadn’t truly connected. Now they talked. Now he touched her affectionately and called her Susie. Now she knew the intense ecstas
y of being pleasured by two men at once. Could she really go back to that unhappy half-life of the past? Yet would she be comfortable with the two men touching each other—and more— in front of her? It might be entirely irrational considering what Joseph had witnessed being done to her, but would Clayton bedding him be arousing, or make her jealous? Not to mention the scandal when London society found out they lived as a trio. The men could be arrested if it was thought they bedded each other rather than merely both bedding her. The importing business could suffer. Clayton might be shunned as an artist. It was so much to contemplate.
Susanna sat up on her bed and wrapped her arms around her knees. “I need some time. To think about this.”
“Very well. Where will you sleep?” said Joseph. “Since we, ah, redecorated.”
“I’ll lock away my valuables and take one of the guest chambers. And arrange one for Clayton.”
The men looked disappointed, but she squared her shoulders against it. Only time alone would help her make the right decision. But make it she would. Her future happiness depended on it.
Chapter 5
The weak autumn sunshine was only just beginning to peep between the drawn drapes at the window of his comfortable, primrose-hued guest bedchamber, but Clayton had been awake for hours.
His stomach wouldn’t stop churning.
Damn it, he cared deeply for Susanna and Joseph and would never do anything to hurt either of them. When they were together, the world finally made sense, even if the world would never make sense of three people finding happiness rather than two. And yet Susanna could say no, that she chose the social norm of life with just her husband. It would kill him inside, but it was understandable. Most of the population wasn’t comfortable with men loving and bedding each other. Hell, the law wanted men to be arrested and transported or hanged for it.
And yet if she said yes, he was certain the three of them could face anything, as long as they were together. Scandal, the ton, his revolting family, and whatever other stinking cesspits stood in the way to their forever after. But he couldn’t pressure her. He wouldn’t pressure her. It had to be an entirely free will decision for this to succeed.
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