A Gathering Storm (Porthkennack Book 2)

by Joanna Chambers

“Is the door to the little chamber locked?” Ward whispered, gesturing at it.

  Nicholas nodded. He appeared calm and assured, even though he was the virgin here, so to speak.

  At last the bedchamber door swung open and they stepped inside. It was barely eight o’clock and, at this time of year, still light out, but with the heavy velvet drapes closed, the room was dark, shrouding them both in deep shadows as soon as Ward closed—and locked—the door behind them.

  Ward quickly crossed the room to light the lamp, the match he struck flaring brightly in the darkness, then quickly subsiding. He let the flame recover its strength before lifting the glass chimney from the lamp and touching the match to the oily wick. As soon as he replaced the chimney, the flame seared, rising high and bright—too bright. He fiddled with the knob till he’d dimmed it to his liking.

  When he turned back to Nicholas, it was to find that the man had already removed his coat, waistcoat, and tie. His shirt gaped at the neck, revealing a tantalizing slice of shadowy, tawny skin and his dark hair gleamed in the lamplight. He was smiling faintly at Ward, his gaze warm and appreciative, and exuding that characteristic calmness that settled every jangling nerve in Ward’s body.

  “You look . . . very nice,” Ward said hoarsely.

  In truth, Nicholas didn’t look nice, he looked beautiful. Not that he seemed to mind Ward’s blandly decorous words. If anything, he was amused, one side of his mobile mouth kicking up in the charming half smile Ward liked so well.

  “You do too, but you’re a bit buttoned-up for my liking,” Nicholas replied, moving towards Ward and reaching for the buttons of his coat. “Let’s get you out of these clothes.”

  Dry-mouthed, Ward nodded mutely.

  Nicholas dealt with his buttons in a matter of moments, pushing the coat from Ward’s shoulders. It dropped noiselessly to the floor, and of one accord, they moved closer together, close enough to kiss.

  “Such a handsome face you’ve got,” Nicholas murmured, tracing his thumb over one of Ward’s eyebrows. “Eyes like acorns.”

  “Acorns?” Ward repeated, amused despite himself.

  Nicholas’s smile was sheepish. “That’s what they look like to me,” he said. “But I’m no poet.” He leaned in, his breath warm against Ward’s mouth, lips near enough to capture without effort.

  “You look into my eyes, and you see acorns,” Ward repeated, grinning.

  “I do,” Nicholas confirmed, smiling. “Right now, they’re a light, woody brown, like when acorns are properly ripe and they’ve fallen off the tree in the natural way. The way they are when you find them on the forest floor, with their little caps falling off.”

  Ward blinked, surprised by how much thought Nicholas seemed to have given this.

  “But sometimes,” Nicholas went on, almost dreamily, “they’re more like those greenish ones that aren’t so ripe. The ones that are holding tight to their caps, you know?”

  Ward did know. He knew exactly the shade Nicholas meant, and it surprised him because if he’d been asked what colour an acorn was, he’d have said brown. Just brown.

  “My mother says I have hazel eyes,” Ward husked.

  Nicholas looked interested. “Is that the proper word?”

  Ward shrugged. “It’s the word my mother uses.”

  “I’m sure it’s right then,” Nicholas teased. “Whatever colour you call them, they’re beautiful.”

  “So are yours,” Ward said with helpless honesty.

  Nicholas laughed, amused. “You don’t need to pay me back, compliment for compliment.”

  “I mean it,” Ward protested. “They’re like . . . starlight.” And with that, he lifted his chin, closing the tiny gap between them, settling his lips on Nicholas’s.

  He didn’t know quite what to do after that, but Nicholas appeared to be happy to take charge and Ward was very happy to let him. Moaning with pleasure, Nicholas slid his sleek, sinuous tongue into Ward’s mouth, drawing Ward’s into play.

  Oh God, the things Ward had been missing with not kissing . . .

  He grasped Nicholas’s hips and pulled him closer, thrusting their groins together as Nicholas explored his mouth with his lips and tongue, suckling and nipping and licking at him as though he was a delicious treat.

  When they finally broke apart, both breathing heavily, Ward reached for the hem of Nicholas’s shirt. “I want you to fuck me,” he murmured against Nicholas’s lips as he pushed the linen up, uncovering the man’s belly, then his chest. “I want you inside me.”

  Nicholas groaned at that, lifting his arms so that Ward could strip the shirt off him in one swift move. Ward threw the shirt aside and ran his hands over Nicholas’s broad shoulders and down his hard, muscular chest, loving the rasp of chest hair under his palms, the way Nicholas’s small nipples peaked under his touch.

  “And I really want to feel your skin against mine,” Ward muttered.

  “God, yes,” Nicholas gasped and began fumbling the placket of his trousers open. Ward followed suit, both of them stripping as quickly as they could, before coming together again, naked this time, for more deep, devouring kisses.

  Nicholas’s cock was like iron against Ward’s, hard and flushed. Their shafts bumped and duelled, the blunt heads rubbing and nudging as they kissed, on and on. It was Ward who finally, regretfully, broke the kiss. He took Nicholas’s hand in his and led him to the bed, urging him to lie down on his back before turning away to extract a small jar from his valise.

  “What’s that?” Nicholas asked roughly as Ward approached the bed, removing the top of the jar and thrusting two fingers inside to extract a large gob of white grease that immediately began melting on his skin.

  “Coconut oil,” Ward said, putting the jar down on the bedside table. “Alfie introduced me to it.” Nicholas frowned at the mention of Ward’s old lover, and Ward couldn’t help but smile a little at that. “It makes everything easier. You’ll see.”

  He stayed standing, lifting one foot onto the mattress, exposing his hole to Nicholas’s astonished gaze. And then, in one rough movement, he shoved his greasy fingers inside his body, gasping briefly at the first painful stab, even as his cock thrust eagerly upwards.

  Nicholas’s eyes widened as he lay there, staring, as Ward shamelessly pushed his first two fingers in and out of his hole several more times to make sure the grease was worked right inside his body. He withdrew them more slowly and began to use just his fingertips to massage his rim, pressing and rubbing at the taut ring, relaxing the stiff muscle while stimulating the tender, exquisitely sensitive flesh. The whole time, he watched Nicholas, lying on the bed. The man’s cock strained upwards, swollen and flushed, and his silver eyes burned with lust.

  “Ward,” he whispered. Then, “My God. Look at you.”

  With a groan, Ward shoved his fingers back in. This time, he gave in to the temptation to fuck his desperate hole with a series of hard thrusts before he withdrew again and returned to the stretching and massaging. Already he ached to be filled. To be fucked. No one had ever looked at him the way Nicholas was looking at him now, his intent gaze darting between Ward’s face and his fingers as they circled and rubbed and slid inside his body. The rosy head of Nicholas’s cock wept, a thread of clear fluid stretching from the straining tip to his flat belly.

  “You can touch your cock if you want,” Ward said roughly, and Nicholas’s hand immediately shot forward to take hold of his shaft, a moan escaping him as he stroked himself.

  “You like doing that,” Nicholas said, almost disbelievingly, as he watched Ward work.

  Ward croaked a laugh. “I love it.”

  “I want to do it,” Nicholas said. “To you, I mean.” His face flushed scarlet but he watched Ward steadily as he asked, “Will you let me?”

  Ward’s answer was a groan and a wordless nod. Immediately, Nicholas sat up.

  “Come here then,” he said. “Lie down.”

  Ward obeyed. He lay on his back on the deep, soft mattress, spreading his thighs and b
ending his knees up, tilting his hips to expose his already loosened and slick hole to Nicholas’s gaze while Nicholas got into position, kneeling between his legs.

  At first, Nicholas just looked at him, eyes wide with wonder. Then, tentatively, he reached out his index finger and gently traced it over Ward’s hole, eyes glittering when Ward jerked at the intense pleasure of that brief, whispering caress.

  “My God,” Nicholas murmured, and did it again, this time a little more firmly.

  “I want your fingers in me,” Ward breathed. His whisper-voice was soft and pleading, unfamiliar to him.

  Nicholas glanced up at him, then he nodded and reached for the jar of coconut oil from the bedside table, extracting another glob of the white grease. Swallowing hard, he brought the already melting oil to the entrance to Ward’s body. As soon as Nicholas touched him there, fingers gently circling and probing, Ward’s hole flexed, then clenched, drawing the tip of Nicholas’s index finger inside his body, just the tiniest bit. Nicholas gasped and stilled.

  “Oh God, Nicholas,” Ward groaned. “Don’t hold back. Push inside.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” Nicholas whispered.

  “You won’t. I can take it—I’m ready for it.” He met Nicholas’s eyes and added desperately, “I’m begging you for it.”

  “All right,” Nicholas said, and slowly pressed his finger inside, moaning softly as Ward’s body sucked him in. “Oh God,” he whispered. “That’s . . . It’s like silk. And the heat . . .”

  “More,” Ward pleaded. “Please.”

  Nicholas pulled carefully out before pushing in again, this time with two fingers. Then out. Then in again. After a little, encouraged by Ward’s moans and desperately rocking hips, he quickened the pace, till soon his fingers were plunging swiftly in and out, whilst his restless gaze moved over Ward’s writhing body.

  “More,” Ward begged again. “I can take more.”

  He could feel the slickness of the extra oil Nicholas had introduced, both inside his body and out. The rim of his anus was liberally coated now and three of Nicholas’s sturdy fingers were able to shove in and out of him with ease. Ward closed his eyes as pleasure sparked inside him, only to be ravaged by a new sensation when Nicholas leaned down to take Ward’s cock into his mouth.

  Nicholas’s mouth was hot and wet and clasping, and Christ, but all these sensations were enough to do Ward in: his arse being filled by Nicholas’s thrusting fingers, and his cock being suckled by the man’s sweet mouth. He gave a harsh cry, and Nicholas immediately broke off, lifting his head and stilling his hand to stare at Ward, appalled.

  “Have I hurt you?”

  “Christ, no,” Ward gasped. “It’s just . . . so good that I’m ready to spill. But I don’t want to like this.”

  Nicholas’s silver gaze glittered, a hint of smile itching the corner of his mouth. “How do you want to do it?”

  “With your cock in me,” Ward whispered. “Fucking me. Hard and deep.”

  Nicholas swallowed. “Tell me what to do. I’ve never—” He broke off, looking so suddenly unsure that Ward found himself reaching a hand out to him.

  “Just come here,” he said. “Come inside me and lie with me.”

  “Don’t you have to turn over?”

  “No, we can do it like this. I want to do it like this.” Ward smiled. “I like looking at you.” He lifted his knees to his chest, exposing himself even more, and Nicholas whimpered.

  “Come on,” Ward urged. “I’m yours.”

  Nicholas nodded, still looking nervous even as he shifted on his knees to align his cock with Ward’s entrance. And then, at last, he was pushing into Ward’s slick hole, slowly filling Ward’s arse with his thick, blunt cock, eyes closing and head falling back as the sensation of burying himself deep inside Ward took him over.

  “Oh God!” Ward gasped. “That’s good. So good.”

  It was better than good. It was everything. Being filled, possessed—in that moment, Ward felt like he’d never be able to have enough of it. Wanted it to last forever.

  Nicholas’s expression was all amazement. “You feel extraordinary.” He pulled back and thrust again. And again, and again, until he was fucking Ward the way Ward most loved, with deep, rhythmic thoroughness. Owning Ward’s body and using it for his pleasure.

  He fell forward, bracing himself on his elbows on either side of Ward’s head, and took Ward’s mouth in a savage kiss. Oh, but this man loved to kiss! And now Ward did too. He opened to that seeking tongue, letting Nicholas plunder his mouth as he was plundering his arse, relishing the friction of Nicholas’s flat stomach against his cock, which Ward realised with something like wonder he hadn’t even touched yet.

  Despite the lack of attention to his cock, Ward’s crisis was building fast. He felt the churn and surge in his balls that told him he was about to come. He broke the kiss to tell Nicholas, but Nicholas spoke first, panting, “I’m going to spend. Can’t stop it—”

  “God, yes. Do it—” Ward hissed, giving himself up to the pleasure, holding nothing back. The final stuttering strokes of Nicholas’s cock sawing in and out of him shoved Ward over the edge, and he came long and hard, a guttural cry in his throat that Nicholas silenced with his mouth. Wet heat splashed his stomach and filled his arse simultaneously, his own spend and Nicholas’s too, mingling with the coconut oil and their sweat, leaving him sticky and satisfied and thoroughly marked.

  “Thank you,” Nicholas whispered in his ear. “That was . . . well worth waiting for.”

  Ward was smiling as he drifted off into a doze.

  From The Collected Writings of Sir Edward Fitzwilliam, volume I

  I embarked upon my studies at Cambridge—philosophy, mathematics, and natural sciences—with the woolly notion of taking up a career as a clergyman. It was my father’s idea and a common road for a second son. Long before I graduated though, I knew that the Church was not for me. On leaving Cambridge, and following a long argument with my then-disapproving father, I enrolled at King’s College London to undertake further studies in the fields of chemistry and natural philosophy. It was there I wrote and published my first scientific paper and began—in my spare time and using the professors’ equipment whenever they would allow it—to carry out practical work into the subject which gripped me at that time: identifying a more effective electrolyte for the production of electrical power.

  The next morning, Nick woke early. A thin beam of sunlight had found its way into the bedchamber through a tiny aperture in the velvet curtains, falling across his face and dazzling him when he cracked his eyelids open. He groaned, lifting his arm to block out the blade of light. As he did so, his fingertips brushed against warm skin. Surprised, he turned his head.

  Ward.

  The man lay beside him, completely naked, contentedly sleeping.

  In sleep, Ward’s face was calm in a way it rarely was in wakefulness. Awake, the man was always thinking about something, fine brows drawn together in concentration. Nick rather liked his distracted look, but there was something uniquely appealing about this peacefully dozing countenance. Something oddly innocent too. Though innocent was the last word Nick would have used to describe what they did the night before, and the shameless, wonderful way Ward had seduced him.

  He had been inside Ward, and somehow, amazingly, Ward had loved it as much as Nick had. The sensation of Ward helplessly spilling between their bodies while Nick fucked him, his cock buried deep in the man’s tight arse, had been, without doubt, the single most wonderful thing Nick had ever experienced. So astonishing that it had even made Nick wonder if he might one day allow Ward to fuck him in return, despite having vowed never to allow that to be done to him again. But if he did it with Ward the way Ward had shown him last night, with coconut oil and all that preparation . . .

  Christ, just the thought of it had him hard as stone again, and wanting more. He stroked his cock, curling his fingers loosely around his shaft while he watched Ward’s sleeping face.

  H
is moving arm made the covers shift, and soon enough, Ward was stirring. He gave a raspy sort of moan and blinked his eyes open, giving Nick a puzzled, bleary look for a moment before he seemed to realise where he was and smiled.

  “Morning,” he croaked. Strangely, Nick found his mouth curving just at the sound of the man’s voice. No one could call Ward’s voice beautiful, but Nick had grown used to it now. It was part of who he was. A reminder of how strong he was, and the obstacles he’d overcome.

  “Morning,” Nick murmured. “Did you sleep well?”

  Ward’s smile was slow and sleepy. “Like a top. What time is it?”

  Nick considered the brightness and angle of the sunbeam penetrating the gap in the drapes. “I’d guess six or so.”

  Ward grunted and rolled away from him, reaching for his discarded pocket watch. Having retrieved it, he flicked it open.

  “Not far off,” he confirmed. “Ten past.”

  “Do I win a prize?” Nick teased.

  “Like what?”

  He grinned wide. “How about a kiss?”

  A raspy chuckle. “I think I could manage that. Come here.”

  Nick leaned over him, bracing himself on one arm. For a few moments, he just looked at Ward, taking in the picture of him lying there, in bed with Nick. The morning sunlight kissed Ward’s hair so that it gleamed dark gold against the white linen pillow, and his eyes, which had the greenish tinge of a ripe pear this morning, were warm with fond good humour.

  Why was it that Nick never seemed to get bored looking at Ward? He had the same features as everyone else, two eyes, a nose, a mouth. Brow and chin. What was it about the particular configuration of Ward’s face that fascinated Nick so much he could just lie here all morning and stare at the man?

  “I thought you were going to kiss me,” Ward said at last, seeming amused.

  “Be patient,” Nick scolded, mildly. “I’m looking at you.”

  “Why?” Ward’s smile was satisfied. “Do you like what you see?”

  Nick gave a growly chuckle. “You know I do.”

  Ward laughed, then his eyes went soft and he said, “So do I.” He slid one hand up the length of Nick’s braced arm and curled his fingers round the back of Nick’s neck, fingers tangling in the thick hair at his nape. “Now kiss me.”