“Buggery fuck.” Ainsley stumbled back a step, chest heaving.
Joachim chuckled. “Oh, you can count on that.”
He took his time to the door and saw the back of the younger man finish taking the stairs two at a time. Willing himself not to race up the steps as quickly, he made his way across the sitting room and poured himself a small taste of whiskey. He sat in a chair across the room from Trixie, not wishing to disturb her, but she laid her book across her lap and asked for a refill. Moved her feet to the floor to give Joachim a spot on the sofa. He balanced his stick against the side.
“Cheers.” She half lifted her glass. “You’ve been perfect for Ainsley, you know? He’s never been so calm and focused.”
“It’s the singing,” he said, more blustery than he felt inside.
Trixie tilted her head to the side. “Charlie sang for Ainsley all the time, did he tell you?”
A wave of something...confusion, perhaps, or perfect clarity. Like being given the key to something that made such perfect sense, it ought to have been obvious before.
“He didn’t mention that.”
“He was a naughty child. Forever in trouble with our father. But Charlie figured out ways to calm him down and keep him from mayhem. They were inseparable. So close that I felt left out, to tell you the truth, as I was in between them in age.”
She stared into the distance the way Ainsley did so often, but Joachim’s job at the hospital was to listen to people, and he was able to maintain his calm face, even if his mind raced.
Trixie focused on him once more. Recrossed her legs and gave a wistful smile. “Ainsley thinks Charlie died because of him.”
Pushing his hair back in agitation, Joachim snapped, “What does he think he did? There was a bloody war on. I’m not sure how that could be Ainsley’s fault.”
Reaching over, the beautiful young woman touched his hand. “I’m not really sure, because I wasn’t here. And everyone in the family who was here is dead, except for Ainsley, who won’t even mention Charlie’s name. It’s been ten years.”
Wounds didn’t always heal in what people thought was an appropriate amount of time, but this wasn’t the time to philosophize. Especially when Ainsley waited for him upstairs. He drained his glass and stood, wishing Trixie a good-night for the second—and hopefully last—time.
“He’s going to be worse than before when you’re gone. I’m dreading it.” Miss Graham’s self-assurance slipped.
Nonsense. Joachim shook his head. “He’ll be fine. This was only—”
Trixie held up her hand. Her calculating look returned. “Whatever you’re going to say, you’re wrong. He’s never been mad over anyone. Not ever. Not even that dreadful Ross Campbell, who spoke against him at the university.”
“Ross Campbell?”
Trixie waved the name away. “He was a fellow lecturer. The only man Ainsley ever seemed to care for. Turned out, he was the one to make the complaint against Ainsley stick.” She shot him a wistful smile. “But Ainsley never acted like this around that scoundrel. Not the way he behaves head over heels for you.”
He had nothing glib to say, so he murmured good-night and pulled the door shut. She was wrong and it left him hollow. Trixie had missed the appalled faces Ainsley made anytime Joachim tried to show him his feelings. This was a need born from boredom and lust, and he’d bet Ainsley would find a replacement easier than he could.
The world was full of men like him, but his Dr. Graham was one of a kind.
Shoes in hand, he took the stairs silently. Slipped into the washroom and combed his hair. Freshened himself up and looked at his watch. A half hour had passed. God almighty, the poor man would be furious.
And granite hard.
That made him grin.
Joachim eased the doorknob around and slid into the room, locking the door behind. Only a small light shone from next to the bed, and cast the lean body stretched over the mattress in dappled shadow. Ainsley’s cheek cradled on his arm. His eyes followed Joachim’s movements as he unknotted his tie and slid it off. And then he unbuttoned his shirt, leaving it hanging open.
Neither man smiled, or spoke, but the atmosphere was warm enough that steam should have risen off the bed.
He walked behind Graham to appreciate the view of his obeyed command. The way his arms reached forward over the bed left every muscle in his back and legs highlighted. He traced the curve of Ainsley’s bum, enjoying the quiver of skin under his palm.
Then, he stepped back, took off his own trousers as quietly as he could, and savored every twitch of muscle in his ginger’s calves as his anticipation grew.
“I’ve only once seen you without plaid, love.” His whisper shattered the silence of the room. “You adore it, and it suits you. But, a man so into tartan ought to be naked, don’t you think?” He stepped between the spread legs and unclasped the buckle on Graham’s hip. His hands delved between the legs and the bed and he traced down the front of the younger man’s thighs.
Joachim eased the kilt down those legs with excruciating slowness. The steady increase in Ainsley’s breathing was noticeable. He wiped the planes of his palms up the prone man’s back, and the skin rose in gooseflesh. He followed his hands with a broad sweep of his tongue.
Graham released a ragged moan that sounded like it was wrenched from his damn soul.
Holy hell, he’d have Ainsley do this once a week if there was a future for them.
But he’d push that notion away. Because there was tonight, and he’d be damned if he wasted it wishing for things he couldn’t have.
Reaching his arms long to lie over the body under him, he kissed the waiting mouth. Lost himself in the warm tongue and soft lips. Ainsley let out a series of moans and whimpers that screamed to Joachim’s cock. The sounds of need and want grew when he backed away and focused on the tender skin behind Graham’s ears, and in his elbows, and above his hips. Licking and nipping and otherwise leaving the younger man to squirm and mewl pleas of desperation that urged him on.
Joachim eased himself up and removed the rest of his clothes, bypassing any touch of his own cock, which ached to thrust inside the pliant body splayed for his attention. Bracing the back of Ainsley’s thighs, he pushed them onto the bed, bent at the knee, and then elbowed them wider so the man’s chest balanced his arse in the air.
He sucked on his own finger, wetting it, and dragged it between the cleft. “What do you want?”
The skin on Ainsley’s spine shivered. “Christ, I’ve forgotten how to make my mouth work. What do I want?” Graham peeked at him upside down from between his thighs. “You’re asking me, truly?”
Joachim nodded, trying not to laugh.
“God. I want to fuck you. I want you to fuck me. I want your fat cock in my mouth. I want you to torture me forever, but I don’t. I want you to stop torturing me and do all the things you’re already doing, and all the things you have planned in that devious mind of yours. Now.”
Joachim laughed once, and pressed his finger inside Graham, who gasped, even though he must have expected it. “Why was I keeping you quiet? That list made me ten times harder, you little witch.” He wrapped his free arm under the low part of Ainsley’s belly and pulled his arse even higher. Spread the flesh back and licked where his finger moved.
“Christ on a...fucking...oh dear God, Joachim, yes.” Ainsley beat his arm on the bed for emphasis.
He puddled saliva and the body under him adjusted to be even more accessible. Licked and prodded with his tongue until Ainsley was reduced to a soft, moaning mess.
“I’ve never been so ready to be fucked in my life.” Ainsley’s voice cracked and split open. “Please let me touch you.”
Ainsley’s mouth frantically swallowed his cock before he was even situated. His pelvis bucked against teeth and the soft, tight skin at the back of Graham’s throat.
His fing
ers and tongue fucked the young man until he was sobbing around Joachim’s prick, each vibration reverberating through his core. He reached under those slim thighs and pulled them over his shoulders. Ainsley’s erection dripped into the hair on his chest, the ginger grinding against him like he needed the friction.
He was going to fucking come if he didn’t slow down. And so was Ainsley.
Joachim pushed Graham’s thighs over to one side and lifted his head by his blazing auburn hair. Brought the mouth still sucking and licking toward his lips and surrendered to the plunge of the tongue deep inside.
Ainsley’s arms wrapped around Joachim’s neck tight enough to choke him, so he loosened one, and pulled his head back. “You liked that, hmm?”
The younger man couldn’t even speak, merely nodded his glazed-eyed face.
God damn, he was glorious; chafed lips and skin flushed from Joachim’s beard. And putty. Liquid in his arms with exquisite surrender. Cockburn held him upright with one arm and awkwardly, but competently, prepped both of them with the oil waiting open on the bedside table.
And Ainsley eased himself onto Joachim’s cock like he belonged there.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Ainsley
Slow but urgent, and every other sensation possible, juxtaposed as he used the strength in his thighs to rise and fall along the rigid length of his gorgeous brute. Joachim’s hands never stopped sweeping across his skin, but he allowed Ainsley full control of depth and speed.
And he fucking luxuriated in it.
No one in the world kissed like Joachim. The combination of back-of-the-throat rumbles and flickering eyelashes mixed with the nibbling and gliding and tangling, so it was as if he was being made love to in two divergent, yet complementary, halves of his being.
His breath caught in his throat when Joachim spit into his palm and tugged his cock at the same speed. Ainsley’s arms straightened behind him, using Cockburn’s thighs as counterweight to the movement. Lips dropped to his nipples, so his spine arched back.
Joachim sat up and crushed their mouths together so hard his lips pinched against teeth. The hips underneath swiveled and thrust deeper so he saw stars behind his eyes. Fingers pressed so deeply into Cockburn’s biceps the man growled.
Ainsley’s hand was dragged down, toward Joachim’s belly, and splashed with oil.
Oil?
“What do you want me to do?” Ainsley had spent the week being at the brute’s delicious mercy, and his own assertive instincts had been quashed. They were ready to be revived.
The older man’s eyes were hooded with lust, but a smile played on his swollen lips. “Whatever you wish.”
The freedom to have his way with the muscular body between his thighs sluiced through his greedy mind and he reached his hand behind him. Under the place where they were already joined, he flicked his lubricated fingertip along Joachim’s hole. Thighs widened and hips tilted to make it easier.
Christ. So much skin to explore and his cock leaked with the longing to reduce this great big man to a quivering, shaking mess. He pumped his hips up and down Joachim’s hardness a few times, relentless. Drawing a wail from them both. And then he slid all the way off and positioned himself between Cockburn’s sublime thighs. The man’s cock glistened against the golden skin of his abdomen and the darker nesting of hair, as gilt-tinged as that on his chest.
All for him. Fuck. Whatever he wished to do.
Ainsley pushed up one of Joachim’s thighs and held it tightly under the knee. He sat back on his lower legs, hair falling over his forehead. Being fucked was his favorite thing in the world, but that didn’t mean he didn’t enjoy topping. The prospect of this brutish bear of a man at his mercy made his cock impossibly stiffer.
Cockburn pushed back Ainsley’s hair with a tenderness that he ought to despise, but instead, it started a thrum in the back of his mind that twined with his own unexamined emotions. He pushed his cheek into the calloused palm, which drew his face back down for another kiss.
A raw and ragged kiss that plumbed a startling urge to confess all the feelings he didn’t know he had for this man. This gruff and dependable man he didn’t wish to let go of. Not on Tuesday. Not ever—
Bugger.
He pulled his mouth away and plunged two slick fingers deep and without warning. Joachim’s body made a full arc from hips to the column of his neck. Color blossomed over his neck and cheeks so fast that he’d have felt guilty if Cockburn’s eyes didn’t blaze so bright.
“Lord—yes, Dr. Graham. More.”
Cockburn was so tight that it was unbelievable that he might fit inside.
“Has anyone ever fucked you?” He leaned over and poured more oil onto his fingers so the glide in and out was easier.
Sitting up on his elbows, Joachim’s face froze. “A few times. Years and years ago.”
Ainsley dropped to his stomach and bit down on the hard interior of his lover’s thigh, loving the small yelp and buck. Cockburn’s balls cinched up tight when Ainsley pressed on his prostate. He sucked one into his mouth, rolling it around. He let it go and propped his chin on the velvety skin between hipbone and erection.
“If you enjoyed it, why’s it been years and years?”
Joachim curled his fingers into the short hairs on the back of Ainsley’s skull. “My guess is that most men look at me and assume I’ll insist on being in charge.”
“You’re very good at it.” Ainsley dropped his face and bit that sensitive skin.
The deep groan carved a hole into his heart. “I’d forgotten you’re an unrepentant biter.”
He licked his lips. “I repent nothing in bed. Waste of bloody time.”
Laughing, Joachim curled his arm under his head. “Well, I’m the son of a minister, so you can bet I’ll be on my knees asking for forgiveness for all the sins we committed this week.”
Ainsley didn’t believe that for a moment. Not with the enthusiasm Cockburn had for committing the so-called sins in the first place. “The only part of that I like to picture is you on your knees.”
Cockburn waggled his eyebrows. “Shall I leave you with a good visual?”
“Fuck yes.” He pulled out his fingers and straddled Joachim’s chest on his knees, hands balancing on the back wall. He’d never get bored with that scratch of hair rasping against his skin. Never ever ever ever. He loved the depth he could push into, loved the hallowed cheeks tight around him. Loved the way Joachim kept their eyes locked.
Just fucking loved.
Bugger. He shook his head.
You don’t love this man.
Couldn’t possibly.
Ainsley poked the idea with the rusty nail of his brain.
Christ, I might.
Feverish, he drove harder, tearing the notion away and jamming it into the secret place he stored all of the ideas he was too terrified to cope with. Pumped until Cockburn made a strangling noise that woke him up. Ainsley pulled out and smothered Joachim’s face with kisses.
“God, I’m sorry, I was—”
Joachim tightened his hands on his shoulders. Looked into his eyes to steady him. “I’m fine. Shh.”
What was it about that deep voice that acted as a ballast to the maelstrom of anxiety that raged inside him so often?
“Nothing about you is weak, love,” continued the strong man now massaging his lower back, “but I promise that I won’t allow you to hurt me. Not physically.” He rubbed the frown from Ainsley’s forehead with the pads of his thumbs. Winked. “Not in a way that I don’t enjoy.”
Shite. When had this casual fucking become a minefield of undetonated sensitivities? He was a complete arsehole imbecile numpty...
“Dr. Graham, come back.” Joachim twisted his hand up Ainsley’s lagging erection and sucked the soft spot behind his ear. “Because if you give up without fucking me, I’m going to be cross with you.”<
br />
That perked him up. “How cross?”
Joachim nipped his bottom lip. “Enough to paddle that perfect arse of yours. Don’t tempt me.”
Ainsley wriggled his body happily. “Good Christ. I love...er...when you tell me what to do.”
“You do, don’t you?” His brute narrowed his eyes and scowled. Deepened his voice so it was all growly and in charge. “Then you’d better harden that cock back up.” Cockburn wrapped both of their hands around Ainsley’s prick. Reanimated it. “And now, do us a favor and use extra oil, because I’m a bit faint-hearted about the size of you riding my arse.”
Confidence restored, Ainsley complied. Oil and his own excitement dripped onto Joachim’s belly.
Cockburn rumbled in his most brutish way. “And now, use your fingers again. Fuck, yes. Like that, love.”
Love was merely an affectation. It didn’t mean anything. The hulk under him clasped his hand under his knee, exposed for Ainsley. He’d never have thought someone so big could be so flexible.
“Dr. Graham, tend to what you’re doing or I’m going to take over and not give you the chance to come.”
Bugger. No.
He slipped Joachim’s other leg over the outside of his hip and used his forearms to pull the man closer. Swiped the head of his prick over the tight, oily hole and pushed. Cockburn groaned loud enough to wake the dead. Fuck, hopefully not. But it prodded him to sink in farther.
A fist slammed into the bed next to his knee but it was attached to a smile.
“Too much?” He leaned down and slanted his mouth across Joachim’s, bearing the rest of the way inside. Fucking glorious amazing perfection.
“Fucking hell, I wanted you.” Hard fingers dug into his bum, gliding him in and out. Yes. “Like this.”
“Bossy bottom?” He giggled, mouth hovering, out of reach.
Best Laid Plaids (Kilty Pleasures) Page 22
