“I would love to, but my hands are rather enjoying themselves already.” He stroked his palms over Henry’s back. “Might you do the honors?”
Henry grinned at him. George felt that smile like a caress.
“And have half the country jealous of me?” Henry started to edge the shirt up, inch by tantalizing inch. “I won’t apologize for not rushing. I want to remember this forever.”
“Take all the time you need, Fitz.” George watched him, his breath quickening. “I’m going nowhere.”
Were Henry’s hands shaking? Just a tremble?
“Bloody hell, George—this is better than on telly!” Henry swept his palms over each inch of skin as it was exposed, until he had pushed the polo shirt up to George’s armpits and could brush his fingertips over George’s nipples.
The touch sent a jolt of pleasure through George and he arched his back, urging Henry not to stop. With a flex of his arms, he dragged the shirt over his head and tossed it aside.
“How do I measure up to the chap on the telly?”
Propping himself up on one arm, Henry passed his eyes up and down George.
“Not bad, I’d say.” The hitch in Henry’s voice as he spoke betrayed his admiration. George was no stranger to being gaped at appreciatively, but the—it was, wasn’t it, or was he only imagining it?—adoring gaze of Henry Fitzwalter was the most precious look he had ever received.
Henry’s voice was barely above a whisper. “Lie on your back, George, let me kiss your tummy.”
It was somehow the most erotic thing George had ever heard and he shifted onto his back, unable to tear his gaze from Henry.
Henry pressed his mouth to George’s, then snaked his tongue the length of George’s neck. Once he reached the planes of George’s chest, Henry kissed and nibbled his way across, teeth gently grazing his nipples. All the while, those fathomless blue eyes peered up at George. George sank his fingers into Henry’s hair as that soft mouth moved ever lower.
With one hand on George’s hip, the other tangling the fingers of George’s free hand, Henry bathed television’s most famous stomach with lips and tongue. The steadying hand on George’s hip anchored him to the sofa even as he arched toward Henry’s mouth.
Courting Standy-Bee, he reminded himself. Courting and behaving and not tearing the chap’s clothes off and rolling around in the rugs until the next day dawns.
By God, though, he is a hard chap to resist.
The tender brush of Henry’s tongue over George’s navel had George moaning, and at last, and unfortunately, Henry raised his head. He placed his palm flat on George’s stomach, while it was still wet from his kisses. Kneeling with George’s legs pressed between his own, Henry panted and passed his hand through his hair.
“George… I’m sorry, I have to stop. I was seconds from undoing your jeans and—we’re courting, right? Aren’t we?”
“You’re really very”—George smiled, combing his hand over Henry’s soft hair—“lovely. You’re lovely.”
“Another day, though, I promise you that. Those jeans are coming off, and I’m going to keep kissing, all the way down.” Henry winked. “But not on a first date, eh?”
“I don’t—” George felt oddly thrown off kilter by that. “I’m not a tart, Fitz, don’t think that. I just got a bit carried away. Sorry, I wouldn’t want—”
He tutted, annoyed at himself and his own enthusiasm. What must Henry think now?
“If anything, I’m the tart.” Henry danced his fingertips across George’s stomach. Then, so light that he barely touched him, rested them on the bulge of George’s erection. “You have such a beautiful cock. I want to pleasure you, George—I want to taste you.”
“Oh, Fitz,” George gasped. “How did we ever get by as enemies?”
Henry stroked George’s hardness through his trousers. “Because somehow we knew that making up would be amazing?”
“I wouldn’t have wanted…” He sighed, not sure how to say it. “The lads who left someone back home, I was always glad I wasn’t one of them. I couldn’t have gone out there if it meant leaving you.”
Henry returned to lying on his side and curled his leg over George’s. Linking their hands again, George was caught by those ridiculous blue eyes once more.
“You were in my thoughts—in my heart—every day,” Henry said. “You still are, because I couldn’t stop loving you.”
“You—” He must have misunderstood surely, or was that— “I thought you hated me.”
“I lied to myself. I wanted everyone to think I hated you—I wanted to stop loving you, because it scared me. There. That’s the truth.” Henry brought their linked hands to rest over his heart. “I don’t expect anything, but I just hope you can at least forgive me.”
“I forgave you the first time an IED went off next to our Scimitar.” George fell silent for a few seconds, feeling Henry’s heart pounding beneath his palm. Longley Parva had never seemed so far away as it had on that unremarkable Tuesday afternoon when the world had looked like it might end. “I phoned you that night but I got your voicemail… I didn’t know what to say, so I never dared try again.”
Henry’s kiss was soft on George’s cheek. “We’re together now, George. I know thousands love television’s Captain George Standish-Brookes, but I love my Standy-Bee.”
“I love you, Fitz.” George tried the words out, the words he had readied years earlier at the end of an unreliable phone line from the desert. He had never expected to hear his own voice saying them, yet here they were, and Henry didn’t look at all perturbed. In fact, he looked happy, as happy as George felt.
“Thank goodness for that!” Henry chuckled, and George found himself pulled into his boyfriend’s—his lover’s—embrace. “I’m not going to let you go ever again, my dear old George.”
“Also known as the luckiest man alive!” He laughed, clinging to Henry’s waist. Maybe the Amazon could wait after all, since he now had a horse and a vet to look after.
“No, no, I’m the luckiest man alive!” Henry ruffled George’s hair energetically.
They kissed again, deep, passionate kisses, echoed by strong, loving caresses. George slid his hand down to rest on Henry’s bottom, holding their hips tight together as he felt his lover’s erection pressing against him. This felt like more than courtship but he wasn’t about to complain or even think, too caught in the feeling of loving and being loved in turn.
“You can stay tonight if you’d like to,” he whispered, hearing Jez’s hooves clipping into the kitchen in the silence that followed. “There’s no pressure.”
“Like to? I’d love to!” Henry stroked George’s chin and kissed him, before adding, “Only thing is, I don’t have my jim-jams with me.”
“I’m hoping you won’t need them, Fitz.”
A hesitant look crossed Henry’s face. He put his hand over his stomach, still clothed in his frayed top, then moved it away, grinning, all demurral gone.
“I hope so too.”
“Before we get too carried away, let’s put Jez to bed? Then the night’s ours, Fitz.”
Just as they disentangled themselves, George was struck with a moment of nostalgia. Sunday evenings at Longley Parva Manor with mugs of cocoa, toasting crumpets over the fire beneath Bad Billy’s regard, Henry’s father holding forth as they watched All Creatures Great and Small.
What could possibly have made him think of that?
Henry groaned. “Oh, bloody hell! That’s my phone going off. Do you like the ringtone? Couldn’t resist the theme tune of our favorite thing on telly!”
“It’s very you, darling!”
George rolled down from the sofa and landed on his knees just in time to hear a clatter from the kitchen. Leaving Henry to answer the phone, he hurried through to the kitchen where Jez was finishing the last of half a dozen fresh apples, the wooden bowl still rocking back and forth on the ground. Jez’s punishment was a cuddle from his owner and a fresh carrot for dessert. What was a boy for if not indulging, a
fter all?
“Uncle Fitz is staying over,” George confided to Jez in a whisper. “He loves me!”
George turned at the sound of a soft knock on the kitchen door, followed by a frustrated sigh.
“So sorry about this, dear old George. I’ve been summoned. Mrs. McKenna’s cat has been hit by a car. It’s still alive—it must be in a lot of pain. I can’t leave it, George, I’ve got to go. I’d much rather stay with you than decide life or death over someone’s pet, but… I’ve got to hurry.”
“Oh God, did you get the Land Rover back?” George tried to recall Mrs. McKenna. Was she walking distance?
“Yes—it’s only a couple of minutes to the surgery. They’re waiting for me there. Look, let’s do this again.” Henry had already put on his jacket and was holding his car keys.
“Tomorrow night, remember? I’ll cook?”
“Deal!” George received a quick kiss to his forehead, and as Henry ran through the hallway, he shouted, “I bloody love you, George—don’t forget that!”
Chapter Eleven
The following morning Longley Parva slumbered, but the world of global business never slept. And nor did Steph Belcher. Across the Belcher bedroom with its planes of glass and marble, its mirrors and chandeliers and neutral colors, the chirrup of a Skype ringtone sounded. It rang out of a sleek silver laptop, echoing through the house.
A moment later, the ringtone bellowed out from another computer in the office, from Ed’s phone and two tablets, providing a blaring wake-up call for the village’s resident millionaire.
Steph tied on her pearl-gray silk dressing gown. She nudged her half-asleep husband. Not getting a swift response from the baddest ball-breaker on the exchange, she lifted his eye mask off his face and held the elastic at such a stretch that her husband would know she’d ping it back on him if he ignored her.
“Ed-babes? A call’s coming through.”
“Tell them to piss off.” He yawned.
She let go of the mask and it snapped against Ed’s face.
“Up!”
Ed let out a howl and bolted upright, his hand shooting out to seize the phone and hold it up.
“No contacts in, smart-arse,” he barked, waving the screen at her. “Who is it?”
Steph swept up one of the tablets and dashed her fingertip across the screen. She flicked back her hair and flashed her porcelain-veneered teeth at the tiny black dot of the camera.
“Randy Cheese! What can we do for you? Must be the middle of the night over there!”
Her Saint-Tropez-tan legs carried her back to the bed and its satin sheets. She propped herself up in front of Ed so that he appeared like a second, miniature head attached to her shoulder.
“It’s always office hours in the Cheese Tower,” the New York billionaire told her as soon as his image appeared. His orange face filled the screen, face plump and cheeks ruddy atop a too-tight collar and tie. Cheese’s boot-black hair was a slicked shadow and he peered more closely into the camera. “What the hell’s going on, Belcher? You sleeping when you should be working?”
“Ed-babes was having a power nap.” Steph pouted at the screen. “I was just waking him up—in the best way a woman can.”
“So, what’s the verdict on the crazy squire’s house? How much does he want?”
Steph rolled her eyes and turned to glare at her husband, gesturing toward the screen. “You can tell him.”
“Our local vet’s nutty as a fruitcake, Mr. Cheese.” Ed was a minute away from touching his forelock, it seemed. “He says he won’t sell for any amount, not to an American.”
Steph nodded, running her finger down from her collarbone to the V of her dressing gown. “Ed’s quite right about that.”
The kind vet who had tried to please her with nice words—the kind vet who had spent all his money on his business and not on Steph.
“But me and Steph have got a plan.” Ed beamed. Steph tensed, not sure he fully understood the scheme or his part in it. Would he say the right thing? “And he can’t go on forever, the place is going to run him into an early grave. So we’re going to make an offer to buy the house off him and preserve it for the village, then give it to you for a nominal fee.”
A huge fee, of course.
“And we can promise you that the planning go-ahead for Cheese Acres Golf and Resort is going to be a piece of cake,” Ed went on. “Isn’t that right, Stephy-boo?”
“Oh, yes.”
Oh yes, it would, because her friend was having an affair with someone on the planning committee at the council, and Steph had casually let it be known that she would tell his wife about his dalliance if he didn’t do all he could to ensure planning permission went through. And damn the bloody Parvans.
Steph smiled across thousands of miles at Randy Cheese. “I’ve been networking.”
“Good girl.” Cheese pointed one finger at the camera. “She’s a good girl, hang on to that one. So, what’s this nominal fee? Don’t try to cross me, Belcher. I’ll buy you, eat you, shit you out and sell you at a profit!”
Steph winced as Ed made a strangled noise. Below the line of the camera, she stabbed her fingernails into his wrist to bring him back into line.
“What we pay plus a finder’s fee of ten percent?” Ed trotted out his line, Steph knowing that his lawyer would put whatever price on the document she told him to, even if they got the house for free thanks to that ancient cricketing wager. After all, Steph knew everybody, and when she’d mentioned to that same lawyer that she had noticed his young secretary’s newborn mysteriously seemed to have no father on the scene, he had gone white as milk.
Yes, I’m a useful sort of wife.
She tipped her head to one side, twirling a length of her blonde hair about her finger. Rather like she did her men.
“So—I hope that’s agreeable, Mr. Cheese? We’re looking forward to your visit. I’ll be providing the entertainment, by the way.”
“When the bulldozers move in and get rid of that damned old eyesore of a manor, then I’ll enjoy the entertainment,” Cheese told her coolly. “And when Cheese Acres Golf and Resort opens in Pavley Longa, you and I can share a hole or two, Stephanie.”
“Or three,” she purred.
“I’ve got my handicap down to fourteen,” Ed added, completely missing the innuendo. “So I’ll be enjoying those holes too!”
“Stephanie, we’ll talk again,” Cheese told her. “Belcher, get on that goddamned house. Cheese out!”
“Goodbye, Randy!” Steph blew him a kiss and wriggled her long-nailed fingers at him.
“Bye,” Ed called a moment after the call ended. Then he looked at Steph and told her, “He knows we’re cheating him, he’s going to have us whacked! We’ll be in concrete boots!”
“How could he know? And a bit of good-natured cheating between businessmen—that’s how the world turns, Ed-babes. You know that more than anyone.”
“If he finds out we’re trying to get the house for free…you’ll need more than your tits to save us!”
Steph pulled her dressing gown tight around her, her cleavage disappearing from view. She was quiet for a moment, tapping her finger against her lips in thought.
“We have a trump card, though—television’s Captain George. Henry might have blustered about in a rage when he turned up the other day, but I know that Henry still has little mementos of George stashed about his house. Photos of them as lads, vet novels that George bought him for Christmas yonks ago. George can’t stand him, that much is obvious—his opening gambit, defending his old chum, was so fake! He’s probably trying to shit-stir for this documentary of his, bit of pretend peril makes for good telly. And that documentary, remember, will star us. Now, imagine—what if we could persuade George to help us? We don’t have to tell him exactly what our plans are, but he can help us get what we want. Can’t he?”
Ed narrowed his eyes and nodded slowly. He looked Steph up and down, a leer on his thin lips.
“Old George’s always been one for th
e birds, hasn’t he? Banged a princess and all that? He won’t pass up the chance to charter your territory, Steph.” He patted her knee. “After all, he doesn’t know what a dried-up old carrot you are! You know the rules, though—you can touch it, but he isn’t sticking it in anywhere.”
Dried-up old carrot? You shrivelly dicked bastard.
Steph pouted at her husband. “Ed-babes, you’re the best lover I’ve ever had—you don’t need to worry. One hand job from me and he’ll give us Henry on a platter.”
She hoped she sounded sincere, because she had that episode of George in the sauna on DVD and she liked to watch it alone when Ed was away on business. The thought of that delightful bottom hurrying away across the tundra had kept her from loneliness on several occasions.
“Here you are.” He reached across to the marble bedside table and picked up his wallet. It bulged with cash but Ed’s plump fingers plucked out the black credit card. The only credit card worth a damn. “Get yourself something nice. Something that’ll give old Georgie a thrill?”
“Can I take the Ferrari?”
“Don’t forget where you parked it this time, you daft cow.” Ed smiled benevolently. “And remember, anything being poked where it shouldn’t and there’ll be a hell of a rumpus.”
“Oh, Ed-babes, you silly billy!” She kissed the top of his head. “To the shops! And to gullible celebrities!”
Chapter Twelve
Henry paused at the garden gate. He saw the foal first, cropping at the lush green lawn. Then he saw the man, whose gaze had settled on the small horse and hadn’t wandered from it. A surge of love washed through Henry. George, clad in nothing but a pair of loose black pajama bottoms, was balancing on the old stone step at the back door of his cottage. He was blinking against the daylight and Henry wondered—had George, like Henry, lain awake half the night, capable of nothing more than smiling at the dark ceiling above him?
George held a steaming mug in one hand. He raised it to his mouth and took a tentative sip. Then he balled his free hand into a fist and stretched his arm high above his head, causing the pajamas to edge just a little lower on his hips.
The Captain and the Cricketer Page 12
