A Seditious Affair(4)

Silas let go of his hair, moved his own free hand down, and for the first time, took hold of the Tory’s prick. The man’s body clamped tight in response, and for a terrifying second, Silas thought he might spend before he was ready. He couldn’t stop the strangled noise in his throat as he tensed everything he had to hold it off and felt the climax recede a little. He gave it a moment, flexed his hips, and, judging by his captive’s flail, hit the spot.

“Oh, yes,” Silas growled. “Want it now, don’t you?” He rolled his hips, ignoring the strain on his back and thighs because he was too old for this, even relishing the discomfort, because it helped him keep going. The Tory was losing control altogether now, head jerking, moving spasmodically, kept upright by Silas’s arm around his chest. Incoherent sobs. Silas grinned viciously into his neck.

“Say it.”

The Tory moaned in protest. Silas tightened his other hand, feeling the swell of the Tory’s cock, using his fist around it to restrict the man’s movements more. “Say it.”

“No. No.” His hips canting and thrusting, sweat running, his prick and Silas’s fingers wet with the leaking that showed just how close he was.

“Watch yourself say it. ‘Thank you for the fucking, sir—’ ”

And the Tory broke. “Oh God, please, thank you, thank you. Thank you for—for fucking—Christ.”

Silas shoved him forward, lost himself in the capitulation, and the drugged, dizzy pleasure in the Tory’s eyes. “Bloody harlot. This is what you want, isn’t it? What are you?”

“Your whore. Anything, just, oh fuck no—”

And that was him gone, crying out helplessly with pain and shame and pleasure, and Silas after him just a few savage thrusts later, spending hard and hot into the man pinned under his own bulky body.

They lay, locked together, gasping. The Tory had his face in the sheets; Silas had his in the Tory’s shoulder and his arm trapped under the man’s chest.

A few more breaths, then the Tory made a muffled noise of discomfort. Silas wormed his arm free and withdrew with wincing care, ever afraid he’d done damage. When he felt his legs would support him, he managed to stand, and went to the little pitcher of water provided by the house—still warm—to wipe himself down and throw a clean cloth to the Tory. Odd sod that he was, he didn’t like to be observed in cleaning up, so Silas took his time stretching out the kinks and getting the wineglasses before he turned again.

The Tory lay on his back, eyes shut, sated. His face was flushed, lips reddened, skin marked all over by Silas’s fingers.

God, he was beautiful.

“Here.” Silas handed him a glass and sat on the bed. The Tory took it without looking. “What’s this, then?”

“Hermitage. It’s a French wine, from the Rhône.”

Silas had no idea where that was, nor why it mattered. But it did matter to the Tory, any fool could see, and it cost Silas nothing to ask.

He sipped at the Hermitage, which the Tory had pronounced in a Frenchified way. It had that dryness on the tongue at first that he didn’t much like, preferring beer or porter, but he knew by now that once you got a little way down the glass the taste could grow on a man. “Very fine.”

The Tory opened his eyes then. They looked tired but deeply content, all passion spent. He smiled, and Silas smiled back. “It’s good to see you.”

Silas moved his glass to chink it against the Tory’s. “You too. Been well?”

“Not so bad. Work. You?”

“Aye, busy enough. Lost one of my assistants a few weeks back, did I tell you?” That was understating it. Harry Vane, his old friends’ son, had been reclaimed by the noble family his father had abandoned, swept off to become a gentleman. Silas wasn’t going to mention that, of course. It was Harry’s business, and for all he knew of good society, which was nothing, the Tory might mix in Harry’s circles. He didn’t think much of a good young radical, or even an idle one like Harry, going off to become a gentleman, but he wasn’t going to put the boy’s future at risk with loose talk. “And it’s too damn hot.”

“That it is. I’m going down to the country this weekend.”

“Very nice. Back next week?”

Silas tried to ask it casual-like, but there was a definite twitch to the Tory’s lips when he replied, “By next Wednesday, I think.”

Silas shoved him, not hard, and the Tory sat up a little, making space. Silas moved to lie alongside him, feeling the heat of his bare skin.

“I finished the book,” the Tory said.

“Oh, aye? What’d you think?”