Rite of Summer: Treading the Boards, Book 1 (8 page)

His disappointment only magnified over dinner, with no decent conversation to be had. Then to cap off the evening, Beaufort excused himself at the end of dinner on account of a bad head, escaping the drawing room and the evening’s activities with enviable ease.

A hand settled heavily on Stephen’s shoulder as he watched the door swing shut, and he jumped at the touch. It was only Evander, though, and he too was watching the door. His bottom lip stuck out a little, the beginnings of a childlike pout, and he pulled it in before Stephen could poke fun.

Evander sat on the footstool by Stephen’s side and rested his elbows on his knees, his glass of port dangling loosely from his fingertips. It was his second one of the night, following a number of glasses of excellent wine at dinner, and it had all left him in an expansive mood.

“You like him,” Evander murmured quietly, keeping their conversation easily out of earshot of the men discussing their hunting dogs over by the fire. One of his hands moved, just so, and he brushed the edge of Stephen’s knee with the side of his little finger. His touch laid sparks along Stephen’s skin, made him feel daring and wild.

“He has a good eye for art,” Stephen replied, something inside him demanding that he hold back. Some things, surely, could be his alone? “And I can hardly fault his taste in music,” he teased.

“Certainly not.” Evander grinned wolflike. “And his fine form does no harm to his presentation either.” He paused to drink, brought the crystal glass up to his lips and laid it there, the dark-red port swirling inside.

Stephen swallowed compulsively. Damn the man. Evander knew all his dreams, all his desires; he had helped him to discover them in the first place.

What was he up to this time?

“Four fine pups in the last whelping,” Coventry proclaimed from the fireplace. “I’ve arranged to breed her to Corkerton’s mastiff next.”

Downe scoffed. “Careful with that one—he talks a bigger game than his dogs can prove. That mastiff’s part hound, or I’m a shopkeeper.”

“He’s very pretty,” Evander continued, softly, so softly. The others in the room would have no idea what sins he was proposing right beneath their very noses. Evander’s eyes gleamed with excitement. “And artists have wonderful hands. Do you want him?”

Stephen pondered it for a moment, and a moment only. Beaufort was a fantasy, a lovely, lush-mouthed man with a still and quiet soul. He had all but suggested, the night before, that he wanted at least one of them. (Evander, most likely—everyone wanted Evander. He was gold and sunlight, slim hipped and lithe.) If Evander invited him, Beaufort might come.

He had stayed to watch them fuck.

The conservatory had been Evander’s wild idea, the first room on his list. He had pulled Stephen through the hallways, biting back giddy laughter so as not to wake the house. Stephen had thrown the latch, but it must not have caught. He’d been distracted, after all, when Evander pulled out the oil and kissed him so fiercely. He had dropped to his knees then and there, hanging on to the overstuffed red wing chair for balance. He’d taken Evander’s prick in his mouth and sucked it to hardness, listening for the desperate and hungry noises Evander made that told him he was ready.

Evander had pulled him to his feet and spun him, bent him over the chair and slid two fingers home, thick and so, so slick. First his oiled fingers, then his tongue, hot against the sensitive skin of his arse and below his balls. And then—oh then—his prick had pressed home, Evander’s hand coiled in the thick locks of Stephen’s hair, holding him tightly in place. Evander had fucked into him, his cock thick enough to break a man in two.

Then the gasp, a shuffle of feet—looking up in a panic, sure that they had been discovered—

It had been Beaufort standing there, his perfect mouth open in shock and surprise, his hand on the door and the other pressed firmly against his own prick.

He had
stayed
.

More than that, he had watched them fuck, stroked himself as he did so. How could anyone resist?

Stephen had looked up, held Joshua’s eye as he watched Stephen’s gorgeous degradation. His release had been harder and more satisfying than anything had in months, perhaps longer. Perhaps ever.

Knowing that Beaufort had wanted them, had taken pleasure in the sight of them, had probably gone back to his bedchamber and fucked his own hand to thoughts of them—

Stephen crossed his legs and settled his arm to hide his mild distress.

Evander bit the inside of his cheek, his eyes bright and merry. “I see that you do,” he said softly, a promise in every movement of his lips. “Shall I get him for us? Bring him to our bed to please you?”

“I…” Stephen began, then remembered quickly whom he was speaking to, “…I don’t need anyone but you to please me,” he replied, equally quietly. Evander preened, and Stephen chuckled. “But you are too good to me, and he might well be amenable. Perhaps if we approach him together? I believe I’ve exchanged more words with him than you, and he seems to have a tendency towards shyness.”

“Shyness is an excellent quality in a girl and foolish in a man.” Evander dismissed his warning with a wave. “But as you wish. You know I live to make you happy.”

“This would,” Stephen agreed, his heart still beating too rapidly, even as the rest of his body subsided. Flirting was one thing, and something Stephen could sometimes manage without putting his foot in his mouth, but with Evander’s charm working for them, there was little to no chance that Beaufort would refuse. No man of their inclination ever did.

When he came to bed, though—it would be because he wanted Evander, and not Stephen. A horrible thought. But if he preferred to touch and be touched by Evander, at least Stephen would have the pleasure of watching two beautiful men tangle together. He could put aside the quick rush of jealousy to at least see that.

“This would indeed.”

Chapter Eight

Cynical as he was becoming, Joshua had anticipated some kind of confrontation with Cade. The man had Ashbrook under his thumb; Cade would soon know everything that had passed between them.

The sharp and dangerous looks thrown his way at dinner did little to dispel his foreboding. Cade hovered over Ashbrook all evening—his hand at the man’s waist or resting on his elbow—or loomed behind him as if to remind Joshua that Ashbrook was his. The easiest escape was to beg off early after dinner and retire to his room. He had no taste for dramatics, not anymore, and florid declarations and threats of vengeance were all too gothic to be borne by rational men.

So when Cade and Ashbrook approached him as he sat in the sun on the east lawn the following day, it took him a moment to recover from his surprise. Cade was smiling, for one. It was hardly an uncommon thing—the man turned his charm on and off like a profit-minded Bankside girl. But this time, it seemed almost sincere.

The sun gleamed in Cade’s golden hair, the breeze tugging at his coat to make it fall just so, as though even nature herself were dedicated to making him as attractive as any human being could ever claim the right to be. His trousers, a very fashionable cut, cupped the curves and sinews of his legs to great advantage, and it did not take much imagination to pair the look with the memory of Cade driving into Ashbrook, his face flushed with exertion.

Ashbrook, two steps behind him, appeared somewhat more nervous. He’d caught his hair back from his face with a ribbon, and his fingers toyed with the flaps of his waistcoat pockets as though he had little to no idea what to do with them. He looked down and swiftly clasped his hands behind his back.

No one else lingered in the area. The ladies had taken themselves off to pick berries, baskets and parasols in hand, and the report of guns from elsewhere announced Coventry, Horlock and the Downes’ current diversion.

Joshua set aside his sketchbook; it would do no good for either man to see some of the things he had put down on the pages.

“Gentlemen,” he greeted them with a polite smile, his cheeks rebelling at it, “I didn’t hear your approach.”

“I hope we’re not intruding.” Cade ignored any answer he might have made, sitting down beside him, completely certain of his welcome.

Ashbrook sat on Joshua’s other side, settling one booted foot beneath him. A dark curl fell across Ashbrook’s jaw, blown there by the breeze, and Joshua stepped firmly on the sudden urge to reach out and brush it back into place.

“It is a beautiful day,” Cade said, “and there is fine company. And yet you prefer to sit alone? You puzzle me, Mr. Beaufort.”

Cade hadn’t come to berate him; he could begin to relax. “I think I am a reasonably simple man at heart, as most of us are. I apologize for any disruption to your world view,” he added with a wry grin that Ashbrook seemed to find amusing.

“I happen to like puzzles,” Cade replied instead, and turned to let his leg fall lightly to the side. He knew and loved the light, that much was obvious, and the daylight loved him. The midmorning sun turned him into an angel. (Cast from heaven, perhaps. He could be painted in such hues, nude, of course, and with broken wings to suggest his fall.) Cade only smiled at his scrutiny, warm and inviting. “And I think, perhaps, you might as well.”

“You think I am like you?” Joshua asked, cutting swiftly to the meat of the matter. He stared at Ashbrook, at the deep-brown eyes that looked deeper and darker yet under the sun’s shadow, at the skin below his jaw that begged to be bitten and marked.

“I think you are much more like us than any of the others,” Ashbrook replied with soft intensity. “You like…art…as well.”

His meaning was now quite, quite clear.
Goodness.
“I am very fond of art.” He did take the opportunity to indulge in a little bit of sarcasm. “Considering that it is how I earn my keep.”

Ashbrook tilted an eyebrow in a look that was probably meant to be irritated but came off closer to amused. “But, yes,” Joshua relented, with a crook of a smile that he could not quite hide, “I take your meaning. I find the male form to be a subject of which I am particularly fond.”

“So Ashbrook tells me,” Cade murmured, and he locked eyes with Ashbrook over Joshua’s head. “He has also suggested that you might be amenable to joining us in a…” he paused, then laughed softly, “…let us say an art-appreciation session, then, if we are to continue this game.”

“Let us drop the pretense.” Joshua suggested, even as his pulse began to race. “As we are alone here. What, precisely, is on offer? For I presume this is an offer you are making.” Or was it a game, one meant to break him, for Cade’s amusement?

“A night,” Ashbrook replied softly, hopefully.
He
was the angel, dark and potent. “That is all. One night, the three of us, free from the eyes of others and able to play out our fantasies and pleasures. You’re not opposed to such things?” Ashbrook was watching him, perhaps to gauge his reaction. His warm eyes pleaded with Joshua, his lower lip gleaming with a hint of moisture from where he had been chewing at it.

He shook his head, and Cade nodded appreciatively. “I’ve rather enjoyed them, on occasion,” Joshua admitted, because to show anything else would be to tip his hand too easily.

Was this to be his devil’s bargain? Go to bed with Cade as chaperone, in order to know the texture of Ashbrook’s skin, the weight of his cock on Joshua’s tongue, what it felt like to be the one to bring him to the heights of passion? He was doubly damned, if so, because he was going to accept. It had been too long since he had lost himself in someone else’s pleasure.

“I would be pleased to join you,” he answered as calmly as though they were arranging a time to take tea. “I assume you have a time and place in mind?”

Ashbrook’s eyes dropped to Joshua’s mouth. He could swear that the man’s throat bobbed compulsively when Joshua ran the tip of his tongue across his bottom lip.

He coughed, and Cade replied, “Our suite, midnight, after the house is abed? There will be less notice of corridor creeping taken at that hour.”

Joshua inclined his head as Cade rose and gestured.

Ashbrook scrambled, albeit slowly, to his feet.

“Midnight,” Joshua repeated. “I look forward to it, sirs.”

“As do we,” Ashbrook said, all dark molasses of a voice. He seemed as though he was about to say more, but Cade beckoned and the two left, heads bent together in conversation.

Joshua waited until they were out of sight entirely before flopping back to spread his arms wide against the grass.

What had just happened? Had he honestly just now been invited to bed with both Cade and Ashbrook? Had he just
accepted
?

Good God Almighty. He would not survive the anticipation.

His body stirred restlessly at the images his mind had begun to form, and he sat up instead. Fourteen hours, a dinner and an evening to get through yet—he would be better off finding some more productive way to distract himself.

And the day had started off so normally.

The afternoon alternately dragged and raced, half the time moving too slowly, and the other, half hours vanishing each time Joshua looked at a clock. He changed his mind a dozen times. He would not go. He could not
not
go. After the evening’s socials he paced the length of his room twice, three times, back again, wearing a path along the rug that surely the maid would notice.

Until that morning, he would have said that Ashbrook intrigued and Cade disdained him. And now? Now he was upside down and backwards.

On the surface, there was little enough to shock. Many men took liberties, the sorts of which women could not dream. Joshua had heard braggarts speak of all manners of arrangements before, in a dozen combinations of number, sex and preference. Previous lovers had delighted him with lascivious tales of other affairs, of beautiful men of all complexions and sizes, of ready cocks, deft hands, hot mouths and arses. How many of those stories had been true and how many told purely to be exciting, he had never been sure. Nor, at the time, had he cared.

He was no blushing innocent, that was the main point. No, his torment stemmed purely from the men themselves. If he suspected for a moment that Cade would ever take the subservient role, he would take a great deal of pleasure in holding him down and fucking him, in shaking that damned arrogance down to a begging, mewling mess of sweat and lust.

But then there was Ashbrook, whose fingers ran over the pianoforte’s keys with such agility that it was impossible to watch without imagining himself beneath those clever hands.

And even that was not the entire truth. It was not only about Ashbrook’s hands, or his mouth, or even his taut muscle. Joshua had apparently developed a humiliating interest in that crooked little smile from the riverbank, the flash of uncertainty in his eyes before he asked a question, the purr low in his voice when he said something intended to be suggestive.

The light that shone from his face when he was lost in his music, that begged—no,
demanded
—to be captured in paint and on canvas.

A better man would send a note announcing a change of heart, abandon all notions of making love to Ashbrook and leave them to their own devices.

Joshua was not a good man.

Still, in the moment of truth, he hesitated one last time. The door to Ashbrook and Cade’s rooms stood silent and ominous before him, a portal through which, once he entered, his world would be forever changed.

Only he could be so dramatic over a casual assignation.
Honestly, Joshua. So much for your distaste for dramatics. You should have been a playwright, not a painter.

There was still a chance to change his mind. He could turn and leave, go back to his room and spend his night in respectable and solitary sleep. Or take a risk, attempt something daring, violate Sophie’s expectations of his “boring” life and prove—what? That he was still a young man, with a body that lusted and a heart that yearned for things it could not have?

Joshua let his hand fall heavily against the door, then instantly regretted it. The door opened almost immediately, as though Ashbrook had been waiting there. A frisson of excitement and a hint of dread coiled deep within his gut. He collected himself, forced his eyes and mouth into a calm and personable smile that showed little of his shaking nerves.

Ashbrook’s bottom lip was red and full, as though he had been biting at it, and something else entirely tangled up inside Joshua. He’d taken off his coat and only his shirtsleeves covered his arms, in fine linen that was not nearly transparent enough for Joshua’s liking.

“Come in,” Ashbrook said quietly, and he stepped aside. Ashbrook kept his eyes fixed on Joshua—as though, what? Afraid that he might vanish? At least until Joshua was within the lushly appointed room and Ashbrook closed and bolted the door behind him. “So that we’re not interrupted.”

Joshua took a minute to absorb the atmosphere of the rooms: the pale upholstery on the furnishings, the two doors, one on either side, which would lead to bedrooms. A fire smoldered low in the hearth, coals glowing darkly red and murmuring softly to themselves, the room lit further by an oil lamp in the corner.

Cade lounged on the settee. He too was dressed only in his shirt and trousers, legs sprawled wide and arms stretched out to either side. His hair curled about his face, his parted lips wanton and already debauched, and a surge of unexpected desire pulsed through Joshua’s veins. Cade met his eyes, then let his gaze wander, slow and uninterrupted, down along the length of Joshua’s body, with no attempt to disguise his hunger.

That
thrummed along Joshua’s veins—the rush of
being desired
—and he flinched when fingers ran along the back of his neck and broke the spell.

“Let me take your coat,” Ashbrook suggested, so close beside him that Joshua could smell the oil in his hair.

Joshua shivered at the faint brush of warm air against his cheek when Ashbrook spoke, but managed a clipped and careful nod. “Thank you,” he murmured, and for some reason, surprise flashed for a moment in Ashbrook’s green-flecked eyes.

He slid Joshua’s coat from his shoulders with careful hands.

“Do you do this sort of thing often?” Joshua asked Cade coolly because someone had to break the hush and make this odd situation normal. He crossed the room and poured himself a drink from the decanter, the brandy tumbling into the glass in a spill of rich amber.

Cade reached out to pull Ashbrook into his lap as the other man walked by too close. “Indulge in carnal excesses, you mean?” He was teasing, his voice warm with laughter.

Joshua drank, the glass cool against his lips and the fine liquor burning a trail down his throat.

“As often as possible.”

Ashbrook looped an arm around Cade’s shoulders, but kept his eyes on Joshua, even as Cade reached up with a finger to tip his chin. Cade fixed his mouth on Ashbrook’s, their lips sliding together in familiar and easy passion.

Ashbrook’s eyes closed, his long lashes sweeping the curve of his cheek, and his hand tangled in Cade’s hair.

Joshua gripped his glass tightly, a rush of blood making his head swim. They were achingly beautiful together, a creation of some god or another and designed to fuel myths. He was a fool to think that he could ever share a place in their bond.

His lust, though—it saw only Cade’s hand sliding down between two firm, young bodies to unbutton Ashbrook’s waistcoat. Joshua’s prick twitched, a slow and steady ache of want throbbing low in the base of his spine. He could ignore it for the moment, aside from the bulge that surely they would notice any moment now.

Ashbrook broke the kiss, swiped at Cade’s lips with the tip of his tongue, then extended a hand to Joshua. “We did not ask you here merely to watch again,” he said, his voice husky and low, and Joshua’s breath caught.

He downed the last of his brandy and felt a flash of pleasure at the way Ashbrook’s eyes followed the movement of his throat. Glass set down, he stepped forward, caught Ashbrook’s waistcoat as Cade pulled it free from his arms. Joshua wound his hand in Ashbrook’s fall of dark curls.