“Come on back to the house,” I mutter. “I’m going to feed you and then we’re going to fuck some more. There’s so much more to learn.”
That open, lusty expression crosses his face, turning him into someone earthy and warm. “Surely there isn’t more?”
I grin, feeling like I should be banging my chest, and instead bend in to nuzzle his neck. He moans, and I feel my cock stiffen so fast it should give me friction burns. “So much more,” I promise him.
I guide him down the path to my house, burying my face in his neck and whispering filthy thoughts until he stops dead in his tracks.
“Lo?” I say questioningly, following his gaze which is full of trepidation and fixed on the forecourt of my house where a figure is standing. The figure turns slowly and elegantly, and I know before I even see his face.
“Gideon,” I gasp.
Chapter
Ten
This is where you are. So, if I want to sleep that’s where I must be.
Milo
With a sinking in my stomach I feel Niall’s arm drop from around me, and in three strides he reaches my brother and drags him into a tight, laughing hug. I shift on my feet, watching them anxiously. They’re the same height, both big and bold, but while Niall is golden and seemingly gilded by the late afternoon sun, my brother is his dark foil. His black hair is cropped close to his head and he’s grown a beard since I saw him last. It suits him, giving him a piratical intensity accentuated by his ice-blue eyes.
Only they aren’t icy now. They’re warm and affectionate as he hugs Niall and says something into his ear. Then they fall onto me and an indecipherable expression comes into them. I swallow. I love my brother and I know he loves me, butcircumstances in our childhood meant a close relationship was never going to happen.
He’s older than me, being the same age as Niall. I was a late baby and treated very differently from Gideon. While he was ferried off to boarding school when he was seven as so many children in our circle were, I was kept at home, babied by my parents because of the speech defect. I’d always thought that my mother felt guilty over Gideon and had seized the opportunity to correct her parental deficit by going in the opposite direction with me.
However, I’d adored him, dogging his footsteps when I was little, and he’d been kind and generous initially, but as time passed I think he found his family in Niall and Silas. He got more and more distant and preoccupied and with an air of almost melancholy about him. Then his star had taken off when he was in the sixth form and he abandoned his studies for the film role that launched him into the stratosphere and far away from me. Now, all that’s left is a vague filial relationship and a sad yearning for more on my side.
He smiles at me and as normal, there’s a sad twist to his mouth. It’s always there, giving all his performances a tragic, flawed air. Critics praise it, but I know it’s not acting. It’s who he is, and it saddens me. He releases Niall and comes towards me.
“Little brother,” he says in his deep, rich voice with the roughness in it that’s led to him becoming the king of the audiobooks. He’s narrated so many of them that Niall once recorded him asking for a cup of tea and used it for his ringtone.
“Gideon,” I say and swallow as he brings me into a hug. It’s more tentative than the one he gave Niall, but I feel his warm arms around me, and the scent of his grapefruit shampoo reminds me of when I was little and had a nightmare and he came to me. Rather than ignore my fears he’d listened intently and then appointed one of my cuddly toys as my guardian,lecturing Paddington sternly and propping him by the wardrobe. It had worked far better than my mother’s dismissal of my fears and I’d slept securely after that. The memory makes affection uncurl in me, sweet and slow, and I hug him back robustly, ignoring his shocked inhale and then feeling his body soften against me.
He kisses my forehead and steps back. “You’re looking well,” he says, examining my face.
I shrug. “I feel well.” I can’t resist a quick look at Niall and find him examining me intently with a half-smile playing on those full lips.
Gideon glances between us, his brow furrowing, and he shoots Niall a strange look. “You were right to bring him here.”
“I’m always right,” Niall says complacently and grins lazily at me when I snort.
Gideon laughs. “I can think of many times you weren’t. Do you remember the time at school when you insisted that you could put tin cans in the microwave? I honestly thought we were going to be expelled.” Then they’re off, laughing together over a time I can’t share, and I step back, feeling stung and absurdly lonely.
And it is absurd to feel that way because I have no right. Niall and I are … My brain stutters. I don’t know what Niall and I are, but it’s certainly nothing compared to the relationship he had with Gideon. My stomach clenches.Has. The relationship he has with Gideon. It’s still going on and I’d forgotten that, lost as I’ve been in the passion we’ve found this week, the connection. I’d forgotten that my brother has a much bigger claim on him.
My thoughts scatter as a woman appears from around the side of the house. Rail thin and wearing a dress that’s so short it could be a pelmet, she has blonde hair and a beautiful wild face. She looks like a fairy conjured up from the woods. Her mouthopens and it immediately dispels the notion. “Fucking hell, Niall. Where have you been? I’m dying for a pee.”
Her voice is impossibly posh but there’s a slur to it and her eyes are bright.
“Jacinta,” Niall says. He looks at me quickly and almost guiltily, and I see Gideon note the movement and his eyes sharpen. “What are you two doing here?”
“We were invited,” Gideon says, and Jacinta goes to him, wrapping her long, thin body around his. “Don’t you remember?” Niall’s brow furrows and Gideon laughs. “We were in bed at the Dean Street Townhouse and Jacinta had to head off for a modelling job. You said to bring her down and we’d finish the night more thoroughly. Do a proper job of it.” He shrugs, looking at Niall intently. “So, here we are. Entertain us.”
“Stop quoting Nirvana,” Niall says curtly. He looks at me again, his eyes eating my face up and an air of worry about him. “Milo,” he says almost imploringly, and I stiffen. I am definitely in the way again, like always, and my stomach lurches. I feel suddenly like the child I’d once been following him around, begging him to notice me when all his attention was always and forever tied up with Gideon.
I step back again. A bigger step this time. “It’s fine,” I say, and I’m so proud and relieved in this moment that my voice holds up. I don’t need to stutter to relegate myself to desperate hanger-on. I’ve always been that. I make myself smile at my brother and Jacinta. She looks bored and glazed while he still has that watchful air about him. “I’ve been staying here while the heating was off but I think it’s back on now, so I’ll get out of Niall’s hair and let you all get on …” My voice falters but I stiffen my spine. “Get on with what you have planned.”
I take another step and then before Niall can stop me, which he definitely is going to do judging by the aborted move that he makes towards me, I half walk and half run back down the path.It’s not the most graceful exit I’ve ever made, and my face flames in embarrassment.
