Ryan was sure he’d be smiling the whole way home, but once he got off the M25 again and headed for Hawthorne House, something tight and buzzing slowly filled his gut. Was he doing the right thing with Graeme? Was it honest to pursue a relationship with him when Art was such a major part of their lives? And why did Giorgio Esposito keep popping into his head? That old bastard would laugh his arse off if he knew Ryan was toying with a three-way relationship with a gardener and an archeologist.
He did his best to shove Giorgio to the back of his mind as he drove the last bit home. Instead of thinking about his former boss, he let his imagination run with images of floral patterns and garments suited to a Cornwall country wedding. Maybe hecould draw inspiration from Mrs. St. Ives and her mid-century style for his fall collection.
“You look like you had a good weekend and were thoroughly debauched,” Art greeted him almost as soon as he walked through the family door into Hawthorne House’s east wing. He had a thick pile of old documents of some sort in his hands.
Ryan jumped more than he should have. “What are you doing here on a Sunday?” he asked. It made no sense that he would feel like he’d been caught doing something wrong. Or maybe like someone would catch the two of them together, andthenhe’d be doing something wrong.
“Your mum rang,” Art said. He held up the yellowed pages he carried as he walked by Ryan’s side to the staircase. “She found some old letters from the fifth Countess of Felcourt talking about the gamekeeper’s cottage fire.”
“Oh?” As glad as he was to see Art the moment he came home, a nagging sense of unease followed him upstairs to his flat.
“Yes, it seems like the countess was newly married to your great-great-great-etcetera-grandfather at the time. They’d been having trouble conceiving, and she’d decided to throw a house party to distract herself. There was an argument, and your great-great-great-etcetera-grandmother ended up huffing in the gamekeeper’s cottage.”
“Sounds like they overcame their fertility problems,” Ryan said with a smirk as he pushed open the door to his flat and hauled his bag inside. No one ever had a reason to lock their doors inside Hawthorne House.
Art laughed. “They did, obviously.” He put the old letters carefully on an end table near Ryan’s door, then followed him on to the bedroom. The subject changed immediately when he said, “Did you and our sweet boy have a good time?”
Ryan put his bag down on the bed, then turned to find Art grinning at him like the imp he was. He sent him a flat look that was meant to be scolding, but turned gloating instead. “Yes, we did,” he said.
“I knew it,” Art said, leaning against the bureau and crossing his arms. “So? Tell me all the details. Is our boy as lithe and sensual as I’ve always imagined him being?”
The heat of memory spilled through Ryan. His imagination conjured up all the things Art would have loved to see, the lines of Graeme’s body, the sheen of sweat that had broken out once they’d got going, the shape, size, and taste of Graeme’s cock, the way he groaned like he would sob when he came.
“It was lovely,” Ryan said with a smug grin.
“Well?” Art demanded when Ryan turned back to the bed to unpack. “Details, man. I want to know everything.”
“I’m sure you do,” Ryan said, unzipping his bag and starting to pull things out.
Art was immediately behind him, his arms encircling him and his growing erection pressed against Ryan’s backside in no time. “Tell me everything, darling,” he purred, reaching one hand up toward one of Ryan’s nipples and the other down, like he would slip it under the waistband of his jeans. “I want every sweaty, sticky detail.”
Ryan sucked in a breath, lust racing through him. They were alone in his apartment. He had actually remembered to shut the door behind him. No one in the family had been in the hallway when they’d come in. Not a soul would know if he stripped off, threw Art on the bed, and tangled with him. He still had a buzz in him from not coming that morning when Graeme did.
But there was that nagging feeling that to indulge in Art so soon after being horizontal with Graeme was wrong.
He turned in Art’s embrace and settled his arms around the man’s waist, trying to break through whatever boundary keptholding him back to enjoy his friend. “It was lovely,” he said. “And that’s all you need to know.”
Art made a mock frustrated sound, and because he couldn’t help it, Ryan slanted his mouth over his, dampening the sound with a kiss. Art responded strongly, moaning and kissing him back like he hadn’t had sex in ten years, which was blatantly not true.
The temptation was all-consuming. Within seconds, Ryan went from thinking there was no way he could get naked with two different men on the same day to tugging at the hem of Art’s shirt so he could grip his bare flesh.
“Yes,” Art said, pushing him back until his legs bumped against the edge of the bed. “Tell me all about it. Recall the whole thing in detail while I slobber all over you and swallow you deep. Did you fuck him or the other way around? I bet it feels so good being buried deep in our boy’s tight arse.”
Ryan gasped at the thought, wishing he’d remembered to take lube to Cornwall. “No lube or condoms,” he managed to pant as Art went for the fastenings of his jeans.
“That’s alright,” Art said, loosening Ryan’s jeans enough to slide his hand in and around his cock. “I always have some with me.”
Ryan clamped a hand around the back of Art’s head and crashed his mouth against his. Maybe this was what he needed after all. Like his dad had said, he could date both of them. No one would judge him. No one would laugh at him for turning his back on the fashion world.
That jarring thought came at the same time as his phone buzzed in the sagging pocket of his jeans. For a split-second, the vibrations against his arse coupled with Art’s hand doing wicked things to his dick nearly made him lose his load.
Sense rushed in by the second ring, and Ryan broke apart from Art and reached for his phone. “It might be Graeme,” he panted.
“Yes, please,” Art said, removing his hand from Ryan’s cock but staying flush against him.
The call wasn’t from Graeme. That would have been enough for him to toss his phone aside and continue with what he was doing, but the name that flashed up on the screen was so unexpected that he answered the call out of pure surprise. “Hello, Adam?”
“Ryan,” his fashion-world friend Adam replied, excitement in his voice. “It’s good to hear your voice again. How’ve you been?”
