“I see.” Merritt nodded. “That is good, I hoped one of them would step up. Otherwise…well, it doesn’t matter.”
“Should I do it?” Vanessa asked.
Merritt blinked. “It sounds as though you already have.”
“Yes.”
“And you enjoyed what happened?”
Vanessa’s breath caught. “Very much so. More than anything I’ve ever experienced before.”
“Then what is the harm is going further? In surrendering yourself to pleasure after so long a time fraught with worry and uncertainty and pain?” Merritt caught her hands. “You deserve everything good and more. At worst, it will end in time and you will choose whichever man is a better match for you, thus protecting you from the uncertainty Arthur and your parents have created.”
“And at best?”
“You get the life. And the arrangement. And occasionally the library.” There was a moment when Merritt’s usually strong expression went a little softer with what Vanessa realized was love. Deep and abiding and complete love unlike anything she’d ever seen. What a thing to share that not with just one person, but two. “It’s worth it.”
Her certainty gave Vanessa more strength and she nodded. “Then I will need even more advice, since you are the far more experienced one in such things. What should I expect, how should I behave?”
“You may expect, I hope, great pleasure from both of them,” Merritt said. “The kind of focused, heated, powerful experiences that will change everything about you. But also, if I judge them correctly, you’ll get the great joy and arousing pleasure of watching them together.”
“They do have…tension between them,” Vanessa whispered, and thought of how focused Darrius and Benedict had been when their eyes met, even though they hadn’t touched. “The way they look at each other. And it was even more powerful when they were touching me.”
“Mmmm,” Merritt murmured, and it was clear she was thinking about her own situation. “There is nothing like it.”
“And what should I do?” Vanessa asked. “I mean, resting back and letting them sweep me away is all fine and good…more than fine and very good. But at some point I’d like to be a more active participant.”
Merritt’s gaze lit up further. “Oh, well, that I can give advice for! Let us start with the basic seduction of two men…”
Benedict
There had been many long nights in Benedict’s life, but none so frustratingly drawn out as the hours between the time he’d shared with Vanessa and Darrius in the parlor and when the house turned in for the night. It was made worse by the fact that the three of them had to pretend away the encounter during supper when all the guests in the house had come together for supper.
There had been so much tension during that meal as the three of them sat with Lord and Lady Egerton and Peter Reid that he was surprised any of them had survived it. But now the clock struck ten, the guests had said their goodnights and he was now standing in the hallway outside of Darrius’s door.
Sometimes it felt like he was always waiting in a hallway outside of Darrius’s door, and he never knew what would greet him when he entered. Tonight he drew a deep breath and pushed the door open without knocking. The antechamber lamps were lit and the fire glowed. Darrius stood before it, jacket removed, cravat gone, boots discarded and sleeves rolled to his elbows.
Benedict caught his breath. A man could write soliloquies about those forearms. He could spend a lifetime just…touching them.
“You’re here,” Darrius said softly.
Benedict nodded. “Did you think I wouldn’t come?”
“I know you were angry with me in the garden,” Darrius said, and for a moment there was vulnerability slashed across his face.
“After wanting you and waiting for you and accepting secrets in the dark from you for so many years, do you think that would keep me away? That anything could?”
Darrius flinched. They never discussed those secrets in the dark. As far as either of them acknowledged they had only ever succumbed to desire once. “Tonight...all of this...it will be about her…not us.”
He was repeating his earlier declaration, but there was something in the way his voice broke when he said that, which gave Benedict…hope.
Benedict moved toward him. Darrius tensed, but he didn’t back away. He just tracked Benedict’s every move, all the way to when he reached out and flattened a palm against Darrius’s broad chest. He felt his heartbeat elevate through the thin linen of his shirt.
“Yes, you said that before. Almost like you have to convince yourself. But if I’m near you, it will always be about us,” Benedict whispered. “Whether you let me touch you or not.”
He edged even closer and Darrius’s breath hitched slightly, his blue eyes never leaving Benedict’s. He didn’t step away when their thighs brushed. He didn’t step away when Benedict let his hand slide lower, down Darrius’s chest, over his stomach, across his hip.
He leaned in and their lips came perilously close to touching. Darrius turned his head slightly and so Benedict moved those lips across the harsh line of his jaw instead, tasting his skin, wishing he could taste a great deal more of it.
