“You’ve got nothing to be nervous about,” he said to Arden. He turned to walk backwards, drawing Arden after him. “You, and Jack, and me,” he said, leaning down for a quick kiss that had Arden stumbling. He steadied him, kept him moving. “We’ll learn as we go, right?” He couldn’t stop himself from stealing another kiss.
Arden said against his mouth with a little laugh, “What are we learning?”
“What we like. What we don’t. What we’ll give. What we want to take. All sorts.” His back came up against Arden’s door and Arden pushed against his body, laying his smaller frame against Beckett’s as if he was pinning him there.
As if he could.
Arden ducked in and nipped Beckett’s throat. Beckett laughed and tipped his head, allowing him access. “Now,” he said, “my suggestion here is, you don’t try this one on Jack.”
“Won’t he like it?” Arden licked daintily at a patch of skin and nipped him again.
“Oh, he’ll like it. Problem is, he’ll do it right back, he’ll do it harder, and you’ll be walking around for the next week with bite marks on your neck for all to see.”
Arden looked both startled and intrigued.
Beckett opened the door and drew Arden over the threshold with an arm looped around his waist.
Since he’d returned to Avendene and found Arden sketching under the chestnut tree, he’d made sure to touch him as much as he could. It was no hardship. No hardship at all.
He’d talked to Jack about it briefly one night in Sevennis as they lay in bed together, gasping.
“He’s touch-starved,” Jack had said.
They’d been talking about Arden. It was what had ended in them fiercely thrusting against each other with legs locked, bodies heaving. Gods, when Jack got the wild in him he could knock the breath clean out of you. Beckett had taunted him, whispering things about what it had been like to be buried deep inside Arden, to be moving in him, over him, all while Arden’s limbs wound around him and drew him closer, while his beautiful eyes had been wide and disbelieving, as if he’d never imagined such pleasure existed.
Whispering that, one day, he and Jack would have Arden between them like that.
Jack had growled at him, bit at him, and fought him onto his back and then flipped him to his belly, got his cock between Beckett’s cheeks, and lost his mind.
“He’s touch-starved,” Jack had said, “and I worry that it will end in him allowing things that hurt him or frighten him, just to know what it is to be touched.”
Yes, it was a good thing, Beckett thought for the hundredth, the thousandth time, that they had him around.
Unwinding the arm around Arden’s waist, Beckett gave him a little nudge in the direction of his dressing room. “You get yourself undressed, and come and find us when you’re ready.”
“Oh. Not here?”
Beckett shook his head. “Jack’s bed is bigger.”
Arden pressed his lips together, which did absolutely nothing to hide his answering smile.
Beckett chucked him under the chin. “We’ll have fun,” he said. “Right?”
He waited for Arden’s nod before he left, pulling the door closed with a gentle click.
Then he bolted for Jack’s bedchamber, barely managing to suppress the whoop that threatened to burst its way out. Sometimes, although not often, he still felt like the lad Jack called him.
This was one of those times.
He ran into the room and hopped first on one foot then the other as he yanked off his boots and dropped them by the door. He strode to the dressing room, loosening his cravat and shrugging off his frock coat as he went. Tossing cravat and coat onto a small side table, he unbuttoned his shirt.
He paused when he saw that instead of one, Jack’s valet had put two ewers of steaming hot water on the large washstand.
Well, it wasn’t as if there was a soul at Avendene, or at any of Jack’s properties, come to that, who didn’t already know Jack was his lover. No need to feel awkward about it.
Besides. He’d given himself a good scrubbing at the end of the day before dinner with Arden as usual, but the wreaths of steam rising from the pot-bellied ewers looked inviting.
He stripped quickly, gave himself a thorough if brisk going over, and snitched a clean towel off the stack to dry himself. He was pondering whether or not to pull his breeches back on when his skin prickled.
