“Yes. And I should like to try. If you will let me.”
Bile and poppies and hopelessness. “I won’t spend.”
“That wasn’t what you asked.”
“Oh fuck.”
Unexpectedly, Thomas gave a soft laugh. “You said that too.”
Micha was so terrified he could barely speak. It was one thing to yield himself for money, but to do so by choice? Could he even recall how? Did he want to? And Thomas would surely be disappointed in him. This hollow shell of a man he found beautiful. “All right,” he managed at last.
But still Thomas waited.
Micha’s mouth had gone painfully dry. “M-make ...” he croaked. “Make me feel.” And in case that was not enough. “Please.”
And the next thing he knew, Thomas was full-length on top of him, fire-warm, rain-damp, all long limbs, sharp bones, and clumsy eagerness. His lips were on Micha’s lips, just long enough to make him breathless, then they were sliding down his throat, over his quickening pulse. Thomas’s hands were tugging open the fastenings on his shirt, and Micha trembled in some awful combination of fear and reaction. It was all he could do not to reach up and cover himself. When he had been naked—far more naked—than this. Thomas leaned over him and kissed his collarbones, his tongue lashing like flames over the ridges of bone. His breath travelled over Micha’s skin like the glow from a shot of brandy.
Micha stared blankly at the moulding on the ceiling, his hands clenching and unclenching in the hearthrug. “You,” he said awkwardly, “you also said something.”
“Hmm?” Thomas lifted his head. His expression was dazed, his eyes as hazy as a man’s who had taken too much wine. His hand shook where it rested upon Micha’s chest, rising and falling with his unsteady breaths.
“Say it again.” Micha did not know if he was begging. He feared he might be.
“Say what?”
“In the lane. Say it again.”
“Oh.” Understanding flashed, bright as sunshine, across Thomas’s face, and then he smiled, saying just as easily as he had the first time, “I love you.”
“Again.”
Thomas kissed him, right over his too-fast, too-hard pulse. “I love you.”
The words enwrapped him like chains of silk, and Micha made a strange, mortifying noise. His hands came up to cover his face, but Thomas caught them and kissed his palms, his wrists, his fingertips. Micha’s blood rippled like long-stagnant water, freshly disturbed. A tingle ran through the veins in his forearms all the way to his heart.
Thomas rose onto his knees, straddling Micha’s thighs, the heat of his cock pooling against Micha’s own, which stirred and ached, with dulled, half-forgotten desires. And Micha twisted, moaned, and dared—just a little—to want. Nothing more than this. No hope of more, no fears of less. Simply Thomas, the touch of his hands, the brush of his lips, the sweet prison of his weight not quite holding him down.
Micha eased himself from Thomas’s grip. For a moment, he was at a loss for what to do with his liberty, and his hands hung between them like frightened birds. Then he brought them slowly to rest on the thighs that enclosed his own. Thomas was a lean gazelle of a man, surprising strength, a touch of gracelessness. Micha traced those long, wiry muscles, feeling the responsive flex, like a smothered gasp. A profane image came to him: Thomas wrapped round him in passion, the harsh embrace of his legs, the deep, secret heat of his body.
Thomas smiled suddenly, his eyes locked on Micha’s, and murmured, “‘Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine.’”
And Micha, closer to lost than he had ever been, arched up helplessly into Thomas’s waiting arms until they were sitting, half-entwined, locked in each other’s embraces, and that was how they kissed, sweet and desperate, soft sounds and broken breath spilling from mouth to mouth, endlessand unending. In the deep darkness behind his eyes, Micha saw a world of undiminished stars.
“‘Behold thou art fair, my love,’” said Thomas, as they broke apart. “‘Behold thou art fair; thou hast doves’ eyes within thy locks. Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet. Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee.’”
Micha shuddered and dropped his head into the curve of Thomas’s neck, breathing in the scent of him, the warmth and the last traces of rain. His fingers dug desperately into the fins of Thomas’s shoulder blades. “‘Stay me with flagons,’” he muttered. “‘Comfort me with apples.’”
He felt Thomas’s lips against his temple and, between them, like an unbroken promise the steady thud of his heart.
“Please ...” said Micha, asking mindlessly for something he hardly knew how to articulate wanting.
“‘Thou hast ravished my heart,’” whispered Thomas, drawing Micha with gentle fingers into another kiss.
And then came a beating at the door.
Chapter 15
At first Thomas thought it was some idiosyncrasy of the weather or, perhaps, a dislocated tree branch beating against the rectory door. But it was too regular, too desperate, too human somehow, a noise.
