“And every night that follows. Every day.”
“No promises, remember? Just fuck me. Let me feel something before tomorrow.”
When Thomas eased them apart, Micha ached with loss. He struggled semi-upright and yanked the shirt over his head.
“What?” he asked.
Thomas was simply looking at him.
“What?”
“You’re so remarkably beautiful, Micha.” Thomas splayed a hand across his chest, his fingers carding lightly through the coarse hair that gathered there. “Like Blake’s tyger.” He traced a band of shadow across Micha’s torso, then a band of light, and Micha shivered helplessly, responding less to the sensation than the intent within it, the care and reverence.
He fell back onto his elbows, the uncertain light spilling like liquid over his skin, shifting with his quickened breath. Thomas followed him, his lips catching at the pulse beating in Micha’s neck, then tumbling in tiny kisses across his collarbones and shoulders. The tip of his tongue pursued the flickering patterns of light, leaving new ones, silver-bright amidst the gold, a ripple of silken warmth that did not entirely fade.
Micha’s chest heaved. His head fell back. Thomas’s tongue swirled across one of his nipples, and his back arched wildly. “Fuck, oh fuck. Oh Thomas.”
“Magnificent,” whispered Thomas, the word flaring white-hot like a brand. He glanced up with a rather wicked smile. “‘Did He who made the lamb, make thee?’”
“I don’t bloody care. Take your clothes off.”
Thomas laughed, sat back on his heels, and let the dressing gown slip from his shoulders, pooling on the bed behind him like a rainbow cast from the sky. He started to work on the knot in his cravat.
“Today, if you don’t mind?” Micha reared up like an avenging valet and yanked the linen free from Thomas’s collar. Then he began to tear at the shirt, his hands slipping between skin and fabric until, at last, a very tousled Thomas emerged, shaking the hair from his eyes.
He was pale, even in the glow from the lamp, though rather than making him appear fragile, it gave him a deep clarity, like a single perfect note, played on a perfect instrument. If Micha’s composition tended towards a certain baroque extravagance, Thomas embodied a pure, and striking, simplicity. Long-limbed and lean-flanked, he was all precise, clean lines and the subtle promise of strength.
Micha’s fingers trembled too much to be useful, so he braced himself one-handed and brushed the knuckles of the other against the ladder of Thomas’s ribs. His skin was raw silk and sun-warmed marble, flawless, and only lightly stippled by pale, gold-tipped hair.
A flush, like the fairest dawn, rose to the surface of Thomas’s skin. “I’m not—”
“Don’t. I love you.”
Somehow, tugging and pulling, wriggling and laughing, they shed the rest of their clothes, and Thomas, sleek as a seal, slipped naked into Micha’s waiting arms. And, suddenly, everything was skin. They gasped in muddled unison, Micha’s harsh obscenity entangled with Thomas’s softer, gentler groan.
“I have dreamed of this.” Thomas sounded half-delirious as he pressed his body to Micha’s, sliding between his legs, against his chest, moving with him, as sensuous and shameless as a cat in catmint.
“I ...” Micha found himself breathless, wordless. Thomas’s erection was nestled against his thigh, insistent enough to stir his own into temporary arousal. He parted his legs and arched his hips until they met, a rough-sweet clumsy-tender intimacy that made Thomas cry out in startled wonder. Thatwas its own pleasure, warm as whisky on a winter day, and Micha buried his hands in Thomas’s hair and dragged him into a finesse-less kiss.
Sex had long ago shed its mysteries for Micha. There was little that had not been done to him over the years, but, even with Isidore, it had not been like this. He had been an assured, imaginative lover, passionate often, tender sometimes, occasionally cruel, a man of incalculable erotic refinements. And Thomas was simply Thomas. There was nothing remarkable in the way they touched each other and moved together, but there was no restraint and no uncertainty now, just a deep mutual joy that Micha thought perilously close to a kind of innocence. It swept across his skin with Thomas’s hands, like the brush of sunlight. And Micha unravelled, not artfully or even entirely consciously, just blissfully and completely, moaning open-mouthed against Thomas.
Finally, he pushed away, and Thomas pulled back, dazed and dreamy-eyed, bruise-lipped and shaking slightly with arousal. The play of shadows made his patrician English features stand out more starkly than ever, but Micha knew all their secrets now. How to coax the stern mouth to playfulness, draw warmth from those plain brown eyes.
“Give me your hand.”
Despite the abrupt order, Thomas did, without hesitation. Micha took it up—that pale gentleman’s hand he had, caught between yearning and despair, once imagined touching him—and closed his lips over the slender fingers, drawing them deep into his mouth.
The breath stuttered out of Thomas in a broken sigh, and his eyes fluttered closed.
“Someday soon,” said Micha, somewhat muffled, “I’m going to do this to your cock.”
Thomas answered only with a delirious noise.
Releasing Thomas’s fingers, Micha nudged him into position between his knees and tipped up his hips, throwing wide his legs. He would have felt utterly absurd if not for the look on Thomas’s face. Thomas stroked his free hand up the inside of Micha’s thigh, not quitegently, and the intimacy of the touch, the hint of possession, made Micha’s heart thud hard with instinctive pleasure.
“Here.” Micha seemed to have lost the ability to converse in more than jerky monosyllables. “Like this.” He spread himself and pressed Thomas’s fingers awkwardly to the entrance of his body.
“Will I hurt you?”
