Vidal took the handkerchief, pressed it to one cheek, and then the other. “Yes.” He turned the damp square over in his fingers. “I am having to face a new reality, Connor. One where I must live within a more constrained boundary than I have ever known. And please understand me, because this is important. I’m not crying because I think it is beneath me to be careful with money. I am crying because today, on the telephone with my father, I discovered how entirely unprepared I am for the realitythat ordinary people live in every day. I think, perhaps, that I have been terribly, terribly spoiled.”
Connor pulled the other wrought-iron chair closer and sat down in it, his forearms resting on his thighs, his hands loose between his knees. He said nothing. He didn’t offer a comparison to people who had it worse, or any of the well-meaning attempts at comfort that would have sent Vidal into a second, more irritable round of tears. He simply listened.
“I may,” he went on, “have to sell the clothes off my back to keep myself in olive oil. I understand that you have a shop for exactly this sort of transaction.” He lifted one silk sleeve between two fingers and offered it across the space between their chairs. “Go on. Assess me, Connor. Tell me what my robe would fetch in a pinch. It is proper silk, from a house in Como that has been making them since before your grandfather was born. Feel.”
Connor reached out. His fingertips closed on the silk at Vidal’s wrist and rubbed it slowly between his thumb and forefinger. His eyes stayed on Vidal’s face the whole time.
“So soft,” he murmured. His other hand settled at Vidal’s waist, slipped beneath the hem of his linen shirt, and travelled across his back until it came to rest exactly where the curve of his arse began to swell. “But your skin is even softer.”
Vidal did not move. The broad palm at his lower back was warm. He’d spent the afternoon enumerating the things he could no longer afford. A beautiful man with his hand on the small of his back, freely offering himself up for the taking, was not one of them.
He shifted in the chair, just enough to make the angle more comfortable for the hand that was making itself at home against his side. Connor’s hand slid another inch and stopped at the waistband of the loose trousers Vidal was wearing under the robe. His thumb traced the edge of it once in a slow pass, and then stilled, waiting for permission.
Vidal turned his cheek against Connor’s. He smelled of clean soap and expensive cologne. The shadow of his stubble was rough against Vidal’s jaw, and Vidal closed his eyes and melted against him.
“Connor.” He kept his voice low, because the garden was small and the windows overlooking it were many. “I think it would suit us both to take a little pleasure from each other. But we must talk terms first.”
Connor’s mouth curved against his temple. “Terms.” The hand at his waistband didn’t move. “Alright. I’m listening.”
“I am serious.”
“I can tell. You’ve gone all diplomatic on me.” The sharp jaw tilted until his mouth was very close to Vidal’s ear. “Go on then, Your Serene Highness. Lay it out. Safewords, limits, the lot. I’ll tell you now, so we don’t waste any of this very nice evening — I’m up for pretty much anything. You want to tie me to the headboard, I’ve got the velvet ropes. You want me to edge you for an hour and not let you come till you’re crying about it, easy. You want me to fuck you bare and leave my mess in you, so you’re dripping into your trousers while I take you out to a two-grand dinner? Say the word. Try me.”
The list was delivered in the same level voice he had used to ask whether Vidal was alright, and Vidal understood that it was meant to shock him, or at least to make him laugh. He opened his eyes and turned his head so that he could see the side of Connor’s face properly.
“My darling. You have not yet said a single thing I have not already done. For one of them I am fairly sure there are still photographs in the possession of a Greek shipping heir who has been waiting three years for the correct moment to blackmail me with them. He will be waiting for some time. One cannot blackmail a man who has no shame and nothing to lose.”
Connor huffed out a laugh.
“No. That is not what I mean by terms.” Vidal lifted his own hand and set it over Connor’s where it rested at his waistband. “I have a history of maintaining long and productive friendships that stray into the sexual when it suits. It is a specific skill. It requires honesty at the start and honesty at the end and a great deal of good humour in the middle. And it does not survive jealousy or possessiveness.” He watched Connor’s blue eyes, which had gone still and attentive. “We are neighbours, Connor. If we allow this to end badly, it will be the most tedious thing for both of us. I shall have to avoid the stairwell, and you shall have to avoid the garden, on account of Mercè’s unpredictable incontinence. You must understand.”
“Got it.”
“We cannot risk this tediousness.” He tightened his hand over Connor’s. “So. Simple terms. We will have fun. When we stop having fun, we will stop. I am not looking for a boyfriend, Connor. I am not looking to be rescued, or for someone to take me to Paris for a weekend and teach me the proper value of things. I want that very clear before either of us takes another step, because I have no patience for men who nod at the terms and then, three weeks later, leave a toothbrush in my bathroom as though it were a flag on the moon.”
Connor laughed. “Mate. I’m forty-four. I’m not looking for a boyfriend either. I don’t even want a toothbrush in your bathroom. I’ve got a perfectly good one in mine, which is, if you’ll notice, two flights down from your place.” He rubbed his cheek against Vidal’s. “You’re hot. You’re funny. You’ve had the kind of week that would put a saint in a ditch, and I reckon I’d make a fairly good distraction. That’s what I’m offering. A distraction in the form of a bloody big cock.”
Vidal turned his face so that his nose brushed against Connor’s jaw. “A distraction, Connor, is exactly what I need.”
Connor’s hand drifted down and closed over the shape of Vidal’s cock through his trousers. Vidal let his head fall back against the wrought iron of the chair. The metal was cold at the base of his neck.
“Alright, sweetheart,” Connor murmured against his temple. “Let’s have a look at you.”
He worked the tie of Vidal’s trousers loose, slid his hand in under the waistband, and wrapped his fingers around Vidal’s cock. The heat of his hand made Vidal’s breath catch at the back of his throat.
Vidal kept his eyes closed. He wasn’t going to put on his usual show when a man’s hand was on him, the running commentary of appreciation and theatre that made his lovers laugh and made him feel, afterwards, that he had earned the pleasure he had been given. Tonight he was just going to receive.
Connor had shifted sideways in his chair so that Vidal’s shoulder was tucked into the hollow beneath his arm. He closed Vidal in from the left, and the arm around his back came up to cradle his head against Connor’s chest. Vidal turned his face into the good wool of Connor’s waistcoat.
“That’s it,” Connor said, somewhere above the top of his head. “You just let me take care of you, love.”
The first strokes of his hand were exploratory. Connor ran his thumb up the underside of him, traced the ridge beneath the head, then began again.
He gathered the slick already beading at the tip and worked it down the length of him until his hand moved wet and easy over Vidal’s skin. Connor’s arm tightened around his shoulders.
“There we go.”
He set up a steady rhythm after that. Slow on the upstroke, a firmer twist around the head, then a long smooth pull back down to the base. His breath was warm and even against the crown of Vidal’s head. Every so often he pressed his mouth to Vidal’s hair.
