Beauchamp’s eyes went down and then very rapidly back up.
“Vidal.”
“What.”
“Please tell me you have pants on under that coat.”
Vidal’s mouth came up at the corner without any input from him. He shifted his weight, let the coat fall back into place, and tipped his chin up.
“Come and find out.”
Beauchamp let out a short laugh through his nose, and the careful military line of his shoulders gave up an inch.
Vidal took two steps forward across the rug, stopped a foot short of Beauchamp, and held there.
He did not close the last of the distance. The coat hung open, and he watched Beauchamp work it out.
Beauchamp’s gaze dropped to the open front of the coat and stayed there, travelled back up the bare line of Vidal’s throat to the gold crucifix in the hollow of it, and finally found his mouth.
His tongue came out and wet his bottom lip. His hand lifted from his side, hesitated, and then he crossed the foot of carpet and slid his palm under the open front of the coat against the bare skin of Vidal’s waist.
Beauchamp shook his head, like he was trying to dislodge intrusive thoughts from his mind, but he kept his hand in place. “This is insanity…” he muttered. Then Beauchamp bent his head and kissed him.
The kiss was careful and unshowy, conducted with enormous attention to the sling between them. Beauchamp’s free hand cupped the side of Vidal’s jaw to keep them at an angle that would not jolt the arm. His mouth was warm, lips slightly dry, and he tasted of tea. He kissed Vidal as though he were handling someone who might come apart in his hands if he jostled him.
Vidal made an impatient noise into Beauchamp’s mouth, slid his good hand up the back of Beauchamp’s neck into his hair, and rolled his hips forward against the front of Beauchamp’s trousers in one unambiguous movement.
“Vidal, mind your arm…” Beauchamp chided.
And there it was. Beauchamp had a hard cock pressed against Vidal’s hip and was still, in the same breath, fussing about the sling. Vidal felt certainty settle inside him.Yes. This one. He is the one.
His coat had fallen open the rest of the way. The silk of his boxers was a thin and entirely inadequate barrier between Vidal’s cock, which had come up hard against his belly somewhere in the last thirty seconds, and the front of Beauchamp’s trousers, which were a sensible grey wool, Sandhurst-cut and concealed an interesting development of their own.
Beauchamp’s hand at his waist tightened. The other came up off Vidal’s jaw, slid round to the small of his back, and held him there against him.
“Christ. Vidal.”
“Mm.”
Vidal rolled his hips again, slower, and watched the colour come up Beauchamp’s throat above the collar of his shirt. The wool of the trousers dragged against the silk of his boxers in a way that had Vidal’s breath catching short. He shifted his weight, slid his good hand down from the back of Beauchamp’s neck to the front of his shirt, and fisted it in the cotton there to keep him in place.
He ground forward against the front of his trousers in a long deliberate motion that pressed the line of Beauchamp’s cock, and the full length of his own through the layers between them.
Beauchamp forgot all about gentility. His mouth on Vidal’s was open and hot, and his hand had slid down inside the waistband of Vidal’s boxers until he was holding him by the bare skin of his arse, pulling him in tight, kneading it in time with the slow filthy rolls of Vidal’s hips. Beauchamp’s cock was a hard ridge against Vidal’s, and every stroke of one against the other dragged an involuntary sound out of Vidal that he made no attempt to hold back.
“Beauchamp. Look at me,” Vidal urged.
Beauchamp lifted his head off Vidal’s neck. His pupils had blown wide. There was a flush high on his cheekbones, and hismouth was wet. His hair had come undone at the side from where Vidal’s hand had been in it.
Vidal rolled his hips against him one more time, hard and slow, and watched Beauchamp’s eyes go soft.
The wool at the front of Beauchamp’s trousers went hot and wet against the silk. His body seized against him and his forehead dropped to Vidal’s good shoulder as he came in his trousers in the small meeting room at the end of the corridor at Clarence House.
Vidal held him through it, and he realised somewhere underneath his triumph, that he was smiling so hard that his face hurt.
Beauchamp lifted his head off Vidal’s shoulder eventually. The flush had gone all the way down past his collar. He looked, Vidal noted with great pleasure, deeply and comprehensively ruined.
Vidal tipped his face up, kissed Beauchamp once on the mouth, and gave him his very best smile.
