Chapter Text
Going to Cuba in pursuit of Duncan Walpole’s reward had, at the outset, seemed to Edward a remarkably straightforward affair.
There had been a dead man, first of all, which simplified matters considerably. Walpole could hardly object to Edward taking his clothes, his weapons, his identity, or the payment promised upon his arrival. Wet, hungry, and penniless, Edward saw no reason good coin should go to waste simply because its intended recipient was cooling in a jungle.
And now he is in Havana. So far, so good.
The difficulty, as Edward is rapidly discovering, is that the men awaiting him are involved in something far larger than a simple exchange of intelligence for coin. Worse still, they appear to believe that he—that Duncan Walpole—is involved in it too.
Edward stands in a shaded gallery of Governor Torres’s residence, one hand resting loosely against the pommel of Walpole’s sword, and makes what he hopes is the face of a man listening attentively to matters of tremendous importance.
And there is a great deal to listen to. Templars. Assassins. Secret societies. An Observatory. Some fellow called the Sage. Governor Torres has been talking for several minutes about civilization and order while Woodes Rogers occasionally supplies an observation of his own.
Edward understands perhaps half of it. He understands the important half, which is that the little glass cube he has delivered into their hands—a trifle he had nearly dismissed as some bit of Assassin rubbish when he stripped Walpole’s effects from his corpse—is worth an extraordinary amount to these men. He understands they have money. They have ships, soldiers, influence. Most importantly, they want something badly, and they believe Duncan Walpole can help them obtain it.
“All will be made clear tomorrow, gentlemen, when you meet the Sage for yourselves,” Torres says at last, reaching for a dark green bottle of Spanish wine. “Until then, let us drink.”
They toast first to the Observatory and then, with rather more feeling, to everything the Observatory might make possible: knowledge beyond the reach of kings; influence beyond the meddling of ministers; power sufficient, as Torres puts it, to make governments behave rationally for once in their miserable existence.
Edward raises his glass when the others do, then drinks it down. The wine is good. More importantly, it gives him something to do with his mouth, because he is in no mood to speak.
Maintaining the identity of a dead man has proven considerably more exhausting than he had anticipated.
He had supposed, when he stripped Duncan Walpole on that miserable little island, that the difficult part of impersonating a man would be looking like him. This concern had been resolved almost immediately by the discovery that none of the people expecting Duncan Walpole had ever actually met him.
After that, Edward had imagined the rest would amount to little more than saying as few words as possible and accepting whatever money happened to be owed.
Instead, every hour in Havana has brought some new and inventive danger. Mostly that, for whatever reason, he has attracted the attention of Julien du Casse and failed to get rid of it. Edward has felt the man staring at him the entire afternoon at Torres’s estate and has not the faintest idea why.
Torres and Rogers have gone now, called away together on other business after informing him that they will meet again tomorrow at noon, leaving Edward alone in the long receiving room with its cool tiled floor and a rather intimidating abundance of expensive objects.
Without thinking, he stops before a painting. It is enormous, nearly as tall as a man, set inside a gold frame thick enough to ransom a small ship. A saint occupies the center of it, though Edward cannot name which one—Sebastian, he thinks, though his schooling in saints begins and ends with knowing that most of them met grisly ends. The fellow is tied half-naked to a tree and stuck full of arrows, his face lifted heavenward with an expression of serene suffering.
“Saint Sébastien.”
Edward keeps his eyes on the painting. “Thought it might be.”
Julien’s reflection appears indistinctly in the varnished black at the edge of the canvas. “Are you a religious man, Duncan?”
“I speak to God on occasion. Rarely does he answer me.”
Julien chuckles softly. Edward glances at him, and there it is again—that look.
Julien comes to stand beside him before the painting, close enough that Edward catches the smell of tobacco in his clothes and something floral beneath it—soap, perhaps, or perfume. For a moment they both regard the unfortunate saint.
“You are not what I expected,” Julien says.
Edward turns his head. His heart gives one hard, unpleasant beat, but he schools his face before any of it can show.
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing unkind.” The corner of Julien’s mouth lifts slightly. “Only that, after so many months writing to one another, I had begun to paint a portrait of you. It is difficult to exchange so many letters with a man and not construct some version of him in your mind.”
Letters. What letters? He knew Duncan had corresponded with Torres; the parchment taken from the dead man’s effects had made that plain enough. But there had been nothing from du Casse. Nothing Edward had seen, at least, and certainly nothing suggesting months of private correspondence between them.
“Right,” Edward says uneasily.
Julien glances over his shoulder, a quick sweep to check whether any Spanish guards are lingering nearby. When he sees there are none, he steps closer, then closer again.
“The Duncan I came to know through your letters was rather less restrained,” he says. “Coarse. Vulgar, at times. Un sauvage. You may imagine my surprise when you finally arrived and proved so very soft-spoken.”
Edward has no ready answer. More troublingly, he has no idea what answer Duncan Walpole might have given.
He clears his throat. “Forgive me,” he says at last, forcing a rueful smile. “Perhaps I’ve lost some of my nerve, finding myself suddenly among men as powerful as yourself.”
It is not his best lie, but it is plausible enough. Men like Julien are accustomed to making other men uneasy. Better to flatter his vanity than leave him wondering at Edward’s hesitation.
“There is nothing to forgive,” Julien says. “In fact, I find I prefer this version of you.”
It is then that Julien lifts a hand.
Edward’s first instinct is to brace. His shoulders tighten before thought can catch up with habit, his body preparing automatically for a blow, a blade, an act of violence. But Julien reaches for no weapon.
Instead, to Edward’s considerable bewilderment, he cups his cheek.
It is the gentlest of touches. Julien’s palm is warm against his face, his fingers fitting easily along Edward’s jaw.
Edward becomes immediately and unwillingly conscious of the hand itself. There are scars across the knuckles, a pale seam of puckered flesh near the base of one thumb, the small hard marks of a man who has used a sword often enough to earn them. It is nothing like the rope-burned, split-nailed hands Edward knows from ships and docks. A gentleman’s hand, almost.
What the devil, he thinks, is this man doing?
Julien’s thumb passes over Edward’s lower lip, and his mouth parts before he can think better of it. The involuntary response sends a hot stab of confusion and embarrassment through him. His pulse beats hard and high in his throat, a war drum, and he has the absurd notion that Julien must be able to feel it from where he stands.
“Now that our work is done for the day, we may turn our attention to more pleasant matters,” Julien says, lowering his hungry gaze to Edward’s mouth. “Governor Torres has given me use of one of his guesthouses while I am in Havana. It is beyond the eastern courtyard, a small place, white shutters. You cannot miss it.”
“What are you—”
Julien’s gray-blue eyes, the color of stormwater over stone, lift slowly to meet his. “Come to me tonight,” he says. “I have waited too long to meet you, Duncan. I should very much like to discover whether you intend to make good on all those things you promised me in your letters.”
Edward remains where he is, struck momentarily stupid.
With a small, knowing smile, Julien turns away, catches up his cloak, and throws it over one shoulder as he crosses the room. Then he is gone, disappearing into the bright corridor beyond and leaving Edward alone beneath the serene, arrow-riddled gaze of Saint Sebastian.
The instant Julien is out of sight, Edward’s composure goes with him. His thoughts, held at bay by the immediate necessity of not looking like an impostor, descend all at once.
What in God’s name was that? Had that truly happened? And, more urgently: What exactly had Duncan written in those letters?
Edward lifts a hand to his mouth without thinking, fingertips brushing the place Julien’s thumb had touched. The realization of what he is doing makes him snatch it away at once, as though someone has caught him in an indecency. His face burns, hot as coals.
Edward glowers and turns to the painting above. “You saw nothing,” he mutters.
The saint, suffering beatifically, offers no reply.
* * *
For the next several hours—after being waylaid near the harbor by a distressingly talkative Stede Bonnet—Edward manages to convince himself that he cannot very well flee Havana just yet.
There is still the matter of Walpole’s reward. He has not crossed half the bloody Caribbean and endured this Templar nonsense only to lose the money he so desperately needs. If failing to appear at Julien’s guesthouse tonight raises questions or gives offense enough to jeopardize the payment, then all has been for naught.
That is the reason he is going, he tells himself. The money and nothing else.
Besides, there is every possibility he has misunderstood the situation. Men touch each other. Not often on the mouth, admittedly, but Julien is French. Perhaps Julien du Casse touches everyone like that. Perhaps Governor Torres has had his cheek cupped as well.
Edward imagines it, then completely abandons the thought.
The point remains: Julien may simply be an affectionate sort of man. And whatever Duncan had written was probably nowhere near as bad as Edward now imagines. Possibly Julien will produce them, which would be useful. Extremely useful, in fact. Edward could learn precisely what Duncan had told him and avoid any future surprises.
After a drink at a tavern to steady his nerves—and then half of another, because the first appears to have gone nowhere useful—he sets off in the direction of Torres’s residence once more.
At the gates of Torres’s estate, the guard recognizes him immediately and allows him through the gates. The eastern courtyard is easy enough to find. Orange trees stand in painted ceramic pots along the colonnade, their leaves black and glossy beneath the moon. The night air is warm and heavy with blossom, salt, and the sweetness of ripe fruit.
Farther on, separated from the main residence by a strip of tiled courtyard, are three small guesthouses.
One has terracotta shutters. One brown. One white.
Edward stops. “There you are,” he mutters.
The guesthouse sits at the far end beneath a spreading tree whose branches scrape softly against the clay roof whenever the wind moves through them. No guards stand outside. No servants hurry between the buildings. The place is quiet enough that Edward can hear insects whining in the hedges and, beyond the walls, the distant noise of Havana settling into evening.
He remains where he is, then forces himself onward. Ridiculous, he chastises. You are being ridiculous.
At the door he stops again. There is light beyond the shutters, and he can make out movement within.
He knocks twice. The latch turns, and Julien appears before him.
He is not dressed as he had been that afternoon. The cloak and hat are gone, as are the belts and weapons that had made him look so dangerous at Torres’s table. His shirt sleeves are rolled neatly to the elbows, the collar loosened farther than Edward remembers seeing it.
He has bathed as well. Edward knows this the instant the door opens and a breath of warm air slips past Julien into the night, carrying with it the floral scent Edward had noticed earlier at Torres’s estate, only stronger now—violets, perhaps, or dried roses steeped in oil, something expensive and foreign and utterly unlike the tar, sweat, and lye soap to which Edward is accustomed.
“You came,” Julien says.
Edward leans one shoulder against the doorpost, trusting the posture to look careless rather than like that of a man who has spent the whole walk across Torres’s grounds reconsidering every choice that has brought him here.
“You sound surprised.”
“I had begun to think you meant to keep me waiting.”
“Have I kept you long?”
Julien smiles coyly. “Long enough,” he says, opening the door wider. “Entrez.”
Edward steps inside. The guesthouse is small but beautifully decorated. A Turkey carpet softens the tiled floor. Two upholstered chairs sit before an empty hearth despite the heat, and a narrow writing desk has been placed beneath the shuttered window, its surface cluttered with correspondence, sealing wax, a silver inkstand, and several books whose spines Edward cannot read from where he stands.
His attention catches on the letters. He wonders whether Duncan’s are among them.
He looks away before Julien can notice, forcing his attention to the rest of the room: the brass candlesticks, the open door leading to what must be the bedchamber. There is a decanter on a low table between the chairs, two glasses already set beside it, and Edward realizes quickly that Julien has prepared for this. Prepared for him.
Behind him, the door closes, the latch dropping into place with a click.
“Please,” Julien says, drifting to the table and pouring them each a drink. “Make yourself comfortable. You must still be tired after such a journey.”
Edward sits and accepts his brandy readily. “Nothing another drink won’t cure.”
“That has always been your philosophy,” Julien says, clinking their glasses. “Santé. To our meeting.”
Edward swallows half of it in one go. To getting paid, he thinks. To getting rich and getting the hell out of Havana before this becomes any stranger.
Julien takes a seat beside him. He settles back with one ankle resting over his knee and, without the least attempt at discretion, lets his eyes travel slowly over Edward—from his boots to the stolen robes, up across his chest and shoulders, and at last to his face.
It is not a subtle appraisal. To Edward’s considerable annoyance, he becomes suddenly aware of every inch of himself beneath it.
He is twenty-two years old, for God’s sake. He has crossed oceans. Married a woman against the wishes of nearly everyone who knew either of them. Put a blade through Duncan Walpole’s chest without losing so much as a night’s sleep over it.
He is a man. Has been one for some time. And yet a single leisurely look from Julien du Casse has somehow reduced him to the miserable self-consciousness of a boy on his first visit to a whorehouse, painfully aware that the other person in the room knows considerably more about what is meant to happen next.
Edward drinks from his brandy again. He takes a longer swallow than necessary and, for want of anything better to occupy his thoughts, finds himself wondering how old Julien is. Thirty-two, perhaps. Thirty-three. There is something in the easy confidence of him, in the patience of that assessing stare, that suggests a good ten years on Edward at least.
“You are nervous still,” Julien says.
Edward looks at him over the rim of his glass. “Is it that obvious?”
Julien takes a final sip from his own drink, sets the glass aside, and shifts the chair nearer. “You need not fear me, Duncan,” he says, now that they are side by side. “While today may be the first time we have met face-to-face, I do not feel as though I am in the company of a stranger.”
“Oh?” Edward says, because there is very little else available to him.
Julien hums thoughtfully. “I have had your thoughts in my hands for months. Your complaints, your doubts, your private opinions—more of them, I suspect, than most men would ever willingly confess aloud.”
He reaches across the space between them and rests a hand on Edward’s knee. Edward glances down at it and finds himself wondering, with mounting alarm, what in God’s name Julien intends to do with it.
“The way you see the world intrigues me,” Julien continues. “Your ideas about men. About power. About what people reveal of themselves when they believe no one is watching.”
His hand begins to move, sliding slowly over Edward’s knee and along the length of his thigh.
“You have a brilliant mind,” Julien says.
Edward’s mouth has gone abruptly dry.
“Do I?” he manages. “Tell me more about what I wrote.”
“You want me to recite your own words to you?”
“Perhaps I want to know which ones made such an impression.”
A small smile touches Julien’s mouth. Edward thinks he has managed it—that the question has passed for whatever quality Duncan Walpole had apparently possessed in abundance on paper and now expects Edward to supply in person.
Then Julien chuckles.
“I see what you are doing,” he says.
No. Edward’s stomach clenches so hard he nearly brings the brandy back up.
But Julien’s hand does not withdraw. His expression holds no suspicion. Only amusement, dark and pleased.
“You want me to repeat all the filth you wrote to me,” Julien says softly. “Is that it?”
Well. That certainly confirms what Edward has suspected and feared.
He swallows thickly. “Yes,” he says, because he is in far too deep now to say anything else.
Once again, he forces himself to think of the coin he will receive at the end of this. Spanish gold in absurd quantities. Enough to buy his own ship, a ship with clean canvas and good guns and a name—any name he pleases—carved fine across the stern. Enough to dress himself in silk if he likes, to drink what gentlemen drink, to walk into any tavern in Nassau or Bristol or London and be greeted with deference rather than suspicion.
Enough, perhaps, to send something home to Caroline. Because that is what all of this has been for. Obviously.
Julien studies him for another moment, plainly enjoying the effort it costs Edward to maintain his composure.
“I could repeat them,” he says. “But I have never had much patience for words when action will serve better.”
Edward scarcely has time to decide what that means. Julien leans sideways and kisses him.
For several appalling seconds, Edward does nothing. Every part of him seems to seize at once. His shoulders lock; his fingers tighten around the brandy glass. A mind that has carried him through more ill-considered disasters than he cares to count suddenly produces nothing useful at all.
There is only the bewildering fact of another man’s mouth against his own.
Christ. A man.
He has heard enough sermons in his life to know precisely what sort of thing this is supposed to be. The parish priest in Bristol had possessed an inexhaustible supply of opinions concerning sins of the flesh, most of which Edward had ignored with the confidence of a man already certain he was bound for damnation by half a dozen other roads.
Fornication. Adultery. Drunkenness. Blasphemy. Those had always seemed ordinary enough offenses, committed daily and without much ceremony by half the privateers he sailed with and enthusiastically encouraged by the other half.
But this—
Edward has never cared what two men choose to do behind a locked door. Sailors learn quickly not to concern themselves overmuch with another man’s appetites. Months at sea breed peculiar arrangements, and a wise man keeps his eyes on his own hammock and his opinions to himself.
But never, not once, has it occurred to Edward that he might someday find himself on the other side of that locked door. And certainly not with a wife waiting for him an ocean away.
Julien’s lips, like his hands, are unexpectedly gentle. He tastes of brandy, the liquor sweetened somehow by the heat of his tongue, with the faint bitterness of tobacco lingering beneath it. The edge of his moustache rasps lightly over Edward’s upper lip—strange enough to remind him, with sudden force, exactly whom he is kissing.
The thought ought to sober him. Instead, the revulsion Edward had expected—the immediate instinct to wrench himself backward, wipe his mouth, curse Julien for trying it—never arrives. What little disgust had seized him at the first touch of their lips falters almost at once, thinning beneath the warmth of Julien’s mouth until, to Edward’s considerable alarm, it disappears completely.
Julien’s hand slides from his thigh to his jaw. His thumb settles beneath Edward’s ear, directly over the pulse beating there with humiliating force, while his fingers curl loosely around the back of Edward’s neck.
Their mouths part. Edward draws in one uneven breath. Then Julien kisses him again, and Edward feels the first light touch of his tongue.
For another heartbeat Edward remains rigid, startled less by the act itself than by the fact that he does not immediately want it to stop. Then pride, curiosity, or something baser gets the better of him. He leans forward and kisses Julien back with enough force to push him deeper into the chair.
It is awkward for the space of a breath—their noses brush, Edward nearly catches Julien’s lower lip between his teeth—but Julien adjusts without drawing away, tilting his head and coaxing Edward into the angle with him.
Edward’s eyes slip shut before he can think better of it. Julien’s thumb moves slowly along his cheek, and the small caress sends a shiver down Edward’s spine.
He cannot blame the drink for this. Edward has always held his liquor well, and he has had nowhere near enough to explain why another man’s mouth is beginning to feel so dangerously pleasant.
“There we are,” Julien murmurs approvingly against his lips. “Much better.”
The hand resting in Edward’s lap shifts higher, cupping him boldly through his breeches.
Edward shudders. Julien only kisses him again, swallowing the startled breath that escapes him.
“You were wound tight as a ship’s rope when you came through my door,” he says in his French lilt. His fingers squeeze with slow, kneading pressure. “Enough of that nonsense. Let me make you feel good.”
Edward’s head is swimming badly enough that he scarcely realizes Julien has drawn him to his feet until deft hands are already working at his clothes.
His belts come away first. Julien unbuckles them one by one, letting the weight of sword and pistol settle onto a nearby chair before turning his attention to the hidden blades at Edward’s wrists—the very pair he had presented to him that afternoon from his own collection. He pauses over them with a satisfied look, then unfastens each bracer and lays them aside.
After every piece, Julien kisses him.
Edward’s belt comes loose, and Julien’s mouth finds his. His sword is set aside, followed by another kiss. Then the pistols. Then the heavy outer layers of Walpole’s robes, stripped from Edward’s shoulders and left wherever they happen to fall.
Somewhere along the way, Edward begins returning the favor. He fumbles impatiently with Julien’s shirt while Julien laughs softly against his mouth and helps him with the buttons.
Before long, half the room looks as though it has been ransacked by thieves. Clothing lies scattered over chairs and carpet alike; belts coil among boots, swords and pistols have been abandoned wherever there was space enough to put them down, and neither man appears capable of remembering which discarded article belongs to whom.
Their breeches are the last difficulty, undone with urgency. Edward nearly loses his balance getting one leg free and catches himself against Julien’s shoulder, which only makes Julien laugh again. Edward silences him with another kiss, hot and open-mouthed, while Julien finishes dragging the offending garment, smallclothes included, down and away.
Then Julien is backing him toward the bedchamber.
Their mouths scarcely part as they cross the room. Edward walks backward half-blind beneath Julien’s kisses until the backs of his knees strike the bed and buckle beneath him. He drops onto the mattress with a startled breath, dragging Julien down after him.
Julien catches himself on one arm before his full weight can come down, then settles between Edward’s thighs. Their naked bodies press together from chest to hip, and the contact startles Edward almost more than the kissing had. Julien feels unmistakably masculine beneath his hands: hard muscle, broad shoulders, coarse hair, old scars.
Edward lets his hands wander.
Julien’s skin slides against Edward’s palm over hard muscle and old scars. His shoulders are broad, his waist lean, his back shaped by the strength of a swordsman rather than a sailor or laborer. Edward feels every shift beneath his hand when Julien moves—the contraction of muscle beneath his ribs, the flex of his stomach when Edward’s fingers wander lower.
Then he glances down between them, where Julien’s cock lies hard against Edward’s thigh. It is as tanned as the rest of him, darker toward the head, thick and heavy where it rests against Edward’s skin.
Edward stares for considerably longer than he means to. There is something profoundly strange about seeing another man aroused because of him. Stranger still is the undeniable fact that Edward is hard, too.
Julien shifts above him, and their cocks brush.
The contact tears a sound out of Edward before he can stop it. His fingers, now buried in Julien’s dark hair, tighten sharply.
“Ah,” he gasps.
Julien answers by rolling his hips again. Their bodies slide together, skin against skin, the friction building in long, steady strokes that make Edward’s toes curl against the tangled bedding and tear the breath clean out of him. He pants into the wet heat of Julien’s mouth, dazed by the slick drag of him, by the intimacy of another man’s cock rubbing against his own.
Edward hooks one thigh higher around Julien’s hip.
He has no idea whether the movement is right. He only knows he wants Julien closer. Wants more of that hot pressure. Wants him moving like that again and again until Edward cannot think past the sensation of it.
The reward is immediate: Julien moans into his mouth, rough and pleased, his composure breaking for one glorious instant. One hand slides down Edward’s side to grip his thigh and hold him open beneath him.
Edward is so swallowed by the kiss, by the heat and weight of Julien above him, that he does not notice when Julien reaches toward the small table beside the bed.
There is a clink of glass. Then Julien draws back with a small bottle of oil in his hand and Edward, who had been quite successfully drowning in the sensation of Julien against him, snaps at once to the surface.
“Wait, wait,” Edward says, breathless. His hand closes around Julien’s wrist before he can think better of it.
Julien stops at once. He remains braced above Edward, chest rising and falling, the little glass bottle held harmlessly between his fingers. Desire still darkens his eyes, but he makes no attempt to pull free.
“What is the matter?”
Edward searches his face with panic. “I have never done this before.”
Julien’s brow furrows. “This?”
Edward’s jaw works. “With a man.”
Julien blinks, his mouth pulling to the side in a smirk. “You wrote to me that you had been with many.”
Duncan, you molly. Of course he had.
“I lied,” Edward says, then feels his blood turn to ice in his veins. He remembers, with sudden and terrible clarity, Julien’s earlier distaste for dishonesty. I have no love for Assassins, but even less for liars.
Desperately, he fumbles for an excuse. Any excuse.
“I lied because I did not want you thinking me some green fool.” His grip slackens around Julien’s wrist, though he does not let go entirely. “I was—”
He stops. What had Duncan been? What had Duncan written? Edward reaches for the man and finds nothing useful there. Only his own humiliation.
“You sounded as though you had the measure of everything,” Edward guesses. “In your letters. As though there were nothing in this world that might surprise you, much less frighten you. And I did not want to come all this way to Havana only for you to look at me and think—”
He cuts himself off again, furious. His mouth works silently.
“I wanted to impress you,” he finally says.
Julien does not speak.
Edward braces for mockery. It would almost be a relief if Julien mocked him. Edward could feign offense then. He could shove the Frenchman aside, gather whatever pieces of his dignity remain scattered among Walpole’s discarded robes, and stalk out of the guesthouse as though the whole thing had been Julien’s mistake rather than his own increasingly enthusiastic participation in it.
Instead, Julien simply smiles. He gives a soft huff of laughter and bends to kiss the corner of Edward’s mouth.
“You might have told me from the beginning, mon cœur,” he says softly. His palm moves in a slow, soothing stroke along the inside of Edward’s leg. “You know you do not need to pretend with me. I can be gentle.”
“I do not need gentle,” Edward says at once, affronted. He casts another wary glance at the little vial, even as a blush climbs steadily from his throat to the tips of his ears. “I only mean that I have never—”
“Been touched there?” Julien supplies, a low laugh stirring in his chest. He uncorks the bottle and tips a little oil into his palm, rubbing it slowly between his fingers to warm it.
Edward’s mouth tightens. “I know where my own arse is, thank you.”
“I should hope so.” Julien’s smile widens enough to bare the sharp points of his canines. “But knowing where something is and knowing what pleasure may be found there are not quite the same thing.”
Edward gives him a suspicious look.
“Let me show you,” Julien murmurs. “I promise not to wound your pride beyond repair.”
His slick fingers drift back down Edward’s thigh, unhurried, slipping between his legs. The first touch is hardly more than a caress. Julien traces one oiled fingertip around the tight rim of him, slow enough that Edward becomes conscious of every pass.
The sensation is peculiar.
Not pleasure, exactly. Not discomfort either. Merely an embarrassing awareness of a part of his body he has spent twenty-two years giving very little thought and certainly never imagined offering up to another man’s attention.
Then his fingertip presses inward to the first knuckle.
Edward’s fingers seize a fistful of sheet. The stretch is small, barely enough to hurt, but his body reacts instinctively, clenching hard around the intrusion.
Julien waits, finger resting shallowly inside while his other strokes up and down Edward’s leg—up toward his hip, down again to his knee, then back, until little by little Edward’s body begins to relinquish its resistance. The initial sting eases, and when he shifts experimentally, Julien’s finger moves with him.
A small shock of sensation runs through Edward’s belly. His cock twitches against his stomach, and Edward looks down at himself, betrayed.
“See?” Julien says huskily, nosing at Edward’s jaw. “It feels good, does it not?”
Physically, yes. Mentally is another matter entirely. Because what sort of husband lies naked in a Frenchman’s bed while another man works a slick finger inside him? What sort of man finds himself spread open beneath a stranger’s hands and thinks, not of his wife an ocean away, not of the vows he made in a church, but of the next careful press of Julien’s knuckle?
What would Caroline say if she could see him now?
Edward cannot bear the thought long enough to answer it.
Julien’s mouth occupies him before his conscience can shame him further. He kisses Edward deeply as his finger sinks the rest of the way in, slow and inexorable, giving Edward no choice but to feel every inch of it. The stretch is beyond anything he had imagined, his body resisting first and then, shamefully, accepting him.
Julien withdraws only halfway before pressing in again.
Edward moans against his lips.
The sound startles him almost as much as the pleasure does. It comes from somewhere low in his chest and ought to humiliate him. Instead, his cock gives a twitch where it lies, weeping at the touch.
Julien notices.
“You are making such a mess of yourself,” he murmurs. His finger moves steadily, dragging another broken breath from Edward’s throat. “All this worry. All this pretending. And yet your body tells me everything so plainly.”
Edward turns his face aside, jaw clenched.
Julien kisses the corner of his mouth, then the edge of his cheek. “Do not be ashamed,” he says.
“I’m not.”
“No?”
“No.”
Julien adds a second finger. Then, after a time, a third.
The new stretch tears a low sound from him, deeper than the first, nearly pained and yet not pain at all. His hands fist hard in the bedding. His thighs tense around Julien’s hips. The oil eases the way, but not enough to make him forget what is happening. He feels everything: the careful push, the give of his body each time Julien draws back and presses in again, scissoring his fingers apart.
“Listen to yourself,” Julien whispers.
Edward shakes his head once.
“Yes,” Julien says. “Listen. That is you.”
His fingers slide deeper with a wet, lewd sound that makes Edward’s face burn.
“Julien—”
“That is you taking me so sweetly.”
Edward makes a strangled noise.
Julien’s mouth brushes his ear. “Très bien,” he murmurs. “There. Just like that.”
Then he curls his fingers. Edward’s whole body bucks. The pleasure goes through him like a musket-shot.
His hips jerk clean off the mattress, a helpless arch that drives a strangled sound out of him before he can bite it back. Heat flashes white behind his eyes, blazing up from some secret place inside him and striking straight to the root of his cock. For a moment he cannot breathe. Cannot think. Cannot even form the curse that rises in his throat.
Julien stills at once.
Edward lies beneath him, chest heaving, one hand fisted so tightly in the bedclothes that his knuckles ache. He stares up at the rafters as though the answer might be written there.
“What,” he says hoarsely, “the bloody hell was that?”
Julien’s smile turns tender. “This?” he murmurs, and with appalling gentleness, draws the pads of his fingers over that same place again.
Edward jolts again. His head falls back against the pillow, mouth opening on a broken gasp. Every muscle in his body pulls tight at once, thighs trembling around Julien’s hips, belly clenching hard. It is too much and not enough, a pleasure so bright it borders on pain.
“God,” he chokes.
Julien watches him with rapt attention. “Beautiful,” he says. “You are learning something rare. Most men live and die refusing to know themselves.”
“I am finished learning,” Edward says, breathless and furious with himself for it. He reaches down to wrap a hand around his cock, hard and slick against his palm. “If you mean to have me, get on with it.”
“My, my.” Julien withdraws his fingers slowly, and Edward’s whole body gives a humiliating shudder at the loss. “So impatient. Are you sure you are ready?”
Edward is not sure—not in the slightest. His body still feels split between anticipation and alarm, opened in a way that should make him feel ashamed and instead leaves him aching, empty, maddened by the loss of Julien’s fingers and the knowledge of what is meant to come next. It is wonderful. It is terrifying.
All he truly knows is that if Julien does not get inside him soon, he will begin thinking. He will think of Caroline. Of what this means, if it means anything, that another man’s hands have brought him so quickly to this state. He cannot have that.
So Edward tightens his hand around his cock and lifts his chin, scowling up at Julien with what little defiance he has left.
“Aye,” he says.
Julien remains still above him, waiting.
“Please,” Edward adds.
Julien shifts back onto his knees. His cock, hard and flushed, taps against his stomach as he reaches for the oil again. Candlelight moves over him in long gold planes, illuminating his throat, the dark hair dusted over his chest and navel, the lean strength of his thighs spread between Edward’s own.
He slicks himself thoroughly, then guides Edward’s legs around his waist and presses forward.
The first push burns.
Edward bows beneath him, his body clamping hard around the intrusion, every muscle seeming to insist that this cannot possibly be what it was made to take. His hand flies from his cock to Julien’s forearm, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise.
“Good,” Julien praises against his ear, easing himself deeper. “Good, Duncan.”
Edward curses through his teeth.
Julien does not stop. He works himself into him inch by careful inch, pausing whenever Edward tightens, waiting for the resistance to ease before pressing farther. By the time he bottoms out, every nerve in Edward’s body seems fixed upon the impossible fullness of him. Julien is buried so deep Edward feels him everywhere—in the tight pull of his belly, in his lungs, in the frantic gallop of his heart.
His body flutters helplessly around the thickness of him, clenching in small pulses. Julien groans, shudders.
He begins to fuck him properly then, one hand braced beside Edward’s head, the other gripping his hip and holding him open beneath every deep stroke. When Edward looks down, all he can see is Julien filling him again and again, his hips working between Edward’s spread thighs, his cock disappearing into him with every thrust.
The sight makes Edward’s face burn anew.
Julien catches his mouth in a brandy-sweet kiss, groaning into it as his balls slap wetly against Edward’s arse with every roll of his hips.
“That’s it,” he murmurs, pushing Edward’s thigh higher and opening him further. “Take me.”
Edward makes a sound perilously close to a whimper. The angle changes with his leg raised. Julien’s next thrust drags the thick length of his cock directly across the place his fingers had found before, and pleasure flashes through Edward so deliciously that his vision blurs. His stomach knots. His fingers seize in the sheets.
His hips tilt upward to meet Julien’s next stroke, cock jerking. He’s going to come. He’s going to come, and Julien has not touched him there once since this all began.
“Julien,” he says, nails digging crescents into the meat of the man's shoulders. “I—Christ, I’m going to—”
Julien laughs throatily. “Already?” he teases. His voice has gone rough, French accent thickening around the words. “Go on. Come for me.”
Edward can scarcely hear him over the blood roaring in his ears. His whole body has begun to tighten around the pleasure building inside him, thighs trembling uncontrollably around Julien’s hips while every deep thrust drives him closer. His balls draw up hard. His stomach clenches.
Julien buries himself deep again, and Edward’s body simply gives in.
His cock pulses untouched between them, his body locking around Julien so suddenly and fiercely that Julien swears and nearly loses his rhythm. A hot spurt of come streaks Edward’s stomach, then another, pearling over his belly and lower chest while Julien keeps fucking him through it.
Edward cries out.
His thighs shake uncontrollably. His heels dig into the mattress. His fingers claw down Julien’s back while pleasure rolls through him in waves. Every thrust drags another helpless contraction from him, squeezing Julien deep inside while Edward’s cock jerks again and again between their bodies.
“Fuck—fuck—”
And then Julien is coming too. He drives home with a moan, pelvis flush against Edward’s arse, holding himself as deep as he can. Each throb of his cock leaves another wash of heat deep in Edward’s body, and Edward, oversensitive and trembling, can do nothing but lie there and feel Julien fill him, fill him until he thinks he cannot possibly take any more.
Edward’s head falls back against the pillow in exhaustion.
Sweat has dampened the hair at his temples, and his limbs feel boneless. His cock lies sticky and spent against his stomach, his own come smeared across his belly and over Julien’s chest where their bodies have rubbed together.
Julien remains over him for several moments, his chest heaving against Edward’s. At last he begins to withdraw, leaving Edward achingly empty, his breath hitching when the thick head finally slips free.
Edward watches Julien’s gaze drop between his thighs and instinctively follows it.
His legs are still sprawled wide across the sheets, trembling with the aftermath of his climax. Between them, his hole is flushed and slick from Julien’s cock, still twitching in helpless contractions. A pearly smear of come glistens at the opening before another thick bead wells up and spills free, dragging slowly down toward the crease of his arse.
“Beautiful,” Julien says again, awestruck.
Edward shoots him a look of pure mortification. It might have carried more force if, at that exact moment, another warm trickle had not slipped from him.
With some effort, Julien pushes himself upright and leaves the bedside for the washbasin across the room. Edward hears water disturbed, the soft knock of porcelain, and for several blessed moments is left alone.
He lies flat on his back and breathes. Every part of him feels loose and strangely heavy, except for the tender ache between his thighs and the occasional flutter low in his body that makes him grit his teeth.
When Julien returns, he carries a damp cloth.
Edward cracks one eye open. “What are you doing?” he asks.
Julien looks almost offended by the question. “What sort of lover would I be if I left you like this?”
Before Edward can think of an answer sufficiently cutting, Julien sits beside him and begins wiping carefully across his stomach, gathering the cooling streaks of spend from his skin.
It is, with certainty, one of the most intimate things anyone has ever done to him.
When Julien is finally satisfied, Edward pushes himself upright.
The room tilts at once.
He waits for it to steady, teeth gritted, then swings his legs over the side of the bed. They feel strangely unreliable beneath him, his thighs still heavy with exhaustion and the muscles in his arse protesting the movement with a deep, unfamiliar ache. Worse, the change in position sends another slow bead of warmth slipping from between his cheeks.
He scans the floor for his breeches. He ought to leave.
That much, at least, seems obvious. Find an inn somewhere decent enough that he will not wake with his purse cut and his boots gone. Have several uninterrupted hours in which to recover his senses. Sleep, God willing. Then rise before dawn and begin considering the larger problem of how Duncan Walpole is meant to comport himself after spending the night being fucked senseless by a man who has been exchanging obscene letters with him for months.
Edward lifts himself from the bed when an arm snakes around his waist. He scarcely has time to swear before Julien gives one efficient tug and hauls him backward onto the mattress.
Edward lands with an undignified yelp. “What—”
“Stay.”
Edward cranes his head around and looks pointedly at the arm locked across his middle. “I have stayed.”
“For perhaps thirty seconds.”
“Oh, piss off.”
Julien makes a soft shushing sound against the back of his neck. “Calm yourself,” he mumbles.
Before Edward can object to being spoken to as though he were a skittish horse, Julien settles more comfortably behind him. One long leg slides over Edward’s thighs, effectively preventing another attempt at escape, while his free hand catches the discarded coverlet and drags it over them both.
“Rest,” Julien says. “There is no reason for you to leave so soon.”
Edward stares down at himself, effectively pinned beneath blanket, arm, and Frenchman. Every sensible thought in his head tells him to flee, to return his focus to what brought him to this blasted island country in the first place.
But Julien’s breath is warm against his bare skin, and the mattress is soft—far softer than any cot he has been sleeping in these past months.
Edward closes his eyes. Only for a moment, he tells himself.
He will leave presently.
Before dawn, certainly.
There is no harm in resting here awhile.
No harm at all in one night spent in Julien du Casse’s bed.
Edward believes that right up until he falls asleep.