There Will Be Phlogiston Page 12

  “It far surpasses them. I’ve never been able imagine a situation in which it wouldn’t have been miserable for both of us.”

  “You’re not miserable now?”

  “No, I’m . . . oh God . . .” He pressed suddenly into her arms, trembling. “I think I’m happy.”

  Rosamond held him, as tight as she could, for she knew his bewilderment and his trepidation, and then Jones let her go, crawled up the bed, and enfolded both of them. After a moment or two, Arkady pulled free and rolled onto his back, looking up at Jones with such naked longing that Rosamond felt a little breathless for both of them. With an unsteady hand, he caressed the side of Jones’s face, and the hair-shadowed jaw that Rosamond found so terribly vulgar and appealing.

  “Please,” he said. “I need you to kiss me. Please, oh please, will you—”

  Jones’s mouth came down on his.

  Needless to say, witness two men kissing was also on Rosamond’s list of Things Not Previously Experienced, along with brandy and billiards, so she lacked sources of comparison, but it indisputably seemed like a highly satisfying endeavour for both parties. She was not at a good angle to see their faces, but the way their bodies moved together, Jones falling into the cradle of Arkady’s opening thighs, and the intermingling sounds they made, soft gasps and helpless moans, communicated a mutuality of pleasure in a manner that required no further explication.

  She was not entirely sure what she might have expected. She had been taught that it was a man’s character to conquer and a woman’s to yield, but her own experiences with Jones had already proven this to be arrant nonsense. Nevertheless, since men were supposed to be creatures of flesh rather than creatures of spirit, she wondered if the way they kissed each other would be different, perhaps even a little brutish.

  But it was not like that at all. There was nothing in it of aggression or subjugation. It was an effortless union, simply a lover’s kiss, an exchange between equals, like their dancing. Just as lovely to behold. What shook her, as it turned out, was not the fact they were two men, but how vulnerable they were to each other when they came together in pleasure. How much power you granted another person when you let your body tell them things as frightening and wonderful as I need, I want, I love.

  She had felt something similar that day in the woods. And she could see it now in the way Arkady’s fingers were curled too tightly in Jones’s hair, in the straining of the muscles down Jones’s back, in the shuddering curve of Arkady’s naked throat, and in the sweat that gleamed at Jones’s brow. All their truths made manifest in the desperate entangling of their interlocked bodies.

  Jones pulled back, breathing hard, lips kiss-dark and slightly swollen. “Arkady, oh my Arkady, you don’t need to ask me for anything.”

  “But I want to. I want to ask you for everything.”

  They kissed again, softly this time, a simple touch of mouths. “It’s already yours.”

  “That’s why I am not afraid to ask.”

  There was some current between, at that moment, that Rosamond could not entirely understand, but she did not need to. She understood enough, and anything else would have felt like imposition.

  Arkady tipped his head back to look at her. “Are you shocked? That I would seek this?”

  “It would be somewhat hypocritical for I seek it myself.” She lifted her chin, and pushed back her shoulders, assuming what she hoped was a lips-accessible position. “Jones, you may kiss me as well, if you wish.”

  “I do wish.” His rose onto his knees, still straddling Arkady, and pulled her to him. His palm curved tenderly around the back of her neck, finding all those magical, tingly places that lurked beneath her hair, and then he kissed her, opening to her. His mouth was hot and harsh like the brandy—maybe she had misjudged the drink—and it could just have been her fancy but she thought she tasted Arkady. She wondered, albeit only briefly, if it should have troubled her. But it didn’t. It didn’t make Jones any less hers, or his kisses any less delightful. She clutched his shoulders, venturing deeper, the glide of his tongue against hers reminding her suddenly—and shockingly vividly—of his fingers moving intimately upon her. Squeaking, she pulled away, scalded with desire and blushing.

  “Are you all right?” asked Jones, a faint frown creasing his brow.

  Arkady pushed himself onto his elbows. “I can leave you. I have no wish to trespass.”

  She almost said yes, just so she wouldn’t have to worry about what he might think of her. But then got a little bit cross. Had she not spent enough of her life preoccupied with the perceptions and expectations of other people? What was the point of running away with an ineligible commoner and his male lover if one was still stuck giving a damn? And besides, Arkady was a sodomite, what right did he have to judge her a wanton? She opened her mouth to say as much, but the words failed to emerge, and she realised what was holding them back was the fact she liked Arkady too much to protect herself by hurting him.

  And that was . . . unexpected. Hurting other people first was the most effective method she had found for stopping them hurting her. But how could she repay Arkady for his trust and his honesty, by denying him hers?

  He was already wriggling out from under Jones, so she put a hand on his arm. “Stay. I was simply afraid I would shock you in return.”

  His lips turned upwards. “Wouldn’t that be hypocritical?”

  “Well, yes. But such considerations rarely carry the weight they ought.” She sighed. “The truth is, I rather enjoyed watching you kiss Jones. It was very . . . aesthetic. Is that peculiar?”

  “I find it preferable to the alternative.”

  “As do I, but I’m . . .” she hesitated, hating to say it “. . . scared.”

  “Of me?”

  “Of me . . . and of the things I want. I fear the loss of some fundamental part of me that I lack the experience to understand.”

  Jones left Arkady—dismounted, she thought, with a slightly hysterical, internal giggle—and came to her, wrapping her up in his arms. “There’s nothing wrong in what you want, but there’s no wrong in waiting until it feels right either.”

  “I’ve spent my whole life fearing what I want,” Arkady told her. “I feared I would lose myself the first time I put my mouth on a man. The first time I took a man inside my body. I feared I would lose myself if I kissed a man, or if I loved one.” His eyes flicked briefly to Jones. “But I’m more myself than I have ever been.”

  She tried to laugh, but it came out sounding brittle and unpleasant. “What lives we lead, spending them in fear of love.”

  “No—” Arkady’s smile was bright and fierce “—I am done with that. I won’t be ashamed or afraid anymore.”

  She touched her fingers to his shorn hair, letting what remained of the red-gold strands slip between her fingers. “I don’t want to be either.” She was silent a moment, lost and thoughtful, confused and wanting. And then she knew exactly what to do. “Show me,” she said. And then, remembering she was trying to be a better a person. “I mean, would you show me? If you please.”

  Arkady spluttered. “And to think I was concerned I would shock you with a kiss.”

  “I think I should like to see you together if it would not discomfort you. I would like to see these acts you speak of, that are performed in love and bring no shame nor loss of self.”

  “What?” Jones was laughing against her neck. “All of them?”

  “Yes,” she said proudly. “All of them.”

  “Well, perhaps some of them?” To her surprise, Arkady was grinning too.

  She blinked at them, mildly irritated by their sudden reserve. “I promise I won’t be shocked.”

  Jones kissed her under her jaw, making her pulse leap beneath his lips. “Love, there are limitations on what a man can do.”

  “With another man?”

  “No. Limitations on his pleasure.” Her expression must have reflected her incomprehension because he went on, awkwardly. “A man can only come once, and then he has to
wait a while before he can, uh . . .”

  “Seek satisfaction again,” finished Arkady helpfully.

  Rosamond gazed at them, stricken. “Oh, you poor things. How awfully disappointing for you.”

  “We contrive to make do.” Arkady settled back against the pillows, and ran a sly finger along Jones’s thigh. “Now, why don’t you come and make love to me, as the lady suggests?”

  “A gentleman never says no to a lady.” Jones leaned down and kissed him again, and this time Rosamond was close enough to catch the details—the cling of skin to skin, the helpless look on Jones’s face, the gilded flicker of Arkady’s eyelashes, the way a kiss was not really one thing at all, but a succession of moments, tender and passionate and intimate, flowing into each other.

  She noted rather ruefully that she could probably learn something from this. Her own habit was to dive right in, as she was also wont to do with sweets when nobody was looking. She had once in a single sitting eaten an entire box of the rose-flavoured lokum her father sometimes brought back from his trips. But watching Jones and Arkady she realised giddily she was never going to run out of kisses.

  “You know,” she said, since they seemed so amenable to counsel, “you might find it more comfortable to be naked as you proceed.” And, then, because being a more honest person was probably necessary to being a better one, she added, “I enjoy the sight of unclad men.”

  Jones grinned at her and stripped off the remains of his evening wear with gratifying alacrity. She was pleased to discover he looked as marvellous as she remembered, especially with the gaslight flickering like adoring tongues over the hard bands of his muscles and the deep hollows between them.

  Arkady met her eyes somewhere in the region of Jones’s abdomen (for he was especially rough-hewn and rippling there) and murmured, “As do I.”

  “And I.” Jones leaned over Arkady to relieve him of his shoes and stockings, and began slowly to ease his trousers down.

  For all the thrill of Jones’s willingness to shed his clothing at a moment’s notice, there was something quite tantalising about this gradual revelation, dark fabric giving way to pale skin, all of Arkady’s beauty laid bare before them.

  “Oh, you’re exquisite,” said Rosamond. “You make me wish I could paint something other than pissant little watercolours of meadows.” She traced the sharp lines of his collarbones, erratic colour rising beneath her fingers, like the pattern of lights at the heart of opal.

  “Aye.” Jones crawled on the bed with them. “Beautiful.”

  Arkady’s knees came up to embrace him, and Rosamond thought it must have been instinct alone, for he also flung an arm across his eyes, the flush spreading down his chest, and curling up his throat. “You’re embarrassing me.”

  “Tough.” Jones spanned his hands possessively over Arkady’s hipbones, half-pinning, half-caressing, holding him there between his palms. He glanced at Rosamond, smiling a little, his eyes bright with some still-uncertain joy. “He hardly let me look at him, before.”

  Arkady made a soft noise and writhed, eyes squeezing tightly shut in the shadow of his forearm. “I love the way you look at me. I love the way you touch me. Please touch me.”

  His male parts clearly concurred. It was hard—difficult, that is—not to heed the urgent, slightly pleading way his member curved towards his stomach. Had Rosamond been Jones at that moment, she would have curled her hand around it, to know the weight and texture of all that taut, rose-and-ivory skin, and it was almost as if Jones read her thought because he did exactly that, a few droplets of pearly fluid spilling over his fingers in greeting. Arkady’s spine arched, his whole body straining like his desirous manhood.

  Having two men present did rather lead one into a comparative frame of mind, but it did neither of them disservice. It was fascinating, really, the variation between what ought to have been two very similar anatomies. Arkady, she thought, was the more sizeable, but the dense dark hair from which Jones’s still rather imposing appendage sprang lent it an air of drama. Typical, really, of the man to possess a vulgar cock.

  Nevertheless, it seemed her own anatomies were quite responsive to such contemplations. She shifted a little on the bed, oddly conscious of the brush of her nipples against her chemise, and the heat gathering in her drawers.

  “Like this?” The bone ridges on the back of Jones’s hand flexed and the knotty blue-ish veins writhed as he tightened his grip, manipulating the other man with quite some vigour, the sound of slick skin sliding against itself a peculiarly visceral counterpoint to all their ragged breaths.

  Rosamond would have imagined such a touch might be painful, but Arkady’s wild cry was the very opposite of pain. “Yes. Oh, fuck, yes.”

  The raw obscenity, clad in Arkady’s usually so genteel voice, both shocked and excited her. It was the worst word, she knew, and consequently her favourite, and she loved to hear other people swearing. She had long thought it the epitome of personal abandonment. But that was before she had spent an evening in the company of two gloriously deviant gentlemen, who were now sharing her bed, lost both to each other and to advanced, glistening priapism. It was filthy and wonderful, and Rosamond devoured them with greedy eyes.

  Abruptly, Arkady seized Jones’s wrist. “God, stop, or I’ll come.” They both stilled, wide-eyed and panting, sweat making silver patchwork of their skin. “I don’t want to come without you inside me.”

  Jones grinned, showing a flash of gold from one of his back teeth. “That’s easily fixed.”

  “Not yet.” There was a flurry of movement, so many limbs, pale skin and darker, and now Jones was underneath, and Arkady astride him. “I never touched you enough.”

  They moved into another kiss, quite different to the last one, rougher and deeper, to match the harsh sounds they made against each other’s mouth. Jones’s hands slid all the way up Arkady’s spine, curving over his shoulder blades to pull him closer, and Rosamond realised she hadn’t touched Jones enough either.

  She had always rather prided herself on a well-developed instinct for self-preservation, and she had recognised what she had done that day in the woods was dangerous—to her virtue, certainly, but more pressingly her heart. It turned out that when a man made himself naked, and knew how to kiss properly, it had rather a way of moving one. And had she learned also how it felt to command a lover’s pleasure, and make it her own, how then would she ever have let him go?

  But now she didn’t have to. Not ever, unless she wanted. And there would be plenty of time to explore Anstruther Jones at her leisure, to make him groan and shudder and come just for her. But now Arkady needed that freedom more, and she wanted him to have it and to glory in it, as she fully intended to do. Besides, it could not hurt to gather a little advance information about the . . . lie of the land, to speak. The human body was rather intimidating in scope, and there seemed so many aspects to it, so many intriguing configurations to stroke, and taste and claim and perhaps even . . . bite?

  Oh yes, biting seemed entirely acceptable. Arkady’s lips had slipped from Jones’s and were tracing a shining path down the man’s throat, and sometimes he would pause, openmouthed, over some tender spot, until Jones groaned, the sound of his pleasure so deep and rich that she half imagined licking it from his skin. Arkady was thorough, learning the other man by taste and touch, his body covering and revealing Jones in enticing flashes like the shore beneath the sea. Her favourite moments, though, were when Arkady would discover some place, some way of touching, that would draw some naked, needy sound from Jones, make him shudder and writhe, and clench those strong hands helplessly around empty air.

  She would never have guessed men could be so sensitive, so full of secrets, not when their arousal was so overtly and specifically made manifest. But she loved to know that the lightest graze of teeth against his nipples could make Jones gasp. Or his hips would buck when Arkady ran his thumbs up the crease of his pelvis. That the interiors of his forearms were paler than the rest of him. That he was slightly
ticklish towards the tops of his hips. That passion made him beautiful, and there was nothing of himself he was not willing to give.

  Like the tide coming in, the boundaries between who was touching and who was the touched slowly dissolved until they were simply locked in each other’s arms, moving together, skin to skin and breath to breath.

  Arkady turned onto his back and reached out to Jones, drawing their faces close, gazing up at the other man with such wonderment that Rosamond stared at the shadows of their pleasingly aligned cocks in order to give them the privacy of their moment. “Now,” Arkady whispered, after a second or two, “please now.”

  “Yes. God, yes.” Jones glanced up, quite unexpectedly meeting Rosamond’s eyes. “Ros?” It could, perhaps, have felt a little odd to hear her name in such a context, but it pleased her to know she was just a thought away from him. “In the bedside table, there’s a vial of oil. Can you pass it to me?”

  Oil? But she nodded, and twisted round to tug open the top drawer. It contained a jumbled and slightly peculiar collection of items—among them, a battered copy of Melmoth the Wanderer, and a rather beautiful glass object shaped not unlike . . . oh. Was it intended for private use? She imagined Arkady’s elegant fingers circling it, and then a further thought occurred to her.

  She looked up frowning. “What exactly is sodomy?”

  Jones’s laugh was full of the wickedest joy. “Find the oil, and we’ll show you.” She rummaged about until she found a stoppered glass bottle, and when she held it up, Jones extended a hand towards her. “Pour some for me.”

  She felt the ripple that ran through Arkady, pulling his body tight with anticipation. This was all very intriguing. She made a neat pool of oil in the centre of Jones’s palm, and he closed his fist, spreading the liquid liberally over his fingers with this thumb until they shone like the tip of Arkady’s cock. Like they had in the woods after he’d brought her to crisis.

  His hand vanished between Arkady’s thighs, and the man made a soft, delirious sound, his head falling back against the pillows and his hips arching wantonly. She had to admit, he looked rather splendid like that, abandoned to whatever lovely thing Jones was doing to him.