Gilt and Midnight Read online

  Only Alain knew him well enough to know there was more to what he felt than what he said. Of all the lovers Gerard had ever taken, only Alain had also been his friend. He reached to grab Alain’s wrist and tug him forward, and Alain stepped toward him without resistance.

  “We have never let a woman come between us before,” Gerard said. “Only that bitch of a fairy has ever separated us. Let us not allow this like-cursed lady to widen the gap.”

  “Mayhap,” Alain said as he ran his hand through Gerard’s hair, “she can help us bridge it, Gerard.”

  Alain had ever been the one of them to think more thoroughly, and Gerard had always been the one to take action. Together it had made them formidable foes to any who opposed them. Now Gerard would listen to his friend, to his brother of the heart, and they would take their action together.

  “The fairy cursed us all three with desire,” Gerard said. “All the same curse. Might we all have the same cure?”

  “I think we might.”

  Alain’s fingers tightened in Gerard’s hair briefly as Gerard’s hand on his wrist pulled him yet closer. It was not often that Gerard was the one looking up, but he did so now. Alain’s gaze held a hotness he recognized. His cock had become thick and pushed the front of his breeches.

  Alain gasped aloud when Gerard tugged open the laces of his breeches and drew forth his erect cock, and louder when Gerard slid the hot flesh between his lips, for it was not often Gerard’s pleasure to provide this service. Gerard opened himself to take in Alain’s length, sucking hard. Alain’s hips bumped forward as Gerard’s hands found his ass and gripped. The muscles of Alain’s thighs jumped and twitched as Gerard sucked and licked all the way down to the root and up again, paying special attention to the crown. One hand left Alain’s ass to grip the smooth foreskin and slide it back and forth as his mouth worked.

  It might not have been Gerard’s habit to suck Alain’s cock, but he did it well nonetheless, for he knew just what Alain liked. In moments Alain’s guttural growls were becoming the slow, deep moans that signaled his release, and now it was Gerard’s turn to seek his own pleasure.

  Without preamble he removed his mouth from Alain’s erection and stood so suddenly Alain had no time to react. With his fist gripping Alain’s prick, Gerard captured Alain’s mouth in a harsh, demanding kiss. It would leave them both bruised, but the small pains were as nothing compared to the damage they’d already caused each other, and Alain’s moan and the throb in his cock told Gerard he didn’t mind.

  “You think you deserve to spill?” Gerard growled into Alain’s ear, his own cock as hard and thick as granite at the thought of what was to come. “Do you really think I’d take your seed down the back of my throat?”

  Alain had his triggers and Gerard knew them all as well as he knew how to make him come. “No, Gerard.”

  Gerard let his hand drift along Alain’s cock before letting go of it. “How long has it been since anyone’s taken a strap to your ass, Alain?”

  “Too long.” Alain’s voice pushed from gritted jaws, and Gerard heard the truth in it. “Not since you, Gerard. That last time.”

  That had been a long time then, for the dark fairy had cursed them more than three moons before. Until this morning with Mira, it had been just as long since Gerard had beaten anyone, though he’d taken countless women to his bed while seeking to break the curse.

  Gerard gripped Alain’s chin in his hand and looked hard into the other man’s eyes. “It’s been too long then.”

  He ordered Alain to take his position against the plastered wall, his hands at shoulder height and fingers spread. They had no safe word. They didn’t need one. The position of Alain’s fingers would tell Gerard how much pain he was able to take—today, with his previous injuries, it might be very little. The wider apart his fingers, the more he could take. If he closed them together, Gerard would know to ease off.

  Just as using his mouth to service Alain was not his habit, neither was undressing him, but Gerard knew Alain was so close to coming, his cock already so hard, that bending to remove his breeches would only give him additional pleasure. Gerard intended to keep Alain balanced on the knife’s edge for a sufficient time, so he was the one who pulled off Alain’s breeches until Alain stood naked.

  Gerard admired the lines of Alain’s back and ass as he pulled the sturdy leather strap from his bag. The leather was supple and oiled and fit his fist exactly. He tugged it between his two hands to snap it, and his cock twitched at the way Alain’s muscles jumped, though he showed no other sign he’d heard.

  “By the time I’m done,” Gerard said, “your back and ass are going to be on fire, Alain.”

  “Please,” Alain murmured.

  Gerard laid the strap in even lines along Alain’s skin. His cock stiffened further at the red stripes and the low, strangled grunts of Alain’s ecstasy.

  Alain’s head hung and his entire body quivered with exhaustion and still he did not push his fingers together, but it was Gerard’s duty to know when Alain could take no more even if Alain himself could no longer tell, and he put aside the strap. He ran his hand over the heated flesh of Alain’s back and delighted in his hiss. He slid a hand over Alain’s ass and felt the muscles twitch and jump. He pulled a bottle of soothing oil from his bag and poured a palmful and repeated the motion. Alain’s body tensed at the contact of the smooth oil on his flesh, and his hips pumped forward recklessly as he moaned.

  He was so close Gerard knew it would take very little to send him over the edge, and for a moment he thought of allowing his friend that final release, but his own nature made him grin slyly instead. He ran his fingers, slick with oil, down the crease of Alain’s buttocks and teased the hot, tight circle of his anus with one finger. Alain bucked and cried out, but his hands never left their places on the wall.

  “Such a good soldier,” Gerard murmured as his finger probed slightly deeper. “So good at following orders.”

  Alain’s low, gasping chuckle sounded tortured, but he said nothing. He pushed back a bit against Gerard’s hand. From a true slave Gerard would have not tolerated the insubordinance, but Alain was not his slave even though they sometimes played at that game.

  “You want this?” Gerard eased his finger into Alain’s hot passage. “Or would you like my cock there, instead? Fucking you? How long has it been since anyone’s been inside you, Alain?”

  “As long as it’s been since anyone’s strapped me,” Alain managed to say, though his voice shook with effort. “Please, Gerard, for the sake of our friendship….”

  Gerard could be cruel, but this was not about cruelty, and he reached to stroke Alain’s cock with his oil-filled palm. Once, twice, and Alain was crying out and pumping into Gerard’s fist. Once more and his seed spilled, hot and fragrant, into Gerard’s hand.

  “Now,” Gerard said when Alain had ceased his jerking and moaning, “use your mouth on me the way you did for her.”

  Alain turned and fell at once to his knees. He took Gerard’s prick deep down his throat and sucked. He used his hand in tandem, stroking and caressing Gerard’s balls in the way that made his mind go blank of any thought but the supreme pleasure between his legs.

  It took only moments for Gerard to explode into ecstasy, and when he did he shouted Alain’s name. As Alain got up from his knees, Gerard put a hand on his arm to keep him from turning immediately away.

  “I have missed you, as well,” Gerard said.

  Whatever had happened between the two men, the last to come through the gate for a fortnight, they had somehow repaired their bond. Mira had expected them to leave when both realized they were unable to bring about the end to the dark fairy’s gift, but as the days passed and Gerard and Alain ingratiated themselves into the household, Mira realized they intended to stay. More than that, they were wooing her, each in his own way, and neither was competing with the other for her affections.

  In the past, of course, guests of the house had sought to court her in proper fashion as befit he