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“And the stupid thing is,” he carried on, “back in my flat tonight, not only am I going to miss your horrific avian alarm clock, but also this revolting creature farting on my feet.” He glanced around the room. “Come to that, I’m going to miss this hideous wallpaper too.”
More limber than I’d been since the op, with only a slight twinge in my belly, I dragged him across to my side of the bed until he lay half on top of me, the solid warmth of his bare body stretched out over mine. Tossing and turning halfway through that first night after my op, he’d confessed he preferred to sleep naked. I'd shimmied out of my boxers too, and we’d not looked back.
“You don’t have to miss it,” I said suddenly, as awake as if I’d done three hours of milking. “Don’t go back to the flat. Drive back here after work. Check out my wounds. Check I’ve not been overdoing it.” Stay forever.
I wondered if I’d gone too far, if it was too soon to throw the invitation out there. Because we were blokes and it was as natural as breathing, he’d been grinding his morning wood softly against my hip, painting it in light brushstrokes. I couldn’t see his reaction to my offer; his head was burrowed in the warm triangle between my head and shoulder. But his movements never stuttered.
“Stay here as often as you like. I’d like you here every night.” In for a penny, in for a pound. “I mean it.”
The hand entwined with mine moved over to my dick, and he chuckled, fingers dancing along my shaft. “Is this you showing me how much you mean it?”
My dick and my brain were both in a frisky mood, for the first morning since my surgery. With a moan of contentment, I shook my head. “No, it’s nothing to do with sex, although bloody hell, feel free to carry on. I just, you know, like having you here.”
I just, you know, like having you here? As a declaration of love, it needed some grooming. The romantic poets could rest easy in their graves. But as the god’s honest truth? Nothing could have been more accurate. Last night before we’d locked up, we completed our habitual arm-in-arm tour of the farmyard. Pausing for a kiss, while admiring Watermelons snoozing, we wished the herd goodnight and collected our first two eggs from the hens. Which he proceeded to feed to the bloody dog. And then later, with my chin resting on his shoulder and my arms around his waist, Evan made a tiny vegan omelette, then insisted we share it. I’d sat in his lap, a big sturdy lump of a full-grown man, yet feeling as lithe as a kitten as he fed us both from the same fork.
Now, we rocked together, quietly and tenderly, Evan careful not to put too much weight on my belly and me careful not to beg him never to leave. Like entries in a secret diary, all the inconsequential little moments we’d shared over the last few days stacked up, one on top of each other. Yesterday, for instance, a familiar skein of geese flew over the farm. Evan pointed them out and waved. The Rossingley air force, I’d said, a crap joke really, but it had set us giggling like schoolboys anyhow. And another day, when I’d woken from a nap and caught him giving Watermelons a rub on his behind using the bristles on an old broom and from the safety of the other side of the gate. He’d kissed me and led me back to the sofa, brought me a cup of tea, and then done some paperwork, with one hand in mine and the pair of ridiculously sexy spectacles slipping down his nose.
And like this moment, as our slow lovemaking slipped into something more urgent. As he caught both of our cocks in his velvety smooth hand and his lips melded to mine.
“Yes,” he gasped, hopefully a response to my sexual prowess and not an ecstatic reception of Zeus attempting another rimjob. The dog was way ahead of me in that department; Evan’s arse had been out of bounds up until now, but I had a feeling his curiosity was mounting. But the way things lay at the moment, if he wanted to bottom, then he’d be fighting me for it.
“Yes,” he breathed again. “I’ll come back tonight. I’ll grab some things from the flat, then drive back here.” Up on his elbows, he gave me a searching look. “Truth is Rob, I never want to leave. I love it here. I love you.”
Oh my god. Those three plain words. Despite their simplicity, I still had no idea how to form them, whereas he trotted them out so confidently, as if offering to let me use the shower first. Awaiting my reply, his green eyes crinkled at the corners without a trace of concern that he’d fucked up, that it was too soon, that I might reject him.
Even as I swallowed down a lump in my throat, I envied him his self-possession. “I…um…I’m not very good at love,” I stuttered, bewildered. “You’re going to have to show me.”
We’d laughed a lot over the last few days. At my squeamishness when he’d peeled back the tiny dressings from my belly; at his horrified expression when I’d scarfed a bacon sandwich, then smothered his face in greasy lips. But none of those laughs were anywhere near the noise he made now. His chest vibrated above me, his belly wobbled on mine, his fucking gorgeous mouth split wide open.
“Rob Langford,” he spluttered, “that is the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard in my entire life.”
Rolling off me, he swung his legs out of bed and stood, stark bollock naked, dragging me by the wrist up with him. “Come over here, gorgeous. Let me show you something.”
“It’s a good thing I don’t have neighbours.”
He pushed me to the window, tugging the flowery curtains apart to reveal the dull, grey dawn and my land slowly waking up. To our right were chinks of light from the barn, where Bill and the lad were doing their last early-morning shift. To my left were cows already milked and plodding back out to pasture. Watermelons would join a select group of them later—the forecast was fine, and he was due his occasional shag. From somewhere below, the infernal cockerel reminded everyone he was incredibly important, and behind us, Zeus chased tigers in his sleep.
With his arms clasped around me, Evan delivered a sloppy kiss to my cheek. I had never felt so treasured. Or warm, wrapped in an embrace turning my insides to gloopy liquid caramel.
“Rob, you have more love inside you than anyone else I’ve ever met,” he began in the low deliberate way he had of speaking, as if every word was the gospel truth. ‘When I look out of this window, all I see is your love.”
“I see a headache,” I quipped, and he shushed me, his arms squeezing me a little tighter.
“I see your love,” he insisted. “For Rossingley and all these acres of lush green land. For the three hundred brown-and-white princesses who endure your nightly serenades. Princesses wrapped in woolly blankets if the temperature drops below, like, an exceedingly mild twenty degrees centigrade. That’s the sweetest thing ever, by the way.”
“My dad and Bill think I’m crazy.”
I was blushing now; my bottom lip was wobbling too. Free and easy compliments dropped from his lips like confetti, as if he needed to get them off his chest, with no expectations in return.
“It’s not craziness—it’s affection spilling out of you. Anyhow, I haven’t finished. I see your love for Watermelons, the most pampered, spoiled bull to ever exist. And for old Bill, for this ugly cottage, and for a bloody ugly cockerel, minutes away from having his neck wrung. And let’s not forget the mangy mutt on the bed that does the worst fucking farts in history.”
He kissed me again, which meant I didn’t have to come up with any weakly witty replies. Talking and crying were pretty difficult to pull off simultaneously. Hiding tears from my lover, who was literally licking them off my face, was tricky too, so I gave up. I leaned back into him, sobbed like a baby, and blamed it on the painkillers (which I’d stopped taking two days ago).
“There is so much love bursting out of you, Rob,” he murmured into my neck. “Your petting zoo and I are drowning in it. And we love you so much in return.”
CHAPTER 14
Every year, around about now, a vellum card, the colour of clotted cream and just as thick, fell through my letterbox and thudded onto the tiled floor. Freddie’s personal invitation to the sixteenth earl's annual May charity ball. And every year, with a knife, I carefully opened the envelope, so as not to spoil the gold leaf aesthetic, removed the thick card, read it, and admired it. Then I propped my invitation to the most sought-after exclusive party this side of London on my hideous 1950s mantelpiece, where it sat until the event had passed, before joining a heap of them gathering dust in a shoebox on top of my wardrobe.
