“Then you’re in luck, my friend,” breathed Rollo, his own hands busy at the man’s breeches.“And if you care to look, you’ll find that I’m pretty everywhere.”His hand landed on its objective—thick and stubby and ready to go.
God, he’d missed this.As his senses filled with the bitter scent of sweat mixed with arousal, he ground against the warmth of a firm thigh.The length of the man’s hard cock thrust into Rollo’s hand; he hummed his approval as the man’s thick fingers eagerly pushed inside Rollo’s drawers.Out of both necessity and desire, it would be quick.Already Rollo’s mind had placed his shaft against the man’s, already he imagined their warm, wanting bodies pressed up close, that big, callused hand clasped around the both of them.If he held back his crisis, then the man might even be willing to drop to his knees and—
An unexpected flurry of cold air gusted against Rollo’s privates.At the same moment, a strong hand clamped around the scruff of his neck, slicing through his shriek of protest and nearly lifting him off the ground.Like a rag doll, Rollo was tossed aside.
With an indignant yelp, he staggered back into the undergrowth.“Hey!What—”
He tripped, landing on his arse with a hard thud.
“Ouch!What…what the blazes?”
A few feet away in the dark, a short scuffle ensued.From his agonised yell, Rollo’s new countryman friend was on the losing end of it.A thumping noise, a harsh curse, another pained grunt, and it was all over.
“Be gone with you,” a deep voice thundered.An all too familiar one, unbidden, unwelcome, and unneeded.Not that its owner gave two shakes of a duck’s tail about that.
Another sharp thump heralded another pained curse, and then Rollo’s brief companion was off, crashing through the brush and swearing as if he’d trodden on an ant’s nest.
“And if you show your face up at the Hall,” the voice thundered again, “there’ll be hell to pay!”
A profound quiet ensued, during which Rollo recovered his breathing, picked spikey blades of grass and twigs from the seat of his trousers, then crossly clambered to his feet.Dismayed, humiliated, and damned livid enough to kill came nowhere near to mining the depth of his annoyance.
“Gods teeth!”he hissed, seeing as the other was in no hurry.“Care to explain why you chose to spoil my evening’s diversions?”
Fitzsimmons loomed over him, still impeccably attired, not a hair out of place, and hardly out of breath.“You have dirt and a leaf on your sleeve, pup,” he observed and made to brush at it.
Rollo batted him away.“Because you put it there, you damned bacon-brained half-wit.”He prodded Fitzsimmons in the chest.It was like prodding a sheet of iron.“Answer the damned question.”
The lord fixed him with a blunt, haughty stare.“You and that man were about to commit acts unseemly at a country dance.”
“Which is precisely why I left the country dance and traipsed up to this bloody thicket, a good way beyond the country dance.And even if I was, what business is it of yours anyway?”
“You…you belong to me.You’re in my charge; therefore, you’re my business.”
Rollo glared, long and hard, at this great hulking creature, his smug arms folded across his substantial smug chest and his thick, expressive, smug eyebrows knitted together like two fearsome devil horns.Underneath them, flat brown eyes glared back at Rollo with a cool intensity the younger man failed to match.If Fitzsimmons had presented a smaller target, Rollo would have bunched up his fist and planted him a facer, right on his self-satisfied sneer of a mouth.Instead, he smoothed his hair and straightened his cravat, trying for all the world to behave like a chap in the company of nobody but his valet.
“I’m nineteen years of age, my lord,” he spat with as much contempt as he could muster.“I’m in no one’s charge, and I belong to nobody.And you’re not much of a Latin scholar.”
For the briefest of seconds, the lord appeared nonplussed, allowing Rollo to conjure up his most chilly stare, worthy of his father’s repertoire.
“If you were,” Rollo explained, “you’d know that interruptusfollowscoitus, and not the other way around.”
As a cutting riposte, it fell horribly short of the Earl of Rossingley’s icy standards, but for a young man with his now very limp cock waving in the breeze, it could have been a lot worse.Satisfied he’d removed most of the foliage from his coat, Rollo poked himself back inside, taking his own sweet time.The lord’s eyes flicked down, then just as swiftly flicked away.The faintest tinge of colour stole across his cheeks, and Rollo’s hand stilled at the fall of his trousers.You belong to me, he’d said.Surely…surely not.
“Oh, I see,” Rollo said softly.“It’s like that.”
A dry twig cracked underfoot as he took a pace closer to where Lord Lyndon stood rooted to the spot.As if pulled by a magnet, the lord’s dark eyes again dropped to where Rollo’s fingers still loitered.
“You like what you see, Fitz?”
“I see nothing,” he snapped, “except a foxed young fool about to shame his father’s good name.”
“My father’s good name is none of your business either.”Employing the same wide-eyed innocent stare he’d used with great success on the countryman not fifteen minutes earlier, Rollo gave himself a slow, deliberate rub.“So why do you appear so discomfited, my lord?Am I to believe you want some of this too?”
Lord Lyndon shoved him away, hard enough to send him careening back into the undergrowth.“You’re a damned fool, pup, messing with a man like Ralph Hart, and not fifty yards from where any person could spot you.”
“A man like what?Oh…you mean…” Recovering his balance, Rollo gave a sly wink.“…a man that you…have afamiliaritywith too?Is that it?My sincere apologies if I’m trespassing on your territory,Fitz.”
“Your insinuations are insanity, boy,” hissed the lord.“I am only acquainted with Ralph Hart because his family were the gamekeepers on Ashington land for over one hundred years until that lazy oaf got himself the sack.”
