Page 51 of Rears & Vices

“I couldn’t do that. I tried. To no avail.”

D’Arcy put his forehead on Everard’s shoulder and groaned. “If I’m shit at lists, you’re shit at apologies.” He laughed, soft in Everard’s ear. “An apology for that would be ‘I’m sorry, Preston, for denying both of us… this…” His hand found Everard’s left wrist, pulled it close beneath the hem of his shirt, to his arse. “… for the past year and more.”

“That’s what you wished me to apologise for?” Everard said, disbelieving. “I’m sorry, then. For your poor, poor, neglected prick.” His hand squeezed of its own accord. “Come on, now. I’m sure you had plenty of company to help you through such a trial.”

“Maybe I did. Stubborn ass. Come here.”

He kissed Everard. A fierce, biting kiss, harshly breathless, strangely goading. It was all D’Arcy: You think I can’t make you feel?

Everard returned it in kind. You think I don’t feel?

He pulled D’Arcy’s nightshirt between his thumb and knuckles. Slid it against D’Arcy’s upper thigh, the hollow of his hip, higher, pushed it up, up, up.

D’Arcy wrenched his mouth free, gasping; he shrugged, and the shirt was gone over his head, his curls skewed even wilder than before. “Please fuck me.”

D’Arcy, fearless and direct and demanding as always. It worked extraordinarily well on Everard.

“Yes,” he said.

He pulled D’Arcy’s mouth back against his and rucked up his own shirt. Unbuttoned his breeches only so far as was necessary, and shuffled them backward. They bumped into what served as the apartment’s little desk. It was narrow, not more than a foot wide, more a part of the wall than actual furniture. It would suffice.

“Find aught to hang on to,” Everard muttered into D’Arcy’s neck, and then spun him.

D’Arcy groaned. “Christ. God.”

But he obeyed, raising his arms, clutching onto the shelving above them. His arms flexed, corded and taut. Everard watched the shoulders bunch in the darkness, and hoped the fixtures could take it.

He knew D’Arcy could.

Everard knelt.

“Oh, my God.” D’Arcy looked down over his shoulder. “Really, the cot is right there⁠—”

“Don’t,” Everard said roughly. He drew his hands up smoothly furred thighs and splayed them. Tugged on the hollows of D’Arcy’s hips, the narrow, muscular arse, until D’Arcy reneged, cursing, and arched the small of his back.

Then, in his second-favorite manner, Everard applied himself to another man.

D’Arcy breathed hard. “You could have—some time ago—turned me over and…” He moaned; a hand came down onto Everard’s head, wove through his hair, urging him and his tongue forward. “Ff… thaa-at. Done that.”

D’Arcy, in his most intimate place, was as hot as sin, silky with sable curls, mild and salty: from seawater, or maybe half a night’s sleep worth of clean sweat. Everard wondered what the clear green Lake Ontario would have tasted like, there and elsewhere on his skin—after a night swim, a rock-beach picnic, a breathtaking forest cliff dive⁠—

D’Arcy had asked to be put on the Lakes Service for a reason. Was this the reason?

Maybe he should apologise for denying them a year’s worth of assignations.

Too late now. And beyond time to stop thinking, besides.

After a little while, D’Arcy was cursing and trembling above him, very close to release, and thoroughly ready for fucking. Everard drew back, satisfied with his work, and bit gently onto the firm curve of arse, breathed deep through his nose to calm his own arousal a bit.

“Preston,” he muttered. “You’re lovely. Who’ve you been keeping yourself so neat for?”

D’Arcy detached his clenched fingers from Everard’s hair, lifted his head from between taut, trembling shoulders. “Wha?”

“St. Clare?” Everard murmured. He brought his right hand round, to D’Arcy’s front, and stroked the slick length of him, slow and careful.

D’Arcy laughed, breathless. He let his forehead fall to the partition wall. “Bell? No, I don’t think this is… quite… what he likes.”

“Mmm? No? Seguro?” Are you sure? He kissed and nipped, because he could. “Has he tried it?”