“But if you painted it an even red colour, it would look like a child’s picture. Try to look at how the light falls on the glass. Does it really look all the same, when you concentrate on the light?”
“No,” Nico said slowly. “It does not. So, in effect, you must paint what you see, and not what you know to be there. Because what we see and what is there are not always the same thing. I suppose it is important to learn that.” He stared at the wine a moment longer, then gave a swift smile. “Nevertheless, it sounds complicated for a first lesson.”
“Well, it’s important to understand the theory.”
They talked through the whole meal easily enough, considering. Titus sipped his wine with care; the world felt a heady enough place without it. And then the plates were removed, and they were left with a decanter of port, two glasses, and one another, and suddenly the air felt thick.
“Would you like port?”
Nico glanced up from under his long lashes. Titus felt that glimmering look in his groin. “We could linger over a glass until the house is at rest?”
“Let’s do that,” Titus agreed.
They didn’t talk much more. Titus couldn’t think of anything to say that wasn’t a variation onPlease come to bedorAre you sure you want to?and Nico was unusually quiet too, watching Titus with hooded eyes. Watching his every movement, his sips and swallows, his breathing, until Titus felt naked, and Nico’s gaze felt like a touch.
People moved outside the room in familiar patterns, the clockwork of the house winding down. Titus swallowed. “Shall we—will you come up?”
“Allons-y,” Nico said, and his lips curved like heaven.
They went up in silence, each with his candle. Perreau was in the corridor; Nico said something rapid in French, and the valet bowed impassively, murmured, “Good night, sir,” and disappeared.
Titus led the way into his room. Nico slipped in after. The candles were burning, the curtain closed. The room felt very small with Nico in it. “Perreau will not be back,” he said. “I felt we did not need a valet. If I may take your coat?”
He moved forward as he spoke, reaching up, sliding the coat off Titus’s shoulders. “Hmph. Too easy. The next should be cut a little closer.”
“I like being able to move my arms.”
“One must suffer for beauty.” Nico hung the coat on a chair and leaned back, assessing Titus. “That waistcoat is excellent, but I want both more and less.”
“Of what?”
“More colour. You looked at a cloth in shades of purple and violet—”
“With gold thread.” He had rejected it as far too gaudy, those few weeks ago, and a tiny regret had stayed with him since.
“We go back,” Nico said decisively. “I want you in purple, as befits a Caesar.”
Titus choked a laugh. “And what clothing do you want less of?”
“Now? All of it,” Nico said, and stepped forward.
Titus met him in the middle of the room. Mouths colliding again, familiar, astringent with port. Both Nico’s hands on him now, and his own hands roaming with the daring a glass ortwo of wine gave him. Stripping each other slowly—nobody could accuse Nico’s coat of being easy to remove. Bare skin in the candlelight; Nico’s compact body, more muscled than Titus had expected; Titus’s own gangly frame rendered beautiful under Nico’s touch. And God, he touched, hands skimming skin like a blind man trying to learn his lover with fingers alone, and Titus, who hadn’t been touched in so long, felt his knees weakening under the onslaught of sensation.
“Lie down,” Nico said softly.
It was a big bed. Miss Whitecross’s once. Would have been Nico’s except for the vagaries of Fortune. Titus’s now, and as Nico crawled over his supine form, he could have cried for the chance that brought them both here. He could have cried anyway as Nico touched and stroked and kissed, and he let his own hands and mouth roam, glorying in the magnificent physicality of touch and closeness.
“Mph,” Nico said at last. He was sprawled over Titus and between his legs. He was startlingly heavy, considering. “Titus. Do you know what you like?”
“That’s… an odd question?”
“Well, if one has not had a considerate lover…”
“Oh. I see. No, Henry wasn’t unkind to me in that way, don’t think that.” Henry had liked to fuck, and done so in inventive ways, some of which had been to Titus’s taste and some not. “I don’t really care for chastisement—spanking and insults and things,” he said, thinking it through. “But if you do, I could—”
“I have never welcomed chastisement in my life,” Nico assured him. “I resist it strongly.”
That was a relief. Titus had spanked Henry and called him a naughty boy on demand, and felt an absolute fool doing it. “Oh, good. Well, then, what I like… I love this. Touching you. Kissing. I could do that forever. I’m happy to consideranything you care to propose, as long as we can do this too. Erm, and if you like to be fucked, apparently I’m quite good at it. It was probably the only thing Henry never complained about, which must be an endorsement.”