They both exhaled at once, hard and shuddering. Nico’s mouth rounded. He whispered, “Yes.”
Titus moved, gently, wanting to find the exactly right angle, watching Nico’s face to see when he got it. He saw the transfiguring spasm, saw Nico’s teeth clamp onto his lip and his eyes twitch dizzily, and felt a shudder that was close to climax just at the sight.
Absolutely not yet. He paused to regain a little control. Nico made a noise that suggested the wolf was howling, fingers scrabbling at the counterpane, and Titus fucked him, slow and careful and painstakingly accurate, keeping his own precarious control even through Nico’s incoherent whispers, speeding up a little as he moved a hand to Nico’s straining prick—
—and that was it, Nico bucking and thrashing and spending, spunk hitting Titus’s belly as well as his own, hips jerking in a way that pushed Titus entirely over the edge, so that another thrust or two and he was gone, lost, swept away in the wave of pleasure that crashed down over him and left only wreckage.
He had fallen forward, he realised at some point later. His face was in Nico’s neck, and Nico’s feet seemed to be braced on his back in a frankly gymnastic manner.
“God,” he mumbled.
“Caesar.”
Titus disengaged himself. He’d put out a rag ready, fromhabit because Henry never liked dealing with mess or oil, and he mopped up, carefully wiping Nico’s legs clean, before flopping back next to him. “That was—honestly, that was wonderful. Perfect. You’re perfect.”
“I did literally nothing,” Nico said. “And was very happy not to, because yes, wonderful. I have never felt so…” He searched for a word. “So fucked. I put myself entirely in your hands whenever you please. Thank you.”
Titus nestled against his warm, bare skin. “Thank you for asking.”
Chapter Seventeen
Nico sat in a low-ceilinged coffee shop a discreet distance south of Carey Street, watching Eve read a letter and reflecting that his life was what one might call a heavily qualified success.
On the plus side, Titus was happy. Nico loved to see him uncurling, shedding the self-effacement of the fifth son, Henry Morris’s punchbag, the awkward paint-stained oddity. He’d kept his head down for so long, it could have become a permanent stoop. It was a pleasure to see him stand and breathe.
And itwasin part Nico’s doing. He was proud of his work as a support, a watchdog, an encourager of every tentative step on the path to Titus finding his feet for good. He had done his best for his lover, which, by chance, was also exactly what a calculating fortune hunter would have done, down to the fucking. Nico would have very much liked to say, hand on heart, that nothing could be further from his thoughts.
He couldn’t. He had intended to take advantage of Titus initially, lied to position himself where he was, and kept on lying once he was there. Not to mention the small matter ofhis urgent need for two thousand pounds, which was what qualified the success into something closer to catastrophe.
Nico was trying very hard not to think about how badly he’d fucked all this up, because that raised the question of whether he could possibly unfuck it by any means that didn’t involve lying to Titus for the rest of their lives.
That—the “rest of their lives”—was a ridiculous thought. They had known each other for a few weeks and been fucking for a few days, and Titus was nothing like the sort of people, men or women, with whom Nico normally indulged. Admittedly, he’d never thought “the rest of our lives” about any of them. He had always conducted his love life in a way that allowed for easy parting on good terms (except when enraged spouses turned up), and nobody had ever seemed disappointed. Possibly he mostly attracted shallow people, perhaps he was shallow himself, but either way, he had never looked for anything deeper, and if he had, it wouldn’t have been with an awkward paint-stained shopkeeper who talked about colours as though they were friends.
It would be much more reasonable for Nico to fall in love with someone dashing, roguish, reckless. Someone who wasn’t Titus, who didn’t have that quiet, suppressed world inside him of which Nico got only brief, tantalizing glimpses. Who wasn’t awkward and reserved and thoughtful, who didn’t need Nico to chase off leeches and look at him like he was a hero.
Who wasn’t six inches taller. That did rankle a bit.
Titus was nothing like any fantasy lover Nico might have drawn for himself. And yet here he was, feeling his heart race as though he were eighteen again because Titus had invited him to go to the Lake District, a place he couldn’t find on the map, in order to see landscapes. Hewantedto go and look at scenery with Titus. He might be going mad.
No, he wasn’t. He had just accidentally fallen heels overhead in love with a thoroughly good man who happened to be immensely rich, and everything about that was perfect. Except the height issue, but perhaps he could find a pair of discreetly heeled shoes. Or even indiscreetly heeled ones, in the old French style. He wondered if Titus would like him to wear those. Maybe in red?
Titus’s height wasn’t the problem. The problem was the lies.
These thoughts came upon him fairly heavily as Eve read Mr. Rankin’s letter for the third time, presumably in hope that the contents might change. “Theytalkedto each other. The bastards. They aren’t supposed to talk to each other!”
Nico had told Mr. Rankin that Sir James Roud had offered him a large sum for the portrait. In what he could only consider a frankly shameful display of suspicious-mindedness, Rankin had written to Roud, who had informed his supposed rival by return of post that he had made no such offer. It was enough to make you lose faith in human nature.
“Well, what now?” Eve demanded. “Because if Rankin tells everyone you lied about this—”
“I sent him a surprised note, suggesting that Roud is trying to prevent him making his own offer and pushing the price up.”
“You think he’ll believe you?”
“No.”
“Shit.”
“We’re not out of the game yet,” Nico insisted to them both. “Baynes wrote back.”