An Improper Holiday by K.A. Mitchell Read Free Book Online Page A

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    Ian felt his own lips curve in answer. There had always been so much laughter between them. For
    years, that absence cut as keenly as the loss of Nicky’s touch.
    Shoving away bolster and counterpane, Nicky flung himself onto the bed. “Now. Kindly divest
    yourself of those clothes and get up here before I am forced to seek other amusements.”
    Nicky arranged himself in a gloriously naked display, familiar laugh and cornflower-blue eyes at odds
    with the strangeness of a body more heavily muscled, more thickly pelted, but no less enthralling than the one that had filled Ian’s dreams as he slept in tents on the edges of battlefields. Longing clawed deeper hollows than all those years of denial, until again Ian was deprived of sufficient breath.
    Such was the assault wrought on his senses by Nicky’s sprawl across the mattress that Ian had
    stripped away waistcoat and shirt and unfastened his breeches before Nicky’s last words attached
    themselves to a meaning. The haze of lust clouding Ian’s mind took on a red veil of anger.
    “Other amusements?”
    Nicky sighed and leaned forward, taking Ian by the arm. “I swear to provide you with a detailed
    history of the past five years in writing and affix the bloody Carleigh seal to my testimony. But if I don’t have you right now, one of us will end up dead.”
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    An Improper Holiday
    Nicky pulled him with a force too gentle to be compelling, but it was easier by far to let Nicky drag
    Ian onto the bed than to make the decision himself.
    Nicky rolled, trapping Ian beneath, the press of hard warm skin such a shock Ian had to close his eyes against the sensation. When he opened them, there was Nicky, the achingly familiar blue eyes and full lips all Ian could hope of heaven.
    “Which of us?”
    “Does it matter?” Nicky rocked against him.
    Ian thought again of Aristophanes and Phaedrus and their tales of separated lovers. Of Achilles’
    terrible grief for Patroclus. “No.”
    Nicky kissed the word from his mouth in a gentle press of lips, but Ian brought his hand up to tangle
    at last in those curls and pinned Nicky tight, an upward thrust of hips to feel the harder, wetter kiss of Nicky’s cock on Ian’s belly.
    Nicky wrenched free and reared up, hands working to finish his duty as substitute valet, shoving away
    Ian’s breeches and small clothes until at last their pricks slapped together. Ian thought he had exorcised it from his memory, but there was no forgetting that sensation, the silky heat of Nicky’s cock against his.
    Adding his spit to slick the way, Nicky held them together, rubbing the thick ridges against each
    other, washing the whole shaft with heat and pressure. Sweet enough to die from but not enough. God, not enough.
    Ian reached up with both arms to pull Nicky down against him, and then let his good arm drop as the
    left hung useless, withered stump bared to Nicky’s gaze. Nicky caught Ian’s half-arm as it fell and bent to press a kiss on the scarred folds of skin. Although the wound was ill-repaired to the point of numbness, the intimacy on his maimed flesh sent a shock of sensation up and down his arm, making his ghost fingers
    tingle.
    Suddenly Ian was ashamed of the way he had made Nicky coax him into this, as if he were somehow
    unmoved by what Nicky offered.
    “That part about not having you or dying. Nicky, now, please.”
    Nicky dropped down, stretched out. Ian flattened his palm against Nicky’s back, urging him on. He
    slid forward an inch and their pricks aligned, trapped together in hard heat and driving friction. No
    tenderness now, Ian couldn’t have stood it. Nicky seemed to understand that only violence could tear
    through Ian’s hard-won restraint, meeting each thrust of hips with matching force.
    Openmouthed kisses, shared breath and—as an errant tooth met an eager lip—shared blood, but Ian
    couldn’t make himself care whose blood had spilled. All that mattered was the rut of