Red, White & Royal Blue - Casey McQuiston Page 0,51

mallet? This sport is a travesty.

Henry breaks the silence by adding, “I was coming to find you, actually.”

“Yeah, hi, here I am.”

“Here you are.”

Alex glances over his shoulder. “There’s, uh. Cameras. Three o’clock.”

“Right,” Henry says, straightening his shoulders. His hair is messy and slightly damp, color still high in his cheeks from exertion. He’s going to look like goddamn Apollo in the photos when they go to press. Alex smiles, knowing they’ll sell.

“Hey, isn’t there, uh, a thing?” Alex says. “You needed to. Uh. Show me?”

Henry looks at him, glances at the dozens of millionaires and socialites milling around, and back at him. “Now?”

“It was a four-and-a-half-hour car ride up here, and I have to go back to DC in an hour, so I don’t know when else you’re expecting to show it to me.”

Henry takes a beat, his eyes flickering to the cameras again before he switches on a stage smile and a laugh, cuffing Alex on the shoulder. “Ah, yes. Right. This way.”

He turns on his boot heel and leads the way around the back of the stables, veering right into a doorway, and Alex follows. It’s a small, windowless room attached to the stables, fragrant with leather polish and stained wood from floor to ceiling, the walls lined with heavy saddles, riding crops, bridles, and reins.

“What in the rich-white-people-sex-dungeon hell?” Alex wonders aloud as Henry crosses behind him. He whips a thick leather strap off a hook on the wall, and Alex almost blacks out.

“What?” Henry says offhandedly, bypassing him to bind the doors shut. He turns around, sweet-faced and unbelievable. “It’s called a tack room.”

Alex drops his coat and takes three swift steps toward him. “I don’t actually care,” he says, and grabs Henry by the stupid collar of his stupid polo and kisses his stupid mouth.

It’s a good kiss, solid and hot, and Alex can’t decide where to put his hands because he wants to put them everywhere at once.

“Ugh,” he groans in exasperation, shoving Henry backward by the shoulders and making a disgusted show of looking him up and down. “You look ridiculous.”

“Should I—” He steps back and puts a foot up on a nearby bench, moving to undo his kneepads.

“What? No, of course not, keep them on,” Alex says. Henry freezes, standing there all artistically posed with his thighs apart and one knee up, the fabric straining. “Oh my God, what are you doing? I can’t even look at you.” Henry frowns. “No, Jesus, I just meant—I’m so mad at you.” Henry gingerly puts his boot back on the floor. Alex wants to die. “Just, come here. Fuck.”

“I’m quite confused.”

“Me fucking too,” Alex says, profoundly suffering for something he must have done in a previous life. “Listen, I don’t know why, but this whole thing”—he gestures at Henry’s entire physical presence—“is … really doing it for me, so, I just need to.” Without any further ceremony, he drops to his knees and starts undoing Henry’s belt, tugging at the fastenings of his pants.

“Oh, God,” Henry says.

“Yeah,” Alex agrees, and he gets Henry’s boxers down.

“Oh, God,” Henry repeats, this time with feeling.

It’s all still so new to Alex, but it’s not difficult to follow through on what’s been playing out in elaborate detail in his head for the past hour. When he looks up, Henry’s face is flushed and transfixed, his lips parted. It almost hurts to look at him—the athlete’s focus, all the dressings of aristocracy laid wide open for him. He’s watching Alex, eyes blown dark and hazy, and Alex is watching him right back, every nerve in both bodies narrowed down to a single point.

It’s fast and dirty and Henry is swearing up a storm, which is still disarmingly sexy, but this time it’s punctuated by the occasional word of praise, and somehow that’s even hotter. Alex isn’t prepared for the way “that’s good” sounds in Henry’s rounded Buckingham vowels, or for how luxury leather feels when it strokes approvingly down his cheek, a gloved thumb brushing the corner of his mouth.

As soon as Henry’s finished, he’s got Alex on the bench and is putting his kneepads to use.

“I’m still fucking mad at you,” Alex says, destroyed, slumped forward with his forehead resting on Henry’s shoulder.

“Of course you are,” Henry says vaguely.

Alex completely undermines his point by pulling Henry into a deep and lingering kiss, and another, and they kiss for an amount of time he decides not to count or think about.

They sneak out quietly, and Henry touches Alex’s shoulder