The Shooting Season - Isobel Starling Page 0,16
into bed beside me!
“What the devil—“
“Hush, Ben! You’ll wake the whole damn house.” Euan whispered. I slumped back into my pillows. This is exactly what he used to do when we shared rooms at university. It was as if the rules of propriety and common sense did not apply to him. Euan always did what he wanted, and was confident that the other party shared his desires. This kind of behavior was fine for boys, but we were grown men of good station. Euan was a father and a Lord of the realm and I had chosen a life of denial. I lay there frigid with anger and frustration at his presumptuousness. I had not shared a bed in years and wanted to punch the blaggard and kick him out of the room. But I could not make a scene and wake the whole house for surely it would be my reputation in tatters and not the new Lord Ardmillan, who could excuse being discovered in my bed by saying it was drunken high-jinx. Euan shifted over and pressed his chilly body to my side. At once my anxiety heightened.
“Hmmm, nice and warm.” He groaned in an amorous way that made my guts curdle and my plums throb. Euan slid his hand beneath the covers, laid it on my chest. I tried not to breathe and let him know how my heart was thundering. He pressed his bearded face into the crook of my neck. The last time we had lain together was thirty years ago when he was a fresh-faced youth. I had not known the sensation of his whiskers scratching my skin, mingled with his hot breath as he buried his face. It sent a jolt of delicious pleasure down my spine.
“And you smell good too, so masculine.”
“Enough!” I whispered in exasperation. I was discomfited by his closeness, tired and had no time for his impertinence.
“What do you want Euan? You had time at dinner and afterward to say whatever you needed to say to me.”
“Ah, Ben, don’t be such a prude. There are some things one cannot say…or do in polite society!” Euan snickered childishly as his playful fingers made their way beneath my nightshirt. I shuddered at his touch and my skin was aflame. In the darkness, it was like we were boys once again.
“There’s no sin if we do it in the dark.” Euan had fervently told me that first time he got into my bed at university and tugged me to spend in his hand. The next morning he behaved as if it had never happened. I was confused and perplexed by his behavior, but that time led to it becoming a regular routine to slake our mutual desire, and each time I protested he told me “There’s no sin if we do it in the dark”.
But then Euan wanted more, he wanted us to go further and in the light. So did I. Our secret trysts led to my invitation to Dunecht Hall for the shooting season. It was then that he taught me how satisfying giving, and receiving a good, rough buggering feels. Oh, how I’d loved it and craved it like a beast.
I lay there in the warm bed, stiff, in more ways than one. The reflection of transient moonlight bouncing off the snow sent a beam of white light through the gaps in my drapes. I turned and saw the devilish glint in Euan’s eyes for a split second before cloud covered the moon.
“Do you remember—” Euan began as he ran his fingers over my warm belly and up to my hairy chest.
“How wonderful it feels to rub our cocks together and shoot-off in each other’s mouths.”
Oh, I did remember and I did not want to. My resolve was being sorely tested. I tried to banish the thought of it from my mind, to pray those memories of stolen time wrapped in Euan’s arms away, but it had not worked. I still yearned for Euan Ardmillan today as much as I had done thirty years ago.
“I… I don’t do things like that anymore,” I insisted, fighting with my desire. His fingers passed over the silver cross, and then he took it and rubbed the smooth metal over my left nipple. I was immediately aroused and outraged that he would use the cross in such a blasphemous way, but then he sucked and bit at the other nipple through my nightshirt while using the silver cross to tease. My whole body