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1.
Moonlight penetrated the Russet Room, and the man the quivering ladder at the window had brought in with it felt to Maurice like a waking dream. An apparition – dark eyes smouldering like coal, unholy beauty amplified by the chiaroscuro shadow – moved above him and against him on the bed. The force of the apparition was too physical, the heat of his body and mouth too close, not to be real, and he was setting Maurice on fire.
At first, Maurice could do nothing but stare wide-eyed, as if paralysed or in shock, as the man locked eyes with him – took him forcefully in hand – whispered to him to lie down. Scudder’s gaze burned with such unmistakeable intent that for a second or two Maurice felt a rush of real fear; but his voice seemed gentle, and up close Maurice realised that the gamekeeper was trembling like himself. They were in a landslide: everything was turbulence, all stability gone. Something Scudder had said earlier that evening – as Maurice paced the Pendersleigh grounds, restless, smoking, half-wondered why the servant kept colliding with him – leapt into Maurice’s head: it seems rather strange.
Words that had seemed to refer to Scudder’s plan to emigrate to the Argentine suddenly took on a new meaning, like a secret code that Maurice had failed to crack until now. Yes, it was strange – and uncanny: this inadmissable, overpowering attraction between them; Scudder suddenly in Maurice’s bed; the strange alchemy of their bodies together. Lips and breath and heat brushed Maurice’s ear and neck, but the sensations they were awakening seemed to come from deep inside himself, not the other man’s mouth. Within barely a minute, he heard his own throat gasp with surprise and pleasure – then gasp more, as Scudder’s breathing quickened, passionate lips and hands were inside Maurice’s pyjama shirt and everywhere, his throat and chest suddenly bared and showered in wet caresses…
The thought that a man he scarcely knew was exploring him like this – more boldly than Maurice had ever dared explore his own body – was equally strange, but that thought was fast obliterated by the pleasure that throbbed through him far beyond Scudder’s touch. To Maurice’s relief, Scudder’s hand had not reached his most shameful lower parts – but these already surged and stiffened with sensations more intense than his own guilt-filled efforts normally achieved. The untenable mix of trepidation and pleasure, shyness and shame made Maurice feel very exposed. With little idea what he should do next but no longer able to lie passive, his fingers instinctively sunk into Scudder’s thick dark curls and pulled him down close into a kiss.
Scudder’s first response seemed reluctant, as if some class or other taboo was at stake, but his resistance vanished as Maurice persisted – as he had to, kissing being the only act to which he could bring any skill or confidence. The result surprised Maurice: Scudder’s lips were soft, and the kisses addictively sweet. But the sweetness suddenly flipped to something harder as Scudder seized the upper hand, his whole body trembling, his lips demanding and his tongue insisting on entry. To his shock, Maurice found he was opening up to Clive’s servant in a way he had never dared in all the years with Clive: allowing Scudder to coax his mouth open, letting him in, reciprocating as his tongue stroked against Maurice’s. Scudder’s lips seemed almost to swell in response. The revelation that the mouth was a sexual organ made Maurice suddenly swallow hard.
A woollen cap fell to the floor, and Maurice realised that Scudder, absurdly, was still almost fully dressed in his outdoor work clothes. More shockingly, Scudder’s body was responding in ways that broadcast his wanton indifference to this impediment. He rubbed against Maurice almost obscenely, letting slip little gasps and moans that made clear how far the servant was taking pleasure, not just offering it. And now Scudder’s hand did what Maurice had been dreading: finding his shame, first through the fine black Egyptian cotton of his pyjamas, then skin on skin. Scudder traced and noted every contour of Maurice’s cock, moaning his appreciation as his fingers explored exactly how hard Maurice was. Stupidly, naively, Maurice had somehow imagined he could hide this one fact from Scudder. He could not have said how far his dread was shame and how far it was fear: of an arousal he could feel spinning out of control, and of what on earth the gamekeeper would do to him now that he knew.
Suddenly very apprehensive, Maurice pulled away sharply. Scudder met his eyes and looked at him questioningly, tried to control his trembling, self-pleasuring body and ragged breathing, bitterly reminded himself of his several transgressions in being here at all. It would not be the first time his sensuality had got him into trouble.
‘I … This is the first time I’ve ever done this.’
Scudder stared, disbelieving. ‘Not with—?’
It was a sentence that, one way or the other, could not be finished. Certainly not with the words ‘Mr Durham’.
‘Not with anyone. Ever. Never even this far.’
Scudder searched Maurice’s wide blue gaze. Seeking and finding the truth in his words, he resorted to a deference that clashed absurdly with his panting breath.
‘Sir, I’m truly sorry if … if I misunderstood, sir. Should I stop, sir?’
Maurice gazed back at him. The lifetime of repression and shame that had been drilled into him, and a babble of voices – Lasker Jones, whom he had paid only this afternoon to try to hypnotise away his invert desires; most of all, the voice of Clive Durham – told him that, yes, they had to stop. But throughout this exchange his hands had never quite left Scudder. He found his fingers moving again, caressing Scudder’s neck, tracing the line of his jaw, running a finger along the sensual, quite beautiful, curve of his lower lip, rewarded by a definite responsive gasp … wanting to touch him more.
‘You didn’t misunderstand,’ Maurice whispered. ‘Please, don’t stop – but, please, be…’
‘Be gentle?’ Scudder whispered. ‘Don’t you worry, sir. I won’t try nowt we shouldn’t do the first time, sir. If it feels wrong just tell me to stop, sir.’
‘Please don’t call me sir.’
The words flew out – surprising them both, making Scudder smile. There was a little kink at the corner of the beautiful mouth, complicit and sceptical at the same time, that Maurice decided he liked.
Scudder belatedly flung off his coat and waistcoat. ‘Undress me’, he whispered, guiding Maurice’s hand to the buttons of his undershirt and holding it against his chest, so that Maurice could feel his warmth and the thump of his heart. Maurice paused – wanting to continue, wanting his hands inside, against Scudder’s skin – but suddenly timid. The logistics – the thought of touching Scudder’s waist, having to unbutton his fly, terrible shyness at what lay beyond – completely paralysed him.
He realised that Scudder was contemplating him, taking in every flicker of confusion and shame. ‘It’s all right,’ he whispered, pulling Maurice into his arms, pressing his face reassuringly into Maurice’s hair. Scudder pulled away a little to loosen his own shirt and fly, then took both of Maurice’s hands in his own and led them upwards between shirt and skin.
Maurice tentatively began to explore the unknown territory: the firm lean body, the smooth skin, the delicate pucker of another man’s nipples. He could not have said what he had expected, but not this tactile beauty emerging from the gamekeeper’s rough clothes. There was a definite physical strength that excited Maurice, but nothing much rough about Scudder apart from his hands. Curiosity and desire seared through him, shrivelling all the years he had struggled to fight such feelings – these feelings for men, the feelings of shame – to ashes. Scudder was touching and admiring Maurice in the same way, lips and tongue exploring the response of his nipples, making him feel desired, making him feel beautiful, making him … Maurice no longer felt alone.
Both men’s upper clothing had gone now. Their kisses resumed, hotter and harder: Maurice gaining in confidence; Scudder no longer reining in his instincts, but doing everything in his power now to make Maurice as hot with desire as he was for him, working on him to make him want as Maurice had never wanted anything or anyone before, almost fucking Maurice’s mouth with his tongue.
Scudder finally wriggled out of his half-mast trousers so that nothing more than his long white interlock pants and Maurice’s pyjama bottoms now remained between the two men – but, strangely, Maurice no longer felt quite so shy. His cock throbbed, so unconcealably erect that it tented the dark fabric; but it was Scudder who seemed further gone, or perhaps he simply had fewer inhibitions about expressing his arousal without shame. He rubbed and arched again against Maurice, moaning more wantonly than before – moans that intensified once Maurice discovered how Scudder responded when his nipples were teased – and the white long johns, far from concealing anything, only made his excitement more deliciously obvious. Maurice, who had never in his life been so close to another man in any state of arousal – Clive had not spent three years diverting his hands for nothing – was utterly – shamelessly – overcome by the gasping, quivering, beautiful vision of unconcealed longing now unravelling before him. Most of all, he could not tear his eyes away from the bulging pants: the beautiful contours of Scudder’s swollen cock inside them, the way it shifted and strained against the white fabric.
All too aware of where his body was heading, Scudder ached desperately for Maurice to touch him, even to spit on his hand and wank him hard, but the words to demand this of a near-stranger, so inexperienced, from outside his own class, defeated him. Instead, he made do with frotting shamelessly against Maurice through the thin fabric. Maurice had never before experienced such an act, nor imagined that anything could feel so lewd. The sheer thought that another man was doing this to him was intensely erotic; the actual, exquisite sensations of Scudder’s cock stroking rhythmically against his made him near-delirious with pleasure and need.
Maurice slipped a hand between them and, hesitantly, for the first time, touched Scudder there directly. Scudder let out a deep groan of encouragement and guided him – but carefully, fighting his own arousal and the overwhelming temptation, all too aware of the need to avoid the faux pas of coming off impolitely fast, or first, in an encounter he had, after all, instigated. After some mutual wriggling out of pants, both men were at last entirely naked. The revelation of Scudder’s full beauty mesmerised Maurice even more than the tantalising vision of him highly aroused and half-dressed. For the first time in his life, he felt truly free to gaze openly at another man. Continuing to touch Scudder delicately – too delicately, eliciting moans of frustration – Maurice drank in the sight before him: unashamed for Scudder to know how he was looking him, wanting him to be in no doubt how he made Maurice feel.
The sight of Maurice naked – the flaxen hair, his long athletic frame, his pale golden skin, the fantastic erection – and the unbearable tease of his virgin touch equally overwhelmed Scudder. Even in his own acute need, he ached with his whole being to make love to this beautiful man, every beautiful inch of him; to show him every pleasure that – he was amazed to learn – he would be the first to give. Kissing and licking along Maurice’s collarbone, he trailed a hot wet worshipful path downwards with his mouth and tongue – but this time not stopping at the chest, not stopping at the navel, licking hard and soft, down and down the trail of hair, then pausing teasingly at Maurice’s crotch to gaze upwards.
‘Please’, Maurice gasped.
Propping up on his elbows, Maurice looked down to see the provocative lips – no longer sceptical now – parting for him. On seeing and feeling the first touch on the tip of his cock – Scudder’s lips softly kissing the head, his tongue tracing harder circles around it – Maurice felt sensations so extreme and new that he truly feared he might faint. The exquisite pleasure that followed was such that he could only close his eyes and surrender as Scudder’s mouth engulfed him and drew him in. Then took him in deeper; licked and sucked him harder; intensifying, easing and intensifying again, playing with Maurice’s responses – until Maurice spurted hot and hard into his mouth, not knowing what name to cry out.
- - - - - - - - - -
2.
‘Had I best be going now, sir?’
‘No – no – no.’
Scudder’s head rested on Maurice’s belly; his lips, still sticky, still swollen, brushing against the soft nest of hair; his arms held Maurice’s flanks. His breath gradually easing, Maurice reached an arm down to caress the dark head, damp with sweat – wanting him to stay, sobered and saddened that the man thought he should leave just as suddenly as he had arrived.
Leave without … After the force of his own orgasm, Maurice felt shamefully unsure if Scudder had even come. The man might be a servant, but even Maurice could not pretend to himself that the mind-blowing pleasure he had just received had been just a ‘service’. For the moment, at least, orgasm and unexpected tenderness smashed through his routine muddle, his snobbery, everything he had been taught to think about the lower orders. He knew he owed Scudder – owed him not five shillings, not a guinea, not all the gold in the world, but reciprocation. Less altruistically, Maurice’s senses still burned with impressions – of Scudder’s own arousal, the openness in showing and sharing and taking pleasure that Maurice had not dreamt existed in the world, his impossible beauty when he was like that, and (oh god) his cock. Maurice wanted to see him like that – make him like that – again. Wanted to unlock every profane mystery of sex distilled in this one body. Wanted, this time with all his senses, to see and hear and feel Scudder come.
Maurice hauled Scudder upwards into an embrace, brushed another damp curl of hair from his face, looked into his dark brown eyes.
‘You mustn’t call me sir … May I ask your name?
‘I’m Scudder.'
‘I know – I meant your other name.'
‘Only Alec, just.’
‘Alec – Thank you. But…’
Maurice’s hand explored downwards, seeking an answer to his question.
‘Oh Alec – I’m sorry, I…’
His hand rested there, idle; everything was soft and sticky.
Alec pulled him close.
‘No need to be sorry. Couldn’t stop myself any more than you could,’ he whispered huskily – returning Maurice’s gaze sweetly, but with an edge of provocation that hinted at an appetite for more. ‘Not with your fucking beautiful cock in my mouth.’
Maurice stared back, awestruck at the way this stranger turned everything upside down, made obscene words seem so tender, made acts and thoughts Maurice had been drilled to believe obscene seem as natural and necessary as breathing. Alec even made it seem a compliment that he had seen to his own pleasure at the same time as he was giving the fullest imaginable satisfaction to Maurice. Maurice took Alec’s face between his hands and pulled him into a kiss – then gasped, realising that the salty taste was his own cum. And Alec was encouraging him to taste it, meeting his tongue, leading Maurice into crevices still silted with residue he hadn’t swallowed.
‘Like that?’ Alec asked, this time with direct provocation in his voice and eyes. ‘That’s you in there, Mr Hall. See how sweet you taste?’
‘I wish I was tasting yours,’ Maurice whispered – shocked at the way the words tumbled out of him so easily, accompanied by a sharp pang of reawakening lust.
And he trailed kisses down Alec’s body as Alec had for him earlier, nuzzled his face between Alec’s thighs, and worshipfully kissed everything he had missed before: tasted the salty traces, scattered tiny kisses along the length of Alec’s resting cock from the balls to the head. Alec’s responses were languid – he sighed gently with pleasure, but was still in recovery mode. Alec stroked Maurice’s blond hair, and drew Maurice’s head a little way up to rest against the pulse that still quivered in his own belly. Maurice wished they might lie like that together forever. As both drifted into a doze, he dared to wonder, for a moment, if he had found his friend.
- - - - - - - - - -
3.
During sleep it seemed they rolled apart, as if the fragility – many might think impossibility – of their sudden intimacy had reasserted itself. But before dawn a movement began, and Maurice awoke to find the drowsy, tousled Alec deep in his arms, head resting against his heartbeat and the promise of an erection nudging Maurice’s hip. Maurice’s heart flipped as he snapped fully awake and realised vividly that the past night had been real. Alec stirred.
‘Had I best be going now, sir?’
‘God, no.’
‘Sir, the church has gone four, you’ll have to release me.’
I’ll release you, all right, Maurice thought, lasciviously. But not the way you mean, oh no. Not just yet.
Seizing the advantage, he pounced on Alec, pinning him on his back by both arms and straddling his naked body.
‘Maurice – I’m Maurice. And sod the church.’
Alec muttered some ineffectual protest. For a second or so, he looked worried at the force with which he was being held, and wrestled and wriggled against Maurice as if to break free – a match Alec would have won if his life had depended on it. But his struggles soon dissolved into a wicked smirk punctuated by giggles, as the effects of his physical resistance on Maurice became all too obvious all too fast. Alec could feel no trepidation about a grown man – one so perfectly formed, too – who was as ridiculously easy to excite as an adolescent boy. On the contrary, the arm-pin only made Alec newly, pleasurably aware of his own erotic power over this man whose beauty filled him with such awe. He remembered again how Maurice had looked at him last night – the way his eyes had explored and devoured Alec’s body, as if mesmerized, making Alec shiver with strange feelings that were new even to him, making him feel absolutely desired. Now actively encouraging Maurice’s hands to roam his body, teasing himself with thoughts of the moment when they would venture downwards, Alec shivered again in anticipation.
As if on demand, Maurice’s hand reached Alec’s belly, caressed his hips, stroked teasingly downwards along the line of dark hair – not so shy now:
‘Teach me how to make you come off,’ he whispered. ‘This time I want to feel you, see you.’
‘And after that, the towel and out?’ Alec asked, sardonically – not with real sarcasm, but unexpectedly moved to provoke Maurice just a little by testing the power relations, remind him that a gentleman could choose to forget his place but Alec could not.
Maurice relaxed the arm-pin and leant forward to kiss Alec, tenderly but with an unmistakeable underlying hot coil of desire:
‘Only because you say you must,’ he whispered.
And Maurice repeated the kiss, wanting Alec to understand how happy he would be for Alec to stay and never leave.
Alec opened up their kiss and stretched his lower body against Maurice, tilting and rocking his hips so that Maurice could feel the full beautiful length of his hardness, every inch of Alec against him. Penetrating Alec’s mouth deep with his tongue, Maurice experimented as he had felt Alec do last night, thrusting hard, then soft and exploratory, then hard again, cataloguing Alec’s responses – every moan, every tremor, the way some kisses made Alec buck his hips harder. He began to play again with Alec’s nipples, learning fast from his first effort, rubbing them to erection, breaking the kiss to lick and suck, soft and hard – relishing the rise and fall of Alec’s chest as he breathing quickened – nipping and teasing the wet skin until Alec bellowed out a very loud, extended moan:
‘Christ, you’re nearly making me come,’ Alec panted, breathing almost too hard to speak. ‘You’ll miss it all twice over if you keep on doing this to me – Mr Hall.’
Gasping and trembling, Alec reached down and choked his cock in a hard squeeze to delay his climax and prolong the incredible pleasure. The excitement of seeing Alec like this – his skin flushed, his eyes huge and almost black with arousal, his visceral sexuality – was so intense that Maurice felt a near-orgasmic thrill just from looking. He held his breath, tried to control himself, tried to re-focus his mind elsewhere. But his thoughts only leapt back to last night, to sensations and images that could only heat him further: the exquisite suction of Alec’s mouth, the sheer shameless eroticism of staring at his erect cock … And Maurice knew now exactly what he must do.
‘Tell me what you want,’ he whispered.
Alec thought of several true answers that, even in his state of advanced lust, he knew could not be said. You. You, forever. To fuck you until you scream my name.
‘Slow me down,’ he panted. ‘Then look me in the eyes as I come.’
‘Mouth? Hand?’
‘As you wish.’
Maurice knew that what he most wished would slow nothing down. Instead, he resumed his earlier, delicate exploration of Alec’s cock, all the while holding his gaze, never losing contact with his eyes. Perhaps his inexpert touch, inadequate earlier, might be what was needed now.
‘Alec,’ Maurice whispered. ‘You are so beautiful, so beautiful like this.’ It was so true that he could not stop himself saying it. ‘I will try to go slow, but I can’t stop touching you.’
Even touching Alec with such care, Maurice’s blood pounded in his head and through his body; his own feelings seemed heightened rather than dulled. Oh god, Alec, he thought. I want you so much. Right now, more than anything I ever dreamed of. More than I can ever say. Alec’s breathing eased a little, and Maurice sensed that in the other man, as in himself, some deep, profound emotion was being touched. As if, in slowing down the touch on the body, the two men had found something deeper. Maurice continued to caress Alec, tracing a very soft line from his balls, stopping just short of the sensitive spot beneath the head so that Alec gasped to control himself – but it was as if pleasure itself had slowed down, suspended in time, pleasure Alec wanted never to end. He could not tear his gaze away from Maurice; he thought if he could die like this he would die happy. Very.
Of course, they could not go on like that forever, free of urgency.
‘Take me in your mouth,’ Alec whispered.
And with this permission, Maurice obliged. He knew he would not match Alec’s skill – but oh how he wanted to learn. And now it was Maurice who felt suspended in some special heaven – the heaven reserved for unspeakables and unbelievers, the heaven of nothing but I and him. At that moment, there was nothing in eternity more beautiful than the feel and taste of Alec in his mouth, and the overwhelming connection between the two men as Alec raised himself on the pillows to hold Maurice’s gaze, his eyes glazed and feverish as he watched Maurice’s lips and tongue working him up and down. The eroticism of the sight, the long slow teasing build-up brought to explosion by the firm wet strokes, made it impossible for Alec to last any longer. He ejaculated so hard that it was more than Maurice could swallow, crying out his name, calling him Maurice – for the first time, and the second, and the third. Not too long after, Maurice came off just as loudly, thrusting to orgasm into Alec’s saliva-slicked fist – screaming Alec’s name, as Alec had wished.
- - - - - - - - - -
4.
‘Stop – Why did you?’
‘There’s the cricket –’
‘No, there’s not the cricket – you’re going away.’
Alec turned back, held Maurice in his arms, buried his face one last time in the blond hair.
‘Well, we’ll find another opportunity before I do.’
Maurice held onto him, held him close.
‘Alec, did you ever dream you had a friend? No more than that; just “my friend”. Someone to last your whole life, and you his?’
'I can’t talk about dreams now, or I’ll catch it – can’t you see?’ Alec whispered kindly. ‘But you get some sleep – there’s no hurry in your case.’
And he left as he had entered, already at risk of discovery in the dawn light. And when Maurice awoke again, the ladder had gone.