Chapter One: London, 1856
He was snoring when I woke. His arm was around me, at waist level, his palm on my pelvis bone, his thumb and two fingers pushed into my pubic bush, holding me close into his side. I had drifted off with him stroking my shaft. He'd been at the point of rolling over on top of me, but I had run my hand through the gray hair of his chest and great belly and down into his pubes and taken hold of him as he had with me, and as I stroked him, he had sighed and dozed off. After assuring myself he was asleep, I did as well. I think he was being a bit too ambitious to think he had another ejaculation in him.
He would remember the hour spent as a pleasurable time, well worth the expense, so all was well here. He would remember having come twice and making me come as well in cries of passion and praise of his skill, but the second time was more artifice on my part than penile success on his part. His member was more limp than hard the second time when I was riding it, and most of the skill involved was mine on keeping it inside me. And I had not been as truly passionate about either finish as he would recall of the hour we'd spent together—the period he'd called the "fucking hour" when we'd come up to this bedchamber—to have been.
But he would be back, and that was all that the house master, Percy Blackthorn, would care about.
He was soundly asleep now, having worn himself out. He was in his mid-fifties. He probably didn't know I knew that, but I did. I knew who he was too and what he was important for in the prime minister's party. What was important here, in the bedroom, was that he was past fifty and had overindulged in life. So, it was understandable that his efforts in bed might have tired him out.
I carefully lifted his heavy arm—everything about him was heavy. I'd had to coax him onto his back and ride him to keep him from crushing me—and wormed my way out from within his embrace. I rolled over and sat up on the side of the bed and looked at my pocket watch on the stand next to the bed, by the chamber pot. His time was up. I could leave. And I didn't have much more than an hour before Sir Sydney's carriage would be here for me.
I looked down at the man, a tower of importance in the current government, a man who commanded full attention when speaking on national policy. He was just a fifty-year-old, out-of-shape client by the hour to me as he lay there, exhausted in sleep. I wondered if he ever had been young and handsome and stirred the heart of another man. Had he been seduced and deflowered and initiated into sex with men by someone who desired his body? To me he was only a big belly and an undersized dick inside me for a few minutes, someone I had to praise for nonexistent skill, and a club patron who put food in front of me and a roof over my head. Still, he wasn't rough; he didn't tax me, or stretch me, or beat me. And he didn't try to use the full hour. So, he was one of my favorite clients. If he offered to buy me from this house and set me up to service his needs solely, I probably would say yes. Other young men I had known had done that willingly for men far uglier and fatter than this one.
The door to the corridor opened silently and Calvin, the dresser, peeked around the edge. He knew the time was up, as well, and that I would have to bathe and dress again before the carriage arrived. Calvin would have been pacing around for the last ten minutes, everything in preparation, wondering if I would make the time or if Lord Harnett would demand more time.
Lord Harnett snorted in his sleep and reached out for me. His eyes were closed, though, and I managed to rise from the bed before he'd touched me. It would have been awkward if he had wanted to do it again. He was too important to say no to, but I didn't really have the time for it and I was quite sure he didn't have the stamina to manage another erection so soon. I was his favorite because I made him climax and I cried out in passion when he did so. If I failed to do that, he would probably stop asking for me.
I reached out to the chair by the bed and retrieved my blue silk robe that complemented my eyes and my nearly platinum hair so well. Standing, I shrugged it on around my lithe, naked body and padded to the door.
Out in the corridor, Calvin whispered to me, "Your bath is hot, but it will not be so for long. I will lay out your clothes while you bathe. What do you prefer for underdrawers—the silk or the linen?"
"I think neither for this assignation," I whispered back. We grinned at each other and Calvin headed for my private bedchamber in the attic and I headed for the waiting bath. I lost my grin, though, as soon as Calvin turned away from me. An assignation with Sir Sydney was not an engagement to grin about. Unlike Lord Harnett, he could be a cruel dominator and his cock was taxing. Like Lord Harnett, though, he was much too important a client of the house to shrink from. One thing I knew, however. He was an impatient man. Unnecessary layers of clothing were just an irritating impediment to him.
* * * *
"Hurry up, Ross. He's here. His carriage is here, outside already. You're keeping him waiting." Percy was hissing at me from the foyer as I descended the stairs.
"What is the concern? So, his carriage is here," I said, nonchalantly, as I pointedly did not hurry and adjusted my wrist cuff studs as I came down the stair treads.
"No, you don't understand," Percy hissed. "He's here himself. In the carriage. Sir Sydney."
"Himself?" I asked. "How extraordinary. Why did he not just send the carriage for me?"
"Who knows? He's here himself. Look lively now."
I put on a smile as I descended the Marble Crescent townhouse steps of the marble-faced townhouse set in the quite fashionable London curve of townhouses, just one of several identical row houses that few would have identified as a high-class male whorehouse.
"Sir Sydney. Such a privilege," I said, retaining my smile, as I climbed into his open carriage. "You came to fetch me yourself. I am touched."