Da Silva, a secret agent. It seemed extraordinary when one considered the ghastly floral buttonholes and the languorous manner. Easier to imagine him as a competent professional if he thought of him working in the library, intent on his manuscript. Impossible to think about if he pictured him on his knees…
Enough of that. Sir Maurice, Curtis’s uncle, would not have recruited da Silva if he wasn’t good. For a moment Curtis imagined the two of them in a room: the ferocious Sir Maurice, who made Curtis’s own spine stiffen; da Silva languid in a velvet jacket. His mind rebelled at the picture. But of course da Silva would adopt another persona for work, no doubt a crisp professional manner. He could pull it off, Curtis was sure, he switched between roles like an actor. Perhaps it was easier for queer sorts to play a variety of parts, being used to concealing the truth about themselves—
The thought pulled him up short.
He had been in exclusively male company at school, of course, and at college. He could have sought out female companionship at Oxford, as many did, but he had been occupied elsewhere, concentrating on his sporting career and, as a poor second, getting his degree. He had joined the army straight out of university, and from then on he’d mostly been in one or another part of Africa, at least up until Jacobsdal. He had, in fact, spent his life with men. And if, in those circumstances, one played the fool with other fellows, as he had at school, and college, or had a particular friend, as he had in the army, well, that was only natural. Men had needs.
Today’s business with da Silva was very far from his first time with another chap. It was simply the first time he’d been forced to think about it.
Curtis shut his eyes. He could still feel a slight dampness in his groin from da Silva’s mouth, and he had a momentary urge to stroke himself.
He had never considered his own tastes beyond the moment. He didn’t often consider himself at all, not being the introspective sort. But in that shocking moment when he had thought he had forced himself on an unwilling man, he had faced a truth.
He had wanted da Silva. Not just the physical relief, not just a hand on his cock; he’d wanted the dark, clever man who dropped to his knees so easily for all his prickly pride. Curtis had woken up hard this morning, thinking of da Silva between his thighs in the mirror last night. He had struggled to control his arousal in the billiard room, watching the man bent over the green baize table. And nothing on earth could have held him back just now, not once da Silva had offered his outrageous, marvellous mouth.
You asked him to suck you off. You begged him to.
He rubbed his hands over his face, unsure where his thoughts were going.
Very well: he would rather have his cock sucked than not, and da Silva was a handsome devil who knew his way around a chap, and God knew it had been so long since he’d felt aroused, let alone acted on it. Was there anything more to it, really?
All his previous encounters had been with chaps like himself: soldiers, sportsmen, good fellows. He had an unformed but definite idea that being queer entailed doing something different, womanish, something like the rouged men in those London clubs. Like da Silva, with his perfectly shaped brows and tight trousers and mannerisms.
Curtis wasn’t like that. He simply didn’t feel queer, whatever that might feel like. He felt like a normal chap who, now and then, enjoyed encounters with other chaps, that was all. Some people might not see the distinction, he supposed, but there was definitely a difference. He wasn’t sure what it was, but there was one. Well, there had to be, since he wasn’t queer.
This was not a useful line of thought.
Curtis straightened up from the wall and marched downstairs to grab his oilskins. It was time to go back to the house, face the Armstrongs, do his duty to King and country, put away this self-indulgent nonsense. If da Silva could keep his mind on the job in hand, Archie Curtis, late of His Majesty’s service, could hardly do less.
Chapter Eight
Luncheon was a noisy, chatty affair. Curtis concentrated on the interplay around him, viewing the country house party through the prism of what he knew.