“That’s a pity.”
Robert laughed, but Ian could tell he was waiting. It was there in the careful way he held himself, the intent force of his stare. Ian couldn’t help but remember those dark eyes holding his gaze as he felt Robert around him, inside him.
He already knew it was too late. He might as well commit to his own fall. It wasn’t as if he could actually deny Robert when he came to him like this.
“When I was fourteen, my mother caught me kissing another boy. One of the neighboring crofter’s sons.” He lifted a shoulder.
“What happened?”
“She told my father. He hit me once or twice…it could have been worse…he never was a man who relied on his fists. He didna need to. And then he told me if it ever happened again, he would throw me out. He said he’d rather not have a son than have an unnatural one. So I left.”
It took Robert a moment to respond. “You didn’t think about staying?”
No. Not even when he’d wondered if he would starve, when he’d crossed the Highlands looking for any odd jobs he could find and had gone to sleep with nothing but the clothes on his back and the cold, distant stars overhead. Those stars had comforted him somehow—they changed, but slowly, and they always returned again to what they’d once been, season after season. He’d taught himself to read just so he could know their names and feel their constancy.
But he hadn’t thought about going back. Not even when hunger and the stars were his only companions.
“I couldna promise that it wouldn’t happen again.” And his parents had already broken something between them that could never be fixed. They’d told him, more or less, that to have their love, he would have to change something he didn’t think could be changed, or he would have to lie, to them, to himself. They didn’t want him as he was, they only wanted him as they thought he should be.
And that was something he couldn’t forgive, or forget.
He had regretted leaving his brother and sister behind, but he hadn’t had any other options at the time.
“Did you love him?”
Ian was startled back to the present. “Who?”
Robert looked at him incredulously. “Your neighbor. The boy.”
Ian shook his head. “I don’t even remember his name.”
What he’d felt for that boy had been simple youthful attraction. It paled in comparison to what he felt for Robert now. It was a drop of water next to the entire ocean. A drizzle next to a downpour.
“Does that bother you?”
After the tiniest pause, Robert shook his head, smiling wryly. “I’m just trying to learn more about you. And I have to ask. I know you won’t tell me otherwise.”
Ian had never thought he’d be so undone by simple honesty.
“You’ll remember my name,” Robert said. “I’m not going to let you forget it.”
It sounded like a promise. Or maybe a challenge. Or a threat. Either way, whether it was true or not, Ian wanted to cling to it. Maybe this wasn’t as hopeless as he assumed. Maybe this really could be their life—together, in the Highlands, nights spent just like this.
They’d probably never sleep, but if he was going to run himself ragged, it would be an enjoyable way to do it.
“Is that so?” he asked.
Robert nodded.
Ian felt his pulse quicken. He wasn’t about to tell Robert that there was no chance he’d ever forget. Not even if he lived for a thousand years.
“Then come back to bed,” Ian said.
Robert was quick to oblige.
Chapter Fifteen
Over the next few days, Worthington became increasingly impatient about the thefts and increasingly suspicious of Robert, so Ian returned to his work as factor (which he was rather happy to get back to), and when he had a free moment while the houseguests were occupied, he continued their search, while Robert reluctantly stayed in Worthington’s sight to avoid raising Worthington’s suspicions even more. Ian had finished checking every inch of the castle; now there was nothing but the outbuildings.
But progress was slow. For the most part, they each went about their normal business during the day, and the nights…well, their nights were for each other.
It wasn’t as though they hadn’t tried to find the missing items. They’d looked and looked, listened and asked, and were still no closer to finding them than they’d been at the beginning.
Ian was starting to think the culprit would never be revealed.
It bothered him. He hated to think that someone who might have tried to frame him would get away with no consequences. And it bothered him more that he didn’t know why they would have attempted such a thing in the first place.
But these thoughts and worries weren’t as immediate when he had Robert pressed against the wall of his temporary bedchamber and their mouths met in a hungry kiss.
This was the shape the thing between them always took—hungry and hot and desperate, as though they’d both been waiting for it for years without ever knowing what it was they longed for.
Ian had never known the difference love would make. Robert might have, but Ian didn’t ask him about it. It was enough to be with him.
Ian tugged at Robert’s shirt so he could slip his hands against his stomach, smooth his palms against the rigid contours of muscle and skin, delve into the hair that formed a line down his lower abdomen.
He stopped kissing Robert long enough to sweep the pads of his fingers across Robert’s lower lip and then push into the warmth of his mouth. Robert didn’t need prompting; he sucked on Ian’s fingers, scraped his teeth along the skin, licked at the spaces between them.
Ian, impossibly, felt his cock swell even more. He didn’t think Robert realized how sensual he could be. The thing about Robert was that sex was an act without walls or boundaries. He threw himself into it with enthusiasm, and openness, and honest pleasure, and he seemed to have no real motive other than a desire to get as close to Ian as possible. He seemed to have no thought of protecting himself.
Ian felt his own boundaries crumbling under the force of Robert’s will, and sex became more than an act of physical release, but a demonstration, a mutual give-and-take. His lack of experience hit him with startling force in these moments, left him unmoored. His few prior couplings hadn’t prepared him for this.
Nothing had prepared him for this. For him.
Ian, who didn’t think of himself as a generous lover, found himself wanting to do things for Robert, wanting to give him whatever he asked for. Wanting to give him things he didn’t ask for.
It was a little terrifying.
But being close to Robert felt too good for him to even think about stopping.
With fingers still wet from Robert’s mouth, he fumbled with the other man’s breeches, pushing at them until they bunched at the top of Robert’s boots, leaving his hard, muscled thighs bare. Then he sank to the floor in front of him.
A distant part of his mind screamed that this was too vulnerable. That he was giving Robert all of the power in this encounter. That he was giving up control in too many of their encounters.
He didn’t care.
As he traced the head of Robert’s cock with his tongue, he felt Robert’s hand clutching at his hair.
“I like the way you look, on your knees in front of me,” Robert said.
That voice. Rough and gravelly. Ian sometimes thought he could come just by listening to the sound of Robert’s voice.
In retaliation, he grabbed Robert’s arse, squeezing roughly.
Robert tugged at his hair, not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to sting. “You’re so cruel,” Robert muttered. But his tone held that hint of good-natured teasing that it was rarely without.
Ian didn’t know how Robert could still jest in the midst of something like this. Ian felt like he might shatter into pieces just from a touch.