Winning Sexy Scribbles Historical Stainton Scene
Elle Stainton Winning Historical Scene
Chapter Twenty-One
Joachim
“Dear Lord, Ainsley–please tell me you’re finally home and that’s not just someone coming to proselytize or sell encyclopedias?” It was a woman’s voice from the great room, tinged with humor–and possibly booze–that rang like little tinkling bells.
“It’s me, and…” Ainsley’s eyes ran up and down Cockburn’s body with a sly smile. “And my dear friend Joachim Cockburn.”
The way he said it set little flags of pleasure waving all over Joachim’s body, like the launching of a new ship decked out in happiness.
The lights were dim, low music played from the gramophone in the corner. A drained cut-glass tumbler sat on the coffee table next to a near-empty decanter. A woman’s slender feet clad in nothing but patterned stockings crossed at the ankle over a sofa arm, and the rest of her body sat up so quickly she nearly toppled from her seat.
“Unexpected–I didn’t know you were bringing someone home.” A terrifyingly pretty woman with bobbed chestnut hair in marcel waves glared at Ainsley.
Her face transformed into a huge smile as she took in Joachim. “Please tell me I’m having a very lovely dream with a happy ending?” She slunk over the carpet to Joachim, red-lacquered hand out. Voice heady. “How do you do? I’m Ainsley’s sister Trixie Graham.”
Ainsley elbowed his way in-between. “Retract your claws, Trix. He’s mine.”
“Where on earth did you find him, and are there any more?” She walked around Joachim, eyeing him up and down like a thoroughbred stud. Her fingernails tracked across his shoulder.
“Draw your teeth back in, darling, you’re not luring him into your web. He likes cock.” Ainsley bowed his chest out like he was about to pounce.
Joachim squeezed his eyes shut in mortification.
“Bloody hell, Ainsley–I wish you could follow a metaphor through to its conclusion and not skip all over the place. It breaks my concentration.” Trixie was back to Joachim’s front view and she blinked at him, the same gray eyes as her brother but with some sort of paint on her lashes making them even more luminous than Ainsley’s. “You’re a beast.”
She pinched Ainsley’s cheek hard enough so he growled. “And you’re luckier than you deserve.”
After slithering back to the sofa she raised her glass. “I need a refill, darling.”
“I doubt it,” Ainsley mumbled as he did it anyway. Nearly to the brim. “And he’s not a beast–he’s Stuart’s friend from the war.” He winked at Joachim. “Actually, that’s a bit of a lie. Let me leave it at; he’s Stuart’s friend from the war.”
“Sir–where shall Mr. Cockburn’s things go?” Dear Lord, the butler was listening too. Joachim had never been so ready to sink into the ground and never re-emerge. But Trixie hadn’t batted an eye over her brother taking a man to his bed.
That sent a frown between his brows. A reminder that he wasn’t anything more than a placeholder in the beautifully quirky Scotsman’s life.
“My mother’s room.” Ainsley said, raising his eyebrows to Joachim with a fresh glass in his hand.
The red-faced man shook his head.
Ainsley shut the decanter. “It’s connected to mine.”
Convenient, that. And another grim reminder that this was a usual occurrence.
“Is there any dinner left?” Ainsley asked his sister.
She pointed to the decanter. “I made my way through about five courses of it, but you can have my share of dessert.”
“Generous to a fault, aren’t you?” Ainsley patted the sofa opposite his sister and after removing his shoes which still had bits of twig and wet leaf from his trek through the woods, lifted his feet to the coffee table.
Joachim was half-minded to follow his bag to the bedroom and wait to see if his embarrassment would recede. But, like a bloody moth to a flame, he sat next to Ainsley who gestured for him to remove his shoes as well.
Once he did, Ainsley pulled Joachim’s feet to his lap and started twisting away at the pain in his ankle and it was soothing, he forgot to be annoyed.
As if stung by a bee, Trixie sat up and narrowed her eyes at Joachim. “Stuart’s friend? The one coming up from England to cement your place in history as a complete idiot?”
Ainsley’s face settled into smugness. “The very one.”
Trixie traced her fingertip over the lip of her glass with a pout. “I was supposed to entertain him, not you.”
“I’m quite sure he prefers my sort of entertainment, don’t you Cockburn?” Ainsley’s eyes smoldered.
Joachim looked from one to the other and would have fled if Ainsley wasn’t making his leg feel…the way it did before it had been mangled in the barbed-wire ten years earlier.
“Greedy. Just like when you were a child.” Trixie tossed her brother a teasing smile. “Mr. Cockburn, is it? Now I’m sure this is a particularly unsatisfying dream, but I’ll play along. When Ainsley was a child and our mother would bring us each home a bag of sweets, he’d go through and lick each of them so he’d end up with them all. Can you imagine?”
“I’m sure he can picture it very easily,” purred Ainsley giving him a pointed look.
Cockburn swung his feet down. “It’s all too much for me, good-night.” He stood.
Ainsley grabbed his hand and pulled. “Did you hear how he said mooch, Trix? I adore it. You sit back down, Cockburn. I promise we’ll stop teasing you.”
Trixie rolled to her side, her short, silky skirt falling over her legs like a waterfall. “We will.” There was a fair bit of contrition in her voice that didn’t match the wicked gleam in her eye.
Trying to imagine his mentor, stodgy professor Stuart Graham, sharing Christmas breakfast with his pair of siblings was…impossible, frankly.
But Ainsley had said he adored Joachim’s accent which sent a sharp, tight thrill to his gut.
“Will cottage pie be sufficient, Sir?” asked the butler from the door.
Cutting his eyes to Joachim’s, Ainsley nodded and answered for them both. “And we’ll have some lemonade, too. Or ginger beer, if there’s any?”
Joachim leaned back against the arm of the sofa and shut his eyes, listening to brother and sister chat about the following night’s dinner party, allowing the easing of his ankle bring him close to sleep.
He roused himself enough to eat and then it was past ten and Trixie bid them both an elaborate good-night as she wove unsteadily across the room.
Only two nights left with his Dr. Graham before heading back south. To his dull life at the university. Shite. How could he bear it?
Ainsley licked clotted cream from his finger suggestively. Restored from his cat-nap and meal, Joachim stood. “Right. I’m going to bed, and you’re coming with me.”
“At the same time?” Ainsley went from sitting to wrapped around Joachim in less than a heartbeat. A now hammering pulse keeping time with the long clock in the corner.
“I haven’t decided yet.” Joachim took the younger man’s face in his hands and kissed him in a wash of scones and cream and adorable Ainsley-ness.
Dr. Graham shivered in his arms. “You’re a bit of a brute, did you know?”
Nipping at the throat bared for him, Joachim nodded. Reached his hands up the back of Ainsley’s shirt. “And I’m feeling particularly brutish tonight after that hike you took me on.”
His ginger clung tighter. “God, yes. Just what I hoped to hear.”
They got up the stairs in record time and Ainsley pulled him to a bedroom at the back of the house. A series of windows took up much of the back wall, blue silk draperies that matched the bedclothes covering them.
Joachim had his wool jumper off in one movement and tossed it to a chair before lounging longways across the bed, propped up on his elbows.
Ainsley stood between his knees, head tilted to the side, as if waiting further instruction. Dear Lord, their role-playing game was addictive. Intense greedy pleasure flared through Joachim’s pelvis.
“Take all your clothes off except your flannels, Dr. Graham.” Joachim’s voice was as firm as his cock which Ainsley eyed hungrily.
A slight tremble shook Ainsley’s shoulders as he complied. Argyll socks first, followed by his tie and jumper, shirt, and then plus-four trousers. His pants tented slightly, but not like they would. Joachim wanted to run his tongue through all the trails and grooves of those sleek muscles.
“Now, take my clothes off,” he said, pleased his voice didn’t hitch the way his emotions did.
Ainsley practically fell onto the buttons on Joachim’s neck, popping one off in his haste. He dropped his lips to the Englishman’s neck with a moan.
“No kissing until I tell you.” Joachim’s tone wasn’t sharp but it didn’t need to be.
Dear Lord those eyes knew how to beg. And sparkle with anticipation. But the younger man did as told, and took off Joachim’s shirt, folding it with cheeky lethargy, followed by his socks and trousers. So slow, as if he knew it would make Joachim a bit desperate.
Which it did.
Ainsley hesitated over Joachim’s short pants, but Cockburn lifted his hips to make it an easy removal. His ginger’s fingers trembled when he pulled the fabric off his straining prick. Licked his lips at the beads of moisture leaking from the tip. It took an almost insurmountable force of will not to drag Graham onto his cock and fuck until they both came, but that wasn’t his intention.
Not yet.
He stood and circled Ainsley oh so slowly, his fingertip dragging over the planes of his body so the skin underneath peaked and shuddered.
“Fetch your oil and then on the bed.”
His ginger opened a drawer in a bedside table and handed Joachim a bottle. He banished any other men who might have used it from his mind as soon as his lover stretched out. Joachim lengthened along his body. “Hands up.”
Ainsley wriggled with an electric sort of happiness that shone in his eyes and the way he didn’t quite manage to hold back his grin and held one wrist in the other hand’s grip.
Not ready for the oil, Cockburn pressed two fingers into Ainsley’s mouth, and he licked down the knuckles and callouses as greedy as he’d sucked Joachim’s cock. God in heaven, he could watch for hours and not get bored with the way his cheeks sucked in and the soft rasp of his tongue.
He eventually pulled them out and slid under the hem of Ainsley’s short pants, straining more now. Much more. He cupped his balls and pressed both fingers inside with no further ado. The way Ainsley responded to so perfectly. The lean body under his hand arched to make it easier, and a moan went straight to Joachim’s solar plexus.
Joachim drew hard, open lips up the shaft of Ainsley’s cock, over the fabric. Again and again until Graham’s heels dug into the coverlet to give him purchase to lift his hips. Begging begging begging with those eyes.
Instead, his mouth traced the lines of Ainsley’s abdominal muscles one by one, his hand pumping a wee bit faster. Difficult restrained by the underpants which did their own job dragging friction across the younger man’s cock and balls. His tongue circled higher and brushed along one nipple before pressing it hard between his lips.
“Christ on a…fuck…can I make noise?”
That breathy pleading was music to his ears.
“Please, Dr. Graham.” He wanted to lose himself in all the gorgeous misery he was putting his ginger through.
Each plaintive little whine made it harder for Joachim to restrain himself, but he’d spent two hours sitting in the car dreaming about keeping Ainsley on edge for as long as he could. Branding himself in the handsome scholar’s psyche as deeply as he’d burrowed into Joachim’s.
Moving back down the slim body, he pulled back the waistband just enough that the shiny-slick crown of his prick was exposed. Deliciously red and weeping with want. Joachim settled his head on Ainsley’s hard belly and pulled just the tip past his lips, tongue pressing the slit open so a sob echoed around his ears.
For long minutes he teased and suckled and fucked Ainsley with his fingers until the flannel short pants were damp.
“Bugger bugger bugger, I’m going to come.” Ainsley thrashed his auburn head most charmingly.
“That’s the point.” Joachim lifted his mouth after another long stroke of his tongue. “I want you to feel every bit of me when I take you.”
Ainsley bucked his hips and mewled. And filled Joachim’s mouth like a man who’d been repressed for years instead of hours.
And while he was drained and pliant, Joachim pulled off the scrap of fabric and covered himself in the oil. With a scoop, he had the younger man in his arms and he pushed into the still quivering hole. To the hilt and then nearly all the way back out so all the blood drained from his body and settled in his balls.
“Fu-fu-fuck me harder.” Ainsley stuttered incoherently, but Joachim barely understood, living in the moans and sighs and the grinding of his cock buried inside this wanton creature who had crawled under his skin and nested.
The gray eyes opened and stared into Joachim’s with an utter longing that thrilled every last nerve ending.
“Good Christ, Cockburn I think I love–”
But whatever he was going to complete the thought with was drowned in the sudden explosion that Joachim couldn’t hold back and his accompanying cry of utter fucking bliss.
When he finished and withdrew and held onto his beautiful ginger for just the few minutes he thought he could get away with before the man drew back in distaste, Ainsley let out a small snore.
He cleaned them up with the crumpled pants and molded his form to Graham who twisted and clung to Cockburn in his sleep, like he wanted to be inside of him.
Joachim pushed the tangle of hair off Ainsley’s sweaty brow and kissed it as gently as he wished to but didn’t dare when the Scotsman was awake and sure to sneer at his sentimentality. “Dear Christ, Dr. Graham,” he whispered. “I think I love…too.”
Puckish AINSLEY GRAHAM leads a golden life in 1928 Scotland. Of a sort. After academically harnessing his severe ADHD into a scholarly reputation, he spectacularly lost it by lecturing on the existence of ghosts. Now, Ainsley hasn’t got much to occupy him besides seducing as many men as he can manage while rehabilitating his career.
Bluff Yorkshireman JOACHIM COCKBURN came back from the Great War with a limp, but it didn’t dampen his enthusiasm to pursue his dream to be a psychology professor. All that stands in his way is his dissertation on how seemingly sane people can be overcome by delusions. When he’s offered an introduction to the eccentric, Joachim pounces on the opportunity to look for ethereal beings…and prove they don’t exist.
Quickly, the two men’s desire overrides their cross purposes and leads to intriguing role-playing bed sport. Ainsley responds beautifully to a commanding voice and Joachim soon loses his heart to the quicksilver charmer. But their futures are entrenched in two different locales.
The Scot can’t bear any sort of treacly emotions, so Joachim does his hearty best to pretend he hasn’t fallen in love. He’s not as successful at denying the existence of all the apparitions they encounter. And it turns out that Ainsley isn’t immune to the calming Englishman.
When their adventure draws to its inevitable conclusion, Ainsley’s on the verge of confessing his emotions. Until Joachim admits he’s still planning on writing that rational people don’t believe in spirits. They separate, heartbroken, until Joachim changes the focus of his research to help others with fidgety minds. Back in Scotland for a mutual friend’s wedding—and to take a local teaching position—Joachim exorcises the last of Ainsley’s ghosts. Madly in love, they work together to establish a beautiful future.