Perilous Beasts

Like any able man of good birth and character, Richard has taken well to hunting; this particular occasion is something of a gesture of renewed friendship to the Duke of York, though how friendly it may be to be sleeping with York’s son throughout the better part of the festivities is a matter for debate. The king needs no excuse to retire early from the rest of the hunting party, even to absent himself from the main bustle of activity entirely, to plead fatigue from travel or a solitary visit to some tumble-down shrine in the woods. No one would dare press the matter, but Aumerle is more likely to be missed.

Servants can find some other way to busy themselves and afford them the uneasy privacy that comes only to the very wealthy. Richard’s private pavilion has begun to feel a little like Dido’s bower in the cave – a spot of refuge in the wild, protection from the elements and the wild beasts. Not to speak of one’s relatives.

“You can’t keep me forever, you know.” He means this to sound the way he feels, dismayed, full of sorrow at the prospect of parting but eager to get down to the actual sport itself – the appeal of a civilized refuge is strong, but the nagging sense that there’s something else he ought to be doing in preparation for tomorrow’s excursion, even having explicit leave to be where he is, continues to eat at him. (Or at least, explicit leave to meet in private. What exactly transpires here should be left up to speculation.)

He lies back nestled under Richard’s arm. The pavilion above their heads sways a little tipsily and he considers how rarely he actually looks up when indoors. Not that Richard would be thrilled to hear this observation, having strong opinions about architecture, so he’ll keep that to himself – it’s impossible to imagine a more graceful space, looking not at all impromptu and furnished with all his cousin’s favorite things, yet it still feels shockingly informal. Things might happen here that could never happen between stone walls at court.

“Are you in such a hurry to get away from me? As far as they’re all concerned you’ve stepped out for a private meeting. I’ve taken you aside to consult some article of your particular expertise, or you’ve suddenly taken sick and can be cured by nothing short of my feeding you from my own hand.”

“Like a king’s daughter with a favorite lapdog.”

“Like a grown man who may do as he pleases,” Richard says with a momentary sternness. But it vanishes in a moment when he laughs, and is once again Edward’s merry-eyed lover. Richard’s fingertips brush his lips in the imparting of a dusty sweetmeat and if they were younger men, boys playing, he’d nibble at them until he yelped. He sucks idly on the side of his hand until Richard starts laughing and pulls it away. Here he is a veritable prisoner of war more than he is a paramour; Richard has conquered him sweetly and he couldn’t leave their trysting-place if he tried. He’s been very effectively tamed.

“Enough of that, you affectionate creature.” His hands teasingly span Aumerle’s neck. He has a light touch, but nevertheless is thrillingly present, and perhaps he can feel his heartbeats in the pads of his fingertips. Aumerle doesn’t know if his heart is beating faster for being here. Though he feels astonishingly warm everything the king does is so slow and deliberate that he’s quite at ease, and the whole world seems to be moving at a drowsier pace. “Though hardly a lapdog. A greyhound, maybe, or a rache. Shall I have a collar made for you? No?”

Aumerle finds himself suddenly inarticulate with desire, shot through with more than a little terror, and sits up, moving to brush his hands away. It does occur to him that what Richard had in mind and his own imagination might differ, but he likes the thought very much.

Aumerle pulls his fingers away and Richard places both hands against Aumerle’s chest. His drowsy eyes focus on him with aloof good humor, like a cat’s.

“It might suit you, Edward. As long as you’re in no hurry,” he says, “we might as well occupy ourselves,” and leans down to kiss him.

He breathes his excitement against the king’s mouth, and Richard’s tongue plays between his lips even as his hands have liberty to roam anywhere and everywhere. Aumerle twists his fingers in the golden hair at Richard’s nape and is patiently undone in between gasped oaths.

He’s stripped first of his coat with all his buttons, Richard slipping a hand inside between the buttons and beneath the cloth to tug it apart, fingers brushing his belly tantalizingly. His mind travels idly to the procedure for dressing game, the undignified sprawling-out of the unlucky beast and the hunter’s slicing, fishing around to pluck out the offal – a thought rather grisly for love’s bower but familiar enough to be content with. If his king were to hurt him, he’d thank him for it, he thinks.

His shirt is suffocatingly damp from where it’s lain next to his skin. Richard tugs it down and brushes off his shoulders, then hooks a finger through the neck of his shirt and draws him in for few kisses. After riding all day, Richard the man smells mostly of dust and salt, but his clothes are still spiced from where they’ve been lain up before wearing and his yellow hair smells sweet, though it tastes bitter. Aumerle should have thought better than to mouth at it too ardently anyway but Richard doesn’t seem to mind as he plucks the errant lock from Aumerle’s lips.

He sucks sweet kisses from him with increasing boldness, and meets with no objections; unwise as it generally is to be too forward with the king’s person, he’s never known anyone as ardently hungry to be touched as Richard, as strangely marked by need for all that he’s aloof on high. Great men always have great appetites, perhaps they are greatly lonely too. It doesn’t pay to think on it, when he’d rather be embracing him. His arms find Richard’s body beneath the beautiful cloth.

His beard has chafed Richard’s mouth and throat quite appealingly red. His lips always look well-kissed, which is not such an advantage when it’s earning him a reputation for nocturnal debauchery or distracting Aumerle on solemn occasions, but now with no grim utterances to be pronounced he is handsome and rosy in repose.

Richard is very lazily working him now with his hands, trying to make it last while himself better than half-hard, his touch firm enough to be distracting but not rough. It still sends his thoughts scrambling from him with urgent desire.

“You’ll have to write a treatise of your own for me.” The knuckles of his hand trace exactly the full length of Aumerle’s tool, without its owner needing to break eye contact; this suggests he knows him very well by now, and that he knows exactly what his penetrating gaze can do to a man, and also that the fashion of short gowns might be Aumerle’s downfall.

He’s quick to disclaim himself, hopefully sounding too distracted to affect false modesty. “You know more than I do – I mean, you don’t need my help, really. I’m entirely unsuited for the task, I’m a very poor writer, and besides, I won’t be abroad again for a while. You’ll always have me when you need me–”

Aumerle knows he’s selling himself short, but it’s hard to strike a balance between seemly modesty before his sovereign and the acknowledgement that all things considered he’d rather be hunting than doing practically anything else and is damned good at it. Not that there’s a great deal of seemliness available to him now. 

“I very much doubt that, Edward.” Richard’s gaze is almost sad, for a moment, but he’s quickly changed back again to amorous softness. He gives his thigh a playful squeeze and rubs against him some more. “Tell me again what Phoebus, Earl of Foix has to say about harts.”

Richard must know, of course, and his French is better than Aumerle’s in every way, but it can’t hurt to refresh his memory. Somehow in the course of his recitation on assises and imprimings Aumerle mysteriously finds himself unlaced.

Richard licks his exquisite fingers (or more aptly the notch between forefinger and thumb) and gets to work on him in earnest, drawing out of him such aching pleasure that it’s scarcely bearable. Aumerle has to start over again several times, fumbling for the right words like a schoolboy and feeling his face grow almost as flushed as some other territories of his person, and Richard seems to find it very amusing.

When Edward has delivered his recitation to his king’s satisfaction he’s permitted to return the favor. Unsurprisingly he doesn’t get to handle Richard very long before he’s gone off all over his sovereign’s hands and probably his lap as well. Which in the immediate future will be damned inconvenient but he’s incapable of thinking of anything at all, cinched close to Richard in a blind tangle of heated limbs and clothes and mouths.

Before he’s even aware of what he’s doing he’s sinking down into his lap, trying very hard not to fall off the ornate couch. This elicits some sound of mild surprise from Richard – surprise but not displeasure – that makes him all the more certain he must do something like this or die. His intellect has helpfully made itself absent in such close proximity and spared him any anxiety about what he should be doing, so he can fall to his wanton task fully enthusiastically with hands and tongue and lips. Why he hadn’t thought of this before, he doesn’t know – he’d put his mouth anywhere Richard will let him, his belly and thighs and the tender skin where thigh joins to hip, where the pale freckles stop – and he wishes to do nothing else.

“You can take me in your mouth, if you like,” Richard says, the graciousness of the directive undercut by the exquisite strain in his voice. Aumerle accepts the suggestion and finds it very agreeable.

Having ultimately extricated himself from the edge of the cushion-heaped platform, Aumerle rolls over on top of him as lightly as he’s able, groaning happily. A cup of wine wouldn’t go amiss, but the taste on his tongue is not unpleasant and he’s hopelessly exhilarated by this new thing he’s done. Richard presses his lips to his temple and Aumerle noses in close against his shoulder.

“Oh, I love you,” Richard breathes against his ear, sounding perfectly helpless.

To the devil with politics, and let the world think what it will. Edward wishes they could both be young again, with all that cruel business yet to happen to them, if he’d known then what he knows now– for God’s sake, he isn’t yet thirty, he has no business feeling old. The rest of the world can go hang, as long as he has his King’s love and they let them out from time to time to hunt together. They lie together there for a little while, simply breathing, and Edward makes a mental catalogue of the next days’ festivities. God knows how long they’ve spent; the sunlight as it sifts in through the silk hangings casts longer shadows.

Eventually they must disentangle themselves, for the sake of propriety and with hunger for a more substantial repast needling at both of them. Richard traces with his fingertips through Aumerle’s hair. Edward wears it in a style considerably shorter and less interesting than the king’s own, but nevertheless it is in a state of complete disorder; he’ll have to pull a comb through it properly, or at least to wash his face. He ought to be in a suitable condition to banquet later when their party reconvenes, so that there might be some question of what they’ve escaped to do. Remarking on this gets him tossed down and savaged with kisses all around his throat. It’ll be something to remember him by once they’ve taken to horse and set out again in the morning.