Free An Improper Holiday by K.A. Mitchell Page A

know it sounds mad. It’s long healed. Long gone.”
    “No. I thought I was mad. Sometimes I swear I can feel it. I thought I was just remembering.”
    “That’s probably it. There’s no way you could feel it.”
    Nicky held up his own hand, fingers spread wide. “The Haunted Hand. A perfect tale for a dark
    December night.”
    “You are mad.”
    Despite the concern from his family, the quiet understanding of his cousins in Norwich, there was no
    one who simply accepted it. Who spoke of it without fear or pity. Who touched without horrified curiosity.
    Who even now could make Ian laugh.
    “It still hurts.” Nicky’s tone made it statement rather than question.
    Ian wanted to look away, but Nicky held his chin and kissed him.
    “Then I must needs take your mind off it.” Nicky licked the side of Ian’s neck.
    There were moments without words too.
    And if in those moments Ian dared believe nothing could be more right than when they strained
    against each other, cocks rubbing together, mouths fused with shared heat, the truth came rushing back each morning when Nicky woke while it was still dark, dressed and slipped from the room.
    The penultimate day of the year was the first that the weather deigned to permit decent hunting. They
    were out well past breakfast, only returning when the hounds floundered in deep drifts and lost the scent.
    Exhausted from the sudden increase in exercise atop little sleep, Ian dropped into oblivion that night with his hand still wrapped around Nicky’s spent prick, damp forehead pressed into Nicky’s neck as they lay on their sides.
    He woke to Nicky’s tongue lapping at him as if Ian’s cock were made of sugar and cream, deep
    sounds of satisfaction echoing from Nicky’s throat.

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    45
    K.A. Mitchell
    “Somewhat of an improvement over rising to reveille.”
    Nicky made a long wet swipe up Ian’s prick with an accompanying smacking sound then looked up.
    “And rise you did.”
    Ian groaned as Nicky chuckled and returned to his task with an eager and meticulous commitment.
    Lips tight around the head, tongue flicking in unpredictable rhythm. Ian threaded his hand through Nicky’s curls and dragged him forward. Something akin to shame but far more thrilling beat under Ian’s skin at this use of his friend as Nicky groaned and swallowed, the soft tissue of his throat pulsing around Ian’s prick.
    Nicky took Ian to the back of his throat again and again, tongue and mouth working a magic that
    turned Ian’s bones to liquid. He scarcely noticed what Nicky was about until he felt the rub of Nicky’s finger—there.
    Ian shuddered, and the tip of Nicky’s finger slipped inside.
    “What are you doing?”
    Nicky raised his head. Without the slick bob of his mouth, Ian was all the more aware of the intrusion.
    It didn’t hurt. It simply was. A sensation of pressure utterly neutral.
    “I believe I am engaged in a practice Aristophanes called sucking the sugar stick.”
    “He never said—”
    Nicky sucked again, finger wiggling farther inside. The pressure was no longer indifferent. Ian’s
    nerves could not seem to choose a side between pleasure and discomfort, a desire to pull away and the
    yearning to sink deeper into sensation, to capture Nicky’s finger with his body.
    Wrapping his hand in Nicky’s hair, Ian tugged. “I mean what are you doing with—” Damn. He hadn’t
    needed a word to refer to that particular location since he stopped needing a nurse. “—my nether eye.”
    Nicky’s laugh tingled along Ian’s most sensitive flesh until at last Nicky raised his head again, blue eyes locked on Ian’s.
    “Nether eye?”
    It was hard to summon the tattered shreds of his dignity in a situation that transported dignity as
    swiftly as a ship of convicts to Botany Bay. “Well. The term is certainly as applicable as sugar stick.”
    Nicky rubbed his chin across Ian’s ballocks, the unruly hair on his forehead tickling Ian’s prick. “Oh, Ian.