He’d forgotten how lonely it is in the solar at night, by himself.
He’d forgotten what it’s like to be surrounded by crowds of people during the day, but none of them an equal. None that could read his mind with a look, lighten his mood with a comment, relax his worries with a touch.
Three days before Christmas, Iain is late for dinner.
Everyone but him is tucked up warm in the hall, the heavy doors shut against the cold. Kit offers to go and fetch Iain, but Harry raises a hand, bidding Kit to stay. He’ll go. He signals for Annie to begin serving the big midday meal.
Harry slips out into the courtyard, his soft boots crunching over the frosty ground.
He finds Iain, as he expects, in the stables. Iain is stripped down to the waist, pitchfork in hand, tossing hay up into the eaves for storage. A sheen of sweat covers his chest, and his thick muscles ripple as he throws the heavy loads overhead.
Harry chokes on his next breath. It’s a sight to tempt a saint.
Iain hears it and turns, cold eyes through those sinfully long lashes sweeping over Harry as he rests the pitchfork against the wall. ‘What time is it?’ he murmurs. ‘Did I work through dinner?’
Harry shivers. He’d thought the fire in his loins had been quenched by fear and distance, that as simple an act as fetching Iain to the hall couldn’t possibly reignite it.
He thought wrong.
The embers of his attraction have apparently been smouldering all this time, like peat, deep under the grassy earth of his composure, waiting for the merest breath of oxygen to burst into flame again.
Harry groans, and gets in Iain’s space, gets his hands on his bare chest, shoving him back towards the tack room. Once they’re inside, Harry kicks the door shut and latches it.
Iain is sprawled back against a saddle, chest arched and shoulders and biceps flexed, and he raises an eyebrow at Harry.
‘Fuck,’ Harry breathes.
The side of Iain’s mouth twists into a smile.
Harry isn’t even conscious of advancing on Iain. One moment he’s looking at the broad expanse of sweat-shined flesh and muscle on display for him, and the next he’s got his hands on Iain’s waist and his tongue in Iain’s mouth.
Iain moans and kisses him back just as hungrily.
‘I’m going mad without you,’ Harry pants, unlacing his breeches so he has fewer layers between himself and Iain.
Iain just growls into his mouth and palms Harry’s dick. ‘You’re not the only one,’ he says, his voice husky with desire.
‘Fuck,’ Harry murmurs again as he runs his hands down Iain. ‘They’re waiting for us, in the hall.’ He rolls one of Iain’s nipples between his fingers, and is rewarded with Iain arching towards him further, biting his lip to stifle a moan.
‘Then skip the damn foreplay, Lyon,’ Iain hisses.
Harry growls and grabs Iain’s hips, turning him around and shoving him over the saddle. Iain gasps his surprise, and it turns into a low moan as Harry tucks the tail of Iain’s shirt up into his belt, exposing his backside.
Iain’s already hard, and Harry has a perfect view of exactly what he wants, of how Iain’s skin darkens slightly as the cleft of his rear leads down to his hole. He grabs Iain’s cheeks in his hands and spreads them to get an even better look, and that’s not enough either, so he runs his dripping cock up and down the cleft, hissing at the sensation.
Iain whines, needy, and pushes his backside towards Harry. And God, Iain’s arse looks amazing, draped over the saddle, the cords of muscle on his thighs standing out as he spreads his legs.
Harry grabs a bottle of leather oil from the shelf next to him and pours some over his cock. Then he’s got one hand on Iain’s belt and the other hand on his backside, and he’s pushing into Iain, his mind empty of anything other than the overwhelming need to fuck him raw, right there in the tack room among the saddles and bridles and combs and blankets, the horses shifting and snorting in their stalls on the other side of the wall.
It’s still.
It’s heaven. It’s.
Like drowning. But. In light.
When Harry bottoms out, he puts a hand on Iain’s back, leaning on him, breathing hard.
‘Christ’s blood,’ Iain moans. ‘Harry, please,’ he says, and rolls his hips.
Harry bites out his own curse as hot sparks of sensation course through him, and he pulls out and snaps his hips back in.
The leather of the saddle creaks as Iain is forced against it, and he arches his back and whimpers. ‘More,’ he says, his voice a wrecked whisper. It speaks to the thing in Harry, the vicious, primal beast that only comes out around Iain.
Harry lets go completely. They’re due at dinner; any minute now someone will come out looking for them and Harry’s not going to let this end unfinished, it’s too much, too good, so he starts pounding into Iain, hard and fast, and his hand slips off Iain’s back and down to the shelf where Iain is bracing himself with one hand, and he covers it with his hand and their fingers interlink, and that, that is somehow more intimate than anything they’ve ever done, and Harry squeezes Iain’s hand as his orgasm builds within him, this liquid fire unspooling from his groin throughout his entire body as he keeps slamming into Iain over the saddle, and he reaches his other hand down where Iain’s cock is trapped between his stomach and the leather of the saddle, and he can’t really stroke it hard so he makes do with rubbing his thumb over the top of it, under the head, on the slit, and he starts biting at Iain’s neck and shoulder because it’s not enough, he needs every part of him to touch every part of Iain, because touching him is like reaching paradise, and he wants to revel in it
