“Could you bring one on, do you think? Purposefully?”
“Why?”
“You saw the maze,” Edwin said. “It was important. You could see something else.”
Robin didn’t relish the idea, but that was inarguable. He settled further down in the bed and closed his eyes. “Where do I start?”
“With what usually starts it,” said Edwin. His voice had the usual confidence of knowledge, but hushed. The sound of it was a comforting thrill, like rough flannel dragged over Robin’s skin.
Robin rubbed his tongue against the roof of his mouth, striking up a heat that he could pretend was the hot taste that heralded the foresight. He screwed his eyes tight shut until the light prickled. He inhaled, deep—no scent but the dusty lavender of sheets long kept in a linen chest, and the murkier one of bodies and their closeness—and held it.
Held it. Held it. Eyes tight.
He willed his mind to plunge into a vision, but couldn’t focus on anything past the sensation of his lungs pressing against his ribs, straining, the stubborn burn of them followed all at once by a flood of panic—any moment his mouth and nose would fill with water, he wouldn’t be able to breathe even if he tried— He gasped his eyes open and flailed in his haste to sit up and lean forward. Edwin’s hand touched his shoulder. Robin was expecting an eager query about whether it had worked, but Edwin just rubbed small circles with the heel of his hand.
“No good,” said Robin when he had his breath. “Sorry. Felt too much like the bloody swan-pond, even trying.”
Edwin lifted his hand away. He looked very tired, and as though he was having trouble deciding on what he wanted to say. What came out, carefully arranged as a dinner service, was: “I wish I could make this better.”
“You’re trying,” said Robin.
The thin lips thinned further. “Failing.”
Robin thought for no real reason of Maud, who’d throw herself into every new endeavour and passion as though it were the first. He swallowed a terrible surge of guilt. He was supposed to be there for her, supposed to be sorting out their family’s future, and where was he? Tucked away in a manor house in Cambridgeshire, drinking up Edwin Courcey with his eyes and pretending that his own problems were the only ones in the world.
“Trying’s what counts,” he said.
Edwin yawned. The room was warming, since he’d stirred up the fire; that must have been the reason he let the blanket slip down from his shoulders. Robin let himself drink his fill. Edwin’s skin was smooth and pale, the wings of his collarbone making Robin’s mouth water. He thought about that particular vision again: Edwin, nude and writhing, on his back against sheets. These sheets? How was he supposed to tell? Sheets were sheets.
“What? What’s that look for?” Edwin’s limbs were curling up, self-conscious and self-protective. Robin was far too distracted to say anything but: “I was thinking I’d quite like to suck your prick.”
Edwin’s breath caught. His bent knee softened, as Robin stroked a hand up Edwin’s leg. Robin was already reaching for him, already moving down in the bed to find a good position, when Edwin’s hand landed on his wrist. Edwin had a look on his face that Robin couldn’t read at all.
“I—thank you, but I would rather you didn’t,” said Edwin. Robin stared at him.
Edwin licked his lips and went on, hastily, “That said, I’d like to. For you.”
“You shouldn’t feel obliged—”
“I don’t.” A trace of a smile now. “I’m not lying to you, Robin. I would very much like to do that.”
Robin had never in his life come across any fellow who had an objection to having his prick sucked, and felt a moment of indignant wounded pride; he’d seldom made that offer before. But he was hardly going to push any kind of activity on someone unwilling, and Edwin was eyeing Robin’s cock—it throbbed in anticipation—with the sort of intensity he’d previously applied only to books, so what was Robin going to do, refuse him?
“Well,” he said, helpless. “Thank you awfully, I suppose?”
“Always so polite,” said Edwin. He leaned down and kissed Robin, a single sharp meeting of mouths.
If asked, Robin wouldn’t have thought that precision was the quality he’d have most desired in a bed partner who was about to apply his mouth to Robin’s cock. But then, he’d never have conjured up the way Edwin held Robin down with a palm splayed low on his stomach, and worked with calm, thorough care from the root to the tip, laying open-mouthed kisses and gliding his tongue against the sensitive skin as though shaping words in a new language. As though painting runes into it. Even the air of the room seemed like a caress, now, as though Edwin’s new house was bending itself to Edwin’s will and creating for Robin a room the exact blood-warm temperature of his body.