Page 69 of The Housebreaker's Assistant
That was precisely what happened after Greer had taken a long bath, which he would rather have done with Penny, though Penny was busy seeing to his sister during that time, once Helen was asleep and Penny had cleaned himself up as well.
“This is clever,” Penny said in a soft voice, stealing through the doorway separating the two large rooms, then carefully shutting the door behind him. “Rather cozy and clandestine, if you ask me.”
Greer sat up in bed, naked from the waist up, freshly shaved and certain he smelled like lilies. He could not even pretend aloofness as he held an arm out for Penny to join him.
Penny shed his clothing as he crossed the room, slipping shamelessly between the sheets with Greer and straddling him as his already half-hard cock wedged between them.
“Something tells me Brutus and Titus know what they’re on about when it comes to bed hopping in this place,” Greer said, settling his arms blissfully around Penny’s waist.
Penny beamed at him, then leaned in to slant his mouth over Greer’s in a long-awaited and much deserved kiss.
Greer had fully intended to talk with Penny so that they might plot out what they did next and where they might go from there. Every one of those thoughts vanished from his mind as Penny’s kiss turned fiery.
“I want you,” he said, stroking his hands up Penny’s back, then down to grasp his arse. “I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anything.”
“I want you, too,” Penny sighed between kisses, threading his fingers in Greer’s hair. “But I don’t have a lick of patience tonight.”
Greer laughed. He wasn’t even certain why. His heart was so light that he felt it might lift out of his body. He had Penny in his arms, in a bed in London, and they were safe.
Without giving it much thought and not caring that he was not the world’s greatest lover, he flipped Penny to his back, then shimmied down the length of his body, laying soft kisses on his flower-scented skin as he went.
“I love you,” he said after each one. “I love you, I love you, I love you. And I would have died if I’d lost you.”
“You didn’t, love,” Penny sighed, tangling his fingers in Greer’s hair as Greer kissed the spot right above his cock, then the seam of his hip, then his thigh. “We’re together.”
“And we’ll be together always,” Greer said, then closed his mouth over one of Penny’s balls.
He wanted to say that he was wrong to think he would only ever work alone. He should have poured out his heart and confessed that he was better with Penny than without him, that he would share his craft and his business with Penny so that they could be the greatest housebreaking team England had ever seen. He wanted to vow to leave a life of crime so that the two of them could settle quietly in the country with Helen, like Penny had once told him he’d dreamed of.
But all he could think about in that moment was how wonderful Penny tasted as he licked his way up the underside of his rigid cock, sending shivers through Penny that he could feel in his own body. They would talk about the future later. In that moment, all Greer wanted was to feel desire coursing through his lover’s body and to take a share of it for himself as well.
“I love you,” he repeated as he pulled himself up the length of Penny’s body, bringing their hard cocks together.
“I love you,” Penny replied breathlessly, reaching a hand between them.
It was rudimentary and quick, but neither of them cared. They’d been through so much together in the last few days, and they would see each other through a thousand other moments in the future. In that moment, all they needed were hands and hips, the hard planes of each other’s bodies, and their lips and tongues exploring each other.
Greer felt himself rise up and topple over the edge far more quickly than another version of himself would have wanted to admit to. With Penny, it didn’t matter if he came fast or slow or not at all. No sooner had he spilled himself all over their hands and bodies than Penny did the same, crying out Greer’s name with his passion.
“I love you,” Penny moaned, hips jerking as the last of his spend left him. “God, I love you.”
“I will love you forever,” Greer sighed, letting the last of his tension go as he flopped to Penny’s side.
He gathered Penny into his arms and held him tightly, nuzzling his face against the side of Penny’s head and breathing him in. Penny curled into him as well, fitting perfectly. As sleep settled over them, Greer smiled. He would never be alone again. He’d found his match in every way, and he would spend the rest of his life making Penny happy.
Epilogue
The Zagreus Den never really slept, but there were times in the middle of the night when most parts of the sprawling compound were silent and where only the occasional sigh or moan of activities behind closed doors interrupted the silence. Those sounds always made Brutus smile. They were proof that the Den was accomplishing its purpose and that its inhabitants were enjoying each other freely in a way they simply could not in the rest of the world.
Soft, pleasurable sounds were not the ones that woke him deep in the night, however. What roused him from his sleep was a painful moan and thumping from the room adjacent to his.
Tight tension gripped Brutus’s gut, and he rolled quickly out of bed, reached for the silken robe draped across a chair near the window, and threw it on as he headed to the small door at the side of his bedchamber.
He knocked first, then said, “Lord Fabian, are you well?”
The thumping and moaning stopped suddenly. It was not a good sign. Without being able to see into the room, Brutus was certain the silence had descended out of fear rather than curiosity or any other emotion. He pressed his lips together and frowned, then did something he would not have donewithout permission under any other circumstances. He turned the handle and entered the adjacent room without gaining its inhabitant’s permission.
As he’d feared, Lord Fabian had retreated to the far corner of the room, where he’d sunk into a trembling ball, his face hidden against his knees. The clothing the poor young man had been given the day before, when Greer and Penny had brought him to The Zagreus Den, was disheveled and torn in places. The bandage that the Den’s resident doctor had wrapped around Fabian’s ankle after treating it for wounds that were just short of festering was half unwound as well, as if Fabian had tried to take it off.
