Page 28 of Measure of the Stars

“Good, yes?”Coran asked.Wes nodded, delirious with pleasure.Leland handed him off to Coran.

Wes felt slickness as Leland poured the contents of the bottle over his ass, then the tickle of the liquid setting his nerves alight.When Marlow returned to thrusting his fingers, his hand was coated with it as well.The sensation was so powerful that Wes came without warning, spilling over Coran’s hand.

“Don’t worry, pretty human,” Coran said, stroking Wes off as he gasped for breath.“You’ll do that again before we’re done with you.”

***

DELAUNEY BREEZED INTOthe room at the inn with a crate of jars and vials jingling in his arms.“You won’t believe the stares I got, asking for these,” he said, setting the box down and striding for the desk.“Apparently, a number of these can set the ship on fire if we aren’t careful.Isn’t that fun?”He turned, expecting to find Wes staring at him with his usual sardonic expression, and realized with a jolt of embarrassment that he’d been talking to the air.

He quickly scanned the room, but the only thing out of place was a small, leather-bound book on the desk.Delauney opened it warily, treating it like a wild creature likely to bite.It seemed to be an introductory guide to the movement of the planets.He knew what most of the words meant when he thought about it, but pinning them together into something coherent was the hard part.The printed text itself was difficult, with too many flourishes and curls.He stopped when he felt the familiar frustration starting to build, slamming the book closed.He’d wait for Wes.Wes seemed to understand.

He pushed open the window shutters, taking in a breath of warm sea air.The beach beyond the inn was quiet, with only a few figures moving near the surf.Delauney watched them idly, taking in their colorful hair, their bare skin, the man with his forearm inside Wesley Bradnell-FitzRoy Leonhart, the wavelets tickling another man’s ankles as he—

Delauney’s thoughts stuttered to an abrupt halt as he realized precisely what he was seeing.There was Wesley, responsible, wry,tidyWesley, on his hands and knees in the sand while a man with blue-green hair drew his hand out of Wesley’s ass, then thrust it in again.Wes arched his back, and another man kissed him as he cried out, stroking his short-cropped hair.

“Spirits,” Delauney said.Wes didn’t look like he was in pain.Quite the opposite, really.But what if Delauney was too far away to truly see if he was being accosted by these strange people?Delauney quickly scurried out of the room and stumbled down the stairs.

He made it to the dunes behind the inn faster than he’d thought possible, slipping on the soft sand between clumps of beach grass.A turtle stared at him balefully as he tumbled past, more judgmental than Wes at his most superior, and Delauney found himself mumbling an apology before scrambling toward a dip between the dunes.

Now that he was closer, he could see Wes all too clearly.Wes groaned in pleasure as he gripped the arms of one of the three men surrounding him, his eyes wet, mouth swollen with kisses.His cock was soft, but it was valiantly trying to stand to attention again as the man behind Wes fucked him with his fist.

“He’s almost ready for us,” one of the people surrounding Wes said.

“I’m ready now.”Wes’ voice sounded positively filthy.Delauney blushed to his roots as it struck him that he was not rescuing Wes from an unfortunate encounter, but intruding on averyfortunate one, indeed.Wes would be horrified if he knew that Delauney had intruded.It would be beyond unprofessional for a...a captain to watch his...to watch Wes take that man’s fist so easily, exposed and lovely, legs trembling slightly as he struggled to hold himself up.Delauney’s gaze slid to his cock again, an odd feeling washing over him as one of the men started stroking Wes off.It was strange, but he felt as though he’d seen all this before.

Regardless, it was horribly improper.Delauney turned to creep back up the dunes, tripped over his own boots in the fine sand, and flopped onto his side like a defeated seal.This was it.He’d just started to think of Wes as a friend, someone who was genuinely interested in him, whobelievedin him, and he was ruining it all because he couldn’t walk onsand.

He waited for the inevitable cries of alarm, but none came.Wes seemed altogether too distracted by his companions to notice.He rocked back on the fist in his ass, and Delauney pressed the heel of his palm to his cock at the debauched sound Wes made.

“Please,” Wes said as the man drew back.The man raised his other hand, possibly to slip another finger in with his fist.The angle wasn’t right for Delauney to see clearly.Wes shuddered.“Please, fuck.”

“Gods, I wish we could keep him,” one of the men said.He guided his cock into Wes’ mouth, muffling his moans, and Delauney could just hear the wet sound of Wes choking on his length.

Delauney’s own breath was coming faster now, his face flushed with heat.He put more pressure on his cock, not yet taking it in hand but desperate for any friction, but stopped as he caught one of the people with Wes staring directly at him.They smiled, their eyes bright with desire, and made a gesture to call Delauney over.

Delauney practically slithered out of the dunes in a panic, getting sand in his trousers and down his back as he slunk past the turtle again.He returned to the inn red-faced, covered in sand, and fully hard, ducking his head to avoid the curious looks of the other officers in the dining hall.

When Delauney burst into his room, he went to check the shutters first, as though they were about to flap open and reveal Wesley and his dominant paramours at any moment.When he was certain that the latch was firmly in place, Delauney slumped into the chair by the desk.

There was nothing wrong with it, of course.Wes had a right to have as many liaisons as he wished, with as many people as he desired.There was no reason for Delauney to involve himself.It would be best for everyone, Delauney thought, to put the image out of his mind and focus on his own affairs.

He feverishly stepped out of his sandy clothes.Perhaps he could ring for a bath to be brought up, if the inn had one.Most inns did in Diabolos, though they usually had terribly narrow tubs that Delauney could barely squeeze into, and the water was never hot enough.Still, Wes would probably need a wash after being passed between three men all afternoon.He’d seemed terribly close to collapsing when Delauney had seen him, and while Delauney had been fucked against a tree in his family estate once, he’d never had his chest and face mashed into the sand while someone thrust into him from behind.

Delauney groaned and sank onto the bed.He needed to compose himself.He couldn’t be out of sorts when Wes came back, and he certainly couldn’t be fixated on the way Wes’ lips parted as he was fucked, or how his nails dug into the sand.Delauney wrapped a hand around his cock, rubbing his thumb idly over the slit at the head.The touch was teasing and light, nothing like what Wes was probably experiencing.He was probably being fucked between two of those smiling people now, one in his mouth, the other clutching his ass the way Wes clutched the sand.Or there weretwotaking his ass, Delauney thought, his cockhead already slick under his fingers.He stroked his cock gently, still not quite hard enough to bring himself off, eyes fluttering closed.

He tried to think of himself in Wes’ place, but then his hazy daydream shifted to DelauneyunderWes, both of them taken in turns by the strange dominants with their colorful hair and sharp smiles.He thought of holding Wes’ thighs while he was rocked forward on their cocks, of his lovely legs trembling.Delauney stroked himself harder now, almost bucking into his fist.He could see Wes’ cock now, as though he’d truly been under him on that beach, taking him into his mouth...

Delauney tipped over the edge with a shuddering gasp as he realized, with a jolt that felt almost as powerful as the wave of pleasure rolling through him, why Wes’ bare legs had seemed so familiar.He’d seen them on the other side of a brick wall the day before, while Delauneyhad his mouth on Wesley’s cock.Delauney groaned through his release, grabbing a pillow with a spare hand and shoving it over his face.The mortified sound he made was swallowed by feathers and linen as his traitorous cock spilled over his fist.

That had beenWesin the wall.Wes,whose tight ass had felt so perfect and hot around Delauney’s cock, who’d spent himself into Delauney’s mouth with a shiver.Wes, with his sharp, intense gaze that seemed to peel back layers in Delauney’s soul that even he hadn’t known about.The man who’d given Captain Lennox the beating he’d always deserved and had made himself indispensable in a few scant weeks, who thought Delauney was clever despite all evidence to the contrary.And Delauney had fucked him through a wall.

Wes could never know that Delauney had figured it out.The conceit of the alley seemed to be the anonymity of the people stationed there, and it wasn’t as though Wes had invited Delauney to stumble down the beach to watch him cavort with strange dominants.

Delauney washed up in a basin and shook sand out of his clothes before putting them back on.He considered going over his supplies, or even finding something to eat downstairs, but it seemed that time slipped away from him again.He jumped as the door creaked open, revealing a clean, freshly-scrubbed Wes in slightly rumpled clothes.His gaze was pleasantly vague, and as he fumbled to set a sack on the floor, it struck Delauney that he was probably still under.Whoever those people were had clearly cleaned him up afterward, but they hadn’t bothered to draw him out of subspace.Delauney suppressed a disappointed frown and walked over to sit Wes down on the bed.

“Got you dinner,” Wes said, flopping loose-limbed onto the mattress.“I hope you like fritters.They’re fried.Do nobles eat their food like that?My tutors said that your family is near the part of the country where they make those horrible heavy cakes, so I wouldn’t know.”

“I don’t remember any cakes with a particular heft,” Delauney said.He knelt to remove Wes’ shoes for him.Wes smiled drowsily.