Cassian whimpered. ‘Oh, yes. Daize. Could you—’ He shifted a bit, up the bed, so that Daizell’s stand was at the juncture of his thighs. That seemed an excellent idea. Daizell nudged his way in, prick trapped between Cassian’s legs, hand around Cassian’s cock, leg over all so that he had hisbedmate cradled and held, and he could feel Cassian panting soundlessly. It was a remarkably motionless way to go about things, he vaguely thought, but on the other hand he was about three thrusts from exploding, and when he rubbed his thumb over the tip of Cassian’s prick he could feel the viscous wetness of arousal.
Small movements, then. Just gentle pushes between those firm thighs, and pushing back with his fist as he did it, so he was stroking Cassian in time to his own thrusts, and Cassian was simply letting him, with nothing but those stuttering, whimpering breaths to signal his desires. Tiny pleading noises, his body in Daizell’s hands, just as Daizell had wanted. Perfect.
‘Cassian,’ he whispered. ‘Cass. God, you’re lovely.’
Cassian’s breath caught audibly and he gave a little moan. Daizell tightened the grip of both hand and leg, by instinct, holding him closer, and Cassian moaned again, in such a hopelessly wanton way that Daizell was doomed. He moved faster, no choice at all, frigging Cassian and using him to frig himself, the pair of them a mass of harsh breath and shuddering pleasure, and then Cassian gave a little cry like pain, and he was bucking in Daizell’s grasp, spilling over his fist. Daizell thrust twice more between his legs, and spent in a quivering, sticky, joyful mess.
He slumped forward, face in Cassian’s lovely shoulder. They lay together for a moment, breathing, Cassian nestled in Daizell’s hold.
‘I’m so glad you did that,’ Cassian said eventually.
‘Which part?’
‘All of it, really, but didsomething. I didn’t have the nerve.’
‘Ididn’t have the nerve: I just woke up like this. Sorry about that,’ he added.
‘Why? It was a very nice way to wake up.’
‘Eventually, yes, but I don’t suppose you wanted to find me all over you when you were fast asleep.’
Cassian made a noncommittal noise. Daizell brushed a very light kiss to his neck, since it was within reach. ‘Is this – just so I know – is this something we did once, or something we might do again?’
‘Oh. Um. Isagaina possibility?’
Daizell kissed his neck again, harder this time. ‘I’d call it a likelihood. Left to myself, it would be a certainty.’
‘Oh.’ Cassian squirmed around at that, wriggling round to face him, rainswept eyes warm with sleep and pleasure, and Daizell kissed him.
He couldn’t have helped it if he tried. Cassian looked so lovely, aroused and dishevelled and wanton and willing, and Daizell had wanted to kiss him for days, to find out if that expressive mouth worked as well by touch. He wanted Cassian as close as he could be, because when he was close the world was a warm, soothing, easy place. He wanted to show his enchanting but oddly uncertain bard that he was entirely enchanted.
There was a tiny moment as their lips met, a tiny stillness, long enough for Daizell to wonder if that hadn’t been welcome after all, and then Cassian’s arms snaked around him, gripping his head, pulling him in. His lips were hungry, and his mouth was unexpectedly fierce, and everything, just for now, was perfect.
The day was bright and sunny, which was nice. Daizell would have been just as happy in torrential rain, or a blizzard. He didn’t care about weather: he cared about that slow, blissful coupling, and the long, languorous kissing that followed it,and then the second fuck, which had been a great deal more energetic than the first. Exceedingly energetic in fact: frantic rutting against one another, lips locked and hands on cocks, groping at hair and skin, gasping into one another’s mouths so as not to be indiscreet.
They’d washed and dressed and breakfasted in a post-coital glow, and then they’d set off to see the sights of Stratford-upon-Avon.
It was at this point that Daizell would normally have protested. He had been obliged to watch a Shakespeare play once, for reasons he could not now remember, and it had been three or four, or subjectively eighteen, of the longest hours of his life. If he wanted to see people shout incomprehensibly at one another he’d go to the Continent, and the thought of being in the company of someone who talked about ‘the Bard’ or, even worse, ‘the Swan of Avon’ chilled his blood.
Luckily, Cassian showed no signs of doing that. Nor did he declaim swathes of poetry that didn’t rhyme. He did however take Daizell to Holy Trinity church, where he’d already been to have the banns declared, only this time he was supposed to look at it.
Daizell had vaguely noticed the soaring arches and stained glass on his previous visit. Cassian wanted a great deal more detail than that. Luckily it turned out that ecclesiastical architecture was a deal more interesting when someone knew what he was looking at. Cassian showed him medieval tombs and explained what the animals and symbols meant and who the dead people were; he took him to a row of almost-seats where monks or choristers or whoever could rest their arses during mass, and they spent a highly entertaining twenty minutes examining the peculiar andsometimes bawdy carvings underneath and exchanging surreptitious remarks that left them both giggling like idiots. They had to see the Shakespeare family graves in front of the altar, of course, and a bust of the old fellow himself, looking like a pompous schoolteacher. Cassian contemplated it reverently and murmured something about dead shepherds which Daizell politely ignored, but redeemed himself by pointing out some strange carved faces with leaves instead of hair, high up where Daizell would never have noticed them, and identifying them as pagan images.
It was, in fact, the most interesting time he’d ever spent in a church, although the threshold for that was not high, and he said so as they strolled out through an avenue of trees.
‘I’m glad,’ Cassian said. He was glowing, bright with pleasure. ‘I do love a good church. Thank you for coming with me.’
Daizell’s tolerance for Shakespeare’s birthplace was, perhaps, a little less, since it was a once-fine half-timbered house, now looking very mean. One half of it was an inn called the Swan and Maidenhead, for reasons he didn’t want to ask, and it smelled like a brewery and a piggery at once. The half that remained a house was populated by aged dodderers who offered to show them Shakespeare’s own chair, his cradle, his wife’s cradle, his tragically lost son’s cradle, his pipe, or whatever other tatty old rubbish they had to hand, and who were all ready to recount their great-grandfather’s many stories from when he was the best of friends with the Bard. This was the sort of thing a gullible man, or an excessively polite one, could be caught in for hours.
Fortunately, though Cassian was exceedingly polite, he was clearly well versed in the darkest arts of courtesy, and slid through the grasping fingers of Shakespeare hawkers like agreased pig, leaving only smiles behind. He’d had a great deal of practice in deflecting the impertinent and importunate, Daizell thought, considering he was such an unassuming young man.
They also took a look at the New Place, which would have been the house where Shakespeare spent his last years and died, except that it wasn’t there.
‘I read about this. The last owner cut down a mulberry tree planted by Shakespeare’s own hands,’ Cassian explained. ‘So the residents here threw stones at his windows and broke them. Then he sought the right to extend his garden, and that was refused and his taxes put up. Whereupon he felt so tired of Stratford and the Shakespeare industry that he demolished the house as an act of spite. That was just a few years ago. What a shame.’
Daizell whistled. ‘If they broke his windows over a tree, how did destroying the house go down?’
‘He was chased out of the town by irate locals.’
