A Collar and Tie (Ganymede Quartet Book 4) (3 page)

Honestly, Henry didn’t know. He
thought
he would. “It
might be nice,” he allowed, not wanting to get his hopes up. He didn’t know how
trustworthy this new, improved Mother might be, and feared she might sink back
into black despair at any moment. There were three months between today and his
own birthday, and a lot could happen in three months.

“You like dancing, don’t you darling? We could hire a band
and invite all your friends. When I was a girl, those are the sorts of parties
I enjoyed, but I suppose you might like something entirely different.”

Henry felt his cheeks grow hot. He had no idea what he might
like and was rendered mute by his confusion.

“Well, you’ll think about it, darling, and tell me what you
decide.” Mother had been picking apart a blueberry muffin and now put a few
crumbs of it in her mouth.

“Uh, thank you, Mother. I will.” He got awkwardly to his
feet, Martin hurrying forward to pull out his chair. “If you’ll excuse me…”

“Of course, darling. Have a lovely time at your party.”
Mother gave him a little wave as he left the breakfast room.

There were hours before they had to leave for the Wilton
house, but Henry had not wanted to spend any more time with his discomfiting
mother. He wanted to believe she was truly changed, and he certainly preferred
this new mother to the old, but it had only been three months and it seemed
very possible she could change back, taking her party plans and lively
conversations with her.

Martin leaned close on the stair. “That’s exciting, isn’t
it, Sir? The idea of a party in your house.”

“I’m not sure I believe it,” Henry admitted, keeping his
voice low. “I’m not sure I trust that she’ll stay in good spirits long enough
for a party to be held here.”

“She seems very changed, though, Sir, very different from
the Mrs. Blackwell I first met. It couldn’t hurt to have a little hope, don’t
you think?” Martin held open the door to Henry’s room and then followed him
inside.

With the door locked, Henry lifted his hand to touch
Martin’s cheek and smiled at him. “You’re hopeful because you’d like to help
plan a party, wouldn’t you?”

Martin could not hide his pleasure at the idea. “I would,
Henry. I’d love it!”

“Then I hope it happens,” Henry said.

They lay on Henry’s bed and kissed for awhile. Martin
wrapped himself around Henry, moved against him, and made impatient, needy
noises against his mouth. Henry rolled from his side onto his back and pulled
Martin on top of him.

“What do you want to do now?” He held Martin’s earlobe
between his teeth and bit down hard enough that Martin winced and gave a little
hiss. “Shall we keep going?”

Martin straddled Henry’s hips and rubbed his ass along
Henry’s hard cock, looking down at Henry from beneath lowered lids. “Maybe we
just do this much. Maybe we save the rest for later. After we come back from
the party.”

It was an interesting idea. They’d had to wait plenty of
times, of course, but they hadn’t ever done it on purpose that Henry could
recall, not when they had time to do whatever they wanted. “You just want to
neck, then?”

Martin bent over him and kissed him lingeringly. “I want to
neck, and then I want to go to your cousin’s party
aching
for you, but
knowing that you’ll take care of me when we’re home again.”

“I might do that,” Henry said, trying to keep a straight
face. “I probably will. If I’m in the mood.”

For a moment, Martin took him seriously, then burst out
laughing. “You’re horrible, Henry!” He lunged and tickled Henry’s ribs until
Henry was rendered speechless and breathless and was just on the verge of being
truly angry.

“No more,” Henry insisted, red-faced and panting and pushing
Martin away. “I
order
you to stop.” He jerked his waistcoat back into
place. “My shirt’s all wrinkled now,” he complained.

“Let me look at it …” Martin smoothed Henry’s clothing into
order with soothing strokes, the very opposite of his tickling attack. “No,
it’s fine. You’re very dapper.”

Henry pushed himself up to sitting and scooted back to lean
against the headboard. Tickling was never actually
fun
, but there was a
point past which it was definitely no fun at all, and he felt they had crossed
that line.

Martin crawled up the bed to straddle Henry’s lap, leaning
in to embrace him, but Henry was less than receptive to his advances and held
him off, hands flat against his chest.

“Henry?” Martin seemed confused, head cocked, gazing at him
with wounded eyes.

“What?” Henry refused to meet those eyes.

“Are you mad about the tickling?” he asked tentatively.

“Well, I’m certainly not happy about it,” Henry told him
crossly. “It stopped being fun for me a
long
time before you tired of
it.”

Realizing Henry was serious, Martin’s demeanor immediately
changed. “Sir. I went too far, that’s clear.” Martin was the very picture of
contrition. “Please accept my apology, Sir.”

Henry did not want to be mad at Martin. Rather than continue
sulking, he made his point: “I thought you wanted to neck with me, not
torment
me.”

“I got carried away, Sir. I shouldn’t have let that happen,
Sir, I know. You shouldn’t have felt it necessary to
order
me to stop.”
Although he still knelt astride Henry’s lap, he shrank away from him, eyes
averted. Martin seemed quite prepared to go down a spiral of
self-recrimination; Henry had certainly not intended to put him on that path.

“Well, don’t make too much out of that,” Henry said. “You’d
already stopped when I said it, after all.”

“I made you
angry
, Sir.” Martin seemed anguished
about this—quite disproportionately, in Henry’s opinion.

Had Henry never been mad at Martin before? With the
exception of his unwarranted jealousies and upset over Martin’s sexual
training, he supposed he hadn’t ever really gotten angry. And where Martin had
his convictions about the necessity of his training to bolster him in those
arguments, there was no training or service excuse for excessive tickling.

Henry didn’t want to have to witness Martin beating up on
himself over something that Henry would have gotten over in short order anyway.
“I accept your apology, Martin. Please don’t worry about it anymore.” He
reached for Martin, who came willingly into his embrace, his relief obvious.

“Thank you, Sir.” Martin kissed his neck and clung to him.
“I really am sorry.”

“Stop apologizing.” He kissed Martin’s slippery hair, the
skin in front of his ear.

“I won’t tickle you ever again, I promise, Sir.”

“You don’t need to promise that,” Henry told him. “Just—go
easier on me, all right?”

“I will. I really don’t want to make you angry with me,
Sir.”

“It’s not the end of the world if I’m mad, Martin.”

Martin shook his head. “For me it is, Sir.”

Henry remembered what he and Jesse had discussed about the
dedication of Ganymede boys and thought that maybe this was true.

He put his arms around Martin and breathed him in. “You
smell so good.” He licked Martin’s ear and Martin whimpered and squirmed on his
lap. He took Martin’s earlobe between his teeth and bit him again, his eyetooth
digging into the flesh, and Martin gasped.

“Sir, you could have my ears pierced. I’ve seen slaves
wearing hoops riding on the omnibus.” Martin seemed excited by the idea.

“Mind the sirs,” Henry told him. And then, “Do you like the
way that looks?” Henry had not seen any slaves at Algonquin with earrings, and
he did not intend to make Martin the first.

Martin colored a little. “Oh, sorry,
Henry
. The
earrings remind me of a pirate. I imagine George has pierced ears, don’t you?”

Now that Martin had said it, Henry could see that George
probably did have hoops in his ears. “Do you want to look like a pirate, then?”

“I want you to mark me, Henry. I want everyone to know I’m
yours.”

“But your tattoo tells them that, doesn’t it?”

“Ganymede put that mark on me. I want
your
mark. I
don’t know what form it should take—maybe not earrings—but I want that.”

Henry loved this idea, loved that Martin wanted a
Henry-specific mark. “Maybe…” Henry said slowly, thinking. “Maybe another
tattoo. I could get one, too. They could match, or make a set, don’t you
think?” The more he considered it, the more he liked this idea.

“Oh, I’d love that, but we can’t get tattoos, not until
we’re adults.”

Henry scoffed at this. “I’ll bet we could find plenty of
places that would tattoo us without asking any questions.”

“If anyone found out, though, I’d be in terrible trouble for
letting you do a thing like that to yourself. I should think I might be
punished.”

“Do you really think so?” That seemed so extreme to Henry.

“Well, tattoos are for slaves, after all, and lower-class
people, not men of your standing. I think your father might be sensitive to
this sort of class distinction. I know he’s not ashamed of his own beginnings,
but I also know he wants you to be a gentleman, and I don’t think he’d look
favorably on me for letting you be marked.”

Martin was probably right, and Henry did not want to risk
Martin being punished, or even just scolded. “Well, all right. We’ll wait until
we’re 18. That gives us time to decide what the design should be, and where we
should get it.”

“That’s not so long from now. A year and a bit.”

That seemed like an incredibly long time to Henry, but he
supposed it would make him seem childish to say so. He held Martin tight, then
ran his hands over his back and shoulders, and down to cup his ass. “I like
that our birthdays are so close together. We could have our own private party,
right in between.”

Martin smiled, seeming to like the idea. “I’d like to have a
party, even a secret party. We never had individual birthdays at Ganymede, you
know. There was Cake Day once each month, and all the boys born in that month
would stand up and we’d all shout ‘Happy Birthday’ and applaud them. Of course,
friends would know each other’s birthdays, and offer good wishes on the
specific days, but it wasn’t like a birthday out here in the world.”

Henry felt that Martin should have an amazing birthday. He
wasn’t sure what that would entail, but he had a little time to think about it.
He should have a cake of his own at the very least, and Henry liked the idea of
him having something special to wear, something different from his usual, though
perhaps that was more for himself than for Martin.

Martin checked his watch.

“What time is it?”

“We have hours,” Martin told him.

“We could go downtown,” Henry suggested.

“To the arcade?” Martin sounded hopeful.

“If you want,” Henry agreed.

“I’d like that,” Martin said. He picked up Henry’s hand and
pressed it against his own crotch. “But let’s kiss a little longer first.”

Henry laughed and squeezed Martin’s prick through his
trousers. They kissed another quarter of an hour, working themselves into a state
of aching, palpitant longing so that they might go to Jesse’s party in a
properly anticipatory frame of mind. Martin’s tongue was slick and agile, his
mouth fever-hot, and he moved against Henry with little panting breaths.

“I
could
suck you now,” Henry murmured, nipping at
his neck. “We still have plenty of time.”

Martin moaned and ground his ass down against Henry’s prick.
“No, no…let’s wait, Henry. It’ll be better if we wait, I know it.”

Henry wasn’t sure he was right, but didn’t press him
further. They continued to kiss and stroke one another, and for a few minutes
Henry held Martin down and moved against him very deliberately but too slowly
to bring either one of them to climax.

“Is this what you want from me later?” Henry’s voice came
out rough and low, excited. “A nice hard fuck?”

“Oh, yes!” Martin arched up beneath him. “I’ll be begging
you for it.”

The idea of Martin begging was too arousing and Henry had to
back off for fear of coming in his trousers and having to change his suit.

During this lull in their activities, Martin moved out from
beneath Henry and sat up.

“Shall we get ready to go?”

They lingered in the bedroom until Henry’s cock was mostly
soft, but he was still full up with lust. He worried that anyone would be able
to see it, see how much he wanted Martin, but Martin assured him that he looked
every inch a young gentleman.

“Do I look a proper slave?”

“How does a proper slave look?” Henry laughed.

“Reticent and servile,” Martin offered. “Handsome but not
showy, of course.”

Henry opened Martin’s jacket and noted that he was wearing
the chrysanthemum stripe waistcoat and smiled. “Handsome,” he remarked, “but
not showy.”

Martin laughed. “I think it quite appropriate for a party,
don’t you?”

“I wonder how these Lawton boys dress their slaves,” Henry
mused, letting Martin fuss with his necktie and collar. “What sorts of fancy
waistcoats they might wear.”

Martin clearly didn’t care to speculate. “It remains to be
seen. Are we ready to go?”

They went downstairs, got their coats and hats, and were let
out into the cool spring morning. They had to wait only a minute before the
omnibus arrived and they found Freddie and Wendell and their slaves already
aboard.

“Where are you going, Henry?” Freddie asked. “Want to come
to the arcade with us?”

“That’s where we’re headed,” Henry told them. “But we can’t
stay terribly long. I’m going to my cousin’s birthday party later.”

“Oh? I didn’t know you had a cousin here in town,” Freddie
said.

“We weren’t close until this year,” Henry said with a shrug,
not wanting to explain his long estrangement from his mother’s people. “He’s a
year older than us, and I guess that made a difference when we were younger.”