The Thief Of Peace Read online

  “You’ll get your linen wet,” said Nicci, his hands reaching down for the hem. With his pulse pounding his ears, Teo set down the sponge and raised his arms. Nicci lifted the shirt from his body in one smooth motion and then they were both naked. Their bodies touched, not quite length to length this time, because Teo was shorter, but no less delicious for that. Skin on skin, mouths opening, tongues exploring. Nicci’s fingers curled around him, making him gasp and shiver, and Nicci must have taken it for hesitation because he stopped for a moment and asked, “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” said Teo, out of his mind with desire. “Very sure.” He reached down and touched. Nicci’s cockhead felt like a sunwarmed plum in his palm, and his blood burned in his veins at the thought that very soon he might discover its taste. “Do as you will with me.”

  They stumbled to the bed with their arms around each other. Nicci pushed and Teo fell back, smothering his little cry of lust with his hand as Nicci parted his legs and began to kiss and bite and lick at the insides of his thighs, breath hot and beard scraping. He felt Nicci’s lips on his balls and then (ohGodforgiveme) a wet tongue dragged up the length of his cock. He stuffed his knuckles into his mouth and bit down, his hips rising from the bed as he sought more of that exquisite sensation. Nicci’s mouth engulfed him and he was sure he’d die, right there, right then, because surely no mere human body was built to withstand this kind of pleasure.

  Teo almost wanted to beg him to stop, conscious that he would never last, but Nicci released him and crawled up over him, hard and doting, hands everywhere and black eyes blazing. “Wrap your legs around me,” he whispered, and they pressed together, Nicci already showing him the way as he rocked his hips. This was all it was? Just a press of bellies and cocks, rubbing against each other? It seemed absurd, but the motion was irresistible, a sweet, burning pressure building up inside him.

  “Oh, you…” Nicci breathed in his ear. “You peach. You perfect angel.”

  Teo bit down hard on his lip, afraid that he was going to cry out and draw attention to what they were doing. His body was in full, joyous riot now, joyously shaking off the control Teo had imposed upon it in the past. Something wet slid between them and the sensation snapped something within him. He came in a sticky, boyish rush, and his first thought was that Nicci would be disappointed that it was over too soon, but no. He felt the shape of Nicci’s smile against his mouth – “My love…” – and then Nicci rose up, straddling Teo’s thighs. He took hold of himself and started to stroke, his dark gaze adoring, and finished. His seed splattered all over Teo’s belly and chest, spurting high enough to land hot on Teo’s throat and on the corner of his mouth.

  Nicci slumped with a whispered obscenity, wilting over Teo’s supine body. All the urgency was gone now, dissipating into a cushiony warmth where there was nothing in the world but the weight of the beloved body on top of his. Teo gazed over Nicci’s shoulder and tried to look within himself to feel the shame he knew he should be feeling, but it wasn’t there. All there was inside him was joy, and he couldn’t seem to stop smiling, so that the crease of his corner of his lips formed a channel and delivered the taste of Nicci to his mouth. He licked it up and shuddered with pleasure at his own daring. “I know what you taste like,” he whispered. Nicci drew back to look at him, and Teo mopped up a splash from under his chin with his fingertips, and watched Nicci’s eyes widen in delight as he tasted once more.

  “You wanton little…” Nicci whispered. “I thought you were a virgin?”

  Teo kissed him. “Can’t virgins be curious?” he said. “Besides, I’m not a virgin anymore, am I?”

  Nicci rolled off him and onto his side. “No,” he said, snuggling down. He kissed Teo’s mouth, his cheeks, the tip of his nose. “Not anymore.”

  “You’ll have to teach me,” said Teo. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

  Smiling, Nicci drew him even closer. Oh, this was bliss, to hold him naked like this. To bathe in the warmth of his gaze. “The first thing you must learn,” he said. “Is that your body is beautiful. And that your body deserves love, and pleasure. Not pain or punishment. You are a work of God, created in love, and when you give yourself to another in love, you are only fulfilling your natural purpose. No matter what the world says, no matter what the Church says…”

  “…you are a heretic, Niccolini.”

  “I’m a man in love.” Nicci kissed him again, small, soft mouth kisses with tiny flickers of tongue. “Infatuated.” Kiss. “Besotted.” Kiss. “Possessed.”

  “I love you so much.”

  “I love you, too.”

  Teo swallowed down tears. Tears of happiness, relief and simple exhaustion. He knew that sooner rather than later his eyes were going to close on their own, but he was determined to keep them open a little longer. This felt like a dream, a fantasy of complete freedom, and he could hardly believe it was happening. Even more so that he had just committed a mortal sin and couldn’t even feel the hellfire licking at his toes. A part of him was amazed by how easy it had been. Anticlimactic, almost – nothing but hands and tongues and an undignified amount of gasping and spurting – but it had shaken him down to his foundations and built him up anew. “When did you know?” he asked, trying to make sense of how this wonderful thing had happened.

  “Know what?”

  “That you loved me.”

  Nicci frowned, and even that was marvellous, because their foreheads were touching and Teo felt the movement of his muscles. “Do you know, I’m not sure. It happened fast. That much I do know. Perhaps it was even love at first sight.”

  Teo laughed. “At first sight? Really?”

  “What? You don’t believe in love at first sight?”

  “Of course not. Love requires knowledge. You didn’t know me. Besides, I was a monk.”

  “You were a beautiful monk,” said Nicci, squeezing his waist. “The loveliest monk in all of Italy. Not even the stupid haircut could dim your shine.”

  “It’s called a tonsure.”

  “I know. And I’m so glad that it’s growing out already.” Nicci reached up and combed Teo’s hair with his fingers, pulling the longer parts over the tonsure. Teo’s mother had used to complain that his hair grew like weeds, and now whenever Teo touched the bald part he felt a soft, upstanding stubble, maybe half an inch long. He would never shave it again.

  “I thought you were perfect,” said Nicci. “Even when you were rinsing out a pig bucket and you had a squash peeling between your toes. Then I realised that you were as good as you were beautiful—”

  “—now you’re talking like a fool in love.”

  “Which I am,” said Nicci, shameless. His kiss was tender and claiming, and he worked a thigh between Teo’s, making Teo wonder just how many ways there were for limbs to entwine. And how he couldn’t wait to find out. “The more I realised I could never have you, the more I wanted you. I have a bad habit of wanting the impossible.”

  “And what now?” asked Teo. “Now that I’m…possible. Beyond possible. Will you want me less, now that you can have me?”

  Nicci ran his hand over Teo’s side. “No. I will want you – and love you – for as long as I have breath in my body.”

  More kisses. It was like a feast, a banquet of voluptuous pleasures, of flesh and blood and thundering hearts. Teo clung, doting and devoted already. He didn’t seem to have enough hands with which to touch, or lips with which to kiss. Far from leaving him satisfied, the loss of his virginity had only made him hungrier still. He was hard again, craving and greedy for more. Nicci rolled him over onto his back and spread him out, kissing the crook of his elbow, snaking his tongue up the inside of his arm and burying his nose in the soft hair beneath. His lips found Teo’s nipple and sucked, startling a soft cry from Teo at the unexpected sensation. “Shh,” he said, half laughing, and biting…oh…biting, and that was exquisite, too.

  “What are you doing to me?” Teo whispered, as Nicci moved upwards once more, the huffs of his breath tickling Te
o’s earlobe, and then his teeth once more.

  “Oh, you should see your eyes, you precious thing. So wide. Nobody has ever touched you like this before, have they?”

  “No. Never.” Teo arched beneath him. “Can we do it again?”

  “In a minute. When you’ve answered the question.”

  “What question?”

  “The same one you asked me,” said Nicci, teasing with slow rocks of his hips. “When did you know that you loved me?”

  “Oh.” Teo sighed. “Why did you ask me that? It’s not very romantic.”

  “Why? Did it involve the portrait of a pig?”

  Teo sobered and shook his head. Nicci, all concern, settled at his side. “It was…it was when I found Armando’s body,” said Teo, with a shiver. “See? Told you it wasn’t romantic. And I didn’t even realise it at the time, what it meant. What was going through my head. Everything was just…fear. I knew that someone had tried to kill me. And that someone knew where I was.”

  “Yes. On account of this big mouthed idiot here.”

  “But it never even occurred to me, Nicci. That you might have given me away. I trusted you. In that moment I trusted you completely.”

  “Misplaced trust,” said Nicci. “As it happens.”

  “No, stop. I know you didn’t do it on purpose. How could you have known how scared I really was? Once I found a dead sparrow on the floor of the chapel, and I thought I was going to die of fright, because I thought some assassin had left it there as a warning.”

  “A dead bird?”

  “Yes. That was how my mind worked. Not even the abbot knew how deranged I was. Not even you.” Teo swallowed down tears. “When I found Armando I panicked. I just got on a horse and rode for Florence. It was so much like a bad dream that I wasn’t sure how I even found myself there, standing outside the house, looking for you. Everything was so muddled up in my head. Everything except you, because in all that chaos I knew I could trust you. And that I needed you.”

  “And so you ran to me,” said Nicci.

  “Yes.”

  “Oh my darling.” Nicci kissed him. “What a day. I wake up in the Bargello and find myself in the arms of an angel.”

  “I know. So much has happened, Nicci. I feel as though my head will never stop spinning.”

  Nicci kissed him again, shushing with his lips. “Not tonight, my love. Let’s not talk about that tonight.”

  “No. You’re right. Let’s just keep tonight for ourselves.”

  *

  He woke to the shriek of gulls.

  There was a hand on his hip, pulling gently, coaxing him to roll over onto his back. Nicci smiled as memory stirred: last night had been everything he’d dreamed of, and more. He rolled over and peered through his lashes. Teo was already awake, exploring, peeling back the covers and dotting little kisses all over Nicci’s body. Teo kissed his mouth, his heart, his nipples and his navel, and slid further down the bed to fasten his lips over the jut of Nicci’s hipbone. There he lingered, and sucked, his eyes bright with a new and knowing hunger, because he’d learned this just last night, and because there was a corresponding mark on the silk of Teo’s inner thigh, where Nicci had sucked the blood to the surface of the skin.

  Nicci shuddered and arched, his thick morning erection bumping against Teo’s sleep-flushed cheek. Teo detached his lips with a soft smack, teased with a kittenish flick of his tongue and then moved over to the other hip. He left a reddish-purple mark behind him.

  “What are you doing?” Nicci said, reaching down to caress Teo’s tousled hair. “Are you going to mark me all over?”

  “Yes.” Teo’s eyes looked almost violet in the morning light. His lips were wet, and rubbed red from kisses. “Now that you’re mine.” He glanced down at Nicci’s cock, flashed a shy, irresistible smile and then lowered his head to lick.

  Nicci lay very still, his breath held and his pulse thrumming in the roots of his balls as he watched Teo explore. Teo’s eyes were downcast, the fringes of his thick lashes trembling, his tongue the colour of a strawberry. Nicci almost had to hold himself down, his hips wanting to rear up off the bed, his cock seeking more of that hot, full-lipped mouth. A kiss, another lick, a slow, experimental suck. Oh, he was never going to survive this. He’d die of desire if Teo opened his mouth any wider.

  But Teo did. He dipped his head lower, taking Nicci past his lips. He was clumsy and his teeth scraped, and he stopped for a moment. “Am I doing it right?” he asked, with the strange mixture of innocence and abandon that had driven Nicci so wild last night.

  “Draw your lips over your teeth,” said Nicci, reaching down to caress his hair, and Teo immediately obeyed. Oh. Better. Much better. “That’s it…get it wet…let it slide…oh…oh, my love…”

  He was doing it. He was really doing it. A monk, of all things, his vocation written right there on the crown of his head where the hair was still short. A monk with the mouth of an angel. Nicci closed his eyes, trying to slow down, but his fingers found the grown-out tonsure and his head was once again full of Teo in his old robes, smiling over his seedlings, pure and innocent, and absolute catnip for Nicci’s dirtiest, most blasphemous fantasies. And yet none of them came close to the real thing, because Teo – who had clearly been paying close attention to what Nicci had done to him last night – began to lap with his tongue on the downstroke. Nicci bucked and Teo made a slight noise in the back of his throat that could have been a growl or a gag, so that Nicci looked down to see if he was all right.

  And he was. His mouth was full, his cheek flushed, his eyes smiling with so much love and mischief that Nicci couldn’t hold back a moment longer. “I’m…” But that was as far as he got, and Teo – who had never even done this before – wasn’t stopping. He was still going, swallowing, sucking almost to the point of pain.

  Nicci tugged at Teo’s hair. “Right,” he said, gasping. “Come here, you. I will have my revenge.”

  Teo wriggled up the bed. His breath came out in a short, soft laugh as Nicci flipped him over onto his back, thighs open, his cock sticking up stiff and rosy. A bead of dew gleamed at the tip and Nicci dived down to taste it. Teo was gorgeously hard and responsive, arching up when Nicci’s hands slithered beneath his arse. His thighs sprawled wider and Nicci pushed them higher, higher, knees all the way up and feet in the air, baring the underside of his balls and the sinful pink pucker of his hole. He was too hot, too eager, and Nicci barely got as far as tickling the little velvet aperture before Teo came, fast and sweet, biting his knuckles. Nicci licked him clean, making him shudder and wince and tug at Nicci’s hair, and Nicci released him, kissing his way back up Teo’s body to claim his lips once again.

  Shameless, Teo pushed his tongue deep into the kiss, as if curious to taste himself. Strange that he still had scars on his back from the whip, but last night he had opened his lips and his legs and drank down every last pleasure that love had to offer them. He wrapped his legs around Nicci’s waist and clung like a vine for a moment, before relaxing with a sigh and falling into a sated sprawl beneath him.

  They lay quiet for a long while, Nicci’s ear pressed to the slowing thrum of Teo’s heart, Teo’s fingers teasing through his hair. Nicci lay and played lazily with the small, pink peak of a nipple, pinching it to stiffness and learning its texture and shape with his fingers. Eventually Teo shivered at the sensation, and Nicci stretched out his tongue to lick and taste. He suckled there for a moment, savouring the stretch and tension in Teo’s body and thighs. Even though they were newly satisfied he could feel fresh desire building, like the stretch in the backs of his legs when walking up a shallow hill, barely perceptible until it began to steal your breath, and then you were going up and up and the next thing you knew you looked around you and the view was magnificent.

  He traced Teo’s eyebrows with his finger. Teo’s brows were soft and thick, perfect little Roman arches when surprised. Nicci brushed his lips back and forth over them, feeling the bristle of the hair against his mouth. He kissed the
bridge of Teo’s nose, the middle of his forehead, trying to guess at the thoughts beneath it.

  “What are you thinking?”

  Teo replied in Latin. Nicci caught only a word or two – domus, nihil. House. Nothing.

  “What’s that?” he murmured, kissing Teo’s lips. “Poetry?”

  “Scripture.”

  “Ah. Are you expecting the wrath of God any time soon?”

  Teo shook his head. His smile wasn’t nearly as rueful as it could have been. “Do you think it blasphemy to hope that God has better things to do than worry about lovers like us?”

  “No,” said Nicci. “Not blasphemy at all. I’ve often hoped the same thing.”

  “With other lovers? There have been others, haven’t there?”

  “Of course. But fewer than you’d think, given my reputation.”

  Teo pushed, playful. “How many?” He held up both hands, fingers splayed. Nicci pushed one hand away, leaving four fingers and a thumb. Teo raised his eyebrows.

  “See?” Nicci said. “Not so many.”

  Teo kissed him. “Still enough to make me jealous.”

  “You don’t have to be jealous. You have my heart, now and forever.”

  “And you have mine. Always.”

  They kissed again, sealing their vows, but the night had escaped them. The sun was streaming bright through the shutters, and from the street below came the sound of a busy port – handcarts and footsteps and bickering tradesmen. Teo sighed as he listened. “I wish we never had to leave this room,” he said.

  “I know, sweetness. But we must. Get back to the world.”

  “And all of its horrors,” said Teo, sitting up. His back was beautiful, and the scars would never look like anything but an affront to Nicci. “I keep thinking we need to go back to San Bendetto. Find some proof. Something at the murder scene to tie it to the Ribisis.”