CHAPTER XXI

                                    

                                          
"The decent man and the lover holds back even when he could obtain what he wishes. To win this silent consent is to make use of all the violence permitted in love. To read it in the eyes, to see it in the ways in spite of the mouth's denial, that is the art of he who knows how to love. If he then completes his happiness, he is not brutal, he is decent. He does not insult chasteness; he respects it; he serves it." ― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Louis rarely entered the room that had once belonged to his brother. It was the source of his greatest joy as a child and later his greatest sorrow. When James was too ill to go outside they would play chess in bed all day and catalogue the new stamps in his collection. His middle brothers, George and Edward, would leave James behind to go riding but there was no place Louis would rather be than by James' side. 
Louis was standing near the curtains where the killer would have stood when he set the room ablaze. Harry was in bed, where James was when the villain took his life. 
The young Duke was so shy he undressed beneath the sheets.  
Louis, poised to take the boy's innocence, suddenly felt like a villain himself. 
He climbed into bed beside Harry, who shifted out of his breeches and undergarment blushing fiercely. Louis did the same. Why was Louis undressing beneath the sheets? Why was he blushing? He wasn't a virgin, far from it. Harry's innocence was contagious.
Harry looked at him, furrowed his little brow, and said with the utmost seriousness: "I'm in the nude."
"As am I," Louis replied, trying to be equally as serious.
They were so close the heat from Harry's skin burned against his own beneath the bed sheet. He was dizzy at the thought of the tenderness between the young Duke's thighs so near. All he had to do was reach over and touch. 
He stopped himself. 
The sweetest pleasures in this world were given not taken. 
He waited for the boy to come to him. Harry peered at him shyly through a veil of long lashes. His red lips were a painting, his curls a sculpture. It seemed impossible that this cherub harbored any earthly desires. Then Louis felt a soft hand on his thigh. 
The bed sheet was thin as paper but now felt like an iron gate between them.
Harry must have been thinking the same thing because he said, "No one has ever seen me. Not even my valet. He averts his eyes when he undresses me."
How could anyone look away? However pure his valet's intentions, what man could resist resting his eyes on a boy so beautiful?  Perhaps this was the source of Harry's beauty. Like primrose, Harry bloomed under the cover of darkness.    
Louis did not pull down the sheet to expose him but widened his own thighs. This invitation proved irresistible to Harry whose greatest pleasure on Earth was tempting Louis to the brink of madness with his caress.  
Those long nimble fingers that moments ago brought music to life on the piano now brought Louis to life beneath the bed sheet. He lay still, resisting the urge to thrust against the young Duke's gentle hand. Unlike his piano playing, Harry's strokes had no rhythm. What was so maddening about his caress was that it was pure affection, without pretense.    
"It's warm," he remarked. Red lips parted, Harry was breathing heavily as though he were the one being touched and Louis' pleasure merely an extension of his own. 
Paradoxically, the closer they came to making love the further away it felt. Louis did not know how much longer he could remain a gentleman.  
"May I kiss it?" Harry asked.