them completely.
Closer now, his guts felt upturned. His whole anatomy was livid with heat. It went beyond the natural chemistry between two unknown people to a confusing salvo and onslaught of thrill. Soothing and disarming in equal amounts, Kirwan was, in plain terms, dazzled. He glanced away, toward the welter of cramped texts. He felt helplessly absurd, and despite the oddity of kindness this stranger just showed him, he was compelled, divinely ordained or not, to make an ass of himself.
‘That was unnecessary.’
‘Was it?’
Beneath intensity of his black irises, Kirwan went flush but the rest of him was pridefully unresponsive.
‘Who are you?’ The force of the young colonel’s inflexible voice was paltry, clearly no match for the amused but not unserious grin on the gentleman’s face.
‘An envoy.’
‘For whom?’
Something unreadable passed over the man’s face, and then he said, quite casually, ‘Shall I walk you back to Fort William, Captain—’
‘Colonel. Colonel William Kirwan.’ he corrected. His tone was notably untenable, especially to himself.
‘Colonel, shall I walk you back to Fort William, or would you rather come back with me and let me suck your cock?’
Kirwan was mute. In general, for as long as he could remember, everything seemed eminently expressible for everyone else except him. Words did not froth into Arthur’s fingertips, climb up his throat and produce themselves as adept and functional features of his imagination. They were not adaptable and arachnoid, stretching quickly over terrains of ink and letter paper. His elocution was not rapacious and prosaic. It was locked somewhere in the garden of his youth, his boyhood slippery feet, running away from him.
On this specific occasion, however, his silence was not without reason. His arms stiffened behind him as his cheeks flushed a sedate but apparent red.
Monsieur?’ muttered Kirwan.
Silence.
embouchement