“Yes, it does.” Niall had to agree. Though if they’d known each other for ages, he might have a far clearer picture of where the night and their friendship was headed.
Blake picked one of the smaller pubs for their supper, one that was hundreds of years old and contained numerous quiet alcoves with low ceilings and beams that concealed them from plain sight. The barmaid seemed to know him—a detail that had Niall’s heart momentarily sinking again—and brought them tankards of good beer as soon as they were seated at a particularly cramped and cozy table. So cramped, in fact, that their knees were squashed against each other under the table, no matter how they sat—something that had Niall soaring with possibility again.
“So how did you become involved in theater?” Blake asked once they had thick meat pies in front of them. He shifted slightly forward as he ate, which forced their knees together even more intimately.
Niall could hardly taste the food he put in his mouth. “I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t involved in some sort of theatrical production,” he replied, pretending not to be so excited his cock was straining against his trousers. “Apparently, my first role was that of our infant Lord in a Christmas tableaux the local rector organized when I was only a few months old.”
Blake laughed, everything about him inviting and open. “Somehow, I’m not surprised.”
“That my introduction to theater happened when I was a baby?”
“That you are God,” Blake answered with a flicker of one dark eyebrow. “Aren’t all playwrights?”
Niall’s heart beat in double-time. “Good heavens, Lord Stanley, that’s sacrilege.”
“Is it?” Blake’s expression grew more mischievous. “Really?”
“Just don’t let the rector hear you say it,” Niall flirted in return. Actually flirted. He must have been out of his mind.
But then Blake said, “There are plenty of things that I would never tell the rector,” with a look of such heated teasing that Niall was in serious danger of unmanning himself right there at the table.
Niall had to take a long swig of beer to steady himself. So Blake was game after all…wasn’t he? He could have meant something else by his comment. There wasn’t a single thing in the man’s way of carrying himself or speaking that hinted he was anything but straight. In Niall’s experience, men like him always had a tell of some sort.
He gulped his beer, then put the tankard down with an awkward clunk and asked, “When did you start playing the piano?”
He was certain the question came out sounding too confrontational, but Blake shrugged and looked deliciously bashful for a moment before answering, “I can’t remember. Like you, I was a child prodigy.”
“I bet you were.”
Niall wanted to slap a hand over his mouth at the way the words came out. Flirting was one thing, but he was in serious danger of getting the both of them into a world of trouble. Especially when Blake grinned as if Niall had implied a thousand inappropriate things.
“Piano lessons were part of my early education,” Blake said, using his fork to toy with the crust of his pie. “I should count myself fortunate that Mama read something about the importance of a musical education when she was young. My brother, Montague, and I were given lessons in every instrument you can imagine, as well as singing, from a young age. Montague never took to any of it, mind you. He claims to detest the sound of music. I suppose I got his share of a love for music along with my own.”
“So you love it, then?” Niall put down his fork—his stomach was too filled with butterflies to eat much anyhow—and leaned his elbow on the table, propping his head in his hand as he watched the interplay of lamplight on Blake’s angelic face.
“More than anything,” Blake sighed with feeling. “I don’t just play the piano, you know. I sing, of course, and I play the violin as well, and the cello, guitar, lute, and clarinet. And I compose.”
The man could have slowly unbuttoned his jacket and waistcoat and peeled off his shirt and Niall wouldn’t have been as aroused as he was by that list and those words.
No, that was a blatant lie. Blake undressing in front of him would have been the very height of arousal. And to think that the perfect man composed his own music as well.
“Niall?”
Niall sucked in a breath and jerked straight. He’d been staring and lusting, and Blake had caught him at it.
“I thought I’d lost you there for a moment,” Blake went on, his grin knowing and teasing.
“You’ll never lose me,” Niall blurted before he could think better of it.
Blake’s grin grew, and his eyes flashed with something heated beyond words. “I’ll hold you to that, you know,” he said.
You can hold anything to me, particularly your delicious body.
Niall cleared his throat and sat straighter. “I have to cast the rest of the play,” he said, blinking his way back to business. “I have your part and my part settled, but I told everyone else I’d have the cast list posted tomorrow morning.”
“I could help you, if you’d like,” Blake said, sitting straighter himself. The shift in position meant that their knees slipped even more intimately together and their legs entwined.
“I’d like that,” Niall said, surprised he was able to form thoughts at all. “A second opinion is always a good one.”
“Agreed.” Blake turned to wave to the barmaid, who was just visible from their cozy alcove. “Two more beers for my brilliant friend and I,” he said, then glanced to Niall. “I think we’re in for a long night.”
Chapter 4
Niall had never been so eager to get to a rehearsal in his life. Only two days had passed since his supper with Blake, but Niall felt as though it had been a lifetime since he last talked to him, since he last feasted on the sight of his kissable lips and sparkling eyes. They’d sat for hours at the pub, casting the play and discussing details of the script and the songs. Blake had read through all of the scenes Niall provided prior to auditions, but he didn’t know the whole story, so Niall told it to him.
By the end of the evening, Niall was left with the feeling that he knew bits and pieces of Blake well, just like the sides he’d handed out to those auditioning for the show, but he didn’t know the whole story. He was certain Blake had been flirting with him…right up until Blake winked at the barmaid, making her blush, as he paid for their meal. Niall had gone home replaying every word that had been spoken between the two of them. He’d examined every look and every smile in his mind, attempting to decipher them. And then he’d beat himself off while imagining what it would feel like to have more than his knees entwined with Blake’s.
He still blushed when he thought about how good it had felt to do that as he approached the door leading backstage in the auditorium, where the play would be staged and where rehearsals were being held. There was absolutely nothing out of the ordinary about frigging oneself during university. Everyone did it. But it was somehow intimate and dangerous to envision a particular object of affection, someone who was now an integral part of his life, while doing so. Whether Blake would be horrified or flattered to be the subject of his fantasies was another story.