That gave Devan an idea. “Clever thinking.”
Jonty beamed. “I’m not just good in bed.”
“No, you’re not.”
“You mean I’m not good in bed?” Jonty pouted.
“You’re very good in bed.”
“The right answer. Okay. So show me where and how you used to jack off and then I can give you marks out of ten for ingenuity.”
Devan’s heart jumped into his throat and he walked faster.
Chapter Three
Jonty thought Devan’s mother was being a bit of a bitch, but he understood why and it just made him even more determined to be upbeat and cheerful. That was the way he dealt with everything in his life—mostly. He had to be the best person he could be. Plus, there was nothing more aggravating to someone who didn’t like you than you being nice to them. He hoped Devan would consider forgiving Griff, though he understood it was a big ask.
Devan was hauling him faster and faster over the garden and down towards the lake.
“Are we going fishing?” Jonty asked. “Do you have an itsy bitsy juicy worm for me somewhere about your person?”
Devan laughed.
“Did you swim here when you were a kid?”
“Yeah, we all did. Dad had it dredged just in case there was anything bad in there.”
“Oh my God, like what? A freshwater shark?”
“Is there such a thing?”
“Bull sharks can swim in freshwater.”
“And how would it have got into a landlocked lake?”
“Helicopter? That magician—Dynamo? He can do amazing stuff.”
Devan sighed. “I think my father was thinking more in terms of rusting farm equipment we might get tangled up in or cut ourselves on. We weren’t supposed to swim in the lake unless we were supervised.”
He tugged Jonty round the side of the water and stopped by a door built into the side of a small cliff.
“A hobbit house,” Jonty said.
“This is where I used to come when I wanted to be on my own. It’s an ice house. In the winter, the servants used to break up the ice on the lake, put it in here and cover it with straw or sawdust. It sometimes stayed frozen until the following winter.”
“Couldn’t you afford a fridge?”
Devan chuckled.
“Wasn’t it a bit dark and spooky and buggy?”
“It will be now. Probably a holiday home for spiders, but I cleaned it out, strung up battery powered lights and made it quite cosy.”
“For you and your willie.”
“We had lots of lovely times together here.”
“Five out of ten. Not very daring. You could barricade the door to stop anyone getting in before you’d tucked your willie away.”
Devan smiled and tugged Jonty round to a wooden pier that jutted out over the lake. “I used to sunbathe on this.”
“Naked?”
“If I was sure I was alone.”
“I bet you came fast.”
“I couldn’t afford not to. Though I used to sit with my back to the house so anyone coming wouldn’t see what I was doing and if anyone did turn up, I could just throw myself into the water.”
Jonty swallowed hard. He’d got turned on just imagining Devan sitting here with his cock in his hand. “Eight out of ten because that’s got me all excited.”
“We could go and sit on the pier.”
“What if a bull shark lurched out of the water and grabbed your itsy bitsy worm? Or me?”
“I’d give you a lovely funeral.”
Jonty glared.
“The light’s changed. I think it’s going to snow.”
Jonty looked up. “I think you’re right. The sky has that heavy look about it. I hope it does snow.”
“You’d like to spend even longer with my family?”
“They’re nice. I like them. Your mother is warming up. She’s a few degrees above freezing now and you’ve seen how much the dogs love me.”
“They’re hoping you’ll give them snacks. They try it on with anyone new.”
“But I thought I was special.”
Devan squeezed his fingers. “You’re very special.”
“Did you have dogs when you were little?”
“There were always dogs in the house. Griff had a service dog from being a small boy, though after Monty died, he didn’t want another.”
“Did he have a hard time with his cerebral palsy?”
“Yes. He wanted to do what everyone else could do and he tried hard, but some things were beyond him. People used to stare and he hated that, particularly hated those idiots who thought having CP meant he was mentally deficient in some way. It used to piss me off when they spoke to me about him when he was right next to me as if he couldn’t understand. It’s amazing how insensitive some people are. But having CP never stopped Griff trying and I admired that about him.”
“I bet him wanting to do what everyone else did turned into an issue.”
Devan nodded. “Just because Griff had CP didn’t mean he had to be overprotected, but that was what happened.”
They kept walking around the lake. It seemed amazing to Jonty that all this land belonged to one family. His dad had hated gardening so their back garden was just paving slabs and a patch of lawn, more buttercups and daisies than grass, reluctantly mowed by his father. Jonty remembered making tiny gardens on the lids of biscuit tins using gravel and weeds and little sticks. He didn’t remember his father admiring any of them.
“Thank you for giving me the first line of Ellen’s book. Except now I have to read it and I’m not going to thank you for that. I struggled through the first one she wrote and I’ve never read any of her others. I’m tempted to make you read it and write me a synopsis.”
“Human morality and social change explored through a young boy’s conviction that he and his siblings are imprisoned in their home. That’s what it says on Amazon. It sounds like something I might read, especially if they’re being held captive by their father who’s gone nuts and thinks the world is ending and one of the kids, a brave teenager with white hair, decides he needs to go and look for help, but they’re out in the middle of a snowy wilderness and one of his brothers follows him and he has to decide whether to take that brother back to the warmth of the cabin or risk his life by taking him with him.” Jonty took a deep breath. “Which is why saying a book is literary fiction does it no favours because it just puts me off even trying it. Oh, it is snowing. Look.”
Jonty held out his hand and caught a fat flake which dissolved on his palm. He leapt after another, missed it and jumped around, laughing as he tried to grab them. He went back to Devan, who’d just stood and watched him, and showed him a flake on his jacket. “Aren’t snowflakes beautiful? Oh, gone already.” All that was left was a tiny drop of water. Jonty lifted his arm and licked it from his jacket.
“Just think what I’ve licked,” Jonty said. “Snowflakes start to fall from about ten thousand feet above the ground. If they fall at around 3.5 feet per second, it takes them…how long to reach the earth?”
“Around forty-five minutes.”