Marius’s green eyes flicked down to Guillaume’s groin, lingering for only a moment before the stonemason nodded and pulled his smallclothes off, dropping them into the pile with the rest of his discarded clothes. His cock stood up straight, as alert as a guard dog at the palace gates. Guillaume looked away, turning his gaze to the fire as he took the last few steps necessary to cross the workshop.

He knelt in front of the fire, a few inches away from Marius, as though Guillaume truly intended to do no more than wash. Guillaume couldn’t stop himself from giving Marius a quick glance as he dropped to his knees. The man was a giant. An unbreachable wall of muscle, with a cock as large as the rest of him. Hands like dinner plates. A stone jaw and sharp green eyes. Arms like braided bread. Hay-blond hair falling to just below his jaw.

Guillaume was strong, lithe, fast, wealthy, and well connected, but less than a foot from the bulk of Marius, the warm smell of him, like salt and pine trees, none of that mattered. Guillaume reached for the washcloth floating in the basin with trembling hands. He saw movement out of the corner of his eye. Marius’s large, calloused hand closed over his wrist. Guillaume let Marius pull his hand away from the water and sucked in a breath as his palm met warm, velvety flesh.

In the woods with another knight, there was a bit of decorum about this. It was quiet, rushed, and egalitarian. You came in each other’s hands in the trees, and sauntered back to court from entirely different directions. In the brothel, there was a hierarchy and a price. He’d pay for the use of some skinny little thing’s mouth, shoot his load down their throat and be on his way with as little fuss as it took to buy apples from a cart in the street.

But this was not the Kingswood or a house of ill repute by the docks. This was not the castle.

There was wildness in Gardenne-Sur-Seine.