Raffles fic
Title: One Cosy Evening
Pairing: Raffles/Bunny
Rating: NC-17
Warning: Ungentlemanly activities! (see rating)
Word Count: 5000
A/N: Set at the very beginning of The Criminologists' Club. Slightly spoilery for that story.
I saw a good deal of Raffles just then; it was, in fact, the one period at which I can remember his coming round to see me more frequently than I went round to him. Of course he would come at his own odd hours, often just as one was dressing to go out and dine, and I can even remember finding him there when I returned, for I had long since given him a key of the flat. It was the inhospitable month of February, and I can recall more than one cosy evening...
(from The Criminologists' Club)
One Cosy Evening
I have until now lighted but briefly in these annals upon that particular period of my life when Raffles developed the pleasing habit of calling upon me at my flat. The reason for it, as became clear in the end, was that he wished to keep up a surveillance on a particular mansion that could be seen from my back windows. But I did not know that at the time; for all I could tell, the new and unwonted assiduity of his attendance upon me had some far more flattering cause. Indeed, I was fool enough even to begin to believe it might be so. A matter of weeks, only, sufficed to disabuse me of the notion; but not before he had chosen, by some freakish whim, to lead me considerably farther along the road that must surely end in hellfire and perdition. Of that journey I now take up my pen to tell.
The early evening was when Raffles generally turned up, about the time I would be dressing if I was engaged to dine out-as I generally was. With hindsight, it is clear that he picked those particular evenings on purpose-why, he may even have been behind many of the invitations I received, for I certainly found my company at table more in demand that February than at any time before or since.
Raffles would arrive, then, letting himself in with the key I had given him (whereby hangs another tale: had I really pressed him into accepting it, or did he just make it seem that I had?); and within a short while he would have taken up his station at those back windows, though I never noticed it especially. I would be in and out of my bedroom, dressing, all unsuspecting, pleased, as ever, to have him there. We would converse, lightly and fleetingly, the merest bagatelles-but consequential enough for me that I wanted more. Sometimes I would offer to throw over my dinner engagement, to remain home and keep him company-for, after all, I believed that was what he had come for! But he would never hear of it.
"No, Bunny my boy," he would say, shaking his curly head, "I would not for the world have you snub your host on my account, nor disappoint your table companions. We must make it some other evening, that is all. So, off you go and be fascinating, while I have another Sullivan and finish this excellent whisky. Don't you worry, Bunny, I shan't forget to turn off the electric lights before I leave." And thus gaily would he usher me out of my own door.
Yet there were other evenings, when he called and I was unengaged. It would have begun to seem odd, even to me, were it not so. On those occasions, we might sometimes go down to the club together; but more often we kept indoors, preferring my homely fireside to the fogs and rains and icy winter winds that London had to offer. Then we would talk for hours; and though I have never had any pretensions as a wit, or even a halfway amusing conversationalist, those conclaves with Raffles-his clear eye fixed upon me and surely sparkling with something more than affection while he laughed at my poor sallies-they shall ever remain with me as probably my closest approach to either accomplishment.
I will not deny his attentions turned my head a little, and perhaps more than a little; nor do I deny that the weaker, vainer part of my nature found nothing preposterous in the idea that Raffles sought me out purely and simply for the pleasure to be gained from my company. Maybe, my self-regard whispered, maybe it was even the case that he had lately discovered in me the power to set his heart aflutter-the same power he had exercised over me since we were boys at school. On the other hand, I can, at times, rise above my baser nature and play the part of the clear-sighted and dispassionate observer; and it is certainly true that, even so early in our friendship, I knew that when Raffles seemed his frankest and most disarming was when I needed to be most on my guard against his stratagems. Nevertheless, to those who would say I ought to have seen what he was about, I can only reiterate: Raffles always had the measure of me, man and boy. I may have wondered, occasionally and in passing, at his apparent pursuit of me, but then he had only to smile his roguish smile, to speak my name in his own warm timbre, and the question became moot. In a word, I was dazzled.
There came an evening when I returned home rather earlier than I had expected-my host, an eminent physician, had been called away to attend an urgent case, and in his absence, the dinner party had broken up without staying for the brandy and cigars. Raffles had not called upon me before I went out, and I considered whether to look for him at the club, or to try the Albany. But I did neither, for I was feeling rather tired, and I decided instead to go home and turn in early for once. So it was with some consternation, upon entering my sitting room, that I found the electric lights blazing and Raffles lounging on my settee reading the evening paper.
"Why, there you are, Bunny!" he cried, jumping up with every appearance of delight.
"Raffles! What the-? What brings you here at this hour?" I demanded, perhaps more abruptly than was quite polite. But he overlooked my tone.
"Waiting for you, of course," he replied, as though it were self-evident.
"But I might have been another hour or more," I expostulated, throwing off my overcoat and pouring myself a whisky. I did not offer him one. "How long have you been here?"
"I was passing, and I saw your light on," he said, not answering my question, "so naturally I assumed you were at home. When I found you were not, I thought I might as well stay for a while, in case you returned. But if I am not welcome..."
Now, I was sure I had not left the light on, for it is something I am particularly careful about. I fell to wondering why he should have told me so trivial a lie, and my puzzlement must have shown in my face as I looked about the room-for what, I know not. That was when I noticed that my race-glass, which only the day before I had put away in the chest of drawers in my bedroom, was now on the side table near the window-and it came to me that I had sometimes seen him idly toy with it while he stood there, though to my recollection I had never had any reason to keep it there.
His eyes followed the direction of my gaze. I opened my mouth to speak-it little matters what I intended to say, for he turned to me-and the moment was lost. There was that in his face which instantly made me forget my-suspicions is too strong a word: let us merely call it idle curiosity. I would swear, were the sentiment not simply absurd in connection with Raffles, that he wore an expression of something like wistfulness.
"If I am not to be made welcome..." he murmured again, making as though to move to the door.
"My dear A. J., of course you are welcome, and more!" I cried, not without a pang of shame for my boorish behaviour. "Forgive my surliness. It's simply that I-well, I had counted on an early night."
"Should you prefer me to go?"
Looking back now, and knowing as I do the real reason he was there, I wonder that he did not simply take me at my word, and leave. As for me, I was within an ace of showing him, yawning, to the door. But once again, something in his face stopped me-and this was more like the familiar face I knew of old. This was Raffles interested, appraising; almost it was as though he had thrown down a challenge, and all that was to follow would depend on whether, and how, I would pick it up.
"No," I said evenly, "I should prefer you to stay." And I found I really meant it.
His demeanour relaxed infinitesimally. "Then shall we sit?" he said, with a return of his old smile.
"By all means."
We moved to the settee together, and suddenly his nearness made me awkward. Where before I had been surly, now I felt simply gauche-I could have been back at school, in his study, permitted, astonishingly, to sit by him while he worked, my heart hammering with tremendous gratitude.
He smiled at me again.
"Well," I said, finding refuge in clumsy humour, "do you miss me so much, then, that you must wait up till all hours to see me?"
I expected a cynical laugh, a wag of the head, an adroit and reassuring riposte.
Instead, his eyelids drooped. "Maybe I do," he said softly.
"Not you!" I cried, forcing a laugh.
Absurd, fantastical! I could not, in my heart, believe it; I do not believe it now. But for a while, that night, he made it true.
To this day, I cannot tell how it happened. I think I must have kissed him first, in the sense that it was I who first planted my lips on his. But undoubtedly it was his tongue that boldly thrust its way into my gasping mouth; his hands that played an insistent tattoo up and down my shirt front; while I, I could only tangle my fingers tightly in his curls and hang on. I need hardly add that with the first touch, every other consideration fled my ignoble mind.
How did it feel, then, to be kissed by Raffles? You may figure me confounded, overwhelmed by sensation, lost in a priapic delirium. But no; I felt every note.
Let me explain: a few months previous, Raffles had dragged me, under protest, to see Miss Adelina de Lara perform at St. James's Hall. Generally speaking, a Savoy opera is the highest form of culture I can stomach, and I had no expectation of receiving any pleasure or improvement from the dreary tinkling recital. But halfway through the concert, she commenced a piece (later study of the programme informed me it was a Bach prelude) that, from the opening bar, held me as though bound and trammelled, so perfect and inevitable did each succeeding ripple of melody sound to my untutored ear. It seemed to me that I felt every note in every particle of my being; and when it finished, my face was wet with tears. I remember that Raffles turned to me, while around us the audience politely applauded, and lightly put his hand upon my arm.
And so it was when he kissed me that fateful evening: I felt every subtle slide, every perfectly judged pressure: my very heart-strings quivered under his exquisite touch. I should estimate the whole business took about as long as that heavenly prelude; and when Raffles at length drew away, I had the same sense of something vital slipping from my grasp.
He spoke not a word; I could not have formed a rational syllable had my life depended on it; and it is some measure of how lost I already was to conventional morality, that I rejoiced the next moment to find he was not done with me yet! Looking down at myself, I found my waistcoat adrift, my starched shirt front gaping open, and Raffles delving inside-yes, and deeper still. And now, unbelievably, he must go down upon his knees before me and deftly make away with my trouser fastenings. Sprawled against the cushions like the veriest voluptuary of old, I raised no protest when he effortlessly debagged me, and merely lay panting while he lowered my underdrawers, inch by maddening inch.
"Oblige me, Bunny," he murmured in a low and thrilling tone. His face was hidden from me, and his breath made my skin tingle.
Oblige him! As though I were not keening, body and soul, for whatever should follow! Already his hand was upon me, where no hand but my own had ventured since the days of schoolboy fumbling. Far though I might have strayed from a life of strict moral rectitude, in some things I was yet an innocent; and this was beyond all my limited experience. Oblige him! I should rather like to know by what power on earth I could have resisted him! For whether or not Raffles was as much a rabbit at this particular game as I was, it was his gift to appear supreme in any accomplishment or art he chose to turn his hand to.
He raised his face to me then, a reckless grin upon it and his dark curls tumbling. "You like this, Bunny?" I uttered a helpless squeak as he squeezed me playfully. "Then I'll wager you'll like this better!"
Down he went again, and down, and down, and oh! Nothing in my life had prepared me for that wicked, wicked mouth as it closed around me and swallowed me whole! What he did-how he did it-as well to ask me how he could unerringly pick apart the workings of a safe's unbreakable lock. Each was a mystery beyond my power to divine. Suffice to say that such feeble defences as I might have mustered against the onslaught were cleverly circumvented, and too soon, all was over with me. The door of the vault swung open at his command and the contents spilled forth. There was an unspeakable and heady delight in being so plundered, so thoroughly ransacked, and as I swam back to full consciousness, once more I found my fingers clenched and knotted in his hair.
"Good God," I could only gasp, "Raffles..." With muscles like water I struggled to sit up; with trembling hands and nerveless fingers, to adjust my crumpled apparel.
Raffles sat back on his heels, poised and watchful. Vaguely I noted that somewhere along the way he had removed his jacket; for he sat in his shirt-sleeves, his cheeks stained with unaccustomed colour, his eye, not merely sparkling now, but glittering with a fierce-nay feral-light.
"Give me a Sullivan," I begged weakly.
At that he sprang up, and lit two from his own case. One he placed between my lips-lips still, to my shame, tumid and thrumming. I inhaled gratefully and waited for my racing pulse to ease. But I had no time to reflect, to shudder at the shocking enormity of this new crime; for he was leaning over me in a cloud of smoke, his hand at my elbow urging me to rise.
"Come, Bunny," he said, and of course, as ever, I did as he bid.
He helped me to stand; he guided me across the room and into the next: it was my bedroom. There I stood, blinking and swaying at the foot of my bed, while he darted to the washstand and came back with a wetted face cloth, which he pressed into my hands. For a moment, he held me with his penetrating gaze, sifting me, knowing me better than I knew myself.
"All right, old fellow?" he said softly. "You'll see this through?"
Innocent I might be, but I had gleaned enough from schoolboy whispers and scandalised clubroom gossip to have some notion of what he meant; and though I may be damned for it for all eternity, I am proud to say that for Raffles's sake, I went gladly to meet my fate.
"In for a penny, in for a pound," I replied, and I rather think I might have shrugged.
"That's my boy," said Raffles, taking both our cigarettes and extinguishing them.
With rapid motions, and no pretence of modesty or embarrassment, he began to strip. I stood watching, my mind in a fog. Quite why this was happening, I could not comprehend; but such self-will as I possessed had long ago subordinated itself to his. That Raffles wanted it, was all I needed to know.
Within seconds, he was quite naked, and now there was no disguising his intentions. Drawing me closer, he guided the face cloth, and my hands, to that which stood up ramrod stiff and straight in its nest of black curls and engrossed all my attention. Many a time had I seen him thus-and yet not thus!-at the Turkish bath; many a time had I gazed at the firm musculature of his fine athletic form, without knowing quite why I was so drawn. Now it seemed obvious: Raffles was simply beautiful.
"Like this, Bunny," he breathed, moving my hand in the appropriate motion. "It's as well to... I think... that is..." The rest was lost in a sharp exhalation that was not quite a groan, and he grabbed me hard by the shoulders. I knew what to do now, and I gave him my best. Dutifully I laved him, up and down, which, after the first convulsion, he bore meekly; and as I laboured I could not forbear making certain comparisons. All things considered, I did not, I fancied, fare badly; but honesty compels me now to admit that Raffles was both larger and more perfectly proportioned than I-just like the man himself. Leaving aside the cloth, I reached out to touch, but before I could well grasp him, his hand came down and stopped mine.
"Best not get too carried away, heh, my boy?" he said, his voice roughened and seeming to catch as he spoke.
But now he became more hurried, bidding me strip in my turn as he re-wetted the cloth. I recall how his eyes blazed as he had me turn round and bend awkwardly over the bed, and how it seemed to my egotistical self that he was not indifferent to my physique, flabby though it was beside his own. Quickly he cleansed the area between my cheeks, even going so far as to force the flannel cloth a little way inside me, making me flinch at the indignity.
"My apologies, Bunny," he said over my shoulder, and his voice had regained the note of dry amusement I knew so well. "Now, up on the bed with you, if you please."
I climbed aboard and waited on my hands and knees while he discarded the cloth, and then he went and brought something back with him from my dressing table. I suppose I knew what was happening-what was going to happen-but I was quite calm. Not only had my ardour not returned (it was too soon for that), but I felt no sort of anxiety. My trust in Raffles was absolute. Then the sharp perfume of macassar oil reached me, and simultaneously his slick fingers began to stroke at my rear end.
"I dare say this is not quite the use to which Messrs. Rowlands intended their product to be put," said Raffles lightly. "But needs must, eh, Bunny? I think you had better try and relax a little more, my dear," he added, for I had clenched tight at the unfamiliar touch.
"You've done this before." My voice sounded hoarse to my ears, and my tone was more accusing than I had intended. Of course he must be as practised in this particular iniquity as he appeared to be in every other!
"Never," said Raffles, as one questing finger gained entry, followed by a second. "But really, can it be so very different from the more usual method?"
I made no reply. How could I? I, who had until not so long ago been keeping myself for marriage, as the moralists tritely term it. I, whose sole fleshly experience hitherto had been at the hands of a courtesan introduced to me by Raffles himself! Besides, a third finger had now forced its way in alongside its fellows, and from that point I ceased to think of anything else.
I remember Raffles's soothing voice, full of praise for his plucky rabbit. I remember the sweat gathering on my brow as he ever so gently stretched me, and the beads rolling down the length of my nose and falling to stain the counterpane which I had not even bothered to turn back. By all the laws of God and man, such a violation of my person should have been the very opposite of arousing. But I am made, it seems, to be the mere creature of Raffles's will; to my lasting shame, his desire became mine.
After what seemed a little eternity on the spit, he withdrew his fingers, and for a moment all seemed empty and cold. But only for a moment, for now we approached the final innings. He briefly paused to apply more oil to himself, and then play began in earnest.
He entered me slowly-so impossibly slowly that I think I cried aloud at the exquisite torture, and I know I thrust savagely backwards in my desperation to spear myself fully upon him. Of course that was unwise, for at once a burning pain flowered within me, making my eyes water. Raffles stayed me with gripping fingers that were almost as painful.
"Steady, Bunny!" he said sharply.
We waited I know not how long, until the pain receded to a throbbing ache, and I relaxed again. All the while, Raffles spoke sweet phrases and gentled me with long, warm strokes of his hands along my back, as he might have soothed a frightened horse. But I could feel the trembling tension in his thighs, and his breaths came shallow and quick.
"All right!" I said at last in a voice unnaturally loud. "All right."
Then Raffles clasped me to him and slid himself deep inside me in one smooth motion.
"Ahhh!" Which of us it was that cried out, I could not say.
I was full, full to bursting. "Bunny... Bunny..." I heard him breathe; and then he began to move.
No question now of gentleness or of holding back. A sensation of power unleashed instantly roared through my frame and shook me to my core. In no time I rushed upon, and past, my second climax of the night, leaving the counterpane ruined for good. But even as the pearly drops spattered the sateen, I barely noticed; all I knew, all my mind could encompass, was tumult, and commotion, and overarching all, Raffles pounding into me like a battering ram.
Looking back, I remember the sounds: the squeaking and creaking of the bed, my voice yelling mindless profanities, and from Raffles-a man not given to unnecessary noise or fuss-from the throat of Raffles issued a continuous gasping moan that aroused my passions to the point of madness. That he-he, of all men!-could so forget himself-and because of me! I hope I may not be thought to preen myself unwarrantably, but the bare thought that I could so move one who had been my hero since boyhood, will still to this day bring a flush to my cheeks.
He finished at last with a long drawn out strangled groan and three or four mighty thrusts, before falling almost insensate atop me. Whereupon my overburdened limbs gave way and we collapsed to lie crushed together on the bed, panting and wet with perspiration. I think I fell almost instantly into a profound and healing slumber, for I remember nothing more-except that as I tumbled down into the realm of sleep, I heard Raffles's voice repeating brokenly at my ear,
"I didn't know... I didn't know..."
~*~
When I awoke very late the next morning, my first alarmed thought was that I must have been in a street accident, or perhaps a fight, for I was as stiff and sore as I have ever been in my life. Sitting gingerly up in bed, I cast my mind back to the previous day. Had there been a contretemps? Had-horrible thought!-something gone wrong while out on a job with...?
Raffles!
As the memories rushed back a wave of nausea washed over me. Dear God-what had I done? I looked around wildly, fighting the urge to curl myself into a ball under the counterpane-the soiled and besmirched counterpane with which, as I now realised, Raffles must from charity have covered my nakedness. But the bed beside me was empty, the pile of clothes on the floor where he had discarded them-gone. I struggled from the bed in something approaching a panic and limped to the next room. No-one! The bird-my rare and precious bird-had flown.
My eyes went to the window. The blind was up and the curtains drawn back, allowing a wintry sunlight to filter in. Perhaps the porter's wife had come in to clean while I slept? But if, instead, it had been Raffles who had taken the time to let in the day, maybe he had not left as precipitately as I had begun to fear... My race-glass still stood upon the side-table, and on an impulse I went across and put it to my eyes. The houses across the way loomed large before me; I could see clearly into some of the upper rooms, a view which held its own prurient interest, but surely Raffles- At that point, I suddenly remembered my own naked state, and I stepped away from the window with an oath.
Returning to my bedroom, I climbed haltingly and wearily into my pyjamas and dressing-gown. Somehow, to cover myself in normal daytime garb, as though I were fit to go out and show myself in the world, was simply unthinkable-beyond the pale. Not that I bore any outward marks of my transgression, for I examined myself minutely in the glass for any traces of it. But the consciousness of having done wrong hung upon me as it had never done after any other of the crimes I had committed at Raffles's behest. I felt heavy, and depressed, and persuading myself I must be in for a bilious headache, I flung myself into an armchair-not the settee! never the settee!-and waited for Raffles to come back. For surely he would know; surely he would come to me in my hour of need?
He did not come; not that day, nor the next. And by the end of the second day, I was beginning to feel more myself again. My numerous aches and pains had subsided, and more to the point, my recently startled conscience had returned to its normal state of torpor. I was well aware that the sin I had committed must remain as a stain upon my honour; but what, after all, was one more stain among so many? That evening, I decided that if Raffles would not come to me-and knowing his delicacy and discretion, I saw I had been a fool to imagine he would risk blundering in upon me before I was quite ready to see him-if he would not come, then I must seek him out. Therefore I decided to call at his rooms-to persuade him, if possible, to dine with me. And if he should not be at home, I would try the club, and then the various other haunts we frequented about Town-though perhaps not, on reflection, the Turkish bath.
In the end, it was another two full days before he condescended to let me run him to ground at the Albany, and by then I had received the fateful invitation from the Earl of Thornaby that led to the affair of the Criminologists' Club-but those events I have fully chronicled elsewhere, and need not repeat them here. As to what had passed on that momentous night at my flat, it was scarcely alluded to between us, and that only by Raffles. I was at the tantalus pouring myself a drink, having just, after much fretting, reluctantly agreed that I would dine with him at Lord Thornaby's. He nodded, and though he made no reply, his eyes were on me through the smoke of our cigarettes.
"No regrets, Bunny," he said softly, and it was not a question.
At first, my mind on the approaching ordeal, I did not know what to make of his oblique remark; then, as understanding dawned, I felt my face crimson. But before I could muster a reply-before indeed I could determine whether he meant to commandeer my feelings, or profess his own life's philosophy-he had reverted smoothly to the topic of the Criminologists. And thus perhaps the most audacious and bewildering of all the scrapes that Raffles ever got me into, passed into history, and was spoken of no more.
Of course, I thought, and think, about it often-more often than a kindly reader might hope who happens to take an interest in my moral well-being. For one thing, I never did fully understand why he went to such remarkable lengths to allay my curiosity about his unexpected presence at the flat that night; but then, that was Raffles all over. Subtlety and flamboyance combined in his nature, and he liked to be at once the master of misdirection and the focus of one's attention. And on the whole, disgraceful though it was, the episode made little difference. Raffles remained to me what he had always been, and I daresay he would have said the same about me. If henceforward I thought him at times just a shade more reserved-just a touch less pleased with me than he had been before-I make no doubt it was my own over-sensitive imagination that made him seem so, and not any actual change in our relations. In short, life carried on much as before, until we parted company on the deck of the steamship Uhlan; and blessed if I could ever fathom what it might have been that night, that old Raffles thought he didn't know.
~***~
Pairing: Raffles/Bunny
Rating: NC-17
Warning: Ungentlemanly activities! (see rating)
Word Count: 5000
A/N: Set at the very beginning of The Criminologists' Club. Slightly spoilery for that story.
I saw a good deal of Raffles just then; it was, in fact, the one period at which I can remember his coming round to see me more frequently than I went round to him. Of course he would come at his own odd hours, often just as one was dressing to go out and dine, and I can even remember finding him there when I returned, for I had long since given him a key of the flat. It was the inhospitable month of February, and I can recall more than one cosy evening...
(from The Criminologists' Club)
One Cosy Evening
I have until now lighted but briefly in these annals upon that particular period of my life when Raffles developed the pleasing habit of calling upon me at my flat. The reason for it, as became clear in the end, was that he wished to keep up a surveillance on a particular mansion that could be seen from my back windows. But I did not know that at the time; for all I could tell, the new and unwonted assiduity of his attendance upon me had some far more flattering cause. Indeed, I was fool enough even to begin to believe it might be so. A matter of weeks, only, sufficed to disabuse me of the notion; but not before he had chosen, by some freakish whim, to lead me considerably farther along the road that must surely end in hellfire and perdition. Of that journey I now take up my pen to tell.
The early evening was when Raffles generally turned up, about the time I would be dressing if I was engaged to dine out-as I generally was. With hindsight, it is clear that he picked those particular evenings on purpose-why, he may even have been behind many of the invitations I received, for I certainly found my company at table more in demand that February than at any time before or since.
Raffles would arrive, then, letting himself in with the key I had given him (whereby hangs another tale: had I really pressed him into accepting it, or did he just make it seem that I had?); and within a short while he would have taken up his station at those back windows, though I never noticed it especially. I would be in and out of my bedroom, dressing, all unsuspecting, pleased, as ever, to have him there. We would converse, lightly and fleetingly, the merest bagatelles-but consequential enough for me that I wanted more. Sometimes I would offer to throw over my dinner engagement, to remain home and keep him company-for, after all, I believed that was what he had come for! But he would never hear of it.
"No, Bunny my boy," he would say, shaking his curly head, "I would not for the world have you snub your host on my account, nor disappoint your table companions. We must make it some other evening, that is all. So, off you go and be fascinating, while I have another Sullivan and finish this excellent whisky. Don't you worry, Bunny, I shan't forget to turn off the electric lights before I leave." And thus gaily would he usher me out of my own door.
Yet there were other evenings, when he called and I was unengaged. It would have begun to seem odd, even to me, were it not so. On those occasions, we might sometimes go down to the club together; but more often we kept indoors, preferring my homely fireside to the fogs and rains and icy winter winds that London had to offer. Then we would talk for hours; and though I have never had any pretensions as a wit, or even a halfway amusing conversationalist, those conclaves with Raffles-his clear eye fixed upon me and surely sparkling with something more than affection while he laughed at my poor sallies-they shall ever remain with me as probably my closest approach to either accomplishment.
I will not deny his attentions turned my head a little, and perhaps more than a little; nor do I deny that the weaker, vainer part of my nature found nothing preposterous in the idea that Raffles sought me out purely and simply for the pleasure to be gained from my company. Maybe, my self-regard whispered, maybe it was even the case that he had lately discovered in me the power to set his heart aflutter-the same power he had exercised over me since we were boys at school. On the other hand, I can, at times, rise above my baser nature and play the part of the clear-sighted and dispassionate observer; and it is certainly true that, even so early in our friendship, I knew that when Raffles seemed his frankest and most disarming was when I needed to be most on my guard against his stratagems. Nevertheless, to those who would say I ought to have seen what he was about, I can only reiterate: Raffles always had the measure of me, man and boy. I may have wondered, occasionally and in passing, at his apparent pursuit of me, but then he had only to smile his roguish smile, to speak my name in his own warm timbre, and the question became moot. In a word, I was dazzled.
There came an evening when I returned home rather earlier than I had expected-my host, an eminent physician, had been called away to attend an urgent case, and in his absence, the dinner party had broken up without staying for the brandy and cigars. Raffles had not called upon me before I went out, and I considered whether to look for him at the club, or to try the Albany. But I did neither, for I was feeling rather tired, and I decided instead to go home and turn in early for once. So it was with some consternation, upon entering my sitting room, that I found the electric lights blazing and Raffles lounging on my settee reading the evening paper.
"Why, there you are, Bunny!" he cried, jumping up with every appearance of delight.
"Raffles! What the-? What brings you here at this hour?" I demanded, perhaps more abruptly than was quite polite. But he overlooked my tone.
"Waiting for you, of course," he replied, as though it were self-evident.
"But I might have been another hour or more," I expostulated, throwing off my overcoat and pouring myself a whisky. I did not offer him one. "How long have you been here?"
"I was passing, and I saw your light on," he said, not answering my question, "so naturally I assumed you were at home. When I found you were not, I thought I might as well stay for a while, in case you returned. But if I am not welcome..."
Now, I was sure I had not left the light on, for it is something I am particularly careful about. I fell to wondering why he should have told me so trivial a lie, and my puzzlement must have shown in my face as I looked about the room-for what, I know not. That was when I noticed that my race-glass, which only the day before I had put away in the chest of drawers in my bedroom, was now on the side table near the window-and it came to me that I had sometimes seen him idly toy with it while he stood there, though to my recollection I had never had any reason to keep it there.
His eyes followed the direction of my gaze. I opened my mouth to speak-it little matters what I intended to say, for he turned to me-and the moment was lost. There was that in his face which instantly made me forget my-suspicions is too strong a word: let us merely call it idle curiosity. I would swear, were the sentiment not simply absurd in connection with Raffles, that he wore an expression of something like wistfulness.
"If I am not to be made welcome..." he murmured again, making as though to move to the door.
"My dear A. J., of course you are welcome, and more!" I cried, not without a pang of shame for my boorish behaviour. "Forgive my surliness. It's simply that I-well, I had counted on an early night."
"Should you prefer me to go?"
Looking back now, and knowing as I do the real reason he was there, I wonder that he did not simply take me at my word, and leave. As for me, I was within an ace of showing him, yawning, to the door. But once again, something in his face stopped me-and this was more like the familiar face I knew of old. This was Raffles interested, appraising; almost it was as though he had thrown down a challenge, and all that was to follow would depend on whether, and how, I would pick it up.
"No," I said evenly, "I should prefer you to stay." And I found I really meant it.
His demeanour relaxed infinitesimally. "Then shall we sit?" he said, with a return of his old smile.
"By all means."
We moved to the settee together, and suddenly his nearness made me awkward. Where before I had been surly, now I felt simply gauche-I could have been back at school, in his study, permitted, astonishingly, to sit by him while he worked, my heart hammering with tremendous gratitude.
He smiled at me again.
"Well," I said, finding refuge in clumsy humour, "do you miss me so much, then, that you must wait up till all hours to see me?"
I expected a cynical laugh, a wag of the head, an adroit and reassuring riposte.
Instead, his eyelids drooped. "Maybe I do," he said softly.
"Not you!" I cried, forcing a laugh.
Absurd, fantastical! I could not, in my heart, believe it; I do not believe it now. But for a while, that night, he made it true.
To this day, I cannot tell how it happened. I think I must have kissed him first, in the sense that it was I who first planted my lips on his. But undoubtedly it was his tongue that boldly thrust its way into my gasping mouth; his hands that played an insistent tattoo up and down my shirt front; while I, I could only tangle my fingers tightly in his curls and hang on. I need hardly add that with the first touch, every other consideration fled my ignoble mind.
How did it feel, then, to be kissed by Raffles? You may figure me confounded, overwhelmed by sensation, lost in a priapic delirium. But no; I felt every note.
Let me explain: a few months previous, Raffles had dragged me, under protest, to see Miss Adelina de Lara perform at St. James's Hall. Generally speaking, a Savoy opera is the highest form of culture I can stomach, and I had no expectation of receiving any pleasure or improvement from the dreary tinkling recital. But halfway through the concert, she commenced a piece (later study of the programme informed me it was a Bach prelude) that, from the opening bar, held me as though bound and trammelled, so perfect and inevitable did each succeeding ripple of melody sound to my untutored ear. It seemed to me that I felt every note in every particle of my being; and when it finished, my face was wet with tears. I remember that Raffles turned to me, while around us the audience politely applauded, and lightly put his hand upon my arm.
And so it was when he kissed me that fateful evening: I felt every subtle slide, every perfectly judged pressure: my very heart-strings quivered under his exquisite touch. I should estimate the whole business took about as long as that heavenly prelude; and when Raffles at length drew away, I had the same sense of something vital slipping from my grasp.
He spoke not a word; I could not have formed a rational syllable had my life depended on it; and it is some measure of how lost I already was to conventional morality, that I rejoiced the next moment to find he was not done with me yet! Looking down at myself, I found my waistcoat adrift, my starched shirt front gaping open, and Raffles delving inside-yes, and deeper still. And now, unbelievably, he must go down upon his knees before me and deftly make away with my trouser fastenings. Sprawled against the cushions like the veriest voluptuary of old, I raised no protest when he effortlessly debagged me, and merely lay panting while he lowered my underdrawers, inch by maddening inch.
"Oblige me, Bunny," he murmured in a low and thrilling tone. His face was hidden from me, and his breath made my skin tingle.
Oblige him! As though I were not keening, body and soul, for whatever should follow! Already his hand was upon me, where no hand but my own had ventured since the days of schoolboy fumbling. Far though I might have strayed from a life of strict moral rectitude, in some things I was yet an innocent; and this was beyond all my limited experience. Oblige him! I should rather like to know by what power on earth I could have resisted him! For whether or not Raffles was as much a rabbit at this particular game as I was, it was his gift to appear supreme in any accomplishment or art he chose to turn his hand to.
He raised his face to me then, a reckless grin upon it and his dark curls tumbling. "You like this, Bunny?" I uttered a helpless squeak as he squeezed me playfully. "Then I'll wager you'll like this better!"
Down he went again, and down, and down, and oh! Nothing in my life had prepared me for that wicked, wicked mouth as it closed around me and swallowed me whole! What he did-how he did it-as well to ask me how he could unerringly pick apart the workings of a safe's unbreakable lock. Each was a mystery beyond my power to divine. Suffice to say that such feeble defences as I might have mustered against the onslaught were cleverly circumvented, and too soon, all was over with me. The door of the vault swung open at his command and the contents spilled forth. There was an unspeakable and heady delight in being so plundered, so thoroughly ransacked, and as I swam back to full consciousness, once more I found my fingers clenched and knotted in his hair.
"Good God," I could only gasp, "Raffles..." With muscles like water I struggled to sit up; with trembling hands and nerveless fingers, to adjust my crumpled apparel.
Raffles sat back on his heels, poised and watchful. Vaguely I noted that somewhere along the way he had removed his jacket; for he sat in his shirt-sleeves, his cheeks stained with unaccustomed colour, his eye, not merely sparkling now, but glittering with a fierce-nay feral-light.
"Give me a Sullivan," I begged weakly.
At that he sprang up, and lit two from his own case. One he placed between my lips-lips still, to my shame, tumid and thrumming. I inhaled gratefully and waited for my racing pulse to ease. But I had no time to reflect, to shudder at the shocking enormity of this new crime; for he was leaning over me in a cloud of smoke, his hand at my elbow urging me to rise.
"Come, Bunny," he said, and of course, as ever, I did as he bid.
He helped me to stand; he guided me across the room and into the next: it was my bedroom. There I stood, blinking and swaying at the foot of my bed, while he darted to the washstand and came back with a wetted face cloth, which he pressed into my hands. For a moment, he held me with his penetrating gaze, sifting me, knowing me better than I knew myself.
"All right, old fellow?" he said softly. "You'll see this through?"
Innocent I might be, but I had gleaned enough from schoolboy whispers and scandalised clubroom gossip to have some notion of what he meant; and though I may be damned for it for all eternity, I am proud to say that for Raffles's sake, I went gladly to meet my fate.
"In for a penny, in for a pound," I replied, and I rather think I might have shrugged.
"That's my boy," said Raffles, taking both our cigarettes and extinguishing them.
With rapid motions, and no pretence of modesty or embarrassment, he began to strip. I stood watching, my mind in a fog. Quite why this was happening, I could not comprehend; but such self-will as I possessed had long ago subordinated itself to his. That Raffles wanted it, was all I needed to know.
Within seconds, he was quite naked, and now there was no disguising his intentions. Drawing me closer, he guided the face cloth, and my hands, to that which stood up ramrod stiff and straight in its nest of black curls and engrossed all my attention. Many a time had I seen him thus-and yet not thus!-at the Turkish bath; many a time had I gazed at the firm musculature of his fine athletic form, without knowing quite why I was so drawn. Now it seemed obvious: Raffles was simply beautiful.
"Like this, Bunny," he breathed, moving my hand in the appropriate motion. "It's as well to... I think... that is..." The rest was lost in a sharp exhalation that was not quite a groan, and he grabbed me hard by the shoulders. I knew what to do now, and I gave him my best. Dutifully I laved him, up and down, which, after the first convulsion, he bore meekly; and as I laboured I could not forbear making certain comparisons. All things considered, I did not, I fancied, fare badly; but honesty compels me now to admit that Raffles was both larger and more perfectly proportioned than I-just like the man himself. Leaving aside the cloth, I reached out to touch, but before I could well grasp him, his hand came down and stopped mine.
"Best not get too carried away, heh, my boy?" he said, his voice roughened and seeming to catch as he spoke.
But now he became more hurried, bidding me strip in my turn as he re-wetted the cloth. I recall how his eyes blazed as he had me turn round and bend awkwardly over the bed, and how it seemed to my egotistical self that he was not indifferent to my physique, flabby though it was beside his own. Quickly he cleansed the area between my cheeks, even going so far as to force the flannel cloth a little way inside me, making me flinch at the indignity.
"My apologies, Bunny," he said over my shoulder, and his voice had regained the note of dry amusement I knew so well. "Now, up on the bed with you, if you please."
I climbed aboard and waited on my hands and knees while he discarded the cloth, and then he went and brought something back with him from my dressing table. I suppose I knew what was happening-what was going to happen-but I was quite calm. Not only had my ardour not returned (it was too soon for that), but I felt no sort of anxiety. My trust in Raffles was absolute. Then the sharp perfume of macassar oil reached me, and simultaneously his slick fingers began to stroke at my rear end.
"I dare say this is not quite the use to which Messrs. Rowlands intended their product to be put," said Raffles lightly. "But needs must, eh, Bunny? I think you had better try and relax a little more, my dear," he added, for I had clenched tight at the unfamiliar touch.
"You've done this before." My voice sounded hoarse to my ears, and my tone was more accusing than I had intended. Of course he must be as practised in this particular iniquity as he appeared to be in every other!
"Never," said Raffles, as one questing finger gained entry, followed by a second. "But really, can it be so very different from the more usual method?"
I made no reply. How could I? I, who had until not so long ago been keeping myself for marriage, as the moralists tritely term it. I, whose sole fleshly experience hitherto had been at the hands of a courtesan introduced to me by Raffles himself! Besides, a third finger had now forced its way in alongside its fellows, and from that point I ceased to think of anything else.
I remember Raffles's soothing voice, full of praise for his plucky rabbit. I remember the sweat gathering on my brow as he ever so gently stretched me, and the beads rolling down the length of my nose and falling to stain the counterpane which I had not even bothered to turn back. By all the laws of God and man, such a violation of my person should have been the very opposite of arousing. But I am made, it seems, to be the mere creature of Raffles's will; to my lasting shame, his desire became mine.
After what seemed a little eternity on the spit, he withdrew his fingers, and for a moment all seemed empty and cold. But only for a moment, for now we approached the final innings. He briefly paused to apply more oil to himself, and then play began in earnest.
He entered me slowly-so impossibly slowly that I think I cried aloud at the exquisite torture, and I know I thrust savagely backwards in my desperation to spear myself fully upon him. Of course that was unwise, for at once a burning pain flowered within me, making my eyes water. Raffles stayed me with gripping fingers that were almost as painful.
"Steady, Bunny!" he said sharply.
We waited I know not how long, until the pain receded to a throbbing ache, and I relaxed again. All the while, Raffles spoke sweet phrases and gentled me with long, warm strokes of his hands along my back, as he might have soothed a frightened horse. But I could feel the trembling tension in his thighs, and his breaths came shallow and quick.
"All right!" I said at last in a voice unnaturally loud. "All right."
Then Raffles clasped me to him and slid himself deep inside me in one smooth motion.
"Ahhh!" Which of us it was that cried out, I could not say.
I was full, full to bursting. "Bunny... Bunny..." I heard him breathe; and then he began to move.
No question now of gentleness or of holding back. A sensation of power unleashed instantly roared through my frame and shook me to my core. In no time I rushed upon, and past, my second climax of the night, leaving the counterpane ruined for good. But even as the pearly drops spattered the sateen, I barely noticed; all I knew, all my mind could encompass, was tumult, and commotion, and overarching all, Raffles pounding into me like a battering ram.
Looking back, I remember the sounds: the squeaking and creaking of the bed, my voice yelling mindless profanities, and from Raffles-a man not given to unnecessary noise or fuss-from the throat of Raffles issued a continuous gasping moan that aroused my passions to the point of madness. That he-he, of all men!-could so forget himself-and because of me! I hope I may not be thought to preen myself unwarrantably, but the bare thought that I could so move one who had been my hero since boyhood, will still to this day bring a flush to my cheeks.
He finished at last with a long drawn out strangled groan and three or four mighty thrusts, before falling almost insensate atop me. Whereupon my overburdened limbs gave way and we collapsed to lie crushed together on the bed, panting and wet with perspiration. I think I fell almost instantly into a profound and healing slumber, for I remember nothing more-except that as I tumbled down into the realm of sleep, I heard Raffles's voice repeating brokenly at my ear,
"I didn't know... I didn't know..."
~*~
When I awoke very late the next morning, my first alarmed thought was that I must have been in a street accident, or perhaps a fight, for I was as stiff and sore as I have ever been in my life. Sitting gingerly up in bed, I cast my mind back to the previous day. Had there been a contretemps? Had-horrible thought!-something gone wrong while out on a job with...?
Raffles!
As the memories rushed back a wave of nausea washed over me. Dear God-what had I done? I looked around wildly, fighting the urge to curl myself into a ball under the counterpane-the soiled and besmirched counterpane with which, as I now realised, Raffles must from charity have covered my nakedness. But the bed beside me was empty, the pile of clothes on the floor where he had discarded them-gone. I struggled from the bed in something approaching a panic and limped to the next room. No-one! The bird-my rare and precious bird-had flown.
My eyes went to the window. The blind was up and the curtains drawn back, allowing a wintry sunlight to filter in. Perhaps the porter's wife had come in to clean while I slept? But if, instead, it had been Raffles who had taken the time to let in the day, maybe he had not left as precipitately as I had begun to fear... My race-glass still stood upon the side-table, and on an impulse I went across and put it to my eyes. The houses across the way loomed large before me; I could see clearly into some of the upper rooms, a view which held its own prurient interest, but surely Raffles- At that point, I suddenly remembered my own naked state, and I stepped away from the window with an oath.
Returning to my bedroom, I climbed haltingly and wearily into my pyjamas and dressing-gown. Somehow, to cover myself in normal daytime garb, as though I were fit to go out and show myself in the world, was simply unthinkable-beyond the pale. Not that I bore any outward marks of my transgression, for I examined myself minutely in the glass for any traces of it. But the consciousness of having done wrong hung upon me as it had never done after any other of the crimes I had committed at Raffles's behest. I felt heavy, and depressed, and persuading myself I must be in for a bilious headache, I flung myself into an armchair-not the settee! never the settee!-and waited for Raffles to come back. For surely he would know; surely he would come to me in my hour of need?
He did not come; not that day, nor the next. And by the end of the second day, I was beginning to feel more myself again. My numerous aches and pains had subsided, and more to the point, my recently startled conscience had returned to its normal state of torpor. I was well aware that the sin I had committed must remain as a stain upon my honour; but what, after all, was one more stain among so many? That evening, I decided that if Raffles would not come to me-and knowing his delicacy and discretion, I saw I had been a fool to imagine he would risk blundering in upon me before I was quite ready to see him-if he would not come, then I must seek him out. Therefore I decided to call at his rooms-to persuade him, if possible, to dine with me. And if he should not be at home, I would try the club, and then the various other haunts we frequented about Town-though perhaps not, on reflection, the Turkish bath.
In the end, it was another two full days before he condescended to let me run him to ground at the Albany, and by then I had received the fateful invitation from the Earl of Thornaby that led to the affair of the Criminologists' Club-but those events I have fully chronicled elsewhere, and need not repeat them here. As to what had passed on that momentous night at my flat, it was scarcely alluded to between us, and that only by Raffles. I was at the tantalus pouring myself a drink, having just, after much fretting, reluctantly agreed that I would dine with him at Lord Thornaby's. He nodded, and though he made no reply, his eyes were on me through the smoke of our cigarettes.
"No regrets, Bunny," he said softly, and it was not a question.
At first, my mind on the approaching ordeal, I did not know what to make of his oblique remark; then, as understanding dawned, I felt my face crimson. But before I could muster a reply-before indeed I could determine whether he meant to commandeer my feelings, or profess his own life's philosophy-he had reverted smoothly to the topic of the Criminologists. And thus perhaps the most audacious and bewildering of all the scrapes that Raffles ever got me into, passed into history, and was spoken of no more.
Of course, I thought, and think, about it often-more often than a kindly reader might hope who happens to take an interest in my moral well-being. For one thing, I never did fully understand why he went to such remarkable lengths to allay my curiosity about his unexpected presence at the flat that night; but then, that was Raffles all over. Subtlety and flamboyance combined in his nature, and he liked to be at once the master of misdirection and the focus of one's attention. And on the whole, disgraceful though it was, the episode made little difference. Raffles remained to me what he had always been, and I daresay he would have said the same about me. If henceforward I thought him at times just a shade more reserved-just a touch less pleased with me than he had been before-I make no doubt it was my own over-sensitive imagination that made him seem so, and not any actual change in our relations. In short, life carried on much as before, until we parted company on the deck of the steamship Uhlan; and blessed if I could ever fathom what it might have been that night, that old Raffles thought he didn't know.
~***~