*
The whole time that his father was dying, she and Kastor had been pursuing their affair.
That was all he could think as he stared at Pallas, his pulse still beating hard from the accusation, from Kastor’s treachery. His father, growing weaker with every breath. He had never talked of it with her—he had never been able to bear talking of it with anyone—but sometimes he had come from his father’s sickbed to see her, to take solace, wordlessly, in her body.
He knew that he was not in control of himself. He wanted to go and rip the truth out of her with his bare hands. What did you do? What did you and Kastor plan? He knew that he was vulnerable to her in this state, that her expertise, like Laurent’s, was in finding weakness and pressing down. He looked over at Laurent and said, flatly, ‘Deal with it.’
Laurent gazed at him for a long moment, as if searching for something in his expression, then he nodded wordlessly, and made his way to the cells.
Five minutes passed. Ten. He swore and pushed away from the window, and did the one thing that he knew better than to do. He left the hall and descended the worn stone steps to the prison cells. At the grating on the final door, he heard a voice from the other side, and stopped.
The cells at Karthas were dank, cramped, and underground, as though Meniados of Sicyon had never anticipated having political prisoners, which was probably the case. Damen felt the temperature drop; it was cooler here, in the hewn stone under the fort. He passed through the first door, the guards coming to attention, and moved into a corridor with uneven stone flooring. The second door had a section of tight grating through which he could glimpse the interior of the cell.
He could see her, reclined on an exquisitely carved seat. Her cell was clean and well furnished, with tapestries and cushions that had been transferred from her solar on Damen’s orders.
Laurent was standing in front of her.
Damen stopped, unseen in the shadowed space behind the door grating. Seeing the two of them together made something turn over in his stomach. He heard a cool familiar voice speak.
‘He’s not coming,’ said Laurent.
She looked like a queen. Her hair was twisted up and held in place by a single pearl pin, a gold crown of polished curls atop her long, balanced neck. She sat on the low reclining seat, something in her posture reminiscent of his father, King Theomedes, on his throne. The simple white sheaf of her gown, gathered at each shoulder, was covered by an embroidered silk shawl of royal vermillion, which someone had allowed her to retain. Under her arched golden brows, her eyes were the colour of woad.
The extent to which she and Laurent resembled each other, in colouring, in their cool, intellectual lack of emotion, in the detachment with which they regarded one another, was both unnerving and extraordinary.
She spoke in pure, accentless Veretian. ‘Damianos has sent me his bed boy. Blond, blue-eyed, and all laced up like a virgo intacta. You’re just his type.’
Laurent said, ‘You know who I am.’
‘The prince du jour,’ said Jokaste.
There was a pause.
Damen needed to step forward, announce his presence, and stop this. He watched Laurent arrange himself against the wall.
Laurent said, ‘If you’re asking, did I fuck him, the answer is, yes.’
‘I think we both know you weren’t the one fucking him. You were on your back with your legs in the air. He hasn’t changed that much.’
Jokaste’s voice was as refined as her poise, as if the practice of high manners was not disturbed by either Laurent’s words or her own. Jokaste said, ‘The question is how much you liked it.’
Damen found himself with his hand on the wood beside the grate, listening as intently as he could for Laurent’s reply. He shifted position, trying to get a glimpse of Laurent’s face,
‘I see. We are going to trade stories? Shall I tell you my preferred position?’
‘I imagine it’s similar to mine.’
‘Confined?’ said Laurent.
It was her turn to pause. She used the time to peruse his features, as if sampling the quality of silk. Both she and Laurent looked utterly at ease. It was Damen whose heart was pounding.
She said, ‘Are you asking what it was like?’
Damen didn’t move, didn’t breathe. He knew Jokaste, knew the danger. He felt fixed to the spot, as Jokaste continued her study of Laurent’s face.
‘Laurent of Vere. They say you’re frigid. They say you rebuff all your suitors, that no man has been good enough to prise your legs apart. I believe you thought it would be brutish and physical, and maybe a part of you even wanted it that way. But you and I both know that Damen does not make love like that. He took you slowly. He kissed you until you started to want it.’
Laurent said, ‘Don’t stop on my account.’
‘You let him undress you. You let him put his hands on you. They say you hate Akielons, but you let one into your bed. You weren’t expecting what it felt like when he touched you. You weren’t expecting the weight of his body, how it felt to have his attention, to have him want you.’
‘You left out the part near the end, when it was so good I let myself forget what he’d done.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Jokaste. ‘That was the truth.’
Another pause.
‘It’s heady, isn’t it?’ said Jokaste. ‘He was born to be a king. He’s not a standin, or a second choice, like you are. He rules men just by breathing. When he walks into a room, he commands it. People love him. Like they loved your brother.’
‘My dead brother,’ said Laurent helpfully. ‘Shall we now do the part where I spread for my brother’s killer? You can describe it again.’
He couldn’t see Laurent’s face as he said it, though Laurent’s voice was easy, as was his elegant lean against the stone wall of the cell.
She said, ‘Is it difficult to ride with a man who is more of a king than you are?’
‘I wouldn’t let Kastor hear you call him a king.’
‘Or is that what you like about it? That Damen is what you’ll never be. That he has surety, self-belief, strength of conviction. Those are things that you yearn for. When he focuses it all on you, it makes you feel like you can do anything.’
Laurent said, ‘Now we are both telling the truth.’
The quality of this pause was different. Jokaste gazed back at Laurent.
‘Meniados is not going to defect from Kastor to Damianos,’ said Jokaste.
‘Why not?’ said Laurent.
‘Because when Meniados fled Karthas, I encouraged him to head straight to Kastor, who will kill him for leaving me alone here.’
Damen felt himself turn cold.
Jokaste said, ‘We now have dispensed with pleasantries. I am in possession of certain information. You will offer me clemency in exchange for what I know. There will be a series of negotiations, then, when we have decided on a mutually beneficial arrangement, I will return to Kastor in Ios. After all,’ said Jokaste, ‘that is why Damianos sent you here.’
Laurent seemed to study her in turn. When he spoke, it was without particular urgency.
‘No. He sent me to tell you that you’re not important. You’ll be held here until he’s crowned in Ios, then you will be executed for treason. He’s never going to see you again.’
Laurent pushed himself off the wall.
‘But thank you,’ said Laurent, ‘for the information about Meniados. That was helpful.’
He had almost reached the door before she spoke.
‘You haven’t asked me about my son.’
Laurent stopped. Then turned.
Enthroned on the reclining couch, she was regal, like a queen in a sculpted marble frieze commanding the length of a room.
‘He came early. It was a long birth, through the night into the morning. At the end of it all, a child. I was looking into his eyes when we got word of Damen’s soldiers marching on the fort. I had to send him away, for safety. It’s a terrible thing to separate a mother from her child.’
‘Really, is this all?’ said Laurent. ‘A few pinpricks, and the desperate appeal of motherhood? I thought you were an opponent. Did you really think a prince of Vere would be moved by the fate of a bastard’s child?’
‘You should be,’ said Jokaste. ‘He is the son of a king.’
The son of a king.
Damen felt dizzy, as if the floor was scrolling out from under his feet. She delivered the words calmly, as she had delivered every remark, except that these words changed everything. The idea that it might be—that it was—
His child.
Everything resolved into a pattern: that the child had come so early; that she had travelled so far into the north to deliver it, to a place where the date of the child’s birth could be obscured; that in Ios she had heavily disguised the first months of the pregnancy, both from himself and from Kastor.
All of Laurent’s features whitened in reeling shock, and he stared at Jokaste as though he had been struck.
Even through his own shock, Laurent’s sheer horror was excessive. Damen didn’t understand it, didn’t understand the look in Laurent’s eyes, or in Jokaste’s. Then Laurent spoke in an awful voice.
‘You have sent Damianos’s son to my uncle.’
She said, ‘You see? I am an opponent. I will not be left in a cell to rot. You will tell Damen that I will see him as I require, and I think you will find that he will not send in a bed boy this time.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
IT WAS STRANGE that all he could think about was his father.
He sat on the edge of the bed in his rooms, with his elbows on his knees and the heels of his palms digging hard into his eyes.
The last thing that he had been truly aware of was Laurent turning and seeing him through the grating. He had taken one step back from Laurent, then another, then he had turned, and pushed his way up the stairs to his quarters, a hazy journey. No one had bothered him since.
He needed the silence and the solitude, the time alone to think, but he couldn’t reason; the pounding in his head was too strong, the emotions in his chest in a tangle.
He might have a son, and all he could think about was his father.
It was as if some protective membrane had been torn away and everything that he had not let himself feel was exposed behind the rupture. He had nothing left to hold it back, only this raw, terrible feeling, of being denied family.
On his last day in Ios, he had knelt, his father’s hand heavy in his hair, too naive, too foolish to see that his father’s sickness was a killing. The smell of tallow and incense had mingled thickly with the sound of his father’s laboured breathing. His father’s words had been made of breath, nothing left of his deep-timbered voice.
‘Tell the physicians I will be well,’ his father had said. ‘I wish to see all my son will accomplish when he takes the throne.’
In his life, he had known only one parent. His father had been to him a set of ideals, a man he looked up to, and strove to please, a standard against whom he measured himself. Since his father’s death, he had not allowed himself to think or feel anything but determination that he would return, that he would see his home again, and restore himself to the throne.
Now he felt as if he stood in front of his father, felt his father’s hand in his hair, as he never would again. He had wanted his father to be proud of him; and had failed him, in the end.
A sound from the doorway. He looked up, and saw Laurent.
Damen drew in an unsteady breath. Laurent was closing the door behind him and entering. He must deal with this, too. He tried to gather himself.
Laurent said, ‘No. I’m not here to—’ He said, ‘I’m just here.’
He was suddenly aware that the room had grown dark, that night had fallen, and no one had come to light candles. He must have been here for hours. Someone had kept the servants out. Someone had kept everyone out. His generals and his nobles and every person who had business with the King had been turned back. Laurent, he realised, had guarded his solitude for him. And his people, fearing the fierce, strange foreign prince, had done as Laurent ordered, and stayed out. He was stupidly, profoundly grateful for that.
He looked at Laurent, meaning to tell him how much it meant, though as he was, it would take a moment before he could muster himself to speak.
Before he could, he felt Laurent’s fingers on the back of his neck, a shock of touch that caught him in a tumult of confusion as it drew him forward, simply. It was, from Laurent, slightly awkward; sweet; rare; stiff with obvious inexperience.
If he had been offered this as an adult, he couldn’t remember it. He couldn’t remember ever having needed it, except that maybe he had needed it since the bells had rung in Akielos, and never allowed himself to ask for it. Body leaned in to body and he closed his eyes.
Time passed. He became aware of the slow, strong pulse, the slender body, the warmth in his arms—and that was nice in a different way.
‘Now you are taking advantage of my kind-hearted instincts,’ Laurent said, a murmur into his ear.
He drew back, but didn’t move away completely, nor did Laurent seem to expect it, the bedding shifting as Laurent sat beside him, as if it was natural for them to be sitting with their shoulders almost touching one another.
He let his lips form a half-smile. ‘You aren’t going to offer me one of your gaudy Veretian handkerchiefs?’
‘You could use the clothing you’re wearing. It’s about the same size.’
‘Your poor Veretian sensibilities. All those wrists and ankles.’
‘And arms and thighs and every other part.’
‘My father’s dead.’
The words had a finality to them. His father was buried in Akielos beneath the columned halls of the silent, where the pain and confusion of his last days would never trouble him again. He looked up at Laurent.
‘You thought he was a warmonger. An aggressive, war-hungry king, who invaded your country on the flimsiest of pretexts, hungry for land and the glory of Akielos.’
‘No,’ said Laurent. ‘We don’t have to do this now.’
‘A barbarian,’ said Damen, ‘with barbaric ambitions, fit only to rule by the sword. You hated him.’
‘I hated you,’ said Laurent. ‘I hated you so badly I thought I’d choke on it. If my uncle hadn’t stopped me, I would have killed you. And then you saved my life, and every time I needed you, you were there, and I hated you for that, too.’
‘I killed your brother.’
The silence seemed to tighten, painfully. He made himself look at Laurent, a bright, sharp presence beside him.
‘What are you doing here?’ Damen said.
He was pale in the moonlight, set against the dim shadows of the room that shrouded them both.
Laurent said, ‘I know what it’s like to lose family.’
The room was very quiet, with no hint of the activity that must be taking place beyond its walls, even this late. A fort was never silent, there were always soldiers, attendants, slaves. Outside, the guards were making their evening rounds. The sentries on the walls were patrolling, looking out into the night.
‘Is there no way forward for us?’ said Damen. It just came out. Beside him, he could feel Laurent holding himself very still.
‘You mean, will I come back to your bed for the little time we have left?’
‘I mean that we hold the centre. We hold everything from Acquitart to Sicyon. Can we not call it a kingdom and rule it together? Am I such a poorer prospect than a Patran princess, or a daughter of the Empire?’
He made himself say no more than that, though the words crowded in his chest. He waited. It surprised him that it hurt to wait, and that the longer he waited, the more he felt he couldn’t bear to hear the answer, brought to him on a knife point.
When he made himself look at Laurent, Laurent’s eyes on him were very dark, his voice quiet.
‘How can you trust me, after what your own brother did to you?’
‘Because he was false,’ said Damen, ‘and you are true. I have never known a truer man.’ He said, into the stillness, ‘I think if I gave you my heart, you would treat it tenderly.’
Laurent turned his head, denying Damen his face. Damen could see his breathing. After a moment he said in a low voice, ‘When you make love to me like that, I can’t think.’
‘Don’t think,’ said Damen.
Damen saw the flickering change, the tension, as the words provoked an internal battle.
Damen said, ‘Don’t think.’
‘Don’t,’ said Laurent, ‘toy with me. I—have not the means to—defend against this.’
‘I don’t toy with you.’
‘I—’
‘Don’t think,’ said Damen.
‘Kiss me,’ said Laurent. And then flushed, a rich colour. Don’t think, Damen had said, but Laurent couldn’t do that. Even to sit there after what he had said, he was fighting a battle in his head.
The words hung awkwardly, a blurt, but Laurent didn’t take them back, he just waited, his body singing with tension.
Instead of leaning in, Damen took Laurent’s hand, brought it towards himself, and kissed his palm, once.
He had learned in the course of their one night together to tell when Laurent was taken unawares—taken aback. It wasn’t easy to anticipate, the gaps in Laurent’s experience not mapping to anything that he understood. He felt it now, Laurent’s eyes very dark, uncertain of what he should do. ‘I meant—’
‘Don’t let you think?’
Laurent didn’t answer. Damen waited, in the quiet.
‘I’m not—’ said Laurent. And then, as the moment stretched out between them, ‘I’m not an innocent who needs his hand held through every step.’
‘Aren’t you?’
Realisation came to Damen. Laurent’s wariness was not, at this moment, the high walls of the defended citadel. It was that of a man with a portion of his guard down, who was desperately unused to it.
After a moment: ‘At Ravenel, I—it had been a long time since I had—with anyone. I was nervous.’
‘I know,’ said Damen.
‘There has,’ said Laurent. He stopped. ‘There has only been one other person.’
Softly, ‘I’m a little more experienced than that.’
‘Yes, that is immediately apparent.’
‘Is it?’ A little pleased.
‘Yes.’
He looked at Laurent, who was sitting right on the edge of the bed, his face still turned away slightly. Here there were only the dimly lit shapes of the room’s arches, its furnishings, the unyielding marble base of the bed where they sat, mattressed and cushioned from its foot to the curve of its headrest. He spoke softly.
‘Laurent, I’d never hurt you.’
He heard Laurent’s strange, disbelieving breath, and he realised what he had said.
‘I know,’ said Damen, ‘that I did hurt you.’
Laurent’s motionlessness was careful, even his breathing was careful. He didn’t turn back to look at Damen.
‘I hurt you, Laurent.’
‘That’s enough, stop,’ said Laurent.
‘It wasn’t right. You were just a boy. You didn’t deserve what happened to you.’
‘I said that’s enough.’
‘Is it so hard to hear?’
He thought of Auguste, thought how no boy deserved to lose his brother. The room was very quiet. Laurent didn’t look back at him. Deliberately Damen leaned back, his body intentionally relaxed, his weight on his hands on the bed. He didn’t understand the forces that moved in Laurent, but some instinct pushed him to say it.
‘My first time, there was a lot of rolling around. I was eager and had no idea what to do. It’s not like Vere, we don’t watch people doing it in public.’ He said, ‘I still get too caught up near the end. I know I forget myself.’
A silence. It went on too long. He didn’t disturb it, watching the tense line of Laurent’s body.
‘When you kissed me,’ said Laurent, pushing the words out, ‘I liked it. When you took me in your mouth, it was the first time that I had . . . done that.’ He said, ‘I liked it when you—’
Laurent’s breathing shallowed as Damen pushed himself up.
He had kissed Laurent as a slave, but never as himself. They both felt the difference of it, the anticipated kiss so real between them it was as if it was already happening.
The inches of air between them were nothing, and everything. Laurent’s reaction to kissing had always been complex: tense; vulnerable; hot. The tension was the greatest part of it, as though this single act was too much for him, too extreme. And yet, he had asked for it. Kiss me.
Damen lifted his hand, slid his fingers into the short, soft hair at the back of Laurent’s neck, cupping his head. They had never been this close, not with the fact of who he was open between them.
He felt the tension in Laurent rise, the crisis peaking with proximity.
‘I’m not your slave,’ said Damen. ‘I’m a man.’
Don’t think, he’d said, because it was easier than saying, Take me for who I am.
He couldn’t bear that suddenly. He wanted it without pretences, without excuses, his fingers curling hard into Laurent’s hair.
‘It’s me,’ said Damen. ‘It’s me, here with you. Say my name.’
‘Damianos.’
He felt the sundering in Laurent at that, the name an admission, a statement of truth that came out of him, Laurent open to him with nothing to hide behind. He could hear it in Laurent’s voice. Prince-killer.
Laurent shuddered against him as they kissed, as if, having surrendered to it, the painful exchange of brother for lover, he was in some private reality where myth and man met. Even if it was some self-destructive impulse in Laurent, Damen was not noble enough to give it up. He wanted it, felt a surge of purely selfish desire as he thought of it, that Laurent knew it was him. That Laurent wanted this with him.
He pushed Laurent down onto the bed, pushed himself on top, Laurent’s fingers tight in his hair, though fully clothed they could do no more than kiss. It was a closeness that wasn’t enough, limbs tangling. His hands slid impotently down Laurent’s tight-laced clothing. Beneath him, Laurent’s kisses were all open-mouthed. Desire flamed, painful and bright.
It was subsumed, as it had to be, into the act of kissing. His body felt heavy, one form of penetration substituted for another, the tremors in Laurent not that of a single barrier crumbling, but shudders as though one after another were being brought down, each place unexplored, each place deeper than the last.
Prince-killer.
A slide and a push and Laurent was on top of him, looking down. Laurent’s breathing was quickened, his pupils enlarged in the dim light. For a moment they just gazed at each other. Laurent’s gaze splayed out over him, a knee on either side of Damen’s thighs. It was a single, dark-eyed moment of choice, the chance to leave, or stop.
Instead, Laurent took hold of the gold lion pin at Damen’s shoulder, and with a sharp tug he cast it off. It skittered over the marble floor to the far right of the bed.
Cloth unwound itself, slipped from its moorings. Damen’s clothing fell away from him, revealing his body to Laurent’s gaze.
‘I—’ Damen pushed himself up instinctively onto one arm, and was stopped halfway by the look in Laurent’s eyes.
He felt acutely aware that he was half on his back, naked, with Laurent fully clothed, astride, still wearing his polished boots and the high-necked, tightly laced collar of his jacket. It was a sudden, vulnerable fantasy that Laurent might simply get up and wander off, strolling the rooms, or sit in the chair opposite to sip wine with his legs crossed, while Damen was left exposed on the bed.
Laurent didn’t do that. Laurent lifted his hands to his own neck. His eyes on Damen’s, slowly, he took up one of the tight-laced ties at his throat, and drew on it.
The spill of heat that came from that was too much, the reality of who they both were stark between them. This was the man who had had him whipped, the Prince of Vere, his nation’s enemy.
Damen could see Laurent’s shallow breath. He could see his dark-eyed intention. Laurent was undressing for him, one lace after another, the jacket’s fabric opening, revealing the fine white shirt beneath.
Heat flared over Damen’s skin. Laurent’s jacket came first, dropping from him like armour. He looked younger in only a shirt. Damen saw the hint of the scar at Laurent’s shoulder, the knife wound, newly healed. Laurent’s chest was rising and falling. A pulse was hammering in his throat. Laurent reached behind himself and drew the shirt off.
The sight of Laurent’s skin sent its shock down into him. He wanted to touch it, to slide his hands over it, but he felt pinned, controlled by the intensity of what was happening. Laurent’s body was held in obvious tension, from his hard pinked nipples to the taut muscles of his stomach, and for a moment they just looked, caught in each other’s eyes. More than skin was exposed.
Laurent said, ‘I know who you are. I know who you are. Damianos.’
‘Laurent,’ said Damen, and sat up then, he couldn’t help it, his hands riding up the fabric over Laurent’s thighs to clasp his unclothed waist. Skin touched skin. His whole body felt like it was shaking.
Laurent slid a little, straddling Damen’s lap, his thighs opening. He put his hand on the plane of Damen’s chest, on the mark where Auguste had run him through, and the touch made Damen ache. In the dim light, Auguste was between them, sharp as a knife. The scar on his shoulder was the last thing Auguste had done before Damen had killed him.
The kiss was like a wound, as if to do it Laurent was impaling himself on that knife. There was an edge of desperation to it, Laurent kissing like he needed it, his fingers clutching, his body unsteady.
Damen groaned, wanting it selfishly, his thumbs pressing hard into Laurent’s flesh. He kissed back knowing it hurt him, hurt them both. There was a desperation in both of them, an aching need that could not be filled, and he could feel it in Laurent, the same unconscious striving.
He had envisaged slow lovemaking, but it was as if, having reached the edge, they could only hurtle. The slight shudders of Laurent’s breath, the urgent kisses that strove for closeness, Laurent’s boots pulled off, the thin silk of his courtier’s clothes peeled down.
‘Do it.’ Laurent was turning in his arms, presenting himself as he had on their first night together, offering his body from the curve in his back to the dip of his lowered head. ‘Do it. I want it. I want—’
Damen was unable to stop himself pressing his own weight forward, running his hand up Laurent’s back, and slowly rubbing himself, close to his object, in sweet, simulated fuck. Laurent arched his back, and Damen’s body ran out of breath.
‘We can’t, we don’t have—’
‘I don’t care,’ Laurent said.
Laurent shuddered, and his body gave a jerk that was an unmistakable fuck backwards. For a moment both their bodies were operating somewhat on instinct, pushing together.
It wasn’t going to work. Physicality was an obstacle to desire, and he groaned into Laurent’s neck, slid his hands down over Laurent’s body. In a burst of explicit fantasy, he wished Laurent were a pet, or a slave, wished him a body that was not going to require extensive, coaxing preparation before it could be penetrated. He felt like he was right on the edge of control, felt like he had been that way for days, months.
He wanted to be inside. He wanted to feel Laurent’s surrender shudder and give way, become total. He wanted no denying that Laurent had let him in, who he had let in. It’s me. His body primed, as though only in one act could this be driven home.
He slid his hands up Laurent’s thighs, pushing them apart a little. The view was pinked, small, and tight, the curl of a calyx, impenetrable.
‘Do it, I told you, I don’t care—’
A smash, the unlit oil burner hitting the marble and shattering in the dim room, his fingers clumsy. He pressed with his oiled fingers first. It was inelegant, braced over Laurent’s back, guiding himself in with one hand. It wouldn’t, quite.
‘Let me in,’ he said, and Laurent made a new sound, his head dropped between his shoulder blades, his breath ribboning out of him. ‘Let me inside you.’
There was some give, and he pushed, slowly. He felt every inch, as the room faded into sensation. There was only the feel of it, the slide of his chest against Laurent’s back, the dip of Laurent’s head, and the sweat-damp hair at the nape of Laurent’s neck.
Damen was panting. He was aware of his own insistent weight, and Laurent beneath him, pushed forward onto his elbows. Damen dropped his forehead to Laurent’s neck and just felt it.
He was inside Laurent. It felt raw and unprotected. He had never felt more like himself: Laurent had let him inside, knowing who he was. His body was already moving. Laurent made a helpless sound into the bedding that was the Veretian word, ‘Yes.’
Damen’s grip tightened in helpless reflex, his forehead bent to Laurent’s neck as the heat of that admission pulsed through him. He wanted Laurent fully against him. He wanted to feel every cooperative muscle, every encouraging movement, so that every time he looked at Laurent he would remember that he had been like this.
His arm slid around Laurent’s chest, thigh fit against thigh. Damen’s grip, still oiled, was wrapped around the hottest, most honest part of Laurent. Laurent’s body responded, moving, finding its own pleasure. They were moving together.
It was good. It was so good, and he wanted more of it, wanted to drive it towards its conclusion, wanted it never to end. He was only half aware that he was speaking words unchecked and in his own language.
‘I want you,’ said Damen, ‘I’ve wanted you for so long, I’ve never felt like this with anyone—’
‘Damen,’ said Laurent, helplessly, ‘Damen.’
His body pulsed, almost climaxing. He barely knew the moment when he pressed Laurent onto his back, the brief sundering, the need to be back inside him, Laurent’s mouth opening under his, the tug on his neck as Laurent took hold of it and pulled him in. His weight bore down on Laurent, shuddering heat as he entered him again with a strong, slow push.
And Laurent opened for it, a single, perfect slide. Damen took up the rhythm that he needed, their bodies tangled and a harder, continuous fucking. They were caught in each other, and when their eyes met Laurent said, ‘Damen,’ again, like it meant everything, and as if Damen’s identity was enough, he was shuddering, pulsing against the air.
Strident as proof, Laurent came with Damen inside him, Damen’s name on his lips, and Damen was lost to it, his whole body given over, the first deep pulse of his own climax just one part of a choking pleasure that took him, overwhelming and bright, into oblivion.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
DAMEN WOKE TO the impression of Laurent beside him, a warm, wonderful presence in his bed.
Gladness welled, and he let himself look, a sleepy indulgence. Laurent lay with the sheet tangled around his waist, the morning sun dusting him with gold. Damen had half thought to find him gone, as he had once before, vanished like the tendrils of a dream. The intimacy of last night might have been too much for either or both of them.
He lifted his hand to brush Laurent’s cheek, smiling. He was opening his eyes.
‘Damen,’ said Laurent.
Damen’s heart moved in his chest, because the way Laurent said his name was quiet, happy, a little shy. Laurent had only ever said it once before, last night.
‘Laurent,’ said Damen.
They were gazing at each other. To Damen’s delight, Laurent reached out to trace a touch down over his body. Laurent was looking at him as if he couldn’t quite believe the fact of him, as if even touch could not quite confirm it.
‘What?’ Damen was smiling.
‘You’re very,’ said Laurent, and then, flushing, ‘attractive.’
‘Really,’ said Damen, in a rich, warm voice.
‘Yes,’ said Laurent.
Damen’s smile widened, and he lay back in the sheets and just luxuriated in the idea, feeling ridiculously pleased.
‘Well,’ Damen owned, turning his head back to Laurent eventually, ‘You are too.’
Laurent dropped his head slightly, on the edge of laughter. He said, with absurd fondness, ‘Most people tell me that right away.’
Was it the first time that he had said it? Damen looked at Laurent, who was now lying half on his side, his blond hair a little mussed, eyes full of teasing light. Sweet and simple in the morning, Laurent’s beauty was heart-stopping.
‘I would have,’ said Damen, ‘if I’d had the chance to court you properly. If I’d come in state to your father. If there had been a chance for our countries to be—’ Friends. He felt the mood shift, thinking of the past. Laurent didn’t seem to notice it.
‘Thank you, I know exactly how it would have been. You and Auguste would have been slapping each other on the back and watching tournaments, and I would have been trailing around tugging on your sleeve, trying to get a look in edgewise.’
Damen held himself very still. This easy way of speaking of Auguste was new, and he didn’t want to disturb it.
After a moment, Laurent said, ‘He would have liked you.’
‘Even after I started courting his little brother?’ said Damen carefully.
He watched Laurent stop, the way that he did when he was taken by surprise, and then lift his eyes to meet Damen’s.
‘Yes,’ said Laurent softly, his cheeks reddened slightly.
The kiss happened because they couldn’t help it, and it was so sweet and so right that Damen felt a kind of ache. He pulled back. The realities of the outside world seemed to press at him. ‘I—’ He couldn’t say it.
‘No. Listen to me.’ He felt Laurent’s hand firm on the back of his neck. ‘I’m not going to let my uncle hurt you.’ Laurent’s blue gaze was calm and steady, as if he had made a decision and wanted Damen to know it. ‘It’s what I came here last night to say. I’m going to take care of it.’
‘Promise me,’ Damen heard himself say. ‘Promise me we won’t let him—’
‘I promise.’
Laurent said it seriously, his voice honest; no game playing, just the truth. Damen nodded, his grip on Laurent tightening. The kissing this time had an echo of last night’s desperation, a need to block out the outside world and stay for a moment longer in this cocoon, Laurent’s arms winding around his neck. Damen rolled over him, body fitting against body. The sheet slipped away from them. Slow rocking began to turn kissing into something else.
There was a knock at the door.
‘Come in,’ said Laurent, turning his head towards the sound.
Damen said, ‘Laurent,’ shocked and on full display as the door swung open. Pallas entered. Laurent greeted him with no self-consciousness at all.
‘Yes?’ Laurent’s voice was matter-of-fact.
Pallas’s mouth opened. Damen saw what Pallas saw: Laurent like some dream of a newly fucked virgin, himself unmistakably above him, fully roused. He flushed all over. In Ios, he might have dallied with a lover while a household slave attended to some task in the room, but only because a slave was so far beneath him in status as not to signify. The idea of a soldier watching him make love to Laurent was breaking open his mind. Laurent had never even taken an acknowledged lover before, let alone—
Pallas forced his eyes to the floor.
‘My apologies, Exalted. I came to seek your orders for the morning.’
‘We’re busy currently. Have a servant prepare the baths and bring us food at mid-morning.’ Laurent spoke like an administrator glancing up from his desk.
‘Yes, Exalted.’
Pallas turned blindly, and made for the door.
‘What is it?’ Laurent looked at Damen, who had detached himself and was sitting with the sheet pulled up to where he had clutched it to cover himself. And then, with the burgeoning delight of discovery, ‘Are you shy?’
‘In Akielos we don’t,’ said Damen, ‘in front of other people.’
‘Not even the King?’
‘Especially not the King,’ said Damen, for whom the King still partly meant his father.
‘But how does the court know if the royal marriage has been consummated?’
‘The King knows whether or not it has been consummated!’ Horrified.
Laurent stared at him. Damen was surprised when Laurent dropped his head, and even more surprised when Laurent’s shoulders started shaking. Around the laughter emerged, ‘You wrestled him without any clothes on.’
‘That is sports,’ said Damen. He folded his arms, thinking that Veretians lacked any sense of dignity, even as Laurent sitting up and pressing a delighted kiss to his lips had him slightly mollified.
Later, ‘The King of Vere really consummates his marriage in front of the court?’
‘Not in front of the court,’ said Laurent, as if this were unspeakably foolish, ‘in front of the Council.’
‘Guion is on the Council!’ said Damen.
Later, they lay alongside one another, and Damen found himself tracing the scar on Laurent’s shoulder, the only place his skin was marred, as Damen now knew intimately. ‘I’m sorry Govart is dead. I know you were trying to keep him alive.’
‘I thought he knew something that I could use against my uncle. It doesn’t matter. We’ll stop him another way.’
‘You never told me what happened.’
‘It was nothing. There was a knife fight. I got free, and Guion and I came to an arrangement.’
Damen gazed at him.
‘What?’
‘Nikandros is never going to believe it,’ said Damen.
‘I don’t see why not.’
‘You were taken prisoner, you single-handedly escaped from the cells at Fortaine, and somehow managed to get Guion to switch sides on the way out?’
‘Well,’ said Laurent, ‘not everyone is as bad at escaping as you are.’
Damen let out a breath, and found himself laughing, as he might never have thought possible, considering what awaited him outside. He remembered Laurent in the mountains fighting alongside him, shoring up his injured side.
‘When you lost your brother, was there someone to comfort you?’
‘Yes,’ said Laurent. ‘In a way.’
‘Then I’m glad,’ said Damen. ‘I’m glad you weren’t alone.’
Laurent pushed himself away, up into a sitting position, and for a moment he sat, without speaking. He pushed his palms into his eye sockets.
‘What is it?’
‘It’s nothing,’ said Laurent.
Damen, sitting up alongside him, felt the outside world intrude its presence again. ‘We should—’
‘And we will.’ Laurent turned to him, sliding fingers into his hair. ‘But first, we have the morning.’