Before he could move, Ture captured his lips with his own. Maris growled at the sweet taste of him. It’d been way too long since he’d been this close to anyone except Darling. Every hormone in his body went into overdrive, and it was all he could do not to show Ture exactly how limber and powerful he was in water.
His breathing labored, Maris nipped Ture’s chin as long-buried fantasies about having sex in the water surged. Since his people killed anyone who wasn’t heterosexual and he’d never dared to let anyone know about this side of him, he’d only been naked with a lover in water in his dreams.
But now. . . .
Don’t go there.
Ture couldn’t breathe as he felt the full power of Maris in his arms. Somehow, Maris managed to hold them both steady in the water.
For as long back as Ture could remember, he’d dreamed of having a hot, masculine warrior of his own. But never had he thought to meet one who could be so incredibly skilled in war and yet tender to others. All his past soldiers had been as vicious to him as they’d been to their victims. Maris was the strangest dichotomy of brutal killer and playful charmer. At times, it was like two men inhabited his lush body.
And Ture found both of them delectable.
Maris deepened the kiss then pulled back. His breathing heavy, he skimmed Ture with a look that only made him hungrier. “We can’t do this.”
Ture pressed his cheek to Maris’s. “I know, sweetie. I’m sorry...I couldn’t resist you.” He placed a chaste kiss to him then moved away.
Maris ground his teeth as he watched Ture return to his physical therapy routine. The fact that Ture understood and agreed made him all the more alluring. It was rare to find someone who was willing to put the needs of others above their own. That was the heart and soul of Darling that had kept Maris bound to him all these years. Why he’d never been able to walk away from his best friend even when he knew he should.
Because that was his life’s blood, too. He would never fight for himself. He couldn’t care less what happened to him. He only fought for who and what he loved.
Darling, above all others, for the simple fact that Darling had bled for him on more than one occasion.
The rest was a short list made up of the only brother Maris had who still spoke to him—Safir, Darling’s immediate family, the Sentella and Caillen Dagan.
Now Ture stood to inherit that small circle. But not if he broke Maris’s heart. And though he would give anything to let Ture in, he knew better. He’d been down this bloody path too many times. As soon as his lovers realized that they could never supplant Darling in his heart, they turned on him with a justified hatred.
Maris couldn’t help how he felt. Darling owned him. He always had. Even though they could and would never be anything more than best friends, Darling was his heart. He’d been there for Maris when no one else had. When the entire universe had slammed down on him and no one had cared, Darling, alone, had traversed hell itself to save Maris’s life.
He shuttered every time he thought of where he’d be without his noble prince. If he’d even be alive.
Sighing, he lifted himself out of the water to sit on the edge of the pool while Ture continued swimming. Memories surged as he reached for a towel. Even now, he could see Darling the day they’d met as tiny kids on a playground.
Because of his young age, Maris had been cloistered on Phrixus and hadn’t fully learned the Universal language. For that matter, he’d barely known how to walk. One day, he’d been a caudate, learning about his own people and laws, and the next he’d been ripped out of his world and sent to exist among humans and their strange, foreign rules. Rules that had baffled and scared him.
His father’s only dictate for behavior had been harsh. Shame or betray us and I’ll cut out your heart myself and feed it to you before you die. One word that you’ve violated any human code or custom, and you will be put down for it.
The man had not been joking or exaggerating.
Barely five years old, Maris had been terrified of making a single mistake.
And even now, all these years later, he saw Lord Trustan’s beady eyes as he’d given Maris his new code of conduct. You so much as breathe on one of our children, or do any act of violence against any human and you will be sent home to your father in pieces. Understood?
The moment Trustan had said those words, his own sons had known Maris was fair game for their abuse.
And they’d bled him well for no other reason than his people had been at war with theirs for centuries.
By the time school had started, Maris had been a well-used doormat who hadn’t dared to fight back for fear of what his family would do for the “dishonor,” or Trustan either, for that matter.
Trustan’s eldest son, Crispin, had been the one who’d chased him across the schoolyard that fateful day. While Maris hadn’t really understood the insults they’d yelled, he knew the misery of being punched and slapped while being unable to strike back.