“Tomorrow night,” the girl whispered.
Gemma could tell by Devery’s expression that he was already planning. “I know you’re not going to like this, Gemma, but I want Lian to give you something to help you sleep. We can plan in the morning. You need to go somewhere where you can rest and recover, because goddess knows you’re not going to stay behind when we take the palace tomorrow night. Am I right?”
Gemma wanted to argue, but she was battered and exhausted. She felt like a rag that had been used to scrub Guildhall, then was left in the sun to bake. “Will you come, too?” she asked softly.
He squeezed her hand and smiled. “Anywhere and always.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
DOCKSIDE
Tollan stared up into the leaden darkness of the storeroom of the Belly Up. Wince’s snores echoed against the walls. The air was heavy with the aroma of onions, spices, and cured meats. They’d promised the tavern keep that they’d sleep there tonight to deter any further unrest. But the airflow was clamped off, and Tollan felt like he couldn’t breathe. He shrugged down his blanket of thin, itchy wool. He felt tangled up in the night’s events, drowning in too much information. His mother had offered her ship—no, his ship—and he regretted declining the opportunity to sleep on the gentle sway of the Hadriak.
But his mind turned another corner as he listened to Wince rolling over on his pallet. Tollan found himself thinking of Elam. He felt himself begin to stiffen involuntarily beneath his blanket, and he shifted uncomfortably. Aegos. Now isn’t the time for …
But it was too late. He rolled onto his side, pressing his cock between his thighs in an effort to dampen the urgency. Suddenly, the air in the room wasn’t oppressive. It was alive with possibility. Elam was sleeping upstairs. They were breathing under the same roof, in the same quarter of Yigris, under the same sky.
Tollan trembled, pulling his blanket tighter around him. In his mind, he heard his father’s voice calling him a coward—feeble, impotent, spineless, craven. Calling him a woman, which to his father had been the very worst insult one could give. Tears stung at his eyes. But this was his chance to be brave. All he had to do was get up, pull on his clothes and walk through that door. All he had to do was knock. And hope.
His erection wilted, but his desire to hold Elam in his arms did not. This may be our only chance. Be brave, you nerveless shit. Pushing aside any logical thought, his feet found the floor.
Aegos. I knocked. Why the prick did I knock? Tollan turned to slip away, suddenly desperate for the suffocating confines of the storeroom. But it was too late. He heard footsteps. The latch was thrown. He turned back, panic seizing him.
The room was illuminated, too bright for its occupant to have been asleep. Elam stood in the doorway in just his breeches. He was barefoot, and he smiled sheepishly at Tollan. “I was hoping you’d come knocking.”
Tollan couldn’t help but take in the whole of him. He was slender, muscles not overly defined, but he didn’t look soft, either. His skin was honeyed ochre, smooth and unblemished. There was a hint of the old noble Yigrisian blood there, watered down, but stunning in its warmth. A thin trail of dark hair ran from his navel downward, disappearing beneath the lacings of his breeches. When Elam turned to motion him into the room, Tollan saw a crisscrossing of thin scars across his shoulders. Fierce hatred for the person who had tried to mar such beauty settled like hot coal in his belly.
But then Tollan felt the blood rush from his face. How could he think that this perfect man would want to touch him? He was hard and hairy and angular and inexperienced and … Oh, goddess. As erect as the palace walls.
“You weren’t sleeping?” Tollan stammered, suddenly aware of his arms and legs, his skin and hair. Every part of his body was singing with hope.
Elam grinned. “The only way men ever respond to the threat of impending death is either with fighting or with pricking. You already tried to start a fight, and, thank the goddess, Devery quashed that urge. So I thought I’d stay up a while, just in case you had a mind for the other. Would you like to come in?” he said, gesturing toward the bedroom he’d claimed for the night. The tavern keep was holed up with one of the Six-Mast girls, enjoying a night paid for by Gemma in reparation for damage done.
Tollan nodded because words were too much for him. He entered cautiously, convinced that at any minute Elam would change his mind.
The only places to sit were a straight-backed chair and the bed. Elam sat down on the bed, leaving Tollan the choice.
Tollan looked at the chair, then the bed. He glanced at Elam and swallowed, urging himself to be brave. Then he sat down beside Elam. Only a breath of space kept the outside of his thigh from pressing against Elam’s.
Without giving himself a chance to falter, Tollan turned to Elam and said, “May I kiss you? I’m not sure how you ask in Under. We don’t … we don’t do that kind of thing.”
Elam nodded, and Tollan leaned in, tentative and trembling.
Their lips met. It was slow and liquid, each of them feeling out the other. Elam brushed Tollan’s lower lip with his tongue, and Tollan shuddered. Their mouths took on a life of their own, dancing the intricate steps of courtship and desire.
After a moment, Tollan retreated, his breath quick. Elam smiled languidly.
“I don’t know what to … I’ve never …” Tollan stammered his face coloring with shame.
“It’s all right,” Elam said, taking his hand. “I’ll show you.” He reached out and started to unbutton the front of Tollan’s shirt. He slipped it off his shoulders and looked down at Tollan’s dark skin, the thick, unruly hair that covered his chest and belly. Softly, slowly, he reached out. “We don’t have to hurry,” he said. “Decide if you like the way I look as much as I like the way you do.”
Tollan grunted a laugh. It was impossible to believe that Elam could find him half as beautiful as he found Elam. Elam walked his fingers back. But Tollan pulled him closer.
“Tell me to stop, and I will. I promise,” Elam said. He ran his hand over the muscles of Tollan’s chest, down the expanse of his belly, and downward.
Tollan stared at him, his breathing coming quick, and bit his lip.
Tollan knew about women, but he couldn’t possibly understand how they would feel in a moment like this. But as he and Elam lay in a warm heap, their sweat mingling with their breath, he knew exactly how Elam felt. The delicious emptiness, the chilly stickiness, the smile that couldn’t be tamed.
Tollan propped himself up on an elbow, untangling himself from Elam’s arms. “I’m sorry that I … that it was …” His gaze drifted, smile slipping. “Fast.”
Elam pulled him back down, kissing him with abandon. Then he pushed him back gently and said, “It was your first time, half-wit!”
Tollan blushed. “Well, it’s not exactly my first time for that.” He grinned sheepishly, waving his hand in the air. “But I guess it makes a difference whose hand it is, huh?”
They laughed until Elam was wheezing, the covers pulled over them, their legs intertwined. Slowly, their giddiness subsided, and soon Tollan could feel the slow rise and fall of Elam’s sleepy breath against his neck. He shuttered the lantern and snuggled deeper into the cocoon of Elam’s arms. It could prove dangerously easy to get used to this. He drifted off to sleep, trying to number the reasons why this was not a good idea, but he kept getting distracted by the soft tickle of Elam’s beard against his neck and the sounds of the man sleeping. He’d worry about what Above thought if they managed to survive another night.
“It’s not exactly the marriage suite, is it?” Gemma quipped, as she swayed on her feet in front of Devery in an impersonal room in some shit-hole Dockside inn.