by K. L. Noone
He folded Harry into his arms. Naked, he fed Harry a bit more now-cold tea, a bit more bread and cheese. Harry opened that mouth and drank and nibbled what Kit gave him, without question; gradually those wide blue eyes began looking more present and less dreamy. Kit brushed fingers over his lips; Harry kissed them, licked at them, settled against him. Despite being larger, he felt small: innocent even though he wasn’t, secure in Kit’s care.
Kit petted him some more. Listened to the wind, to the fire, to the creak of the lodge’s roof. He did not know what time it might be; they’d only set out that morning. But the light was dim and snow-washed.
Harry said, half-awake, “Kit?”
“What do you need? More tea? More fire? I can find more wood.”
“No, I’m fine. I’m splendid, actually. That was…” Harry hesitated, adjusted position slightly, tucked toes under Kit’s leg. Kit’s leg liked this. “You’ve done that before. Giving orders. In the—well, not precisely a bedroom at the moment. But you know what I mean.”
“I have,” Kit said. “I’ve put men on their knees. I’ve put one or two in handcuffs. Which I don’t do very often, because it reminds me of work, but some men like that.” He was being honest; he had to be, here in this enchanted space. “I prefer silk ropes or my own hands or nothing at all, just orders, knowing I can give a command and be obeyed. But you, Harry—I haven’t done that before. I haven’t felt that before.”
“Oh,” Harry said: surprised, delighted, bashful about it.
“I do mostly hold back,” Kit said. “The empathy, the abilities—it’s too easy to get lost in other people, at that moment. But with you it wasn’t like getting lost. You fix things. You find things.” Anchors, he thought. “I could feel you but I could also feel me.”
“I could feel everything with you,” Harry said. “Ropes?”
“What have you tried?”
“Not terribly much—options are rather limited when confined to the estate—but I’m relatively unshockable.” Harry tipped that head up to meet Kit’s eyes, sated and peaceful. “To make things go right—a barn-building, a healing, a relationship—I have to be able to feel it. Everything people want and need. I’ve been aware of quite a lot of things for quite a long time. Ned’s never really understood that.”
“No.” Kit ran a hand over Harry’s rumpled sunshine hair. “He thinks he needs to play matchmaker. He told me not to disappoint you.”
“I know what I want,” Harry said. “And you don’t. Disappoint me. You’re kind.”
“Am I?” Kit said, and bent to kiss him again, hand finding Harry’s limp spent cock; Harry made a startled but unprotesting sound and squirmed closer, for better access, for ease of play. “See if you’re still of that opinion in a few hours, then…”
Harry laughed, made another noise as Kit’s hand did more, relaxed. The fire hummed to itself. The snow tucked them away, intimate and protected.
They had a mission. They had a job to do. They had an estate to save. They would do all that.
But in this stolen moment Kit could care for Harry Arden. Could make Harry gasp and sigh and cry out with pleasure. And he would, he thought: he would, for as long as he had the chance. Here, on an overstuffed sofa, in a distressingly well-equipped hunting lodge. While the wind cheered for them.
Chapter 9
The storm let up after a while, the elemental no longer sensing imminent threat, but the snow did not melt away into immediate oblivion. Inside, Kit and Harry held each other, stayed warm, tangled themselves together, paused to nibble more purloined food, and fit themselves together again. Harry liked to be talked to, praised, instructed; Kit put him on his knees, had him on his back, bent him over the sofa. At one point he had Harry in his lap, riding his cock, Kit’s hand playing ceaselessly with Harry’s oversensitive shaft and balls; Harry made extremely lovely sounds, and eventually spent himself that way, Kit’s length deep inside him. Harry’s arms went around Kit in the wake of it.
They napped for a bit, entwined. They talked.
Kit did not expect to talk, but he did: the words flowed easily, as if waiting there, as if he’d always been meant to talk to Harry Arden on a snowbound night in a firelit hunting lodge. He told himself that he was doing this for Harry, keeping Harry awake and alert and distracted from fretting over his brother; this was in part even true.
He knew about the other part of that truth. He did not intend to admit it. He wanted to protect Harry, obviously; he did not spontaneously share pieces of himself. He did not want to trust a blue-eyed affectionate viscount. He did not want to tell Harry anything. He told himself that.
He told Harry about Anne. About a childhood spent in brothels and back alleys, about his need to see his sister and his niece well and secure and happy. He talked about Sam Rookwood and the day he’d joined the Preternatural Division. He told Harry that story without shame: the dinner-party he’d talked his way into, the way he’d done for years, using empathy to learn what every person wanted and making himself indispensable enough to be invited places, and once there helping himself to jewels or rare books or anything he could sell. Sam had caught him, that last night, and rather than turning Kit in had regarded empathic talents and quick hands with the gaze of a man spotting a potential recruit.
He did not know where he would’ve ended up, without Sam’s choice that night. Harry listened, lying bathed in firelight and under Kit’s arm, and said, “He sounds like a good man. I wish I could meet him.”
“If you’re ever in London,” Kit said. The ache stabbed his heart, then: Harry Arden did not go to London. Harry did not leave the Fairleigh estate.
But he had Harry lying there with him, golden and sated as a sunbeam; Harry was here and well and not white-faced or collapsing to the floor. The stab-wound could only be a small one, in the face of that.
Harry said, looking up, “Do you know, my headache’s absolutely gone, I think that last thing you did with your tongue must be a marvelous cure. Can we try it again?”
Kit laughed. And they tried it again.
Night arrived, or they guessed it did; snow-encircled, there was not much difference, but the quality of the light deepened and darkened and went away.
Harry talked, too: about Ned, about growing up on the estate, about being permanently under the watchful stares of tutors, parents, servants who had been tasked to ensure the good luck of Fairleigh came to no harm. He sounded wistful, and wistfully glad of that; at some point, Kit thought, Harry had made peace with the knowledge that his gifts equaled his usefulness, and the extent of love, for his parents. And, being Harry, had no doubt shrugged, considered that his own virtual imprisonment was a fair price for Ned’s strength and the estate’s flourishing, and not questioned his own choice again.
Kit said, “Do you ever want more? Town. Museums. Those elephants.”
Harry yawned, ran a hand along Kit’s bicep, radiated lazy fulfillment. “Sometimes. To see it all, to be part of the world…but I won’t leave Ned while he needs me. And I don’t know anyone in Society, and I think I’d be awful at fashionable conversation and etiquette. So I don’t know.” His voice hovered, suspended like a high-wire act between ruefulness, acceptance, and complex and bittersweet curiosity. “What about you? Do you ever want anything different? Not being what everyone thinks they know about you?”
“Sometimes,” Kit answered, a deliberate echo. “I don’t know.” Yes, he thought. Yes, and no.
He’d worked hard to be proud of his life. He was good at his job. He had Sam’s respect, and a reputation that was useful, and the ability to assist his sister in her chosen profession. He’d earned them both, if not acceptance, at least respectability.
He did not have sparkling blue eyes in his life, or someone who would tease him about maps and ponds and oceans, someone who would then turn around and use large kind strength to protect him.
He thought that Harry would like London: not the fashionable frivolous gossiping elements, but the story-soaked rooms of the B
ritish Museum, or the fantastical unfolding of an opera on stage, or the silvery violet hush of the city glimpsed from a solitary stake-out rooftop before dawn. Or the perpetually paper-strewn and overworked Preternatural Division offices, which hummed with magic and stress and complaints over official reports, and which felt like home.
He realized that he’d been picturing that scene. Himself escorting Harry to an opera. A museum. His offices. Where he might introduce Harry to Sam.
That would not happen. That could not happen: not when Harry had only a breath ago sworn not to leave Fairleigh while his family had need of him.
Kit kissed Harry’s shoulder, tasted fire-flushed skin, distracted Harry from asking another question. Distracted himself from a sensation like a splintering, a cracking, an unexpected searing pain deep inside. That was not a pain he should feel; he should know better, should be more clearheaded, should comprehend what was only practical.
No daydreams. Another reminder. Absurd.
But as he pushed Harry’s head down between his thighs, as he tangled a fist into Harry’s glorious hair, as he fucked Harry’s eager mouth and felt Harry’s subsequent moan of delight with every fiber of his being, he felt that broken-crystal ache again, too diamond-edged and brilliant to escape.
Harry, being occupied, did not see Kit’s face. Only heard, as much as Harry was hearing anything, the catch of breath; and consequently redoubled his efforts. Bringing Kit pleasure.
Kit gripped his hair and told him how good he was, told him so in utterly filthy terms borrowed from the brothels and the leather-worked clubs, told him that he’d be allowed to reach release if he could do so like this, only like this, not touching himself, sucking Kit’s cock and loving it so plainly. Harry shuddered and rocked hips into the sofa, chasing sensation; Kit said, “No,” and ordered him to lift hips, to move away, cock caressed by nothing at all. Harry trembled, sucked at him harder, begged with that whole body.
Kit, drinking in this beautiful anguish, fell suddenly and sharply over the tipping-point, spending himself in a spurt of dark sweet ecstasy: pouring out his release down Harry’s skillful throat, watching Harry lift those hips and deny himself and struggle to be good, because Kit had requested it of him.
Harry swallowed, swallowed again, quivered. His eyelashes were wet. Kit stroked a hand over his hair, down to the nape of his neck; Harry made a choked noise, muffled by the cock in his mouth, and began to come, helplessly, cock spilling pearly streams into the air and down to the blankets below.
Kit held him, after. Harry slept more, and woke with a start that turned into abrupt laughter. Harry Arden, Kit understood, was the sort of person who would surrender, who would take everything demanded of him, and who would find freedom waiting there, and joy. Of course Harry would laugh.
He ran a hand over Harry’s back. He counted freckles and lost count: they twinkled innumerable as the distant stars they resembled.
Harry tucked that golden head under Kit’s chin, resting; they lay together, in a cocoon of firelight and snow-banked walls and the taste of tea.
Kit thought, half-asleep, about hunger. About hours passing. About exploring that kitchen further. About Harry’s unconcerned sleeping bulk, and the mild pins-and-needles sensation in Kit’s own left arm, trapped by choice under muscles; about Ned, who would worry, and about Anne, and family, and care.
Harry wanted to protect his family. From the cold, from elemental hunger for brightness and vitality…from pain and weakness…
Harry could use food. Soon, not immediate. Upon awakening. Kit himself had been hungry before; Harry likely had not, and Kit two days ago would’ve resented this fact and instead found himself simply glad that Harry Arden, who cared for other people, had never needed to beg or steal to survive.
Eyes closed, he let senses whisper across the landscape. He did not know whether he could feel Edward Arden from here; he did not know what he could do if he could. He’d never been a powerful projective talent.
He extended ephemeral gossamer threads of self. He felt echoes reverberate along them like plucked harp-strings: farmers anxious over the unbreaking ice, pacing feet along hallways in the great house, a blooming spot of green-gold that must be the neighboring estate, Miss Featherdale holding the cold at bay for her own family…a tight-drawn knot of fear and love and frustration that had to be Edward, hurting with the knowledge that the night had come in and no searchers could be asked to do more, but Kit couldn’t make himself heard, couldn’t shout, could only listen…
A kiss of chilly hunger bit along his spine, a reminder: a bruised numb place in a once-green hollow. He stepped away hastily, unprepared at the moment to—
He stopped. And then he pulled everything back, all those outward tendrils of self gathered up. And he opened both eyes. “Harry. Harry.”
“I was comfortable,” Harry protested, and then, “I’m awake. What?”
“I know why it’s here. Your elemental.”
Those blue eyes went from adorably drowsy to wide and focused in a single blink. “Why, then? And what can we do about it?”
Of course that’d be the question. “It’s you.”
And then he wished he’d phrased the answer differently. Taken it back. Found other words.
Harry’s face went white as the snow. “It’s not—how can you say that I’d—I told you it wasn’t, I’d never—”
“Not like that!” He grabbed the closest big forlorn hand. Squeezed. “Not on purpose. I know. But it’s you anyway. It’s hungry. I mean the elemental. And you’re a cornucopia.”
Harry, who might’ve argued this metaphor, did not. Trusted Kit, instead. Hand squeezing back belatedly. “Oh gods. I hadn’t thought…I hadn’t ever thought…”
“Magic. Life. The way you keep fixing everything. Fairleigh hasn’t had a bad year in, what, twenty-five years? You’ve been pouring power into the estate. The land. The people. It’s a feast.”
“Twenty-six years,” Harry breathed. “Since I was conceived…Mother used to say I’d been a spring blessing. She’d laugh when she said it. Not in a particularly nice way. I knew I was useful. What can we do?”
“Right now?” He glanced around. The fire had dwindled, banked; the snow loomed behind thick brocade draperies, smirking in cracks between folds. “From here? I have an idea. With what you can do, what I can do—I said we could persuade it, before. To leave.”
“But it might come back. Or another one might turn up.” Harry bit a lip. “If it’s me…if I’m a beacon…why now? Why not years ago?”
“You’d have to ask a magical zoologist. I’m a PD constable. Hardly my area of expertise.” He relented, though, because Harry was looking distressed. And because, damn it, this wasn’t his area, but he rather liked that. Not a criminal case, not a story of human malice or vengeance or misjudgment. A challenge. A puzzle. “I’d guess it took years to build up enough of a reservoir to be noticed. And maybe it was just chance, then. Something wandering by, deciding you felt tasty…”
Harry, despite everything, raised eyebrows at him in amusement.
“How did I ever think you were innocent,” Kit said, and tapped his hand against the closest hip, not hard, though Harry made an obliging sort of sound and shifted into the light impact. “If you can help I think we can do something about this one, for now, at least.”
“Of course.” Harry sat up, naked and freckled and determined; in the low gleaming light he might’ve been a prince, a leader of men, strong and young and fair. He was everything Kit had never been; those diamond fractures twisted, but the ache was kind, because at least Kit could offer him this. An answer, a gift, a solution. “I’m perfectly fine, now. What do you need me to do?”
Chapter 10
Kit did not in fact have a precise plan. But he did have the shape of one, and good instincts.
He thought for a moment of feet across rooftops, of chases and perilous ledges, of disguises in a ballroom and of the swirling multihued pool of his own abilities: the way he could rea
ch out and touch someone and drink them in, soak them up, know everything he needed to know, and come back with a stunning resolution, a remarkable ending to a case, a triumph.
He’d forgotten, in the social whirl of insipid compliments and fleeting praise, how much damned fun that could be.
He folded legs under himself. Took both of Harry’s hands, because this was serious, even as he wanted to grin. “Only if you’re up to it. I won’t ask you again if you say yes now, but be honest with me.”
Harry’s eyes were true and sure as oceans. “I’m fine. I promise. Tell me what to do. Er…more.”
“Brat. How good are you at projection? I’m not.”
“Um…decent, I think. I have to be, in order to reach out and make something else go right. You need me to push?”
“That, and…” He would’ve waved a hand, but he was holding Harry’s. “What you normally do. Finding the truest shape of the world. The land. The seasons. The elemental itself; it shouldn’t be here. It’s here for your magic reservoirs, but it should be in the otherworld. I want you to remind it of that.”
“I should be able to do that, if I’ve got an anchor on this end?”
“I know. Ready?”
“What, right now? Are you—I’m—I’m naked! So are you!”
“I like you naked,” Kit said, and meant more: I like being naked, in every way I never thought I would, with you. “Is that a problem for your magic?”
Harry stared at him, then laughed, a thoroughly jubilant sound. “Not at all. Ready when you are, then.”
“Now,” Kit told him, and the world became streamers of light.
The light billowed. Rippled. Iridesced. Flowed outward in immeasurable rivers and streams, a cacophony of colors, drenched in rainbows like an impossible sky.
Shapes and bridges glittered, outlined in gold; the racing plumes suggested buildings, bodies, motion, a world dreaming or moving or coiled into tense knots that needed unpicking or simply gladdened by attention. Harry Arden held out invisible hands to the universe as if greeting a friend; in the unreal pulse of empathic sight he looked like himself, all gold and blue, and his presence flickered merrily around the edges with scents of amber and vanilla and sandalwood, tempting as sex.