The Voyages of Trueblood Cay

by Suanne Laqueur

  “I had a few encounters within my charm. After a raid when we’d be on a sick adrenaline high and getting off fast and hard was the only way to come down.”

  “I see.”

  “Funny how I had rules about not getting intimate with the Finches, but they ended up being the only ones I had any kind of sexual contact with.” He smiled at his feet. “The rest of the time I’d take my frustration out on a tree.”

  “Always in kheiros though.”

  “Always.”

  “No one you let past your skin.”

  “No one like you.” The breath stuttered in Fen’s chest as he inhaled deep. “Man, I’m so fucking nervous.”

  “It’s all right, so am I.”

  “Look, I’m not sure how this is going to go.”

  “Fen—”

  “I want it. My body wants to take its skin off and let you close to me, but I’m not sure if my head is going to be onboard. My head might still be stuck behind a wall or even stuck in Arcodolori.”

  “Fen, I get it.”

  “Apologies in advance if I break down for no reason.”

  “You have ten thousand legitimate reasons to break down. I don’t want you to apologize for any of them.”

  “Tell my head.”

  “You had rules with your charm,” Trueblood said. “If you have rules now, anything off limits or out of the question, anything you don’t want me to do, you can tell me.”

  “Well.” Fen rubbed the back of his neck. “I was thinking we could start with everything and use process of elimination?”

  Trueblood had no idea how he was smiling this hard when his nerves were screaming this loud. Every emotion in the world was in his veins. His heart on the verge of exploding and they hadn’t even kissed. Four feet of space separated them yet it felt like Fen was in his soul.

  “What the fuck are you staring at?” Fen said, smiling back.

  “You. Breaking down.”

  “It’s what I do.”

  The kepten took a step closer. “All I want you to do is tell me things. All right? Don’t keep the breakdown in your head. The second we do something that doesn’t feel good, we stop. We do something else. Or we stop altogether. You’re not going to disappoint me.”

  Fen exhaled. “I think that’s what was scaring me the most.”

  “Disappointing me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You can’t. It’s impossible. It doesn’t matter if you’re not all right with sex. I only want you to be all right with me. Whatever else happens is…extra right.”

  Fen rubbed a hand over his face. “Gods, man, nothing’s going to happen if you keep telling me shit like this.”

  “I wanted to get the talking out of the way.”

  “You’re lucky that listening to you feels like making love.”

  “It’s all making love to me. All of it. If we lie down and go to sleep, it’ll feel like making love. If we stand here and stare at each other all night, it’s making love.”

  “If you throw a rock at my head, making love?”

  “If you shit on my feet, making love.”

  Their eyes held and they breathed together. One by one, Fen slid each of his rings off his fingers, collecting them in a palm.

  “This is what right now means to me,” he said, setting the bands on the dresser.

  His throat warm, Trueblood regarded the little pile of starsilver. For the kheiron to come to him bare-handed was an honor most men wouldn’t realize, let alone experience.

  I am not most men.

  “Right now,” he said. “This.”

  “Right now,” Fen said, holding out his empty hands. “Only this.”

  Trueblood’s mouth on Fen’s neck. His mouth on Fen’s heart. He put a knee down, then the other. His mouth on Fen’s stomach. Biting his sides as fingers pulled at the strings of Fen’s breeches. Light as birds, his fingertips danced at Fen’s waist.

  “What is this?” he whispered.

  “What is what?”

  Trueblood touched, then kissed the silvery line arcing down from Fen’s hipbones. “This. I love this. Does it have a name?”

  Fen drew in breath after shaking breath as Trueblood’s tongue drew along the border where man and horse met. “No,” he said.

  His laces were undone and his pants clung by a prayer. He could exhale them down. He held his breath and stood still, poised on the edge of letting Trueblood see him. Trueblood on his knees, face turned against Fen’s stomach. The coils of his hair soft and springy through Fen’s fingers.

  “This,” Fen whispered. “Does this have a name?”

  Trueblood’s eyes shone in the dark as he looked up. “What?”

  Fen opened his hands, encompassing the room, their bodies, their heaving chests.

  And Trueblood said, “This is gelang.”

  Trueblood’s hands. His mouth. His tongue. All dragging along Fen’s skin. Scraping his clothes off. Stripping him down. Laying him bare.

  “I need to know you’re all right,” he said, drawing Fen toward his bed. “We won’t do anything you don’t want.”

  Fen fell to his back, pulling Trueblood all along his body. “Am I yours?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I’m all right. And this is everything I want.”

  Under Trueblood’s hands, the plumage of Fen’s heart went from red to gold. Damned to righteous. Trueblood delivered and brought his soul. He stopped when Fen said to. Started when Fen could breathe again. All through the night, his bold, unapologetic passion stayed careful and attentive, taking all the time in the world to do whatever Fen wanted.

  “Just this is enough,” he kept saying. “Whatever you want is enough for me.”

  “I want more,” Fen said.

  Trueblood had the utter patience of an expert trainer gentling a nervous colt. His constant stream of reassurance wound around Fen’s anxiety like a silk scarf, smoothing out all his rough edges, until the kheiron couldn’t remember what he’d ever been worried about or why.

  “You’re so fucking beautiful,” Trueblood said, kissing along the humos-equos boundary. “I’ve been out of my godsdamned mind thinking about you in my bed. You have no idea…”

  Fen had all the ideas tonight. His hands full of the mariner’s plaits, his back bent like a bow, heels digging down and hips pushing up into the wet heat of Trueblood’s mouth.

  “Gods, Pé.” Fen’s voice bounced off the ceiling, then careened off each wall before toppling beside him on the tangled covers again.

  “All right?” the mariner said softly.

  “Everything right. Don’t you fucking stop.”

  Trueblood reached long for a little vial on his nightstand. His grip on Fen turned slick and slippery. Slowly he took Fen apart, opened him up, unfolded him like a love note with endless pages. Story after story told. Layer after layer of skin shed. All the laughing curses and growling praise and murmured encouragement coaxed Fen to bigger acts and braver deeds. The kheiron was steeled with desire and limp with trust when he fell to his back and pulled Trueblood onto him. “Come in me now.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I am nothing but sure.” His hands drew Trueblood’s head down and he whispered in his mouth, “It’s you and I want it. I want this, Pé. I want it from you. Nobody else.”

  Trueblood drew back tall, gathering up Fen’s knees on his forearms. A shiver ran down the length of his body as he slowly pushed inside.

  Time closed its eyes and held its breath.

  Each lover gasped the other’s name.

  The mattress swelled like a wave as Trueblood fell on his hands. The crown of his damp head curled into Fen’s shoulder, mouth open in a wordless groan, teeth closing on Fen’s fingertips.

  “Right now,” he whispered. “This.”

  Then Fen’s mouth
filled with Trueblood. Kisses like the sea, watery and liquid and deep. His knee curled around Trueblood’s waist, a heel grabbing the opposite hip. He pulled hard, pinning the kepten into him, unable to get him close enough.

  “Right now. Only this.”

  “Look at me,” Trueblood said, holding Fen’s head in his big hands. “Look at me the whole time. Look at me when you come.”

  It hit them fast. Fen flung himself over the edge and Trueblood dove after him. The kepten poured into the kheiron, who came back hard, starsilver colliding against giantsblood. Hands clenched numb, eyes still locked but no longer seeing anything.

  Trueblood held him afterward, wrapped around Fen’s back, arms crossed tight.

  “Valentos, I love you,” he said.

  Fen couldn’t speak. To lie here naked and unafraid, to feel a man against his back in a way that was nothing but beautiful and caring and careful, was beyond any words.

  I’m free, he thought over and over. I’m stone-less and bare-handed and I am finally, finally free.

  “Tell me what you feel,” Trueblood said. “I need to know you’re all right.”

  “I’m so all right,” Fen said. “I’ll tell you when it’s not.”

  “Promise me.”

  “I promise.”

  Trueblood got up to get them water. He stumbled a little, and had to pause with his hand on the wall, taking slow breaths, but his smile was a beautiful thing.

  “One of us is bleeding,” Fen said, running a hand through the rumpled sheets and finding tiny streaks of red.

  They lifted limbs and craned over shoulders. “It’s me,” Trueblood said. A healing scar on his side had torn open a little. Fen shaved off a bit of kyrrh and pressed it to the raw edges. Trueblood lay down again and wrapped Fen’s arms around him like a cape.

  “I can feel your heart beating on my back,” he said.

  “My heart is feeling so many things.”

  “Tell me one.”

  “I want to be with you. Wherever you go the rest of your life, I want to be somewhere near.”

  “I want that, too.”

  “Can it work?”

  “We’ll make it work.”

  Fen gathered up a handful of the mariner’s plaits and held them to his face. “What about our heirs?”

  Trueblood glanced back, chuckling. “Is this a biological question?”

  Fen lightly smashed his palm against the laughter. “Dynastic, you moron.”

  “Talk to me. What are you thinking?”

  “That I love you but we both have certain…procreative obligations and godsdammit, Pé, stop laughing.”

  “I’m not laughing at you, I just smiled.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Yes, I know what you mean. One of these days, both of us are going to father children. We won’t pretend it’s not going to happen. At least, I won’t.”

  “I won’t either but will it bother you?”

  “You mean will I be jealous if you have sex with a pegaso?”

  “Well, when you put it that way…”

  “I have no idea. If it happens, I’ll talk about it. All right? We can do anything as long as we’re honest with each other.”

  “All right. I know I’m being stupid—”

  “You’re not.”

  “—But I’ve never felt like this. Never in my life. This is more feeling than I ever had in my life.”

  “Me too.” Trueblood held Fen’s head, smoothing a thumb over his bottom lip. “My heart’s pounding right now and I’m so in love with you, I can barely contemplate being with anyone else. For any purpose.”

  “You have more of me than anyone else ever has.”

  “I know. I’ll be really careful with it.”

  “Promise?”

  Trueblood held his lips against Fen’s, breathing. “It’s safe with me. All of it.”

  His skin burned under Fen’s hands, but not with desire. His teeth chattered within their kiss.

  “Damn, kheiron, you made me come so hard I spiked a fever.”

  “You’re welcome,” Fen said. Then he got up and went out to the hearth to heat up the kettle and find a mug.

  So this is what it’s like, he thought, pouring hot water over a flake of kyrrh, stirring in honey and taking it back to bed.

  Our bed. I’m part of an us now.

  We are gelang.

  At hand to offer his lover a cup of what he needed. Then lying down together, scooping up the covers and tucking them in tight around their naked bodies.

  “Rest now,” he said, his fingertips gently closing Trueblood’s eyes. “You’re tired.”

  “If I sleep, I’ll miss you.”

  “I’m right here. I’ll be at hand.”

  They slept quickly and dreamlessly. Woke in the night again, hard and hungry.

  “Again,” one pleaded.

  “More,” the other demanded.

  “Don’t stop,” they promised.

  The kepten’s room was full of heat. Steam curled from the walls, redolent with sex and spice. Through the night, the flame of the mariner and the finch burned, burned, burned.

  “Again.”

  “Come to me.”

  “This.”

  “Tell me its name.”

  “Show me it’s yours.”

  “Valentos.”

  “Gelangos.”

  Trueblood took the ship’s wheel an hour the next morning, still following the course set by the pegasos. He passed the helm to Raj, then walked the Kaleuche from top to bottom, bow to stern. He stopped to talk to everyone. Or listen. He praised jobs well done. Pointed out the things allowed to slip and firmly demanded they be put back to rights. He spent the most time with the carpenters. Misery had done significant damage to the port hull and while the temporary repairs were sound, they weren’t made of wood from Nye trees. They’d have to be watched carefully.

  Calvo needed Trueblood’s ear next. The food provisions were starting to dwindle. Without Seven’s guidance, the galley cooks were being a little too lavish at mealtimes. Some belt-tightening would have to be done. If it didn’t rain soon, they might have to ration water. Something else to watch carefully.

  Everyone needed a piece of him and he took the time to give his full attention, even as his thoughts kept wandering off to Fen. Trueblood wanted him. Again. Right now.

  Soon. Tonight. He’s with me now. We’re together and it can wait.

  He almost couldn’t bear sitting through the evening story hour. The minoros fought for the floor space at his feet, crowded the back of the sofa to lean on his shoulders. Their love was a blanket, but Fen’s gaze kept snagging on his and flooding him with impatient heat.

  I can’t wait to get you alone in bed, the ukhor-blue stare said.

  We won’t even make it to the bed, Trueblood replied with his eyes.

  Sighing, he crossed one knee over the other. Fen looked away, the color up high in his face.

  When the minoros finally—finally—said goodnight and left the aftercastle, Fen went with them. A few of the young ones were still processing everything that happened. Lejo had his hands full with silent anxiety, out-loud homesickness and a lot of night terrors. Fen tried to help with some extra time and reassurances. It was work he did best.

  Trueblood wrote in his journal. He was several entries behind.

  One by one, his majoros and his maristos said goodnight. The ship downshifted into quiet. Trueblood marked his place with Fen’s feather, blew out the lamp in his study and went into the bedroom.

  Fen wasn’t there.

  For a moment, the kepten didn’t know what to think, then a smile pulled his mouth sideways.

  Oh, I see. The game is on again.

  He was tired though. And Fen should know. Odd that he’d throw the old hide-an
d-seek gauntlet on this first day, at this hour. More than odd. A little thoughtless.

  The smile inverted to a frown. Where was he?

  Doesn’t he want me?

  He batted the thought away like a fly, but it buzzed around, worrying at him as he left the aftercastle. He looked in a few of Fen’s old hideouts on the main and halfdeck, but the thrill of the search stopped there. He went below another level and stood for a lost moment in the corridor, outside Fen’s old cabin door.

  Were you about to invite me?

  He touched fingertips to the door, then pushed it open.

  The lamp was out and Fen was in bed. Lying on his stomach, covers pulled high and face turned to the wall.

  Bewildered, Trueblood crept in and knelt down.

  “Héjo,” he whispered.

  The kheiron’s back rose and fell in long breaths.

  “Fen.”

  “Mm?”

  Trueblood slid a hand into the white hair, rubbing the soft skin behind Fen’s ear. “What are you doing here?”

  “Sleeping.”

  “I want you to sleep in my bed.”

  “I know.”

  Trueblood leaned elbows on the mattress and stretched to look over Fen’s far shoulder. “So why are you here?”

  Fen’s eyes opened. “Because I like when you look for me.”

  Fen barely recognized his gentle hands that night. Couldn’t believe such tender ardor wrapped in this kind of volcanic passion was anything he was capable of. It came bubbling out of him in words without beginning or end.

  “I want to be with you,” he whispered against Trueblood’s smile. “When I’m with you, I know who I am.”

  “You’re mine.”

  “I want to be where you are and I want us to be together.”

  “It’s done. You don’t have to want that. You have it.” Trueblood rolled on his stomach, hands sliding through the tangle of bedclothes. “Now have me.”

  Fen moved against him, careful of the healing cuts on his back. The cool, piney scent of kyrrh shivered up from his skin.

  “Hurt?” Fen whispered.

  “No.”

  “Good?”

  “Mmhm.”