The Scholar's Heart (Chronicles of Tournai Book 3)

by Antonia Aquilante

  “Etan.”

  He thought he imagined the voice at first, but the tone was sharp and the voice all too familiar. Looking up from his book, he found he was no longer alone. Tristan stood in the doorway to his little room watching him, and for an instant, Etan felt as if time fell away, bringing him back to before. Then the present snapped into place again. “Tristan.”

  “Didn’t you hear me? I was calling your name.”

  Tristan’s impatience surprised Etan; he didn’t remember Tristan being so sharp at something so minor. But for quite a while now, he’d been questioning much of what he thought he knew about Tristan. “I apologize. I didn’t. I was reading.”

  His overly polite tone, the one he used to keep his irritation in check, only seemed to annoy Tristan further. “You can’t hear when you’re reading?”

  Why should he explain the way he focused while he read? The way he got lost in the words, in the history, in the story, and didn’t notice anything around him, anything outside the book. No, Tristan’s inexplicable irritation with him only brought his own frustration crashing back despite the calm that had descended while he read. He carefully closed the book, set it on the table, and rose. “What are you doing here?”

  Tristan stared at him a moment, his fists clenching. “Why were you looking at me like that last night?”

  “Like what?”

  “You’re going to pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about? Really?”

  Yes, yes he was. Because he was not going to have this conversation with Tristan, especially when he didn’t have a good explanation for his behavior—no explanation at all except the truth, and the truth was not something he could tell Tristan. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Tristan huffed. “Last night, at the Hidden Cat, you looked at me and you were so angry.”

  “You’re mistaken.”

  “I’m not mistaken. I saw how you looked at me.” Tristan stalked up to him. “And I want to know why.”

  “Not everything is about you.”

  “You were sitting at a table surrounded by laughing people, and you looked at me with fury in your eyes. Why?”

  “Leave it, Tristan.”

  “No. Why?”

  He forced down his irritation when he saw Tristan’s fists were still clenched. “Why are you angry with me?”

  “Because of the way you looked at me. I don’t understand it. I don’t know what I did.”

  “Just leave it, Tristan. It doesn’t matter. It had nothing to do with you.”

  “But you were looking at me.”

  Was it just because Etan was irritated that the whole argument seemed ridiculous and childish? “I cannot possibly be the only person who’s ever looked at you.”

  Tristan’s face contorted with anger. “Don’t be ridiculous. Don’t try to be funny. I want answers, Etan, and I came here to get them. Now tell me—”

  “Who was he?” Etan kicked himself for asking the instant the words were out of his mouth. He wished he could take them back.

  Tristan floundered for a moment. “Who was who?”

  “Never mind.”

  “No, don’t stop now. Who?”

  Etan swallowed back a sigh, but Tristan’s belligerent tone goaded him. And, though it made him crazy, he had to know. “The man you were with last night. The one you left with.”

  Tristan rocked back and shook his head, as confusion and surprise mingled in his eyes. “No one, a friend from university.”

  “A friend?” He knew his words dripped skepticism, but he almost didn’t care.

  “Yes, a friend,” Tristan said. His voice was firm, but something skittish, something less certain, had his gaze darting away from Etan. Etan wasn’t sure what it meant, but it fed his annoyance, made him push.

  “Looked like more than just a friend. What with the way he was hanging off of you, and the hurry he seemed to be in to get you out of there.”

  Tristan face went red. Embarrassment or anger or both, Etan didn’t know. He didn’t know if he cared at this point either. “I can’t see what concern it is of yours what Leo is to me. I don’t know why you’re even asking me.”

  Etan felt something snap inside himself at Tristan’s rising voice. “I shouldn’t be asking, you’re right. But you want to know why I’m asking you? This is why.”

  Against all of his better judgment, which was screaming at him unheeded from some small part of his mind, he grabbed Tristan, pulled him close, and kissed him.

  The kiss was rough—passionate but rough and almost violent. All lips and teeth and grasping hands. Not at all how Etan usually kissed or liked to be kissed. Not at all how he’d envisioned a first kiss with Tristan to be, back when he’d imagined such things, before he put aside the possibility of anything between them. A shame, since this kiss was likely to be their only one. But he couldn’t change it now. All his anger and frustration, his thwarted passion and hurt, every feeling that had accumulated over years of loving Tristan and grieving what might have been, was being poured out into the kiss, and Etan was helpless to stop it.

  Tristan froze in his arms.

  And finally Etan was able to stop, to wrench himself away from Tristan, just as Tristan’s hands came up to Etan’s chest. They fell back to Tristan’s sides when Etan stepped back, putting much needed distance between them as he dragged in a gasping breath. Etan made himself look at Tristan. His eyes were wide with shock, his lips kiss-swollen and parted. Etan was horrified. And his horror at himself, at what he’d done, drowned out every other emotion he’d felt that morning.

  “Wha-what was that?” Tristan finally stuttered out.

  “I apologize. That was a mistake,” Etan said firmly and turned back to the table, looking down at his books and notes in their organized piles. He needed to do something with them; he needed to work. But he couldn’t with Tristan standing there watching him. “I have work. You need to leave now.”

  “You’re throwing me out? After you kissed me like that, you’re throwing me out?”

  “I have work I must finish this morning.” He fought to keep his voice even. “So I’m asking you to leave.”

  “Well, I’m not leaving, not until you explain to me exactly what happened here.”

  “I told you it was a mistake.” How could he even hope to explain what happened so it made sense to Tristan when it didn’t make sense to Etan? He couldn’t. He didn’t want to try. “If you’re not going to go, then I will.”

  He gathered books and papers at random into a messy pile he lifted in his arms. Doubtful he had anything he needed to make any kind of progress, and his grab for books had only left the table in disarray. He would have to reorganize everything when he returned. Normally that would annoy him, but he just wanted to leave.

  He brushed past a staring Tristan and strode for the door, making it through and into the larger reading room outside before Tristan called after him. He heard Tristan following, footsteps loud in the silence of the library, but Etan didn’t stop. He didn’t even answer.

  A hand on his arm jerked him around, and books and papers spilled from his hands, tumbling to the floor. He cursed and crouched to gather them up again, tempted for a moment to leave them and continue on, but that stank of running away to Etan. And while he’d been leaving, he didn’t want to run away, not really, not that way.

  Tristan sank to the floor to help him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you drop everything.”

  “I know.”

  “But, Etan, I don’t understand. You kissed me.”

  “I did, yes. It was a mistake. I apologize.”

  Tristan grabbed his wrist as he reached for a sheet of paper that had slid farther away on the polished floor. “I don’t want your apologies. I want to know why you did it.”

  The demand, the edge in Tristan’s voice, made Etan inexplicably angry. “Why I kissed you? Why do you think?”

  Tristan blinked bright blue eyes once, then again, at his harshly spoken question. Etan had
loved those eyes, loved how bright everything about Tristan seemed to be. Now, looking at them just hurt. He turned away, back to collecting the scattered papers while Tristan stared silently.

  “You wanted to kiss me? Since when? How long have you wanted to….”

  How long had he wanted to kiss Tristan? How long since he’d had to put aside his hope for anything, even a kiss? “Kiss you? Since the moment we met.”

  When silence greeted his statement, he glanced up to find Tristan staring at him, perhaps more dumbfounded than he had been just a moment ago. “Since the moment we met,” Tristan repeated slowly. Tristan stared at him for what felt like a long time and then shook his head. “Why didn’t you, then? Not right at that moment—you know what I mean.”

  Etan thought he did. Why not kiss him, why not bed him, when they first met? But that wasn’t Etan, and he thought Tristan understood that about him. He didn’t want to explain any of this now, not when there wasn’t anything between them anymore. “I don’t do that, Tristan. Then we became closer, knew each other more, but you were in love with Amory. And then you were married. It’s different now.”

  Tristan opened and closed his mouth several times before he spoke again. Whatever anger had brought him to Etan that day seemed to have been pushed aside by the surprise. “Yes, everything is different now. I’m not married. I’m not in love with Amory. Kissing me wasn’t a mistake.”

  “It was.” Etan took a book from Tristan’s hands and added it to the pile in his own arms before rising. “And it won’t be repeated.”

  Tristan rose from his crouch as well, putting him back on eye level with Etan as they were of a height. “Why not? I think I’d like to repeat it.”

  “No.” He shook his head, but Tristan paid him no mind.

  “I don’t see why not.” Tristan grabbed the books and papers in his arms, pulling at them. Etan didn’t want to let them go, but he wanted even less to get into a childish tug of war so he released them into Tristan’s hands. Tristan grunted when he took the weight of the heavy books but only turned and set them on the nearest table. “You kissed me once. You seemed to enjoy kissing me. I’m sure you’d enjoy it again. I’m sure you’d enjoy doing more than kissing me. I’m sure I would too.”

  He probably would. The kiss had proven that his attraction to Tristan was still alive and well, and that his hurt was too, despite his thinking it had faded. Going to bed with Tristan for a quick, meaningless tumble would not be anything other than a mistake, a bigger one than the kiss had been. “And what about your friend from last night?”

  “What about him?”

  Tristan’s honest cluelessness hit Etan like a blow. “You went to bed with him last night. What would he think of your propositioning me to do the same?”

  “Oh.” Tristan laughed. “He really is just a friend, and barely that. Last night with him meant nothing more than an enjoyable evening for the both of us. He doesn’t care if I’m with someone else, same as I don’t care if he’s with someone else. We’ve only been together that way a few times anyway.”

  Tristan’s statement, the implication that there had been many men, his friend from last night—and perhaps Griffen as well?—just one of them, felt like another blow coming on top of the last. He didn’t judge Tristan for his casual attitude toward affairs. There was nothing wrong with it. It was Tristan’s decision and absolutely none of Etan’s concern. Etan didn’t share that attitude, but again, what Etan would do didn’t matter. What hurt was the thought that Tristan was grouping Etan in with those other men, that if they did as Tristan wanted that was all it would be, all it would ever be. Etan hated that it hurt because he saw again that he wasn’t over the pain of knowing there was nothing more between him and Tristan. That Tristan hadn’t wanted more then and only wanted to go to bed with him now.

  It wasn’t a good idea, for his own sanity.

  “Be that as it may—”

  He was cut off when Tristan’s lips crashed against his. His gasp allowed Tristan’s tongue to slide inside his mouth, to explore and conquer. Etan brought his hands up to Tristan’s shoulders, but even as he did, he wasn’t certain if he was doing it to push Tristan away—he should push him away, he should—or pull him closer. A bad idea to pull Tristan close, a bad idea to let this go any further. But with Tristan’s firm body finally pressed against his, Tristan’s mouth devouring his own, he struggled to remember why. When his body, which had craved this exact thing for so long, wanted to stay right where it was and never give this up, it was almost painful to tell himself to end it.

  Tristan’s hands moved over his shoulders, his back, exploring. His lips left Etan’s to nibble at his ear, his neck. “Etan,” he gasped before diving back into a kiss, his hands skimming lower and clutching at Etan’s backside.

  Something snapped inside Etan. He cursed into the kiss and wrapped his arms around Tristan, hands digging into Tristan’s back, dragging him even closer until their bodies were plastered together. Tristan groaned and writhed against him, each sound, each movement setting off fires inside Etan. His common sense made one last protest. Bad idea, it said.

  Tristan scrabbled at the fastenings of Etan’s clothing, and even that last weak protest was drowned out in the raging fire of need blazing through Etan’s body. He held on to enough sense to catch Tristan’s hands in his and stop Tristan from stripping them both naked in the middle of the lesser reading room of the royal library. “Wait.”

  “No.” Tristan tried to squirm free of his hold, to get his hands back on Etan.

  “Not here. We can’t do this here.”

  Tristan blinked and glanced around. “Oh, of course. Anyone could come in. We’re in public here.”

  That wasn’t why Etan had stopped them, but it was a good reason, and he let Tristan believe it. Better than telling Tristan he didn’t want them to do this, make what would probably turn into a memory Etan would regret, in the place he felt most comfortable. “This way.”

  He dragged Tristan behind him by the hand, Tristan stumbling as Etan changed direction away from the doors that would take them toward the library’s only exit. Only exit that most knew of, that was. He pulled Tristan into a small, windowless room crammed floor to ceiling with books and went directly to the far corner. He reached under the third shelf and fumbled for a moment, his fingers, usually so practiced, made clumsy as Tristan pressed against his side, letting Etan feel the heat of his body against his own.

  He cursed again, but his fingers finally found the catch. He stepped back, pulling Tristan with him, as the entire bookcase swung out at them. Which was enough to make Tristan pause, at least for a moment.

  “What is this?” Tristan stepped forward, peering inside the opening and jumping when lights came on inside. “Is it a secret passage?”

  “I suppose you could call it that.” He crowded Tristan inside and pulled the door shut behind them. From the inside, the door looked like a stone wall with a mosaic set in the center, the pattern denoting where the door let out and also holding the key to unlocking it in a clever bit of magic. He knew where all the passages in the palace went and where all the doors were—a necessity after he’d managed to get himself lost inside them as a small child. “There are corridors like this that run all over the palace.”

  “For the servants?”

  “No. There are back corridors they use. These are something different, and yes, secret.”

  “Incredible.” Tristan looked around in delight, taking in what he could in the soft white light provided by the glass globes set in sconces hanging at intervals along the walls. The globes magically lit when someone entered the corridor and went out again as the person moved away.

  Just as Etan wondered if Tristan had forgotten their purpose for being in the corridor in his fascination with the new discovery, Tristan turned back to him and pushed close for another searing kiss. “You can show me more of it later. Let’s get going now.”

  Etan hesitated. He’d brought Tristan here because the corridor
would lead them back to his suite far more quickly and with much less chance of being seen or stopped, but suddenly he didn’t want to do this with Tristan in his bed either. He didn’t want the memory of being with Tristan there every time he tried to sleep. Knowing that, he should’ve called the whole thing off, but with Tristan pressed against him, lips against his neck, he couldn’t.

  Grabbing Tristan, Etan pushed him up against the wall and followed, pressing them together again. He attacked Tristan’s mouth with lips and teeth and tongue in a kiss that astonished him.

  “Etan. What?” Tristan gasped. “We need to—”

  “No. Here,” he said and took Tristan’s mouth again before he could protest, before he could say anything. But Tristan didn’t argue. With no hesitation, he threw himself into it, meeting Etan with as much passion as he poured into the kiss, and Etan let everything go. They kissed frantically, as if trying to consume each other, clutching each other as if they might be torn apart at any moment. Etan indulged himself, exploring as much as he could reach of Tristan’s leanly muscled body through his clothes, enjoying Tristan’s gasps and moans as he did. Enjoying more the feel of Tristan’s strong hands doing the same to him.

  They fumbled with belts and buttons and fastenings, pushing just enough clothing out of the way so they could skate fingertips over naked chests, grasp greedily at bare skin, and free hard members. Tristan took them both in hand in a firm grip.

  “Yes,” Etan whispered, encouraging him on. Groaning when Tristan moved his hand, setting up a hard rhythm that goaded them on toward release, pushing them mercilessly, relentlessly. It was a race, had been from the first insane moment, and it wasn’t going to change at this late point. Etan almost wanted to slow down so he could savor being with Tristan, the only time he would, but he pushed the thought aside ruthlessly. No need to savor this, it was to be nothing more than a physical release between two people who had been—still were?—friends.