“It makes no sense. They’re not our parents.” Griffen flinched as soon as the words were out of his mouth and then took a gulp of plaire. Neither of them wanted to think of how their parents had never had the chance to press them about marriage. Bastien wondered if their father would have, or if he’d have let Bastien choose in his own time. He’d never know. But he suddenly missed his father fiercely, even as guilt gnawed at him.
He shook off his emotions as much as possible. “No, they’re not, but maybe that’s the point.”
“What do you mean?”
“Our parents are gone. Maybe they just want to step in and help us.” Bastien wasn’t sure he believed his own theory, but what other reason could there be? That his uncle and aunt were trying to push for their daughters’ welfare? Also possible, he supposed.
Griffen rubbed a hand over his face in a gesture eerily similar to Bastien’s. “I suppose. But I’d expect them to focus on Ligeia. She’s coming to that age.”
Bastien felt another weight pushing down on him. Ligeia was at the age when marriage became a serious consideration. He’d have to start thinking about a match for her, and it wouldn’t be easy with their having been so isolated for so long. That she was an earl’s daughter and the prince’s cousin was all she had to recommend her, and he hated the idea that someone would only want her for that. They should have spent more time in Jumelle, but there had been—and still was—so much to do at Ardesia.
“That would have made more sense. Even then, the correct way would have been for Aunt Evadne to offer to help her meet people. Anything else would have been overstepping. What they did was overstepping.”
Griffen stared at him, as if accessing his words for a long moment before nodding. He looked down at his glass and then lifted it to drain the remaining liquid. He crossed the room to the decanter and refilled his glass. “Do you want another drink?”
Bastien considered for a moment. He nearly said yes, but more plaire wouldn’t help. “No. I’m going out.”
Griffen’s eyes went wide. Really, how was he effective in foreign affairs when everything he felt was so clearly written across his face? “You’re going out? Now? You?”
“Yes,” Bastien snapped, more sharply than he meant to. Griffen’s disbelief wasn’t misplaced, but tonight Bastien couldn’t stay under this roof and think about all that had happened. He repeated, more quietly, “Yes, I am.”
“Where are you going? It’s late.”
“Just out. I’ll go by a friend’s, perhaps.”
“A friend?” Griffen tilted his head to the side as he contemplated Bastien, the scrutiny enough to make him want to squirm. “Master Corentin?”
“What?”
“I saw Etan today, and he mentioned he’d seen the two of you having lunch together. He seemed surprised you knew each other.”
Whether Griffen was surprised or suspicious or anything else was, for once, impossible to determine.
“We’ve become…friends.” His hopes that Griffen might have missed his brief hesitation were dashed by the sharpening in his brother’s gaze.
But when Griffen spoke, he said nothing about it. “That’s good. I don’t know him myself, but Etan thinks highly of him as a scholar, and he helped the guard find Tristan’s daughter when she was kidnapped earlier this year.”
“That’s right. Flavian mentioned it at the wedding.” No one had explained what Corentin had actually done, though. “Good of him.”
“Yes. It was an awful time. I’m glad he was able to help.”
“Yes.”
“Well. Have a good evening, Bastien,” Griffen said. “Try to distract yourself from all this. Enjoy yourself for a change.”
Bastien narrowed his eyes at Griffen. What was his brother implying? “And you try to calm down. Try not to drink too much either.”
“A few drinks are what’s going to calm me down tonight,” Griffen replied, raising his glass to Bastien in a mocking little toast.
“Don’t ask for sympathy tomorrow, then. I’ll only tell you it’s your own fault when you have a sore head in the morning.”
Griffen let out a short bark of laughter. “I know you will. Wouldn’t expect anything else.”
A few moments later, Bastien had thrown on his cloak against the chill and was out on the street. He chose to walk to the university quarter where Corentin’s lodgings were. Corentin had given him the address earlier after they’d agreed to meet tomorrow night. Bastien hoped Corentin wouldn’t be too put out at Bastien appearing at his door a night early.
What would he do if Corentin wasn’t at home, or was but wasn’t alone? That possibility was almost enough to make him turn around and return home, but the possibility that Corentin would open his door and invite Bastien in kept him walking. He couldn’t go back home. He would only spend the whole night vacillating between anger and guilt.
His aunt and uncle had overstepped in their push to see him—and Griffen—wed to one of their daughters. Bastien was the head of the family, not his uncle, so for Uncle Ormand and Aunt Evadne to push so hard, to presume to lecture him, was far beyond what was appropriate. Perhaps they’d done it out of concern, but he was having a difficult time getting over the way it had been done. It would have been far more appropriate, if they really felt the need to say something, to do so in private. And insinuating he should marry his cousin was just bizarre. He wanted to forget all about it, or pretend he’d misunderstood. Anything to quiet the simmering anger. He didn’t want to be angry at family; he didn’t want to have to say anything to his uncle about it, even though he’d have to.
Bastien’s gut churned with a swirling mess of guilt and anger. He was twenty-six years old and the earl; he should be married and producing heirs. Ligeia was sixteen, and he should have been thinking of her future long before now. And he needed to think of his own. But he wasn’t ready yet, not for himself. Duty and desire warred within him, even as he walked closer to a meeting with a man who was not what he needed as earl.
But was Corentin what Bastien needed as a man?
He pushed the thought aside even as he pushed down the sick mix of emotions inside him. He found Corentin’s rooming house easily despite its location in the twisty streets of the university quarter. It was on a narrow lane, which was well lit and lined with similar stone buildings crowded close together. Despite their proximity, all the buildings were well kept and well built, and the location was a good one. The university quarter was one of the nicer areas in Jumelle, if not as rich as the quarters where the nobility and wealthy resided.
A knock on the door brought the landlady almost immediately despite the hour. Once she heard who he was and who he was there to see, she admitted him to the house and invited him to follow her up to Corentin’s lodgings. She led him through the small entry hall and up the stairs to the third floor. He studied his surroundings as they walked. The house was as well maintained on the inside as it was on the outside. Clean, in good repair, and surprisingly cozy. A carpet runner muffled their footsteps on the stairs and the hallway floors, something he assumed the residents appreciated.
The landlady stopped at a door and knocked sharply. “Master Corentin?” she called, just loud enough to be heard through the door but not so loud as to rouse any of the other boarders who might be already in their beds. “You have a visitor.”
Very little time passed, but it felt like hours to Bastien as he waited for Corentin to either invite him in or send him on his way, back to his house and his thoughts. He didn’t want to go back to his thoughts. Finally, the door opened, and Corentin appeared. “A visitor?” Corentin’s gaze lit on him. “Bastien?”
“I’ll leave you,” the landlady said. Had Bastien gotten her name? He didn’t think so.
“Thank you for showing me up,” Bastien said.
“Your welcome, your lordship,” she said with a bob of her head. Corentin thanked her as well and wished her a good night. They watched her walk back down the corridor and disappear down the stairs.
Only then did Corentin turn back to Bastien.
“Bastien,” he said again. “What are you doing here?”
“May I come in? Unless you’re occupied, of course.” Bastien fervently hoped that wouldn’t be the case. Surely Corentin had to know why he’d come.
“No, no, come in. Please.” Corentin stepped back and admitted Bastien to a tiny sitting room before closing the door. The fire and overstuffed furniture made it cozy, though they would trip over each other if they moved. “Here, let me take your cloak. I didn’t expect you tonight. You said you had a family dinner to attend.” Corentin’s eyebrows rose when Bastien removed his cloak and passed it into his waiting hands. “You’re dressed quite formally to visit me.”
Bastien glanced down at the finery he was still wearing. Perhaps he should have changed, but he hadn’t wanted to take the time when he needed to leave the house and his thoughts behind. “The dinner was a formal one.”
“Ah.” Corentin said nothing else, only turned and hung the cloak on a hook by the door beside his own. Bastien finally noticed that Corentin was dressed for bed in a deep red, plush dressing gown over what appeared to be a thin sleep shirt and pants, his feet in brown slippers.
“I didn’t wake you, did I?” He assumed not. The sitting room was brightly lit with candles flickering on mantle, table, and sideboard, and what he assumed was the bedchamber, only visible through a half-open door across the room, seemed to be lit as well.
“No, I was reading.” Corentin smiled, the curve of lips almost devastating, though there was a flicker of something else in his violet eyes. “Come. Sit. Would you like a glass of wine?”
“That would be lovely. Thank you.” He didn’t sit, though. Just stood awkwardly in the center of the small room, at a loss for what to do.
Corentin was at his side again a moment later, handing him a glass of ruby-red wine. He guided him to the couch with a gentle touch, urging him to sit, and then took a seat beside him. Bastien allowed it, happy for the direction in his sudden uncertainty. Corentin waited for Bastien to sip the wine and hum approvingly. It was a good vintage. “I didn’t expect to see you tonight. Did something happen?”
He stared down into his glass. How to answer that…because yes, something had happened, but it wasn’t something monumental in the grand scheme of the world, only to Bastien himself. And he really didn’t want to think about it any longer. But he couldn’t deny the allegation that something was wrong. Was Bastien so transparent tonight? Or had Corentin come to know him that well? “Something happened, but I don’t want to talk about it.”
“What then?”
Bastien looked up into Corentin’s eyes. The concern there warmed him in an odd way, but it wasn’t what he wanted at the moment. “Distract me.”
Corentin watched him closely for a moment before his lips curved slowly once more. Bastien felt the force of it straight to his gut. “I take it you’re not looking for an engaging conversation.”
An intriguing shiver went through Bastien at the lower pitch of Corentin’s voice. “No, I’m not.”
“Good.”
Corentin took the glass from Bastien’s hand and set it down on the small table. He turned back immediately, took Bastien’s face in his hands, and kissed him. The hold was gentle, but the kiss was not. It seduced rather than teased, compelling Bastien to give in, to open for Corentin and sink into the kiss. Bastien groaned deep in his throat and surrendered, diving into it. He brought his hands up to Corentin’s chest, mapping the hard planes of the broad expanse through his thin shirt. Corentin made a little sound and slid one hand into Bastien’s hair and the other down his back, pulling him in closer.
But Bastien couldn’t get close enough, not as they were, sitting side by side on the small couch. He grunted in frustration and broke the kiss, shaking his head when Corentin began to speak. Bastien pushed Corentin against the cushions at the back of the couch and climbed into his lap, straddling him and plunging back into the kiss immediately. For all the movement could have been aggressive, it wasn’t. Bastien didn’t much care about controlling the kiss, wasn’t sure he felt like controlling anything at the moment. He only wanted closer. Closer and more and now.
Everything now.
Corentin’s hands swept over Bastien, rubbing over his shoulders, his back, down to cup his backside. All the while the kiss continued, spiraling out and out in dizzying circles, like the other kisses they’d shared but so much more. Bastien tried to burrow even closer and slipped his hands under Corentin’s shirt; he wanted to feel skin, craved the feel of skin. Everything was slipping away in his need for Corentin’s touch.
Corentin caught Bastien’s hands in his, stilling them, and broke the kiss.
Bastien shook his head, trying to clear it. “What…”
“Let’s go to the bedchamber. This couch is far too small for us both.”
It took a moment for the words to make sense, for them to filter through the haze of passion and desire that saturated Bastien’s mind. When he’d finally sorted them out, he nodded. “Yes.”
He climbed from Corentin’s lap, standing on shaky legs. Backing up a couple of steps to let Corentin stand, he nearly collided with the table. “I hope the bed is bigger,” he said in a surprisingly breathless voice. “Otherwise we’ll have a problem.”
“We’ll be just fine.” Corentin took Bastien’s hand and drew him forward, around the offending table and through the doorway into the bedchamber. The bed did look plenty large enough to accommodate both of them comfortably, especially since Bastien intended to stay very close to Corentin.
They stopped at the side of the bed, and Corentin reached for Bastien, for the fastenings of his clothing. Bastien let Corentin strip him of what he wore, sparing not one thought for the fine clothing as it hit the floor. He stretched up, kissing Corentin again, and opened his dressing gown. Corentin obligingly moved to allow him to push it from his shoulders but then immediately went back to his task. They continued that way, alternating kisses and caresses, separating only when necessary, and only as much as necessary, to remove each other’s clothing.
Finally they stood bare to each other in the firelight. Bastien didn’t think of his own nakedness, or what Corentin might think of him, and concentrated instead on the wonder before him. Corentin’s skin was smooth and coppery with only a dusting of dark hair along the breadth of his chest. He was powerful and strong, and Bastien shivered at the thought of being held against that body, held by that man.
He didn’t have to confine himself to imagination for more than a moment. Corentin reached for him, drawing him in until he was flush against his powerful body. The heat of Corentin stole his breath even before Corentin took his lips in a long deep kiss. Bastien filled his hands with as much of Corentin as he could reach, reveling in the feel of warm, surprisingly silky skin. He hadn’t realized he was so cold until Corentin eased him closer.
Corentin broke away only to pepper Bastien’s jaw and throat with light kisses before nuzzling into Bastien’s hair. The barely there touches created a wash of pleasure through Bastien. He let out a long breath and tried to get even closer.
“What do you need tonight?” Corentin asked in a rough whisper, and Bastien was glad he wasn’t the only one affected.
He attempted to gather his thoughts into some semblance of coherence, which was far more difficult than it should have been. “You. I need you. Need you inside me. Can we…”
“Yes.” Corentin released Bastien only long enough to turn back the blankets on the bed, but Bastien still felt the loss. Then Corentin was back, hands taking Bastien’s and urging him down onto the bed.
The sheets were chilly against Bastien’s skin, but he could feel the heat radiating from Corentin even before he tugged him close again. He shivered, as much from the sudden warmth as from the slow, deep kiss Corentin drew him into. He gave into his desire to touch more, and swept his hands over Corentin’s skin, mapping out the planes of his back, the dips of his spine, dragging his fing
ers up into his soft hair and burying them there.
Despite what Bastien had told him, Corentin seemed to want to take his time, and while Bastien wanted to protest, to make him hurry, his thoughts scattered more and more with every kiss and brush of Corentin’s hands over his skin. They lost themselves in kisses, in exploration of each other with hands and lips. Corentin murmured against his skin, words of praise and pleasure that whispered over Bastien. Heat suffused him from just Corentin’s breath across his skin, let alone the words he spoke.
He’d come here wanting distraction in passion—and he was certainly getting it—but he hadn’t expected the…care Corentin lavished on him in kisses and caresses, in endless moments of touch. He wanted to reciprocate, wanted to bring Corentin as much pleasure as he received, but he wasn’t sure he was managing it in the way he’d like under Corentin’s passionate—dare he say romantic—assault. Corentin seemed intent on making sure Bastien couldn’t string two thoughts together, and even that realization was almost too much to hold onto, skittering away entirely as Corentin dragged a feathery touch up the inside of Bastien’s arm. Such an odd place for the touch to light him up inside.
“Corentin, please.” The words came out a rough plea when he’d been hoping for something a little more forceful. He doubted they’d have had much of an effect either way—Corentin seemed intent on making Bastien melt into the mattress.
Time spun out around him as Corentin continued taking Bastien apart piece by piece. When he finally pushed inside Bastien, filling him, making him cry out at the pleasure of it, Bastien’s whole world had narrowed to Corentin—his lips, his large hands, his body pressed to Bastien’s. He reveled in it, in the closeness and the pleasure. Pulling him down for a kiss, Bastien wrapped himself around Corentin as he began to move.
AFTER, CORENTIN LET himself rest against Bastien for a moment. He wanted to stay there, cradled on Bastien’s body, but he’d crush him soon. It was just that if he stayed, right there, he didn’t have to think about how being with Bastien this way had shaken him. He’d been thinking about what he and Bastien would be like together, imagining having Bastien like this, but he’d never come close to the reality of it. He’d done his best to drive Bastien insane with wanting, to drive the sadness from his eyes, and ended up utterly undone himself.
The Dragon's Devotion (Chronicles of Tournai Book 5) Page 17