“Good. Up with the other hand now.”
The hooks were just high enough that he had to stand on the balls of his feet: planned, indubitably, which made him wonder when his cousin had measured his height. How soft the velvet was! He spread his toes, enjoying the caress of it. Lisinthir had mapped every particular, which made him say, suddenly, “Did you buy a whip in case I had wanted it?”
His cousin trailed a hand over his chest, ducked under Jahir’s arm. “I didn’t, no. I thought your acquiescence unlikely enough to save myself the expense.”
That seemed implausible, given how carefully Lisinthir had planned everything else. “But then what would you have done if I’d said yes?”
“I had the pards instruct me on the use of a belt.”
Jahir started. “You would have flogged me with your belt?”
“With my sword belt, yes.” Lisinthir sounded amused—satisfied too, no doubt because he felt Jahir’s shocked interest through their skin. “I thought that would offset the association of flogging with corporal punishment. It would be personal.”
The heat that ripped down his spine when he let himself fully imagine it… personal, yes. The belt that held Imtherili’s swords to its heir’s hips? To know that his blood would stain the leather that his cousin wore into battle? To transform that symbol of potential violence into one of trust and intimacy? To feel it, still warm from Lisinthir’s body... God and Lady, sword belts were incised with patterns, and had buckles and hasps. He could almost feel the metal slashing his side....
Lisinthir spread both hands on either side of his ribs, his concern like cold water on his too-hot skin. “Cousin?”
“A very… compelling… image. I am forced to admit.”
The humor then was very gentle. “Should I go fetch it?”
“No! No. I think… but maybe next time.” Jahir bit his lip, realizing too late what he’d implied, but Lisinthir’s hands stroked down his sides to his hips and came to rest there.
“Then next time. I will have you kiss the leather before I use it on you.”
“Welts,” Jahir whispered.
“Patterned with twined dragons.” Lisinthir kissed the back of his neck, reached over Jahir’s shoulders, and pulled his hair back. Was he braiding it? Yes, from the tugs on his scalp, too gentle for Jahir’s taste. He wanted more. “You give me something to look forward to.”
His body was beginning to tremble and he couldn’t make it stop. His mouth was dry. “Are you looking forward to this?”
“I don’t have to look forward to this,” Lisinthir murmured, spreading his hands over the backs of Jahir’s shoulders. “I’m living it. Are you ready now, Galare, Healer, beautiful cousin?”
“Please,” Jahir said. “Gentle me.”
“Nothing would gratify me more.” Lisinthir dropped a kiss below the nape of his neck… and then grabbed him by the braid and yanked his head back, and here at last was the pain he’d yearned for, enough to bring spontaneous tears to the corners of his eyes. “You are going to have to earn the knife, cousin. Show me your absolute obedience and I will give you what you want.”
“Anything…!”
“Promises,” Lisinthir growled, low and hungry. “Now you will make good on them.” And bit him on the neck, below the ear.
When Jahir had imagined this interlude, he had seen himself lying on his back, with his cousin near him but not covering him, held at a clinical distance. They had both considered the knife. Been utterly focused on it. Experimented with it, slowly, scraping, analyzing each discrete sensation. He’d had some vague notion that eventually the threat of the knife would arouse him and then there would be lovemaking, at which point his imagination had failed him; he hadn’t been able to decide what happened to the knife then, or whether it remained germane to the situation. There had been a chill dignity to it, an awareness of the dangers, and a measured and intellectual approach to the matter.
The moment Lisinthir slammed him back, demonstrating why he’d left enough distance between his spine and the wall, all his carefully constructed fantasies shattered. There would be no academic deconstruction, no discussion, no distance. He would suffer: give up breath at his cousin’s command, shudder under teeth and nails, twitch at the endless pinches and the twisted posture imposed by hands tangled in his hair or knees forcing his legs apart… and when he did not comply in exact detail, he knew himself fettered by the talent he’d helped his cousin hone, and he no longer found it horrifying, but welcome, so welcome if it meant his obedience was more perfect. He knew, then, that he would go to the knife fevered, begging wordlessly, short of breath and desperate for release… and surrendered to the inevitability of it. His cousin had known him better than he’d known himself, again.
He sank into sensation, and drowned in it so utterly he abandoned himself to thought, and fear, and shame. So completely, in fact, that he found it hard to concentrate on the words he heard his cousin speaking, from such a great distance. The fingers on his face were holding him steady. Was that important? He wasn’t being dragged down for a kiss or pushed back for something else… so he lifted wet lashes and focused, with difficulty, on the darkwater eyes searching his. And what he saw in them kindled a level of arousal he’d thought impossible when his body burned so much already.
Words. He struggled, found one, used the language of dragons. “Now?”
Lisinthir dragged a finger over his bruised lower lip, and all his body throbbed in response. He dizzied, forced himself to concentrate again.
“Now,” Lisinthir said, low, and something cool pressed against his chest, near the sternum. He could sense its outline like a brand against his fevered skin, knew its shape: slender and purposeful, like a scalpel. “Yes?” Lisinthir whispered, kissing him gently.
“Yes,” he hissed, shivering.
His cousin’s hands skated down his sweating sides, tracing his ribs, returning to his chest. There, a scrape, not enough to draw blood. A threat, an unbearable friction that made him burn for it, for the illumination of his edges. Another scrape, lower, moving outward. He inhaled, expecting it to continue, but received it instead on the opposite side. Never cutting. Abrading, only, drawing all his yearning into a tight knot beneath its path. So much taunting. He flinched after each scrape, struggling not to push into it, until at last he gasped out, “Please, I can’t!”
“Then I’ll make you,” Lisinthir said gently, kissing the corner of his mouth with a tenderness that made him ache in entirely different ways, until he thought he would weep. And then, mercifully, his cousin took his body from him and forced it not to twitch… and also not to breathe as deeply as he wanted, until between the teasing of the knife and the stealing of his wind he became nearly senseless with want, and when he thought he could bear nothing further his cousin crushed his mouth beneath his and the knife slashed him—
—on the side, where Chatcaavan claws had left scars—
He gasped in, and on the inhale, Lisinthir dug his fingers into the slice and smeared the blood over his skin.
The shock of it broke him open and he cried out, wordless, and the universe spilled out through him, stretching him open, pouring him full. He saw too many worlds, more worlds than he could hold in his arms, more worlds than could be conquered, and despaired of the conquering—
Only love can hold this, because the war for it will never end
You will have to make a choice, arii, a choice, you will have to make a choice
It is not enough to rule, one must Change
“C-cousin,” Jahir gasped out, terrified, exalted, blinded by it. He remembered living in a body but couldn’t find it, smelled the copper tang of blood and sweat and desire, was swept in cold and hot waves. “Cousin, please…!”
He fell from the hooks into Lisinthir’s arms, tangled in the velvet, and still he felt history—unwritten and inevitable and enormous—like the welts he’d refused from his cousin’s belt, and it was so implacable he was sobbing for breath, like something hunted. He
would be lost, he would never find his way back to his body, he would be pinned by the weight of the future and die under it….
Lisinthir bit his throat at the collarbone, shocking him. “No,” his cousin commanded, voice dangerous with possessive edges, words hard as dragon’s talons. “You won’t.” Fingers skidded down his side. Jahir gasped as they found the slice and stroked it as they might have his lips. “Live in this body, cousin.”
“Oh, God,” Jahir said, “Make me, please!”
Lisinthir rolled him onto his back and took him, so hard it shocked a cry out of him, and then he reached up for his cousin and gave in and gave in and left the future where it belonged. There was only this, and the fire of the wound and the iron taste of blood in his mouth as his cousin kissed him, forced his release, did it again, and again, until everything hurt and it was a relief, so good. So good, and when it was done he started shaking, and Lisinthir whipped the red blanket around him and swaddled him in it and rolled him into his arms, and through their skins Jahir felt his adoration, his concern, the ferocity of his love. Turning his face into Lisinthir’s neck he sagged, and gasped out, “Lin, oh Lin.”
The shock of reaction in his cousin’s skin mattered not at all. And after a heartbeat, not to Lisinthir either, who cradled him, dropped gentle kisses on the top of his head, and held him until his heart slowed and his limbs stopped shivering. When he was steady enough, Lisinthir left him briefly to fetch the warmed port, and brought the rim of a glass to his lips: mulled with sugar and cardamom, tart enough to sting his mouth and oh, the sugar, he needed the sugar.
“Slowly,” Lisinthir murmured, stroking his hair back from his jaw. “If you gulp it, you will be sorry.”
Jahir managed a husky chuckle and did as bade before tucking himself back into his cousin, who scooted back until he could rest his spine against the wall. And there they remained, furled in the dense, plush blanket, recovering in that warm safe place together.
At last, Lisinthir spoke, his voice a rasp. “Say it again.”
A smile curved Jahir’s lips. He didn’t lift his head. “Lin.”
Such a small sound, so short a breath could carry it. But that was the way with milk names, wasn’t it? Not that he would know as he had never had anyone to call him by one. He’d lacked for siblings, and the parents who cared more for their consequence than their heir would never have permitted the nurse, tutors, or servants to assign him a diminutive. That would have been encroaching. They had given him a long name, as was the custom, without ever bothering to contract it to derive the love name Eldritch children accepted as proof that they mattered.
Lisinthir let his head ease down until his nose was pressed against Jahir’s hair, and trembled. Would the pards have approved of his needing reassurance as a part of his cousin’s aftercare? They would have found it suspect, perhaps… but then, they hadn’t known he’d be cutting a therapist. He smiled at the touch that slid up his shoulder to rest against his face.
“You deserve one,” Jahir said, low. “You know it.”
And since he had so richly earned the admission, Lisinthir murmured, “I do now, Healer.”
Jahir lifted his head just enough to meet his eyes. “It is not the Healer who calls you so.”
Lisinthir kissed him between the brows, tasting the salt there. “Jahir. Whom all the world loves so well he needs no formal name.”
“My complex and perfect Lin Imtherili,” Jahir answered, accepting the touch with closed eyes. He exhaled, a cool plume of air against Lisinthir’s throat. “Oh, but you can cut me anytime.”
“Good, then?”
“God… and… Lady.” Jahir shuddered against him, managed a weak chuckle. “I could have done without the prophetic interlude, but the rest of it….”
“For me, too.” Lisinthir brushed his cousin’s hair back, observing the tangle that had fallen out of the braid and thinking that next time, he’d have to set aside a brush with the blanket. If, in fact, there was a next time. “I heard it too.”
“The words?” Jahir looked up at him.
“Change and choice.” Lisinthir leaned past him for the glass, brought it back for them both to sip from.
“Do you… do you know what it means?”
Did he? He’d recognized the cadence of the Chatcaavan tongue in the first words. But the others? And what was a single utterance like that, devoid of context? There would be no guessing at its inspiration. He rested his cheek against Jahir’s temple, watching his cousin drink, and said, “There is no hazarding the guess. For the best, I think.” Accepting the empty glass, he added, gently, “Are you clearer-headed? You sound it.”
“I feel it. But… languorous. For once…” Jahir trailed off, then blurted a laugh. “For once I want only to stretch every limb and luxuriate in my own satiation, like a decadent.”
“At last!” Lisinthir said, stroking the backs of his fingers across his cousin’s tacky cheekbone. “I have finally rendered you limp. Living Air help me. It takes a great deal to sate you, cousin…!”
Jahir snickered, and pressed his fingertips to his mouth. “God, but did I make such a noise.”
“Didn’t you, and so injurious to your dignity. It is almost as if I had seen you naked!”
That won him the laugh he’d wanted and he smiled as he brushed the tip of his nose against Jahir’s. “If you are fully in this world, then, I would like us to rinse off, and to see to the wound.”
“Was it dire?” Jahir glanced down, though there was no seeing the cut with the blanket swaddling them both. “It felt like nothing, and then as if you’d ripped me open.”
“A very, very shallow slice,” Lisinthir promised. “But aggravated when I petted it.”
“Then we should see to it, yes.” Jahir sighed. Quietly, “I did not mistake it, did I? You cut me where the dragons left their mark.”
Lisinthir kissed his cheek. “What else? Come now, my dear.”
They washed together in a warm silence, interrupted only by occasional laughter and gentle touches and exchanges of quips that were freighted with the hours they’d spent in one another’s arms. Once they were out of the shower, Jahir offered to see to the cut himself and Lisinthir refused him. “Mine to do,” he said. “As I put it there. Sit.”
“I don’t need proof that you won’t leave me wounded.”
“Yes,” Lisinthir said, “You do. And I need to prove to myself that I am not that man, as well.”
Jahir hesitated, brows lifting. With a chuckle, he said, “You school the healer.”
“I might have mentioned I have some vague grasp of psychologies.” Lisinthir set the flat of his hand on his cousin’s back, pressing him toward the bench beside the mirror. “Be still now. It’s seeping.”
“It seems a minor slice.”
“It is. I won’t over-fuss.” Lisinthir found the vial of antiseptic bandage and eased it open, and became aware that he was being stared at. “Cousin?”
“There is a thing we must discuss.”
“Ah,” Lisinthir murmured. “So I am about to receive my comeuppance now.”
Jahir’s mouth twitched. “It was you who taught me that discussion is necessary. Don’t blame me for learning the lesson when what I preferred was to pull you over me.”
“Mmm. Well, then, earned it I have.” Lisinthir spread the skin over the cut, ignoring the hiss, and started brushing the bandage on. “Speak, then.”
“You were right.”
“I like this so far.”
Jahir silvered the words. “I should hope.” More seriously: “You invited me to this tryst, believing that without it, I would never have pushed past my reticence, and thus never made sufficient peace with my body and my desires to approach the woman I wish to marry.”
An incredible beginning, one he had no idea how to react to. He continued what he was doing, focusing intently on the skin as the liquid began to cloud. “I had a feeling.”
“A prescient one, I think. I am far more comfortable with the idea of bein
g with her now. Perhaps because what we are to one another is so transgressive that marrying her seems minor in compare. I find…” Jahir trailed off, nodded. “I find I am looking forward to what we might be to one another.”
“Then I have done a great thing,” Lisinthir murmured.
“But.” Jahir caught his wrist, startling him with the vehemence he felt through that palm. “But whatever she and I will be to one another… it will never be what we are to one another. Cousin, I have loved your teeth, your claws, your fist in my hair. But I have loved them because they were yours. Your dragons will take you far from me. And perhaps Sediryl—when I find the courage to tell her about all of this—will not be willing to give her husband to the occasional assignation at another man's feet. But if those things keep us from consummation again, I will seek no other cruel hand. Gentleness I can do with another. But this belongs to you.”
This speech was intolerable, and only growing more so. “Cousin—”
But Jahir spoke over him. “Yours was my first rough touch, and the only I want. If not you, then no one. The thought of celibacy does not trouble me the way it would another.”
“You must not miss me,” Lisinthir breathed. “Cousin, you must not.”
“But I would.” Jahir held him in place by the wrist, so gentle to be so inexorable. “I would miss you like a limb ripped from me, the way I will miss Vasiht'h when he has passed on. But it will not sway me. My needs might be needs, but you are not replaceable, and I will suffer no other hand. None will do.” He breathed in and let it out, and the sweetness of that smile, and the hunger in it, and the wistfulness…. “After what we have just done, how can I not know? How can you not?”
The pace of his heart was frenetic enough to nauseate him. Such an incredible thing to be promised, and he knew, absolutely knew that he could not accept it. And yet, he had asked Jahir to accept something similar with his hand when they’d come back to the suite, hadn’t he? To risk rejection and denial, and the shattering of trust.
It was his faith in Jahir’s constancy that made the idea unbearable. Because he could not, would not, stand in the way of his cousin’s future bliss. And because he didn’t know if he would survive the war to return, even were he welcome.
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