Chapter Twenty-Nine
HELD COULDN’T SWEEP the girl from his mind.
Or rather, the way she’d touched her mouth to his. The reverence in her movements. The strangeness of the contact, and the little word she’d whispered before doing so. Held didn’t understand, exactly, but—he did, too. It hadn’t been unlike the reaching out of a kiss. That was how skymen kissed, wasn’t it?
If so, then Janez had never kissed him at all. And Held’s heart clenched at the thought of it. He’d clasped his hand—more than once—but never, if Held had understood the girl, kissed him. They’d laughed, touched, danced, even pleasured one another—and not kissed.
How was Held to keep, or even have, this man if they never kissed?
He threw back the blankets and slid from the bed. The passageway was empty, lit by warm lanterns. He padded silently along to Janez’s rooms and hesitated at the door. A warm glow showed through the cracks, and he knocked hesitantly, wondering—for the first time, armed with new knowledge—if Janez was even alone. The guards had had maids the night before, too. Who was to say Janez had gone without?
A voice called. Janez’s voice. Held recognised the welcome and slipped in, snapping the door shut behind him.
“Held!”
Janez’s voice was pleased. The name sounded warm and wanted. He was standing in the middle of the room in loose white clothes, clearly not dressed for company but for the gleaming shoes on his feet. He gestured at them, saying something, and then lifted his arms and began turning about the room as though dancing with some invisible partner.
He looked—quite mad, actually.
But also quite beautiful, with his hair askew, ribbon-free and falling in gentle curls about his shoulders, and the loose flow of the clothes both hiding and revealing his thin frame and easy grace. The look of concentration, and the raised hands, open and empty, begging to be kissed.
Touched. Not kissed. Not to the skymen.
Held stepped forward as Janez turned back to him, and slid his palms into those empty spaces.
The touch was raw heat and rough skin. It was as blinding and breaking as that first, on the roof of Held’s world and the floor of Janez’s. He shivered at the very presumption, yet wanted nothing more than to slide his fingers between those long, white digits, and feel the oh-so-foreign pulse of a heart, a heart that beat so much faster than any he’d ever known, pound against his own as though they were one.
Janez’s broad smile dipped into something softer, gentler, and he curled his fingers about the back of one hand, and dropped the other. As before, his arm came around Held’s waist, yet…tighter. Firmer. They were pulled closer until he had no natural option but to run his freed hand up the loose sleeve and settle it on Janez’s shoulder, as though it was by Held’s design and not this skyman’s that they remained clasped tight like lovers.
He gripped the rough cloth under his fingers, and Janez’s smile widened.
And when he began to lead, it was not the wild, laughing dance of the first time. It was slow, little more than an idle circle. All along his body, from knee to chest, Held could feel another’s. Janez’s leg, just barely between his own, a chest breathing in tandem with his, even the faintest wash of air against his cheek. And when he looked from their clasped hands to that handsome face, those impossibly blue eyes were focused on Held, and Held alone.
And there was something there.
There was. He was sure of it. Something in the focus. Something in the way they moved, but Janez’s entire face was still. Something in the almost intimate embrace—
The girl’s words spilled, and Held only prayed they were correct.
“Küss mich.”
The dance stopped.
He hardly dared to breathe. Had he said it right? Had it meant what he’d thought? Had it—
Held’s thoughts stopped when Janez’s hand slid from his fingers and brushed down the side of his face.
Everything stopped.
That light touch. The backs of his nails. Cool and light. The endless blue of his eyes.
The hand at Held’s waist fisted in the fabric there, and Held licked his lips. The blue flickered down.
Held whispered it again.
“Küss mich.”
The hand turned on his face. A palm touched his jaw. A thumb slid under his chin and pushed. Held rose up onto his toes automatically, the hand at his back steadying and firm. Pulling. And—
Oh.
He whimpered, and the room slipped away under his eyelids. In the dark, there was only this. Only the soft heat of lips against his own. Something inside him—deep, primal, alien—surged. He arched up into the body before him. Felt the hand slip aside and cup the back of his neck. And for a moment, he merely hung there, gripped somehow tight and somehow barely held, with nothing but those lips on his and some indescribable, fierce possessiveness burning him from the inside out. This man—this man—
This was how the skymen kissed.
And it was no gentle guidance or soft attachment. It was something deeper. Something rawer. Delicate and dangerous. Of course this was how, this simple press that screamed in a thousand tongues at once. These creatures controlled the clouds and walked on water. Of course they didn’t simply wind their hands together, but stopped all, stopped everything, halted their very existences for—
For this.
As cool air whispered between them, as Janez pulled back, Held kept holding on. He followed, grasping for hair and skin, and found that sweet mouth again. And this time, it opened. It kissed not sweetly now, but hungrily; it consumed, and the hands at his back and nape dug as though pulling him into Janez’s very self, very soul—
“Nein,” Held breathed when Janez broke the kiss again. “Nein.”
He wanted to ask for more. Wanted to know how skymen loved. Wanted to know if they kissed in other ways, and learn every variety of kiss they knew. But the language escaped him; the words were never there. This body held the desire, but none of the details.
How could he—how would he—
He touched. The shirt was half-open, and Held pulled at the ribbons until it came apart entirely. His fingers trembled against the heat. The skin here, from sleek neck to the shadowed lines at the tops of the trousers, was sea smooth, and Held trailed the backs of his nails in a mimicry of Janez’s earlier motion.
And watched in fascination and fierce hunger as a shiver followed him.
“Held…”
The voice was deep. Grave. Some warning reverberated there, yet the hand at his back had drifted a little lower. And Held didn’t know why, or what it would do lower, but something intense and urgent, from head to toe, wanted to know.
So he pressed closer and pushed his hand higher. His lips sought Janez’s neck and rested there, at the perfect height. He could feel a thundering heartbeat under his mouth and kissed it, as his fingers found the darker skin and gentle peak of a nipple and circled it, curious.
The body supporting his arched—a powerful undulation, like the shiver of an earthquake through the sea. And then Held gasped into a hungry sky-kiss. His lower body was held fast to Janez’s, one hand high, just where his leg ended in a swell of pure sensation, and the other still clasped between hand and hip. Held felt every inch of Janez's body. He could feel raw heat, the crush of their clothes between them, and the sharp bite of teeth against his lower lip when he touched that soft darkness again.
He wanted closer. He wanted everything, and if he didn’t know how everything could be between men, then this body did. It craved touch and bare skin. It yearned for heat. He gave in as he pushed the shirt open wider and pulled at the cords. In a moment, the hands at his legs and back were turning him—them—in another dizzy dance, faster than before, and then he fell, the deep softness of the bed yielding under him.
In the midst of the blankets, he was alone for a mere moment.
And Janez did what still came clumsily to Held. In swift movements, the clothes were flung to the floor. He stepped ri
ght out of the shoes, as though they had never been. And then he stood, bare as a royal of the deep, a tall form of divine beauty, gold and white in the low lamplight.
Not for long.
Held leaned in to touch, but was crowded back down to the blankets as Janez crawled over him, entirely naked, and pressed those dizzying lips to wherever they could reach. And Held dismissed his adoration of men’s hands. It was a man’s mouth that held true power. He gasped when it kissed and whimpered when the bite at his shoulder turned hunger into heat. The kisses along his chest as his shirt was unlaced and spread open were skittering claws of feeling all along his skin, and then that mouth traced lower still, ever lower, until he lay bare and all the new words escaped him. Until he could do nothing at all, nothing but feel.
But then, as the burning seemed to mount to a fever, dangerous and destructive, and elusive thoughts skidded after one another in a tangle—yes, and more, and please, and Janez-Janez-Janez—the kisses stopped.
Just—stopped.
He was tugged, under the arm. Pulled. He wriggled from his trousers and sat naked against the pillows, dizzy with abandoned hunger yet drawn by curiosity as Janez—bare shoulders speckled with sweat, hair a mess—rose from the bed like a god from the ocean, and padded barefoot across the carpet. Perfection was wrought in every line, and when he bent to retrieve a small dish from the side, something oddly primal stirred in Held’s blood. He wished to take those hips in hand and—
And what?
He knew it, but he didn’t. It whispered in the darkness in the back of his head, somewhere he couldn’t yet see, tantalising but out of reach.
Still, when Janez returned with the dish and began to touch wet, slippery fingers to Held’s flesh, stroking and rubbing in some deep, sensual massage, Held wondered if perhaps, perhaps—
“Küss mich?”
Janez laughed softly and kissed him. Their mouths were askew. The affection was somehow dimmed yet more beautiful for its slip. And when a heavy leg was thrown over Held’s, another kiss came. Firmer. More purposeful.
Then Held was pushed back and made to watch.
Made to watch a god, a skyman, on his knees in front of mere merfolk, stretch up in a powerful arch. He rolled his hips in idle thrusts, like a gentle tide, the flesh jutting from him like islands from the sky. His hands worked at his body, and Held could not be parted so long from such beauty. He reached, touching hands and lips to shadows and smoothness. He tasted salt and the sea, sweat and sky, and he felt the groan deep in Janez’s very bones. Only to be pushed back again, and his mouth—no, his entire head—caught in rough hands and soft lips. A great weight bore down, and Held gasped as his very skin was enveloped in tight heat. As Janez straddled him and sat, as though upon a chair, and if Held had burned before—
Now, now, he dissolved.
He scrabbled for purchase on slick skin, crying helplessly in the storm as he was caught within. Janez rose and fell like a cloud upon the waves—head buried in Held’s neck, lips and teeth caught against his skin—and Held was trapped, pinioned beneath and within this myth, this legend. The softness of the bed rocked like the sea in a storm; Held swayed, cradled between that blanket-sea and brilliant sky, and clawed for skin and hair. Found mouth. Grasped it in his own and cried there the indescribable, incredible, so utterly unfathomable rapture—
He broke. Came apart. Shattered, under and inside that immense divinity. Burst into the sea foam that would be the end of him, of all his kind when their days ran out.
And—
Breathed.
His skin was slick.
Teeth caressed his earlobe. Soft. Gentle. Turning the flesh and tugging, as the kisses had below. As the air returned, Held nudged his face against that alongside his, grasping blindly for hands and heat.
“Küss mich,” he whispered again, his voice soft and slurring.
A laugh.
And then a swipe of lips against his cheek, his nose—his mouth.
Held closed his eyes, tangled fingers numb from the deluge of pure feeling into soft curls, and surrendered.
He knew but a handful of words, yet had found, against all odds, the very ones he needed.
Chapter Thirty
JANEZ WAS USUALLY a prompt and early riser.
But, although he woke early—so early the curtains were not so much as lightened by the dawn, and the inn sat still and silent around them, brooding under its mountains in peaceable slumber—he wasn’t inclined to move.
For movement meant separation.
And how absurdly romantic it was, some post-coital bliss, no doubt, but Janez very much did not want to separate. Held was sleeping, his hair askew across the pillow, and when Janez pushed a hand across smooth skin under the blankets, he discovered perfect warmth and a desire so strong, he felt drunk with it.
He wanted no ball.
In fact, he wanted no life at all. For the doors to be bricked up, and to die here, drinking this ecstasy.
His lips touched the long column of Held’s neck, and the body between his hands stirred with a murmur. A hand stroked through his hair, gathering it into a clump, and then Janez was being pressed backwards into the mattress as a lithe form arranged itself all along his body, knees sliding between his own, chests and mouths meeting in the dark. Janez stroked both hands down smooth spine and the soft swell below, and held on tight. As though he could fuse them. As though if he only held on, the evening would never come.
As though the world outside could wait.
They took their pleasure lazily, in idle kisses and soft touches, and it was coincidental—at least on Janez’s part—rather than the purpose of the matter. He didn’t want what he had last night; he wanted, rather, to simply touch. To love, rather than to make it. Blood went where it would. Bodies reacted as they could. Yet it was not the point. The point was to kiss that soft mouth and drag fingers through fine hair. The point was to memorise the skin under his palms and learn the way Held whimpered when fingers closed about his sex. And eventually, when the whimpers grew too desperate, to laugh in delight and submit peaceably when Held captured his exploring hands by the wrists, planted them aside, and subjected his body to an attack by teeth and mouth—the lazy pleasure brewed into a biting climax, together, messy, in the tangle of an inn’s old blankets.
When it was over, to then return to the point of the matter. To draw the man-in-command close and nest in this too-hot mess, nose to cheek, breaths intermingled. Held’s heart beat faintly against his own, and Janez could feel his smile and contentment. Could hear—
The captain barking orders in the yard below the windows.
Janez sighed and let go. Rose. Held sprawled in the bed a little longer, wild hair and stained skin dangerously alluring as Janez leaned in to explore it with his fingers. But when he raked both hands through his own hair and reached for the brush, in an attempt to tame the curls, a sharpness crept back into that pale gaze.
And Held moved. Lunged, almost. Snatched the brush and smacked Janez on the knuckles with it. Hard.
“Ow!” he yelped and then laughed as he was shoved into a chair and his head attacked. The bird’s nest began to resemble hair again, and Janez submitted to being washed, groomed, and dressed as though Held were his manservant, not his—
Lover.
The word uncurled like a flower in his mind, and Janez grimaced. He’d yielded. Oh, but he shouldn’t have yielded.
Yet when he rose from the chair to tie his trousers, and have the great overcoat slid into place—the gentleman in the mirror returning, not the wild-haired, wild-eyed cad who had risen from the bed—Janez couldn’t stick firm to the regret. It slid away. He turned on Held in a moment, cupping that narrow face in both hands, and kissed him with all the hunger of a starving man.
And there he spoke the truth.
“I love you,” he breathed, and Held stared back at him, uncomprehending. “I am promised, yet I love you.”
It was the most honest he’d ever been. And it hurt.
Held clutched at his elbows and stretched up. The kiss was soft and sweet—and then the captain shouted in the yard, damning his men with a cock-pox, and Janez broke it with a soft laugh.
“Dress,” he said, pushing gently. “Dress!”
Held scowled, fiercely angry for a split second, and then his expression smoothed and he slipped out. Janez listened to the drum of his feet going into another room before turning back to the mirror to pull his collar a little more firmly in place. There was a smile on his face, and he forced it away.
He had yielded.
And he failed to even regret the failure.
THE WINTER PALACE was, in theory, a royal retreat during the winter months. Overshadowed by the mountains, cupped from behind by a vast lake, and supplied by the great river that washed ever northwards to the sea, it was a shelter from the iceberg-spotted sea and raging storms.
In reality, its grandeur and luxury had served as a diplomatic tool for centuries. An ancient castle in stupendous style, it was simultaneously more welcoming and more imposing than its shoreline summer counterpart.
The other departure from theory was, of course, its nature as a retreat. It wasn’t. It was more home than the summer fortress, and his father’s death had driven his mother from the sea entirely. Now, the queen dowager lived permanently by the mountains, the good air helping her humours and the silence, rather than the terrible drum of the sea that had slain her husband, soothing her grief-ridden mind.
His mother—much like his sister-in-law—had been an aristocratic lady before her marriage, rather than a foreign princess. It hadn’t been an arranged match, but one of love. She’d dearly loved Janez’s father, and they’d courted at a time of peace, when the king had been freer to marry those of good standing rather than those strictly of royal standing.
Janez was jealous of his father’s freedom in that regard, but the rules of peace and the rules of war were different things, and he banished the bitterness from his mind as the great doors to the palace opened. He was welcomed into the great dining hall by a red-faced captain bellowing his name and title, and saluting in such an exaggerated fashion that he knocked his very hat off.
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