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Summer in Arles is nowhere near as hot as summer in Ios. But it’s hot enough that Auguste has stripped down to his flowing undershirt, the collar undone and hanging wide, trailing laces down the bare sliver of his chest.
Wading in the cool lake water, it occurs to Damen that he has spent too much time in Arles if the sight of Auguste’s pale collarbones is enough to stray his eyes. It’s kind of pathetic. Back home, women go bare-breasted, and his slaves wear nothing at all.
“I’m not swimming,” says Auguste, without looking up. Seated on the forest floor at the bank, under the shade cast by an oak tree, he uses the point of his sword to fling a patch of moss at Damen in the water. Damen ducks. Auguste has been in a sour mood since they rode out.
“Because you won’t take off your clothes,” Damen guesses.
Auguste looks up at him, squinting, with a hand cupped at his brow to shield his eyes. “No,” he says. Damen thinks that if Auguste were to ever let the sun kiss his skin he would have freckles. He has the complexion for it.
“The water’s cool,” Damen says, and bends to flick a handful at Auguste’s boots. “You can roll up the hems. I promise I won’t tell the courtiers I saw your ankles.”
The expression on Auguste’s face is one of contempt.
“Look—” Damen unpins the chiton where it is fastened at his shoulder. The cotton slips down to hang around his waist, leaving his chest bare. When in Vere, so as not to offend Veretian eyes, Damen dresses most often like a Veretian. But he has forgone the pants and jacket this morning. “My skin is bared and nothing terrible has happened. No bastards, even.”
Very deliberately, Auguste raises his hands to the laces hanging from his collar and draws the shirt shut.
Damen flicks more water at Auguste, and a single drop makes it as far as his buckskin-clad thigh. Auguste stares at the tiny, dark spot with utmost disdain, and picks at it with long fingers, as if that will remove the water.
“This is what you do in Ios,” Auguste says peevishly. “You strip naked and splash each other for entertainment.”
“We also strip naked and wrestle.”
Auguste fingers the wet spot on his riding pants. “Ah. Thank you for enlightening me.”
Deciding that Auguste will not be persuaded to join him in the water, Damen wades to the bank and joins Auguste, who remains sullen under his tree. The chiton remains unpinned and he neglects his sandals, strewn over a log that is half fallen in the lake.
“We could go back to the palace and spar,” Damen offers.
Auguste shakes his head, takes up his sword again and pushes around pebbles with the point.
“We could throw spears.”
Auguste frowns.
“Wrestle?”
Auguste makes a face, at that, that twists his aristocratic features into something stormy. Damen is at a loss. He and Auguste usually revel in the physical. The weeks that Damen summers in Vere, they wake nearly at sunrise to spar and hunt and remain awake long past the sunset, racing into the forest under the stars. Sometimes, Auguste can be convinced to eschew his Veretian sensibilities and chase women on the Vaskian border, where his infractions are most likely to go unpunished.
“I am in need of some diversion,” says Auguste tightly, after a moment has passed. “And I am between pets at the moment.”
Damen nods. It sounds, to him, as if a trip to the border is warranted.
“And,” Auguste adds, “Laurent has found out some of my transgressions. With women.”
Damen nods, enthusiastically. “We can be careful. We’ll dress like merchants, or townspeople.”
Auguste looks up from the patch of dirt that he has been picking at, and then drops his sword completely. The elaborate hilt bounces dully on the forest floor. His gaze settles on Damen, then lower, on his naked chest, the chiton draped around his hips, his thighs. He tilts his head, thoughtfully.
“Laurent tells me that if he learns I have snuck off again, he will tell the council.”
“Do you believe him?” Damen doesn’t think that Laurent would do that to Auguste. But when Laurent makes threats, Damen is inclined to believe he’ll follow through. The younger Prince of Vere is a reptile. Warm-blooded only for his brother, and, even then, only on occasion.
Auguste’s head thumps back against the tree trunk. He blows a frustrated breath. “I don’t know. Laurent’s been especially icy as of late.”
Damen, having not seen much of Laurent at all since he arrived at Arles, wonders what constitutes, ‘especially icy’ for Laurent. Laurent’s disposition can be described as chilly at best and, at worst, absolutely heartless and utterly without mercy.
“It’s—” A pent-up noise escapes Auguste. “I was preparing to ride out to the border before you came, but a dignitary from my mother’s side arrived without notice, and I had to host him. And then Laurent came bursting into my room with accusations about bastardry and throwing away my birthright.” Auguste’s lip curls, in annoyance, in frustration. “He’s fifteen, what does he know?”
Damen hasn’t been doing much but bobbing his head, but he nods again, sympathetically. “You’re always careful,” says Damen, “you use the herbs.”
“I use the herbs,” Auguste echoes.
There is a beat of silence, where there is only the sound of ripples in the lake as they nudge the bank, and the gentle breeze rustling the forest canopy.
“I miss women,” Auguste says.
Damen laughs. He too has been conforming to Veretian custom during the length of his stay. “I miss women. You need to come to Ios. No Akielon woman cares enough to go through the trouble of reporting you to the ambassador. And my household is discrete.”
Auguste, slumped morosely against the tree, seems to consider this. Damen is aware that there is a difference of opinions where his slaves are concerned, but Auguste has not put himself in a position to protest any access to women.
Auguste says, with finality: “I need to get off.”
And then it occurs to Damen why Auguste has brought this up with him, rather than spending the morning shut in his bedchambers with somebody else’s pet.
Damen says, “Let’s go back to the palace.”
: : :
While pushing through the ornate double doors of Auguste’s sumptuous bedchambers, Damen and Auguste are finding it difficult to come to an agreement.
“I prefer women,” Auguste insists, not for the first time.
“I also prefer women,” Damen tells him.
Auguste pushes back, pointing an accusatory (if elegant) finger. “You suggested that we come back here. You are meant to be indulging me.” Damen is caught by the way annoyance has pinked his high cheeks and pinched the set of his full lips. Then there is the faint and unpleasant realisation that Auguste sounds almost like Laurent, in his petty presumptuousness. Damen feels his mouth twist.
“We are indulging each other,” says Damen, whirling on Auguste. “I’ll use my mouth on you, but I will not be the person bending over and begging for it.”
Auguste pauses, halfway between the door and the bed, as if he is considering Damen’s offer to suck him off. Then he opens his mouth. “You bend over for me every time I knock your sword from your hand.”
Damen balks at the implication and his jaw drops open, very, deeply offended. He is the best swordsman in Ios. And he does, actually, sometimes manage to disarm Auguste. Sometimes.
A frustrated sound escapes Damen’s throat. He strips off his wool riding cloak and tosses it over a desk strewn with flouncy ostrich quills and stacked with correspondence. “You are the Veretian between us. Yesterday evening, I saw not one, but two members of your council taking pets in plain view in the gardens.”
Auguste groans and scrubs a hand over his eyes as though Damen is to blame for the entire situation. “The pet gardens, Damen. That is what happens in the pet gardens.”
“The public gardens, Auguste. I was walking in the public gardens.”
Auguste’s hand is still covering his eyes, like the sight of Damen offends him. He finishes crossing the bedchamber, ridiculous heeled riding boots clicking against the tile, and sits on the bed. It sinks more than a few inches, as if the mattress is stuffed with feathers, or a similarly Veretian material.
Damen remains where he is, leans a hip against the desk, and glares pointedly. The bed is draped with so much velvet that the whole thing looks like a massive, four-poster sofa. The veritable mountain of pillows stacked near the carved headboard does not help to dispel this fact.
Damen, despite himself, imagines Auguste’s hair spread out on the jewel-toned cushions, and his cheeks pinked with pleasure. All the more reason to win this argument.
“You aren’t even allowed to lie with women,” Damen says. He thinks it makes a logical argument. “If anyone is more suited to parting his legs, it is you.”
The look from underneath Auguste’s noble brows is downright arctic. “And here I thought you were sympathetic to my plight,” he drawls. “Get on the bed, Damen.”
“I’ll get on the bed after you get on the bed.” It occurs to Damen that Auguste is already on the bed. “On your stomach.”
“Damen,” Auguste says, calmly. He folds his hands precisely over his lap. “You knew what you were agreeing to when you said we should return from the forest. You knew.”
“Did I?” Damen says. Pushing off his hip, he goes to stand in front of Auguste. Perhaps if he gets in the bed, then he can convince Auguste to let Damen fuck him. Now that the prospect of fucking is indisputably on the table, he wants it more than anything.
He sits beside Auguste on the bed, keeping a meaningful distance.
“Did you,” Auguste mutters, making a face like the words have gone sour in his mouth. Then he lunges.
Damen finds this turn of events quite fortunate. The bickering and jibing (what he imagines is typical Veretian foreplay for Auguste) was decidedly not his arena. Wrestling, however, is. And there’s a reason Akielons wrestle in the nude. The multitude of laces and loops on Auguste’s jacket make excellent handholds. Damen has him pinned on his back in under ten seconds.
Auguste’s hair has partway slipped from its tie with all the motion, and Damen takes a second to marvel. It’s a wonder he and Auguste haven’t fallen in bed before. Damen reaches out a hand to stroke the strand of hair spilling over Auguste’s forehead like yellow gold.
And then, in a very deliberate, very Veretian move, Auguste grinds his thigh between Damen’s legs, and Damen experiences a lapse in concentration that finds him awkwardly twisted, face shoved into the pillows, arm pinned to the small of his back and Auguste’s forearm barred across the back of his neck. Auguste swears triumphantly behind him, and shoves harder with his forearm.
Damen feels his traitorous cock fattening against his thigh. Damn his legendary virility.
In accordance with a split-second decision that Damen does not make with his brain, but rather with his cock, he says, quietly, into the cushions: “I’ve never done this before.”
The forearm on the back of his neck relaxes. “So you will do it.”
Damen rolls his eyes. And then shakes Auguste off of his back with a bucking wrestling move, and maneuvers to his knees and forearms, presenting his backside. There is a beat of stunned silence.
“Wow,” says Auguste, with some amount of disbelief. His ill-temper goes entirely forgotten, as he palms Damen’s thighs and prompts Damen to spread wider. Damen does, in an unfamiliar shuffling and rearranging of limbs.
Auguste says, “I can see all the way up your chiton. What happens if you drop your sword and have to bend over to pick it up?”
“I don’t drop my sword. Do you drop your sword?” Damen says, face pressed into the pillows. He wiggles his hips a little. It seems like the right thing to do.
Auguste makes a scoffing sound and then the faint heat of his palms travels upwards and creeps under Damen’s chiton, rucking it up in the process.
“Get on with it,” Damen complains. “I want to get off.”
Auguste makes another of those faintly mocking noises and continues handling Damen. It’s like he’s kneading dough, except his long-fingered hands are working the flesh of Damen’s ass. Damen’s never kneaded dough before, but he imagines it’s a fair comparison.
“What was that,” Damen asks, sometime later, when he is lying flat on his stomach with his head pillowed on folded arms, after Auguste has removed his hands.
“What was what?” Auguste’s voice is distant, from the other side of the room.
“That clinking noise.”
A pause. “Oh,” says Auguste. “Vials. How else will I fuck you?”
Damen lifts back onto his forearms and contorts his neck to look at Auguste.
Veretians make everything so complicated. Auguste has in hand a half-dozen bejeweled vials of oil, each with a delicate chain hanging from the cork, as if they are meant to be worn around the neck.
“Don’t you have a pot?” Damen says, incredulous.
“A pot,” Auguste deadpans, approaching the bed with his handful of vial jewelry.
“A pot of oil. I keep one beside my bed.”
Auguste shakes his head, climbing onto the bed. He lifts one hand to Damen’s head and forces it back to the pillows. Damen goes with only slight resistance.
“Akielons,” Auguste says, exasperated, and Damen hears the pop of a vial being unstoppered.
And then there are cool, oil slick fingers trailing up his inner thigh, and Damen is faced with the reality of what he has thoughtlessly agreed to.
A lot of men like this—he knows that objectively. Kristos, the last slave Damen had before he left for Vere, had loved it when Damen pushed inside him. He’d practically wailed the entire time, as much as you could call it wailing when it was breathy and demure. Some women even like this. Damen had met this girl from a tiny farm village in Mellos, once, and she hadn’t even wanted Damen to fuck her where women usually like it, had begged him to put it in her ass—
“Relax, will you,” Auguste says, and slaps Damen on the back of the thigh. Damen realizes that his entire lower body has gone tense in nervous anticipation. With a conscious effort, he unwinds.
“I’ve never done this before,” Damen hears himself say.
“So you’ve said.” The fingers make their way to the tender flesh up high on his leg.
Damen lifts his head. Auguste takes the base of his skull and pushes it back down.
“Have you ever done this before?” He asks, muffled by the pillows. There’s a bit of fringe in his mouth, which he tries to extract with an awkward movement of his tongue. The embroidery decorating the pillows is scratching his cheek.
Auguste makes a frustrated sound. His fingers stop. Damen lets out a breath.
“Of course I have.”
“Then shouldn’t I be the one fucking you?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I didn’t like it.”
“Then why should I like it?”
Auguste pointedly ignores him and uses one hand to spread Damen. His fingers are cold. And bony. And then Damen is momentarily distracted from his protests by the pad of a thumb pressing against his opening. It’s as though Auguste is toying with him there, patting and pulling lightly.
Damen’s hips jerk.
“Fuck me,” he says. His cock is hard against the sheets and has been sorely ignored amid all his complaints. But it is hard, Damen thinks, which is possibly a sign that he is going to enjoy this.
“Going to. Up,” Auguste prompts, patting Damen on the flank like one does a horse. Damen raises himself back onto his knees. The skirt of the chiton slides fully off of his ass and settles at the small of his back.
He’s going to do this. There’s going to be a cock inside of him, and if the nervy fluttering in his stomach is any indication, it’s going to be good. He thinks.
“Good,” Auguste says, petting him some more, and it’s exactly how Damen has heard him speak to his prized mare while he saddles her for a ride. The analogy is not lost on Damen.
Slick fingers return to Damen’s opening, circling, teasing, never doing any more than dipping shallowly with the pad. It’s a slow ticklish torture.
And then, without warning, Auguste sinks one in to the knuckle. Damen chokes.
He doesn’t feel anything spectacular. It feels like there’s a finger in his ass. But the anticipation and the teasing and Auguste’s glacial pace have primed his body for anything Auguste is willing to give him, and Damen curls fingers into the silken covers by his head and exhales messily into the cushions to collect himself.
Auguste pauses behind him, Damen practically speared on his finger. But then the finger is moving, and it feels objectively weird, like Auguste is searching inside. It occurs to Damen what he’s looking for.
When he finds it, curls his finger and presses, Damen sees stars. He cants his hips back, fucks himself reflexively on the finger.
“Put another,” he says, and hears the breathlessness in his voice.
Auguste palms his ass with the hand not inside him, spreading Damen again. The finger shifts back and a second pushes in with it.
Damen sighs. Arranges his hips so that the pleasure spot is easily located.
It’s different than the sex he’s had before. It’s not especially intimate—it’s just Auguste—but he feels almost as if it were transgressive. As though he is breaking a rule that he set for himself at some point in the past.
Damen decides he will have to interrogate that rule as soon as he can think straight. ‘No ass play’ is not a very good rule.
Auguste has three fingers in him soon enough, and Damen is so boneless on the bed that he thinks his knees might give out. With the way he brushes his pinkie finger over Damen on the way out, Auguste seems to be angling for a fourth.
“No more,” Damen gasps, turning his head to press his cheek to the pillow. It’s damp—from drool, from tears, he doesn’t even know. “Come on, put it in me.”
Auguste removes his fingers with a squelch and wipes them on Damen’s chiton, which has slipped pretty much all the way off.
Auguste makes his scoffing noise. “‘Put it in me?’ Sometimes I forget just how green you are.”
“Or don’t,” Damen amends, aware that his tone has gone sulky.
There is a rustling behind him, of fabric, and the clinking of delicate metal. Damen feels the emptiness where Auguste’s fingers were. His view is of darkness and royal blue, keeping his head pressed into the rich pillows while he waits for Auguste to fuck him already.
“What’s that,” Damen says, of the rustling noise, and rolls onto his back. And realizes what the rustling noise is. Auguste is divesting himself of his needlessly overcomplicated Veretian frippery.
And it looks like it will take him hours.
There’s three rows of lacing holding together the brocade panels of his jacket, a row up each sleeve, some complicated looking, frilly neck thing—and that’s to say nothing of his skin-tight, buckskin riding pants. How does he squeeze into them in the mornings? And the boots, Damen remembers the boots from when he and Auguste were riding. The boots have an indeterminate number of miniature buckles from ankle to calf. You don’t fuck with boots on, and he doesn’t see how Auguste will get them off—
Damen groans. It’s a groan of frustration, not of pleasure, and he makes this abundantly clear to Auguste with an accompanying facial expression.
Auguste frowns back at him, but he does pick up the pace, pulling fine strings from fine loops a fraction faster.
“Usually I’d have a servant do this,” Auguste says. “Or a partner.” At that, he gives Damen a meaningful look.
Damen is bewildered. “A servant? During bedsport?” A slave, maybe, but a servant? In the room while his partner is wanton and waiting?
“Unlike you, I wear more than a bedsheet.”
This reminds Damen that he is still half wearing his chiton, and with a single motion he slips free the pin and strips it off.
Auguste looks mildly impressed. “Convenient. I’ll give you that.”
Damen parts his legs, and gestures between them. “Give me something else,” he says, grinning.
Auguste makes a face, at that, but then he’s finally tugging loose the last row of laces and shrugging the jacket from his shoulders.
Damen takes one look at him and considers actually inciting an international conflict.
There is a second shirt under Auguste’s jacket. This country is so backwards.
Impaired by an intense burst of sexual frustration, Damen is only half aware that he is sitting up and laying hands on the frilly collar of Auguste’s shirt. Then he’s tearing it clean off him. The ruined halves are discarded without thought, somewhere on the absurd, painted tiles, and then Damen is moving to deal with Auguste’s pants.
“Wait, wait,” Auguste is saying, fumbling his hands over Damen’s while Damen searches for the right place to grab so that he might rip the seams apart.
“Wait,” Auguste says again, and Damen stops staring fixedly at the hem of his pants, and looks up.
Auguste wears a stunned expression, mouth agape and pupils blown, and his eyes are so blue. Blue, blue like Damen’s never seen. Like the sea roiling against the white cliffs back home—but somehow even bluer.
And there’s his hair, soft and golden, and kind of mussed and ruined, but it’s like a halo of sunshine around his beautiful, angular face. His lips, pink and parted. His brows, drawn up to the hairline. His torso, as perfectly formed as his face, muscled in exact proportions, tapering elegantly at the waist. His creamy, creamy skin, seeming to have never been touched by the sun.
Without thought, Damen wraps a hand around the back of Auguste’s neck and crushes their lips together. How haven’t they done this before? Damen’s been visiting Vere for five consecutive summers, and they’ve never done this before. It’s unthinkable.
Auguste makes a muffled sound of surprise, but then he’s kissing back with an enthusiastic fervour, sliding his tongue into it with all the finesse of someone who has six years more practice and clutching Damen’s shoulders. Their chests are flush, and Auguste’s skin is cool, and Damen pulls away from the kiss just so he can wrap one hand lightly around Auguste’s white neck and admire how brown his skin is in comparison.
Auguste’s clothed legs slide against his naked thighs, and Damen falls back to the bed, pulling Auguste on top of him, parting his legs and allowing Auguste’s hips to slot between them. He’s surprised, when the arch of his foot brushes a boot-clad calf, that his pulse quickens and his cock jumps against his thigh. It’s kind of hot, actually, knowing that he’s not wearing anything and Auguste is still half dressed.
“Oil,” Auguste says against Damen’s mouth, like the word took immense effort to form, and Damen reaches blindly for the table beside the bed that Auguste dumped the vials on. He finds them, the glass cool under his fingers, but knocks half to the floor when Auguste sucks on his tongue and his entire body convulses.
There is an embarrassing crash, and probably rose-scented oil all over the floor, but Damen finally manages to get one vial in hand and press it into Auguste’s palm.
Auguste is uncapping the vial, trying and failing to do it with one hand while he has the other wrapped around Damen’s cock.
“Pants,” Damen gasps.
“What?” Auguste is still fumbling with the vial, mouthing down Damen’s neck.
“Pants. Off.”
To Damen’s chagrin, Auguste removes his mouth from the hollow of Damen’s throat and creates just enough space between their bodies that he can begin to undo the lacing at the top of his riding pants. It goes slower than Damen would like, but that probably has to do with how he keeps bucking his hips and throwing Auguste off balance.
“Stop that,” Auguste says, and throws the vial at Damen’s head. The chain hits him in the eye.
“Hurry up,” Damen urges, and grabs the vial to unstopper it himself. It goes with a pop and a sweet waft of flowers. He finds he’s too turned on to make fun of Auguste for his flowery oil.
Auguste gets the laces open and shoves the pants down his thighs.
Damen is aware that he is on his back with his legs spread, very close to begging for it. This is a moderately compromising position, and it would probably be more dignified to turn around and get on his knees, but he needs to see Auguste during. All that skin and hair, and his eyes, and his pink mouth, and the flexing muscles of his shoulders, it would all go to waste if Damen couldn’t see him.
Damen opens his legs wider, hooks a calf around the back of Auguste’s thighs. Auguste looks down at him, half exasperated and half wildly aroused, and moves Damen’s leg, sits back on his knees, and hoists Damen’s ass onto his lap.
And sinks inexorably inside.
He does it all at once, and it kind of hurts, but Damen groans when hips are pressed flush to his backside. He doesn’t know what to do with his legs, or his arms—Auguste is too far away to reach unless he sits up. He doesn’t have any leverage in this position.
Above him, Auguste has squeezed his eyes shut, made slits fringed with thick, golden lashes, and holds completely still, buried all the way inside Damen. It’s intense. Damen knows that it’s intense, he does this all the time and it never stops feeling so heart-shatteringly incredible.
Auguste grips the muscle of Damen’s hips with bruising force, sword calluses on his fingers, shifts backwards, and then pushes back in.
It’s deep. It stretches and burns like Damen’s muscles do after a good ride. It’s intensely satisfying. An encouraging sound escapes his lips and then Auguste is fucking him with ardour, sliding all the way in and then nearly all the way out.
He leans over Damen’s chest and adjusts Damen’s legs in such a way that when he pushes in next, his cock bumps against that place that makes Damen go boneless. In the back of his head, there’s something that’s telling him he takes pride in being an active participant, and all he’s doing at the moment is laying there while Auguste fucks into him, but it’s easy to ignore. There are sparks racing up his spine and some new kind of simmering pleasure low in his stomach, and his cock is only getting a modicum of attention, the head brushing against the taut muscles of Auguste’s stomach, but he really doesn’t mind.
“Good?” Auguste says, above him.
“Good,” Damen says. It’s about the most complicated word he can form. He rolls his hips experimentally, and Auguste’s eyes flutter shut and he breathes hot air all over Damen’s collarbones.
They end up twined together after an indeterminate amount of time, once Auguste’s thrusts have calmed from long and powerful to rolling and languorous. They’re kissing too, and Damen loves kissing. He might even especially love kissing Auguste. His arms are wrapped over Auguste’s shoulders, and he has one hand fisted in Auguste’s hair so he can pull Auguste’s mouth where he likes it. Auguste is caressing Damen’s side with one hand, and tugging his cock with the other, all the while keeping up lazy pushes with his hips. He stays almost all the way inside, bumping the place Damen loves with every thrust.
“Can I—” says Auguste, kissing Damen under his jaw. “Inside you?”
Damen almost doesn’t hear it, he’s so out of his head with pleasure. It’s just a tangle of Veretian breathed next to his ear. Auguste repeats himself.
Damen doesn’t really think. He isn’t really capable of thinking. “Yes. Yes,” he says, because he would agree to anything, and uses the hand in Auguste’s hair to bring his mouth back to Damen’s. He’s really enjoying that twisty thing Auguste’s deft fingers are doing on his cock.
But then Auguste’s hand falls still, and Damen rolls his hips in complaint, but Auguste is shuddering on top of him and there’s warm wetness spilling inside. He realises, belatedly, that he agreed to this. Sliding his own arm between their bodies, Damen takes his cock in hand while Auguste is occupied by climax. A few, thorough strokes is all it takes to crest the wave of pleasure, before he’s groaning and arching off the bed and spilling on his own stomach.
He slumps. Auguste slumps on top of him. Auguste’s softening cock is still inside, and Damen has enjoyed himself thus far, but he thinks maybe he doesn’t like this part.
“Get out,” Damen says, shoving at Auguste’s shoulder, and Auguste pulls out without ceremony and flops on his back beside Damen, his pale chest heaving with exertion. Damen notes that his skin is so white that the sweat on his brow barely reflects any brighter.
“Good?” Auguste says, for the second time, directing the word at the vaulted ceiling. It’s obvious to Damen that Auguste is no more capable of intelligent speech than he is.
Damen utters something that is meant to be a reply, but does not leave his mouth fully realized. Auguste seems to understand him nonetheless.
With a faint grunt of displeasure and a shifting on the bed, Auguste appears to have realised that his riding pants are still halfway down his thighs, and sits up to strip them off the rest of the way.
Thinking to tidy himself also, Damen reaches for a corner of the silk sheet to clean his stomach with. He gives himself a perfunctory rub down, only to pause and grimace when he feels the spend dripping down his inner thigh.
This is not an issue he has had to deal with before. He tosses the ruined corner of silk off the side of the bed, deciding he will deal with the mess between his legs later. Maybe Auguste can be persuaded to join him in the royal baths, now that Damen has seen him unclothed. Then again, Veretian custom probably dictates that you must wear no less than six layers unless your cock is presently inside another person, or during the ten minute periods before and after.
He turns his head on the pillow to look at Auguste, who has stretched out next to him. He is just as stunningly handsome when viewed in profile.
“I can feel you staring,” says Auguste, pink lips parting.
“I am,” says Damen.
“When I was younger, my governess would have said that staring is rude.” One of Auguste’s fine boned swordsman’s hands comes up to brush a strand of gold hair from his forehead.
Damen doesn’t think. “I like your hair,” he says.
“What?” Auguste turns to face Damen, squinting incredulously. They must be mirror images of each other, cheeks pressed to pillows, mouths a handspan apart. Damen thinks that when Auguste forgets his princely manners, he comes off quite ungraciously.
Damen clarifies: “That’s why I’m staring. In Ios, they say I have a weakness for blondes.”
Auguste snorts, turns back to the ceiling. “I’ll be sure to lock up Laurent.”
Damen laughs with him. Auguste is easy to laugh with, and now that he knows also of Auguste’s easy manner in bed, he wishes Arles was not all the way across the border. Perhaps Auguste can be convinced to meet Damen in the center, at one of the Veretian border forts, for a week of riding and swordplay and uncomplicated bedsport.
He opens his mouth, about to say so, when the embellished door to Auguste’s bedchamber is thrown open. Speak his name and he shall appear—Laurent is sweeping into the room with an uncaring glance at the bed.
Damen scrambles to cover himself.
“Your Highness—” The words are exiting his mouth before he can think, strung ineloquently together by way of explanation and excuse, as he’s sitting up and hurriedly wrapping the sheet over his lower body. It’s the same corner he used to wipe his stomach, faintly damp. Auguste makes an amused sound, still reclined in the pillows, and folding his hands behind his head.
“I need that book back,” Laurent demands, without a second glance in Damen’s direction, and crosses the room with long strides, throwing open Auguste’s wardrobe.
“We were, just—” Damen tries.
“Oh, you,” Laurent says, distaste clear by his tone. “I know what you were doing. You can carry on in a moment. Auguste has failed to return something that belongs to me.”
Damen shakes his head, clearing it. Laurent is bloodless, and exactly the kind of frigid boy that would deprive his brother the pleasure of relations with women. He wills Laurent to leave, but Laurent remains, tossing aside jackets that trail laces and slamming cabinet drawers.
Damen gapes at the image of it. He would never enter Kastor’s rooms without so much as knocking, without express permission to do so. Kastor would kill him.
In Damen’s periphery, Auguste is shaking with laughter. He thinks this is funny—of course he thinks this is funny. Damen shoves him in the shoulder and gives him a look.
“I’ll get it back to you tonight, Laurie,” says Auguste. “Someone’s feeling amorous.” This is said to Damen’s utter discomfiture.
“Tonight,” Laurent hisses, jabbing a sinister finger at Auguste, and leaves in a flurry of deep blue and silver blonde.
Damen flops on his back. His heart is pounding. He notes, also, that his racing blood seems to have made it back to his cock. Hopefully the sheet covered it while Laurent was inside.
Leaning over, Auguste pulls the sheet from Damen’s lap. There is mirth, twinkling in his eyes. “Shall we deal with that?” he asks, and smiles with the points of his teeth.
Damen submits to his attention.
: : :
On the long ride back from Vere, through rolling hills and sparse countryside, Damen nudges his mount with his heels and trots her a few lengths ahead of the retinue. With a wave, he bids Nikandros join him.
“Nik,” he says. “Have you ever been taken?”
“Taken,” Nikandros repeats, unsure of Damen’s meaning.
“Fucked,” Damen clarifies. He feels very Veretian in his overtness.
On his horse, Nikandros looks scandalized. “Damen,” he hisses, “the others are right behind us.”
Damen tosses his head. “I have now.” Spoken at a regular volume.
Nikandros pales, turning shades of gray. He looks like a man might if the ground cracked open beneath his feet. “You’re the Prince!” he says, and, in another scenario, this might have been a fair objection.
Damen tugs on his reins and pulls up closer to Nikandros. “So is Auguste,” he says.
Nikandros swallows, and with obvious effort, manages: “Very good.”
Damen throws his head back and laughs. He and Nikandros are riding close enough that he can slap him on the back, so Damen does. “It was.”
And then he kicks with his heels and leaves the retinue in the dust, Nikandros chasing behind him. The next trip to Vere won’t come soon enough.