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The change in positions, the new way Mattias fit inside him like this, left Náli dizzy, but he reached down to claw at Mattias’s belt anyway. Sentences were beyond him. He struggled with the buckle. “Off. Wanna see you,” he slurred, and, thankfully, Mattias understood.

“Gods. All right. Yes. Hold on.” He eased Náli back down to the mattress and then tore at his own belt. The buckle finally came loose with a clang and he tossed it, heedless, across the room. As it landed somewhere distant with a clatter, he ripped off his tunic and undershirt in a mad rush, wisps of long hair coming loose from his braid in the process.

He stilled a moment, after, save the flexing of his arms as the gripped Náli’s waist again; save the heaving of his chest as he took a massive breath.

The sight of him like that, all golden swells of muscle carved with shadows from the candlelight, eyes black with want, breathless, sheened with sweat, struck Náli in a wholly new way, now that he was spread beneath him, impaled on his cock and utterly helpless at his hands. It stripped away the last of Náli’s fronts. No part of him could hide, now; there was no sense in playing the lord like this, which left him free to ache, and want, and beg.

He reached up for him. “Matti–”

And Mattias swooped down to capture his lips in another kiss. This one was messy and frantic. Mattias ground his hips forward, close circles that pressed him deep inside. Náli wrapped his legs around his waist and urged him on with his heels; with the way he opened his mouth beneath the press of his tongue; with the way he clawed at his bare shoulders. More, more, more. Ruin me.

Mattias pulled back and thrust back home, a little farther, a little more forcefully each time, until their hips met with a smack of sweat-damp skin each time. Until he broke the kiss in favor of panting against Náli’s cheek, brows drawn together, grunting on every forward thrust.

That’s because of me, Náli thought with what little awareness remained. The way his mouth fell open and a growl built in his chest; the way all the tendons stood out in his neck and down his arms, the way pleasure looked almost like pain in the harsh set of his face – that was for Náli.

He’d known power all his life, and learned to exercise it to its best advantage…but he’d never exercised this kind of power. The most personal kind, achieved only by existing, by being here with the person who loved him most in the world.

And that was the heart of it, wasn’t it? Love wasn’t just a word to Mattias. He meant it when he said it. He loved Náli. Náli’s love was reciprocated, was mutual.

His eyes filled with tears, and he didn’t try to blink them away or turn his head. Let them build and slip hot down his temples.

Mattias noticed, and his rhythm faltered. He lifted a hand from his death-grip on the bedding and thumbed wetness from Náli’s face. “Does it hurt? Did I–” He tensed all over, as if prepared to leap away.

Náli gripped the base of his braid, right at his nape, and held him tight. “Nothing hurts.” He smiled, though his voice was wobbly and breathless. “I love you.”

He’d never said it outright and simply before, only ever during arguments or stressful moments or in advance of a criticism – usually about Mattias’s refusal to do something about said love – and he had the pleasure of watching the words, voiced sweetly and honestly, hit Mattias like a physical blow. He blinked, and his throat bobbed, and his cheek twitched as the words pierced him.

And his cock kicked where it was buried inside Náli.

Eyes still brimming, Náli grinned and said, “Liked that, did you?”

“Brat,” Mattias accused. “I love you, too.” Then he sat back, drew his hips nearly all the way back, and slammed back in.

Náli made an undignified sound and tightened his thighs. Went readily when Mattias manhandled him in closer, took a firm grip on his waist, and set about fucking him in earnest.

All of his power, witnessed so often in the sparring ring, was focused now on thrusting into Náli, again and again, gaining speed, shoving him up the bed so that he had to slap a hand up against the headboard to keep from knocking into it. Náli could do nothing but take it – and enjoy the view. The sweat beading and pearling down Mattias’s chest, the hard flex of his stomach as his hips worked, forward and back, forward and back. Skin slapped skin in an obscene, staccato crack that echoed off the room’s granite walls and floor. The competing tempos of their harsh breaths filled the space between them. Náli gripped at the linens, at Mattias’s forearms, at his own cock, finally, when the roll of oncoming pleasure became too bright and fierce and all-encompassing to ignore any longer.

“Gods,” Mattias panted, gleaming and working and the picture of masculine beauty there between his thighs. “Gods – fuck – you’re so tight.”

“Do – do I – feel good?” He needed to know, craved the praise like the brat he was.

“You feel perfect, darling.”

Náli tugged hard on his cock, and let himself go over the edge; came in messy, hot ribbons all over his own stomach. He cried out, as the pleasure crested and the tension snapped – and then again when Mattias adjusted his hips, shifted the angle, and thrust in hard right against the spot he’d hit earlier with his fingers, so his nerves fizzed and sparked.

It was too much, but in the most wonderful way. His body was awash in sensation, tender all over as a fresh bruise, and he was only dimly aware of Mattias thrusting, and grunting, and then finishing, grip bruising on Náli’s waist, wet heat blooming deep in his gut where Mattias was buried.

Mattias bent forward, a slow collapse, and pressed their foreheads together. They breathed hot and frantic there, still joined, and Náli could feel the throb of his heartbeat, a stronger, steadier echo of his own, like signal drums calling and echoing across the mountaintops at night.