Page 79

He gripped the front of Mattias’s tunic with both hands and yanked him forward, throwing him off balance so that he floundered to catch himself, one hand on the mattress, the other on Náli’s thigh. Náli kicked his chin up and pushed their mouths together.

Mattias’s grip tightened on his thigh, digging bruises, and his teeth scraped across Náli’s lower lip before he slipped his tongue between, urged his jaw wider, and kissed him properly.

Náli’s chest swelled with delight, hands moving to Mattias’s shoulders and clinging tight, because he was the one who got to do this. He was the one who drew a reaction from the normally-taciturn Guard captain; it was Náli he broke down for; who he got angry with, scowled at – and then kissed as if he couldn’t live without him.

One hand slid up Náli’s thigh until it gripped his hip, and the other speared back through his hair to cup his nape; tipped his head to a new angle so Mattias could deepen the kiss. It was a slick side of damp lips and hot tongue; Mattias was so warm, heat bleeding through the fabric of Náli’s trousers, radiating through his face like sunlight. He wanted more, but already this was nearly too much, his head swimming and his neck weak.

He gasped when Mattias broke away, and gasped again when he pressed a chain of kisses down his jaw and throat, close-kept beard scratching at sensitive skin.

“Matti,” he panted. He fisted the back of his tunic, between his shoulder blades, and felt the shift of steely muscle beneath his knuckles. “Please. I want…” Everything. He wanted everything, and his usually-glib tongue failed him.

Mattias pulled back, but rested their foreheads together before Náli could protest. His voice was breathless, strained when he said, “What if I give you what you want? What if I take you to bed?”

“Yes – oh, please–” He tried to surge forward, but the gentle pressure of a hand at the base of his throat held him in place. “Matti.”

“What if I did?” Mattias persisted. “What if I spent all night with you?”

Náli couldn’t stop the growl that built in his throat. “If you’re about to wax poetic again about your fucking vows–”

“Have you thought,” Mattias said, ignoring him, his voice melancholy in a way that stopped the words on Náli’s tongue. “About what would happen after? When we wake, and dress, and venture back to the salon for another day of entertaining your potential brides?”

Náli had never wanted to punch and kiss someone at the same time before. He loosened his grip on Mattia’s tunic with a huff of annoyance; ran his hands down the strong planes of his chest and stomach instead, until he could hook his fingers in the tooled sword belt around his waist; stared down at the way his skin looked too pale and breakable against the well-worn, oiled leather, their foreheads still pressed together.

“It’ll be just like it was today. Miserable. Pointless. And then, after, we’ll come back here, and have this.” He gave a meaningful tug on the belt.

“But this” – Mattias drew back, finally, to meet his gaze, his brown eyes impossibly sad, full of regret; his hand slid up, until it was pressed flat to Náli’s stomach – “isn’t something you’ve ever had before. After…after, it won’t be the same.” His hand inched higher, until it covered Náli’s quick-thumping heart. “If you love me, and you lie with me, it’ll hurt even worse when you have to marry someone else.”

“Gods – I don’t care about that!”

“But I do,” Mattias said, just a whisper. “It’ll hurt me.”

The words hit Náli like a shove. He turned loose of Mattias and sat back; felt his eyes go wide.

Mattias’s expression turned rueful and, somehow, sadder. “You never considered that, did you?”

“No, no – I did. It’s only that…”

It was only that he hadn’t. Not really. He’d felt such pain himself, been so bitter over their arrangement, and all the things he was denied, that he’d never stopped to consider that crossing boundaries might wound Mattias.

Mattias let out a long breath and shifted to sit sideways on the mattress, absently smoothing the fine hairs that had escaped his braid. “I forget how young you are sometimes.”

“That’s got nothing to do with it.”

Mattias smirked, wry and unhappy. “You’ve never been with anyone. Who’s to say you won’t enjoy your wife, once you try it? And I’ll be the old man standing outside the door.”

“Would you stop that? You aren’t old, and I’m not that young. And if I’m liable to gain a taste for girls, what’s to stop you from realizing I’m nothing special?” He gestured to himself, glaring a challenge.

One Mattias met with a quietly devastating visual sweep of him, head to toes. “Because I have been with someone, and love didn’t factor into it at all. It would be different.” His gaze lingered on Náli’s mouth on the way back up. “With you.”

“You are going” – Náli said on a big inhale – “to have to stop looking at me that way if you’re intent on keeping our hands to ourselves.”

Mattias bit his lip. “I didn’t say anything about hands.” And he wrapped one around Náli’s calf and yanked him across the bed.

“Ack!” Náli fell onto his back, and Mattias perched over him, one hand braced on the mattress by his head, the other teasing at the hollow of Náli’s throat. His palm could span the entire width of his neck, and wasn’t that a delightful realization?

Amusement touched his expression for the first time, an old fondness usually kept guarded. “You’re an insufferable brat,” he accused.

“Yes. An insufferable brat that you want to fuck.”