Page 27

No, aroundhim. Oliver landed on his back, the air knocked from his lungs, and looked up to see Erik looming over him, face made harsh by the curtain of snarled hair falling on either side of it. He had Oliver by the biceps, gripping so tight it hurt, pinning him down to the mattress. Oliver flexed his forearms and there was no doubt that he’d never be able to dislodge him.

The position, even the harsh fingertips digging in, were not unwelcome. He liked it a little rough; liked to be reminded how big and strong Erik was; reveled in all the contrasts between them.

But Erik’s eyes were all wrong.

The sky lightened by the second, its wan diffusion highlighting a pair of blue eyes gone foreign. Pupils the size of pin heads, rolling side to side, scanning Oliver’s face without really seeing him. Erik bared his teeth, and the growl repeated.

For one awful moment, stomach flipping, Oliver wanted to pull his collar wide and search for a bite. Had Leif turned his own uncle? Had he…?

But no, no. This was a human sound. The growl of a man full of anger, and frustration, hurting and worried and helpless, caught in the grips of a nightmare, straining toward the call of a wolf and all that it might mean.

“Erik,” Oliver snapped. “It’s me.”

Confusion. And then recognition. And then horror, as he realized what he’d done. His grip slackened, and he started to draw away.

Oliver’s stomach flipped again, this time because the idea of Erik withdrawing into himself, burdening himself with yet more shame, was intolerable. Oliver needed him to understand that he was here, that he saw Erik’s anguish; to know that, even if he stood up for Leif, because someone ought to remind Erik that he did still love his nephew, he was ultimately on Erik’s side. That he was his shoulder to lean on, no matter how small, and that Erik didn’t have to hide all that he was thinking and feeling. Not in the dark hours that were theirs and theirs alone.

Oliver reached up to take two fistfuls of Erik’s hair and dragged him, unresisting, down into a kiss.

Erik made a low, hurt sound against his mouth, and then kissed him ferociously. His grip tightened, and shifted, hands petting roughly over Oliver’s chest, stomach, throat.

Oliver wound up on his knees, one big hand pressing his face into the pillow. It had become a race, desperation evident in every grab and shove, in the sloppy, hurried way Erik stretched him with too much oil and not enough time.

Oliver shifted now with a wince, sore. Not unpleasantly so, but he had finger-shaped bruises coming up on the side of his throat, and his scalp was tender where Erik had gripped his hair, long enough now to gather up in one hand and tip his head back until his neck strained. Thankfully, his clothes covered the rather deep, distinct bite mark on the point of his shoulder.

He felt well-used, thoroughly-fucked, more than a little bow-legged…and would have loved it if not for the fact that, after, while Erik clutched him desperately to his chest and breathed like a lathered horse, nothing seemed to have eased.

“I’m sorry,” Erik had murmured, finally, and kissed his forehead, and then rolled away and gone to the washstand.

Oliver frowned as he buffed the saddle’s breastplate strap, recalled the splendid sight of Erik standing at the basin, passing a wet cloth over his chest, stomach, shoulders. Pink lines from his own nails had scored that broad back, and the insides of his thighs throbbed to the shape of those narrow hips. But Erik had still been tense – far too tense for a man who’d just come like a bull.

Oliver had a sinking suspicion that it was going to be a long, fraught march South, filled with stares off into the distance, and weighted silences, and many sighs.

He could wring Leif’s dumb neck for that alone.

Beyond the door, he heard the drakes warble a greeting to someone, and Percy sent him an image of Tessa, hair braided elaborately and slender form wrapped head to toe in a fox fur that matched it. He lifted his head as she stepped through, old, stale grain crackling under her boots.

“Good morning.” She came to the brazier straight off and held her gloved hands before it.

“Morning.” Oliver returned her smile.

She froze, fingers outstretched, eyes widening. “Ollie, are you well?”

He resisted the urge to pull his shirt collar up higher around his throat. “Yes. Fine.” And hewas, truly. Minus the worry.

Her head titled fractionally, and her gaze dropped to his neck; he knew she was seeing the marks there, but she didn’t comment on them. She was married, now; it was likely she had a little better understanding of the sorts of bruises a person wanted to carry, that they’d all but begged for and leaned into.

(How depressing to think of his little cousin in that light. Damn. She really was all grown up now.)

“What brings you out here this early?” he asked, and returned to oiling. “Off for a ride?”

She hesitated long enough that he lifted his head again, and found her standing in a formal pose, linked hands resting before her, head held high. “I hope so,” she said, and her tone was formal as well.

“If you need me to check your saddle for you–”

She stepped closer, moving around the brazier so she stood right beside him, and he saw, at this distance, the firm resolve in her gaze. It rocked him back on the stool, which left him biting on a wince and a hiss as Erik’s attentions made themselves suddenly, painfully known.

“You’re flying out to meet Náli this morning,” she said. “And I’m coming with you.” Her voice quavered a bit at the end, not as sure as Amelia or their mother would have been, but it was a statement rather than a request.