Jack’s real chambers, his private rooms that he never entered during the day, saving them from his horrible ice trail and frigid touch, sprawled beyond his frozen throne and the main entrance into the hidden passageways. No one else was allowed there, ever, but especially at night, when his earned isolation was absolute.
He couldn’t bear to see his own face, his own form, so no one else could either. While the rest of the court looked as they once had when night fell, Jack, just as his curse was different during the day, doomed to leave an icy residue and stomp upon the ground like a plague, wasn’t the same when he was human either.
He was human , but the damage….
Sitting beside his bath as it filled with heated water, he hated what little of his skin he could see, sleeves rolled up to his elbows.
His rooms were warm, as warm as he could make them, but he still started most nights with a soak. He never seemed to get warm enough, no matter how hot the water or how many layers he wore or blankets he piled on his bed. He rarely slept anyway, since the need was gone with the clutch of the curse. He dreamt though—daydreams of what might have been if he hadn’t been such a fool all those years ago.
The washroom had steps up to the large bath and many wardrobes around it, and continued farther on to his bedroom, where Jack’s large bed sported four ceiling-high posts and heavy bedcurtains. Closer to the door was his antechamber and study. Josie loved her gold, but Jack had always preferred silver, even if it was less kingly. His rooms were the same, covered in those colors, in stone and cool woodgrains and varying shades of blue.
The rug that adorned his study led beneath several bookcases and his desk. Behind the desk wasn’t a normal chair but his original throne, which had once been in the other room where the frozen throne now stood. Jack had moved it here as a reminder, closeting away what he hadn’t been able to live up to.
The throne wasn’t wood but polished white stone painted in gold and silver. It was too grand to sit behind a desk and as tall as Jack’s ceiling, blocking much of the view toward the bedroom and bath. Jack preferred it that way, to be blocked off from everything.
He ran his fingers through the warm water, deeming it high enough to turn off the pump, and tried not to cringe at the sight of his ruined skin.
Closing his eyes, he attempted to think of anything else, something good, something sweet—and wondered if Reardon had discovered the book yet.
“Majesty?”
Jack’s eyes flew open.
Reardon
The door wasn’t locked. Why bother , Reardon supposed, since no one would dare do what he was doing now—ignoring the very serious mandate to never disturb the court at night .
Well, once someone was trusted, the court wasn’t off-limits, Reardon knew now. But the king never allowed anyone in, and he was encroaching on the king’s privacy anyway, untidy without his doublet and clutching an old leather book.
“Majesty, I know you’re here,” Reardon called again, softly shutting the door behind him.
This was a king’s chambers indeed, the grandest Reardon had seen tonight. The rooms seemed to go on forever beyond the antechamber, with an overlarge throne behind an ornate desk. And it was so warm, the coziest room in the castle, contrasting starkly against the chill on the other side of the door. Only the door itself and a bit of the floor right in front of it remained wet and cold, where the king must stand as his form changed.
“Please, Majesty, I didn’t mean to discover your secret. I only went to speak with Barclay and found….” Reardon trailed off, nervous amidst the silence that greeted him. Still, he crept forward toward the desk with its elegant throne. “I saw Josie. I’ve seen everyone. All that remains is you.”
Even as Reardon came around the desk, he heard no sound. Maybe the king hadn’t returned yet. He’d been in Reardon’s room. He might have gone somewhere else. But then the barest peek toward the washroom showed that the bath was filled with steaming water, ready for someone to sink into it.
“Don’t be angry. You can’t leave me this gift and not expect that I’d want to say thank you. There is so much I want to say to you.” Without any rustle of noise or answering voice, Reardon sighed and turned to the desk, his back to the washroom as he moved beside the throne and set the book down, peering over the desk’s contents.
In the center was a crumpled piece of paper smoothed out, like the king had thrown it away and then changed his mind. Reardon picked it up.
The noble prince went on his quest—
The air was knocked from him as a body slammed up against him from behind, arms wrapping around his own to pin them to his body and cause the rumpled paper to drop.
“You come into my room and rifle through my things?”
The king, his voice unmistakable—with his arms wrapped around Reardon.
Reardon didn’t dare move but couldn’t help leaning subtly against the warm body pressed to him, not some large, hulking figure, but a man, about his own height, with tan arms, much of the skin visible, as the sleeves of a simple shirt were rolled up.
“Forgive me,” Reardon said, holding still and forgetting the parchment as he made to turn his head.
“ Don’t . You will not look. You will not see me. If you do, I swear I will throw you from the window you first climbed through.”
The words were cold, but the body was warm as he held Reardon. He held Reardon, touching him, which had to be the first time he had touched anyone since—
The king squeezed so tight, Reardon gasped for reprieve.
“P-please! I won’t look!” Reardon promised, keeping his head forward but glancing down at the arms around him, at the glimpse of skin and humanity and….
Scars , countless scars, covering so much of the king’s arms that Reardon hadn’t noticed for how many overlapped and ran together.
“Is this what you wanted?” the king roared, shaking him. “To see the true, ugly me? Ugly and earned, have no doubt about that.”
“No, I… I could never think you ugly, Majesty, no matter what the rest of you looks like. Please, I have seen too much beauty in you to see ugliness.”
The hold on Reardon slackened but did not release. “Then you are a fool. You learned our secrets early, which means I can choose to cast you out or imprison you, maybe freeze you come morning.”
“You won’t.”
“So bold and foolhardy, little prince?” The king’s voice was ice where his touch was not, sharp and biting, but Reardon saw through him.
“No, but if you had such hatred for me, you wouldn’t have left me that book. You left it, Zephyr said, not him.”
A puff of air disturbed the hairs on Reardon’s neck, as warm as the room and enough to make him shudder. “Damn gossip.”
Reardon smiled, because the king hadn’t denied it, and his hold was loose now, just their bodies flush and those arms around him. No one had ever really held Reardon before, besides a brief embrace, and certainly not like this, intimate and caging. Reardon should have been unnerved by it, but the king never instilled that feeling in him.
“I won’t look if you do not wish it, Majesty.”
“I do not. But I also do not believe I can trust you anymore. ”
“Then let me prove myself again. Let me know you. Isn’t that what we promised?”
“You broke our promises.”
“I didn’t mean to! It was an accident. You can ask the others.”
“Was coming here an accident too?”
“No. But I hoped you might make an exception for that.”
Another silence, as if the king wasn’t sure what to do or whether he dared release Reardon—and honestly, Reardon did not want to be released. He felt improper stirrings low in his belly at being so securely detained by the mighty Ice King.
“May I ask…?” he ventured quietly, still looking at the scars and seeing a hint of the king’s bare feet too. He was otherwise dressed like Reardon by the feel of him, in only a shirt and trousers.
“Part of my punishment,” the king said, hot and close at Reardon’s ear. “I don’t feel pain. Or if I do, I have grown too used to it to notice. The others become their element at sunrise, but I am trapped inside. Every day, these two hundred years, the ice cuts deeper. I don’t have wounds come nightfall, only the scars.
“If you came here looking for a handsome face that only looks unfortunate in sunlight, you will be disappointed.”
The harshly spoken words did not change the stirrings Reardon felt. “That does not matter to me. It wasn’t your face that first showed me who you are. A face is not what warms someone the way knowing them can. The way… a touch can.” He lifted his hands just enough to alight a soft caress on the king’s forearms.
A howl was the only precursor to Reardon being slammed onto the desk, the king releasing him but for a hand pressing to his shoulder and another at his lower back, keeping him down. The king’s hips were close at the curve of Reardon, bent to his will.
“I will not touch you,” Reardon swore, biting back an unbidden moan, “but if you asked… oh, Majesty, if you asked… I would, and I would welcome you touching me.”
The grip on Reardon faltered. The king wasn’t hard behind him but very present along Reardon’s backside. “You know not what you say.”
“I do. Believe me, I do.” Reardon arched backward, as bold as the king had accused him of being. His captor might not be hard, but Reardon was, twitching in reaction to being pinned when he knew there was no danger. “Please,” he said, shifting his legs to spread wider and splaying his arms across the desk.
“I saw you,” the king said in answer, and for the first time, Reardon felt the king tremble. “I… watched you in the night.”
Reardon tilted his head, though not so much as to risk peeking over his shoulder.
“It was your second night in the castle. I watched you, I am always watching, but I saw something that night that I shouldn’t have and almost didn’t turn away. You undressed and retired without snuffing out the candles and reached down your body beneath the sheets.”
Recognition made Reardon throb at the thought.
“I didn’t stay beyond that moment, but that’s how I knew your desires, because I heard you speak them as I left, longing for a ‘him’ instead of a queen. You think you know me, but I have not changed since the days I bedded my stable boys.”
“But you have,” Reardon said, not sobered or ashamed as the king surely wanted him to feel with that admission. All he could imagine was those brilliant blue eyes on him. “I’m glad you told me, and I forgive you, because you did turn away like the good man I know you to be. All I ask is that you offer the same mercy to me. Forgive my coming here… and give me what I beseeched of the fates that night. If you want me, take me.” He flattened more wantonly on the desk. “Take me and let me know your touch.”
The hand on Reardon’s shoulder loosened like it might lurch away, but the one on his back shifted, sliding down his hip slowly, and then hungrily over his ass with a firm grip, as the king twitched tellingly where he teased between Reardon’s thighs.
“ Yes ,” Reardon gasped. “Please… let me be yours.”
“I forbid you to look at me.”
“Not once will I attempt to see you, Majesty, unless you ask it of me.”
“I will not. And I will not give in again. This is only for tonight.”
Reardon gave no answer to that, because he refused to believe it would be true.
He closed his eyes.
The king squeezed his backside again, and then brought both hands around the line of his untucked shirt. His palms raked up Reardon’s skin beneath the fabric, and though even his hands felt scarred, that did nothing to diminish Reardon’s wanting .
With an insistent tug, the king tore the shirt from Reardon’s head, returning his hands to travel down the same route they had gone up. Even without seeing him, the contact offered a promising thrill. Reardon didn’t care how many scars marred the king. In his mind’s eye, he conjured a powerful, faceless man with those intense blue eyes, wearing a blue doublet with white-gold embroidery. Before knowing the king became human at night, Reardon had already been making it for him.
Textured palms slid around Reardon’s waist, up his chest and down like had been done to his back, feeling him everywhere with slow precision. Long fingers spread over every part of him, applying the perfect pressure to make him shiver. With the king’s hips pressing in flush against Reardon’s, a lone hand strayed beneath the band of Reardon’s trousers, through the coarse hair there, and right to his burning flesh.
No frantic touch of his own could compare to someone else wrapping their fingers around him or passing a warm thumb across his slit. Reardon whined, hips rocking in reflex, which both pumped his cock into the king’s hand and pressed the curve of his ass against the hardening length behind him, but Reardon’s trousers were too tight for the king’s hand to move much while merely down the front of them.
“Take them off,” the king ordered.
Reardon fumbled to obey him, hands trembling uselessly, but once he got the ties undone, his trousers fell loose to his ankles, leaving him naked and still bent over the desk. Sordid tales of romance told Reardon what came next. Basic anatomy, secret whispers, the instinctive straying of his own hands—he knew what came next, and he longed for it in ways no solo pleasuring or pining after a man could satisfy.
The king was still dressed, though, still holding Reardon down and stroking him, making Reardon’s belly hot and his loins ache.
“Please, Majesty. Take me .”
“So impatient, you don’t even know how much more pleasure there is in waiting.” His grip tightened, but the movement of his hand slowed, an agonizing slide, as the king’s hips began to rock forward, subtle teasing of his clothed cock between Reardon’s cheeks.
“I have waited…. My whole life I’ve waited, please.”
“I will, but you need to slow down.” The king’s free hand pressed so hard on the middle of Reardon’s back to keep him in place, he had trouble taking a deep breath. “Do you want me to hurt you? Because it will not feel nice if I fuck you raw like you think you want. There is an art to this, little prince, like clothing crafted or a bard tale composed. Do you understand? Or do you want the culmination to be a disappointment?”
The warning came with immediate reprieve, the pressure on Reardon’s back lessening while the hand between his legs gathered every bit of slickness leaking free and pumped harder. “S-slow,” Reardon conceded. “Whatever pace you set.”
The whole of the king’s body molded over Reardon, the feel of soft fabric tickling his bare skin, and then breath tickled his ear as the king whispered, “Good little prince.”