Page 5 of The Second Marriage

Taral stared at the beams of the ceiling overhead. The haze of heat ebbed for now. A warm breeze wafted through the open shutters. He could hear chickens in the courtyard below, clucking as they scratched around for insects. Sejun kissed his shoulder, then again.

Iniya would be pleased. Sejun’s dowry would arrive, and with it an end to their poverty. Taral had done what he hadn’t thought he could and what Iniya had insisted he must.

How different his life would be now if he could have managed this a decade ago.

Forgive me, Jaysha, he thought.

CHAPTER3

“Would you like to eat?”

Taral turned over in bed, holding the blankets pulled up around his shoulders. He was only half awake, and the effort to form words was, for a moment, more than he could manage.

But Sejun held a tray of food, and Taral was, in fact, hungry. He sat up. “Yes. Thank you.”

They sat together on the rug and shared the meal, both of them loosely wrapped in their untied robes, Sejun’s sagging open to his navel and baring the soft folds of his belly. He was wonderfully plump, and Taral tore his gaze away, discomfited by how much he desired Sejun.

He felt that he should offer some manner of conversation, but he couldn’t think of anything to say. Sejun glanced at him again and again and finally said, “How long do you expect your heat to last?”

“Oh—a few days. Two or three more, at this point.”

“That’s longer than I thought.”

“It varies among omegas. They were even longer in my youth.”

Sejun frowned absently at the tray, picking over the offerings. Taral took the chance to study his face. His Sarnai ancestry showed in the lightness of his skin, more yellow than brown, although of course most people in the Mountain Kingdoms had Sarnai ancestry to some degree or another. He was unfairly handsome, with a strong, straight nose and thick dark hair that grazed his forehead in unruly waves. Taral wasn’t the sort to be swayed by a pretty face, but he couldn’t deny that Sejun was pleasing to look at.

“How can I suit you best?” Sejun asked, glancing up to meet Taral’s gaze. “I would like to please you.”

His artlessness was disarming. “I’m pleased so far,” Taral said.

Sejun laughed, to Taral’s surprise. “So far? You aren’t willing to give me a blanket endorsement?”

Taral stiffened. “I didn’t mean to insult you.”

“You didn’t.” Sejun looked at him, his mouth pulled into a down-turned line. Taral waited for him to say something further, but instead he turned his attention back to the food and said nothing more.

Taral crawled back into bed when he was finished eating and lay facing the windows with his back to Sejun. The first shared heat was meant to be a happy time of courtship and growing intimacy, and Taral knew he was behaving horribly, but he couldn’t find any joy in the occasion. Regret sat in him like a heavy lump of clay. Sejun’s only sin was that he wasn’t Jaysha, and Taral’s sins were innumerable but chief among them in this moment was that he still thought of Jaysha at all.

He heard the door open and then close again as Sejun set the tray outside. Then the bed creaked and shifted as Sejun perched on the edge. “Should I leave you?”

“No.” Taral turned and grasped at Sejun’s sleeve. “Forgive me. Heat sometimes leaves me weak and feverish.”

Sejun’s face concealed nothing. His relief was as easy to read as if he had written a letter proclaiming it. “Do you feel well? I don’t know how it comes upon you—”

Taral shifted. He did feel his heat rising again after his nap. Heat always reminded him that although he spoke and thought, he was only a speaking, thinking animal with all the urges of an animal. His body yearned for Sejun’s body, to feel Sejun inside him again.

“Lie down with me,” he said.

Sejun was attentive and careful without being timid. His hand on Taral’s cock was confident enough that Taral was certain he had lain with men before, which set an unexpected jab of jealousy poking at Taral’s heart. He wasn’t the possessive type, but he felt possessive now, of this man who was the next thing to a stranger. The animal in him wanted such bewildering things.

Day blurred into evening and then night. Taral slept for a while and then woke again, aching and urgent, and Sejun was there to attend to him; and that was how the night passed. In the morning, Sejun opened the shutters to air out the room and went out to the colonnade, and after a short while returned with food and tea and hot water for bathing.

“You should bathe now, if you like, while the water’s hot,” he said as he set out the tray of food. “Would you care for tea?”

“Yes, thank you,” Taral said from where he lay in the blankets, feeling somewhat like over-kneaded dough. He hadn’t known what it would be like to have someone care for him during heat.

Sejun glanced up and smiled at him. “One can’t possibly face the morning without tea. That’s my opinion, at least.”