Page 50 of The Second Marriage

When the servant had gone, Sejun removed his robe again and climbed back into bed. Taral sighed and turned toward him, his eyes opening long enough for him to offer Sejun a sleepy smile before drifting shut again. Sejun kissed his forehead, then again when Taral didn’t respond—indulging himself.

Even in his darkest moments of self-pity, he couldn’t pretend Taral wasn’t warming to him. During their first shared heat, before their second marriage, Taral had been so grim and silent that Sejun had worried he was causing Taral pain. Then the peaceable camaraderie of their second heat and the revelation about Jaysha that had followed, and now this: Taral begging for him and then drifting off to sleep in Sejun’s arms, the bond heavy with his contentment.

As he had promised, Taral hardly looked at Jaysha when they were in the same room. To Sejun’s knowledge, Taral was loyal in word and in action. Sejun would expect no less: Taral liked rules and order and took his duties seriously. But he was beginning now to wonder if Taral might see their marriage as more than mere duty. The way he smiled at Sejun, the way he laughed at Sejun’s feeble jokes, the way he came into Sejun’s arms with no hesitation in the sweet vulnerability of heat—Sejun had trouble holding himself aloof when Taral gave him these small encouragements. But maybe Sejun was only a hopeful fool who would have his heart crushed in the end.

He had no way of knowing. One God guide me, he prayed silently, and then turned his thoughts to something even more mysterious, namely the conversation at Nirav’s gathering the evening before.

Some guests Sejun had recognized from the night of the dancing. Others were new to him. All were young, within five years of Nirav’s age, and they had extensive talk about hunting and parties and some new play at a theater in the city, which Sejun gathered was quite scandalous. When the conversation turned to politics, Sejun forced himself to pay sharp attention instead of letting his thoughts wander elsewhere as he might otherwise.

Even so, he understood little of what was said. Someone had heard from a friend that troops were gathering near the border, but which border and which troops were never specified. Someone else had heard that the crown prince had been going into the city more than usual, and everyone gathered around the table nodded with thoughtful expressions, although Sejun couldn’t even begin to guess at the significance. Did they suspect Aditya’s heir of conspiring against him? That seemed unlikely, as all the man needed to do was wait for Aditya to die.

He hadn’t shared any of this with Taral yet as he had hoped to have some insight to present to Taral instead of merely parroting what he’d heard. He could see that he would make sense of nothing, though, and so he would tell Taral as soon as Taral’s heat was over.

Taral stirred beside him. With a stretch and a yawn, he woke from his daze and promptly flopped over to smash his face against Sejun’s upper arm. “Do you have food for me?”

Sejun laughed. “No, but I’m sure I can acquire some in short order. You don’t need me?”

“No. Soon. Let’s eat something first. I can control myself that long.”

“All right,” Sejun said, but first he gave Taral a lingering kiss, and Taral held him close for another kiss and another, and in the end Sejun did have him again before he ever managed to summon any lunch.

Taral was sweeter and more agreeable during that heat than Sejun had known he could be, as if he had been replaced in the night by a stranger who had his same appearance. Sejun wondered if this was Taral’s true self that he had been concealing from Sejun all this time, but no, the man who enjoyed scowling at his ledger was Taral, too. This secret, languid, wanton Taral would appear once a month for Sejun to enjoy and would then vanish again until his next heat.

“Will you read to me?” Taral asked late in the evening of the second day. “From your book.”

“From my—oh.” Sejun pressed himself up onto his elbow and grinned down at Taral’s somewhat bashful expression. “From the book of pornography you purchased for me?”

“I didn’t know what it was!” Taral protested, then smacked ineffectually at Sejun’s chest, a reluctant smile tugging at his mouth, as Sejun laughed at him.

“All right, I’ll read you your smutty stories.” Sejun rose to fetch the book, which he had put away in a chest so the servants wouldn’t gossip. He had looked through it a little while Taral was in his meetings; the book consisted of a series of linked tales about the same characters, increasing in length and level of debauchery as the book progressed. Although Sejun knew what men and women did together, he had never considered the matter in any detail and had little interest in the proceedings. Still, he had found the stories did titillate, and he was gleeful in his anticipation of Taral’s scandalized response.

“I hope you’ll pick a good one,” Taral said as Sejun joined him on the bed once more.

Sejun huffed. “That was my intention. You’ll have to be patient with me, though, as I don’t have any experience with translating.”

“I don’t mind.” Taral shifted over to rest his head in Sejun’s lap, a development Sejun found nothing less than thrilling, and sighed softly when Sejun began stroking his hair.

Sejun held the book with one hand and petted Taral with the other. He chose his story with no care at all, instead opening the book at random and beginning to read from the top of that page. He made slow progress as he had to mentally translate each sentence from Chedai before speaking the words aloud, but Taral didn’t complain or try to hurry him along. He lay quietly, curled against Sejun in the tangled bedding, listening as Sejun read.

The tale had a thin framing device of the man and woman, a newly married couple, exchanging stories they had been told by helpful friends and relatives before their wedding. Sejun thought of the Chedai as somewhat prudish and was surprised by the explicit detail of the narrative as the woman first described oral pleasure at great length and then invited her husband to perform the act on her.

“Does it really say that?” Taral interrupted at one point to ask. “Her lush flower?”

“You thought that was my artistic license? No, the book says exactly that. And ‘moist petals,’ also.”

“Whoever wrote that euphemism should be ashamed of themselves,” Taral said, so adorably disgruntled that Sejun had to bend down to drop a kiss on the side of his face.

Despite this griping, the story had an obvious effect on Taral. His scent warmed and deepened as Sejun continued, and soon Sejun could detect the distinctive, musky smell of Taral’s slick. Taral shifted on the bed again and again in a way Sejun was tempted to identify as squirming. At last, just as Sejun was about to set the book aside and suggest they put this inspiration into practice, Taral sat up and took the book from Sejun’s hands.

“Enough reading,” Taral said, and Sejun grinned.

Taral pushed Sejun onto his back and climbed on top. Sejun was happy to be pushed and happy to be mounted, and happier still when Taral lifted up on his knees and sank down again on Sejun’s cock.

“You found the story motivating, I see,” Sejun said.

“Heat is motivating,” Taral said, and then the tart edge of his humor softened as he gazed down at Sejun’s face. He bent to kiss Sejun’s mouth, his hands braced against Sejun’s shoulders, pressing him down into the bed. “Thank you for reading to me.”

“I said I’d read to you every night, and I will.”