Claiming the Warlord (Drakkari #2)

Chapter 1

It is very early in the morning and Evran is very warm.

It's not the thin, hesitant warmth of spring that has begun to creep in through the stones these past weeks, but a deeper, closer kind.

It's the unmistakable heat of a body pressed against his back, of a heavy arm draped across his bare waist, of a bearded jaw tucked into the curve where his neck meets his shoulder.

He does not open his eyes. He does not need to. He has woken this way nearly every morning for six months, and his body has memorized the feel and structure of being held by the Warlord of the Drakkari.

Vaike's breath moves warm and slow against his throat.

Asleep, Evran thinks, though he knows better than to assume.

Vaike sleeps like a hunting cat, surfacing and submerging in increments, and more than once Evran has thought the man fully unconscious only to have a low voice murmur against his ear in perfect, knowing response to some small sound he made.

The light through the shutters is grey-gold. Dawn, then, or close enough that Eira will already be in the upper terrace, pulling on her gloves and casting an impatient glance toward the gates.

Evran shifts, experimental. A slow, gentle attempt to extricate himself from the bed without waking his lover.

The arm around his waist tightens at once, hauls him back, and a pleased, half-awake rumble vibrates against his shoulder blade.

"Stay."

Evran laughs, soft and startled. "That's cheating."

"Mm." Vaike's nose presses further into Evran's neck, nuzzling, and Evran's breath hitches and he curls into Vaike's body despite himself because gods, Vaike knows.

He knows what happens when his beard drags along that curve of sensitive skin, knows the way Evran's whole body goes traitor on him, knows exactly how unfair it is to wake him this way when there is a morning to be gotten to.

"Vaike."

"My love."

"I have to get up."

"A tragedy."

"Eira will tease me if I'm late." He tries to twist, to look at the warlord, but all he can see is the crown of Vaike's head and the edge of one cheekbone.

"She'll give me the sunny patches and take the shade for herself.

She'll hum all morning. You know how she hums when she's pleased with herself. "

"Mm." A slow breath. "The sun brings out your freckles."

"I have plenty of freckles. I don't need more."

"Hmmm. But they're such a good distraction when I'm bored in counsel."

Evran means to reply. He has something clever ready, something about how the Warlord cannot possibly need more distractions if he cannot even manage to release his consort before breakfast. But then Vaike's hips shift, a small, deliberate roll against him, and the clever retort dies on his tongue.

Because Vaike is hard.

Of course he is. He wakes like this most mornings, warm and heavy and pressed against Evran's back, and this morning is no different except that Evran can feel the precise shape of him nestled into the cleft of his ass, can feel through the thin damp smear at the base of his spine that Vaike is already leaking, and something hot and liquid uncoils low in Evran's belly.

He inhales, sharp and involuntary.

He will never get used to this. He is certain of it now, six months in.

The wanting does not wear down. If anything it has sharpened, because the fear is gone and the strangeness is gone and what is left is only the clean, dizzying knowledge that this man, the Warlord of the mountain, broad and scarred and steady, wants him.

Wants him first thing in the morning, with his hair a wreck and his mouth stale and his skin warm from sleep, as if there were no better thing in the world to wake up wanting.

Sometimes he thinks Vaike might want him more now than he did in the beginning, and that's a flustering thought, that the longer they're together and the more Vaike learns him the more he wants.

He didn't even notice himself going still, but Vaike does. Vaike notices everything.

The hand at Evran's waist slides flat across his stomach, broad palm splaying over the soft rise and fall of his belly, and then presses.

Firm, unhurried. Pulling Evran back flush against the long line of him until there is no space left between them, nowhere for Evran's body to retreat.

Vaike's teeth graze, just barely, across the tendon of his neck.

Evran makes a small sound that is not going to help him argue his case.

"Eira will wait," Vaike murmurs.

"Eira will not wait."

"Eira has waited every morning since you moved to my bed. One more will not undo her."

"Vaike—"

The hand on his belly slides lower. Not far. Just enough that Evran's breath catches on the promise of it, just enough that his hips tilt back of their own accord, seeking, and he feels Vaike smile against his neck.

"Go," Vaike says, and his voice has gone deeper, darker, the voice he uses when he is pretending to be reasonable. "Go play in the dirt, little gardener. I will not stop you."

He does not move his hand. He does not move his hips. He does not stop grazing his mouth along the side of Evran's throat.

Evran lets out a laugh that is more breath than sound. "You are the worst man I have ever met."

"You have met worse."

It is meant lightly and that's the way it lands, but something in Evran goes soft and aching at the casual truth of it, at the way Vaike can say a thing like that and have it mean I know where you came from and I know what you survived and I will never be that to you.

Evran turns in his arms.

It takes a concerted effort. Vaike has to let him turn, and Vaike is in no hurry to let him do anything this morning.

But after a long, grudging moment the arm around him loosens just enough, and Evran rolls onto his other side and comes face to face with the Warlord of the Drakkari in the grey-gold light of a spring dawn.

Vaike's hair is loose on the pillow, light and tangled, and his beard is shorter than it was in the winter. His face is relaxed and pleased, like he can imagine no better place to be than in bed with him, and it makes Evran reach for his cheek before he can stop himself.

Vaike catches his wrist. He turns his palm and presses a kiss to the inside of it, slow and closemouthed, and then sets Evran's hand flat against his own chest where his heartbeat is calm and unhurried beneath the warm skin.

"Good morning, my heart," he says.

"Good morning," Evran says with a smile too big for his face.

"You are late."

"I am aware."

"Whose fault is that?"

"Yours, entirely."

"Mm." Vaike's mouth twitches. "I accept the responsibility."

One kiss, he thinks. A brief, courteous goodbye kiss that is simple and sweet and can be left behind to keep his lover warm while he tends to his responsibilities. Vaike has responsibilities too, but who is going to tut disapprovingly at the warlord? Not Eira. She'll be too busy tutting at Evran.

He kisses him with the intention of it ending, with the idea that he will roll over and get up and get dressed like a sensible person.

Vaike's mouth opens under his at once, unhurried, familiar, and the hand Vaike had at Evran's waist slides down and around to the small of his back, warm and pulling him in so that their bodies meet all along their length.

Vaike is still hard between them. Evran is hardening, embarrassingly quickly, from nothing more than this, the kiss, the weight of his hand on his bare skin, the smell of him.

Sensible person, Evran thinks, with some distant despair.

"I have to go," he says against Vaike's mouth.

"Do you?"

"You are not helping."

"I am not trying to help, my heart."

Evran huffs a laugh, and Vaike swallows it, and the next kiss is deeper, wetter, a thorough claim that Evran feels all the way to the base of his spine.

Vaike's hand slides down from his back to the curve of his ass, cups him there, and tugs him in so that their cocks drag together once, deliberate.

Evran moans into his mouth.

"Five minutes," Vaike murmurs, and his voice has gone rough now, not pretending at anything. "Five minutes, Evran. Let me have you for five minutes."

"You are a filthy liar. It's never five minutes."

"I am the Warlord. My minutes are what I say they are."

"That is an abuse of power."

Vaike rolls them.

It is easy for him because Evran is smaller by so much, and Vaike moves him like he weighs nothing, and then Evran is on his back with Vaike braced over him, one hand planted beside his head, the other settling at his hip.

The blankets have come down around Vaike's waist, then slither further as Vaike shifts his weight, baring them both to the cool morning air of the room.

He never quite gets over the sight of him.

Vaike above him, broad-shouldered and eyes bright with mischief, the long pale line of the old scar across his ribs, the flat plane of his stomach and the heavy weight of his cock, flushed and thick and smeared wet at the tip, hanging between them in the space where Evran's own is arching up toward his stomach.

The difference in their sizes is always starkest here, in the bed, in the morning light, Evran slender and freckled and half-dwarfed, Vaike built like something the mountain itself shaped with its own hands.

Vaike kisses him again, thorough and unhurried, a kiss that takes its time mapping every corner of Evran's mouth like he has not kissed this mouth a thousand times before.

Then he kisses his way down. He knows the path well enough by this point and he is in no hurry.

He drags his beard along the line of Evran's jaw, mouths at the soft underside of it, and when he reaches the join of neck and shoulder he pauses there and bites.

It's not hard, just the firm closing of teeth on skin, but Evran's whole body arches off the furs with a gasp that is half-laugh, half-something-else.