Chapter 11 #3
‘I already knew it, of course,’ he continued, as if Olly hadn’t spoken.
‘I had spent weeks praying that it had been a dream, a dying man’s last thoughts, and that I would slip away and it was you who’d wake up on that damned battlefield.
But after talking to her … it built. I got it into my head that somehow I could …
I could trade myself for you. That if I returned to France I could undo it.
I was completely delirious, but it seemed so true …
’ Ash scratched at his scar as he spoke.
‘I tried, once. Raff caught me in the stables wearing nothing but my braies trying to saddle a horse. He dragged me back to bed, whilst I muttered about France and debts and you the whole time. He thought I had gone insane.’ He chuckled, voice low, entirely humourless. ‘I suppose I had.’
Olly swallowed. His chest felt hollow, his head empty.
‘You tried to go back for me?’
Ash smiled – but it did not reach his eyes. ‘So many times. So many arguments, so many attempts, even with a damned sea between us—’ Something within him broke. He dropped his head, tears spilling down his face. ‘Even though you were dead.’
He’s telling the truth. It was Olly’s own voice, but so much younger. Unruined by time and war and betrayal and death. The feeling Olly had buried for years took over. He reached out, wrapped his arms around Ash’s middle and bundled him close.
For a long while, Olly just held him, listening to him breathe. Ash buried his face in Olly’s neck, his breath hot and ragged against his skin.
When Olly let go, it was with a sigh, never really releasing Ash from his grip.
His face was so familiar, yet so different.
Olly could see all of him in those eyes: the grumpy squire, the passionate youth, the devoted lover.
The man torn down in a spray of blood on the battlefield.
There were strands of grey swiping through the hair at his temples. They had not been there before.
‘My Ashel …’ Olly tilted Ash’s face up, his thumb pressed lightly into the scar that bisected his lip. ‘What happened to you?’
‘Everything,’ Ash breathed. ‘War. France.’ His eyes dragged shut as Olly brushed his thumb across the scar, feeling the ridges of it, the puckered skin. ‘You.’
Olly hooked his finger beneath Ash’s chin and pulled him in. Now, without anger clouding his mind, he could fully appreciate his touch, the now-changed shape of Ash’s lips beneath his own.
Ash pulled back with a sigh, taking Olly’s hands, turning them over in his own as if amazed that they were even real. He went to raise one to his lips, then paused.
He stroked a gentle, cautious finger over the red marks left by the ropes that Ash’s guards had bound around Olly’s wrist.
‘Is this—’
‘I was their prisoner,’ Olly said. ‘I cannot blame them.’
Ash looked horrified. He lowered his head, pressing his lips to the marks with gentle, reverent kisses.
‘I should not have let them do that to you.’
‘I tried to kill you. I should count myself lucky that’ – Olly shuddered, his words breaking into a gasp as Ash’s kisses became more desperate, his lips opening against Olly’s tender skin – ‘that they did not harm me more fatally,’ he managed, voice quavering. ‘Ash—’
Ash peered up at him, head still bent. His eyes sparkled. ‘Yes?’
Olly could not bear for him to look at him like that. He grabbed Ash’s face in both his hands, heaved him up, and kissed him properly, kissed him till neither of them could breathe.
Before, their kisses had been a rush – passion overwhelmed by anger. Olly had been too consumed with his own rage to appreciate having Ash in his arms again. Now he could.
He pushed Ash back. They stumbled over each other’s feet until they collided with the far wall. Olly drunk down Ash’s sound of shock as the wind was knocked from his lungs, gripping at Ash’s tunic, pulling it aside.
Ash grabbed his hips, pulling him in and holding him against his body. His prick twitched between them and, unthinking, Olly slid a hand down to better feel the evidence of Ash’s uncontrolled desire. He made a low, rumbling noise which became a single word:
‘Bed.’
They shuffled to the enormous bed. Ash roughly tugged aside the hangings, and then – as if struck – froze, his hand bundled in the fabric. This was his space, yet he still looked a little lost. He looked around as if seeing the room for the first time, his face tense.
Ash turned, opened his mouth, dropped the curtain, and then—
‘I’m the earl.’
It was so absurd that Olly burst out laughing. ‘So I’ve heard, yes.’
‘I … I can’t be an earl.’
‘I fear you’ve not much choice in the matter.’
‘I had always thought …’ Ash looked around the enormous room like a child sneaking around in his father’s quarters. ‘I had always thought when it happened, you would be with me.’ His expression broke.
‘Ash …’ Olly stepped forwards, taking his hands. ‘I am with you. I am with you now.’
‘I am sorry.’
Olly sighed, rubbing his thumbs across Ash’s knuckles. ‘As am I.’
Ash still wore that lost expression. He was feeling awkward, Olly realised. The simple act of having Olly in his chambers, decked out in the finery of an earl, was a lifetime away from the squire he had once been who had shared Olly’s cramped bed in his father’s keep.
Ash needed a nudge. He needed, Olly knew, a gentle touch.
A little guidance.
This was familiar: this was a dance he and Ash had done many times before.
‘Ash.’
Ash looked at him. Olly gave him his best grin.
‘Come here.’
Ash did so without question or argument, letting Olly take him in his arms. He softened against him, and Olly wondered just how long it had been since Ash had given himself over like this.
He guided them down onto the huge bed, trying not to consider how he’d never fucked anyone in a bed this fine. Ash seemed a little dazed as Olly laid him down upon the sheets and slung a leg over his hips, holding himself above him.
‘Are you well, my Lord?’
Ash winced. ‘Don’t call me that.’
‘Are you well, my Ashel?’
Ash nodded. ‘I— yes,’ he breathed. ‘Olly, please—’
Olly kissed him, this time careful to make it gentler, a lingering kiss that left Ash panting and squirming when he was done. He could feel Ash’s prick straining at his breeches, desperate for more than just the meeting of lips.
He sat up, making Ash whine in a way that was so charmingly familiar it made Olly’s heart squeeze, then began to undress him.
It had often been like this, when Ash was at his most petulant or needy or fraught; Olly taking him apart, layer by layer.
He started with the ties of his tunic, feeling the waxed cord beneath his fingers.
Next the tunic itself, already untucked and ruched around Ash’s waist, pulled up and over his head to leave his chest bare.
Something shone on a cord around Ash’s neck. The ring. Ash’s half of the promise they had exchanged. It was tarnished with age and oil: he must have worn it beneath his clothes since France. Since Olly’s apparent death.
‘You kept it?’ Olly muttered, brushing his fingers against the warm metal.
‘Of course I did.’
Now Ash’s chest was bare, Olly could also see the true extent of the wounds that Ash had acquired in battle. The scar that snaked down Ash’s face and neck twisted down his collar, too, in an uneven, broken line. Someone must have slashed at him, catching his skin at various points with the thrust.
The scars were raised and jagged. It appeared that they had healed poorly, and the deep, puckered skin bore the evidence of long-since-cleared infection. Olly could only imagine the state Ash had returned to England in, his face ruined, his body dying.
The marks still looked raw and painful. Another truth, and this one he could never deny: such wounds were not earned by a man who had tried to be rid of him.
He dragged a finger down the worst of the scars, cutting across Ash’s collarbone, when Ash reached out and grabbed his wrist.
Olly froze, fingers curling. ‘I am sorry,’ he said, for more than just the intimate touch. ‘I did not realise …’
Ash heaved himself up on his elbows. ‘You did not know.’
Ash kissed him, one hand coming to cup the back of Olly’s head, before tugging him back down.
They could have kissed for an age – the world outside them could have turned through summer and winter and spring again – before Olly finally began to continue the urgent task of getting Ash bare.
He reached down for the ties of Ash’s hose and breeches, undoing them with a swift hand.
It took some manoeuvring to remove the garment itself; every time he leaned back, Ash grabbed at him, pulling him back.
The space between them was ringing and cold.
Even like this, with Ash half-naked and eager beneath him, his eyes wide and awe-struck, he felt so terribly far away.
Olly finally removed the last of Ash’s clothing with a triumphant tug.
Now Ash was entirely naked, he could appreciate him more fully.
He had changed over the years that had separated them; not just the scar, but his body, too.
He had lost the firmness that strict training had carved into him, now plusher, softer.
Olly stroked up and down Ash’s chest, feeling all of him, pressing nails into pliable flesh.
Ash pulled him into a desperate kiss. Olly straddled his hips, removing his own tunic as Ash’s hands roamed the planes of his chest. Olly was skinnier, now: he was no longer as well-fed as he had been in his father’s keep, and he wondered what Ash made of his new body.
But Ash’s hands had gone still, his expression furrowed in concern.
‘Ash?’
Ash sat up, making Olly nearly topple from his lap, then gently pressed his hand to the terrible scar that sliced across Olly’s upper arm.
‘What is this?’ he muttered. ‘Did this happen in France?’
Olly glanced down at the mark. ‘No,’ he muttered. ‘It was … after.’
Ash’s expression did not change. ‘After?’