Chapter 32 #3
There was a long silence now, Claudio’s hand steady on his knee, the weight of it reassuring him that something was real here.
Finally, Claudio said, “I don’t have Alexander’s knack for reading oaths and the way they can tangle and shatter.
But I think you were close to it. This side of the line, not the far side.
But if you’d stayed?” His arm shifted, a tiny shrug, carried through to the fingers on Matty’s knee.
“I don’t think you’d have had much longer without breaking.
And probably making things worse, not just for you, but for everyone around you.
Better you came back. Better to figure out how some of those bits can scab up and heal.
Certainly, there are things tangled in the Ministry where it’d help people to get them better sorted. ”
Matty swallowed hard against that. It felt now like it had earlier, when all he’d been able to do was flee.
But this time, he didn’t want to flee. He took a breath, and it wasn’t all bile and panic and his heart racing.
Another, and things stayed steady enough.
“Are you risking that, making a Challenge?”
It got a sharp bark of laughter from Claudio.
“Oh, probably. But probably not tremendously more than being a Penelope? Or being the kind of Penelope I am, anyway. There are variations. It might be a different flavour, but not a different magnitude. Maybe that’s the way to put it.
I trust Gabe about that. Orion. My own observations. ”
“Suppose that helps,” Matty agreed. Whatever else, Claudio was going in with far more understanding of how the Council changed people than anyone else had.
Matty would not argue with that hard-won expertise.
It made him go back to something. “You said you weren’t the right person to suggest things to your mother. What sort of person might be?”
He focused on Claudio now, saw his eyes go wider.
There was something joyful and free and tremendously complicated there, all at once, like taking a microscope to a few drops of water and realising it was teeming with near-invisible life.
A sudden shift, something that should have been startling and unsettling, but instead had Matty’s heart lifting to meet it.
“Mmm. We’re back to the conversation about sex.
” Claudio shifted his hand, fingers edging a bit more to the inside of Matty’s thigh, a little higher on the leg.
Nothing entirely indecorous, compared to a bit of what they’d already done, but absolutely suggestive.
“I wonder what sort of person I might be if I could surrender. Not let things wash over me, gods, I’ve got experience at that.
Not be resolute in the face of foolishness.
But not—” He twisted slightly to face Matty better.
“Not guard myself. Give myself over to the sensation without holding back. Are any of these words making any sense at all?”
Matty grunted because a number of them were, it turned out, entirely relevant to his interests. “So.” He tried to keep his voice even, the voice he used in meetings when he was taking things a step at a time but wanted to be encouraging of an idea. “You’re saying you might be interested in me—”
He had to stop and breathe, because he’d suddenly had a vision of it.
Claudio, spread out on the bed, all that skin there to touch.
Lying there, waiting for Matty to press inside and take him as hard and fast as either of them could stand.
No holding back, no restraining his impulses.
All the Boarish desire and passion and urgency flooding out.
If, that was, he could make it last more than two or three strokes.
There were charms for that. He’d learn them.
Claudio must have realised some of it, because the hand slipped further up, not quite groping at Matty’s now recovered cock. “Mmm. Tell me that?”
“You. Bed. Not right now.” That was an urgent clarification.
“When we’ve time. When I’ve had time to get you ready to take me, not the first time we do that.
If you’re up for this.” It was entirely possible Claudio had the usual run of hangups about who did what in bed or up against a wall, or wherever they were.
Most people did. “Spreading you out on the bed, and taking you hard and fast, rough as you could take it.” He twisted then, bringing his fingers up to brush Claudio’s cheek.
“And you’re strong, you know your body, you do impossible things before breakfast on the regular. You could take a lot, couldn’t you?”
He was rewarded with an absolutely shattering gasp, felt the way Claudio shivered against his hand.
Right at that moment, the alarm in the bedroom went off.
Claudio waved a hand at it incoherently, a pulse of magic that made it shut off immediately.
Matty hadn’t known anyone could do that from across a room.
Claudio said, his voice a growl. “Set that thing for an hour from now. Let’s go to bed so you can tell me more about your ideas.
Want to get my hands on you. May I do that? ”
“Oh, oh, yes.” Matty wasn’t sure for a second he could stand, but then Claudio was getting up, and there was every reason to follow.
He left the light on, the mug abandoned on the side table, and was in the bedroom a step after this man who kept surprising him.
They did manage to set the alarm again. It turned out there could be so much talking and touching and kissing and two rounds of shuddering pleasure in that time.
When Claudio left, Matty was a puddle on the bed who would sleep soundly, no matter what his brain wanted to try. Tonight, at least.