Chapter Ten #2
could handle himself—handle Fen if he had to. He’d done it before.
Their very first meeting had been a fight, and Cai had
won.
He would lose against the man restored
to health. The conviction of that made every tiny hair on his
shoulders and spine rise, as if Fen were already touching him,
brushing his palms down his naked back.
In the barn’s furthest reach, he eased
the lantern into a niche in the stonework. Then he turned. Fen was
standing a few feet away from him, waiting. A cassock was as
impractical for hunting as for delivering cattle, but for Aelfric’s
sake he and Cai had conscientiously worn them, traveller’s and
raider’s clothing folded away out of sight, since their return.
Either Fen was getting used to his or had found one that fitted him
better. He wore it with an insouciance that was anything but holy.
He was beautiful.
Cai cleared his throat, which seemed
suddenly full of golden motes of dust from the hay. He said, dryly,
“What are you waiting for?”
“Did it ever occur to you, Abbot
Cai—these things I could do to you, these things you want and fear
so much...”
No use in denial. “What about
them?”
“They are things that you
could do to me.”
Cai’s lips parted. He felt all
expression drain from his face, and suspected that he looked about
as bright as Yarrow, and twice as astonished. Fen was holding out a
hand to him. Cai ignored it. He closed his eyes—strode blind and
bruising-hard into his arms.
The freedom offered was all Cai had
needed. Spectral thoughts about greater or lesser men, comparative
physical strength, evaporated in Fen’s heat as they landed in the
hay. Cai wasn’t sure who had knocked who onto his arse this time,
and it didn’t matter—he clutched Fen’s shoulders, rolled
luxuriantly with him, letting the pent-up wildness surge and surge.
Fen gave it back to him, thrusting to meet each wave. The heavy
cassock fabric caught and restrained them, but even the friction of
that was good, a sweet torture Fen brought to an end by hauling up
Cai’s hem and crushing their bodies together, flesh to engorged
flesh. Too hot a day for the linen-strip undergarment—Cai’s shaft
plunged straight between Fen’s thighs, the place where lean muscle
would grind hard enough to bring him over in a second.
“No!” Cai gasped. “Not like
that. Do them to me—the things you said.”
Fen went still. Their struggle had
left Cai on top, and Fen gazed at him, hands securely spread and
holding his backside. The flickering lamplight met the amber fires
in Fen’s eyes. “Your choice.”
“Yes.” Cai didn’t know how
this creature had come to be waiting beneath him—this barely tamed
man, not a bit of his wildness abated, letting him decide. It felt
like embracing a storm. “This time, you show me. Fuck
me.”
Fen’s pupils widened. He took Cai in
for a long moment more, as if assessing him—for strength,
intention, what his flesh, bone and muscle would withstand. Then he
pushed up, rolling him powerfully down onto his back. “I want you
stripped,” he growled. “I want to see every inch of you.
Now.”
Now the cassock fabric was unbearable,
a hot, tight skin. Cai sat up far enough for Fen to start ripping
it off him, and they fought over girdle, sleeves, the tussle of
getting the thing off over his head. Immediately Cai seized Fen’s
robe to return the favour, but Fen stopped him, hand locking hard
round his wrist. “In a second. Gods, Caius—let me look at
you.”
Cai propped himself on his arms. He
bore the inspection as best he could, although blood seemed to rise
and burn beneath his skin wherever Fen’s gaze focussed. He wished
he could see himself through those firelight eyes, see whatever it
was that was making sweat sheen on Fen’s brow, in the hollow of his
throat. All he knew of himself was that he was ordinary—hair
rumpled, bits of hay caught in it, his body just the stocky, tough
framework that had carried him about his business for so long in a
difficult world. He was scarred. The hair that marked his chest and
a midline down his stomach was black and wiry, an inheritance from
Broc. But Fen was running his fingers over the old injuries, that
dark line. His face was rapt.
Cai shivered. “You’ve seen it before,
you know.”
“Yes. Down at the rock
pools, when you decided to wash me. But I was sick then. I couldn’t
appreciate it all.”
“It’s not so much. Just a
hill farmer.”
“You have no
idea.”
Cai released a groan. He tipped back
his head and shut his eyes. Fen continued a fingertip caress down
across Cai’s navel. He bypassed Cai’s shaft with a brush of his
knuckles. Cai gasped in frustration, but Fen reached deeper,
closing a short-lived grasp on his balls, then pushing up between
his buttocks, one finger finding target.
“God!” Cai managed, with an
emphasis that startled them both. “Yes. There.”
“Very tight. Not your
first, am I?”
“No, but it’s been a long
time.” He writhed, trying to find the beautiful touch again. “I
know it’ll hurt,” he added stoically, to prove that he wasn’t
afraid. “I won’t mind it. Go on.”
“I won’t hurt
you.”
“How can you not? It’s not
like with a woman. And Benedict’s cell was next to mine. Oslaf
sometimes sounded as if he was dying.”
Fen quirked a smile. He leaned
forwards and kissed Cai’s throat, then the sides of his neck, all
the while rubbing at the entrance to his body, until Cai thought
his heart would tear out through his ribs. “You don’t think
Benedict and Oslaf found ways to ease such…dreadful
suffering?”
“I don’t know. I never
thought about it. I…”
“Be quiet. Here, my
unimaginative doctor. Look.”
Fen let go of him long enough to reach
into his cassock’s side pouch. He withdrew a glimmering bottle Cai
instantly recognised. “That’s the wheat oil and rosehip I get
Hengist to make up for me for winter, to cure coughs and chest
ailments. It lubricates… Oh.”
Fen made a valiant effort not to laugh
at him. His hair had grown back, long enough for a bright bronze
curtain to shield his face as he turned aside, uncapping the
bottle. “I took the liberty of stopping by your supply cabinets on
my way out here. And I made no assumptions, before you get your
back up, you stiff-necked Celt. But the moon was full—the night so
warm—and I knew you were out here alone.”
He was pouring the oil into one palm.
Cai’s protest about the raid on his supplies died unspoken. The
next time the touch came at his body’s entrance, it was warm and
slick and he had no resistance to it, the tight ring of muscle
convulsing but not rejecting the inward slide. The first pang of
broaching over, the push was delicious, as if Fen were reaching for
some stray fragment of heaven—the golden fruit that had suddenly
grown deep in Cai’s guts, perhaps, pulsating just in front of Fen’s
reaching fingers. “There. Ah, there!”
“Yes. I know about
there.”
Cai gave a sobbing chuckle.
“Not your first, either, then.”
“No. Many fine brother
warriors. None of them anything like you.”
“And your people don’t mind
it?”
“No. Not any more than
yours do, outside of mad enclaves like this. It’s expected, among
men who travel without women, although…” He leaned forwards and
kissed Cai, lingeringly, tongue shoving deep in time with his
fingers. “Although Sigurd was fretting that I’d never get him
heirs.”
It was the first time he had said his
lord’s name without bitterness, and Cai, although he could barely
speak, tried to attend him. “Your brother, though—”
“Ah, yes. Gunnar has done
it for both of us, time and time over, the women willing or not.
But men fall fast among the Torleik, and Sigurd likes a brood
growing up around him, of good blood and ready to replace us.
Now—before you die of this, my beautiful monk—kneel for me. Up on
your hands and knees. Now.”
Cai couldn’t have done it except
at those soft-voiced commands. His limbs had turned to water,
desire washing strength out of him. He grunted in protest as Fen
withdrew his fingers. The emptiness inside was unbearable, his cock
so stiff against his belly that one touch would have finished him.
Fen was sitting back, stripping off his cassock, and Cai closed his
eyes to that in case it had the same effect. Awkwardly he scrambled
onto his knees. He would die if Fen kept him waiting, die of shame at being so
ready, laid so open.
“Fen,” he rasped, a dream
coming back to him—the dream of the wolf from the sea. “Fen, for
God’s sake, fuck me now.”
The wolf had turned into a man. This
man, whose advent had been written into Cai’s dreams, his very
blood, before he’d ever seen him. Crying out, Cai lowered his brow
to his wrists, his hands clenching and unclenching in the hay. The
wait ended instantly. Fen’s thighs pressed to his. The oil’s warm
musk filled his nostrils, and he knew without looking that Fen was
rubbing his shaft with it. Fen’s hands closed on his hips, holding
him still.
The push of that great cock inside him
burned the touch of Fen’s fingers to an ashen memory. The mounting
pressure would destroy him. He felt with anguished detail the gape
of his arsehole to accommodate the head, and he stifled a yell as
his muscles clamped down afterwards, a reflex of shutdown and
repulsion. “No! Stop. I can’t.”
Fen went still. He released Cai’s hips
and put his arms around his waist, the hold at once so powerful and
so tender that tears blurred Cai’s vision. He kissed a hot track
between Cai’s shoulder blades, up the back of his neck.
“Pain?”
“No. Just…too much. Too
much inside me.”
“I will stop. If you are
sure.”
“No, I’m bloody not.” It came out
on a sob. The only thing worse than this overwhelming pressure
would be the loss of it, the emptiness of that. Fen had sounded
breathless, his voice ragged. “Am I hurting you?”
“The muscles inside you are
strong. And you’re fighting me.”
“I’m not. I want you.
I…”
Fen took hold of his cock. His grip
was hard. Shocks of pleasure went through Cai, undoing the iron