Fourteen
T he darkness hid much of the Reinholz estate, particularly its flaws, for which Cin was grateful.
It looked mildly imposing in the night, its long main building of two stories—three in the center—surrounded on one side by the garden and the other by the carriage house and the barely used barn and storeroom.
Compared to Prince Lorenz’s castle, it was a hovel, but the prince—who was not marrying Cin—was also not marrying for money.
Nor fucking for it. Cin wondered what he was truly marrying for, other than the gentle goodness his parents had advertised, but then Lorenz dismounted and strode toward the manor’s front door, and Cin was distracted by following him.
“It’s locked—there’s no one home,” Cin warned him, realizing only too late how many bells that would set off.
Prince Lorenz turned, lifting a brow. “You let all your servants attend each ball night? That’s very good of your family.” He sounded genuinely proud, which made Cin feel all the worse.
“It’s... well, it’s only us now. The famine has hit us particularly hard”— there was a lie, at least; the famine hadn’t helped, but their family’s fortunes had been flailing for years prior—“and Mother let the staff go. We’ve been getting along all right on our own, though.”
This seemed to confuse Prince Lorenz. “You don’t even have a cook, then?”
“I do the cooking.” Cin shrugged. “It’s come fairly easy to me and I enjoy it.”
The prince looked like he was trying to fit that into his idea of the Cin he’d known so far—the wealthy, chaotic gentleman who raised a royal dovecote’s worth of pigeons.
It didn’t seem, at least, that he was finding it distasteful, only odd.
“And who tends the horses, then?” he asked.
“And the gardens? Your family does that alone as well?”
“I do most of it, but I don’t mind,” Cin reassured him. “It’s actually rather relaxing when you’re in the mood. We only have two horses, and the crops have been small, so it’s less work than you’d think.”
By the look on the prince’s face, any amount of gardening seemed to be more work than he’d ever imagined himself doing. “And you all do the cleaning, for the whole estate? And launder? Tend the hearths? Fetch the shopping? Patch the drafts? That must be enough work for a dozen servants.”
“It’s not that big a house, really.” Though it certainly felt that way on dusting days, or any time the wind whipped through the damaged ceiling, which was most days in the winter.
Cin cringed despite himself. “It does get drafty, though. Father says he’ll patch the roof, but he’s off on business most months of the year, so it tends to be forgotten. ”
Prince Lorenz shuddered visibly. “How hideous—no offense.” He narrowed his eyes at Cin. “And the rest? Does your father help with any of that?”
“Not generally.” Cin looked aside, like that would make the whole line of questioning go away. Each new inquiry was beginning to feel like a small barb beneath his ribs. “He runs the business, and Mother does the finances, and I care for the estate.”
“I thought you had three siblings?”
Cin snorted. “Useless ones.”
Now Prince Lorenz was folding his arms as well, practically scowling. “Still, they should be helping you! If not them, someone .”
“What if I do clean, and launder, and tend the hearths, and fetch the shopping? They are the tasks that need doing, and I’ve the skill to do them.
If I can keep my family home from falling into ruin then it’s my responsibility to do what I can.
No one else will. No one else can!” Cin had to survive these frustrations every day.
He didn’t want to relive them now, during the one time he had for himself and his own desires.
But now that he was, he found himself scowling, the pain inside him turning to something sharp between his lips.
“The world isn’t like your pretty castle.
Life isn’t as easy for us as smiles and balls and marriages.
Some of us must work to live; not everything in our lives is handed to us on a platter. ”
A wave of embarrassment flooded the prince’s expression. “I know,” Prince Lorenz whispered, and he looked so vulnerable in that moment that it broke Cin’s flash of anger into a thousand pieces, stunning him free.
He breathed out, slipping his fingers against the prince’s arm, encouragingly.
“I’m being selfish and arrogant,” Prince Lorenz said.
“And not just in this, but in my life. I know I need to put my cares aside for the sake of my people and my family—and that’s what I’ll be doing.
It’s what I’ve been trying to do.” Cin couldn’t see much of the prince’s face from that angle, the sliver of a moon rising behind the prince’s head, but he could feel the gentleness in the prince’s touch as he caught Cin by the shoulders.
“But you—you have no reason to torment yourself to keep your family afloat! You had a proposal of partnership just today. You could choose a new life, a better one.”
That life—the life with Dorthe—flashed before Cin’s eyes again, and this time, he wanted it.
Just for the tiniest second, he wanted it.
Then, the weight of the rest of his life settled back down, and he didn’t have the energy to want any longer.
“Your Royal Highness ,” Cin begged: not a title but a soft, aching thing.
My love , it sounded like, though for the life of him, he didn’t know why.
Prince Lorenz’s hands shifting, sliding up Cin’s shoulders and cupping tenderly around his neck, one thumb caressing his cheek. “Does your family make you happy? Does this estate?”
Cin thought, oddly, not of his birth mother’s esteemed virtues for him, but of Emma. Kind, ignorant Emma, watching everything she touched fall to pieces the same way their family’s fortune had fallen apart under their father.
In the silence, the prince’s voice felt like a beacon, his words a lighthouse. “The thorns in your side should be from the roses that sweeten your life. If they are not, pull them out.”
Cin closed his eyes and felt nothing but the prince’s fingertips.
“If only I could pull you out,” he grumbled, knowing as he said it that what he meant was the exact opposite.
“But it’s not that easy for me. I can’t leave my family to suffer.
I can’t be that selfish. Just like you, and your parent’s future for this kingdom—I can’t simply walk away. ”
The prince opened his mouth like he was going to protest, but as he stared at Cin in the darkness, all he ended up with was, “Please do what you can then, for yourself?”
“Only if you make the same promise,” Cin whispered.
A small, wistful smile graced Prince Lorenz’s beautiful mouth. “What else do you think I’m doing here, with you, if not that?”
He brushed back a stray wisp of Cin’s hair, and it felt suddenly as though they were both trapped within a cage, together but apart all at once. They were both living the lives that they had been given, and they’d known from the beginning that those lives were only aligning for a short time.
Who were they, to think they had the right to change each other?
Cin leaned into the pressure of Prince Lorenz’s palm as it drifted up to cup his cheek. At least they were not entirely alone, even now. Their short time was not yet up.
“Have I ruined our outing?” Cin whispered. Then, more dramatically, pushing out his lower lip slightly. “Are you not going to kiss me, now?”
The prince’s laugh seemed to emerge like a light from the darkness. “Of course I’m going to kiss you, dove,” he whispered back.
And then he did.
Prince Lorenz wrapped one arm around Cin’s waist and pulled him close, mouth hungry but more contained now, kissing Cin like he was taking a deep drag from the well of life.
When he finished, Cin’s knees were shaky, his lips tingling, and he leaned against Prince Lorenz, playing with the edges of his prince’s jacket. “You are so good at that.”
Cin could feel Prince Lorenz’s smirk against his forehead, and hear it in his low voice. “You are infuriating.”
“A thorn, yes,” Cin agreed. “Acquaintances you tease and fuck can be thorns, correct?”
“If they are you?” Prince Lorenz chuckled. “Most certainly.”
He kissed Cin again, and it seemed as though he was searching through Cin’s mouth, stealing his breath away before moving on to Cin’s jawline and the soft space behind Cin’s ear. Cin laughed at the sensation, playing with the prince’s hair as the prince kissed his skin.
“There,” he said, pulling Cin against him. “Was that a kiss?”
“It was at least three kisses, I think.” Cin pressed his lips to Prince Lorenz’s once more, quick and soft, then lay his head on the prince’s shoulder. They stood like that, holding each other.
The yard felt almost lovely like this. There was something deep in Cin’s bones that he hadn’t realized usually prickled in this place, until he lingered there in the prince’s arms, and felt it gone. Momentarily banished, at least—unable to return so long as Prince Lorenz was holding Cin up.
The prince’s fingers trailed up and down Cin’s back, and after a while he asked, “Did you grow up in this place?”
Part of Cin lamented losing the quiet, but he nodded. “Yes—it was my father’s mother’s estate once. My birth mother is buried in the garden...”
“And you really love it here?” Prince Lorenz seemed merely curious this time. Unless he was simply hiding his judgment better now.
“It’s my family home,” Cin said, and hoped the prince understood that as an answer. It was the only one he could give. “It’s got no dovecote, though. An irreparable failing, if you ask me.”
“Where are those pigeons of yours, hm?” A smile came into his voice. “I haven’t seen those birds that keep following you around since we arrived.”
“It’s late. They do sleep, you know,” Cin grumbled, teasingly. “But I think they may also be giving us space.”
“Ah.” The prince’s hands slid down Cin’s sides, cupping his waist. “Well, I can see one benefit to there being no servants in your house.”
“What is that?”
His palms glided lower, fingers wrapping around Cin’s ass as he whispered in Cin’s ear, “We have the whole place to ourselves.” He squeezed, sending a flurry of desire through Cin, but then those glorious hands were gone, motioning to the back door. “Shall we?”
The thought instantly turned Cin off. “Let’s go around the back instead.” It was, oddly, not as cold as it should have been, and Cin suspected there was something magical about that. “Too many less-than-sexy memories inside.”
The prince took the redirection in stride, shrugging as he extended a hand to Cin. “Far be it from me to make my pleasure anywhere ordinary.”
“Have beds ever factored into your many endeavors?” Cin asked, guiding Prince Lorenz around to the garden, deliberately circumventing his birth mother’s grave.
If anything, he thought she’d be proud of him for managing to get frisky with the prince—but they could still put some distance between them and her.
“Only when it’s someone else’s bed,” the prince answered, and it sounded like he was, oddly, telling the truth.
Cin unwrapped his feathered cloak, settling it over the grass. He wasn’t sure what they were doing yet—wasn’t actually sure how much he felt comfortable with—but it seemed right. “Your royal mattress is probably too plush anyway. Your partner would end up asleep instead.”
Prince Lorenz—now just visible enough in the moonlight to see the details of his expression—made a face. “As though I’d ever be such a boring partner as to let that happen.”
He helped Cin settle onto the cloak, half on top of him as he knelt to catch the back of Cin’s head in his hand and brush his fingertips over Cin’s lips.
“Prove it,” Cin whispered.
The prince kissed Cin yet again, but this time the slow, seeking gentleness was gone.
He kissed like he had back at the castle dovecote weeks ago, with fire and lust, as though already dreaming of the place this would take them.
Cin moaned into Prince Lorenz’s mouth between gulps of air, one of his hands finding its way onto the prince’s chest as he supported himself with the other.
He dragged it down, feeling the prince’s taut flesh beneath the fabric until his thumb brushed something hard as metal hidden beneath.
Before Cin could distinguish the shape, Prince Lorenz scooped that hand up, pushing Cin back and onto the ground without breaking the kiss.
The moment Cin settled, he felt the strain of his chest binding all too keenly.
His breath came shallower, but he couldn’t seem to stop, stars spotting his vision as he kissed the prince back.
Before too long, Prince Lorenz broke away from Cin’s mouth, leaving Cin to gasp as the prince sucked on his neck.
One of his hands put rolling pressure between Cin’s legs, and Cin swayed into it, moaning.
When the prince shifted his face downward, though, his fingers already working open the front of Cin’s pants, Cin forced himself to sit up.
He caught Prince Lorenz’s chin in his hand. “Wait.”
Worry flashed in the prince’s gaze, so selfless it made Cin ache.
He took a breath, solidifying for himself that this was what he truly wanted, before he continued. “Please, I want to do you first. Let me make you come.”