Chapter 7 #2
Deyvid rolled his eyes. “It’s not a fairy tale.
I’m a living, breathing example of how you can make the decision to change your life and stand by it.
I left everything behind when I decided to defy my clan and come down here.
It’s been five years, and …” His voice trailed off, but Petur knew what he was thinking about.
“You wonder still,” he said. “About the people you left behind, whether or not you made the right decision, whether you could have changed things enough if you’d stayed.”
“I do. Of course, I do. It’s only natural to wonder, but I don’t let myself pine for it,” Deyvid replied. “I can’t. I would be immobilized if I did otherwise, unable to continue the everyday tasks of living. I did what I had to do, and then I put that life behind me forever.”
“I would argue that you didn’t change, though,” Petur said, leaning back in his chair and stretching his long legs out before him.
If he pointed the toe of his right foot, he could easily reach the edge of Deyvid’s boot.
He began to rub their feet together, delighting in the way that Deyvid jumped, then blushed.
“I would argue that your character has been fixed from a very early age.”
“How could you possibly know that?” Deyvid asked, taking a swallow of his own wine. If he was trying to calm himself down, it didn’t work. His face only became more flushed as Petur’s foot slowly trailed up his leg.
“I don’t need to have known you as a child to guess what you were like,” Petur said coyly.
“I look at you now, and I imagine a boy with an overdeveloped sense of responsibility. I see a child on whom a great deal of expectation was placed, both by his mother and his father although only his father had nefarious purposes in mind for those expectations. I picture a young man who was willing to sever his own soul in order to live up to the heights that were asked of him.”
“More like down to the lows,” Deyvid muttered.
Petur shook his head. “No. You were asked to sacrifice immensely, and you did so. Probably without compunction, because you believed that it was the right thing to do. You didn’t obey your father because you loved him, did you? Or because you knew his judgment was superior to yours.”
Deyvid slowly shook his head.
“No.” Petur smiled with satisfaction. “No, you did it because you thought it was the right thing to do. Then when you were shown, finally, without a shadow of a doubt that what you were doing was wrong, it’s not your dedication that changed, Deyvid, or the strength of your belief.
It was simply the object of that belief.
You believed you needed to leave, and you did.
You’re an all-or-nothing sort of man, the sort to take massive action in order to get, in order to do, what you think is right.
“And now.” Petur let a smirk crawl across his face.
He knew it was an insufferable expression, but he also knew Deyvid, in particular, liked the look on him.
“Now you’re here with me. Why? Because I’m unbearably sexy, and you want to do wicked things to my body?
You do, of course, but that’s not the main reason.
” Deyvid rolled his eyes as Petur went on.
“You’re with me because you believe in my cause.
You believe in what I’m asking for and what I’m trying to accomplish.
You’re making the world a safer place for my people.
That’s what you wanted to do with your own people, and I’m not stupid enough to get between you and what you believe in.
“But I am smart enough,” he added, “to position myself to take advantage of it.”
“Gods above,” Deyvid said hoarsely. “You think you’re so clever, don’t you? And it’s absolutely galling to me that you’re right.”
“Hmm.” Petur smiled with satisfaction. “Does that mean you’ll let me take you to bed tonight?
That would be new.” It was far from the first time he’d asked, but Deyvid had been resolute about staying in his quarters with the rest of the soldiers.
Ever since he’d come there, they still hadn’t laid together in the way that Petur craved.
But he’d known his patience would be rewarded.
“Yes,” Deyvid said at last, and a hot ember of satisfaction fell into Petur’s stomach and grew into an inferno of desire, spreading outward through all his limbs until he felt drunk with it.
“Excellent,” he growled, then got up from his chair. He rounded the table to Deyvid and held out a hand. “Come with me to the palace. Come to my bed.”
“I’ve been training all day,” Deyvid protested even as he got to his feet.
“I don’t care.”
“I smell like horse.”
“I don’t care,” Petur repeated as he led Deyvid toward the door. They could be at the palace in ten minutes if he—
“I care,” Deyvid said, and Petur slowed down, then stopped. He turned to look at Deyvid, who was blushing hard but whose gaze was firm. “Give me half an hour to ready myself,” Deyvid told him. “Then I’ll come to you.”
“You won’t make it past the guards,” Petur said. “I need to escort you.”
Now it was Deyvid’s turn to smirk. “Oh, I’ll make it past the guards and all the way to your rooms without being seen.”
Triple gods, why was being sassed such a turn-on? Was this how his lovers felt when Petur did it to them? Former lovers, he reminded himself. He only planned on having one for the foreseeable future. “If you don’t come …”
“That would be your fault, wouldn’t it?” Then Petur was out the door, which closed in his face, and he was left with flushed skin and the most outrageously inconvenient erection of his life.
“Ah … Your Highness?” the guard at the end of the hall said tentatively.
“Not a word, I’m fine, I’m going,” he snapped, then decided that discretion was the better part of valor and took on his raven shift. It meant leaving the clothes behind, but he had more of those. What he didn’t have a lot left of was dignity, damn it.
You better come to me, he thought as he landed on the windowsill of his suite and hopped inside.
He thought it as he quickly washed the day from his skin, as he sent a servant for fine wine and delicately cut fruit, and soft, sweet-scented cheeses.
He thought it as he pulled back the heavy blanket on his bed, as he paced, wondering whether to undress or leave his things on until Deyvid got there, if he even came, and what if he didn’t?
What if he changed his mind or was caught sneaking into the palace, or—
There was a knock on the door, and Petur opened it, expecting the servant with a tray of food. Instead, he found Deyvid in a borrowed cloak, his hair still wet, eyes wide and searching as he stared at Petur.
“Gods, come here,” Petur barely managed to get out, then pulled Deyvid into his arms and slammed the door shut behind him, almost catching the cloak in it before he ripped it off him.
Beneath it, Deyvid had nothing on but a pair of boots and breeches. Boots and breeches; he’d come all the way there half naked, snuck in past the guards, right under the queen’s very nose, all for Petur.
All for me.
“Tell me you’ve done this before,” Petur muttered harshly.
He knew how to take his time, but he didn’t want to right then.
He wanted to consume Deyvid, wanted to own him, every inch of him.
He wanted to fuck him until he could barely breathe, until the only name in his head and out of his lips was Petur’s.
“It’s been a while, but yes.”
Heat flared through Petur again, heat that it took him a moment to realize was jealousy.
He shouldn’t mind he wasn’t bedding a virgin, and yet the thought of someone else inside of Deyvid was a conflagration.
“I’ll be better,” he promised as he leaned in, pressing his mouth to Deyvid’s cheek.
Stubble met his tongue, and Petur growled as he bared his teeth and nipped at the sharp line of Devyid’s rough jaw.
“I’ll be so good you’ll never want anyone else. ”
Even trembling under Petur’s assault, Deyvid found the breath to murmur, “Prove it.”
Fuck.
Petur pushed Deyvid back onto his immense bed as he reached down and pulled apart his trousers.
The laces were done too tight—with a snarl of impatience, he shifted his hands into claws and tore them off Deyvid’s body, then growled with satisfaction as the musky scent of Deyvid’s lust drifted up to his nose.
He was close to his warrior form, Petur realized, perhaps too close for comfort, and yet Deyvid didn’t seem bothered. Far from it.
“You like me like this,” Petur said as he loomed over Deyvid, pulling his own clothes off until he was finally naked. “Don’t you? With the shift close by, the animal just under the surface.”
“I like you however I can have you,” Deyvid said, and Petur knew he was being honest. Still, when he flashed his warrior form’s yellow eyes at his lover and got another whiff of pheromones, Petur knew there was more to it.
Good. Let him want Petur in every way he could get him; let him make Petur the standard by which all other lovers were measured.
No one else would be able to give him this excitement, this danger.
When he stroked himself, pulling his member to its full length and watching Deyvid eye him hungrily, Petur amended the list—this cock too.
Spoiled for choice, Petur finally laid himself down in the cradle of Deyvid’s hips, rocking their bodies fully against each other as he closed the distance between them.
He wanted to suck Deyvid off, wanted to drink his come and feel him writhe against Petur’s tongue, but the base part of his brain knew he wouldn’t be satisfied until he’d buried himself in his lover.
“Let me have you,” Petur said, not a question but a demand. Let me have you at last.
Deyvid grinned into the kiss they shared. “Take me, then.”
Petur groaned and mustered all his willpower, then reared back and reached for the oil he’d left on his own pillow.
“No.” Deyvid shook his head. “You don’t need it.”
Petur frowned. “I don’t mind providing a bit of pain, but taking you dry would split you in half.”
Deyvid caught his hand and guided it down between his legs. It took a moment for Petur to register what he was feeling as his fingertips brushed against the tight furl of muscle beneath Deyvid’s soft sac, but—
Slick. He’d prepared himself already? Unconsciously holding his breath, Petur pressed in with one finger and caught the faint scent of linseed oil before he slipped inside and—
Soft, so warm, so giving as he pressed deeper and deeper.
One finger, then two, three, and now Deyvid’s breath was catching in his throat, the red flush gone all the way down his neck and across his chest as he began to pant, eager, desperate.
“I’m ready,” he promised, and that was all Petur needed.
He slid his fingers out, pushed Deyvid’s legs back, lined up the slippery head of his cock, and steadily pressed inside of his lover.
It wasn’t easy. The prep had helped, but Petur was big—especially so close to his battle form.
He had to go slow, and he might have spared the brain power to worry if he saw anything but pleasure on Deyvid’s face, but Deyvid’s eyes were rolled back in his head, his arms tight around Petur’s shoulders as he pulled.
“More, more,” he chanted, and Petur obliged him.
Being all the way inside was bliss. It was agony.
It wasn’t enough, and Petur didn’t wait for an invitation now.
He moved, pulling almost all the way out before thrusting his cock back inside that hot, wet channel.
It felt as good as he’d imagined it would—better because now he could lean down and kiss his lover while he fucked him, watch Deyvid’s pretty cock bounce against his stomach and leak a shining trail that Petur wanted to lick up.
He grinned savagely as Deyvid almost shouted, his hole clenching with pleasure.
Found it. He hammered Deyvid’s prostate again and again, watching in fascination as his lover bit his lower lip so hard it bled. “Come,” he ordered or begged—it felt like one and the same to him. “Deyvid, come, come just like this, you can do it.”
It was so gratifying to be right, to watch thick jets of white spray over Deyvid’s chest as he came with a groan and a grip on Petur’s back so tight it hurt.
Petur only closed his eyes when Deyvid was done, following him a few seconds later as he fucked in hard, as deep as he could go, and pulsed inside of his lover until he was completely spent.
When he collapsed on Deyvid a few moments after that, it was as fully human.
Petur was breathless but couldn’t help but kiss him, over and over, worshipful in a way he’d never felt before.
“You’re perfect,” he whispered. “Gods, you’re perfect for me.
Stay, stay with me, be mine. Tell me you’re mine.
” He had never had someone wholly his before, and Petur held his breath as he waited for a denial.
He breathed once more when Deyvid finally looked at him with shining gray eyes and said, “I’m yours.”