26. Drunken Confessions
Drunken Confessions
Dain’s soulmate was a sassy, snarky little spitfire, absolutely fearless and entirely unmoved by his penchant for snarling.
He didn’t intimidate her. In fact, I suspected that she liked the power and danger he represented.
A woman who climbed construction towers for fun and liked watching Dain brutalize his way through a sparring match seemed like the sort of woman who might take a look at the Stag Prince and decide that she was going to climb him like a tree.
And as for Dain? My prince was head-over-heels in love.
I watched them flirt their way through drinking games with a growing sense of delight.
If Leah had decided to slide her hand those last few inches north to grab his cock, Alluin and I would have needed to get a new booth.
Not that I wasn’t comfortable holding a conversation with someone whilst the couple across from me fucked—it wasn’t the most uncommon thing in the world, especially in the garrison—but Dain was a big man, and he was not above flinging a table into my lap so he could have his soulmate’s shapely legs more comfortably around his ears.
When the two of them finally left for the palace, Alluin sprawled down across my lap, drunk and boneless. “Gods,” he said with a loose laugh. “You were right. They’re surely going to be lovers.”
“Tonight, even,” I said, grinning down at him. “You’re such an ass. Whyever would you put it into Dain’s head that I might fuck Leah? I like my dick attached to my body.”
“I like your dick attached to your body, too,” Alluin said with a slow smile, showing a line of white. “It was a well-deserved punishment. You’re the one who asked how I’d get him off. I’ve known him since he was an infant, and we’re like family. I don’t want his dick anywhere near me.”
I snorted, feeling quite pleased with myself. “Plus, ‘he has no interest in the fascinating things you can do with your tongue and throat.’” I said, imitating Alluin’s saucy tone. “Such torment dealt. Dain looked like he wanted to chuck you out a window for making him imagine it.”
Alluin rubbed his cheek on my thigh like a cat, a maneuver that brought his mouth unfortunately close to my groin. “Learn anything new about me?”
I took his nose between two fingers and gently turned his head away from my dick, getting a laugh. “I didn’t know you were into tattoos. Should I get one?”
“It’s a nice look on mortals,” Alluin said.
He flopped his head back to the side, lashes drifting shut.
“Not you, though. You’re all smooth and pale, like the finest of alabaster.
” His voice started slurring, going dreamy.
“You’d look pretty with marriage-marks, if you scar white.
On your back, maybe. All up along your spine and onto your shoulders.
Put my name there,” he said, mumbling the last words.
Heat flashed down my spine and shimmered across my skin. He hadn’t said that. There was no way he’d said that. I was clearly too drunk to understand spoken language.
“Alluin?” I said, his name coming out strangled.
He hummed, a querying sound.
I rubbed my hand over my mouth. “What did you just…say? About marriage-marks?”
Alluin tilted his head back and blinked sleepily up at me. “Did I?”
‘Did I?’ Fucking hell. He was either blackout drunk or he was faking it damn well. “You definitely did. Marriage-marks. Something about them.”
“Mm. Used to have ’em.” Alluin nuzzled closer, his breathing slowing. “Ny put them on my thighs and my—” His jaw clenched. “—cock,” he gritted out. “Said his marks wouldn’t look right anywhere else. Too scarred up. No space for him.”
Icy rage built deep inside me. How was it possible that literally every story Alluin told me about Nyland made me hate him more? I was familiar with the ancient practice of marriage scarification, but to cut Alluin’s cock? For fucking aesthetics?
Not trusting myself to speak, I started rubbing the shell of Alluin’s ear—a mistake, because fae ears are sensitive and Alluin was a touch slut when he was drunk. He moaned and arched into the contact, lashes fluttering.
“Gods, Zhi, you touch me so well,” he said in a groan. His dense lashes parted, showing me his blown pupils and muzzy gaze. “Do you care?”
“About what?” I said, my voice coming out rough.
“The scars.” He leaned his face into my hand like a needy hound, rubbing his ear against my fingertips, clearly asking for more.
I shouldn’t have been playing with his ears in the first place, but my self-control was only so strong.
I ran the callus of my thumb along the outer edge of his ear out to the sharp tip, then traced my fingers up along the back to the sensitive soft spot at the base and gently rubbed in a circle.
Alluin started panting with pleasure, lips parted and his fingers hooking through one of my belt loops.
“I liked the scars so much you told me to stop babbling so you wouldn’t fuck me against the wall, remember?” I said, recalling the incident with altogether too much sensory memory for a man with a panting Alluin in his lap.
“Not those scars,” Alluin said, like I was being dim. “The other ones.”
“Your…marriage scars?” I ventured. “I thought those healed. Isn’t that why you’re not married anymore? That’s how that works, right?”
“Zhi.” He pushed himself up, wobbling a bit, and yanked his shirt up. “My scars.”
Notably, Alluin did not have any scars on his torso. He was all lean muscle and smooth skin, an entirely too tempting expanse of flesh that I very badly wanted to put my mouth on. Hands, too. I wasn’t fussy.
I carefully wet my lips. We were in the garrison bar, which was still populated at this hour.
Nobody was paying close attention to us, but they were all definitely updating their odds on whatever secret betting pool existed about how long it would take me and Alluin to fuck.
It was probably running alongside whatever secret betting pool existed about how long it would take Dain and Leah to fuck.
At least that one had a reasonable end date.
“Um. If you have, ah, any scars there, Lu, they’re very well glamored.”
Alluin blinked and wavered, his eyes focusing slowly on my face. “Oh. Right,” he said, wilting. “You— Right. You still think I look nice.” He slumped against my chest, sliding his leg over my lap to straddle me. His fingers hooked over the collar of my shirt. “You like beautiful men.”
One good thing about consuming enough cocktails to pickle a horse over the course of a single evening: despite the heat that rose in my core and the extremely pleasant aesthetic of having Alluin’s legs splayed across my lap, my dick was absolutely not up to the task of doing more than getting half-hard and throbbing for touch.
Alluin, who was clearly halfway to drunken weepiness, wouldn’t also have to deal with my excitable body prodding him on the inner thigh.
“What I like is you,” I said throatily. My hands found his hips; slid higher of their own accord, under his shirt and up across smooth warm skin, my fingers finding every dip and curve of his toned sides.
“You could have scars on half your body and I’d still want my hands on you.
You could have scales. A secret tail. Whatever.
I don’t give a shit.” I ran my mouth along the curve of his neck, all the parts of me that knew how bad of an idea this was so much easier to ignore when lubricated with significant quantities of alcohol. “I’m your Zhi.”
He shuddered and tilted his neck for me. “We shouldn’t do this,” he groaned. “We’re way too drunk.”
“Definitely not while still in the garrison bar,” I agreed, going exactly nowhere, my hands tightening on his sides.
I brushed a kiss against his neck. Wild heat fanned across my skin from the contact, my nipples peaking and breath going shallow.
My panting mouth found his pulse, tongue flicking out to steal an intoxicating taste of his skin.
“Don’t,” he said, rasping the word, another tiny shudder running through him.
I froze, the denial cutting through my horny, drunken haze.
Gods, what the fuck was I doing? Alluin hadn’t asked for this.
Hadn’t invited it. Sure, he was straddling me, and, yes, he’d maybe also said that he wanted to put his name in marriage-marks across my shoulders, but he’d also gone through more than a bottle of fortified wine in the name of making Leah feel welcome, and my alcohol tolerance was significantly higher than his.
“Lu, I’m… I didn’t mean…” I started, with no idea of how to even begin to make it right.
His hips angled into mine with a soft sound of frustration.
“Not the right time to make this decision,” Alluin said in a moan.
“Not the right way. Gods, I want to, you’re so lovely and you smell so good and you touch me so well, but we’re drunk and you don’t have a tight leash on your allure right now, and I…
and we…” He shivered, clinging to me. “Zhi, if you regret me I don’t know how I’ll survive it. ”
The betting odds were probably slanting strongly in the direction of ‘Zhiolas and Alluin do something extremely unwise and have frustratingly limp-dicked sex while blackout drunk,’ but the second Alluin mentioned my allure there was no way I was going take advantage of him being horny while on also being on my lap.
Courting heartbreak by hooking up with my best friend was one thing.
Courting his heartbreak by accidentally geasing him into fucking me was another thing altogether.
“I wouldn’t regret you,” I whispered to him, even as I took my hands out from under his shirt and wrapped my arms around his back instead. “But you’re right. If I’m too drunk to control my allure, I’m too drunk to be seducing you.”
Alluin let out a watery laugh. “I like your allure,” he said, half-mumbling the words against me. “It’s nice to not be able to think about anything but how much I love you.”