Chapter Thirteen #2
“I’m sure there are easier ways to win votes,” Cyrus drawled.
“There’s a lot of competition for my seat this time,” Maximillian returned, a trace of heat to his tone. “You wouldn’t understand.
It’s been tough.”
Cyrus let his eyebrows convey that tough wasn’t really a good enough excuse to try and publicly murder his business partner. Maximillian looked away again, shoulders
hunching, and Cyrus sighed.
“But you didn’t go ahead with it,” he prompted.
Maximillian twisted his fingers in his lap, a clearer sign of nerves than Cyrus had ever seen from him. “I kept putting it
off. I always had an excuse. It wasn’t the right time, or I didn’t think you’d—well, that you’d fall for it.” The glance he
threw towards Cyrus was apologetic. “I told Bal to call off the Heliarth plan, that we’d think of something better. But he
went ahead and arranged it anyway. He knew that I was—that I had this—” His mouth worked, trying to form the right words and
failing. “He knew that you were my—weakness, I suppose. That I wasn’t going to arrange it on my own. So he forced my hand.”
Cyrus had worked out as much. He didn’t say anything, more interested in hearing about the champion’s side of events, but
Maximillian seemed to misinterpret his silence as fury.
“He was only trying to help me,” Maximillian said quickly. “It wasn’t like he—it was what we’d planned all along. It had been
my idea, I was the one who changed my mind on him.”
Cyrus almost didn’t dare ask, but he had to know.
“Why did you change your mind?”
“When you showed up at the brewery, I didn’t know what to do,” Maximillian admitted quietly. “It was supposed to be black
and white. You or Heliarth, you or everything I’ve worked for.” He paused, agitation creeping into his voice. “I told myself
that I should do this, I had to, I had no choice. We were in Heliarth, and everyone was watching, and this was my moment.
But.”
But. There, at the heart of everything.
Cyrus reached out. He didn’t think about it, guided by instinct alone. No time for shying away, for plastering vulnerability
over with denial. His hand settled atop Maximillian’s, cool fingers against warm. Maximillian’s head jerked up. For one long
moment they just looked at each other. Cyrus’s heart thudded. He could see the matching flutter of Maximillian’s pulse at
his throat.
“I knew I’d made a mistake the moment I did it,” whispered Maximillian. “I wanted to take it back. I wanted to reverse time
so I never hurt you.”
Silence. It seemed to press on them from all around, like the air had turned solid. The muslin drapes shifted against the
stone floor; a gull cawed over the retreating tide. Maximillian breathed.
“Cyrus, I—”
Distantly, Cyrus acknowledged that this was the first time he had heard Maximillian say his name—his given name, his true
name. Him, not the nickname of the dread wrongdoer known to all others. Cyrus wanted to hear it again. But there would be
time, later.
Cyrus leaned forward, and kissed him.
Maximillian was warm. That was his first thought. His lips were warm, and soft, and Cyrus had wanted to do this for far longer
than he could admit.
The champion stilled in surprise before he relaxed, and Cyrus’s heart leapt at the acceptance.
Soft lips pressed back against his, opened to him.
Cyrus felt the slide of his tongue, hot enough to send a shudder down the length of his spine, tracing the shape of his mouth.
Maximillian’s hand came up, cupped the underside of his jaw.
His fingers were strong and firm, calloused from years of fighting.
Then Maximillian drew back, just a little. Cyrus’s eyes opened slowly, almost against his will. The champion—his enemy—was
so close. His eyes were so blue.
Maximillian opened his mouth, his brow creased, and Cyrus’s mind immediately conjured every refusal he might put forward.
The rush of dread was abrupt and awful.
I didn’t mean I like you in that sense. You’re a wrongdoer and I’m a champion. This can never be.
But Maximillian only murmured, “Your wound.”
The dread vanished, drained away in an instant. Cyrus looked at Maximillian properly: flushed cheeks, expression filled with
hunger. His eyes slid down Maximillian’s body, and anticipation swooped giddily in the pit of his stomach. Those tight leather
trousers left little to the imagination. Maximillian wanted him. He was holding back for Cyrus’s sake only.
And in that case, there could be no holding back at all. Cyrus made an impatient noise. “My wound will get over it,” he muttered,
and then he reached out, grabbed a handful of Maximillian’s shirt, and yanked him back in.
Maximillian made a startled noise that shouldn’t have been cute but still managed to be.
Cyrus kissed him greedily, relishing the scratch of his stubble against soft skin.
Possessive fingers curled around the back of Maximillian’s head and disrupted the artful flow of coppery waves.
His nerves seemed to sing with it, the proximity of the one he wanted—and he did want Maximillian, desperately, urgently. He had wanted him all along.
“Wait—”
Cyrus didn’t care for waiting. He was all about instant gratification. But Maximillian had pulled back again, heedless of
Cyrus’s little growl.
Maximillian’s eyes searched his. “You’re not angry?”
He should be. A stabbing, a devious plot against his life: These were things he should probably be concerned about. Maximillian
had been manipulative and deceitful and sly. He had proved himself unpredictable. Dangerous.
Cyrus, gods help him, found that extremely fucking sexy.
Realising that was one thing; voicing it was another. Maximillian’s ego was hefty enough as it was. Cyrus certainly wasn’t
going to inflate his head any further.
“Furious,” he mumbled, resuming his efforts to kiss Maximillian. “Raging. Probably try and kill you tomorrow.”
Maximillian stopped trying to resist him, huffing out a laugh. Cyrus leaned in, too close. Their foreheads knocked together
but Cyrus paid it no heed, too busy drawing the champion’s lower lip between his own and pulling him even closer. A low hiss
escaped as his wound twinged, and Maximillian shifted, but before he could think of withdrawing again Cyrus dug his teeth
in slightly. An incisor nicked the soft flesh of Maximillian’s lip.
“Easy,” Maximillian muttered, and Cyrus felt the rumble of his voice, the reverberation against his own chest, and then he felt his own blood rush south almost as quickly.
His breath hitched, a stuttering exhale.
Maximillian flashed him a smirk that didn’t help the situation at all. “Don’t stop on my account,” he murmured. “Think I quite like it when you make those noises.”
He’d never heard Maximillian’s voice pitched like that before. Low, teasing. Ever so slightly ragged and just for him. Cyrus
thought his brain might’ve fizzled out entirely at the sound of it. With nothing coherent to say he made do with snatching
another kiss, even as Maximillian nudged him to lie back against the pillows, guiding him with a careful but firm hand. The
champion came with him, keeping the barely there distance between them until he was pressed up close to Cyrus’s uninjured
side.
Now that Maximillian was where he wanted to be, he wasn’t holding back. He was as greedy as Cyrus, their shirts dragged free
and thrown aside. When he turned back to Cyrus he was all warm tanned skin with a few faded scars, a dusting of freckles.
All the times he’d pressed up close to that chest during their fights; brushed those muscled arms when they sat together,
already too close for two people calling each other enemy. All the times Cyrus’s eyes had lingered on the stretch of material over Maximillian’s shoulders, the sliver of skin at his
waist when he lifted his arms. Each burst of attraction had been shoved down, repressed, so certain was his belief that this
could never be.
Now, Cyrus let himself stare. His eyes could never have their fill, but he would give it his best shot.
Their mouths met again, urgent and eager, glutting themselves on each other.
Maximillian explored his chest, his collarbones, each trail of fingers against skin causing shudders to skitter out in their wake until they knotted loosely in Cyrus’s hair and exerted just enough pressure to nudge his head back into the pillow.
Lips found the curve of his throat, hot and wet against the delicate skin, and the pressure of Maximillian sucking a purpled bruise into his flesh had Cyrus’s fingers clenching in the sheets beside him, a gasp fighting free.
Two could play at that game. Cyrus reached out, burying his fingers in bronzed waves, and squeezed until Maximillian groaned.
He tugged, sharply, bringing Maximillian’s head up. He looked debauched already, flushed, his hair in disarray. Cyrus wanted
to devour him.
For now he would settle for biting his own bruises into Maximillian’s throat, the muscular slope of his shoulder. A soft laugh
rumbled in Maximillian’s chest.
“Not sure it’s a good idea, letting you and your teeth near my throat.” He sounded breathless. Cyrus had done that to him.
The knowledge made pleasure surge fiercely. “You might start plotting your revenge.”
Cyrus hummed in response, kissing along the champion’s collarbone to the curve of his shoulder. His lips ghosted over warm
skin, tasting soap and sweat. Maximillian sighed, leaning into it.
Cyrus bit him. Maximillian yelped. Cyrus flicked his eyes up, demure, as he ran his tongue over the bite mark soothingly.
“Don’t give me ideas.”