CHAPTER 13
C HAPTER 13
R AIDER WAS BETTER NOW. He was fine. He was fucking fine, and he didn’t understand why the hell Seth couldn’t see that.
Yes, okay, so he’d acted a bit weird after the dungeons, but that had been two fucking days ago. And yet, here they were on their second dull day in the imperial library and Seth kept looking at him. Not an appreciative looking. Not an I-want-to-fuck-you looking. Just … looking. Checking on him. As though fucking was the farthest thing from Seth’s mind. In point of fact, they hadn’t fucked since before this whole damn mess had begun.
And it was, most definitely, a mess.
Empress Zarina had set them an impossible task. The Alchemist’s Stone? That legend was a thousand years old. They would never find Ulam. No one ever had. But when Raider had tried to explain that to Seth yesterday after Seth had revealed the conditions of their release from the dungeon, Seth had insisted that “everything would be fine.”
Nothing was fine! (Except for Raider. He was fine, like he’d fucking told Seth four times already.) But this assignment? It was not fine.
And yet, Seth just kept turning pages and making notes. Raider was supposed to be helping, like Julian was helping. (Adavasti had already been banned from the library for animating a statue of a griffin and riding it around. Touring, he’d said. He’d also bitten one of the librarians, which hadn’t helped his case.)
That left just the three of them sitting at a table cluttered with books and scrolls and maps. They were in one of the library’s many grand rooms. This one had a floor-to-ceiling, ornately latticed window that cast an intricate pattern of light and shadow across the towering, gilded bookcase behind Seth and Julian.
Julian looked annoyingly young and eager as his eyes darted across lines of text. With his brown hair freshly trimmed and his slender figure clothed in clean silk robes of pale green, the young scholar looked entirely at home in the magnificent library.
The same couldn’t quite be said of Seth. As soon as his black Curator garb had been clean, he’d resumed wearing it. Muscle shifted visibly in his arms when he turned the pages of a book, and his intense green eyes looked like they could burn that parchment right up. He looked much like when Raider had first met him: serious, sharp-eyed, and rigidly self-contained. And yet, he went from book to book and map to map with quiet focus, making his endless notes.
It was driving Raider crazy.
The only thing breaking up Seth’s focused work was his periodic glances across the table at Raider. Mostly, Raider had been ignoring them. At least, he’d been pretending to, always flipping open another dusty, boring book while Seth eyed him across the table. This time, when Seth looked up at him, Raider didn’t pretend to be busy. He met Seth’s eyes with a glare.
“This is pointless,” Raider told him. “And very boring.”
Beside Seth, Julian glanced up. His cheeks went pink as he looked between Seth and Raider. He lowered his gaze. Raider suspected the boy was a virgin. He also suspected the boy had a terrible crush on Seth. When Raider had told Seth that yesterday, Seth had dismissed it out of hand, but Seth was wrong. Julian was constantly embarrassed around Seth, tongue-tied, and always trying to impress him. But, poor lamb, that slender boy would never be able to handle someone like Seth.
Raider could. Raider wanted to. But Seth’s touches had been unrelentingly gentle for two days. Raider liked that sometimes . He liked that after sex. He didn’t like that instead of sex.
Why the hell wouldn’t Seth fuck him?
Seth calmly closed the book he’d been reading, though he kept a finger inside to mark his place. “Do we need to take a break?”
“A break? A break from what ? We’re not doing anything.”
“We’re researching.”
“ You are researching. You and Julian.”
“It has to be done. We have to prepare.”
“You know what? You’re doing a fantastic job, so I think I’ll leave you to it.”
When Raider got up from his cushion, Seth’s eyes traveled, as though of their own volition, from Raider’s face down the open front of his dark blue vest to the teal silk of his shalvar pants. Raider’s nostrils flared in frustration when Seth’s eyes snapped back up to his face.
“Where are you going?” Seth demanded.
“Don’t worry about it.”
Raider gave himself one glorious second to watch how Seth’s gaze intensified, reacting to Raider’s defiance with his instinctive, irrepressible dominance. He didn’t stay to enjoy more than that, however. Since Raider was so damn frustrated, it seemed only right that Seth should be too. So Raider turned and walked resolutely across the red and gold carpet to the arched, open doorway.
He exited into a high-ceilinged hallway with heavily carved wall paneling, domed skylights, and arched doorways leading to other rooms and hallways. The imperial library was a honeycombed maze of rooms.
In his two years as the emperor’s bed toy, Raider had only been in here a few times, so it wasn’t as familiar as other parts of the palace, but he still knew it better than Seth did. So when Seth’s footsteps started thudding at a distance behind him, Raider was able to duck into another room and hurry through it before Seth caught up. Raider darted into another hallway, his heart leaping as he heard Seth’s pace quicken.
Room after room, Raider kept just enough ahead to have Seth hurrying, sometimes guessing wrong at a turn and grunting in frustration while Raider hid a little way ahead before letting Seth glimpse him again. He caught a few stern looks from the librarians and courtiers working or lounging amid the books, but most of them scattered at Seth’s thudding footsteps.
Those steps were starting to sound angry—and they were starting to catch up. Raider’s blood had been heating and his cock stiffening since he’d first heard Seth pursuing him. By the time he spotted a closed door deep in the library, he was achingly hard.
He opened it and ducked into the dark room. He waited by the open door, staying out of the swath of light cutting in from the other room. It didn’t take long. Seth stepped into that swath of light, his breathing audible. His chest was heaving against the form-fitting buckled vest with its heavy shoulder guards. That alone had Raider’s cock throbbing, but then Seth closed the door, and Raider had to bite his lip to hold back the sound that tried to escape him.
Raider’s arcane eye allowed him to watch Seth move into the room. Seth went straight to a table that he’d clearly marked when the door had been open, but he fumbled across it until his fingers found the lamp. It clicked on, fully revealing what Raider’s arcane eye had already glimpsed. They were in a restoration room. Pots of glue, sewing supplies, and stacks of damaged books crowded the worktable. All of that, though, was a mere peripheral awareness. It was Seth that Raider’s eyes were locked onto.
In the first bloom of light, Seth was facing away from him. Raider ran his gaze over Seth’s ass in the black pants, then his broad back and shoulders and his close-cut, light brown hair. Then Seth turned. His green eyes were blazing. His strong jaw was clenched. His fists were clenched. And his cock was a visible ridge against the front of his laced pants.
Raider closed his eyes as fresh arousal assaulted his body. He kept them closed as Seth slowly approached.
“You want to tell me what’s going on?” Seth asked in a low, gravelly voice.
Raider opened his eyes and shivered at the burning intensity in Seth’s eyes. But Seth had stopped. Seth didn’t touch him. He wasn’t going to.
Anger spilled hotly through Raider’s veins. “Why can’t you figure it out?”
“Why can’t you tell me?”
“I’m angry with you!”
Seth’s jaw clenched. His eyes flashed. But he spoke with infuriating calm. “I know, but I’m not sure why.”
It was like they’d gone back in time, all the way back to Shalaa when they’d first met and Seth had refused to yield to their clearly mutual attraction. It had been a sort of game then, a challenge. Raider had enjoyed it.
He wasn’t enjoying this. This made him feel like shit, and he wasn’t even sure why. He was sure, however, that attempting to explain it would only make it worse, so he said nothing.
“ Talk to me,” Seth demanded.
Raider shoved away from the wall. He grabbed Seth’s dick through his pants and squeezed the hard, thick rod.
“Fuck!” Seth barked through gritted teeth. He crowded into Raider, forcing him back.
Raider didn’t let go of Seth’s cock, not even when his back hit the wall and Seth growled into his face. Instead, he gripped harder.
“You really think I want to talk right now?” Raider demanded. “Do you really want to talk?”
“Let go .”
“Why?”
Seth’s teeth were still gritted. “Fucking let go. Now .”
Raider did as Seth demanded, and it brought a wave of despair crashing through his body. He couldn’t keep that despair from his voice as he asked, “Why won’t you touch me?”
Abruptly, understanding dawned in Seth’s eyes. All the anger vanished. All the intensity was gone.
So. Raider had talked—and just as he’d predicted, he felt even worse and everything was ruined.
“Oh, baby,” Seth said softly. “It’s not like that.”
Seth’s hands came up to Raider’s face, cupping his jaw. Raider tried to turn his face away. Seth wouldn’t let him, so Raider closed his eyes instead. Then Seth’s lips were on his, but the kiss was tender and sweet and nothing like what he wanted, nothing like what he needed. Frustrated, Raider nipped Seth’s lip. It sparked enough of Seth’s dominance to have him plunging his tongue into Raider’s mouth—finally.
Raider moaned. This was what he needed.
He reached around Seth to grip his ass and pull him close. The ridge of Seth’s hard cock pressed against his own. As Seth rocked against him, Raider’s body lit with anticipation. He wanted Seth to spin him around and slam him into the wall. He wanted Seth to drive hard and deep into his ass. He wanted Seth to fuck him until he couldn’t think.
But Raider could feel, he could fucking feel the second that Seth seized control of himself. It was a subtle shift in Seth’s rhythm, in his energy. It was the way his hips drew back and his hand took their place, gripping Raider’s cock through the silk of his pants.
Raider was almost desperate enough to take what he could get—but not quite. He spoke against Seth’s mouth. “Are you going to fuck me?”
“I’m going to make you come.”
“But are you going to fuck me?”
“No.”
Raider wrenched out from under Seth. “Then don’t fucking bother.”
Seth’s eyes blazed, but he didn’t pursue Raider as he stalked to the door.
“Raider, I don’t think—”
Raider yanked the door open. “I don’t want to think. That’s the point. I don’t want you to think either.”
“It’s not that fucking simple!”
“Yes, Seth, it really is.”