10. Poisons #2
He wanted Imalroc to look at him with that overwhelming hunger in his eyes, or better yet, the things he’d seen so rarely in the man’s face. Contentment. Happiness. Once he’d even caught sight of something that bordered on wonder.
“I told you it would be like this.” Imalroc’s voice softened. “I warned you we would need to be cautious here. I don’t want anyone’s attention in this city; I want to take their onyx as quickly as possible and leave.”
Rerdas swallowed. “Yes. I want that too. I… It just feels different now. With you. Things have changed.” There was an entirely different man beneath the armor Imalroc wore, someone tender and hopeful and so very strong.
He needed to know more of that man. His heart kicked against his ribs, his pulse suddenly speeding, skin prickling. “Haven’t things changed?”
Imalroc regarded him for a painfully silent moment before he closed his eyes and let out a breath. He uncrossed his arms and dropped heavily onto the bed beside Rerdas. “We can’t lose sight of our purpose, huntmaster.”
“I asked Etiana last night about where we stood with onyx. She’s made inquiries in the east already. Three, maybe four more fights, and we should have enough.” He cleared his throat. “But if I can convince her to sell the estate in Kirinoll, it would be less.”
“Your home?” Imalroc asked quietly.
Rerdas shrugged. “Not anymore. And… if it means we can get you out of battleboxes sooner, then it’s worth it.”
He held Imalroc’s searching gaze, and fought a surge of relief when Imalroc carefully, gently cupped his cheek with one cool hand. Rerdas closed his eyes and tried to imprint the touch in his memory.
“You mean it,” Imalroc said, almost under his breath. His blue-eyed gaze slid back and forth across Rerdas’s face, hunting.
“Of course. You’re saving me. My family. Everything I care about. And… I know it was stupid to say it out loud at dinner, but I meant what I said. I think you’re extraordinary.”
Imalroc stroked his thumb across Rerdas’s cheek.
“You shouldn’t say that,” he murmured again, and then he smiled, soft and almost shy.
“But I admit I enjoy hearing it.” The bed creaked as he shifted closer.
“I like seeing it in your face even more. Sometimes it’s all I can think about.
” His uneasy laugh trembled across Rerdas’s skin, and his smile grew, unfolded, something slipping free. “Idiot. What are you doing to me?”
Rerdas laid his hand over Imalroc’s and pressed him closer, sensation twining down his neck, his chest, down his torso and winding beneath his skin.
The door rattled. Imalroc ripped away from him as it opened.
Etiana glowered as she strode in and kicked the door shut. She glared first at Rerdas, frozen in place, and then at Imalroc. “Right,” she snapped. “Let’s deal with this.”
Rerdas sprang up. “Eti, we were just discussing—”
“If you say training or battleboxes, I might slap you.”
“We were planning,” Imalroc said. He sounded completely unruffled. It hurt to hear. Imalroc needed this ability, this shield, but hearing his voice iced smooth felt like being tossed on the other side of a locked door. “Discussing the number of fights required. If Tamasyad—”
“I am not stupid,” Etiana said pleasantly. “I know what it means when my cousin looks at a man the way he looks at you. I remember the last time.”
Rerdas opened his mouth, but he found he couldn’t breathe, much less speak. All he could do was look helplessly from Etiana’s empty smile to the unmistakable frost growing in Imalroc’s pale eyes.
“I want you two to stay away from each other. Stop this before it gets worse,” she commanded.
“That’s a rather impractical request.” Imalroc sounded bored.
“I know what you’re doing!” Etiana’s voice rose. “You’re using him because he’s too gentle and easy to get to, and you’re toying with him for your entertainment, or hoping he’ll—”
“Etiana,” Rerdas croaked. She might as well have slapped him for the way the words left him reeling. “I’m right here, and I know you think you’re helping, but—”
“He’s going to hurt you, Rerdas!”
Imalroc stood and stalked directly at Etiana.
“You fucking stupid, spoiled shitheap. I agreed to your plan, I’ve done nothing but help you, I followed him back from Draal.
If I wanted to hurt him, I would have! But you see only what the battleboxes made.
You have to believe in that, don’t you? That must be how you live with yourself. ”
Rerdas tried to get between them, but Etiana stood as if rooted, only stumbling back when Imalroc advanced again and crowded her.
“You call it sport, games, spectacle, all so you won’t have to really see it.
You think yourself superior to the other vultures.
But you are just the same. You lift your hands and cheer, for the blood and the pain and the killing, the dying.
” Imalroc’s pointed finger punctured the air just short of Etiana’s nose.
“You can’t look at it and see what it really is, because you’re too afraid of what it says about you that you enjoy it. ”
Every drop of anger and color drained from Etiana’s face, apart from the stinging red in her cheeks. Her throat worked. “I’m protecting my—”
“Your protection is worth shit!” Imalroc roared. “Without me, you’d still be killing your own mother!” He veered away, his stride impossibly long for the tiny room. “Get her the fuck away from me, Rerdas!”
Rerdas, heart in his throat, gripped Etiana’s shoulders and towed her across the room.