Chapter Six #2
“Pack your things as slowly as you like, and give whatever notice you should. But, when you go to sleep each night, it will be in my bed—in our bed.” That wasn’t negotiable.
He’d already waited far too long to have Ryland laying close to him all through the night.
He might not have been exactly sure what allowances and indulgences his mate would need in order to find a contented place within his pride, but anything that took him out of his Arslan’s bed on all but the very rarest of occasions wasn’t going to be part of that.
Ryland nodded. “Now, sir?” he suggested.
Arslan brushed their lips together again.
Ryland was his mate. It was official, but he knew it would feel even more certain once more than mere words passed between them.
Waiting for privacy had been torment enough, now he could barely convince himself to take the necessary time to leave the fireside and make their way upstairs.
Ryland in front of the fireplace was a beautiful sight.
Arslan’s memory of the time they had spent there had been one of the very few things that had kept him even slightly sane while his mate had been missing.
Still, no matter how much he longed to lay him down on the rug and destroy all doubt of who he belonged to, Arslan needed to see him in his bed, too.
And it was that instinct that won out in the end.
Turning away from Ryland, Arslan headed towards the door.
Ryland didn’t need to be ordered, or even invited, to join him. He was at his side before any words could leave Arslan’s lips. He shivered as the colder air in the hallway surrounded him, but he made no complaint.
Arslan made a mental note to see to it that the whole house would be heated to human temperatures, but at least the master bedroom was already somewhere where a human would be comfortable, heated as it was by the warmth from the fire in the meeting room directly below.
As Arslan closed the bedroom door behind them, Ryland hesitated for the first time. Arslan stepped up behind him and kissed his neck. “It’s your room, too, pet. Don’t act like a visitor.”
Ryland turned around within Arslan’s arms. He reached out and settled his hands on Arslan’s skin, but he still seemed more hesitant there than he had been downstairs. Arslan ran his palms over Ryland’s back, encouraging him to lean into his body and relax, but Ryland remained tense.
“You said there’d be more explanation, sir.”
“Yes.” Arslan rested his forehead against Ryland’s temple for a few moments, but whichever way he turned the situation, Ryland was right. Things had to be properly settled between their minds before they could move on to anything else.
“I meant it, sir—no allowances. I’ll learn how to be like a lion, learn how to be exactly what you want.” The words were whispered against Arslan’s shoulder, but no matter how hushed they were, both the individual words and their meaning was clear.
Arslan forced himself to pull back far enough to look down into Ryland’s eyes.
“Wanting to please your mate is natural. But you need to remember that I won’t be pleased with you if you’re so busy worrying about playing the part of a lion that you forget that I fell in love with a human.”
Ryland looked up at him, his surprise obvious.
“Did you think I’d ask you to be my mate on a whim, pet?”
Ryland shook his head. “I just wasn’t sure if…how lions might… I’d rather you didn’t make allowances, sir.”
Coaxing Ryland backwards, Arslan guided him to sit down on the edge of the bed before sitting beside him. “Because?”
Ryland stared at the rug by the side of the bed for a few long moments. “Because I tried asking someone to make allowances for me a long time ago. And I learned from my mistake—I won’t do that again.”
Arslan reached out and set his hand very gently on his pet’s back, offering what comfort he could.
It had been drummed into him from the time he was old enough to listen that humans were fragile, vulnerable creatures.
Staring down at Ryland’s bowed head, he could easily believe every word of it was right.
“Your housemate mentioned that you’re not on easy terms with your family,” Arslan said, carefully.
“Bit of an understatement, sir,” Ryland muttered.
“Lions have never considered which sex someone is attracted to to be important. It’s not…” He trailed off as he felt Ryland tense.
“That’s what everyone thinks,” Ryland whispered after a while. “That they chucked me out when they found out I’m gay. I generally just let them think that. It’s easier. People understand homophobia. But my family they’re not homophobic at all.”
Arslan stroked his palm up and down Ryland’s spine and waited.
“They threw me out when they found out I was applying to study mathematics in university rather than medicine.”
Arslan tried to follow. He failed.
Ryland gave a sad little chuckle. “In 1518, a small group of doctors petitioned Henry VIII to set up the Royal College of Physicians. One of the group was Harold Gilford. Since then, every single sodding Gilford knew what he was going to be when he grew up—the daughters, too, once the universities started letting women in. You could say medicine is kind of the family business. The Gilford family is actually kind of a big deal in medical circles. It’s a point of family pride. ”
“And when they found out you weren’t intending to…” Arslan realised.
Ryland laughed, but there was no humour in it.
“I’d guessed they’d be furious. I expected a lot of shouting to start with, maybe trailing off into snark and barbs over the years.
But I never thought they’d actually cut me out of their lives completely, not long term.
” For a few seconds, he was silent. “They said there was no way I’d make it on my own.
They said I’d come crawling back once I was broke and had to drop out.
That I’d end up begging them for help. But I won’t—I won’t ask them to help me retrain as a medical doctor, and I won’t ask them to help me finish my bloody PhD either. ”
Arslan put his arm around Ryland and guided him to rest against him.
Ryland took a deep breath. His shoulders trembled as he made an obvious effort not to let it out as a sigh.
“I should have known how it would be. I shouldn’t have let myself pretend that it would all be fine with them in the end.
That’s the way it works, isn’t it? You have to fit in.
I get that now. You follow the rules—even the bloody stupid ones that make no sense to you.
You do what’s expected of you, and you don’t ask anyone to make allowances.
” He took another deep breath. “I won’t make the same mistake again, sir. ”
Arslan pressed a kiss onto the top of his head.
“I won’t lose this, too,” Ryland whispered. “I won’t.”
Wrapping him completely in his embrace, Arslan held him as tightly as he dared and tried not to let on just how irresponsible for his actions he would be if he set eyes on any member of Ryland’s family right then. The closeness seemed to help Ryland find the courage to speak.
“You want to know what they said when I finally worked up the courage to tell them I was gay?” Ryland whispered.
Arslan didn’t trust himself to speak, but he made an encouraging little noise in the back of his throat and that seemed to be enough.
“There’s still plenty of work to be done in the field of HIV research.
Having a Gilford find a vaccine or a cure for that would be quite a feather in the family’s cap.
” Ryland gave another of those bitter little laughs.
“A gay doctor would have been fine with them. I shouldn’t let people think they’re homophobic.
It’s just easier not to have to explain just how stupid it all is. Family bloody business.”
Arslan helplessly pressed another kiss to the top of his head.
“I never did learn how to fit in with them. I was always the cuckoo in the nest, even when I was little. I got good grades, I did as I was told, but I was always just slightly off, slightly out of step. This time, it’ll be different, sir.”
Arslan closed his eyes for a moment, as he began to understand just how terrifying it had to be for Ryland to find himself thrown into the middle of another family that he didn’t quite fit into yet.
Even if his disappearance still wasn’t acceptable, Arslan perhaps began to see why his mate had thought fixing everything before he came back to the pride was the only way to keep himself safe.
“You’re safe now,” Arslan whispered.
Ryland nodded. He seemed to make some sort of effort to pull himself together. “And you were right about my instincts, I’ll work on them, sir.”
“Yes. We’ll do that,” Arslan agreed. He stroked his knuckles down Ryland’s cheek. “What do your instincts tell you to do right now?”
Ryland tilted his head back, offering his lips up to be kissed. It was a beautiful invitation, a plea for reassurance and acceptance as much as anything else. Arslan didn’t hesitate to bring their lips together.
As one kiss turned into another and another, he gradually felt Ryland relax and forget about all his worries.
Very cautiously, Ryland began to return the kiss.
His actions were impossibly tentative as if he expected Arslan to pull away at any moment, and he was determined to have his apology ready as soon as that happened.
As the minutes passed, his anxiety seemed to ease.
He leaned into the kiss, and his hands moved more confidently over Arslan’s skin.
It wasn’t reassurance he was interested in anymore.
As Ryland gained the courage to run his hands up Arslan’s shoulders and thread his fingers into his hair, Arslan began to turn them, guiding Ryland to lie back on the mattress. When Arslan finally broke the kiss, Ryland, stared up at him, wide-eyed and with his lips slightly reddened.