Prologue #2
Under the rich warm bronze of his skin, Rahat’s cheeks were almost as deep a red as the core of the rose-sweets. He seemed to have lost his voice, somewhere between disbelief and a furtive hope.
He thinks me handsome? Well, good.
“Would you allow me the privilege of sharing pleasure with you?” Ashar asked him.
“Allow—? Master Asharan, why would someone like you want… well…”
“You have no idea how delightful your blushes are, do you,” Ashar said, smiling.
“You blush like rahat al-hulqum’s own rose-red heart, looking at me with a gazelle’s soft eyes and lips like petals, and you ask me that?
I can never be one of the catfolk, but I am as much Bastet’s own as any man can be.
Pleasure is its own reward. Indolence interrupted by bursts of play, bathing at any opportunity, charm and languor and indulgence?
I am so one of Bastet’s own, in everything but the hunt; and even then, I hunt in my own way.
Be grateful to the chai pot, or else I would pounce upon you and prove it. ”
Rahat’s glance flicked toward the pot. He bit his lip, which was unfair, because Ashar wanted to nibble his lip for him. And then he picked up the pot and set it carefully aside.
Well, that was an invitation if he’d ever seen one. Ashar leapt over the table and knocked Rahat flat among the pillows, a leopard with its chosen gazelle. Rahat gave a startled yelp, then laughed in delight.
Still, before he pushed any further, Ashar asked, “Is this to your taste as well? Letting another take control—” He stopped himself before he could say putting aside the weight of your responsibilities.
Instead, he said, “Letting us indulge. Savoring Rahat’s every sweetness, and thanking you for the gift. ”
“The gift is mine, to thank you for,” Rahat said.
“I would argue that, but it is entirely fitting that we make of ourselves gifts to each other,” Ashar nuzzled a kiss against the soft curve of his cheek and touched the fastening-ties at his collar. “May I unwrap my gift?”
Rahat hunched his shoulders, ashamed and uncomfortable.
And oh, by his name and his eyes and his faith, Asharan bir Chameli was not going to let that pass by unchallenged.
“We are in a bath-house,” he said, “and as lovely as your silks are, they will not enjoy an oil-slicked massage and a warm, languid soaking the way I intend for you to enjoy them. At the very least, let me coax you into a bath-towel, before I ask the delight of unwrapping you again. Why else would you come here to me, if not to share such pleasures?”
“I’ve been dreaming of your hands for half my life,” Rahat murmured. “But I don’t know why.”
That gave Ashar a moment’s pause, because everyone in the Empire knew that the God-Emperor’s third brother was a true-seeing prophet — and that he foresaw trouble in the making.
But this was Tel-Bastet, the city of the cats, where there was never any shortage of trouble in the making. And the man trembling beneath his touch was merely his sweet Rahat, at least for the span of this evening.
“If you have dreamed of my hands,” Ashar said, “then trust my hands, and the pleasure you may find in them.”
Still achingly self-conscious, Rahat touched the softly silver-streaked curls that had escaped his turban, and he would have tucked his silvering hair away if Ashar hadn’t put a hand over his.
“If my hands have touched your dreams,” he murmured, “then may I touch this dream with you?”
The lamp-flames glittered in Rahat’s soft eyes like starlight, and he breathed, “Yes. Please.”
“Oh, I’m going to enjoy this,” Ashar said, smiling.
He spun fine, deft threads of incense-smoke to loosen the ties and lift aside the layers of Rahat’s princely silks, wrapping him instead in the softest of the bath-towels, and tickling his cheek with the fringe.
Rahat giggled at the tickle, and Ashar discovered the delightful dimples in his cheeks when he truly smiled.
“What a hidden treasure you’ve brought me,” he murmured, brushing a fingertip over the curve of his smiling cheek, and chasing it with a kiss. “What else might we discover, I wonder?”
“I — I don’t know?” Rahat gulped hard. “I’m so sorry, I don’t know… this. The ways of this.”
“That, my sweet adventurer, is why we speak of discovery,” Ashar told him merrily. “You might touch me too.”
“You wouldn’t mind…?”
“Mind? I would be delighted; pleasure is always sweeter when shared.” Ashar settled into the curve of his side and coaxed Rahat’s arm around his waist. “You have had the advantage of your dreamings, but you bring me a dream I had never imagined, until this evening.”
In a deep, voiceless wonder, Rahat touched trembling fingertips to Ashar’s cheek, as though he were some rare and priceless treasure that might shatter at a too-bold touch.
Of course it was deeply flattering, but Ashar intended to coax him into far bolder and more playful pleasures, to hear his merry laughter again.
With a bit of sweet almond oil in his hands and an adventuresome touch, Ashar discovered several delights: the way the tension in Rahat’s shoulders softened beneath attentive hands, the quickening of his heart at a gentle kiss, the breathless astonishment when Ashar dipped Rahat’s fingertips in sugar and then nibbled and kissed them clean.
But he also discovered more discomforts; Rahat flinched from a kiss at his temple, where his dark hair was most lavishly brushed with silver, and from even an affectionate and admiring hand caressing his most generous curves.
For all that these were heart-aches rather than body-aches, Ashar hoped that a caring touch might release some of those points of tension. In his work, he loved the moment when knotted muscles relaxed under his hands, and a bruised heart deserved the same relief.
He would be careful with his touch in sensitive places, of course.
But he had faith in his arts of body-work, both for comfort and for pleasure.
He gently worked his way from Rahat’s fingertips up the length of his arm to the anxious huddle of his shoulder, and followed kittenish kneading with a gently indulgent snuggle.
Ashar sprawled against him as indolently as any cat, stroking a fingertip along the ridge of his nose, along the dimple of his cheek, around the curve of his chin.
“Never be ashamed to be yourself,” he said. “You are Rahat; you are comfort and rest and the sweetness of ease. A soft warm pillow for a lazy hunting-cat in the sunbeam, a cushion against the world’s sharp edges. Let me savor you exactly as you are.”
Rahat’s great dark eyes shone too bright for a moment, until he could blink back the shimmer of almost-tears.
“I’m deceiving you,” he murmured.
“You’re really not,” Ashar said, amused.
“But my name isn’t Rahat.”
“It most certainly is. Here in this room, between us? You are li rahat, my sweet comfort. That’s all that matters.”
“Then you are ya hasan, ya habibi, ya rafiq, ya majid—”
“If I can’t be your Ashar, then let me be your rafiq, your companion of choice this evening,” Ashar suggested. “I haven’t the skill in the court tongue to remember the rest.”
“Ya majid, O thou glorious,” Rahat said instead, and gathered the courage to kiss his hand.
They made a sticky, sweaty, sugar-dusted mess of each other. Rahat made the most delightful sounds when he was kissed or licked or petted or snuggled, and Ashar luxuriated in the soft, generous warmth of his body, sharing rich and tender comforts and the occasional tickle-giggles.
When they were both well sated, Ashar floated a bowl of steaming water and a cloth into his hands. He made a sensual, playful indulgence of cat-washing before coaxing Rahat into the bath for a long, hot soak.
Utterly limp, Rahat let his head tilt back far enough to nestle his head against Ashar’s shoulder. Delighted, Ashar snuggled close against him, wrapping both arms around him and stroking his skin idly, as though the most powerful man in the city were simply a sleepy kitten drowsing in his lap.
“Chai?” Ashar asked.
“Oh, it’ll have gone cold…”
“That, li rahat, is what magic is for.”
“Ya rahat,” he murmured. “Or… ya rahati, if he is your particular comfort.”
“Are you?” Ashar asked, smiling. “Would you like to be?”
“Yes.” Rahat swallowed hard, and said, “Yes, very much.”
A bit of concentration drifted the tray over to the poolside, and Ashar cradled the pot in both hands, warming both his heart and his hands with memories of the blaze of leaping flames until steam wafted from the spout.
Another thought floated a pair of cups across the water so he could pour for them both.
“O most glorious of enchanters,” Rahat said, and sipped at his cup with downcast eyes.
“What pleasure-spark might a humble body-servant illumine, to chase such shadows from your gaze…?”
“What payment do you wish?”
“Ah, no, no, I told you: on the house.” The shahzada’s lips pursed in distress, and Ashar couldn’t resist the urge to kiss the soft dimple of his cheek. “The pleasure of your company is gift enough.”
Rahat gave a small, unhappy laugh. “Please don’t lie to me, ya majid. I am not so unworldly as to know that little of how these arrangements are made, between a man of some wealth and a man who serves as you serve.”
“Well, yes. But that’s precisely why. Isn’t that the gift you would treasure most? Sharing simple pleasure with someone who requires nothing at all of you, and expects nothing? There is bliss in ignorance, my sweet one. I hold it dear as any other fragile gem.”
“But what does it gain you?”