Chapter 10
CHAPTER 10
T raveling with Leofric was worse than Cosmo ever could have anticipated. He scrutinized Cosmo’s every move, refused to let even the smallest thing slide, and took deep, personal offense in every slight from Cosmo—real or imagined.
Every time he and Leofric mounted up at dawn, Cosmo told himself to give up on the man. Leofric was carved of stone, and Cosmo told himself he had no hot blood pumping beneath the cold exterior. But then, at night, they would sit opposite the fire, eating the food that he had hunted and Cosmo cooked, and the silence between them would be soft and comfortable. Leofric would stare at him over the fire, like Cosmo was a puzzle he was determined to solve. The intensity in Leofric’s looks made him shivery and nervous. Cosmo hadn’t been nervous in…He frowned. He didn’t think anyone had ever made him nervous before. Nervous, unsure of himself, hot and jittery. Unfortunately, it never failed that just when he thought he was making progress, some careless remark would have the shutters closing behind Leofric’s dark brown eyes, and then he’d be gone, gone deep inside himself where Cosmo could not reach, no matter how hard he tried.
It did not help that he was beautiful, truly and uniquely beautiful, made even more so, somehow, by his complete disdain of Cosmo. Before meeting Leofric, Cosmo would never have said a scowl could be as captivating as a smile, that contempt could have him as hot as desire. Watching him all day was torture. Leofric rode with confidence, legs wrapped around his horse, back straight, dark hair swept into a tight, impeccable braid that shone in the sun. The shorn side of his head, with its twining tattoos, emphasized the sharp line of his jaw, the bitable ears, and the long, elegant column of his neck. No one just had a neck like that by accident, Cosmo thought sourly. A neck like that was meant to be stroked, bit, kissed. Grabbed. Cosmo often found himself wondering what that neck would look like with his own freckled fingers wrapped around it, pressing lightly to feel Leofric’s pulse hammering against his thumb.
It was maddening. This was the longest Cosmo had gone without taking someone to bed since he’d first surrendered his body to a pair of amorous serving girls at the age of five and ten. There wasn’t much to do, of a summer, besides work and fuck. He needed little else, or so he had always told himself, but absent one he found it difficult to enjoy the other, and he felt as if he were slowly coming unglued.
He needed to do something to cleanse himself of these urges, the urges that were destined to starve the life out of him. Leofric was as dry and unwelcoming as the scorching sands of Sokol, his homeland. One evening, as Leofric set their camp, measuring the distance between the rocks of their cookfire so they were perfectly equidistant—or whatever the fuck he got up to—Cosmo announced he was going to find a lake in which to bathe. He didn’t care if he had to walk all the way back to bloody Papia City to get into the water, he was going for a swim.
Luckily, the wild forest provided, and Cosmo’s grace allowed the trees to lead him through a thicket to a small, hidden pool. His shoulders at last came down from around his ears, each footfall that took him from the camp allowed him to breathe deep, and breathe free. The thought of spending even a few moments weightless, clean, and light had his chest expanding fully for the first time all day. The glade was an intimate little oasis, the perfect thing for a humid, sticky summer evening. A pool fed by a small waterfall, water clear and cold, would be just the thing. Cosmo stripped out of his clothes and bangles and slid into the water, gasping at the chill even as he relished in it.
Lazily, Cosmo swam a few laps around the shallow pond before standing beneath the deluge from the waterfall, letting it sluice over his hair, his face, his body.
The rushing of the water was playing tricks on his hears; he heard what sounded like someone clearing their throat. Then again, louder. Cosmo turned to face the clearing and his heart nearly stopped. Leofric stood there, a thin sheet of white linen wrapped around his hips as he stood barefoot in the grass.
“What are you doing here?” Cosmo blurted. “How did you even find me?”
Leofric looked confused. “I thought you invited me.”
Cosmo braced his hands on his hips. “What on earth are you talking about?”
The sun had set hours before, but in the moonlight reflected on the water allowed Cosmo to see a deep flush moving up Leofric’s chest like a darkening bruise. “The trees…” he glanced over his shoulder into the shadowy expanse of the forest. “There was a path.”
It was Cosmo’s turn to flush. The forest must have moved itself around his footfalls, feeling the want through the soles of his feet and encouraging Leofric to answer what it thought was Cosmo’s call. “No there wasn’t.”
Leofric raised his brows. “No?”
“Not an intentional one,” said Cosmo, wondering if the affect was ruined by the tingly heat surely visible in his cheeks, the catch in his throat as he spoke. It was dark enough that Leofric couldn’t see any further damning evidence through the water’s surface, so Cosmo decided to push his luck. He cocked his head. “Why would I have wanted you to follow me?”
The confusion on Leofric’s face vanished, replaced by embarrassment, then irritation. Soon enough, though, he had reschooled his features into an emotionless mask. If Cosmo hadn’t been staring, he might have missed it. “How should I know?” Leofric asked.
They stared at each other.
“So,” said Cosmo at last. “What are you doing here, then?”
Leofric looked at him like he was being purposely obtuse. “Bathing.”
Cosmo sucked in a breath as Leofric shed his linen to stand naked under the silver light of the moon. Of course, with a few sharp twists of his hands, he folded the towel neatly and hung it from a nearby tree branch. Cosmo scowled at the tree, as if it had presented a convenient towel rack for Leofric on purpose. Perhaps it had.
Leofric stretched his arms above his head, shaking out his hands as he stepped into the water. The long lines of his body seemed even longer somehow, when unobstructed by clothing or armor. Impossibly long, his limbs hard with muscle, tanned and scarred from battle and whatever else he got up to.
Cosmo could not help the way his gaze pulled down from Leofric’s arms where they stretched toward the heavens, to his upturned face, his jaw, his unbound hair cascading down over his shoulders. He rarely wore it like that, untamed waves of rich brown tumbling freely and curling around his ears. Leofric finished stretching and turned his face to Cosmo, a barely-there smirk softening the corners of his usually stern mouth, and Cosmo realized with a jolt that his own mouth had fallen open, gaping wide as he blinked stupidly at the man before him.
Damn him, Cosmo thought. He is doing this on purpose.
It took a lot of Cosmo’s self-control not to ogle Leofric’s more private parts as he turned away, his pert buttocks catching the glow of the moon in a way that had Cosmo aching to sink his teeth in. When at last he lowered himself into the water, the look in his eyes was a challenge, a challenge that said that Leofric could play Cosmo’s own games, and worse—he could win.
Unless Cosmo was mistaken, the temperature of the little glade and the water had risen, such that he found himself hot all over, warm from his scalp to his toes as his blood fizzed and simmered beneath his skin. He turned his back, dunking his head once again beneath the stream of water from the waterfall and tried to gather himself. What did this mean? Leofric may have already put his shields back up, but the fact remained that he had thought Cosmo invited him to the lake. And he had come.
A fissure of eager lust shot through him, but he did his best to tamp it down.
Cosmo would have had an easier time believing Leofric was interested in lifeless hunks of granite. This was simply his own boredom coupled a healthy dollop of wishful thinking. He peeked over his shoulder. Could something happen between them?
He doubted it.
And yet.
Cosmo straightened up, frowning. What was he doing? He was the god of summer, the god of warmth and heat and want. There wasn’t a mortal on earth who could defeat him in the arena of seduction, of flirtation, of any kind of bed sport. If Leofric wanted to play, Cosmo wasn’t about to back down. He shook himself, and ran his fingers through his wet hair. He peeked over his shoulder at Leofric, just in time to catch his eyes before he shifted his gaze, away from Cosmo, where he’d plainly been looking.
Cosmo grinned. Leofric had no idea what sort of duel he’d entered, but he was about to learn.
Leofric had no idea what he was doing. First off, he was furious with himself and humiliated that he’d allowed himself to think Cosmo had invited him to the pool for some kind of—some kind of what, even? A tryst? What he had expected? That they could wash each other’s hair, share an impassioned kiss in the moonlight? He shivered. Even as he mocked himself, he couldn’t deny the appeal of the mental images currently flooding his brain.
By arriving in the clearing, he’d certainly made himself vulnerable, and it was plain that Cosmo knew. Just as he had known before, known the way Leofric reacted to rough handling, the way he’d craved it. He’d shown his weakness, and now his only defense was to pretend he was unaffected. No.
He had to be unaffected. Anything else was madness, like trying to chase the sun without being burned. Leofric lowered himself into the water, forcing himself to remain relaxed and calm, still. Cosmo moved around as he cleaned himself, swam in the water, splashed about. Leofric forced himself to pick a spot on the opposite bank of the little lake to focus upon, a reed waving back and forth in the wind.
Cosmo preened like a songbird, stretching and presenting every freckled inch of himself like washing up was a stage performance and he had a full and captive audience. When he lifted one slim leg out of the water to brace against a stone, bending over it to wash non-existent dirt from his skin Leofric audibly gulped.
He tried to cover it with a cough, but something told him Cosmo was not fooled. Leofric shifted to lean back against the gently sloping stone, tipping his head to skyward in what he hoped was a casual movement.
The night was warm and so was he, while the water was cool. There was no denying the sights of Cosmo’s flaunting had him aroused, but the water provided a disguise, and the feeling wasn’t an unpleasant one. He’d had neither the opportunity nor the inclination to pursue anything of the sort since his brother’s death—his life had been a whirlwind. Helping his family, his discharge from the legion, his new position in Papia, chasing after Prince Alexios.
Even knowing he would not act on anything, the feeling was welcome. It had been a long time since Leofric had felt so present in his body, so at home in being a man. It reminded him all at once that he was alive. These days, he only felt this way when fighting. When he fought, Leofric knew who he was. This was nice too, though. The water was soothing and the heavy air warm and pleasant. Over the course of his life, Leofric had traveled thousands of leagues without ever taking the time for such luxury, and part of him wondered why. Soldiers needed to wash, just as anyone else did. More so, after hours marching or riding in the sun.
A disturbance nearby set tiny waves smacking against his ribs, but he was too peaceful to care much. That is, until a voice whispered in his ear, “If you thought I was inviting you here, why did you come?”
That was why. A relaxed man was a vulnerable one. Leofric jerked away from the voice, from the reflected heat from Cosmo’s skin, from the question itself. Cosmo leaned into his space, droplets of water clinging to his dark, ruddy lashes as he waited for an answer.
“Morbid curiosity,” said Leofric, with as level a voice as he could muster.
Cosmo smiled. “That’s fair, I suppose.”
Leofric shifted subtly, putting a bit more distance between their bodies, and did his best to force his muscles to relax again. “Besides,” he said. “Letting you out of my sight seems unwise. It’s always better to know from which direction the storm is coming.”
Cosmo laughed, a bright and startled sound, like he didn’t expect Leofric capable of anything resembling a joke, and Leofric supposed he could hardly blame the man for that.
Cosmo was still staring at him, still leaning in, far too close. He was waiting for something, something Leofric couldn’t quite identify. His expression was hungry, starved actually, and Leofric could see something of the lonely young boy he’d perhaps once been peering out of Cosmo’s eyes.
“This is…pleasant,” Leofric said, because he felt as though he had to say something. His tongue felt thick in his mouth, twisty and unreliable.
Cosmo smiled faintly. “Agreed. You’re much nicer when you’re relaxed.”
Leofric grunted in response, unsure what else to say.
“Maybe we could…” Cosmo trailed off.
“Spar?” Leofric blurted.
Cosmo blinked, startled. “What?”
“We could spar, again,” Leofric said. “If you want.”
Cosmo looked bewildered. “Now?”
“No, not now,” said Leofric. His face grew hot as he scrambled to make the request to bludgeon one another with practice swords seem normal. “I—I’d been thinking, perhaps when we’ve finished riding for the day. Tomorrow.”
“Oh,” said Cosmo. His brow furrowed, and he leaned back a bit, the air cooling between them. “If you like.”
“Good,” Leofric said. He wrapped his arms around himself, and stared resolutely ahead, avoiding Cosmo’s searching gaze. “Good.”