8. Forfeits #2
I closed my eyes and screwed up my courage.
“You could be the one with a pretty boy desperate to suck your cock, Lu,” I said in my very best sensual purr.
I splayed my hand across his thigh, my own cock twitching from the feel of his muscled leg tensing in my grip.
Precome smeared against my stomach where I had my erection trapped by my belt.
“Think about how good it would feel. All that wet heat wrapped around you, your fingers fisted in his hair and the throaty little whimpers he’d make for you as you fucked that sweet mouth—”
He shoved himself up in a sharp motion, throwing me off of him with a hard turn of his body, putting his back to me. My ass hit the floor. I stared up at him, shocked and achingly hard and desperately hoping that I hadn’t just fucked everything up forever. I was so good at that.
“Lu?” I asked in a small voice.
He shuddered. “Don’t do that again.”
I fought the desire to cringe away at the harshness in his voice, feeling guilty despite not having done anything wrong. “You asked me to. You paid me to,” I said in protest, ears pinning back more with fear than with anger.
Alluin swallowed, the sound audible. His hands slowly unclenched.
“I know,” he said, sounding shamefaced. “I… It's just… Gods, Zhi, as it turns out, you’re very good at that, and I…” He let out a shaky breath, then looked over his shoulder with his brows slanted and expression yearning.
“It’s been decades since I’ve…” Alluin flashed me a pained smile. “Well. With anyone.”
My cheeks started heating. I got up carefully, brushing the dirt off my pants before taking my seat again. “He doesn’t deserve your loyalty,” I said, not meeting his eyes.
Alluin took another moment, rubbing his hand over his face and breathing carefully. When he took his seat, he was only flushed, a light rouging of his perfect brown skin that could have been from the warmth of the fire.
He sighed, picked up his cards, and chucked them back on the table face-up. His hand had been better than mine. That bastard had fucking let me win.
“Droesh is the only thing I have left of my family,” he said quietly, holding my gaze.
“It’s not the manor itself I care about, not really.
It’s a nice house, but there are many nice houses.
” Alluin looked away, his expression moody.
“The land is where we came from. Where we hunted horses and sang under the moon. My grandmother birthed my mother on that soil, and my mother birthed me. My niece painted things in the caves that she never spoke of, and that I’ve never seen.
It’s part of me, but worse than that, it’s all that I have left of them. ”
I wet my lips. I had no idea what to say to that.
“It wouldn’t be so awful if I wasn’t the last one,” he said in the calm, emotionless voice he used when he didn’t know how he was supposed to sound. “Someone else could love it. Someone else could… could want it. Clarien did, and then she…”
“Your niece,” I said when he fell silent. She had died almost two thousand years ago, his last living family member. I’d learned that from a passing comment in one of his letters, a throwaway line that I knew hadn’t been casual at all. I hadn’t had any idea what to do with the knowledge.
Alluin nodded, looking down at his hands.
“I can’t have children, Zhi. It’s not even that I don’t enjoy the company of women.
I can’t. I’m infertile. There’s no one left but me.
I thought…” He swallowed, his throat bobbing.
“I thought, maybe, he could… he could love it. And then, when he wanted—” Alluin squeezed his eyes shut.
“When he wanted children, I thought, maybe it would be worth it. Maybe they would love it, and they would know me, and that might be almost as good as if I could— If I could have—”
If Nyland had wandered into the pub right then and there, I would have caved his face in. How dare he. How fucking dare he.
“He has them now, doesn’t he? Children,” I said, trying to keep my murderous desire off my face and out of my voice.
“Two daughters,” Alluin said dully. His lashes fluttered. “He doesn’t want them to meet me. He doesn’t want them to have anything to do with me.”
So that I wouldn’t clench my fists so hard my fingernails cut my palms, I started picking up the cards and viciously shuffling them into a pile. “I changed my mind. Don’t sell the place to him. Evict him and let me burn all his stuff in a pyre. I can help you redecorate afterwards.”
Alluin gave me a longsuffering look. “He was my husband, Zhi.”
“‘Was’ is a very important part of that sentence,” I said, shoving the cards back into their box and pocketing my dice. “Come on. Let’s go down to the garrison and get so cup-shotten they have to carry us to our room. First one under the table pays for the drinks.”
“‘Room’?” he asked, a faint smile chasing away some of the pain. “Soldiers love to gossip. By dawn, half the garrison could know you’re sharing a bed with the First General.”
“Let them talk. You owe me, and I’m not letting you slip out of paying,” I said, standing and holding out my hand to him.
“If anyone dares ask, you can tell them that all you have to do to get me into your bed is offer. You could have dozens of handsome men working up their courage to ask if they can keep your bed warm while I’m away once the news gets out. ”
Alluin took my hand and let me tow him up.
“I have no intention of telling them that,” he said, sounding amused.
He put his arm around my waist and steered me towards the door, his body warm and solid against my side.
“For the record, Zhi,” Alluin added, glancing sidelong at me with a wicked light in his perfect hazel eyes, “if I was going to pick, it wouldn’t be me getting my cock sucked tonight.
I love being on my knees for a beautiful man—” His voice dropped into a sultry purr. “—and I’m very good at it.”
My cheek twitched. I had to force myself to relax, giving him an unamused look as his throaty laugh warmed the air.
“Regretting your choice yet?” he asked with a rakish smile. “You could probably still go catch that weaver.”
I dropped my arm across his shoulder and rolled my eyes. “Not happening. Are you seriously flirting with me mere hours before you take me upstairs to chastely cuddle all night? After I gave up fellatio from a beautiful stranger for you?”
“Is that awful of me?” Alluin asked, making a face. “I could behave myself.”
“Nah,” I said, letting myself enjoy the feel of having him under my arm and up against me. “I like that you’re unbending a little. Only took, what, a century? More?”
The tips of his ears reddened. “It’s been a little over one hundred eleven years since we met.”
“But who’s counting?” I teased. “Come on, General. Let’s go have ourselves a little fun.”