8. Discoveries
Chapter eight
Discoveries
Imalroc pulled the door open. Rerdas stood there with curls disheveled, gaze flitting from Imalroc’s face to the room behind him, and then back up the darkened hallway.
“May I… could I…” Rerdas made a nervous gesture.
Wordlessly, he stepped back so the huntmaster could slip past him.
Rerdas didn’t venture far into the room. It felt strange, since Imalroc had almost grown accustomed to his bursting in with new medicines or harried attempts to get him to eat something. But this time, Rerdas stood at the very edge, with his back almost pressed to the shut door.
His cloak and tunic were gone in favor of a loose bedshirt that gaped over his chest. The trousers were different too, thinner fabric than he’d worn out into the woods, and his feet were bare.
If anyone had seen him stepping into Imalroc’s room dressed like this, looking so soft and touchable, there would undoubtedly be whispers about what exactly Rerdas Toriem got up to with his battleboxer.
Imalroc didn’t want anyone to know what he was doing with Rerdas. But he’d also like the entire world to know that no one else was allowed to touch the huntmaster, unless they wanted to lose their hands.
“Are you still amenable to…” Rerdas trailed off. “I can go if you’d prefer.”
Imalroc slipped forward and the huntmaster startled, bumping back against the door.
He had a hand already lifted toward Rerdas, but he stood there with it awkwardly frozen in the air, uncertain. If Rerdas was afraid of him… that would be close to unbearable.
He needed Rerdas not to be afraid of him.
He could go slowly if it would help. So slow, gently, slowly, stop looking at the man as if he’s about to be devoured. He let his hovering hand come to rest against Rerdas’s chest. The heartbeat beneath his palm was racing.
He took another step closer and drew Rerdas gently in. He touched Rerdas’s chin, lifted it slightly, watched the huntmaster’s lips part in anticipation, and kissed him. It was almost chaste.
“Still amenable,” he said, his voice husky.
Rerdas exhaled, tension melting from his shoulders as he leaned closer.
Imalroc took Rerdas’s face gently in both his hands, then slid one hand up to bury his fingers in those silky, coppery curls.
His stomach swooped as he caught Rerdas’s mouth again, harder this time, pressure against his lips that he craved.
It took him an embarrassingly short time to turn sloppy, breath coming hot and unsteady, his tongue in Rerdas’s mouth the way he’d been imagining every night since he’d first tried to resist this.
Rerdas opened for him, soft and sweet and eager.
Imalroc shifted back, catching Rerdas’s chin lightly to hold him just shy of kissing again. “You’re… Did you rinse your mouth?”
“Well,” Rerdas began, as though he tried to sound breezy, “I thought in case you… wanted anything from me, I may as well be ready.”
Imagining it sent pleasure fizzing down his back. Rerdas had prepared for him, wondering, hoping, making himself smell good and taste good and—
Imalroc frowned. “You taste like coconut, and I taste like—” An entire menu of everything he’d eaten earlier rushed through his head. “Fish and pickles?” he said, slightly horrified.
Rerdas’s smile twinkled in his voice. “I don’t care what you taste like.”
“Fuck’s sake, there’s oil in the washroom! Let me—Just stay there. Don’t leave.” Imalroc glowered at him to emphasize that Rerdas couldn’t go, before he lunged away behind the safety of the washroom door.
He lit the lamp beside the narrow basin and groped for the coconut oil, cursing under his breath. Poured too much of it, splattering it all over the basin and clouding the tiny room with a nutty scent.
Worrying about what his mouth tasted like was stupid.
Maybe everything he was about to do was stupid.
Gods, why couldn’t he be drawn to someone easier?
That moment in Draal had been the first time he’d been able to fuck someone on his own terms in so long, and he needed just a bit more of it.
Rerdas was tempting, available, and willing.
It didn’t have to be dangerous. He could take what he wanted; it wouldn’t cost Rerdas anything, and this awful, incessant hunger would be satisfied.
He’d never gotten his hands on any man like the one waiting for him. He didn’t know what he was doing.
Imalroc frenzied the cleansing stick he used over his teeth before the rinse. He couldn’t exactly count the pleasure servants for experience. They’d done their work with awful efficiency.
And Briga—His jaw clamped shut, and the stick crunched.
The few times they’d had any opportunity to be together like that, Briga had crumbled in his arms before they’d done much more than take off their clothes, and Imalroc had tried to soothe him while he wept.
He and Briga were battleboxers, and only one of them was any good at it.
Briga had needed to feel comforted and protected.
He didn’t need Imalroc making demands of him.
There never seemed to be energy left for passion.
This was different. He could make demands of Rerdas. He owed the man nothing. Rerdas’s needs, what the huntmaster wanted or what he liked, didn’t have to be the point of this.
Imalroc spat and rinsed out the coconut oil. He stalked out of the washroom.
The room seemed darker absent the small light he’d lit beside the basin, which he regretted blowing out.
The huntmaster sat on the edge of the bed, but he was an almost indistinguishable shadow in the dark.
Rerdas was one of the most beautiful men he had ever encountered. He wanted to see all of him.
“There’s a lamp on the bedside table.” Imalroc drifted slowly toward the bed and sank down beside Rerdas. “Light it?”
There was the snick of a wick catching and a dazzle of light before Rerdas carefully lowered the glass around the flame and the lamp cast a rose-gold pool over the bed.
“Don’t move,” Imalroc murmured.
Rerdas stilled, looking back at him like something freshly emerged from a delirious dream.
Imalroc ran his gaze along lines of light and shadow.
Over Rerdas’s high cheeks and hopeful, stunning eyes, the fine bridge of his nose, the curves of his mouth, the elegant strokes of his collarbones and the notch between them.
Light seeped through the thin material of the huntmaster’s bedshirt, offering up the tantalizing golden skin beneath.
He glimpsed the flat planes of Rerdas’s chest and the carved shape of his archer’s shoulders.
“Come here.” His voice sank to a rumble he felt in his stomach.
He liked that Rerdas came to him without hesitation, but he tensed when the huntmaster’s shadow fell across him where he sat on the bed.
Imalroc shot up on instinct, then forced himself to pause.
Breathe. He slid his hands under the hem of Rerdas’s bedshirt and bracketed the huntmaster’s hips, circled his thumbs over the ridges of hot skin and pressed Rerdas around so his back was to the bed.
The huntmaster’s hands alighted on his shoulders, as if to pull him in. Imalroc gave him a gentle shove.
Rerdas tumbled easily to the bed and lay sprawled on his back, waiting.
He’d thought too often about how quickly he could get the huntmaster on his knees, and whether Rerdas would let him fuck his mouth again. But the way the light adored the huntmaster, it would be a crime if Imalroc didn’t strip him first.
He wanted to tear Rerdas out of his clothes. Ruthlessly, he leashed his desire. He was his own master, and no one, not even this man, could make him forget it.
“Undress,” he said, stepping back to deal with his own clothes.
He didn’t know what he’d expected, but it wasn’t Rerdas yanking his own shirt over his head with stitch-popping force and shimmying out of his trousers as though he’d been awaiting permission.
Imalroc stared. There was a naked, exquisite, completely forbidden man on his bed.
All his blood plunged into his groin, and his body came to life as if it had been called. His cock thickened, the feeling of it so sudden that it nearly hurt.
He undid the buttons on his own tunic slowly, holding Rerdas’s mesmerizing gaze.
They really shouldn’t be just dumping clothing all over the floor.
He should do something about it. Maybe gather it up and run out of the room before lust ate him alive.
But somehow his own shirt was landing in a pile with Rerdas’s, and his hands worked the tie of his trousers.
He pushed his smallclothes off his ankles and kicked them away.
Had to fight back a shiver. He wasn’t shy, and he trusted his body, but he wasn’t accustomed to considering how it might look to other people, beyond as a weapon or a threat.
He definitely wasn’t accustomed to hoping someone else liked it.
Not that he cared what Rerdas thought—but Rerdas was gazing at him like he wanted to memorize him. And that was… He quite liked that.
He inched onto the bed, and when Rerdas didn’t draw back, he climbed right over him on all fours until he had the huntmaster prone beneath him.
The opportunity to stare without having to hide it or hurry was too good to pass up. He let his gaze travel down all the places he wanted to taste. Rerdas let out an unsteady breath, as though Imalroc had done something worth that dazed expression.
Rerdas was already hard and flushed. A wet bead glimmered over the swollen head of his cock.
Imalroc arched an eyebrow at him.
“Sorry,” Rerdas said weakly. The shells of his ears turned red. “I may have spent too much time imagining warriors with swords when I was younger. And you… you look so… strong.” He brushed his hand along the bunched muscle above Imalroc’s shoulder.