Chapter 16 #2
She gave him a worried grimace, but wished him good night, leaving him to carry his buzzing anger out into the hallway alone.
There was no sign of Dashiell. Not that it mattered, for Nic knew where to find him with the same certainty he knew the sun would rise.
And sure enough, out in the far reaches of the house, he found weak light spilling beneath the conservatory door.
His smile held a grim edge as he pushed it open.
“I thought I might find you here.”
Dashiell rose from the window seat, reaching for his discarded coat. At the sight of Nic, he left it where it lay. “Well, it’s always been my favourite room,” he said, something of a sheepish smile turning his lips. “It feels… comforting. Safe.”
The words gave Nic pause. “Are you all right?”
“Yes. And no. Did you know there’s no statute in the guild charter that allows for a vowsmith to pull out of negotiations when they feel unsafe? Likely because the punishment for harming a working vowsmith is high and strictly enforced, but for the first time I’m not finding that very comforting.”
“No, I should imagine not.”
Silence stretched, but Nic had no desire to fill it. Dashiell cleared his throat. “The loss of Master Everel must be quite a shock for you. I’m sorry.”
The thought of how strange it would be without the old vowsmith had been circling Nic’s mind, coming slowly to an unexpected conclusion.
“Yes, but also no. I’d seen him more this week than I had for months.
Since my father stopped taking apprentices, he’s been more like a piece of furniture in my father’s study than a member of the family.
And you should know we don’t do family.”
Dashiell grimaced and strode to the large aviary to straighten its night cover—perhaps so he didn’t have to look at Nic as he said, “I heard about what happened to Louis sa Ellis. He can’t have been with you long, before…”
“Nine months. And no, I don’t know what happened. We had every reason to believe it was an accident.”
“Oh, I’m not trying to pry, I just… I don’t know. I suppose I’m curious about… how everything went after I left.”
“You mean did I kiss any of my father’s other apprentices while sitting on that window seat?”
Dashiell’s gaze snapped around. “No, I didn’t mean—”
“Well, no.” Nic fixed him with an unblinking stare. “Only you.”
A flicker of relief? Nic wasn’t sure, but the possibility both thrilled and enraged him in equal measure. He stepped forward. “No, after you left, I had to leave the house for such company.”
A question seemed to hover unspoken on Dashiell’s lips, and well for him it stayed there.
One step became a second and soon they stood just as they had in the pavilion, breath hitched, gazes caught, the buzz that had filled Nic since rising to a crescendo like he was holding back a storm.
Dashiell took up his whole world, all thick brows and soft, dark lashes.
He made no move forward, yet there was something imploring in his gaze, in the way he licked his dry lips.
Nic touched his nose to Dashiell’s cheek in an echo of the vowsmith’s gesture, receiving it back with the ghost of a laugh. “Old habit,” he murmured. “With your Brilliance headaches, I always wanted to be sure before I…”
The last of Dashiell’s words were but a breath across Nic’s lips, the rest swallowed into a soft kiss that troubled the strength of his knees.
Moving slowly as though Nic were a nervous animal he feared to frighten, Dashiell slid an arm around his waist and drew him close, and Nic could feel himself losing control of the moment—the moment that needed to be his and his alone.
He pulled away abruptly, quick strides taking him toward the door.
“Nic—”
Nic turned the key and glanced back, catching relief as it crossed Dashiell’s face. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“Not at all,” Dashiell murmured as Nic returned to stand before him. “To be honest, I hoped you would come.”
“More closure?”
Dashiell’s lips parted, but before he could speak, Nic added, “You owe me for that. Why should you be the one to decide what closure looks like? What about what I wanted?”
He gripped the folds of Dashiell’s neckcloth and pulled him close—a sharp, hungry movement that elicited a delicious gasp. On its heels, the vowsmith’s eyes slid half closed. “Well, by all means, my lord, do whatever you want with me.”
“Oh, I will.”
He’d had no conscious plan when he’d followed Dashiell, but still holding him by the neckcloth, Nic now backed him toward the window.
There it was Dashiell’s turn to drop onto the window seat as Nic had done, the only difference that he was all but fully clothed.
Nic stripped off his own coat to match, before sitting on Dashiell’s legs, chest to chest, face to face, the vowsmith’s bronze eyes shining gold in the candlelight.
“Sit on your hands.”
A frown flickered across Dashiell’s brow, but he did as he was bid, shifting his weight to pin his hands beneath him.
“That’s for your safety,” Nic said. “That way you can say you never touched me.”
Dashiell huffed a laugh. “Very funny, but if someone sees us, it—”
“If someone sees us, I’ll claim it was all me. Don’t complain. You got what you wanted, now it’s my turn to have you how I want.”
Dashiell seemed like he would argue, but as Nic spoke he unbuttoned the front of his own breeches, leaving the vowsmith to swallow any objections and stare.
Dashiell’s fall front was next, the buttons almost torn away so Nic could slide his hand in, his fingers closing around the man’s rapidly hardening cock.
He drew it out along with his own, letting them fall heavily against one another in the candlelight.
Dashiell’s breath hitched as he stared at the sight between them. “Damn.”
“No hands,” Nic reminded him. “Or I walk away.”
Confusion coloured Dashiell’s face, only to be chased away upon a gasp when Nic slid a hand around them both.
With his own hands pinned beneath him, Dashiell could only watch Nic’s fingers work at each long, lingering stroke, every one of them tight and sure and teasing so much more.
Nic tried to focus, to build slowly and draw their moment out, but the sensation was everything he had ever dreamed, leaving the desire to hurry toward an end tearing at his concentration.
While Nic worked upon their joined flesh, Dashiell seemed unable to drag his gaze away, until all at once he bared his throat and moaned to the uncaring ceiling.
“God, Nic, your hands.”
“This is what you can do when you don’t get scribe’s hand,” Nic murmured.
The laugh was almost as beautiful as the moan, and the notch of pleasure between Dashiell’s dark brows. “This is not fair,” he said, breathless.
“Who said anything about fair?” Nic nipped the point of Dashiell’s chin and didn’t so much as miss a stroke when the vowsmith tried to bite back.
Instead he captured Dashiell’s mouth with his own, his kiss a light, teasing thing as he went on building the sensation, every stroke a step toward an ending he both wanted and didn’t with all his soul.
“Please let me touch you,” Dashiell whispered against Nic’s lips.
“No.” Nic prefaced his reply with a kiss and followed it with another, each pulling lightly at Dashiell’s lips as though he sought to consume him.
“But this is torture!”
Dashiell tried to bite Nic’s lip, only for Nic to pull away with a soft laugh. “Torture, huh?”
He shifted the position of his fingers and tightened his grip, the pleasure it sent through his body nothing to the thrill of Dashiell’s gasp.
The vowsmith’s reactions were everything he’d hoped for, from his small moans and whimpers to his requests to be let free.
He writhed with every tightening stroke, and when Nic leaned close, pressing their cocks between them, Dashiell let out a cry—a desperate, needing thing, a vulnerable plea more sound than words.
And on his lips, Nic’s name, repeated like a prayer.
When at last the legs beneath him gave a jerk, Nic pulled back, shifting his hand just in time to save them both from ruined shirts as Dashiell bucked, a hissed expletive caught upon his bitten lip.
Dashiell’s reaction was all he needed to let himself go, leaving the heat of their mingled seed covering his hand and the hot huff of their breath upon the air.
For a moment neither of them moved, as though to remain still might keep the clock from ticking on, might keep them caught in that perfect moment.
Until Dashiell let out a breath, as much a laugh as a sigh.
A light sparkle of sweat beaded his brow, and he leaned forward to touch his forehead to Nic’s chest, each breath he pulled heavy and satisfied.
And as the first thrill of having Dashiell in his power faded, Nic realised this one closure, this one memory, would never be enough.
In truth, all the memories he could gather never could be, because he wanted Dashiell, not once, not twice, but forever.
It was, Nic thought, a terrible time to realise he’d never stopped being in love.
Nic stood abruptly, two steps taking him to his discarded coat and the handkerchief tucked into its pocket. There he stood with his back to Dashiell and cleaned himself and his hands, hoping to still his rising panic.
“Nic—”
“Don’t.” The word was out before Nic could temper it, and having tidied himself as best he could, he turned, forcing a smile. “It’s best if we don’t talk, don’t you think? I’m done as you were done.”
Dashiell had buttoned his fall front and stood to adjust his breeches, but he froze there, beautifully tousled in the candlelight. “You’re angry with me.”
It wasn’t a question, but the slight confusion in the tone lashed Nic to answer all the same.
“Yes!” he cried, and with the truth out he could not stop. “Yes, I am. The other night should have been amazing but you just fucked me and walked out. Small variation on the last time you walked out. As though it meant nothing. As though I mean nothing.”
“Nic—”