5. Chapter Five

Chapter Five

Men through the ages had called it many things.

Bloodlust.

Berserker rage.

Bloodthirstiness.

Marcos had experienced all of them, the siren's call through his body, through his blood, to fight and to destroy.

He felt it now, rising in him, an irresistible pull.

Marcos let it spiral higher, let it move through him, strip out all the distractions, all the other variables. His mind focused, narrowing in with a pinpoint accuracy, on the first two riders in the merchant's caravan, just about to enter the beginning of the open culvert.

He was gifted in many things, but his ability to time things perfectly was one he enjoyed the most. Withdrawing his favorite dagger—the long, curved one with the hilt that fit perfectly in his hand, the leather binding molded to his palm—he took one breath and then another. It was a balance: the blood coursing through him in a dizzying rush and the deadly calm that allowed his mind to make calculated decisions.

Waiting until just the right moment, he braced himself and then dropped down, right behind the first set of riders. Less than a second later, he had them on their backs, using the hilt of his dagger to knock them out.

Death was easy; it was a challenge for him to offer defeat without destruction, and after so many thousands of years of battle, it was that challenge he sought more than any other.

Marcos turned, clubbing the next rider in the throat with his arm, sending him falling, hitting his head on the hard, rocky turf.

A shout went up through the ranks of the caravan.

There were two more, now, on their feet and not on horseback, and as Marcos charged, they withdrew their own swords. Marcos' stayed in its sheath. He liked the challenge of only drawing his sword when absolutely necessary.

War was not a game, but over time, he'd learned to set these special trials for himself. It kept his skills sharp, but more importantly, it kept him in check.

Lashing out with a quick, well-positioned slash, he sliced one with his knife, right above the upper thigh, blood spurting, and without hesitating, turned to the other as the first dropped to his knees.

The second had had an extra moment to prepare for his attack, and he met Marcos' blow with one of equal force, his sword and Marcos' knife clashing together once and then twice.

The man's swordsmanship was skillful, and it took an extra parry for Marcos to find a way under his guard, slamming him with a shoulder into the ground.

It was that extra second that he paid for, because now the rest of the guards were massing.

Marcos had taken on this many men before, but they were also well-paid, and clearly had some skill, and as he advanced towards the next three guards, he realized he might have slightly miscalculated.

He had just enough time to pull the second knife, shorter but no less deadly, from his boot, before they were on him.

His movements were faster, quicker, more efficient, and he could think further ahead, even dueling three opponents, but defeating them still took more time than he'd envisioned.

He blocked a blow, and then another, flicking his knifes in and out in patterns so well-practiced and well-remembered they felt like part of his body. A jab with a sword made it through his defenses, and he lunged out of the way in the nick of time.

Whacking a man out of the way with a solid punch, he disarmed the second with a parry he'd invented for that purpose.

Leaving only the third, and a growing mass of men behind him.

He fully expected to hear the gang's cries behind him, as they charged into the battle, but he heard nothing, only his breathing and the thundering of his heart as he struck the back of the man who tried to pivot away from him.

Leaving only eight men remaining.

Four of them were arrayed around the coach that must be carrying the merchant and his gold, but the rest began to approach, moving carefully, deliberately.

They'd clearly marked him as a serious threat—even if there were far more of them.

It was time.

Even Marcos could not hope to defeat four men—and then another four—with two knives. He slid the shorter one into his boot and unsheathed his sword.

It sang as it rose from its sheath, as metal scraped metal, and he watched as the men in front of him hesitated just long enough.

He sidestepped the first, spinning around and whacking the second in the back, leaving him on his knees, and then began to drive the other three back with heavy blows, blows they could barely deflect.

The second fell to a jab that would need to be seen by a doctor. Hopefully the merchant would part with some of his remaining gold to take care of his men.

Marcos was not usually so sloppy, but the rest of the gang had still not materialized, and he was beginning to think that he had misjudged and they would not.

He was on his own.

The thought had just teased at his mind, as he attacked the third and fourth man, switching back between them with slashes and piercing blows, when he heard a noise behind him.

A heavy thud.

Someone had just landed on top of the coach from up above.

Finally, Marcos thought, as he dispatched the third, and then turned to the fourth, who was by far the biggest and most skilled of the group that he'd faced thus far.

They came together in a flurry of blows, swords clanging as they hit and then fell away.

Another man might have given up, after seeing Marcos defeat the rest of his comrades, but this one didn't shirk or blink, until all of a sudden, he took a step back, his jaw falling open.

Marcos risked a look behind him and nearly yelled.

Rhys—no Evander, was up on the roof, a flame shooting from his outstretched palm, and he was breathing hard, but he was holding it and he was clearly mustering his energy to firebomb the rest of the guards around the coach.

Marcos was so shocked to see the Evander of old that he nearly missed the penetrating thrust of the other man's sword, but he parried it just in time, pushing him away and down, and giving him a rap on the back of his head that he wouldn't soon forget.

He realized a second too late that he'd been hoping, deep down, to defeat the rest of the guards, before Evander marshaled the rest of his power, but he was too late.

A fireball flung out of his hand, and Marcos could sense just how strongly Evander had wrenched it out of himself, pushing it away with all his force. It flattened three of the remaining four guards, and with the shock written on the fourth's features, it was not that difficult for Marcos to stab him solidly through the shoulder.

His sword lowered, and he tore open the door, coming face-to-face with a whey-faced man, dressed in rich scarlet robes, hovering over a solid-looking lockbox.

"That," he said in clipped tones, "is mine."

When he emerged with it, setting it at his feet, he found that Evander had jumped down from the roof.

"What were you thinking?" he demanded as Evander walked towards him. "Where are the rest of the men?"

"They wouldn't join in, not when they saw you fight. They said you didn't need any help, not with how you moved." Evander's blue eyes—bright as cornflowers—followed his. "They didn't want to risk their lives, only yours."

He'd seen Evander in Rhys—it had been impossible not to. But coming face-to-face with the real Evander again, for the first time in so very long, was making him short of breath. At least Marcos was fairly certain it was the familiar specter of the Guardian in front of him, and not the battle.

Marcos raised an eyebrow. He was flattered and furious. Angry and awestruck. It had not been unusual for Evander to evoke such strong and parallel emotions in him, but he was unused to it, after so long without. He felt the rush of them now, right alongside the burn of the battle, and his fist clenched tighter around the pommel of his sword. "And so you decided to come assist even though I had the situation well in hand?"

"You pulled your sword," Evander argued, the flawless curve of his jaw jutting out stubbornly.

"You promised," Marcos said, and suddenly, he found himself pushing Evander back against the side of the coach. Evander's hair glowed gold against the dark olive paint. The sight of it made him insane. It made him lightheaded. He wanted to make the men behind bleed, he wanted to make them all suffer, and he wanted to stroke Evander's hair, and find out finally if it was as soft as he'd always imagined.

He couldn't touch him, his hands were full, of his favorite knife, and his sword, but he could look, and Evander was looking back, that particular heat in his eyes that had always pulled Marcos towards him, inexorably.

He'd never wanted it. But he'd dreamed of it, anyway.

"I had to do it," Evander said quietly. "You know I had to do it."

"And this?" he said, his eyes raking up and down Evander's form. His dark coat, with its high collar, emphasizing the flawless pearl sheen of his pale skin. "You revealed yourself?"

Evander licked his lips. That is not an invitation, Marcos reminded himself. "You said the leader, that gang, was obsessed with mysticism. When they saw me change, when I became . . . me," he added bitterly, "they ran, terrified out of their wits by my magic. We will be but legends in a few months' time."

He had just said, before the battle, that he was no longer Evander.

He'd been angry that Marcos had referred to him by that name, even though that was who he was. Who he would always be, no matter how he ran, no matter how many forms he took.

He was Evander.

Seeing him like this only convinced Marcos more.

It was like seeing home, for the first time in a very long time.

"I had to, anyway," Evander said, sounding self-conscious. Like he too had just remembered that the last words he'd spoken to Marcos before the battle had been a denial of who he was. "I'm more powerful like this. Well, not as powerful as I was. But I will recover faster and I knew . . ." He trailed off.

"You knew I would be angry, because you promised."

Marcos knew it was the latest in a long line of bad decisions. At least questionable ones. But he leaned in, pressing his much larger body more firmly against Evander's much slighter one. Evander's head tilted up. In stubbornness, perhaps. Or so he would not lose the connection of their gaze?

Marcos did not know.

But he knew the question would haunt him.

"I had to," Evander said again.

"You said it yourself. I am immortal. These men could not kill me if they tried."

"I know," Evander retorted. "I know."

"You just did not want to play nurse, I'm aware," Marcos said dryly. What he should do was move away. Check the lockbox. Take two horses. Escape before the gang who hired them decided that a shapeshifter who could throw firebombs and a man who could defeat fifteen men were too valuable to lose.

Instead he was pinned down by Evander's eyes.

It was not the first time that had ever happened, and it would certainly not be the last, but unlike all those other occurrences, Evander was gazing up at him with surprise and wonder.

Like it was the first time he was truly seeing Marcos.

There'd been a moment, a mere echo of what he was feeling now, when Marcos had stood in Evander's chambers before he'd been cast out, and even though the bed had likely been still warm from Vanya's body, he'd wanted more than he'd ever thought possible.

And yet that moment paled in comparison to this one.

Evander's head tilted up another fraction, and Marcos' grip on his sword tightened. He knew better than to drop it, especially on a fresh field of battle, when threats could still lurk in the shadows, but the temptation was strong.

He'd been waiting for thousands of years to touch Evander, and now, finally, Marcos thought that possibly Evander wanted to be touched.

Evander opened his mouth, and he found himself anticipating and dreading what he was going to say.

But he was left wanting, because instead of actually speaking, Evander made a distressed noise, and eyes fluttering shut, he collapsed at Marcos' feet.

He was running through the gardens.

They were lush, almost overgrown, because Jae could never leave well enough alone, and was always trying some new arrangement, some new planting, flowers blossoming so plentifully and so strongly that the entire air smelled of perfume. He could never bear to cut anything back, so the gardens kept proliferating.

There was a canopy of the bluest wisteria above his head, blossoms dropping like rain on his head, and he laughed, brushing them away, feeling them tickle his face as they fell. Shaking his golden waves of hair, he left a shower of blossoms behind.

He turned a corner, feeling the man behind him closing in, and he faded into the shadow of the maze that Jae had constructed over seventy years earlier, creeping along the edges, waiting to catch the man who believed he could catch him.

After all, he was the Guardian of Secrets, and he was the only one of the Thirteen who had managed to find his way through the maze the very first time.

That dent in the dense brush to his left was where Marcos became frustrated and used his big curved knife to hack his way out.

And the red roses there, climbing up that wall, that must have been where Taavi and Hektor liked to steal away from everyone else, one bloom for every kiss they'd ever shared.

He'd stopped hearing the footsteps, and he crept out, carefully, not wanting to reveal himself too soon and ruin the game.

"Found you," a voice behind him exclaimed triumphantly.

Before he could turn around and face him, he was overwhelmed by the other Guardian, arms wrapping around his chest, firm lips kissing down the lean column of his neck.

The scent surrounding them was intoxicating, but it was the feel of his hands and his mouth on Evander that made his head swim.

He leaned back, and let the other Guardian take his fill, cock hardening in his loose linen trousers.

And then he reached back, and instead of Vanya's smooth cheek, he touched the rough bristles of another.

Marcos.

Evander woke with an abrupt start.

You were just dreaming.

It was only a dream.

And yet it had felt so much more real than a dream. An imagined fantasy?

The dream—because that was what it had been, he told himself firmly, a dream—began to fade away, and he began to take inventory.

He'd been enough different men and creatures through the years that he'd learned to carefully categorize who or what he was before he ever opened his eyes.

But in all these hundreds of years on the surface, he'd never woken and been himself.

He'd been Evrard or Rhys or one of another dozen fleeting disguises that he'd used as needed.

He'd never permitted himself this disguise, because it had never been a disguise.

It had been him, before Deimos had stripped what made Evander who he really, truly was, away.

Squeezing his eyes shut, Evander wished himself back into the dream.

It had been simpler to be that carefree, easy Guardian.

Which was why he'd never permitted himself to occupy this shape again.

Down here on the surface, nothing was easy, and he needed to remember that before he remembered anything else.

Evander took stock of his surroundings. He was upright, and he was also moving, in a slow rolling gait that was unmistakably equine.

He was on a horse.

There was a warm, hard body behind him.

Marcos.

"I can feel that you are awake." Marcos' voice was deep and rumbling. "I felt you startle."

"It would be easier if you were slightly less aware," Evander grumbled.

He finally opened his eyes.

It was nearly dusk, and they must have made good time since . . . Evander realized he did not remember how he'd gotten on the horse.

He certainly would not have chosen to share with Marcos. He'd have demanded his own mount.

That was the moment he realized that he had no memory of what had happened after the battle.

Clear as day in his memory was standing above the battle, watching Marcos as he took on fifteen of the merchant's armed men. He remembered waiting for the gang leader who'd hired them to give the signal for the rest of his men to attack.

But he hadn't. He'd merely watched, an amused grin on his face as Marcos had torn into the defenses of the caravan as if they were wet parchment.

But then he'd taken a second longer with one of the men, and it had thrown off his timing. Evander had seen it immediately, understood the consequences of it, and he'd felt a swell of panic rise inside him that he hadn't quite understood.

He'd reminded the leader politely at first. Then he'd yelled. Then he'd screamed.

But the man had merely laughed at his distress.

The anger that surged through him had been a shock.

He'd promised Marcos that he wouldn't interfere or intervene, but even though he'd reminded himself very firmly that Marcos did not need his help, did not want his help, he'd reached for the power before he could reconsider or think about what he was doing.

Not the fire magic. Not at first.

He'd known he didn't have the energy for it, not when he was maintaining a different form, the cloak of Rhys.

No, to access that kind of magic, the kind of magic that could really help Marcos, he'd need to be someone else.

He'd need to be Evander.

The change had swept over him as easy as breathing, and it had felt like a veil had lifted over his features and his magic had surged through him as he'd returned to himself.

He'd grasped for the power and hadn't hesitated, dropping down to the roof of the traveling carriage, letting it flow through him in a sickening wave.

"I thought you taking your real form would make it easier for you to access your magic. I guess I was right."

Marcos' casual observation interrupted his disordered, panicked thoughts before Evander could get to the moment when everything had gone black.

But then it was back, the memory flashing through him in a nauseating wave.

He'd felt the rise of the battle in his blood. Marcos' eyes had been wild with it, with recognizing him, stripped of all his normal artifice.

And then they'd come together, bodies pressed close, and Evander wanted to feel a wave of embarrassment at how he'd acted, how he'd wanted, so desperately, for Marcos to lean down and press his lips against Evander's, but he felt no humiliation whatsoever.

He'd wanted it.

He . . . wanted it still?

Evander shook his head, trying to clear it.

"I didn't know," Evander retorted. "I . . . I suspected, I suppose. But I have not taken this form since . . ."

"I know," Marcos said, and naturally, it was not the almost-kiss or the embrace, or the burn of want still coursing through him that made him blush. It was that Marcos had known he'd never re-taken this form, and that he'd done it today, for him.

"You have been out for almost a whole day," Marcos said. "You collapsed . . . do you remember that?"

He wished he didn't, but he did.

"Yes," he said shortly.

"I took the strongbox and several horses and got out of there," Marcos said, reciting the order of events tightly, succinctly, leaving out anything about what had nearly happened, right after the fight.

That is better for everyone, Evander told himself firmly. You don't need to discuss it because it is irrelevant.

Evander stroked at the horse's mane, and felt its pleasure at his touch.

"I might have overdone it," he admitted. "My power . . . well, you know it is not what it once was."

"Which is why I asked you, in fact made you promise, that you would not intervene."

"If I told you that you were right, would you cease this endless lecturing?" Evander asked crossly.

There was silence behind him for a long moment.

Finally, Marcos spoke, and his words were quiet. Soft. So much softer than Evander could've imagined. "I am appreciative. Your help, while ill-advised, was invaluable."

Always when Evander believed he had understood Marcos and relegated him to the right kind of box, with the right purpose that he could serve, he surprised him.

And Evander was not much surprised by anyone.

"You're welcome," Evander said.

"How are you feeling?"

"Better. Much better. Less drained." He'd recovered faster than he had since coming to the surface.

"We will stop at dark, and then you can eat something, which should help you regain more strength."

"Did you get the supplies?" Evander wondered. He realized, there was another set of reins, tangled loosely in one of Marcos' big fists. Turning back, he glimpsed first, Marcos' stern face, and ignored how the sight of it sent a tremor through him, then spied the second horse behind them, loaded with saddlebags.

"Yes, as you can see," Marcos said, amused.

Maybe he'd felt the tremor.

Evander hoped he didn't understand what it meant, though if Marcos did, that would make at least one of them.

"It was not exactly simple," Marcos continued, "because you were out cold, and I had to make sure you weren't unprotected. So I slung you over my shoulder, and told everyone that we were just married, and you'd over-indulged during the celebration."

"You . . . you . . . what." Evander had not been mentally present for this humiliation, but he felt the sting of it spike inside of him nevertheless.

"It was the easiest explanation. The merchants I approached at first were worried that I'd kidnapped you, and I had to invent an explanation that made sense. And I couldn't leave you, not when you were insensible." Marcos' tone was matter of fact, but the truth was, he hadn't looked unaffected at all, right after the battle.

He'd been shaken.

And not just because, Evander thought, he had returned to his original form, which was not exactly unpleasing to the eye.

"So you have married us now," Evander said dryly.

"Like I said, the simplest explanation." Marcos' voice was still so easy, like there was nothing else he wanted.

And perhaps there wasn't.

"Is that why I smell like . . ." Evander sniffed at his tunic. "Mead? Terrible mead?"

"I sprinkled a little over you," Marcos admitted with a chuckle. "Had to sell it, right?"

Evander rolled his eyes. "I can hardly blame you for paying attention to detail, when there is nothing I enjoy more than the details. I suppose, then, if you were that detailed in your approach, I should find nothing missing in the supplies you purchased."

"There is food, several waterskins, a bedroll for the hard, cold ground that we'll be likely to find, and one last thing that I found, just for you."

"Just for me?" Evander asked skeptically.

He could feel Marcos' grin, even though he could not see it. "Call it a wedding gift, courtesy of the merchant and the gang leader, who abandoned the battle before he could take most of the gold."

"I also hope you obtained me a new change of clothes, since you doused these in mead," Evander said.

"That too," Marcos said. "I remember just how fastidious you've always been.

"But then," he added in a teasing voice, "it never made much sense to me. Because how could you possibly be fastidious when you're something else? Like a horse? Or a mouse? Or Evrard?"

"I will have you know that Evrard was perhaps even more fastidious than I am," Evander said.

"But mice? Horses? They . . ."

"Don't," Evander warned him. "Just . . . don't. Leave it at I am fastidious now, in this form, and you would be smart to remember that."

Marcos laughed. "With you wearing that face, it will be difficult to forget." He hesitated, likely because he'd felt Evander stiffening in front of him. "Are you considering staying Evander?"

Even though he could feel Evander, in every inch of skin and every bone in his body, it still felt dangerous to remain as him.

He'd almost been sure that when they stopped, he would dismount and become Rhys again—but the truth of it was he did not want to be Rhys.

He wanted to be himself, even though he'd told himself that he couldn't be Evander again, because Evander was missing and gone forever.

But there he was. He'd reached for his oldest form, and even though he might only be a shadow of what Evander had been as a Guardian, while he could be anything in the world, what he wanted most in his heart, deep down where he never wanted to look, was still Evander.

"It seems the most convenient solution to the problem. It takes effort, magical and otherwise, to change forms and to maintain other forms," Evander admitted. "I have more power at my fingertips if I stay Evander. Not much more, but enough."

Evander told himself that he was imagining the satisfaction rolling off Marcos in waves. He could not possibly know anything about how Marcos felt. But he did. It was impossible to mistake.

"That," Marcos said slowly, with consideration, like Evander couldn't feel how pleased he was, "is a wise decision."

Evander's stomach grumbled. "Are we stopping soon? I find that I am, in fact, starving."

"Really?" Marcos' voice was a rumble behind him. "I couldn't tell."

Evander only remembered how sharp a weapon his elbows had always been when he struck Marcos in the chest and heard his oomph.

"We will be stopping shortly; I believe there will be a nice creek coming up. I have scented the water on the air." Marcos' voice had grown formal, and Evander found himself craving the teasing.

"My apologies," he said. "I'm still . . . I'm still adjusting to this body again. Rhys' elbows were not nearly so weaponized."

"What is that like?" Marcos wanted to know. "Being in a new body? Or an old, familiar one? Is there always an adjustment?"

"Sometimes, it's a rush of feeling, especially if I become human again, after so long as an animal. I was Evrard for a very long time," he admitted. "When I became Rhys, it was exhilarating. Even if Rhys was not a particularly exhilarating form."

"I liked Rhys just fine."

"Really?" Evander was skeptical. Rhys had been created because he was easy to forget, a kind of form he'd perfected over the years.

"Truly," Marcos said. He pulled the reins, moving the horse off the road and down a small incline, dotted with trees and brush underfoot, until they did, indeed, come to a nicely bubbling stream.

"And now," he added as Evander dismounted without waiting for his assistance, "you can even bathe."

Evander turned, and it was a jolt to see Marcos again, even though he'd been hearing him speak since he'd woken up.

But this was the first time he'd truly seen him, since the moment before he fainted.

Evander ignored the shivering of his insides, and tromped right over to where the other horse had ducked his head, beginning to chew on a clump of grass next to a fallen log.

The horse was loaded down with more supplies than Evander was expecting. He started pulling off the saddlebags one by one, inspecting each one. There were four waterskins, a whole saddlebag full of dried meat and the hard kind of bread that rarely went bad.

"Looking for your gift?"

Evander glanced up and saw Marcos standing there, a glimmer of a smile on his face.

"No," he said, "I'm looking for the clothes. It's warm now, but when dusk falls, it'll grow chillier, and I want a bath." He shot Marcos a look. "You could use one as well."

Underneath the blankets, he finally found the clothes.

They were simple enough, and good for traveling, in shades of olive green and brown.

"I did not know whether you'd be staying Evander or not, but Rhys is about the same size," Marcos said casually, like there was nothing unusual about sizing his body up.

There isn't, Evander reminded himself. This is a simple arrangement. He is helping you—only because he refused to be left behind—and once it's over, once I have uncovered the source of the voice, I will return to Beaulieu and Rhys, and this chapter will be closed.

"Thank you," Evander said stiffly.

But no matter how many times Evander recited that admonition as he marched down to the creek, he did not quite believe it.

He just hoped that Marcos would take a hint and not follow him as he took the new clothes and set out for the stream.

Ducking behind a tree, he braced himself as he yanked off his boots, pulled off his tunic, and then loosened his breeches, dropping them in a pile. Naked and beginning to shiver, Evander regarded the water in front of him.

The stream was not too swift, though there was no doubt in his mind that it would be cold.

Selecting a shallower spot, where Evander could see the smooth gravel of the bottom, and the water eddied and swirled, he took a cautious step in. Muttering an oath under his breath, he took another handful of steps in, until the water was nearly to his waist. The temperature took his breath away, but it also felt good to be able to clean off the sweat and dirt of the road, and the night spent in that makeshift cell.

It was one of the things that had always annoyed Evander about his transformative abilities—surely he should have been able to shift away from blood and gore and dirt and sweat, but he never could. Evander was just as filthy as Rhys had been, and he set out to scrub it all away with the cool, clean water.

It was far too cold to wash his hair, so after a minute or so of rinsing, his teeth chattering the whole time, he turned to step out of the creek when out of the corner of his eye he saw the worst possible scenario.

Not a bear.

Or a cougar.

Or the gang, come to find them and exact revenge for taking all the gold.

Not even the merchant, angry that they'd stolen from him.

No, it was Marcos, standing near the creek bed, and he was in the middle of unbuckling his chest plate, loosening it enough to remove.

"What do you think you are doing?" Evander asked, hating the panic that had leaked into his voice.

Marcos shot him an incredulous look. "I am bathing. You yourself said I needed it." He pulled off the armor, and then knelt down to remove his studded leather greaves from his legs. "Don't tell me," he added, "that you've become prudish over the years."

"No," Evander said. "Hardly. I only meant . . . is it safe to bathe at the same time? What about the horses and the supplies? The gold?"

Marcos did not look particularly convinced by this argument, which made plenty of sense, because it was a terrible argument.

"We haven't met a single person on the road. We left a great distance between us and both the merchant's men and the other thieves. I think I can take a little dip in the stream without compromising our safety."

"Right."

Evander had just been about to get out of the water, because it was cold. He would have done it, without flinching, but then there had been that moment between them after the battle.

When Marcos had pressed that big, powerful body against his, and he'd felt weak in the knees with the force of it.

Vanya would have told him it was just sex, and he could even have it with Marcos, if that was the direction his tastes were headed these days.

But even though many of the Guardians treated sex as just another way they could enjoy themselves and the immortal life they'd been gifted, Evander had never been able to be cavalier about it.

He'd only been physically intimate with Vanya, even though he knew Vanya shared his favors with many. That had never particularly bothered him, because he trusted the connection they'd always shared. But he'd never been tempted to explore or experiment, and then after his fall to the surface, he'd been too busy to contemplate trusting anyone that much.

Occasionally he'd considered taking a different form to find release, but he'd never actually been able to do it.

Maybe he had gotten prudish.

Evander took a deep breath. "I was just finishing," he said.

Marcos glanced up from where he was untying his boots.

"Then you can protect our supplies," Marcos teased.

"Yes," Evander said, and realized too late that it was a mistake to get out of the stream when he did, because that was the very moment Marcos stood, pulling his loose linen tunic over his head and dropped his breeches.

Vanya had always claimed that Marcos was like a weapon—so unimaginative, so stolid, so plain—but as Evander took in Marcos' body, he realized that Vanya was right, but he was also wrong.

Marcos was big and he was strong, unbelievably so, but he was also beautiful.

That was smooth skin, over all that muscle, and they weren't bulky or too big. He was formed in an impossibly elegant way, the slopes of his shoulders leading to the bulge of his biceps, and the ridges of his abdomen leading to . . .

Evander gulped. He'd told himself over the many years alone that he hadn't missed sex or physical release, but clearly he had, because his lack of it was suddenly the most pressing problem that he could imagine.

In a moment, Marcos was going to understand it too, because even with the cold water, and the way his bare skin had chilled in the growing dusk, he felt hot, and he found himself growing hard.

Marcos' dark eyes were amused as he came to a stop right in front of where Evander stood, near the bank of the stream.

"Are you alright?" he asked.

"I must be tired still," Evander said. "I feel shaken."

Marcos reached out and took his wrist in his hand.

Evander could feel his pulse leap at the skin-on-skin contact. His thumb, rough and calloused, rubbed across where his blood beat the hardest.

"Your heart," he murmured, glancing down at where he'd left a streak of dirt on Evander's pale skin, "is beating just fine."

"You are hardly Abram," Evander retorted, referring to the Guardian of Healing.

"No, but he taught me many things. A good skill to have on a battlefield. The ability to take people apart, and then to put them back together," Marcos pointed out.

His voice was as soft and gentle as his touch, even as the roughness of his fingers sent a thrill up Evander's spine.

"I didn't . . . I didn't know that," Evander stammered.

At any moment now, he was going to flush red, and this pale skin of his would do nothing to hide it.

"You do not know everything about me," Marcos said, sounding surprisingly delighted.

"But you know much about me," Evander said.

Another puzzle he had yet to untangle.

"Yes," Marcos admitted. He reached down, and trickled cool water down over the dirt he'd left on Evander's skin, and then released his grip.

Evander caught back the plea of don't before he could embarrass himself any further.

"Go get dressed," Marcos added. "It's freezing."

When Evander reached his clothes, his fingers were trembling. Not from the chill, no, it was not that simple at all.