Chapter 14

CHAPTER

14

Luca had never seen Matti like this before.

Or perhaps he had. Something like it, in that ramshackle park after they left the Vane house. An icy lake with deadly thread-thin cracks appearing and the sense of something churning beneath.

Matti kept painful hold of Luca’s hand up two flights of wide stairs and along an empty corridor lined with near-identical doors. Luca’s room was somewhere in this wing and on this level too. The small golden plaque on his door depicted a half-blooming rose. He remembered this, but couldn’t have said when they passed it. His heart was hammering promises and threats. He couldn’t spare any attention except to worry for Matti, who was vibrating like a plucked string and breathing too quickly.

Matti’s plaque was a bare winter tree. Luca had barely enough time to notice that the room had been prepared, well-lit and almost overwarm with it, and that the curtains were pulled nearly all the way closed, only a sliver of dark night and their own reflections visible in the window. The door closed behind them.

And then Matti was kissing him: clumsily, wildly, crushing Luca between himself and the wall next to the door. Luca’s body surrendered in a jubilant rush of heat. He took hold of Matti’s clothes and kissed back, fierce and urgent, like taking gulps from a cup that would be snatched away.

Which it was, far too soon. Matti wrenched himself out of Luca’s grip and stepped back. He didn’t look horrified, or guilty, or even conflicted. He looked—distant, and dreadful. Full of dread. As though kissing Luca had been a lungful of good air before he ducked his head back beneath a pool of fetid water.

Luca found himself settling into a ready stance, knees slightly bent, able to shift his weight anywhere on little notice.

Matti said, “I don’t want to be in that room.”

“You’re not in there anymore,” Luca said, careful. Almost visibly, Matti’s thoughts were looping him back again and again, like circling dancers.

“I don’t—”

“You’re here.”

“—Because all of that, down there, that’s the future, and I’m so fucking sick of pretending . I want—” A hitching laugh. “I want it to be morning, a normal morning, I want to be in the practice room with you, doing something stupid with my feet. I…” Matti’s breathing was erratic now, each inhalation ripping the air in half. His eyes glittered and he looked bewildered with pain.

Huna save us, Luca thought, with a despairing twist of his stomach. Not again.

Luca unbuckled his sword belt and set it down on the floor. When Luca got close and put his hands on Matti’s shoulders, Matti flinched. Luca was expecting it—it had happened last time too—and managed not to flinch in return.

“Matti,” he said, low. “Matti, it’s all right.” And Matti gave another of those not-really-laughs and then his arms were around Luca, warm and sturdy at Luca’s waist, and Luca pressed his face for a long and incoherent moment into the side of Matti’s neck. Neither of them knew what the fuck they were doing, he suspected, but Matti was the one closest to the snapping point, so Luca was the one who had to find the path for them both.

He pulled away to look Matti in the face again. Matti’s body was heaving against his, but the rhythm of his breaths was steadying. His hands were on the small of Luca’s back.

Don’t distract him.

We can’t afford it.

Everything crumbled. Luca didn’t care. He was done pretending he did. He would have tried, for Matti’s sake, but Matti was clinging to him and Matti deserved more than his own stupid immolation. Matti should know what it was like to have exactly what he wanted, even if it was just for one evening.

“I told you it could be simple. I’ll make it easy,” Luca said. Matti smelled incredible. Luca’s blood was a river boiling over rocks. “Do you want me?”

“Yes.” Matti’s body stilled. One more deep breath in and out, and he was poised. “Yes.”

“I’m here. I’m willing. I’m—” yours, Luca almost said, and felt himself reeling, yanking himself back from that particular precipice.

He lifted his face instead, moving a hand into Matti’s hair so that he could pull Matti’s mouth back down to his for a long, incandescent moment. Matti’s mouth opened to the pressure, and Luca wavered on the edge of letting this kiss turn as frantic as the last, but the memory of Matti’s heaving breaths stopped him. He wanted Matti to have this, but he wanted Matti to be sure.

He stepped back, disentangling himself. He made sure no part of his body was touching any part of Matti’s, though he let his gaze travel over the dip of Matti’s throat and the drowning darkness of Matti’s eyes.

“Say yes to me again,” Luca said.

“Yes.”

“Say you want this to happen.”

“I— yes .”

Luca shivered all over at the raw need in Matti’s voice. “Good. Tell me exactly what you want.” He managed to find an edge of humour, somehow. “Yours to command, Mr. Jay.” There—the word had slipped out anyway. But in a way that felt safer.

“I…” Matti’s voice trailed off. He swallowed.

The pause stretched out long enough that discomfort began to gnaw at the edges of Luca’s desire.

“Sorry,” Luca said, rueful. “I guess I misread that.”

“No, I’m sorry—”

“We can come back to it.” Luca stepped closer again, putting himself within arm’s reach. “You can just… take.” Somehow he made it sound casual, Huna only knew how. “If that’s—”

Matti took.

This was more like it. Luca wrapped one arm around Matti’s side and one around his neck, for balance, and experimented with how much of his weight Matti would take. This kiss was more controlled than the first, but Matti’s mouth devoured Luca’s with the same hunger and only slowed when it was apparent that Luca was not going anywhere. It felt more like a duel between equals than anything else he and Matti had done up to this point, as though they were trying to learn each other’s movements.

Matti’s fingertips dug into Luca’s spine through two layers of cloth. Matti moved to kiss Luca’s temple, a harsh press of lips that felt more indecent than his tongue.

“I want you. I can’t decide what I want first .” Matti sounded almost irritable. “No. I can.” His eyes were burning as he reached out and unwrapped the scarf he’d given Luca earlier that evening, tugging at one end, letting it slide against Luca’s skin like a caress. He tilted up Luca’s chin and kissed the same place on Luca’s neck, once and then again, with a faint scrape of evening jaw and teeth.

A shiver like a net being pulled tight took hold of Luca’s entire front, nearly bending him double with the force of it. His body swayed, bucked, coming into firmer contact with Matti’s.

“It’s all right,” he assured Matti. “I— ah . I feel adequately wanted.”

Luca’s jacket came off next, when Matti was done with the scarf, and landed in a pile somewhere on the floor. Luca was making a disaster of Matti’s hair, Matti yanking Luca’s shirt out of his trousers so that he could get his hands against Luca’s back—Luca made a low noise of encouragement, because gods, that was amazing, the first searing touch of fingers on skin—when a thought elbowed its way into Luca’s brain.

“Though if we could get down to specifics, briefly,” Luca murmured, “do you want to fuck me?”

There was a single suspended moment, and then the hunger crashed back onto Matti’s face like a wave. Luca’s mouth curved in gratification; it was nice to be wanted. It was almost unnecessary for Matti to say, “Yes. Yes. If, ah, if that’s something that you… want?”

Luca balanced the words in his mouth, enjoying the anticipation. He looked Matti in the eye and said, with the pure heat of honesty: “I’m fairly certain I want you to wreck me.”

Matti’s lips parted in something like disbelief. Luca glowed with pleasure at his own aim.

“The point of my question being,” Luca went on, chasing the advantage in an unsportsmanlike manner, “do you have anything that would facilitate that?”

Perhaps he’d pushed Matti’s coherence too far. He had to lift a hand and rub his fingers together before Matti caught on to his meaning, and then Matti’s dark brows drew together with comical speed.

“No,” Matti said. “Fuck.”

Luca tucked his shirt back into his trousers. He snatched up Matti’s hand and kissed it hard, once: marking his place. “I’ll be right back.”

The corridor was deserted when Luca stepped out into it. Luca took some breaths to clear his head and set about searching for his own rose-adorned plaque. A couple came up the stairs, loudly enough that Luca had time to arrange his face before they came into view. It was Sofia’s brother, whose name Luca couldn’t remember, and his blond wife. Luca gave them a careless smile, fumbling with the doorknob as though drunk, and stumbled through his own door.

By the time he emerged again, they were gone. Nobody else ventured into view in the time it took Luca to jog light-footed back to stand in front of Matti’s door. As he stood there, however, laughter drifted from the far staircase, and it propelled Luca back into Matti’s room like a nudge from the gods. Don’t waste your time, it seemed to say. He’s too good for you. Leave him alone too long and he’ll realise it.

Matti was sitting on the edge of the bed. The thick bedcover had been pulled back and folded into an impeccably neat pile, a fact that struck Luca as both promising and painfully sweet. Matti stood as Luca entered. He held his hands self-consciously apart from his body, which Luca appreciated, because it brought into beautifully framed relief the fact that Matti had also used the time to remove not only his own waistcoat and shoes, but his shirt as well.

Matti had learned, eventually, under the lash of Luca’s tongue, to stand to his full height. To hold his shoulders properly wide. The span of them, the broad expanse of his chest with its scattered black hair, banished Luca’s breath. The small jar of grease felt slippery in Luca’s hand, though it was screwed tight shut.

Luca was staring. Matti licked his lips.

“I’ve thought of some more things I want.” Matti’s voice was hoarse.

Luca said, dry-mouthed and clutching the jar as though it would disappear: “Me too.”

He directed Matti back to a seated position on the edge of the bed by the firm press of fingers against Matti’s chest. Luca spared only a moment to be grateful for hours spent moving Matti with his fingertips, for the shorthand of physical direction that they’d woven painfully between them. Then Matti was reaching for him, and Luca was climbing into his lap, one knee on either side of Matti’s legs. He tossed the jar so that it landed near the pillows; they’d get to it soon enough.

An exhalation jerked out of Matti in three parts, nearly soundless. Luca put his hands on Matti’s cheekbones and kissed him. He was nowhere near drunk, neither of them were, but he still felt like swaying.

“Luca.” Matti laid his hands on Luca’s legs and squeezed, his thumbs skating close to the sensitive inner thighs.

Luca arched, encouraging. His trousers were tightening with every breath. He undid his own shirt with fingers that had been very nimble two minutes ago, but now had been somehow tipped with lead weights. Matti gave another of those helpless exhalations when Luca wrestled the garment off and to the floor and leaned in.

“Fuck,” muttered Luca. “Gods, that feels good.” He buried a hand in Matti’s hair, felt the heat of Matti’s scalp twinned to the heat of Matti’s mouth as it moved over his chest, an exploration of lips and tongue and—“ Fuck ” again—a scrape of teeth over Luca’s nipple.

Matti’s hands had moved, tight at his waist, but Matti still hadn’t mastered the art of the feint. He signalled his movements loud and clear. So Luca was ready when Matti tugged and leaned back on the bed, pulling Luca to lie on top of him and between his legs.

He wasn’t ready for Matti to roll them sideways, and the surprise of it melted into delight. There was a moment of glorious weight, Matti stretched out hard above him. Luca twisted, to create more contact, and Matti pulled back almost at once. Now it was his turn to sit astride Luca’s hips.

“That wasn’t a protest,” Luca said hastily. “Really, really not protesting. Any of it. Quite the opposite, in fact.” He wriggled, getting himself comfortable on one of the pillows. He had a moment of wanting to do five things at once with his hands, and settled for framing his head with his arms, exposing the undersides of his wrists in a vulnerable way that he knew practically shouted to be taken advantage of. Pin me down, this posture said.

Matti’s eyes locked to Luca’s upturned wrists, but he didn’t reach for them.

“This,” Matti said. Rough, like he couldn’t fit all the edges of the words in his mouth. “Yes. Fuck. This is what I wanted.”

This was, apparently, to get his mouth on every piece of Luca he could expose. Luca ended up with two handfuls of the sheets, cursing as Matti worked the rest of his clothes down and off his legs. An open-mouthed kiss over Luca’s navel. A gentle trail of Matti’s tongue down the revealed skin of Luca’s leg, to the ticklish back of his knee. Then Luca’s neck, then his hip. No rhythm, no pattern, just Matti following whatever whims were seizing him.

“ Yes, ” Luca said, “gods, please,” as Matti’s lips passed close enough to Luca’s cock that Luca caught his breath, urgent desire pooling. So far Matti hadn’t laid so much as a finger on that part of Luca’s anatomy.

“Please?”

“Oh, fuck you,” said Luca, a bit strangled. He’d been resisting grabbing hold of Matti’s hair, as Matti seemed to be enjoying directing his own explorations, but now he reached out and managed a tame tug.

Matti buried his face in Luca’s side, laughing. In another partner Luca might have been batting away concern, or embarrassment, but Matti was not at all the kind of person to laugh at someone, least of all in bed. The joke was probably one he’d be happy to share, and Luca’s mouth was already curling in response.

“I’m so pleased you’re finding this amusing, Mattinesh.”

Matti lifted his head. Luca felt like a piece of plain fabric taking in dye: he wanted to soak this up, thread by thread. He wanted to capture forever the loveliness of Matti’s mouth, the dimples sparkling in his cheeks.

“I suppose we could call it irony,” Matti said. “I’m so used to looking at the way you move. The way you respond to things. This is a lot easier than the intermediate forms.”

“Matti,” said Luca, breathless, “if there’s a man alive who would not be responding like this, who would not be going insane looking at you, with you doing that, then he’s either tragically committed to women or so lacking in taste that there’s no helping him at all.”

Matti lowered his abashed expression to drop another kiss on the inside of Luca’s thigh. His hair tickled Luca’s cock and Luca’s leg jerked in protest.

“Be still,” Matti murmured.

“I—”

“Luca. Be still.”

Luca’s heart was trying to punch through his ribs. He felt dizzy and alive, stretched out bare for the taking. He’d never been this hard in his life. Matti sucked, gently, at a new patch of skin.

“You can,” Luca panted, “harder.”

Matti glanced up. “Harder?”

“I mark easily.”

“But—” Realisation. “ Fuck, ” said Matti fervently, and this time when his mouth landed over Luca’s hipbone he sucked hard, drawing blood to the surface, and Luca gave up on being still and wrapped a hand around his own length. He squeezed once, dragging a groan from his throat, and then forced himself to let go. The grease jar was digging into his shoulder. He fumbled for it and held it out to Matti.

Matti hesitated. Luca paused in the act of bending one leg up invitingly. He choked back the first three flippant things he was going to say, and made sure his voice was casual.

“Have you done this before?”

Matti’s brow creased. He sat up and looked at the jar in Luca’s hand. “Not… this part, with men.”

Luca bit his lip so hard he endangered the skin. It was stupid for him to find that so blazingly, unbearably hot. Sex was many different things. Actions were arbitrary. But Luca was selfish; he liked things that were his, only his, and he was already looking forward to imprinting somewhere on his greedy, dye-hungry heart the memory of Matti’s face and the sounds that Matti would make.

He realised too late that Matti was taking his silence as a judgemental one. Luca pushed up onto his elbows, almost slipping in his haste. “Matti, it’s fine, I didn’t mean—”

Matti stilled him, silenced him, with a firm press of his hand on Luca’s stomach. One of Matti’s dimples was starting to deepen again.

“Do you think I’m embarrassed?” Matti said, steady. “It’s not like I have no experience at all. But yes. It’s been hard to find the time.”

To justify the time, Luca translated. As for sword lessons, so for… well, more enjoyable forms of physical exertion.

“And I haven’t… felt like it.” At that, Matti did look embarrassed. Not getting sex was understandable, but it was odder to admit to not wanting it at all.

“Not enough blood getting to your brain. I remember.”

Matti flicked a glance at him, dark eyes transparent as smoked glass, limned in silent gratitude.

“Or maybe not enough blood getting to other places,” Luca murmured. He sat up fully and unscrewed the lid of the jar himself. “Take your damn clothes off, Mattinesh, and come here.”

Matti did.

In the intimate light of the room, Matti undressed was mouthwatering. His skin was like shadowed amber and he was, Luca was gratified to see, just as aroused as Luca himself. When Luca’s slicked fingers closed around Matti’s cock, Matti made a sound that Luca was going to remember for the rest of his life.

“All right,” Luca said, soothing. Matti was bucking into his hand, kneeling over him. Luca felt like new-spun thread about to be snipped. He shifted his hips and bent his legs up—exhaled, slow—and guided Matti to his entrance.

“I do know the mechanics of this.” Matti’s arms were shaking, but he sounded almost amused. “You don’t want—fingers, first?”

Luca had to swallow hard before he could be sure that his voice would be even. “Believe me, if that was what I wanted, I’d ask for it.”

He wondered if Matti was going to argue, but Matti was back to following Luca’s lead. Luca was glad of it. He was full of that sparkling-wine sensation that he loved so much, the one that came when he simply acted, without dragging himself down with planning. The joy was in seeing what would happen next.

The fizz of sensation carried him through the painful stretch when Matti took himself in hand and pushed, finally, guiding himself inside. Luca was endangering his own lip again. His breath was unsteady and he was—full, gods he was full—his legs bent up around Matti’s hips, helping Matti the rest of the way, taking Matti deep inside himself.

Matti whispered, like an entreaty: “Luca.”

“Yes, yes,” Luca threw back, echo and answer. “Go. Go .”

Then Matti’s arms were gathering him up as Matti drove into him, the discomfort rapidly melting into a pleasure that seared along all of Luca’s nerves. Luca framed Matti’s face in his hands, making Matti hold eye contact, wanting to see him. To watch him. He hadn’t planned it, but he wanted it. And he felt something that wasn’t orgasm building in his chest, like a welling of tears, as Matti closed his eyes and turned his head, opening his mouth against Luca’s wrist in what might have been a kiss when it started, but ended up ragged and inelegant, a scrape of teeth.

The hot water in Luca’s chest kept brimming. Luca couldn’t run from it, so he did the only other thing he could: let it wash over him. He craned up to kiss Matti’s neck and murmur pleas against Matti’s mouth. He let himself be overwhelmed by Matti, Matti inside him and above him and anchoring him.

Matti came first, with a sudden cut-off cry that he buried in Luca’s neck. Luca felt suspended in a moment, not quite fitting into his skin. He was too hot and too cold. Matti was heavy and impossible and Luca never wanted him to move, or else wanted him to keep moving forever. Luca’s cock was pressed between their bodies, and Luca was reaching for it to finish himself off when Matti got there before him.

The motion of Matti’s mouth on Luca’s face became deliberate. They were kissing, Matti’s tongue warm and demanding against Luca’s, when a final squeeze of Matti’s fingers dragged Luca over the edge as well.

Afterwards, when Luca had stripped a pillow of its fine case in order to give them both a perfunctory wipe, they lay side by side in the warm room, breathing. More than one of Luca’s previous bedfellows had said that Luca could form a diagonal line in the narrowest or the widest bed in the world. He sprawled with a leg hooked possessively over Matti’s knee, feeling tired and happy and something else, too, a niggling sense of vulnerability, as though a wind had swept through him and left a window open somewhere.

“I don’t believe I feel wrecked enough,” Luca said, to cover it. “You’ll have to try harder next time.”

Matti’s breath shook out of him, not quite a laugh. “You really are an awful teacher, did you know that?”

A familiar defensiveness tried to rise in Luca and sharpen his tongue to lash back. It didn’t get very far. There was too much in the way. Instead, he yawned and looked at the shadow of Matti’s jaw and actually let the accusation—lighthearted as it had been—settle into him.

“Ye-es. I suppose so.” He added, “Sorry.”

“You’ve been getting better,” Matti said. “At about the same rate as I’ve been getting better with the sword. But I do know that you’re supposed to give praise every so often, as well as pointing out all my mistakes.”

“Oh, well .” Luca grinned, warming to the task. “In that case I could tell you that was still one of the better fucks of my life, and I’d dance five hundred catskills with a halitotic lech for the opportunity to repeat it, with variations, every day for the next year. And that I didn’t need to take my shirt off to demonstrate the basic forms, that first day in the practice room when I was trying to convince you not to have me arrested, but I wasn’t thinking straight because I’d never seen anyone look so glorious when they were angry as you. You are absurd, Mattinesh. In another life you’d be posing for paintings. I’m going to have dreams about your shoulders, or maybe your knees.”

Too late Luca heard the note of affection in his own voice deepening, hushing, as though the long stream of his words were a plume of fragrance wrapping them intimately close. Matti hadn’t interrupted. Matti was watching him with something that Luca felt he should be able to read by now, but which lived in the neutral at-rest realm of Matti’s facial expressions.

“Do you want me to be quiet?” Luca asked. His lips twitched in helpless memory.

Matti smiled. “No. No, I love the way you talk. Most of the time,” he added, in response to the dubious look Luca gave him.

“I talk too much.”

“You talk like you’re not afraid of anything. Like you could say whatever you wanted and it wouldn’t matter.”

Luca rubbed his thumb over the roughness of Matti’s jaw and moved to press a kiss over Matti’s collarbone, then another. Matti’s arm slid around him, holding him close. “There are things I’m afraid of,” Luca said, soft against Matti’s skin.

After a moment Matti said, “Have you ever been hurt with a sword? Badly hurt, I mean?”

Caution swam in Luca’s gut. “Hm? Why?”

“I was wondering about your scars.” Matti rubbed a hand down Luca’s back. “I suppose I thought duellists would have a lot of them, but then I realised: few ceremonial fights even go to the blood, these days. And you train with dulled blades. So.” His fingers were gentling back and forth on what Luca knew was a long, thin groove that curled around Luca’s side. A line of almost ghostly whiteness on Luca’s already pale torso.

That one was from a sword, as it happened. A training session a few years back, when Luca had learned that picking up a sword while seething with anger was a recipe for disaster.

He opened his mouth to tell Matti that story, but the caution was still there, trying to call out to Luca. He was in too deep for safety. He knew that already. Nothing could prevent him from feeling nearly boneless with pleasure, helpless with longing, lying here in Matti Jay’s arms.

What he could do was remember that he was a liar. That he was lying. That nothing here was as simple as it felt, and that Luca’s fears had nothing to do with metal blades.

“Sorry to disappoint,” he said lightly. “Childhood accident. Smashed a window, tripping on a toy, and was lucky to escape with just that cut. And one on my hand, but it healed without scarring.”

“What about the ones on your feet?”

“All right,” said Luca, “ when, during the events of the last half hour—thoroughly enjoyable though they were—did you bother to look closely at my feet ? Do you like feet? Is that it? Can I reduce you to a panting mess by simply flashing my ankles? Because that’s useful information.”

Matti laughed. One of his own feet slid over Luca’s, gently rubbing. “I saw them at the sea bath.”

“Oh. They’re from chilblains. Two winters ago.” That was true.

“I didn’t think chilblains scarred.”

“They don’t, usually. But these ones were bad, and they got infected, and I didn’t stop going to sword lessons when the physician told me to stay off my feet. I hate winter.”

“You complain about the summer enough. Are there any temperatures you do like?”

Luca pretended to consider this. “There’s usually a few weeks in spring that are tolerable,” he said. Then, sliding his hands under Matti’s sides, burrowing farther into Matti’s neck, “And I’m comfortable now. You’re a good temperature.”

“I’m not a season.”

“Yes you are.” Luca was sleepy, lulled by contentment. He hadn’t meant that to come out. For a moment he hoped Matti would let it go, or wouldn’t understand what he’d meant, but Matti could be perceptive when Luca didn’t want him to be.

“You’re saying you’ll move on.”

“Yes. I’m a season in your life, and you’re a season in mine.”

“Don’t go anywhere tonight.” Matti brushed a kiss into Luca’s hair. “Please?”

“Are you joking? You were probably given the best room in this wing.” Luca pressed his fingertips hard for a moment into Matti’s skin: I’m staying .

After a pause Matti said, “It’s probably not nearly as nice as Sofia’s room.”

Luca swallowed a sudden surge of salt at the mention of Matti’s betrothed. He had the unpleasant and unfamiliar sensation of not knowing how to handle a conversation. After what had just passed between them, he hadn’t thought Matti would be in the mood to talk about Sofia at all.

“Do you think she was expecting you…?”

“No. My assigned room would be a lot closer to the family wing if that were the case. But… it’s a Half Moon Ball.”

Luca nodded. These celebrations were often when the eldest child of any given marriage was conceived. It was an easy matter of counting. “My older brother was probably conceived at the Half Moon point,” he said. “Were you?”

“I don’t think my parents had a Half Moon Ball.”

“That’s right, they were married in Manisi. Wait: correction.” Luca lifted his head. “ Outside Manisi.”

Matti’s laugh was warm. “No, they did get married in Manisi. But apparently Mama’s extended family grumbled about having to make the trip down into the city for the ceremony. I don’t think they gave everyone much warning.”

Luca rested his cheek back on Matti’s chest. Matti’s fingers combed through his hair and Matti’s breath was a soothing tide, lifting and lowering him. This was so easy. Family stories. Laughter. Luca felt like he could say anything in this moment and it wouldn’t matter, nothing would matter; Matti would accept it.

But that wasn’t true.

Luca’s mouth, half-open on a truth, closed again. His lips burned with his name and he shifted to kiss Matti instead, wondering that Matti didn’t pull away at the feel of them. But Matti’s mouth was generous and sweet. Luca wanted to kiss him for hours.

They didn’t have hours. Or rather, they did, but the house had the heavy quiet of nighttime; they were either too late or too far removed from the main entrance to hear the departure of the last guests. Luca’s limbs clamoured for sleep even as his brain flitted from doubt to joy to doubt.

Matti slept first, his breathing softening out, his arm draped over Luca’s back. Luca’s body wanted to shift positions, but he was stubbornly fighting it, letting his hands and feet move instead so that he could stay under Matti’s arm like—

Like it meant something.

“Fuck,” Luca breathed. “I’m sorry. You deserve better. You deserve someone who can tell you the truth.”

Matti took a deeper breath and shifted the angle of his jaw against the pillow on the exhale, but slept on. Selfish, selfish, Luca raged at himself; and answered himself, exhaustedly: Yes, I know. Selfish. Lazy. Liar.

“But I’m not sorry enough to let you go,” he added, low enough now that he could barely hear his own words. “Not yet.”

Matti woke to rain. He could hear a steady, heavy drumming on the roof, and pale light angled through the sliver of window between the curtains. A clock on the wall told him that it was the same hour he usually woke. After a year of swimming and another three months of sword lessons, Matti’s mind and body knew what time they would be asked to function.

There was no set hour for breakfast. Nobody would care if Matti didn’t show himself for a few hours yet.

Another steady murmur slowly resolved itself into words. Matti scrubbed at his eyes and turned, and his arm hit Luca, who was sitting upright in the bed and seemed to be drawing aimless patterns on the sheets with one finger.

“—and Jenny. But that wouldn’t work. Unless. It’s a lot of moving parts, but you can make parts dance if you pay them enough. Donna and Jenny—” He stopped as Matti laid a hand on his leg. The glance he directed down at Matti was not shy, exactly, but it was careful.

“What are you talking about?” asked Matti.

“Maybe nothing. Maybe something.”

“You don’t need to cultivate an air of mystery, you know. I’m already fascinated by you.”

A smile of true delight lit Luca’s face. “Really?”

Matti stretched, then pushed himself upright as well, shoving pillows until he was sitting back against them. “I have been since I first saw you.” This room with its halfhearted light, the unfamiliar warmth of waking next to someone else’s body, felt unreal. Anything true could be said, here and now, and it would be treated kindly. “Since I knocked you down.”

“To be scrupulously fair about it, I made you knock me down.” Luca let his fingers play on Matti’s stomach. One finger scratched idly through the trail of hair, but there was no serious intent in the action. Luca was just moving because he had to move. “But when I got a good look at you from down there… part of me wanted to stay on my knees.”

Matti closed his eyes briefly, unable to stop his imagination from running with that. He had woken partway hard and was only stiffening further at the thought. “What would that have involved?”

Luca’s hand stilled. Matti looked at him. Luca was staring back, his eyes the same shade as the rain-soft light; he swallowed, and the smile began to cut across his face again.

He said, silky, “Why don’t you stand up and I’ll show you?”

Anticipation rubbed itself over Matti’s skin, making him feel boyish. He pushed aside the covers and stood. Luca followed him across the bed, grabbing Matti’s pillow on the way. He laid the pillow at Matti’s feet and gave him the hand gesture that meant hold, stay .

“It would have involved something like this,” Luca said, and threw himself backwards.

Matti’s knees weakened and then locked as the instinct to help came up against the instruction to stay. And Luca wasn’t hurt, Matti could see at once. Luca was sprawled playfully on the floor, seeming not to notice his nudity in a way that made Matti feel less self-conscious about his own.

“It’s easier in a crowd, of course. A lot more going on. But either way, I end up down here. How dare you, sir! And you’re apologetic, and confused, and it’s a simple matter to get my watch—already broken, obviously—precisely where your foot will fall on it. It’s all about reading the body’s cues.”

“I see.”

“But then I get a better look at the mark I’ve chosen,” Luca said. He was kneeling upright and straight on the pillow now. His hands came to rest lightly on the sides of Matti’s legs. “And I’m struck instantly into repentance by your magnificence, your”—a slight smirk, a dart of Luca’s eyes—“stature.”

“Not to mention the fact that I appear to have forgotten my clothes when I came out this evening.”

The scrape of Luca’s nails down Matti’s thigh might have been either encouragement or warning against further improvisation.

“Oh, sir, I should never have tried to deceive you. Will you ever be able to forgive me?” Luca’s voice had a theatrical breathlessness, but the glance he directed up at Matti was that of someone daring himself to draw a finger through a candle flame. “How can I make it up to you?”

“Luca—” Matti lost his breath as Luca wrapped a hand around Matti’s cock and gave it two light strokes.

“Ah,” said Luca softly. “A solution presents itself.” He leaned in and made a careful, agonising circle of his tongue around the sensitive head of Matti’s cock.

“I think we’re going to be thrown out of this drinking house,” Matti managed.

Luca seemed to take Matti’s ability to string clever words together as a challenge, because he abandoned all effort at teasing and simply took Matti deep into his mouth. He sucked Matti slowly, thoroughly, a steady pressure that had Matti tilting his throat to the ceiling and muttering every piece of Huna’s anatomy that passed through his unravelling thoughts.

But it was Luca’s own noisy satisfaction, his obvious pleasure in pleasuring Matti, that gave Matti the courage to ask for what he wanted.

“Wait,” Matti said. When Luca pulled away, Matti twisted and leaned to pick up the grease from the bedside table, then handed it to Luca. “I want you to—use your fingers in me, at the same time.”

“Whatever you wish,” Luca said, easily. He slicked his hand and then settled his weight on his knees again. His mouth was very close to Matti’s dark, straining, still-wet cock. “I suggest you hold on to something”—a grin with claws to it—“ sir .”

Matti had just enough time to grab the frame of the bed before Luca dove into his task as though it were one of the rare sword lessons when Matti could persuade him to show off, to dance through forms and parries, and to defeat invisible enemies, while Matti watched him with a joy so hungry it bordered on peace.

This was not peaceful. Luca hummed, licked, kept his mouth full, as his slick fingers gently rolled Matti’s balls before moving to press inside him, careful and sure. Matti’s knees were weak, pleasure sparking through him in bursts. He gripped the bed frame hard enough to whiten his knuckles and kept his other hand gentle at the back of Luca’s head. At least, he was gentle until Luca moved his finger a certain way and a hoarse cry burst from Matti’s throat, and he realised that he had tightened his grip, pulling Luca closer.

The apology was poised on Matti’s numb lips, but Luca just gave an encouraging moan. Pleasure was winding tighter and tighter at the base of Matti’s stomach. Slowly, he allowed himself to use his grip, pushing Luca farther down until the heat was overwhelming.

“ Luca, ” he managed, as he felt himself swaying with incipient climax. He released Luca’s hair abruptly.

Luca pulled his mouth off but kept hold of Matti’s cock, angling it so that when Matti came, with a wrenching groan, it was over Luca’s neck and chest.

As he recovered his breath, Matti clung to the bed frame for dear life, staring down at Luca.

“I—” Matti stopped, shocked at himself. And a little amused as well.

Luca stood, curious and unconcerned. “What?”

“I. Nothing.”

“Nothing?” Luca drew a finger slowly across his own collarbone and gods, oh gods, Matti was still staring. He wrenched his gaze back up to Luca’s face, remembered Luca’s delight when Matti had loosened control of his tongue in the past, and let himself speak.

“I was thinking I can’t decide which I prefer around your neck, of the two things I’ve given you.”

Luca’s eyes widened.

Matti’s face heated. An incredulous smile broke out on Luca’s.

“Filthy,” Luca said, admiring.

Don’t think about it, Matti told himself. Just act.

He echoed Luca’s motion, drawing two fingers through the evidence of his own release, and felt his breath stop yet again as Luca took hold of his hand and sucked the fingers clean.

“You are full of surprises, Mr. Jay.”

At that, Matti made a face, then laughed, and after a moment Luca laughed too.

“Is that form of address not working for you in a bedroom setting?” Luca bit his lip, dropped his eyelids, then glanced up at Matti through his pale lashes. “Sir?”

To Matti’s embarrassment, that one landed cleanly on an invisible nerve. His face did something. Before Luca could do anything to press the advantage, Matti said, feeling the slippery ease of truth in his mouth again: “I just want you to use my name. I just—like to know that you want me .”

Luca’s face smoothed out like a new-flicked sheet. It was gone so quickly that Matti could have imagined it, replaced with a slow, devastating curve of Luca’s mouth.

“Mattinesh.” Husky, lingering on the hiss at the end. Matti had meant Matti, but he felt the correction die in his throat. Nobody else said his full name like that. “ Mattinesh, ” Luca said again. “I wish I could show you how it tastes.” And that was about all Matti could bear; they were kissing again the next moment, Luca shoving him back down onto the bed and bracing himself above, his legs falling between Matti’s.

When they were fitted together, Luca took them both in hand, his hard cock against Matti’s softening one, pushing them against each other with urgency and little finesse.

Matti winced; his sensitivity was crossing over into discomfort. “It’s—”

“Too much? Fuck, sorry, I’ll—” Luca loosened his grip.

Matti wanted to learn what Luca liked. In his memory of the previous night, everything had been a frantic haze by the end, Matti barely thinking consciously at all, just wanting to see Luca’s face and swallow the broken sounds that Luca made against his mouth when Matti pulled the orgasm out of him.

Now he put his hand over Luca’s, a careful offer, their fingers tangling on Luca’s length, Matti’s thumb brushing through the moisture leaking from the tip. Luca shuddered and buried his face in Matti’s shoulder. The hand Luca was supporting himself on wobbled; he moved so that they were lying side by side, face-to-face.

“Here,” Matti said. “Show me what to do.”

And Luca did, his fingers guiding Matti’s into a fast, steady rhythm of strokes. Near the end Luca’s fingers stuttered, his face screwed up in something between wonder and pain, and Matti greedily drank in the sight of him as he kept his own hand moving.

“ Ah, ” Luca cried, as he spilled over both of their hands and his own stomach. His face slackened; the slits of his eyes were dark, his perfect wide mouth slightly open. Matti understood, quite suddenly, what Luca had meant when he’d talked about Matti posing for paintings. And yet he didn’t want anyone else to see Luca like this.

Matti didn’t know what to say. There was a bubble of something in his throat, like blown glass or hot chocolate, a tenderness that threatened to sear itself into Matti on a fundamental level.

“What with yours and mine, I am rather a mess,” said Luca presently. He didn’t sound unhappy about it. “Time to sacrifice the other pillowcase?”

“I think we can do better than that.” There was a small washbasin in the corner with a single tap, and towels folded over a rail. Matti fetched one of these, dampened it, and offered it as an alternative to further degrading the bedclothes. Luca dumped it cheerfully onto the floor when he was done. Matti resisted the urge to fetch it and hang it up again.

“I should get dressed,” Matti said, perched on the edge of the bed.

“You should get back in here with me,” Luca said at once.

Matti opened his mouth to argue, then closed it. What changed his mind wasn’t anything so sensible as the truth, which was that here in the Coopers’ country house he didn’t have any deadlines to meet, or meetings to attend, or problems to clear from his desk. No. What pulled Matti back into the bed was the edge of resignation in Luca’s voice, as though he didn’t expect to be placed above any of the other priorities of Matti’s life.

Matti was full of the overwhelming urge to prove Luca wrong. To press his mouth and his hands against Luca’s skin and imprint the proof there: that for Luca he had already thrown so many should s aside, and hadn’t regretted a single one yet.

Luca’s surprise was obvious in the way his eyebrows shot up as Matti slid beneath the covers.

“You were right” was all Matti said. “I’ve reconsidered my position.”

Luca’s foot slid between Matti’s calves. “I like being right.”

Luca’s hair looked less vibrant now than it had by firelight or gaslight. Less like it could burn. And yet, somehow, warmer. Burnished and dark and everywhere at once. Matti reached out and ran his fingers through it and thought about sea-scarlet dye, and then about rising costs, and—

“Don’t get any ideas,” Luca murmured. “My own mother can’t persuade me to get it cut.”

“That’s not what I was thinking.”

“No? You were doing your pensive thing again.” Luca touched Matti’s forehead, right between his eyebrows. Matti caught his hand and kissed one of the fingertips, loving the way Luca’s eyes went immediately hooded and pleased. He shoved the thoughts of business aside; they’d be there, waiting for him, as soon as Matti was back in the city. For now he was exactly where he wanted to be.

He said so, aloud, and Luca’s face changed again.

“You wouldn’t rather be in the practice room?” Luca said, arch. “Like you said last night? Fully clothed, no bed in sight?”

A spasm of desire filled Matti at the image that sprang into his mind. The two of them in the practice room, mostly clothed, fucking on the floor. Or against the wall, Matti’s hand over Luca’s mouth to stifle the cries that he would wring from Luca’s throat.

“I’ve changed my mind.” Matti settled deeper into the pillow and pulled Luca close. “I’d be quite happy to stay here, in this room, forever.”

Luca’s arm was slung over Matti’s waist. His fingers were tapping, undemanding, on the small of Matti’s back. He said lightly, “There’s a lot more world to see than just this room.”

This felt like they were skating close to a conversation that neither of them was ready to have.

“I’m sure I’ll see more of it one day. And I’ve already seen more than Maya or the twins have. None of them have been on any voyages by sea, or to Manisi.”

“Outside—”

“Shut up,” said Matti, fond, tilting his face down to Luca’s and kissing the smug smile.

It was a while before Luca said anything. He sounded thoughtful when he spoke again. “You know, I used to think all of you Jays needed to be a bit more selfish, but I’ve decided I was wrong about that. It took a while for me to change my mind. She’s very good at that rose-oiling trick, your sister. Your House should deploy her a lot more.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I like your family. I do. I think they love you and are proud of you, and if they knew you weren’t fine, when you tell them you’re fine, they’d be troubled by it.”

Matti opened his mouth. His words were held back by Luca’s fingers, a brief and commanding press on Matti’s lips. Luca pulled himself free of Matti’s arm and pushed himself upright in the bed again, as though he needed the distance.

“I also think,” said Luca, with a shift of tone that Matti recognised from sword lessons as the criticism coming hard on the heels of token praise, “they’re not asking the next question because it’s easier not to. You’re telling them the lie and they’re accepting it at face value, because it’s more convenient that way.”

“It’s not a lie.”

“Of course it’s a lie.” Luca smoothed his fingers on that same place between Matti’s brows. “Matti, you’ve been destroying yourself. You’re not fine.”

“It’s not that bad,” Matti said, but weakly. He thought of the physician’s contemplative silence when Matti talked about his dizziness and nausea. “Fine means normal. Fine means I’m coping. And I am, it just feels as though…” He struggled, moving his hand in an effort to pluck the right words out of the air.

Luca bent one leg up, one arm wrapped around it. He rubbed his mouth on his own knee as though clearing dust from it to make way for something. Then he looked down at Matti.

“It feels like you’re in a box,” Luca said. “Not a cage. A box. Whenever it shrinks, it’s like there’s less air in there with you.”

Matti wouldn’t have found those words given ten hours and a magnifying glass, but Luca had glimpsed them, somehow. Luca, who had cracked the lid of the box and shown Matti how much space there was outside it.

“How. How did you know?”

Luca’s mouth twisted. He glanced away. His expression was warmer when he looked back, and he lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Don’t you think your family deserves to know that the prospect of marrying Sofia has you feeling like you’re closing yourself in a box? Don’t you think she deserves to know?”

“What would it help? Then they’d be unhappy as well, and I wouldn’t be any less unhappy myself.”

Matti nearly stumbled over the last few words, surprised at hearing them in his own voice. Three months ago he wouldn’t even have thought himself unhappy.

“And that,” said Luca, “just about sums up the last ten years of your life, I’d wager.”

“I—I really should get dressed.”

Matti climbed out of the bed and dressed under Luca’s unabashed gaze. Halfway into his jacket he realised he needed to shave, and did so with the soap that had been laid out on the basin, retrieving his own razor in its leather case from the bag he’d packed.

Luca stayed in the bed. He was quiet enough during the shaving process that Matti wondered if he’d fallen back asleep. But when Matti pulled his jacket on again and tugged a brush through his hair, Luca met his eyes in the mirror.

“Good enough?” Matti gestured down at himself.

“You’ll do.” Luca’s tongue flicked out and wet his lips. It looked more nervous than appreciative. “Matti. If there was some other way to get Jay House out of this hole—”

“But there isn’t,” Matti said. “Even if I could snap my fingers right now and halt everything Corus has done, we’re too far over the line.” The familiar ache of resignation was like a swallowed stone.

“But if there was,” Luca persisted. “If you didn’t have to get married.”

Something prompted Matti to turn around and look more closely. Luca was a knot of pale limbs, one hand encircling the opposite wrist and wringing it. He looked awkward. Vulnerable.

Matti was not sure, all of a sudden, what he was being asked. And he couldn’t dredge up the courage within himself to drag this conversation even more explicitly into the realm of personal declarations. Luca was probably not offering—anything.

I don’t think either of us is looking for serious, Luca had said, in the sea bath.

“If,” Matti said, granting the premise despite his better judgement, “then I would like to see what else is out there in the world, apart from what I’ve been doing for the past ten years.”

Luca climbed out of the bed. The sight of his casually naked body made desire throb weakly in Matti, and it settled into something soft and bittersweet as Luca walked right up to Matti and lifted his face demandingly, close enough to press his bare chest up against Matti’s clothed one. Matti kissed him, wrapped him up in his arms. He had never been with anyone before who sought as many kisses as Luca, who seemed content to spend so much time on them.

“I meant it. I wouldn’t mind if time stopped right now,” Matti said, when he’d kissed his fill.

“Would time let me put some clothes on first?”

“No.” Matti ran a hand over the lower half of Luca’s spine, then down over the firm muscles. “Time would prefer you in exactly this state, Mr. Piere.”

“How about in that scarf?” Luca teased. “ Just the scarf. Nothing else. Oh, you like that idea? Ah. Fuck, Matti.” He tilted his head back and let out a soft groan, encouraging, as Matti sucked over the pulse on Luca’s neck, feeling the slightest scratch of morning stubble; nothing compared to his own. Matti burned to leave another mark on Luca’s easily markable skin. He wanted to order Luca to wear the scarf for the rest of the week, and to think of Matti whenever the silk brushed over the bruise.

That felt like a step too far.

When Matti released him, Luca looked at the clothing strewn around the room and laughed. “I’ll have to put my ball finery back on to begin with. I haven’t got any other clothes in here. Go on, you leave. I’ll make sure the coast is clear, then I’ll go back to my own room and wash up properly.”

“Then come down to breakfast and be charming at my betrothed’s family.” Matti made himself say the word deliberately. “And tomorrow we’ll be back in the city.”

“And in thirteen days I’ll stand up at your wedding.”

Yes, Matti told himself. Remember what this is, and what this isn’t.

He almost wanted to stretch out his hand to be shaken. It felt like an amiable bargain, an agreement being made that would benefit everyone. It didn’t have to be as complicated, as overwhelming, as Matti had feared. He’d always known this couldn’t be anything more than a brief, precious window of pleasure.

And Matti was benefiting. Here was Luca Piere, gorgeous and dishevelled and fresh from Matti’s bed, his lip reddened with Matti’s kisses.

There was no reason for Matti to feel aching and hollow, as though hearing a mourning song being rehearsed in another room.

“And in the meantime?” he heard himself ask.

“Two good weeks in spring.” Luca smiled. His rainy eyes were dark. “Figuratively speaking. Let’s make the most of them, shall we?”