Chapter 20

CHAPTER

20

His mother’s rule on conversational topics was probably the only reason Matti got through dinner without bursting. There was an awkward moment when Tomas said, “Tell us a story about your work with a sword, Mr. Piere; I’m sure you must have several,” and Matti caught Luca glancing at him, just as he was looking to Luca in silent query as to whether their plan required ongoing secrecy regarding Luca’s identity.

“Actually, the best story I know is one from my own sword master,” said Luca. “Master Carriere used to work in Barlow, and one night in the middle of winter he was standing swordvigil for an old woman from a very rich House, who’d died suddenly of ice fever—”

And so on, into an implausibly eventful tale of mulled wine that might have been drugged, and duels fought with numb hands against mysterious masked opponents, and ghosts that turned out to be greedy distant cousins come in search of the gold that the old woman had always said she’d use to line the pockets of her deathgown.

When he was done, Luca took a drink from the glass of wine in front of him, bowed theatrically around the table, and turned to Merri, who was seated to his left.

“I saw you put that bread roll on a plate under your chair, Merrinesh.”

“ Merri, ” said Nessa, exasperated. “Again?”

Luca went on, “Who was that for? Do you have an invisible pet? I had one, you know, when I was younger. A cat.”

Merri’s face lit up. “Really? What was her name?”

“He was called Copper. What’s yours? A rabbit?”

“Polina’s a wolf.” Merri glanced beneath the tablecloth. After a moment she said, conscientiously, “She’s still growing.”

The dinner conversation didn’t return to Luca’s past. Marko asked about his bruises, and Luca told him that he’d been accosted by some men while walking home at night, and that it looked a lot worse than it was. Luca told stories, but—as far as Matti could tell—he avoided any outright lies. Matti watched Luca laugh and drink and wave his fork, and felt something within him shift and fit together into an entirely new shape.

By the end of dinner Luca was flushed and his arm movements more expansive. He looked quite drunk, though Matti didn’t think he’d had that much wine.

Nessa laughed at him. “You will fall in a canal on your way home, Mr. Luca Piere, if we send you out the door now. Sleep here. We have rooms.”

Furtive excitement rose up Matti’s spine. Luca was looking at him, eyes dancing.

“Yes.” Matti’s tongue was clumsy. “You should definitely sleep here.”

“And then dunk your head in the canal tomorrow,” said Sofia. “What a good thing the wedding’s in the afternoon.”

“Never fear. It takes a lot more than a hangover to slow me down, Miss Cooper,” said Luca. “Thank you, Mrs. Jay. Very kind. I will sleep here.”

Matti walked Sofia to her own house—she squeezed his hand, her expression a banked fire of excitement, before she slipped inside—and found his steps quickening on the way back home. He bade his parents good night, with a wash of renewed guilt at the fondness and tightness with which his mother hugged him. She wasn’t one to cry, but her accent thickened as she flicked his ear and told him that she was proud, they were so proud, and they knew he would be happy.

“I think I will be,” Matti said. Not a lie at all. No more lies. And, after tomorrow, no more secrets. “Good night, Mama.”

He was not at all surprised to find Luca seated on the edge of his bed, leaning back on his hands, one foot tapping on the floor. Matti spared a moment to imagine Luca’s restless energy confined to a prison cell, and was seized with the conviction that Jacquelle Harte might have been sorely tempted—and Matti couldn’t blame her—but she wouldn’t have done that to her whirlwind of a son if other options were available to her.

“This feels familiar.” The slight slur of Luca’s speech was gone. His cheeks were still pink.

“This feels ridiculous. Sneaking around in my own house, hiding lovers in my bedroom, as though I were seventeen.”

Luca smiled and stood. “Now there’s a story I want to hear.” He came close. There was a faint limp in his step that hadn’t been there before, or that he was now not bothering to mask. His clever hands slid up Matti’s chest. “But later. I don’t want to talk now.”

Matti privately marked that one down as a lie, but an unconscious one. Nothing short of direct intervention from the gods would make Luca stop talking.

“You still have something to tell me.” Matti had remembered, on his way home from the Coopers’. “You said there was some other big reason why Jay House would be fine.”

Luca flicked one of the buttons of Matti’s shirt back and forth with a forefinger, considering. “Will you let it be a surprise? If I swear up and down and on my mother’s name that it’s something good, and that I told Maya about it already?”

“Is hiding more things from me a good idea?” Matti demanded. “You just want to make a grand dramatic scene tomorrow, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Luca agreed. “I do. But you’re right. I’ve told you enough lies.” His smile slipped. “I’ll tell you now, if you ask me to.”

Matti wanted to know. He didn’t want to go into the next day without feeling that he would have every controllable thread in his own hands.

He thought about the crossed-out lines of numbers on the loan calculation Luca had pressed into his hand.

“No, that’s all right.” He took a deep breath. “I trust you.”

Luca’s lips parted infinitesimally. He looked almost angry, for the space of a breath. Then he reached up and pressed his palms to Matti’s face, hard enough to grind against Matti’s cheekbones, and lifted his mouth in a quick, savage kiss. “Mattinesh. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Fuck, I didn’t want to think about how much I’d hurt you.”

A peacekeeping denial was obligingly ready to emerge, but Matti let it die in his mouth. It had hurt. It had felt like something vital had been lopped away, and the sensation of Luca in his arms now, glorious as it was, had its own fresh pain to it. Tingling and fierce like nerves being regrown.

Luca said, “I couldn’t bear the thought of never touching you again.”

A growl came out of Matti’s throat. He kissed Luca again, burying his hands in Luca’s incredible hair, tasting raw salt along the line of Luca’s split lip. Luca’s mouth was hungry beneath his, and Luca made little whines of desperation that settled low in Matti’s stomach.

I can’t lose this, Matti thought, I can’t, and remembered that he had something to say.

“I’m sorry too.”

Luca had unbuttoned Matti’s shirt. His hands were sliding on Matti’s chest, light rakes of his nails that left fire in their wake. “Whatever for?”

“You’re leaving Glassport. You made a promise; you have to leave.”

Luca’s hands stopped. He groaned. “Huna’s bleeding fingers, Matti, I’m about two heartbeats away from begging you to fuck me until I can’t remember any of my names, real or fake. Can’t this wait?”

That was an excellent attempt at diversion, and Matti’s breath left him in a gust of immediate desire, but he wasn’t going to fall for it. “Luca.”

A pause. Unwillingly, Luca nodded.

“Glassport to Cienne isn’t that far,” Matti offered. “A few days, by coach. And I think if I refuse to take any breaks from work from now on, Maya will stab me herself.”

Luca’s eyes were sharp with hope. “So why are you sorry?”

“I’m sorry it had to happen at all. Your mother gave you those deals in exchange for your return to Cienne, and your word that you’d apply yourself properly to your House duties. You made that bargain. For me.”

“It was probably inevitable, me going back,” Luca said. “I think I always knew it. I just didn’t want to think about it.”

“No. Listen to me. You saw the box I was living in,” Matti said, aching. “You recognised it. Do you think I wanted you to go back to that? For my sake?”

“It hardly compares. Yours was closing in around you for a long time. I haven’t spent any time in mine—I just felt the bare outline of it, and ran.”

Matti smiled despite himself. “Good instincts.”

“I didn’t think far enough ahead,” said Luca. “Maybe I can work on it from— Look, this metaphor’s getting unwieldy. Maybe I can be a different kind of Head of House to my mother, is what I meant. And different to what Perse would have been.”

“You’re creative,” Matti pointed out. “You can talk your way around corners, and you take risks. You’re a lot better at that than me.”

“I am.” Luca drew his fingertips down the side of Matti’s neck. “Careful Matti Jay.”

“You found the right angle to solve my problem with the Barlow Guildmaster in less than a minute, when I’d been tearing my hair out for a week. You have a flair for some parts of this, Luca.”

“Mm,” said Luca. “If only I had someone good with numbers.”

A future expanded like a pool ripple in Matti’s mind, so fresh and so huge that he couldn’t breathe.

Luca’s fingers moved to Matti’s mouth. Matti kissed them and took hold of Luca’s hand, adjusting his grip until it was a handshake. A bargain. A beginning.

“My name is Mattinesh Jay,” he said. “Tell me what you want.”

Luca’s fingers stirred in his, then went still. All of him was still. It was strange enough that Matti felt like a man watching a card trick, afraid to blink.

“My name is Lucastian Harte, and I want us not to have a time limit. I don’t want you to promise yourself to anyone but me.”

A wave broke against Matti’s lungs. “Luca.”

“I want to tell you everything real about myself, because when you look at me like that I can almost believe you’ll like me anyway. All of me. Even the parts that aren’t—drama, and swords, and my hair, and the fact that I can make you laugh.”

Their hands hung together between them. Matti clasped Luca’s fingers in his own, hard, until Luca gripped back.

Matti said, “I want you to keep making me laugh. I want to keep you. Luca. I owe you my life.”

“ Now who’s being dramatic?”

“Not really,” said Matti. The truth felt like jenever, clean and strong in his mouth. “You broke me out of the box. The rest of my life is yours. If you want it.”

“Huna’s breath, how are you so fucking brave about this?” A laugh shook out of him. “Mattinesh Jay. I think you’d walk through fire.”

It was an odd thought, given how Matti felt: vulnerable and raw, as though they were standing in a cold wind, stripped down to nothing but bones and undeniable things. Staring at each other over a handshake. Matti didn’t feel brave. He felt like this was the only possible way to act, and these were the only possible things to say.

“I might,” he said honestly. “I don’t know. Are you asking?”

“I’m answering,” said Luca. He lifted Matti’s hand to his mouth and pressed his lips to Matti’s bent fingers.

As he had done on countless days since that implausible moment in the practice room, Matti wanted to slide his fingers into Luca’s mouth—and to keep them there, this time, to forget to come to his senses.

And there was nothing to stop him, was there?

Luca’s eyes widened and then fell closed; his mouth twitched towards a smile before his tongue worked at Matti’s two fingers, obedient to the unspoken command. They’d been to bed together at every opportunity, in the brief span of days between the ball and Persemaine’s arrival, and yet Matti hadn’t thought to do this. He should have insisted that they do nothing else. Matti moved his fingers gently, in and out, feeling the blunt scrape of Luca’s teeth and the heady wet heat of that wide, infuriating mouth.

“Gods,” said Matti, unthinking. “I want to see you do that when you’re riding me.”

The heat became tight suction for a moment, and Luca’s eyes snapped open. He removed Matti’s fingers by a tug on Matti’s wrist.

“Done,” Luca said. “Deal. Yes .”

“Take your clothes off,” Matti said hoarsely.

Luca did as he was told. Matti took longer than he should have to divest himself of his own clothing, because he kept getting caught by the angle of Luca’s faint-freckled shoulder emerging from his shirt, or the bruises dappling his side and legs, or the straight, bobbing arousal of Luca’s cock below the thatch of dark copper curls. Luca had barely thrown his last sock aside when Matti caught his arm and drew him close. He cupped Luca’s face—beneath the unbruised jaw—and kissed him, trying to make it everything he was feeling, everything he wanted to do and give and be.

Luca held on to Matti’s wrists. He made small movements there with his thumbs, a glorious version of his restless tapping. Matti kissed him deeply one more time, then kissed his cheek, then his brow bone. Light, light. Adoring.

“Now.” Happiness was injecting Matti with daring. “I believe I was given some feedback, some time ago.”

“Hm?” Luca had turned his head into one of Matti’s hands and was mouthing the fleshy base of his thumb.

“Someone felt that I hadn’t put adequate effort into wrecking them.”

Luca froze. He released Matti’s arms and pulled away, his eyes seeking Matti’s.

“I’m not the cleverest man in Glassport, but I’m stubborn,” Matti went on. “I try hard, and I don’t stop.”

It looked for a moment as though the impossible had happened and Luca was at a loss for words. He licked his lips. He cleared his throat.

“Oh, please try,” Luca said finally, and yanked Matti flush against him, body to body.

The sensation, Luca’s erect cock nudging up against his, was enough to threaten Matti’s balance. Luca was all hot skin, his hands roaming over Matti’s arse, his mouth dipping to suck open-mouthed at Matti’s shoulder, and Matti almost missed the way Luca’s breath caught in a grunt of pain when Matti’s arm tightened around his back.

“Is it your ribs?”

“It’s fine.”

“I don’t want to hurt you—”

“You can hurt me a bit, ” said Luca at once. His pupils were huge.

Matti coughed out a laugh. “I want you to be able to fight a duel, Luca.”

“Oh. Yes. Fair point.” A smile so sharp it bordered on wicked. “I believe you mentioned riding. That’s mostly thighs; I think I can manage that.”

Every other time they’d done this since the ball, they’d been in Luca’s small room in the boardinghouse. It felt both thrilling and comforting to Matti to lie back on his own sheets and watch Luca move naked around his bedroom, as Matti told him where in the dresser to find the bottle of oil.

“Let me,” Matti commanded, when Luca knelt beside him on the bed. He held his hand out for the oil.

Luca handed it over without a murmur and sat astride Matti’s hips, far enough forward that Matti’s straining cock had a reprieve from the torture of contact. Luca rubbed one of Matti’s nipples with his fingers, and sparks of sensation crawled across Matti’s skin. He fumbled the stopper of the oil bottle, but managed to coat his fingers thoroughly.

“Lean down to start with.” He could do this. He knew how much Luca liked it when Matti took charge, made his wants explicit. He put his dry hand on the small of Luca’s back, guiding. “That’s it. Is that all right? Not uncomfortable?”

Luca shifted until his knees were snug on either side of Matti’s body. He bent all the way down, as instructed, and sucked Matti’s earlobe into his mouth for a mind-curling moment. “Perfect,” he breathed. “Ah— fuck, yes,” as Matti’s first finger breached him.

Matti couldn’t get his finger very deep, with the angle available to him, but he wasn’t interested in deep. He already knew how to make Luca shout and sob and come on his fingers alone. Now he wanted this: Luca stretched out atop him, breath coming quickly, waiting. Anticipating.

He took a handful of Luca’s hair with his other hand, to remind himself not to touch Luca’s sore ribs, and made small circles around Luca’s rim with his oil-slick fingers.

“Matti, you fucking— please, ” Luca said, and bit Matti’s lip.

Two fingertips at once, and Luca gave a gratifying moan. Still just the tips, though, pulsing in and out. Matti felt heady and powerful. Luca was hot and strong and as responsive to Matti’s hands as he was to the slightest twitch of a blade.

It struck Matti anew how ridiculous sex was. But also how good it could be; better than he’d ever imagined. Two weeks had done nothing to rub the shine off the novelty of wanting someone this much. And now everything was layered, made more vivid, by the fact that there wasn’t an endpoint. In Glassport or in Cienne, Matti would have this—have Luca—again, and again. It would keep getting even better, though he wasn’t sure how.

Soon Luca was making needy sounds against Matti’s mouth and grinding against Matti’s stomach, shoving back to meet Matti’s hand. Matti’s wrist bumped his own cock from time to time. He was so hard he felt lightheaded with it.

“Stop,” Luca gasped. “That’s enough. I want you in me, right now.”

Matti released him and Luca sat up. He reached behind him and took hold of Matti’s cock, giving it a couple of torturous squeezes. Matti felt his abdominal muscles contract, felt the shout of his nerves. Luca knelt up, balancing himself. The crack of his mouth as he lowered himself, the audible scrape of his inhalation, was almost as good as the way he felt. Matti found he was running his palms along Luca’s thighs, afraid to apply pressure and yet wanting nothing more than to shove down, to feel Luca engulf him totally.

“Just— ah . That’s it.” Small sways of Luca’s hips, carrying him down. Luca’s head was tipped back in simple abandon.

“Gods, you feel amazing.”

“You too. Fuck. ” Luca’s stomach muscles clenched. “All right. All right.” Settled, now, his weight gloriously resting on the tops of Matti’s thighs, his cock leaking onto Matti’s stomach. He took hold of Matti’s hands and moved them insistently to his own hips. “Fuck me,” Luca said: sharp and clear instruction. “Wreck me. Do it.”

And Matti did his best, as he’d always done. His thumbs at the jutting bones of Luca’s hips and then reaching back, taking convulsive handfuls of the hard muscle of Luca’s arse. They found a rhythm, Luca rising with a powerful bulge of his thighs, Matti’s firm grip grinding him down, Matti gone panting and wild with pleasure as Luca tightened and lowered and then did it again.

Matti drank in the sight of Luca’s face, the slim muscle of his shoulders, the straight line of his throat. The tight pink nipples begging for the attention of Matti’s mouth and yet too far away to reach.

“Oh,” Luca gasped. “Forgot,” and grabbed Matti’s unoiled hand, pulling it up towards his face.

It took Matti a moment to focus, to remember. He was burning up. He was nothing but pulse and sweat and the pooling fire in his groin. He wanted to struggle upright and pull Luca even closer, get his hands on Luca’s shoulders and yank him down; hear him cry out as Matti’s length found new places inside him. But Luca was injured, and they’d begun this with other plans in mind.

Luca bit lightly at Matti’s thumb before letting it slide between his teeth. The movements of his tongue were clumsy as he sucked and then groaned, kissed the pad and let Matti explore the soft insides of his slack lips. It was inelegant, uncoordinated; it was everything Luca usually wasn’t. Luca’s eyes were unfocused and he was working his own cock in frantic strokes. He was losing the rhythm, reduced to trembling jerks, little shifts of his body back and forth as though to corkscrew Matti even farther into himself.

“Fuck—oh, gods—” Luca came, spurting through his own fingers. Matti felt the vibrations of it everywhere at once. His thumb. His fingers tucked around Luca’s jaw. And most torturous of all, the spasms of Luca clenching around Matti’s cock.

It was enough. It was almost too much. Matti choked, “ Luca, ” and pleasure obliterated him piecemeal: a tingling gush of heat down his legs, sparks beneath the skin of his abdomen. The sense of relearning how to inhale.

Luca swayed, his chest heaving. His fingers dug into Matti’s chest, almost too hard. It took him nearly a minute to climb off, easing Matti out of him with a bite of his own lip.

“Fuck me .” Luca sounded as drunk as he had at dinner. He performed a controlled collapse towards the space of clean sheet next to Matti, where he arranged himself on his back with a sprawl of limbs.

Matti bit back the obvious reply but couldn’t think of anything clever to replace it. His mind was still clearing away the syrupy webs of his own orgasm. He dropped a kiss on Luca’s shoulder instead, and moved to tug at least a top sheet up from the pile of bedclothes. It was no longer hot enough to sleep uncovered. Matti wasn’t tired enough to sleep at all, yet, and knew his mind’s tendency to chatter on in exhausting circles the night before anything important.

But he wouldn’t mind sacrificing sleep tonight. He didn’t have to fight any duels tomorrow. And this was only the second full night he’d ever been able to spend with Luca beside him. Every other time they’d fucked had ended in parting. Through whatever sleepless hours awaited, Matti would be able to see Luca, and hear him, and touch the storm-tossed waves of his hair as they lay bright against the pillowcase.

A slow smile spread over Luca’s face when Matti matched deed to thought. Then, like a piece of wool being carded perpendicular, the smile slackened and disappeared. Luca turned his head and opened his eyes, and Matti’s breath caught at his expression: shattered, and open, and young. Luca was shameless in bed in a way that Matti loved, saying anything that came into his head and never hesitating to tell Matti exactly what he wanted. It looked like whatever was brimming in his mouth now was something difficult. Something extraordinary.

There are things I’m afraid of.

“Mattinesh,” Luca said, low.

“Lucastian. Luca.” Matti kissed the side of that mouth as though to sip at its secrets, its unsaid declarations. He would wait. “I want you. That’s all. Just you.”

“I hope you’re proud of yourself,” Luca said.

“For turning you into a morning person?”

“Bite your fucking tongue.” Luca lifted his chin; Matti kissed the base of his neck, and then nipped the skin between his teeth. Perhaps Luca shouldn’t have said the word bite . Perhaps he should say it five more times. “I will never be—that.”

“You’re awake now.”

“Your curtains are thin.”

Matti’s mouth curved in a way that Luca felt rather than saw. “Do you have a pressing morning engagement, Mr. Harte?”

Matti’s bedroom had two layers of curtains, and only the thinner ones had been pulled the previous night. The light in the room had the quality of a cool sun-drenched morning that was going to turn warm by noon. It would be commented on as an inauspicious sky for Matti and Sofia’s wedding. Sofia’s patron was an agricultural deity. Maha might have sent rain, if he’d cared to reach out and bless this particular union.

Luca sighed and twined his fingers into Matti’s hair, encouraging. Matti sucked the base of Luca’s neck, at first playfully, and then with enough force that Luca’s flesh was drawn between his teeth. Shivers and goose bumps played cartography on Luca’s skin beneath the sheets. He knew he couldn’t feel the blood in his tiniest vessels yearning towards Matti’s mouth, blushing purple and vivid in a way that would stain and stay. But imagining that he could feel it was almost the same.

“I do, actually,” Luca said. “I’m giving a sword lesson.”

A smile as Matti lifted his head. “I don’t know if I have the time.”

“Whoever said I was giving this lesson to you ?”

The furrow of Matti’s brow was a lot more enjoyable to look at when it was due to confusion and not bone-deep worry. And even better now that Luca could call it up with his words and banish it with his fingers. Matti bent his head again and bit outright at that same spot on Luca’s neck. Pain throbbed beneath the smarting skin and Luca felt it go straight to his cock, both for the sensation and the possessiveness it represented.

“Hm,” Matti said. “I didn’t know you’d started to inflict your dreadful teaching techniques on others.”

“Did you think my life revolved around your needs, Mattinesh? We poor duellists have to take our income where we can, you know. I can’t be available for your every whim.”

“No?” said Matti. “How much would that cost me?”

Luca bit the inside of his cheek, hard, at the jolt of need that went through him.

He managed, “A lot more than six hundred gold.”

“Can I afford it?”

The second layer to that question caught up with Luca just as he was about to answer. “Yes.” He leaned over and gentled Matti’s mouth open, a slow tease of tongue. “Unaccustomed as you are to buying yourself nice things.”

“Well, I…” Matti pulled away, rolled onto his back, and laughed. It was a genuinely merry sound that Luca couldn’t remember having heard before. Luca wanted to put his own mouth over it, take it into his lungs.

“What?” he asked instead, trailing his fingers through the sparse hair on Matti’s chest.

“Lucastian Harte,” said Matti. “I gave you a scarf made of your own fucking silk.”

“I worked very hard not to laugh,” Luca assured him.

“You should take it as a compliment to your House. You make beautiful things.”

Luca bowed his head in elaborate acknowledgement.

“And you are a beautiful thing,” said Matti, softer. “You’re right, I’m out of practice with luxury, but I bought you.” He turned back, seeking, and took Luca’s mouth with his own again. “I paid for you.”

The shiver took Luca all over. He heard himself moan against Matti’s lips, shameless.

Matti was braced on one elbow above Luca now, staring down at him, one thumb brushing hair back from Luca’s temple. “I thought I had simple tastes. I don’t care about pearls or silver. I don’t need silk. I can live without cherries and bottles of Diamond Blend.” Luca pressed up, incoherently wanting, and Matti obliged him with another bruising kiss. “But you,” Matti breathed. “You are the most exquisite thing in this city, and I want you, and I’m going to have you.”

Luca’s bones were turning to water in his flesh. He felt a flush travel down his neck in the path of Matti’s mouth, which laid a trail of kisses and quick nips. Matti paused to spend some time on Luca’s nipples, drawing one into his mouth and rubbing the pad of his thumb in circles on the other. Luca lay there, breathing like a man about to be submerged, feeling the goodness of it crash over him in slow waves. He put a flat palm briefly to his own stiffening cock, like a command; gripping it would feel like cheating, but he needed something .

“Patience,” Matti murmured into Luca’s navel.

“Yes,” said Luca, stupidly, to the ceiling. Matti’s room was painted an unexceptionable pale cream. “That’s me. So patient. We all know how patient I am.”

Matti gave a low chuckle that vibrated. He glanced up, a measure of fierce affection delivered from between those thick lashes. The shape of him, the lovely balance of his features, struck Luca like a dart.

“Fuck, you’re perfect,” Luca said, hoarse. “Look at you.” He got his hand into Matti’s hair again, his nails on Matti’s scalp. “How did nobody else get their claws into you?”

Matti scraped the black stubble of his jaw back and forth, thoughtful, on the skin of Luca’s lower stomach. His hand was splayed on Luca’s thigh, his thumb maddeningly close to where it might do some good.

“I wasn’t looking,” he said simply.

Greedy: “I made you look at me.”

“I could have been halfway down the aisle, and I would have looked at you,” Matti said. “I could have been halfway across the world. ” He shifted in the bed and licked a circle around the head of Luca’s cock.

Luca made a sound that had nothing to do with language. His hand was still in Matti’s hair. He tightened it.

Matti was in no hurry. He was curious, exploratory. He used finger and thumb to work the skin of Luca’s cock, agonisingly light, while he sucked. And then Luca lost track of exactly what was happening, and stared at the ceiling some more as fingers of building pleasure worked their way up through his body. He kept hold of Matti’s hair more for anchoring than for direction. His hips were trying to rise off the bed, his cock blindly seeking to be deeper in Matti’s throat.

Matti pulled off. The air of the room on Luca’s wet, sensitive skin was its own kind of torture. “Did you want—”

“I don’t want you to stop, please, oh gods please —” He ended on what was nearly a wail, as Matti took mercy and swallowed him deep, generous strokes of tongue and then a steady pressure that sent Luca over the edge, pleasure tearing through him like scissors.

Matti took it all into his mouth, which worked around Luca as he swallowed. He pulled away and ran a finger across the crease of his own lips.

Luca lay there and tried to sort out which bits of his body he could still feel. His sprained ankle was aching. He hadn’t been aware of putting weight on it, but it was possible he’d bent his legs and braced his feet against the bed at some point during that process. He couldn’t bring himself to care.

“Hm,” said Matti, a bit rueful. “I was going to ask if you wanted to fuck me.”

“Kind of you to ask, and we’ll definitely revisit the subject,” said Luca. “But as you point out—” He waved a weak hand at his softening cock. “And I have to say, I’m quite enjoying this ‘beautiful object’ thing.” He stretched, taking full advantage of the trim lines of his torso, turning his wrists up in the way that Matti loved.

It was hard to tell if Matti’s eyes were darkening further, but the skin slackened around his mouth in a way that was just as good. “I can’t be the first bed partner to tell you that you’re beautiful.”

“Obviously not.” Luca grinned and batted away Matti’s attempt to swat him in the chest. “Expensive, though, that’s new.”

This time when Matti reached out, it was with a single fingertip. He started at Luca’s hairline and moved down—pausing next to Luca’s eyes as though there were something noteworthy about them—skimming the centre of Luca’s mouth—pressing down on the mark on his neck—and then a swift, ticklish line down Luca’s side, his hip, his leg, until the reach of Matti’s arm gave out somewhere near Luca’s knee. Luca felt like a route being memorised; an artwork being considered one last time by its creator before it was sent for framing. It made him want to make huge, impossible, unwise promises. It took him three tries to speak.

“You’ve got me,” said Luca. “So take me.”

They ended up with Luca on his front, comfortably settled with one leg bent beneath him, head and sore ribs and arms all draped over pillows. Matti’s fingers worked him open with less care than the previous night, and Matti swore gratifyingly when he lined up and pushed in, a quick blunt pressure. Luca’s body tensed, then softened. Matti’s hand skimmed his spine, all the way to the base of his neck and back down. He pushed in a little farther. Luca swallowed with difficulty.

“Is this—”

“For the love of everything, move, ” said Luca.

Matti did, easing entirely inside. His breath hissed. “Fuck. Luca.” He drew out what felt like nearly all the way; Luca made a sound of complaint that turned to a low groan when Matti clutched his hips and slammed back in again.

Again. Again.

Luca felt safe, and admired, and yes, taken . It was unbelievably good. There was no urgency to his own need, nothing demanding release. Just the blissful slide of his cheek on the pillow, the firm grip Matti had on his hips, and the stretch that melted into pleasure every time Matti thrust deep inside him. Luca could have stayed there for hours, half-drunk on being fucked while Matti gasped praise and called him a lovely thing, tight, perfect, Luca —

Even in the moments after spilling himself into Luca, Matti was considerate. He collapsed forward but caught himself, bracing his weight on his hands, which framed Luca’s neck. There was a grumble of pain in Luca’s side from the shift in position, but not much.

Matti kissed the knob of Luca’s spine and eased himself out and away. His hand ruffled Luca’s hair. “Luca?”

“Mm.”

Amused, now. “Are you going to fall back asleep? Someone is expecting a sword lesson, apparently.”

“Just calculating the likelihood that I’ll turn into dust,” said Luca. “Scatter myself across your bed.”

“You’re not making any sense.”

Luca managed to form a working body from the dust. He struggled upright and poked a finger into Matti’s chest. “No one to blame but yourself.”

Matti climbed out of bed and went to fetch something. It was his watch. He sat on the edge of the bed, tugging a fold of blanket across his legs. “Another couple of hours before my House members will be arriving.”

“The long lunch. I remember. Perse stood up to call the blessing in front of all our cousins with his shirt skew-buttoned.” Luca smiled. “It was the first time I’d seen him look nervous about anything. All right. I’ll leave you to make yourself presentable, Mattinesh.” He stood up and paused to rub Matti’s unshaven jaw, lowering his voice. “But I prefer you like this. You’re mine like this.”

“Yes.” Matti’s hands closed on his waist, directing Luca to stand between his legs. “And you, like this.” He learned forward abruptly and sucked another mark into Luca’s skin, over the unbruised ribs. Luca swayed on his feet. This was absurd. Nothing should feel this good.

“Clothes,” said Luca reluctantly. “Sword lesson. And I need to go and tangle the sheets in the room I was supposed to sleep in, if you don’t want to have to explain the fun half of the story to your parents ahead of schedule.”

“I would have told them last night,” Matti said.

Warmth fluttered in Luca’s chest. “They might have guessed. Parents see more than you think.” He suppressed a shudder remembering the time Jacquelle had sat him down, just after Luca had congratulated himself on the casual way he’d explained how he came to sleep at a friend’s house the previous night. She’d given him a half-hour lecture on responsibility and safety, and being able to talk about things, and making sure everyone involved, himself included, was sure they wanted everything to happen.

It could have been worse. She could have told Perse to do it.

Resolve firmed Matti’s expression. “Get dressed. Go and be sneaky. I’ll see you at the Guildhall.” A final press of his fingertips, deliberate, in the hollow of Luca’s throat. “Dress nice. I chose my wedding colours for you, you know.”

“Huna’s arse you did.”

“I did!”

“I was a con artist you barely knew!”

“I know. I was horrified at myself. I told you,” said Matti, steady. “Halfway across the world.”

Luca put his hands on Matti’s shoulders, just at the rise of Matti’s neck. He paused, face hovering a little distance from Matti’s, a taut skin around the enormity of his feelings. Luca had always wanted to be liked, to know that people desired him, or simply enjoyed his company. But all of that faded next to how it felt to be accepted for who he truly was, stripped of stories. Luca Harte with all his dramatics and all his many failings.

He’d never felt so wanted. He’d never wanted to keep anything, to devote himself to anything, with the violence that he felt it now.

“It’s your wedding day, Mattinesh. Are you ready?”

When Matti reached up, Luca thought for a moment he was going to fix Luca’s hair; his fingers slid into the hairline and scraped with slow, careful pressure all the way over Luca’s scalp and down. Luca felt like the head of a match, struck. By the time Matti pulled Luca’s head down to kiss him, Luca wanted to shove Matti back onto the bed and throw all their plans out the window for the chance to have Matti inside him again, now .

But he liked to think he was getting better at making long-term plans.

Matti looked determined when he pulled away.

“I’m ready,” Matti said. “Let’s do this.”