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‘I am listening to hear where you are
I am listening to hear where you are’
~ Neutral Milk Hotel, ‘Two-Headed Boy’
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When he had used forbidden magic to drag his brother back from death, binding Rhy’s body to his in the process, sex had been the last thing on Kell’s mind.
These days, more often than not, it was the first. He had always been aware of Rhy’s sex drive, but it was one thing for that awareness to come from soft laughter in the corridor and his brother’s chamber door creaking closed, and another to feel it in his own body: a nagging, persistent want, ambushing him at the least convenient moments. The first time, he had been in the Sanctuary with Tieren, talking seriously about what he had done to save Rhy, when he had felt desire rising in him, sharp and incongruous. He’d been horrified, until he remembered he’d seen Rhy heading to the baths, where no doubt some particularly decorative member of the court had since joined him. Kell braced himself on the cold stone wall.
‘Kell?’ said Tieren, brow furrowed. ‘Is everything all right?’
‘I’m fine,’ said Kell, pinching his wrist until he left a mark. Rhy. Not. Now.
Since then, the uninvited pangs hadn’t abated: if anything, they had got worse. Part of the problem was that, in a dramatic break with tradition, Rhy didn’t seem to be doing anything to satisfy his urges. Kell didn’t know if experiencing death had sobered his brother’s rakish ways, or if he was just so acutely aware of their connection that it made him uncharacteristically shy, as if Kell were watching over his shoulder. For Kell’s part, where he would usually have worked out his frustration swiftly in bed or in the baths, he instead lay glaring at the ceiling, trying not to think of Lila, trying not to think of anything at all, until he slid into a restless sleep.
By now, their shared frustration had built to the point that they were constantly snapping at each other. When the queen came to Kell’s room and asked him what was amiss between him and Rhy, he had mumbled something about getting used to their new situation, praying to magic itself that she wouldn’t ask for details.
This is unbearable, he thought, leaning his head against the door after she had left. Something has to change.
And so, when he heard the familiar sound of laughter in the corridor — Rhy’s and a woman’s, soft and low — he felt a mix of dread and relief. Desire — Rhy’s — started to coil low in his belly. Kell cast fruitlessly about the room for the best place to weather what was coming. The bed? Inappropriate. The couch? Scarcely better. He went to the sideboard and poured himself a glass of wine with shaking hands.
Ghost-kisses trailed their way down his neck. He shuddered and drank, focusing on himself, his body, here in this room, alone. He paced, trying not to visualise what Rhy’s paramour was doing to him that would cause the sensations that ran through him. He was hard, now, painfully, and the temptation to surrender, to collapse on the bed and bring himself off, was overwhelming.
‘I changed my mind,’ he said to the empty room, with a half-despairing laugh. ‘This is unbearable.’ Rhy’s pleasure rolled through him. He caught at the wall to steady himself, breathing hard. His hand moved down, but he arrested it, digging his fingers into his thigh. Wrong. It would be wrong to take his brother’s pleasure as his own: as perverse as going to Rhy’s chambers and climbing into bed with him. He kept his eyes open, his breathing shallow, and waited for it to be over.
*
Rhy couldn’t get Kell out of his head.
His brother had never been far from his thoughts, but there were some times he typically didn’t spring to mind. Usually, those times included when Rhy was alone with a delectable and mostly naked woman. Aura kissed her way down his body, her hot mouth waking his nerves to ecstasy. But with every spike of desire came an echo of dread.
Damn it, Kell, just relax and enjoy it, Rhy fumed internally. He tried to block out his brother’s feelings and focus on his own, but as with every other time he had tried this, he couldn’t tell where he ended and Kell began.
He rolled over, pinning Aura beneath him, and looked into her eyes. She, at least, was having a good time: her pupils wide with pleasure, her mouth falling open as Rhy touched her between her legs, posing a question with his eyes.
‘Yes,’ she gasped, pulling him up the bed. He felt a surge of anticipation as she guided him inside her.
It had been too long. Rhy groaned at the wet heat of her, and nearly forgot about Kell, until he felt the hard pressure of fingers on his thigh. Not Aura’s: her hands were tangled in his hair, holding on for dear life as he thrust into her. Kell’s fingers: Kell, trying to stop himself taking Rhy’s pleasure for his own. It gave him a strange, half-angry feeling, one he couldn’t push away. As he got closer, it came to him, clear as if he could see it: Kell alone in his room, flushed and panting, fingers digging in as he resisted the pull of Rhy’s desire. The image tugged at something dark and deep in him, and the thought arose before he could question it: he was going to make Kell come. He cried out, speeding up his thrusts, and his climax came sudden and overwhelming, making Aura cry out in return and pull him into her.
‘Mas vares,’ she giggled, wondering at his ardour.
Rhy kissed her once on the mouth, gave her a confident smile, and rolled onto his back, wondering what the hell had just happened.
*
Kell pressed his head against the wall, feeling the waves of Rhy’s pleasure recede. The spike of his climax had been so intense that he’d been afraid he would be carried along against his will. But he had held back, digging his fingers into his flesh and thinking of anything, literally anything, mildew on the wall in the cellars, Tieren lecturing him about balance, a particularly interesting beetle he had seen crawling along his windowsill the other day. Now, he shook himself and went unsteadily to the sideboard for another glass of wine. It was over. Still, he felt angry, in a vague, unfocused way that lasted through to the next morning, when he listened at Rhy’s door to be sure the prince was alone before giving a sharp knock.
‘Come in.’
Rhy was still getting dressed when Kell entered. He avoided looking at the rumpled bed. Instead, he stared at his brother, crossing his arms. ‘Could you warn me next time?’
Rhy gave him a look of horror. ‘Sanct. Were you in public?’
‘No! I was in my room.’
‘Well, then. I thought you might be grateful.’ Rhy finished buttoning up his shirt. ‘Call it my gift to you. All the fun and none of the effort.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. It’s not as if I could have —’ Kell’s mouth snapped shut.
‘Well, obviously not, when you can’t even say it.’ Rhy exhaled and sat down heavily on the bed. ‘What do you want, Kell? For me to become a monk? I don’t see why you bothered giving me back my life if you won’t allow me to live it.’
‘I’m not asking you to become a monk. I’m asking you —’ Kell tailed off. ‘I don’t know what I’m asking you.’ He looked down at Rhy. ‘Is there any way for this not to be awkward as all hell?’
Rhy shrugged. ‘We could always coordinate.’ Kell looked at him with incomprehension. Rhy clarified, ‘We agree on a time, we each meet with our respective lover, and we —’ He trailed off into vaguely obscene gestures.
Kell scoffed. ‘That would be a wonderful plan, except that unlike you, I’m not exactly drowning in offers.’
‘Maybe it’s time to send out that search party for Delilah Bard.’
Kell gave his brother a warning look.
‘Alternatively, you’re always welcome to join in,’ said Rhy.
‘Very funny.’
‘It’s no joke. I can tell you there’s more than one woman in the palace who fantasises about getting both princes into bed.’
Kell made a face. ‘I thought the idea was to avoid people noticing our matching scars.’
Rhy shrugged. ‘Well. You can keep your clothes on if you insist.’
Kell stared for a moment, the image more vivid than he had anticipated. He shook his head. ’This is not a reasonable conversation.’
Rhy got up and went to the mirror, peering in to adjust his curls. ‘In case you hadn’t noticed, we are not in a reasonable situation.’ He sighed and stood back. ‘You think it wasn’t odd for me? I didn’t ask to have you share my bed every time I —’
Silence fell between them. Kell picked over the bottles on Rhy’s sideboard, wondering if any of them contained an elixir that would make this easier. ‘I suppose you’d rather be dead.’
‘No, Kell. I would not rather be dead.’ Rhy exhaled. ‘Why does everything have to be so serious with you? I mean, looked at in a certain light, this is rather funny.’
Kell gave him a dark look.
‘I’m just saying,’ Rhy pursued. ‘We don’t have a choice about this. But we have a choice in how we deal with it. And as far as I see it, our choices are: become celibate for ever, or figure out a way of living with this.’ He raised an eyebrow at Kell. ‘I don’t know about you, but I don’t find option one very appealing.’
Kell sighed. ‘I hate to say this. But you have a point.’
‘That’s what she said.’ Rhy grinned wickedly. When Kell glared, he stepped back, holding up his hands. ‘Too soon?’ Kell shook his head and left. ‘Love you!’ Rhy called after him as the door closed.
*
Late that night, as he lay on the edge of sleep, Rhy felt a pang of desire: not his own. Kell’s.
He lay still, not wanting to do anything to scare the feeling away. For a moment, he simply let himself marvel in it: Kell’s desire, so different from his own, deep and aching. It wasn’t so strange, if he focused on enjoying the sensation without thinking too much about where it came from.
There was a moment of quiet, like someone listening for something. Then he felt Kell’s touch, hesitant at first and then firm, as if he was eager to get this done as swiftly as possible.
Rhy laughed quietly into the dark. ‘Oh, Kell. I’m proud of you.’
His delight lasted until he realised he was achingly hard, and that Kell’s ghostly touch was not going to be enough to resolve the situation. For a moment, he wavered, pondering the ethics of what he was about to do. Finally, he couldn’t take it any more. Fuck it, he thought, and with a groan, he let his hand go to his cock, matching Kell’s movements with his own.
They didn’t naturally align: Rhy’s tendency was to be fast, eager, where Kell’s movements were heavy, his pleasure spreading out through Rhy’s bones with a delicious slowness. He adjusted his rhythm until they were in sync, closing his eyes and letting the sensations roll through him. Wrong, wrong, this is probably very wrong, he thought, as the echoes of Kell’s need resonated with his own, building to an unbearable crescendo. Kell must have been aware by now that he wasn’t alone in this, that Rhy was with him in every stroke, but if he was, it didn’t stop him: he sped up, rushing to a climax that tumbled over them both, and Rhy came harder than he ever had in his life.
*
After Kell fell asleep, loose-limbed and spent, he had a dream he hadn’t had in three years.
It had been the wet, miserable autumn after Alucard Emery left. Rhy had been inconsolable, and Kell’s days and nights had been spent tending to the prince’s ragged emotions: holding him while he sobbed, sleeping next to him when he feared he wouldn’t make it through the night, wrestling him into submission when he got angry enough to endanger himself.
‘He said I belonged to him,’ Rhy gasped, in a voice so wretched Kell barely recognised it. ‘He said I was his.’
Anger surged in Kell, so bright he thought he might set fire to anything he touched. ‘You’re not his,’ he said, trying to keep his voice under control. ‘He doesn’t deserve you.’
Kell’s heart had been full, with the exhausting excess of everything he felt for Rhy: his boundless sorrow at seeing him brought so low, his disproportionate rage at the thought of Emery touching him. Kell had never been in love, but thought that if it hurt half as much as watching Rhy sob brokenly, curled like a child on his bed, he would rather not experience it.
On one of those endless, dark nights, he had left Rhy in a fitful sleep and returned to his own room. The dream had found him there, woven out of sorrow and frustration and a tangled envy he didn’t dare to look at head on.
In the dream, he and Rhy were wrestling. Rhy was winning, or he thought he was, using his growing strength to force Kell to yield. To fight him, Kell had to be cunning: wait for an opening and take it, pinning Rhy’s wrist and turning it until the prince lay under him, gasping and conquered, colour rising in his cheeks. Kell felt a moment of hot triumph. Then, to his horror, Rhy started to cry.
‘Rhy,’ he said, touching his face. ‘What is it?’
Rhy looked up at Kell in misery. ‘I’m his,’ he said.
Kell shook his head, anger flaring. ‘You’re not his.’
Rhy’s eyes went dark with something Kell had never seen. ‘Then whose am I?’
‘You’re mine.’
He didn’t recognise the truth of it until he said it. The words echoed — you’re mine, you’re mine, you’re mine — as Rhy lay gasping and laughing beneath him, their bodies coming together in something that wasn’t wrestling, not any more, the physics of dream-space making it vague and endless.
At eighteen, he’d woken sticky and ashamed. Afterwards, he had rationalised it to himself: just his subconscious, trying to make sense of his intense feelings for someone he wasn’t, after all, related to. Perfectly normal. Nothing to be concerned about.
Now, he woke hard and close to the edge, and before he could think about it, he took himself in hand and thought of Rhy — mine, you’re mine, he muttered under his breath — Rhy, who was still half-asleep, but who woke a few seconds later with a jolt of satisfaction and his brother’s name on his lips.
*
He didn’t look like Kell.
Rhy reminded himself firmly of the fact as Castars pressed him up against the wall, his copper head trailing hot kisses down Rhy’s neck. He was nothing like Kell, not really. His eyes were wrong, for a start. Just his height, the lean muscles of his shoulders, the dark ember of his hair. The only way you could mistake him for Kell was if he was facing away: like when Rhy had seen him across the hall and made a beeline for him, thinking his brother might have finally stopped avoiding him, only to be confronted by a bewildering smile — no, not Kell, not at all — and a look of open desire that stirred something deep in his belly.
Now, fuzzy with wine, Rhy took Castars by the shoulders and steered him to the bed. Dread, Kell’s dread, coiled below the desire in his stomach, but Rhy aggressively ignored it. It seemed less than it had been when he was with Aura, but perhaps that was just the wine dulling it, making it easier for him to focus on Castars unbuttoning his shirt, making the usual noise when he saw the scar over Rhy’s heart.
‘It’s nothing,’ said Rhy, and of course the ardent, foolish man immediately kissed it, as they all did, thinking Rhy’s bravado was some kind of secret cry for help. Rhy imagined Kell feeling Castars’s hot mouth on the naked skin over his own heart. He pushed the thought away. Gently, he moved Castars back. ‘It really has very little sensation left.’ He smiled, a practised, devastating smile. ‘Unlike other areas I could mention.’
Castars laughed and moved down the bed, undoing Rhy’s breeches with practised ease. As he took him in his mouth, Rhy felt it: his own jolt of pleasure, then a lurch of Kell’s panic, shading back into reluctant need. It made it impossible to ignore: Kell was here in bed with them, feeling what Rhy felt, his presence as real as that of his naked lover. Reeling with it, Rhy looked down at Castars’s copper head moving. With a lurch like he was throwing himself off a cliff, he stopped resisting. He let himself imagine it was Kell taking him in his mouth: Kell who would feel his pleasure as his own, who would know exactly how to bring them both to ecstasy. He gasped, throwing his head back, and came in a shuddering rush.
As soon as the fog of his orgasm cleared, deep shame took its place. He buried it by pulling Castars up towards him, taking the other man’s cock in his hand as he looked into his eyes, grey and hooded with desire. Not Kell. Nothing like Kell.
*
Kell walked the corridor to the baths, longing for warm water and silence. He was grimy and cold from a day of traipsing about the city, paying court to various magicians whose favor the king wanted to curry. It was a job more suited for Rhy, but Maxim had insisted that a visit from the royal Antari was the only thing that would please them, even if he lacked the crown prince’s easy charm.
Kell had been avoiding Rhy for days. He didn’t know how to face him. Had his brother felt it, when he’d let his mind go to that buried, unacknowledged place? He doubted it, if his activities last night were anything to go by. He flinched at the memory of shuddering with Rhy’s pleasure while his heart burned with jealousy.
Coming into the baths, he stopped short. Rhy was naked in the water, head tipped back against the side.
‘Oh. I’m sorry.’ Kell turned to go.
‘Don’t be absurd.’ Rhy’s voice was a command. Still, Kell hovered, the tension between them like a taut cord. He thought of the times they had come here before, bathing naked together without shame. He wondered, with an ache of his heart, if that had been with another Rhy, the one who had died: not this one, who stared up at him with tawny eyes that held an answer to his question.
He considered turning away to undress, but that would mean admitting that something had changed. Instead, he disrobed in full view, trying not to let his trembling show. He was aware of Rhy watching him, and felt a spike of arousal, without knowing if it was Rhy’s or his own. He slid into the water, ducking his head under to drown the thrum of his thoughts. When he surfaced, Rhy was waiting for him.
‘So. Fancy meeting you here. I wasn’t aware you still lived in the palace.’ When Kell didn’t reply, Rhy made an exasperated noise. ‘Where have you been?’
Kell’s anger flared at the memory of some other man’s lips on the skin over his heart. Rhy’s heart. ‘You didn’t seem to care much about my whereabouts last night.’
Rhy stretched his arms along the edge of the bath. ‘It never used to bother you who I spent my nights with.’
Kell bit the inside of his cheek. He shouldn’t say it, but it came out anyway, like a sneeze, involuntary and convulsive. ‘It did.’ Rhy’s gaze snapped to him. Kell avoided his eyes. ‘It always did. I told myself it shouldn’t, but —’ He shrugged helplessly. He’d never felt so vulnerable, so open: like he was bleeding out into the warm water.
‘Kell.’ In Rhy’s voice, his name was a caress. ‘What’s happening to us?’
Kell crossed the pool before he could think better of it. He came to rest in front of Rhy: his damp, warm skin, his wet eyelashes startlingly close. Kell lifted his hand through the water and pressed his palm against the seal over Rhy’s heart. He felt the echo of his own touch on the other side of his body, over his own heart, beating as hard as Rhy’s was, thunder against his hand. The ghost-touch became real, Rhy’s hand mirroring his as their breaths came fast: achingly aware of themselves, of each other, of their shared arousal. Rhy’s mouth was tilting towards his. Kell followed the tug on the cord, closing the gap between them.
Rhy gasped into his mouth. Kell hummed in response, and they both shuddered with mingled pleasure and fear. The kiss became a place they were inside, dark and wet, their every movement setting off chain reactions of sensation. It was exactly as absorbing and terrifying as Kell had imagined it would be.
He didn’t know how long they stayed there, in that wondrous, echoing place. He only felt a shiver cross his shoulders, bringing the external world with it: the roughness of Rhy’s cheek, the muscles of his chest where his hand still lingered. Kell had never been with a man, but that meant nothing to the fact that this was Rhy, his Rhy, who he loved more than his own life, and that every second they spent together like this demolished another wall between them.
Their bodies moved in the water. They brushed together, once, an electrifying touch that echoed like thunder after lightning. Then Kell heard footsteps in the corridor.
*
One moment Kell had been there, right there, his hand pressed over Rhy’s heart, his mouth wreaking delicate violence on what was left of his resistance. The next he was gone, the wave that had helped lift him out of the water breaking against Rhy’s shoulders. He stood for a moment in absolute, existential shock. Then he turned quickly, leaning on the side of the pool as his father strode in and stopped, looking at Rhy distractedly. ‘Have you seen Kell?’
‘Kell?’ Rhy heard the strangeness of his own voice. He coughed. ‘No. No, why?’
His father looked at him closely, suspecting he was covering for his brother. Rhy raised his best insouciant eyebrow. ‘Water is transparent, Father. I suspect he’d think of better places to hide.’
‘Never mind,’ said the king, and marched back the way he had come.
Rhy exhaled, trembling, and then the trembling wouldn’t stop, running through him in a shuddering wave until he could barely lift himself out of the water. He stumbled to his feet and went after Kell. But he was gone, all that was left of him a daub of blood on the wall. Rhy touched it, fitting his palm to where Kell’s had been. His brother was probably halfway across the city by now, or in another world, pacing the streets of Grey London in the same turmoil that rolled through his chest. Rhy reached through the air, as if he could use the bond between them to wrench him back.
He spent the next few days in a haze of confusion and misery. From the doubled depth of it, he knew that wherever Kell was, he was feeling it too. If his parents had noticed they were avoiding each other again, they didn’t seem particularly surprised. They knew that Rhy and Kell had always loved each other with a fierce intensity, their fights as bitter and hot as lovers’ quarrels. They waited, as always, for the storm to pass. But Rhy knew it wouldn’t, this time: not unless one of them did something about it.
He held out for three days before swallowing his pride and knocking on Kell’s door.
No answer came. Still, Rhy felt an alertness, a quickening of his own heart. Kell was in there, and he knew who was knocking. Since he hadn’t been told not to, Rhy went in. He found Kell on the couch, staring into a book Rhy was willing to bet he hadn’t turned a single page of.
Rhy went to read over his shoulder. ‘Veskan agricultural policy. Fascinating.’ Kell didn’t respond. ‘You want to know my theory?’ Rhy asked.
‘No.’
‘My theory,’ Rhy went on, ignoring him, ‘is that we’ve always wanted each other, on some level. Subconscious, unacknowledged. Whatever you want to call it. And all the bond has done is — made each of those little seeds of want, sort of, echo back on each other. Until we became aware of them.’
‘Echoing seeds,’ said Kell, finally. ‘You’ve always been a master of metaphor.’
‘Kell, I don’t care if it’s wrong. If you do, I understand. But I just want you back. In — in whatever way you’re happy with.’
Kell put down the book. He swivelled, resting his bare feet on the floor. He looked up at Rhy. ‘I think,’ he started.
‘Yes?’ prompted Rhy, his heart skipping.
‘I think,’ Kell said, ‘I need some wine.’
An hour later, they were sprawled across Kell’s bed playing Sanct. Rhy suspected sex was no longer on the cards, if it ever had been. He couldn’t decide if he was relieved or disappointed. For now, he was just happy to have Kell here, to feel the familiar triumph when that crease between his brows faded and his eyes crinkled in amusement.
‘There’s something I can’t believe we haven’t done yet,’ Rhy said, happily losing another game.
Kell raised an eyebrow as he gathered the cards.
‘Not that,’ said Rhy. ‘Well, not just that.’ He tapped Kell’s arm, feeling the echo. ‘We have the ability to communicate secretly at any time, at any distance. And we’ve barely used it.’
Kell gave him a bemused smile. ‘So what do you suggest?’
‘A secret signal. So we can summon each other at any time.’
‘It’s a good idea. But we need to make it something unmistakeable,’ said Kell. ‘I don’t want to have to drop everything each time you blunder into a cabinet.’
‘I do not blunder into cabinets. I am the epitome of grace,’ Rhy said haughtily. ‘However, I agree it should be something that’s hard to do by accident.’
‘All right. How about this?’
‘Wait!’ Rhy covered his eyes. ‘We can’t be looking at each other while we do it. We have to make sure we can recognise it blind.’
They sat facing away from each other on opposite sides of the bed. Rhy felt lighter than he had in months: like he and Kell were children again, about to play some dangerous and forbidden game. They kept breaking into breathless laughter. ‘No peeking,’ Rhy commanded.
‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ said Kell. ‘Who first? Me or you?’
‘You,’ said Rhy, wondering why his heart was beating so fast. A twist of pain flared on the back of his hand. ‘Ow!’ He rubbed it. ‘Very distinctive. But really, do we have to go with pain?’
‘Pain’s hard to ignore,’ said Kell reasonably. ‘You have the attention span of a goldfish. I don’t want to be gently tapping my wrist for three hours waiting for you to notice.’
‘I won’t be tortured for the sake of your lack of imagination. My turn.’ Rhy clasped his hands, pressing the palms firmly together. Aesthetically, the gesture pleased him: it was beautiful, symbolic.
‘Too faint,’ said Kell brusquely. ‘I can barely tell what you’re doing. What about —’ Rhy felt a sting against his palms as he heard Kell clap.
‘Secret signal,’ Rhy reminded his brother. ‘We can’t very well start randomly breaking into applause.’
‘Fine. Let’s have your next brilliant idea.’
‘What about this?’ Rhy touched the place where his neck met his shoulder. He squeezed and moved his hand down, fingers working the muscle. He was surprised to feel himself shiver.
‘Ah! Not there.’ Kell’s voice had an undercurrent of laughter, and something else that made Rhy curious. He turned to look at Kell and moved his hand slowly again along the same path. Kell shuddered, hand hovering above his shoulder. ‘Rhy,’ he said in a warning voice.
‘What?’ Rhy fought down a smile and did it again. This time, it was unambiguously a caress, fingers moving softly across his skin. ‘Do you like that?’ he half-whispered.
Kell’s head turned, his black eye as inscrutable as always, his blue glassy with desire. Rhy understood, finally, that this was what he’d wanted all along: to make Kell lose control. He crossed the bed, feeling Kell’s sharp anticipation edge into fear. He bent his head to the crook of Kell’s neck and kissed the warm place there, feeling the echo on his own skin. Kell made a choked sound. Rhy’s belly roiled with his brother’s desire and uncertainty.
‘You’re so tense,’ he said wonderingly, hands tracing the taut muscles of Kell’s back.
’It still feels strange.’
Rhy drew back, a pang in his heart. ‘We don’t have to —’
Softly, Kell said, ‘Don’t stop.’
Hesitantly, Rhy bent his mouth to Kell’s neck again. He realised, subconsciously, that Kell wasn’t the only one holding back: he had been pushing down on his own desire, not letting himself feel what he had told himself was forbidden. Now he opened himself to it, let it run through him, electric as the vicarious feeling of Kell’s magic. Kell relaxed into him with a shuddering sigh. Rhy pulled him back into the centre of the bed. Kell turned in his arms, and they lay face to face, the bond between them pulsing like an artery.
‘Close your eyes,’ Rhy whispered. When Kell did, he ran his hand in a slow caress down his own face, stopping at his mouth. He sucked two of his fingers, biting their tips tenderly.
Kell’s mouth opened. ‘Fuck,’ he moaned, and pulled Rhy towards him.
When their mouths met, the doubled pleasure was almost too much. They kissed slowly, finding a level of intensity they could bear. It wasn’t like being with anyone else: every touch set up echoes, ricocheting like reflections down a hall of mirrors. They undressed each other, half-laughing still at the strangeness of it, until they lay naked and twined together, hands moving, mouths locked, all sense of their separate bodies gone: one creature, a wanton thing made of pure desire, pleasuring itself in Kell’s bed.
Rhy had to draw back, breathe, remind himself where his body ended and Kell’s began. Kell held up his shaking hands. ‘I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘I’m feeling so much, I’m afraid I’ll lose control —’
Rhy kissed each palm. He drew Kell’s hands above his head, pinned his wrists there. ‘Kell,’ he said, naming him, letting there be no mistake. He kissed his neck, his chest, the line of his hip. Kell was looking down at him, his heart, their heart going like mad.
‘Rhy,’ Kell whispered, and the want in the word sank through Rhy to his core. He held Kell’s gaze right up to the point that he took him in his mouth.
The flood of sensation hit him with such force he froze. By the time he could move again, he was already half-gone, moaning with the too-muchness of it, of Kell’s pleasure and its undercurrent of shame, of his own delight in making him feel such abandoned desire, until he was grinding helplessly against the bedsheets.
‘Fuck,’ Kell gasped, ‘fuck fuck fuck,’ and Rhy sped up his rhythm, knowing already how close he was, how close they both were. When Kell spasmed and came, he swallowed and brought him all the way off, his own climax shimmering like a mirage, unbearably near.
‘Please —’ he choked, as he crawled half-blind up the bed and into Kell’s grasp. He stroked him once, twice, and they both doubled up with their second orgasm, as Rhy shook and cried out, fingers digging into Kell’s shoulders.
They lay, obliterated with pleasure, aftershocks running through them both in a staggered wave. The world had contracted to the span of Kell’s bed. Rhy began to doubt the existence of anything outside it. He wondered for a dizzying, come-drunk instant if they had discovered another plane of existence: if the power of what had passed between them had created another London, containing only the two of them.
Kell twitched and rolled towards Rhy, his fingers tangling in his hair. ‘I’m sorry. I couldn’t — I couldn’t hold back any longer.’
‘We both need to work on our stamina,’ said Rhy, when he was able to talk.
Kell laughed. The sound was unfamiliar and delicious, and it ran Rhy through like a sword. He pulled Kell back into his chest, kissed the crook of his neck, felt him shudder. They fell asleep that way, holding and held by each other.
*
They still hadn’t agreed on a secret signal. But Rhy being Rhy, it didn’t take him long to find a way to misuse their connection.
There had been a state dinner in honour of the vestra from Arnes’ northern border: part of the king’s continuing efforts to persuade his kingdom that he cared about what happened beyond London’s walls. Rhy had abandoned the proceedings an hour or so before, and Kell had been left to make stilted conversation with the earl of somewhere he’d never heard of. He was trying his best to focus on what the earl had learned from his Veskan neighbours about agricultural policy — curse Rhy, if only he had actually been able to read that book — and was managing reasonably well until he felt a kiss on his hand, hot and lingering.
He actually looked down, before he understood. He suppressed a reluctant smile and pinched the inside of his wrist, a warning. Not now, Rhy.
‘Of course, the truly ingenious thing is their method of crop rotation…’
A caress, in the tender spot where his neck met his shoulder. He shivered all over. The earl gave him a questioning look. ‘Are you cold, Master Kell?’
‘It’s nothing. You were saying — crop rotation?’
‘Well, it’s rather clever, you see, they plant each field in alternate years with alfalfa…’
A slow, firm stroke to his cock.
He closed his eyes and took a gulp of wine. ‘I’m terribly sorry. Urgent Antari business. Excuse me,’ he said, picked up Rhy’s discarded glass, strode round the corner, and nicked his hand with the blade at his wrist. ‘As Tascen Rhy,’ he said through gritted teeth.
He fell out of the air into Rhy’s bed, finding the prince naked, half-hard and laughing uncontrollably. Kell threw the glass over his shoulder, hearing it smash, and pinned Rhy beneath him.
‘Well this is unfair,’ said Rhy, fingering the lapel of Kell’s jacket.
‘Unfair,’ said Kell. ‘Unfair is interrupting an important diplomatic discussion to satisfy your perverse desires.’
‘Not just mine,’ Rhy pointed out, reaching for the evidence of Kell’s arousal. Kell watched Rhy bite his lip as the throb of pleasure caught them both, and wondered how they’d managed to keep their hands off each other for this long.
‘You have a point,’ he admitted.
‘That’s what she —’
Kell smothered Rhy’s laugh with a kiss. He rolled on top of him, delighting in the perversity of being fully clothed while the prince was naked. It clearly delighted Rhy too: he ducked his head, mock-bashful, Kell’s possessive hands on him calling up little cries of want.
‘How long?’ said Rhy breathlessly, nuzzling Kell’s neck, his hot breath raising goosebumps. ‘How long have you wanted me like this?’
Kell pushed against Rhy’s mouth, eyes drifting closed. ‘Three years.’
Rhy stopped. Kell shifted off him.
’Alucard,’ Rhy said with heavy eyes.
Kell frowned. ‘I hated him. I hated him more than made sense, even if he was the man who broke your heart. I couldn’t get away from that hatred. It consumed me. I would wake up sweating, my heart pounding, the sheets smouldering from dreams where I had torn him away from you, beaten him bloody with fists and magic.’ He looked into Rhy’s uncharacteristically serious face. ‘And then, I started to have different dreams. About you.’
Rhy’s expression lightened. ‘Erotic dreams. How unoriginal.’ He accepted Kell’s bite to his neck with a gasp before going on, ’So why didn’t you do something about it?’
‘How could I? I told myself I was confused. After all, I had no reason to think you felt the same way.’
‘I flirted with you outrageously!’
‘You flirt with everyone outrageously.’
‘I suppose that’s true.’ Rhy tipped his head back on the pillow, pensive again. ‘I don’t think I knew. Not as such. I always wanted to — move you. Make you feel things. But I never thought about why. It’s only very recently it became clear to me.’
Kell raised an eyebrow. ‘How recently?’
‘A couple of weeks ago. When I was with Aura, and you were — with me. You were holding back. And I didn’t want you to hold back. I wanted you to come. I wanted us to come, together. And that thought —’ Rhy shuddered, arousal moving through him and into Kell, back again in a returning wave. ‘It’s almost enough, even now, to —’
At the same time, they reached for each other. Their hands moved, finding a shuddering rhythm, and they gasped for breath, foreheads pressed together, riding a shared, cresting wave until it broke, tumbling them both over and over in its wake. Kell wondered as he fell if it would always be this urgent, this essential, and then wondered what he meant, always: as if this was anything that could last. As if they wouldn’t come to their senses, sometime soon. For now, he lay and let pleasant shudders rock him, the warm afterglow spreading through his bones.
Rhy was examining the streak of Kell’s blood on his arm. ‘Terrible misuse of blood magic,’ he murmured in sleepy, post-coital tones. ‘What would Tieren say?’
‘You’re going to talk to me about misusing magic?’
‘I told you. This is our situation. We had to find a way to live with it. And with our usual fantastic teamwork, we did.’
Kell, laughing, gathered Rhy close and kissed the top of his head, inhaling the scent of him, sweat and satisfaction. ‘There’s no problem the two of us can’t solve,’ he said as they drifted into sleep.