Charon turned to leave. A maid in the doorway gasped softly as the chair creaked behind him, and Charon heard the slam of a hand on leather.
“You willnotrefuse,” Lord Marteau started to say, and Charon could feel his dominance pushing against his own, like a current from an inlet trying to move an ocean. “It is unwise to reject such a generous offer.”
“It is unwise to try to use your dominance on someone who lives next to the man you want to marry,” Charon said, and he strode out the door. He heard Lord Marteau try to hurry after him, but he kept his gaze fixed. He passed the bright, cheery garden and walked back to the House, barely registering the sounds of Duciel moving around him as people prepared for nightfall. He didn’t even pay notice to Oleander, who was outside tearfully begging Laurent to let them spare an extra room for the cat. He went straight to the work shed behind the house, pulling out the leather strips he’d reserved to make a travel bag.
He put all his energy into shaping the leather, trying not to let his irritation boil over as he thought of the flippant way Lord Marteau had assumed he would win Yves. Plenty of nobles saw courtesans as objects they could buy and discard, and while Charon had thought he’d come to terms with it by now, he could feel the anger simmering under his skin as he worked.
Sabre de Valois was the one to find him that night. Laurent’s husband emerged in the dark garden while Charon stitched straps of his bag together. Sabre had a sturdier build than Laurent, though he was still slight compared to Charon, his long red-brown hair falling unbound over his shoulders.
“I saw you from the window,” he said, and pulled up a chair. “You looked like you might need company.”
Charon didn’t answer.
“Laurent’s been checking for gray hairs lately, thanks to Yves. The next test is the hedge maze, but the one Laurent is worried about is a ball. A masquerade. You’d be surprised how difficult it is to arrange a ball with most of the nobility back from their country estates. I offered to let Laurent take it out on me, but he said it mighthurt.”
“He must be tense,” Charon said. Sabre was a notorious masochist, and it was unclear if he had a limit for pain. That was dangerous for a dom, particularly a sadist. If a submissive couldn’t be trusted to say no when the pain turned to the point of harm, it was the dominant’s job to refuse them.
“He thinks it won’t really end in a wedding,” Sabre said, “just an expensive retirement party. Yves has weeded out most of his suitors by now, and I doubt they’ll pass the test at the ball. It’s odd, though. I always thought Yves hated that kind of thing.”
“He loves dancing,” Charon said. Yves was always dragging Percy and Nanette to the public dance halls in the lower city. It was an old habit from his early life in the country, where entire villages crowded into barns and fields to dance. He knew more dances than the nobility, who had professional tutors to help them memorize the steps. While Charon had only learned a few of the percussive, rhythmic Arkoudai dances, his memories of them were only half-formed, and he didn’t have Yves’ skill.
“Oh, sorry, it’s not that.” Sabre stretched like a cat, revealing the violet collar he wore under his shirt. “I was thinking aboutthe other part of the test. He’ll be wearing a mask. He won’t be able to see a thing. I can’t imagine that will be very helpful for finishing a dance, let alone choosing a husband. I wonder if it might be too much.”
Charon thought of Yves hooded and helpless on a dance floor, hands extended, and a shameful part of him thrilled at the thought of pulling him across the ballroom and into a calm, dark place so he could remove his mask in private. So he could?—
Charon stopped himself. It seemed there really was no escaping Yves.
“He’ll have people to watch him,” Charon said. Laurent wouldn’t allow it otherwise.
Sabre nodded. “Will they be the right people, though?”
Charon looked at him, and Sabre cast his gaze downward, clearly affected by the dominance bleeding off Charon. “Laurent sent you here.”
“I saw you from the window,” Sabre said, too carefully.
“Tell Laurent he has work to do.” Charon set the leather aside, “and keep an eye on Lord Marteau.”
Sabre looked up. “What? Why?”
“He…” Tried to buy Charon? Had an ego? Lost his temper when Charon blatantly insulted him? Those weren’t good enough reasons to have him banned from the contest, and Charon knew it. “He isn’t right.”
“Maybe none of them are,” Sabre said.
“Then he wouldn’t be doing this.” Charon didn’t realize that his dominance had slipped into his voice until he saw Sabre’s glassy-eyed stare. As a masochist, Sabre responded to Charon’s dominance almost too easily. He would have been a difficult case for the interrogators of Arktos.
“Sorry.” Sabre looked down at his feet.
“Go to Laurent,” Charon said. He gathered his bag and went inside. He tried to block out the sound of courtesans with theirclients as he ascended the stairs, but he opened his door in time to hear Yves crying out in apparent pleasure.
He shut the door a little too loudly, and Yves’ voice faltered.
Charon didn’t light the lamp in his room. He went to the wall between his room and Yves’, pressing his forehead to the wood. He could hear movement, rustling, a faint laugh. Yves groaned faintly, and Charon, hating himself for it, reached down to palm his cock. He thought of Yves sprawled beneath him, sweating and blissful, his makeup streaked so Charon could see the freckles on his cheeks and nose. Yves let out a sharp noise through the wall, and Charon stroked himself as he imagined Yves gasping as he took him, Yves reaching for his shoulders, lips parted.
“Oh no.” Yves’ voice floated through the wall, clear enough that he must have been pressed into it face-first. “Are you going topunishme? But I’ve been sogood!”
Charon suppressed a laugh. It was a blatant lie. Yves took a wicked glee in winding up his clients until they slung him over their knees, but that was the point. Yves was probably grinning into the wall when his client wasn’t looking.
A slight thump reverberated on the wall. Had Yves heard Charon laugh? Charon paused, unsure, and then he quietly knocked.
