Somehow, though, that hadn’t prepared him for the idea that Corin, when he came home, would do so entirely nude, hard muscles gleaming with melted snow and with shimmering malachite scales still rippling and melting into his skin.
Aster’s jaw fell open and his hand went lax. His cup of wine tipped, and the contents sloshed directly between his legs to soak him from navel to thigh.
ChapterNine
It took even Corin’sdragon eyes a moment to adjust to the change in lighting as he strode into the hall, kicking the door shut behind him. Once he came through the cloud layer, the glare of gray all around and above him and an endless expanse of reflective white below had forced him to use his inner eyelids the rest of the way down. But the glow of the fire…
The fire.
Aster had risen, then, because Corin had left it as coals. And the hall reeked of wine, which…
He stopped, blinked, and brought the scene before him into focus at last: Aster sat by the newly blazing hearth, an open bottle at his elbow and a cup in his hand. He was gaping at Corin as if he’d seen a ghost, and a wet stain was spreading across his groin.
The tilted cup with a last drop falling from the rim clearly showed the source of the wetness.
But the combination of that and Aster’s surprised, horrified face finally pushed Corin over the edge.
He felt it first as a juddering in his stomach and then as a hitch in his breath. And then he bent over, braced himself on his knees, and howled with laughter. Corin’s belly and chest heaved, his shoulders shook, and puffs of smoke laced with an edge of flame huffed out of his mouth as he wheezed.
“It’s not—it’s wine!” Aster’s mournful wail set him off again, helplessly. “You startled me!”
With one last paroxysm, Corin managed to straighten up and rub his eyes. “Sorry. But you…” And he gestured at Aster’s indignant face and soaking-wet pants, barely managing to restrain himself from another cackle.
A long flight tended to leave him loose, relaxed, less human than usual—for good or ill. His senses were heightened and his interest in human proprieties lowered. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew he ought to say more than that, to try to put Aster at his ease. They’d come damn close to fucking. That would’ve been awkward enough. Aster’s total lack of any kind of poise or dignity pushed the awkwardness into the realm of absurdity.
Aster’s elder brother, the heir to the title, had already distinguished himself as a diplomat, probably because he had all the straightforward honesty of an oiled weasel. And Belinda…well, she might be a bitch, but she ruled any ballroom she deigned to enter and any conversation she chose to dominate. Her clothes were always perfect unless she’d rucked up her skirts to get fucked by someone she wasn’t engaged to.
Whether running away from home or spilling wine on himself or doing anything else foolish, Aster didn’t lie as far as Corin could tell. And he certainly lacked his brother’s and sister’s elegance. But he had something a lot more important than that.
“How did you turn out so unlike either of your siblings?” Corin asked.
Aster’s eyes went even wider. “Oh,” he gasped. The corners of his pretty, mobile mouth turned down. Fuck. Corin hadn’t meant it badly. How could he take that as anything but a compliment? “I suppose—everyone wonders that. I once overheard my aunt say that the third time’s apparently the lack of charm. Maybe there’s no better explanation than that.”
What the…? Corin’s temples throbbed trying to process that. He’d met Aster’s aunt once or twice, and he didn’t think she had much room to talk, personally. The woman was a shrew. A beautiful shrew, but apparently that ran in the family…except for Aster.
Who couldn’t seem to meet Corin’s eyes, his gaze directed down in shame, possibly?
Or no. No, perhaps partly shame, but mostly…
Fuck, mostly at Corin’s cock.
Which started to thicken under the attention.
Corin’s breath was coming a bit faster, tension seeping back into him. He’d spent the whole flight, a long one, hoping Aster would be in his right mind when he returned—and hoping the same for himself. He’d desperately wanted to rid himself of the desire to pin Aster face-down and fuck him unconscious. Aster had clearly sobered up. And Corin had thought he’d succeeded in the other part of his plan, too.
One minute was enough to undo it all, apparently. Especially since Aster being sober meant that one of Corin’s greatest sources of reluctance had been removed.
The firelight flickered over Aster’s wide-eyed face and heaving chest, on the white-knuckled grip he had on the arm of his chair and on the cup—a bit belated, that. Aster might have been offended by Corin’s tactless question, or upset by having to give an answer to it, but it certainly hadn’t affected his physical desires. The fire cast enough of a glow to highlight the growing bulge underneath the damp fabric in Aster’s lap.
He could’ve been on a stage set by a particularly clever director, the only thing really visible. The only thing Corin could see, anyway, and that probably would’ve been true even if he’d been in the midst of a sunlit crowd.
Corin flexed his fingers and toes, fighting back the claws that tried to sneak out. A faint, ice-cold breeze through the broken shutters and under the door whispered over his exposed skin. It did nothing to take the edge off of the heat building within him; it only emphasized his nakedness and the fact that he had no barrier at all between him and what he wanted.
What he definitely, desperately wanted, the longing smacking him out of nowhere with renewed force and leaving him grinding his teeth and clenching his fists with the effort of not simplytaking it. He could hear Aster breathing, little needy pants. He could smell his arousal mixed with the spilled wine, sweet and salty and intoxicating.
One leg moved without his volition, and then the other. A third step, and then a fourth. Every nerve ending prickled. Each speck of grit in the stone floor pressed palpably into the soles of his feet. His erection hadn’t reached its peak, but it stuck out in front of him like a dowsing rod searching for Aster’s body. The fire crackled. With a soft little gasp, Aster shifted in his chair, and the cup fell from his hand and clattered to the floor, rolling away into the shadows.
Corin didn’t stop until Aster’s breath brushed his abdomen. Corin looked down and went lightheaded for a moment, almost swaying on his feet. Those softly parted lips were only a couple of inches from his cockhead.
