“When someone tries to kill you, he isn’t going to give you a signal for when you need to defend yourself.” Corin lunged again at about half his full speed and strength and Aster parried, barely, but didn’t manage a riposte. “Good. Again.”
They quickly settled into a rhythm—more Corin putting Aster through his paces and teaching him than any kind of real fight, but it held Corin’s interest as much as a challenging bout would have done, merely in a different way. He’d always enjoyed training the squires.
Of course, his time had been most usefully spent honing the skills of the most advanced students; a private lesson from Sir Corin had been an honor only second—and perhaps not even second, for some—to the notice of the king. Corin didn’t have an inflated opinion of himself, he didn’t think, but he’d have had to be blind to miss the hero worship he received from the younger contingent of knights and squires and soldiers.
Anyway, he knew damn well how good he was with a sword. That wasn’t arrogance, it was realism.
Round and round they went, working up a sweat—in Aster’s case, anyway, since dragons didn’t perspire—and a pleasant warmth in the muscles and joints, loose and easy. The rasp of Aster’s boots and the whisper of Corin’s feet on the stone, the scrape and clink of their swords, Etallon’s snuffling, all of it made a delightful music, the sound of life and activity. Something Corin hadn’t even quite realized how much he’d been longing for until Aster came and shook up his solitary, dull routine.
“Again,” Corin said, “and go slower this time. Get it right first. Speed can come with practice. I’ll go slowly too.”
And he did, moving through an attack steadily and smoothly, allowing Aster to counter it the way Corin had demonstrated a few minutes before. He didn’t have nearly the skill of those Corin had trained before, not even close. But his eagerness, the way he hung on Corin’s every word and watched him so closely, tried so hard…that made up for it.
Or perhaps watching his lovely body bend and stretch made up for it. Or the way the exercise brought a healthy flush to his cheeks and lips, or the way his eyes shone. Corin had sometimes appreciated his opponents in a general sort of way, but he’d always been more focused on the swordplay than on the possibility of…well, a different kind of swordplay.
With Aster, every time their foils touched it felt like a caress, a tease. They circled closer. Aster tried to parry Corin’s thrust and failed, his eyes gone wide, his teeth digging into his lower lip in concentration.
And that was quite enough of that.
Corin twisted his wrist and neatly caught Aster’s blade with his, flicking it out of his hand and sending it spinning away across the courtyard where it landed with a clatter half in a pile of slush. If someone else had treated a part of his hoard that way he’d have picked it up, cleaned it off carefully, and then used it to slit the offender’s throat. But Aster had let out a little cry and then gazed at him in awe, as if he’d done something spectacular. It wasn’t much of a trick, really, but he’d executed it so swiftly and neatly that maybe it’d seemed like it.
Hero worship had never affected him this way. He’d been flattered, perhaps, mostly indifferent. It’d never made his cock go from half-mast to rock hard in an instant, never set his heart hammering, never left him almost shaking with the need to touch.
If he’d ever caught Aster looking at him like this at the palace, with desire and admiration shining in his blue eyes…
He flung his sword after Aster’s. Fuck it. He’d clean them later.
And he seized him around the waist, forced him back over his arm, and took his mouth ruthlessly, swallowing his cry of surprise.
Aster melted into his arms, lips parting under Corin’s assault, one leg coming up to wrap around him and reel him in, closer, between his legs, God, he’d take him right here—
“Ho there, in the tower!” Three loud bangs echoed all the way out to the courtyard. “Open up! Lord Aster, come out!”
Corin wrenched his mouth away from Aster’s. “You have got to be—fuckingfuck!”
The pounding repeated, louder this time.
“I suppose you have to go,” Aster said, breathlessly and with gratifying regret. He hadn’t let go, and he rubbed up against Corin’s cock as if he couldn’t help himself. “Unless you want me to—”
Corin cut that particular bit of idiocy off with a kiss. “Don’t keep asking that,” he said roughly, and forced himself to let Aster go and stride for the front gate. “This one’s probably as terrible as all the others.”
Maybe he could adjust his shirt so as to hide his erection from whatever idiot had chosen to get brutally and efficiently cut into pieces and flung off the bridge this morning.
On the other hand, once in pieces at the bottom of the canyon he’d be unable to gossip about how the mighty but very strange Sir Corin fought duels with a cockstand. He nodded to himself, pleased with his own infallible logic, and went to rid himself of his unwelcome visitor.
He’d deal with his cock when he returned. Aster wasn’t going anywhere.
ChapterTwenty
“Oh, for—what thefucknow?” Corin groaned, and Aster lifted his head, barely conscious, muzzily blinking at the pale squares of the windows and trying to brush hair out of his eyes. Corin flung the blankets back and rolled out of bed, cursing as he tripped over something Aster couldn’t see and then hopping his way to the window.
If he hadn’t been so disoriented after waking suddenly from one of the most interrupted nights of sleep of his life—not that he really had anything to complain about, given the nature of the very thick, hard interruptions—he might’ve laughed. What had woken him, anyway? He’d startled to consciousness a moment before Corin spoke.
“Fuck this,” Corin growled. “Unfuckingbelievable. It’s not even dawn.” A moment later, a tinny-sounding trumpet blast—the second, no doubt, and now he knew how he’d been rousted—made Aster jump. “Damn it, I can’t see much in all this mist. Who brings an actual herald to something like this? I’m going to remove one of his limbs just for that. Probably one of the herald’s too,” Corin added, and stomped past the bed, obviously making for the stairs.
His massive cock at morning half-mast passed within two feet of Aster’s face as he went by, the double ridges flushed dark green and his heavy bollocks swinging. For a moment Aster lost all power of rational thought.
And then he rolled over in time to catch Corin on his way out the door and call out, “You’re not wearing any pants!”
