Aster caught at the sides of the ladder, which swayed horribly—or no, that was vertigo, not the ladder reaching its own tipping point.
He’d been unimaginably selfish, dizzyingly so, waiting here and losing himself in Corin’s touch and his kisses and the sound of his voice when every moment counted. It might already be too late, and how had he been sostupid? So reckless and irresponsible? Without further delay, he had to go, without allowing Corin to fight his battles for him, without pretending that there would ever be another man at the gate whom he’d be willing to marry.
Another man who’d take him away from Corin and possess him and fuck him, and Aster would lie there in the dark and close his eyes as someone else pounded into him, or be expected to pound into someone else, and it wouldn’t matter who. It wouldn’t be Corin. The whole court would watch his humiliation. That wouldn’t matter either. He wouldn’t have Corin.
The man he loved.
The man he’d always loved, although he’d tried so hard to hide it: from himself, from Belinda, from Corin, from anyone who observed them at court.
He couldn’t even pretend to hide it from himself anymore, and he doubted he’d been hiding it particularly well from Corin, either.
Distantly, he thought he ought to have been shocked or surprised, that it should’ve come upon him like some kind of revelation. But it was more like opening a birthday present when you already knew what you’d been given.
He loved Corin, adored him, never wanted to be parted from him. If Corin would only tolerate his presence, he’d spend the rest of his life on his knees.
But he couldn’t even beg for that. No matter how foolish his parents had been, he couldn’t leave them and his siblings to face the family’s ruin, not when he could stop it from happening. Even if he’d been powerless, he’d still have wanted and needed to go home to support his mother as best he could.
He couldn’t close his eyes and cover his ears and hide away here on Corin’s cock and allow it all to go to hell, allow his home to be sold and his family disgraced.
Sig had said something else loud and probably coarse, and he and Corin were both laughing now. But Aster couldn’t have picked out an individual word through the rushing in his ears if his life depended on it.
The gate slammed. The world came back into focus around him so abruptly that Aster jumped, the ladder rocking back for real, this time—and he flailed and barely caught himself, landing against the wall with his heart pounding enough to make his vision jerky.
Below him, Corin dropped the bar across the gate and strode away, calling back, “Come in the hall, I’ll make a fire. That was Sig, we’ve campaigned together four times, and gotten drunk together a hundred more. Can’t believe he didn’t wait until a decent hour to come to the door, the fucker…” It sounded like Corin might still be muttering about Sig’s atrocious manners, but he’d gone around the corner into the hall, and his voice faded.
Aster swallowed hard around the lump in his desert-dry throat.
I love you. Please take me captive and chain me to your bed so that I can’t ever leave.
Slowly, so slowly, feeling like he’d aged twenty years in the last three minutes, Aster climbed down the ladder and followed Corin down the corridor. He found him stirring up the fire, still buck naked.
“I’m going to make some breakfast,” Corin said, “since apparently I’m done fucking sleeping for today, God damn it.”
Corin was apparently also an asshole when he got woken up early in the morning.
And he didn’t bother with clothes most of the time.
Possibly, the second made up for the first. Or would have, if Aster had meant to stay. He could distantly imagine a life in which he’d simply admire the view and smile tolerantly as Corin stomped around snarling in the morning.
But that life didn’t exist and never would.
I love you. Don’t let me go.
“Would your friend. Sig. Would he hurt me?” The words felt like they bruised his lips as they left. He couldn’t ask Corin this, of all people. But he had to, even though his stomach churned and his heart squeezed and his vision blurred. “Would he be a good husband, do you think?”
Corin went still. A moment later he dropped the poker with a clatter that made Aster jump an inch in the air.
“What?” He spun around, and Aster fell back a step despite himself. He’d seen the flicker of Corin’s flames in his eyes a dozen times, but never like this. Fire had subsumed his pupils and crept out into his irises, crimson and vermilion. Scales spread over his body in whorling patterns, increasing as Aster watched, rippling down his arms and legs and streaming up his neck. “What did you fucking ask me?”
Aster sucked in as much air as he could, lungs too shallow to hold much at all. “I need to know if Sig would—”
“He’s not going to fucking touch you!” Corin’s teeth, bared in a snarl, had definitely lengthened. That wasn’t Aster’s imagination.
Jealousy? It couldn’t be, could it? Protectiveness, maybe. Or—God, he wanted it to be jealousy, and he might be sick with longing and frustration and misery.
Except that it didn’t matter either way. Even if Corin—he couldn’t think about love, because he knew it couldn’t be true—cared about him, a little bit at least, Aster still had to be married off tosomeone. Someone willing to bow and scrape to the king, someone who’d want to marry into the nobility and make his fortune. Someone who didn’t loathe the Cezanne family with all the hot rage of his dragon’s heart.
Corin would almost certainly rather transform permanently into one of the chipmunks who lived in his chimney than kiss the king’s ass and marry a Cezanne. Even if he—cared about Aster far more than he did. His pride, and more importantly his self-respect, would never allow it.
