The patrons in the common room were thinning out. Charls took his leave shortly after, heading upstairs to the second-best room of the establishment.
When he looked over at the card game, Damen saw that Laurent had managed to lose all his coin, but gain the filthy woollen cap. Volo grinned, slapped Laurent soundly on the back in commiseration, then bought him a drink. Then he bought himself a drink. Then he bought himself the house boy, who was offering very generous rates—one copper for a poke, three coppers for the night—and who had warmed up a great deal to Volo now that he had piled in front of him all of Laurent’s coin.
Laurent took the drink and picked his way back across the room, where he put it, untouched, in front of Damen.
‘Spoils of someone else’s victory.’
Although the inn was emptying out, two of the patrons by the fire were possibly within earshot. Damen said, ‘If you wanted a drink and an old hat that badly, you could have just bought them from him. Cheaper and quicker.’
‘It’s the game I like,’ said Laurent. He reached over and appropriated another coin out of the purse Damen carried, then palmed it. ‘Look, I’ve learned a new trick.’ When he opened his hand, it was empty, as if by magic. A second later, the coin dropped out of his sleeve onto the floor. Laurent frowned at it. ‘Well, I don’t have it quite yet.’
‘If the trick is making coins disappear, I think you do have it, actually.’
‘What’s the food like?’ said Laurent, his eyes on the table.
Damen tore off a piece of bread, and held it like a treat to a house cat. ‘Try it.’
Laurent looked at the bread, and then he looked at the men by the fire, and then he looked at Damen, a long, cool look that would have been difficult to hold if Damen had not had, by now, a great deal of practice.
And then he said, ‘All right.’
It took a moment for those words to penetrate. By the time they did, Laurent had settled next to him on the long bench. Laurent straddled it, facing Damen.
Laurent was really going to do it.
Pets in Vere made a teasing production out of this, flirting and making love to their masters’ hands. Laurent, when Damen brought the mouthful of bread to his lips, did none of those things. He maintained an essential fastidiousness. There was almost nothing of pet and master about it at all, except that Damen felt, just for an instant, the warmth of Laurent’s breath against his fingertips.
Verisimilitude, thought Damen.
His gaze dropped to Laurent’s lips. When he forced it upwards, it fixed instead on the earring. The lobe of Laurent’s ear was pierced through with the ornament of his uncle’s child-lover. It suited him, in the mundane sense that it matched his colouring. In another sense, it looked as incongruous as it felt to tear another mouthful of bread from the flat loaf, and lift it to feed him.
Laurent ate the bread. It was like feeding a predator, the same feeling. Laurent was so close that it would be easy to wrap a hand around the back of his neck and draw him closer. He remembered the feel of Laurent’s hair, his skin, and fought the urge to press against Laurent’s lips with the pads of his fingers.
It was the earring. Laurent was always so austere. The earring reframed him. It gave the appearance of a sensual side, sophisticated and subtle.
But that side didn’t exist. The glint of sapphires was dangerous. As Nicaise had been dangerous. Nothing in Vere was as it seemed.
Another piece of bread. Laurent’s lips brushed against his fingertips. It was brief and soft. This wasn’t what he’d intended when he picked up the bread. He had some sense that his plans had been overturned, that Laurent knew exactly what he was doing. The touch resembled the first brush of lips in the kind of sensual kiss that begins as a series of smaller kisses, and then, slowly, deepens. Damen felt his breathing change.
He reminded himself forcefully of who this was. Laurent, his captor. He made himself recall the fall of each lash on his back, but thanks to some misfiring of the brain, found himself instead in the memory of Laurent’s wet skin in the baths, the way his limbs fitted together like a hilt fitted to the blade of a balanced sword.
Laurent finished the morsel, then rested a hand on Damen’s thigh, and slowly slid it upward.
‘Control yourself,’ said Laurent.
And shifted in, until, facing one another on the straddled bench, they were almost chest to chest. Laurent’s hair tickled against Damen’s cheek as he brought his lips to Damen’s ear.
‘You and I are almost the last ones here,’ Laurent murmured.
‘And so?’
The next murmur slid softly into Damen’s ear, so that he felt the shape of each word, made of lips and breath.
‘And so, take me upstairs,’ said Laurent. ‘Don’t you think we’ve waited long enough?’
It was Laurent who led the way, trailing up the stairs, with Damen following. He was aware of each step, and he found his pulse beating fast beneath his skin.
The third door at the top of the stairs. The room was warmed with a well-tended fire in a large hearth. It had thick plastered walls and a window with a small balcony. Its one large bed had cosy-looking bedding and a sturdy dark wooden headboard that was intricately carved with a interlocking pattern of diamonds. There were a few other pieces of furniture, a low chest, a chair by the door.