The rustle of sheets and the sound of the bed creaking—
It was Damen’s turn to have the breath knocked from him as Laurent pushed him, hard. His back hit the wall beside the shuttered window. The shock of the impact was only slightly less than the shock that came from Laurent pressing against him, pinning him firmly to the wall with his body.
It was not a moment too soon. The shutters swung open, trapping them in the small triangle of space between the wall and the back of the open shutter. They were hidden as precariously as a cuckold behind an open door. Neither of them moved. Neither of them breathed. If Laurent moved back even a half-inch, he’d bump the shutter. To prevent this, he was plastered so tightly against Damen that Damen could feel every crease in the fabric of his garments, through which, the warm, transmitted heat of his body.
‘There’s no one here,’ said Volo.
‘I was sure I heard something,’ said the boy.
Laurent’s hair tickled his neck. Damen stoically endured it. Volo was going to hear his heartbeat. He was surprised that the walls of the building weren’t pounding with it.
‘Just a cat, maybe. You can make it up to me,’ said Volo.
‘Mmm, all right,’ said the boy. ‘Come back to bed.’
Volo turned from the balcony. But of course there was a final act to the farce. In his eagerness to resume his activities, Volo left the shutter open, trapping them there.
Damen suppressed the urge to groan. The whole length of Laurent’s body was flush against his own, thigh against thigh, chest against chest. Breathing was dangerous. Damen needed, increasingly, to interpose a safe distance between their bodies, to push Laurent forcefully away, and couldn’t. Laurent, oblivious, shifted slightly, to look behind himself and view the proximity of the shutter. Stop moving around, Damen almost said; only some thin thread of self-preservation prevented him from speaking aloud. Laurent shifted again, having seen, as Damen saw, no way for them to squeeze out of hiding without giving themselves away. And then Laurent said, in a very quiet, very careful voice, ‘This is . . . not ideal.’
That was an understatement. They were hidden from Volo, but they could be seen very clearly from the other balcony, and the men pursuing them were somewhere in the inn by now. And there were other imperatives.
Damen said, quietly, ‘Look up. If you can climb, we can get out that way.’
‘Wait until they start fucking,’ Laurent said even more softly, the murmured words unheard beyond the curve of Damen’s neck. ‘They’ll be distracted.’
The word fucking sank down into him, even as there was an unmistakable moan from the boy inside the room, ‘There. There—put it in me right there—’ and it was time, beyond time, for them to go—
—and the door to Volo’s room slammed open.
‘They’re in here!’ called an unfamiliar man’s voice.
There was a moment of total confusion, an indignant squawk from the house boy, a shouted protest from Volo, ‘Hey, let go of him!’ the sounds only making sense when Damen realised what might naturally happen to a man who had been sent to apprehend Laurent, and had heard him described, but had never actually seen him.
‘Stay back, old man. It isn’t your business. This is the Prince of Vere.’
‘But—I only paid three coppers for him,’ said Volo, sounding confused.
‘And you should probably put some pants on,’ said the man, adding awkwardly, ‘Your Highness.’
‘What?’ said the boy.
Damen felt Laurent start shaking against him, and realised that, silently, helplessly, he was laughing.
There came the sound of at least two more sets of footsteps striding into the room, greeted with: ‘Here he is. We found him fucking this derelict, disguised as the tavern prostitute.’
‘This is the tavern prostitute. You idiot, the Prince of Vere is so celibate I doubt he even touches himself once every ten years. You. We’re looking for two men. One was a barbarian soldier, a giant animal. The other was blond. Not like this boy. Attractive.’
‘There was a blond lord’s pet downstairs,’ said Volo. ‘Brained like a pea and easy to hoodwink. I don’t think he was the Prince.’
‘I wouldn’t call him blond. More like mousy. And he wasn’t that attractive,’ said the boy, sulkily.
The shaking, progressively, had worsened.
‘Stop enjoying yourself,’ Damen murmured. ‘We’re going to be killed, any minute.’
‘Giant animal,’ said Laurent.
‘Stop it.’