‘You take liberties,’ said Laurent. ‘I never gave you permission to call me by my name.’
‘Your Highness,’ said Damen, and the words twisted, wrong in his mouth. He needed to say, Don’t do this. But he couldn’t think past Laurent, improbably close. He felt each shifting inch that divided their bodies with a fluttering, illicit sensation at Laurent’s proximity. He closed his eyes against it, felt his body’s painful yearning. ‘I don’t think you want me. I think you just want me to feel this.’
‘Then, feel it,’ said Laurent.
And slid his hand inside Damen’s open jacket, past his shirt, to his stomach.
It was not possible, in that moment, to do anything but experience Laurent’s hand against his skin. His breath shuddered out of him, Laurent’s touch hot across his navel and sliding lower. He was half aware of the silk bedding, rumpled and disturbed around him, Laurent’s knees and other hand like pins in the silk, holding him down. His jacket was discarded, his shirt half off him. The laces between his legs parted, obedient to Laurent’s fingers, and then he was all undone.
It was Laurent’s face he looked at. He saw as if for the first time the look in Laurent’s eyes, his slightly altered breathing. He was aware of the taut line of Laurent’s back; of the conscious way he held his body. He recalled the line of Laurent’s back in the tower, bent over the table. He heard the tone in Laurent’s voice.
‘I see you are everywhere in proportion.’
Damen said, ‘You’ve seen me roused before.’
‘And I remember what you like.’
Laurent closed a fist around the head, and slid his thumb over the slit, pushing down into it a little.
Damen’s whole body curved. The grip felt more like ownership than a caress. Laurent leaned in, let his thumb delineate a small, wet circle.
‘You liked this too, with Ancel.’
‘That wasn’t Ancel,’ said Damen, the words coming out, raw and honest. ‘That was all you, and you know it.’
He didn’t want to think about Ancel. His body strained, like a strap pulled too tight. He did what was natural to him, but Laurent said, ‘No,’ and he couldn’t touch.
‘You know, Ancel used his mouth,’ he said, almost nonsensically, desperately trying to distract Laurent, to distract himself, fighting to hold himself in place against the sheets.
‘I don’t think I need to,’ said Laurent.
The rise and fall of Laurent’s hand was like the slide of Laurent’s words, like every frustrating argument that they’d ever had, stymied, tangled up in Laurent’s voice. He could feel the tension in Laurent, sharp like the feel of his own heartbeats. Laurent held his former mood within him, constrained, and converted into something else.
He fought it, as it rose inside him, striking out for resistant purchase in the silks above his head. But Laurent’s free hand curtailed his movement, pushing down on him in hot, insistent command. He was caught unexpectedly in Laurent’s eyes, and it hit, in a tangled burst, Laurent fully clothed above him, a prince in full panoply, his shiny boots alongside Damen’s thighs. Even as Damen felt the first tremor rolling up his body, the moment was transforming, too much communicated between them. He felt suddenly that he should look away, that he should stop or turn back. He couldn’t. Laurent’s eyes were dark, wide, and for a moment looked nowhere but at him.
He felt Laurent pulling back, pulling away, shuttering himself, trying but not quite able to manage a cool snap withdrawal.
Laurent said, ‘Adequate.’
Breathing roughened, still trembling with climax, Damen was pushing up, chasing the look in Laurent’s eyes to catch it before it was gone.
He caught Laurent’s wrist, felt the fine bones, and the pulse, before Laurent could rise from the bed.
Damen said, ‘Kiss me.’
His voice was husky with pleasure tha
t he yearned to share. He felt the warm flush that suffused his own skin. He had pushed himself up, so that his body made a curve, the planes of his abdomen shifting. Laurent’s gaze splayed out instinctively over him, then lifted to his own.
He’d caught Laurent’s wrist before, to hold him back from a blow, a knife strike. He held him now. He could feel the desperate urge for retreat. He could feel something else too, Laurent keeping himself apart, as though, this act being finished, he had no template for what to do.
‘Kiss me,’ he said again.
Dark-eyed, Laurent was holding himself in place as though pushing himself past a barrier, the tension in Laurent’s body still telegraphing flight, and Damen felt the shock with his whole body when Laurent’s gaze dropped to his mouth.
His own eyes fell closed as he realised that Laurent was going to do this, and he held himself very still. Laurent kissed with a slight parting of his lips, as though he was unconscious of what he was asking for, and Damen kissed him back carefully, dizzy with the idea that the kiss would deepen.
He drew back before it did, just far enough to watch Laurent’s eyes come open. His heart was pounding. For a moment, looking felt like kissing, an exchange in which the distinctions of intimacy blurred. He was leaning in slowly, tilting Laurent’s jaw with his fingers, and kissing him softly on the neck.