He heard Laurent’s strange, disbelieving breath, and he realised what he had said.
‘I know,’ said Damen, ‘that I did hurt you.’
Laurent’s motionlessness was careful, even his breathing was careful. He didn’t turn back to look at Damen.
‘I hurt you, Laurent.’
‘That’s enough, stop,’ said Laurent.
‘It wasn’t right. You were just a boy. You didn’t deserve what happened to you.’
‘I said that’s enough.’
‘Is it so hard to hear?’
He thought of Auguste, thought how no boy deserved to lose his brother. The room was very quiet. Laurent didn’t look back at him. Deliberately Damen leaned back, his body intentionally relaxed, his weight on his hands on the bed. He didn’t understand the forces that moved in Laurent, but some instinct pushed him to say it.
‘My first time, there was a lot of rolling around. I was eager and had no idea what to do. It’s not like Vere, we don’t watch people doing it in public.’ He said, ‘I still get too caught up near the end. I know I forget myself.’
A silence. It went on too long. He didn’t disturb it, watching the tense line of Laurent’s body.
‘When you kissed me,’ said Laurent, pushing the words out, ‘I liked it. When you took me in your mouth, it was the first time that I had . . . done that.’ He said, ‘I liked it when you—’
Laurent’s breathing shallowed as Damen pushed himself up.
He had kissed Laurent as a slave, but never as himself. They both felt the difference of it, the anticipated kiss so real between them it was as if it was already happening.
The inches of air between them were nothing, and everything. Laurent’s reaction to kissing had always been complex: tense; vulnerable; hot. The tension was the greatest part of it, as though this single act was too much for him, too extreme. And yet, he had asked for it. Kiss me.
Damen lifted his hand, slid his fingers into the short, soft hair at the back of Laurent’s neck, cupping his head. They had never been this close, not with the fact of who he was open between them.
He felt the tension in Laurent rise, the crisis peaking with proximity.
‘I’m not your slave,’ said Damen. ‘I’m a man.’
Don’t think, he’d said, because it was easier than saying, Take me for who I am.
He couldn’t bear that suddenly. He wanted it without pretences, without excuses, his fingers curling hard into Laurent’s hair.
‘It’s me,’ said Damen. ‘It’s me, here with you. Say my name.’
‘Damianos.’
He felt the sundering in Laurent at that, the name an admission, a statement of truth that came out of him, Laurent open to him with nothing to hide behind. He could hear it in Laurent’s voice. Prince-killer.
Laurent shuddered against him as they kissed, as if, having surrendered to it, the painful exchange of brother for lover, he was in some private reality where myth and man met. Even if it was some self-destructive impulse in Laurent, Damen was not noble enough to give it up. He wanted it, felt a surge of purely selfish desire as he thought of it, that Laurent knew it was him. That Laurent wanted this with him.
He pushed Laurent down onto the bed, pushed himself on top, Laurent’s fingers tight in his hair, though fully clothed they could do no more than kiss. It was a closeness that wasn’t enough, limbs tangling. His hands slid impotently down Laurent’s tight-laced clothing. Beneath him, Laurent’s kisses were all open-mouthed. Desire flamed, painful and bright.
It was subsumed, as it had to be, into the act of kissing. His body felt heavy, one form of penetration substituted for another, the tremors in Laurent not that of a single barrier crumbling, but shudders as though one after another were being brought down, each place unexplored, each place deeper than the last.
Prince-killer.
A slide and a push and Laurent was on top of him, looking down. Laurent’s breathing was quickened, his pupils enlarged in the dim light. For a moment they just gazed at each other. Laurent’s gaze splayed out over him, a knee on either side of Damen’s thighs. It was a single, dark-eyed moment of choice, the chance to leave, or stop.
Instead, Laurent took hold of the gold lion pin at Damen’s shoulder, and with a sharp tug he cast it off. It skittered over the marble floor to the far right of the bed.
Cloth unwound itself, slipped from its moorings. Damen’s clothing fell away from him, revealing his body to Laurent’s gaze.