Greenwode

by J Tullos Hennig

  Like he wanted to get away.

  Rob bent closer, set his fingers to Gamelyn’s shoulder, and pulled at the sleeve. The lanyard, still wrapped in those fingers, rolled and tugged in the smooth wake of the linen, and Rob’s thumb followed, a callused caress. The snag and smooth of that hand down his arm, the sight of fingers trailing, lingering over fabric, sinew and flesh, the feel of the cloth falling free… yet the fingers hesitated, lingered, just a touch. Just a touch, and Gamelyn was rising, immediate and hard as any stallion scenting a mare in season.

  Rob’s nostrils flared; his dark eyes lit as if one of the fireflies he’d beckoned had kindled, smoldering, behind them. His expression tipped, from arrogant to assailable. He brought his leather-tangled hand to Gamelyn’s cheek, riffled his fingers through the lock of hair falling across Gamelyn’s eyes.

  And any shame, any righteous protest choked itself in Gamelyn’s throat, charred beneath a sudden conflagration of need.

  And Rob cupped his hand at Gamelyn’s nape, leaned forward, took Gamelyn’s mouth with his.

  Again, the shock of touch. The hand firm at his nape, the roll and bite of leather against neck hair, Rob’s mouth upon his—gentle, so gentle—but merciless. Gamelyn was still half snared by the knife-pinned tunic, now Rob’s mouth and body and hands pinned him, as suddenly fierce and unforgiving as the realization that, somehow, Gamelyn was kissing him back.

  It was inconceivable that a body could contain this much raw sensation and not combust. No mercy. No mercy—and it broke something within Gamelyn, sent him shuddering and whining thinly in his throat. Rob cupped Gamelyn’s face in both hands, drank his whimpers like brandywine and laved the dregs with his tongue.

  Somehow Gamelyn’s swordbelt had kinked crossways, and his knife was working its way between them… nay, that was no blade. It was Rob.

  Gamelyn reared back, breaking the kiss. The old oak caught him, held him, and Rob kept peering at him. Both of them were heaving air as if they had been running full-out through knee-high overgrowth. Rob bent in again; in a brief flare of panic, Gamelyn ducked his head sideways. He was thoroughly unprepared for how Rob nuzzled at his cheek, breathed in his ear, then ran his tongue along the rim. Was just as sideswiped by how his body quivered, arched and sought Rob’s, recognizing the lithe power of it, drawn to the heat of it like… like….

  Like fire, bewitched to the gentle, tenacious sway of some mythic forest lord. Like fireflies….

  “What are you doing to me?” The whimper escaped before Gamelyn could bite it back.

  The hands cupping Gamelyn’s face shook, stilled. The fleetest of hesitations, then Rob gave that tiny shrug of his, relegating such matters to the realm of plain and unfettered. Instead he ran his tongue over Gamelyn’s lower lip, whispered, “What do you think I’m doing?”

  “I think….”

  “Stop thinking, then.” It was a growl.

  “I…. We can’t…. I…. Oh.” This as Rob nipped at his upper lip, gave a slow, fabulous shove of his hips.

  “I think we are.”

  “But I…. We….” This time it was his sword that tugged sideways and dug its pommel into the lower edge of Gamelyn’s ribcage. Yet was so… insignificant beneath the pressure of Rob’s body, of the hard arc butting against his own, pinned between their bodies and against the tree. “I…. You…. We’re….”

  “Shut the bloody fuck up, Gamelyn.” Rob bent closer, nipped Gamelyn’s mouth open. Stole the whimper from Gamelyn’s throat, answered it with tongue and teeth. Shoved his hand down between them, then with a shift and a wriggle and a twist of his hand….

  Oh, God. Oh, God….

  He was going to die. And then he was going to Hell.

  “Bloody damn.” Rob gave a sudden murmur against Gamelyn’s mouth. “You never have, have you? At all. You really never have—”

  With a growl of rent fabric, Gamelyn yanked his arm from the dagger’s point and cupped both hands against Rob’s temples. Snarled his fingers in black curls. Rob’s mouth tilted in a smirk, and Gamelyn covered it with his own, shoved his hips forward as Rob’s hand claimed him again with a stroke and squeeze.

  Again the sword lurched against Gamelyn’s hip, some wildly improbable chaperone of virtue. This time it was Rob who winced. With a frustrated growl, he yanked at the swordbelt. He didn’t stop kissing Gamelyn, but gave several more growls against Gamelyn’s teeth as the belt foiled him. Gamelyn reached down, fumbled at the catch and loosed it; belt and weapons hit the roots of the oak with a dull ring of sheathed metal. But that was insignificant, also, beneath the reality of Rob snaking his hand into first Gamelyn’s breeks then his braies beneath, shoving them impatiently down, freeing.

  “My, what a fellow you have there,” Rob purred, another small quirk tucking into his lip. “Almost as large as that bloody fancy pig-sticker you insist on wearin’. Sir Gamelyn.” Again, a slap with the kiss; Gamelyn thought to protest that last, for Rob never, ever meant it save in mockery. Instead he found himself hung on Rob’s eyes. They were fathomless as the trees tracing the inky sky, glimmering with the firefly flashes as if filled with stars.

  Looking at him.

  Gamelyn was going to die, unshriven and with every sense he owned cupped in the palm of Rob’s hand, and he didn’t care. Rob was shoving him against the tree, hard, yet Gamelyn barely felt the bark abrading his bare back. All he knew was the fierce, damp breaths spent into his mouth, the hard, hot line of Rob’s body. Gamelyn groped down with his free hand, fumbled and then found what he sought. It lurched against his fingers, butting against his palm, eager.

  “Aye, that’s it, you know what to do,” Rob breathed in his ear. “Or do your sort not know how to have a good wank, either?” This was accompanied by a slide-stroke-twist of Rob’s fingers that nearly made Gamelyn’s eyes bug out of his head.

  Maybe “his sort” didn’t know how to have a good wank.

  The silken weight in Gamelyn’s palm lurched again as he ran experimental fingertips down the underside. Rob grazed his neck with his teeth, his chest expanded in a quick, delighted sigh, and Gamelyn almost came, then and there, just from the sound of it. The knowledge that he’d caused it.

  The reality that he could cause it again.

  And Rob kept looking at him, from their hands back to Gamelyn’s face. Then he smiled, a fleeting, wild thing half of delight and all of deviltry, and knelt.

  Get up, you idiot! Gamelyn almost said, because surely this was taking a bad joke entirely too far. Instead he nearly swallowed his tongue as Rob gave an impatient yank of Gamelyn’s breeks down to his ankles, took his erection in both hands, and leaned forward.

  Searing wet, the caress-nip-tug of fingers, the mind-boggling vision of Rob’s tongue curling and lapping, then his mouth widening, taking. Perhaps the sparks flooding the back of Gamelyn’s eyes were from knocking his head back against the tree. Perhaps he was no longer going to die but actually dying, with Rob’s hands and mouth the only things to hold his debauched corpse. Perhaps it was wrong—had to be because it felt so… damned… good—so then it was filthy wrong that all Gamelyn wanted was to arch forward, shudder and shove and welcome death if only Rob’s tongue and teeth would accompany him there.

  And those eyes, dark-lit as the pool beside them, soft and wanton and still watching him. Agile, callused fingers trailing up his belly to tease at his ribs, the lacing to Gamelyn’s tunic still twined in them, a bite and chafe as seasoning to the smooth, gentle touch. Rob’s eyes gleamed as Gamelyn gave a shivery moan, sent his hand curling around and down to clutch at Gamelyn’s haunch, urging. Took him deeper, suckled, nipped.

  Just like that it was over; no stopping it any more than Gamelyn could stop himself from jerking his hips, twining his fingers into black hair, and thrusting hard into that lovely, all too capable mouth, gasping Rob’s name.

  Over.

  Rob pulled him down, forward; Gamelyn wobbled to his knees, braies and breeks still tangled at his ankles and hands still wound tight into Rob’s
hair, breath hoarse and huge against the stillness.

  And Rob was still watching him.

  Again, that leather-wrapped hand lifted to push the sweat-damp hair back from Gamelyn’s forehead, so gentle as to hardly be believed. Rob leaned forward, nuzzled his cheek, and before Gamelyn could even speak, Rob was pulling him down into the grass and curling up against him, as close as fur to skin.

  It swallowed him entire: the touching, the nearness. It was twice as intimate and thoroughly as devastating as the sex had been.

  “God,” Gamelyn whispered. “What… what have you done to me?”

  “Are y’ talking to your god,” Rob murmured against his ear, “or me?”

  Gamelyn wasn’t altogether sure he knew, and it gave him another deep-set shiver.

  “Let’s see, then,” Rob continued, still that throaty murmur that stole every sense Gamelyn had left. “I’ve thrown a knife at you, kissed you, wanked and tongued your knees out from under you.” His mouth curved against Gamelyn’s cheek, a bare hint that merely confirmed the rich satisfaction in Rob’s voice. “Aren’t you glad I decided to bend the knee, m’lord?”

  “Stop… stop calling me that.”

  “Mm.” Rob trailed his hands over Gamelyn’s ribcage, sending twin flickers of pure sensation up and down his spine. Too much… it was too much, and Gamelyn shuddered, made a slight retreat. Unaccountably, it didn’t seem to put Rob off. He seemed to understand, which was impossible because Gamelyn wasn’t sure he comprehended anything at the moment. “Aye, well. There’s no need rushing you, after all. Not when you’ve given me such a gift.”

  “Gift?”

  Rob rose slightly, propped on an elbow, chin against his cheek. “’Tis good fortune to share new pleasures.” He was smiling again, that lovely, unguarded expression that twisted Gamelyn’s head off its axis and left him a-stagger. “All flesh is a gift to the Lady; to find a new delight is doubly blessed.”

  Gamelyn didn’t know what to do with any of it: the words, that smile, the hand that had crept around to tickle the downy ceriphs of gilt hair on Gamelyn’s chest, the quite unsated, substantial heat which gave a heavy lurch and quiver against the curve where Gamelyn’s thigh and buttock met. And he certainly didn’t know what to do with what Rob said next, in a voice soft as the grass that cradled them, “I’ve looked at you all this time and never seen you.”

  The implied emphasis begged a response. Of its own accord, Gamelyn’s hand reached out, stroked the unruly forelock back from Rob’s temple.

  The hand was trembling.

  Rob smiled and cupped it with his own, then kissed it and rolled to a crouch. “How is it someone who knows so many ways to make war knows nowt of how to make love?”

  The question sent a small culpable shiver down Gamelyn’s very bare tailbone. Love.

  Two lads couldn’t love, not like this.

  The thought drained from his mind as Rob stood and stretched, lithe as a prowling wolf and nigh boneless with grace.

  God, but he was… beautiful.

  “Sweet Lady, but I need a bath.” Rob held out his hand. “Come swimming with me.”

  “I don’t—”

  “You didna know how to kiss me but a little while ago. You’re needing a bath.”

  Hell suddenly seemed so cold and far away, compared to the light in Rob’s eyes.

  XV

  THERE WAS sunlight sending a warm tickle across his cheekbones and a line of heat up and down his front. Something with the sleek-fine texture of flax clung to the damp of his lips and the unshaven scruff of his chin, and in his nostrils lingered the scent of hay and lake water, oak bark and bruised bracken.

  Rob opened his eyes upon a lover in his arms, and his heart jerked in his chest as he remembered. Yesterday, and into the night. From fear had sprung fury, then frustration, to the wrench of parting…. Will, he thought with a bitter pang… to the cry of his heart into the forest, asking for answers. How the answers had come to him, first with the fireflies gathering, then this.

  This. His heart jerked again, lurched up into his throat then gave an almighty thud and slip back down against his breastbone. He nuzzled his lips against the still damp silk of Gamelyn’s ruddy-gold hair and breathed in, mapping the scent of him as much as Rob had mapped the length and breadth of him by touch during the night.

  This. He’d had lovers, loved most of them after one fashion or another, but….

  This.

  Of all the things he had Seen, why never had he recognized this other self looking from Gamelyn’s green eyes? Never dreamed that they could share a breath to warm his heart and spin out behind his eyes, untangle every knotted skein and weave tynged into such possibilities? No longer merely a ghost in the night with a fate no one could feel, no longer a sport, a mystery wrapped in a riddle, unseen beneath the threat/promise/surety of a dark, smothering cowl.

  It should have been impossible. Yet here they were.

  And oh, but Gamelyn undressed all lovely. It must be some cruel order of family or Church that had so far kept him unbroached, for surely he could have already had his pick of partners. He was substantial, as powerful as the warhorse he rode, muscles all layered and sculpted beneath pale skin, well able for that great longsword stuck into the ground beside them. And the freckles on him!—he had those lovely freckles everywhere, even misting about the light fox’s-pelt leading from the dip of navel down.

  Rob smirked. Quite a longbow, there. In fact, he would swear he remembered his tongue mapping more than a few freckles there, too.

  And bloody damn but it was tempting—more than tempting—to kiss Gamelyn awake, perhaps indulge the sudden tightening in his groin that was already insinuating itself into the cleft of those copper-dusted buttocks.

  Rob entertained the sudden fantasy of bending Gamelyn over the roots of their sheltering oak and shagging him until he cried mercy, then smirked as his anatomy lurched eagerly toward just that goal. It was obviously not satisfied with Gamelyn’s awkward but eager hands during their swim last night, or with the frotting on the bank after, or even the sleepy hand play as they’d curled up beneath the shadows of the old oak. Aye, that last had been after they’d rolled atop the crossed—and bits-pinching—pile of Gamelyn’s sheathed sword and quillion knife. Rob had, in a fit of temper at the bloody things, thrown the knife so that it stuck in the oak next to his own, still imbedded in the bark along with a piece of Gamelyn’s favorite tunic. Then Rob had unsheathed the sword and stuck it in the ground. There must be something to what his mam was always teasing about boys and pointy things, because not only had Gamelyn watched him do both with plain lust in his eyes, but they’d both gotten hard as posts, and if it hadn’t been for the fact they’d tongued and stroked each other silly several times already, there would have been rutting. Under or over, Rob wasn’t picky. Though his knob certainly had a firm preference this morning.

  His stomach, however, was talking even louder. He was going to wake the dead with it, let alone one shagged-out lad who was frankly bloody gorgeous as he lay there, sleeping in Rob’s arms.

  Rob inched out from under Gamelyn, cautious and noiseless. He rose and put on his clothes, still without a sound, took up his bow and two arrows, then left Gamelyn sleeping cradled by the oak.

  After all, there wasn’t owt couldn’t be improved by a good breakfast.

  WHEN ROB returned, not long after, it was with a brace of coneys hanging from his belt, retrieved arrows stuck into the knotted cache of his hair, his bow carelessly slung over one shoulder and a song of dubious repute on his lips.

  The song warbled and went silent as he came across Gamelyn snugging his swordbelt about his hips, fully dressed save for his unlaced tunic and the “bloody fancy pig-sticker” still stuck in the oak behind Gamelyn.

  No doubt the tunic was unlaced only because Rob still wore the lanyard, wrapped about his wrist.

  They both stopped mid-motion, staring at each other. The copse was quiet around them, broken only by the birds fluttering from bran
ch to branch, the sudden splash of a fish, the burbling of the stream that fed the little mere.

  Gamelyn was the first to look away, his fingers resuming their rhythm. “I thought….” Fingers tangling against the leather, he trailed off and flushed. “I wasn’t sure you were returning.”

  “And why shouldn’t I?” Rob frowned and held up the two rabbits. “You were sleeping, so I thought I’d be fetching breakfast.”

  Gamelyn remained silent, resumed buckling his swordbelt. Once finished, he set to tying off the scabbard’s thigh rigging.

  “’Tis what I do, most times,” Rob continued, feeling as if he was forcing the words from his throat. “When Marion goes hunting with me, she starts the fire. She’s not one to be out hunting so early.”

  Still silence. Gamelyn was still finding inordinate interest in arranging his sword on his hip.

  “There’s nowt, though, like the feel of a forest morning on your skin, the mist in your lungs. Everything’s new, somehow. Alive.”

  Usually it was Gamelyn who babbled, too quick with words and uneasy of silence. But now and here they had switched places, and Rob, unable to contain the spew of words, finally, finally understood what it was that made Gamelyn sometimes just not shut up.

  It was curling in the pit of his gut right now, a warning as chill as the set of Gamelyn’s shoulders.

  Or Gamelyn’s words, quick and just that much too forced. “I have to go.”

  Rob considered this, made himself move again, a careful advance. He reached the spot where he’d woken not so long ago, tangled in a lover’s arms and, taking the arrows from his hair, stuck them in the ground. Considered that, at this moment, pointy things seemed more to hollow his heart than fill his cod-wrap. “You… have to go,” he repeated, quiet.