“Less that and more an atavistic terror of the might of our allies,” Jahir confessed, and added shakily, “Cousin… please….”
Lisinthir smiled. “Kiss me first.”
When anyone could walk in on them—couldn’t they? How did the service in this place work? And yet, he could not say no. He dipped his head and touched his mouth to the base of his cousin’s throat, and accepted the hand he felt rest on the back of his neck with what he hoped was a mostly concealed shudder. Not that it mattered, when Lisinthir could feel his desire and ambivalence and fear through his skin.
“Sit.” Gently. “They need to be summoned to enter, and the glass is filmed by default. We’re safe enough.”
“Did you research this place in anticipation of my arrival?”
Lisinthir laughed, pulling out a chair. “Of course. What else? Who would you have brought to a restaurant like this? Who would have taken you?”
Jahir looked away.
“Ah, and there it is again.” Lisinthir leaned over, set fingertips under Jahir’s chin and tipped his face up, ever-so-slightly. “What is this, then? Money troubles?”
“Not… as such. But my situation has caused some friction.”
“The fact that you’re rich?” Lisinthir chuckled. “I would have thought lack of money a sounder recipe for strife.”
“If we’d both lacked for it, we would have been less aware of it.” Jahir finally sat, finding it strange that he was willing to accept his cousin pulling the chair out for him. “And if we’d both been well-heeled, again. But I have always had more than him.”
“And that made him uncomfortable, as the Alliance clings to its egalitarianism with all the ferocious claws of its Pelted progenitors.” Lisinthir settled across from him, his posture impeccable, as if the linen tablecloth and its spotless setting had drawn their shared heritage from him. It was very like an Eldritch high table, save that the candles had been replaced by glowing spheres, delicate as soap bubbles, held in place through some magic he could not divine.
“It is a relief to be able to buy something without having to hide how much it cost me,” Jahir admitted. “I love him, cousin, but the inability to share my stipend without apologizing for it is burdensome.”
“Fear not, then. With me you can be as extravagant as you please and all it will earn you is my gratitude.”
“Expressed no doubt in kisses.”
“Expressed in kisses, when not expressed in teeth and knives.”
Jahir stopped in the act of reaching for the menu, an anachronism in flawless parchment on the plate. Perusing his own, Lisinthir did not look up as he said, “And what has caused you to freeze so deliciously, then? Was it the teeth or the knives?”
When he was sure of his voice, Jahir said, “I would not want to do all your work for you, cousin.”
Lisinthir did look up then, and laughed.
There were no prices on the menu. There were no choices either. The restaurant offered a single meal in four courses, designed by the chef to take advantage of the best of the ingredients purchased that day and adjusted to the diner’s species. There was a suggested wine pairing for each course. There was a suggested aperitif as well. And a suggested dessert wine, and cognac.
“You want me drunk,” Jahir observed.
“It might help.”
That had been so unexpectedly serious that he looked up again. Lisinthir waited until their eyes met to smile, whimsically, a little lopsided curve of the mouth.
Jahir’s heart squeezed. “I don’t need this much. My tolerance is low.”
“Then I’ll have your serving with mine, because my tolerance remains high.”
“And will it help you?”
Lisinthir said, “I’m not sure. But I want to be careful of you, cousin.” He chuckled. “Also, I like alcohol, I’m afraid.”
“So long as you’re not inclined to become an addict again.”
“No. I have too much to do. You understand.”
He did. Jahir set the menu down. “Let us summon the waiter, then. I have a meal to buy us.”
It was a sublime dinner and, God and Lady be thanked, a light one. Though Jahir half-expected his cousin to demand to feed him, or some other outrageous intimacy, Lisinthir remained on his side of the table, all his courtier’s manners brought to play. To converse with him was enough exhilaration without adding anything more salacious, with their discussion flowing seamlessly from Universal to their own tongue, from flirtation to politics, covering ground only they would have understood: twin noble heirs to the royal house of a dying world, ejected from it into a broader universe. The wine, the privacy, the sense of floating so far above and apart from the tumult, all of it was heady. If Lisinthir had intended dinner to divorce him from his anxieties, he’d succeeded. Jahir could even find humor in it when they returned to the suite, enough to say, “And now the kissing and the fondling, I imagine?”
“Are you so eager for it, then? I seem to recall you dreading it.” Mischief, yes. But provocation as well.
“You’ll own that you are intimidating, now and then.”
“Now and then!” Lisinthir drew off his coat and tossed it on one of the chairs before advancing on him. Such slow steps, to flow so. Jahir wondered if this was some effect of the succession of alcohols he’d consumed, to see it coming and be unequal to moving away.
“Now and then,” he repeated, and accepted the hand that caught his chin and held him in place for his cousin’s scrutiny.
“You really don’t hold your wine at all, do you,” Lisinthir said, his gentle amusement an effervescence between their skins.
“I may not be entirely in possession of myself,” Jahir agreed. “Particularly as I have said I would be ceding that possession to you.”
“Did you!”
“My arrival should be taken as an explicit grant, I would imagine.”
Lisinthir chuckled, voice gone husky. He dragged a finger over Jahir’s lips. “I would not want you to regret in the morning.”
“Ah, but you said… no deflowering tonight, yes?”
“You are correct. And this is another good reason why I shan’t.”
“And if I asked you to?”
Lisinthir chuckled, his nose trailing along Jahir’s jaw. “You already have. Or have you forgotten already?”
Half-dizzied with inebriation and desire did not seem the best state to test his very small understanding of Chatcaavan... or perhaps it was the very best state, as he found himself indifferent at the thought of error. So he tried it, the sharp syllables muddied in a mouth that wanted very much to gasp at the unexpected nip at his collarbone. “Don’t make me wait.”
Lisinthir froze, eyes flicking up to his with such predatory intensity that he stopped breathing. The release when his cousin relaxed was almost orgasmic. Almost. “I see you have been spending our time apart profitably.”
“You sometimes speak it, when you aren’t thinking,” Jahir offered in Universal. “I am hoping to greet you properly in that state.”
That won him a chuckle. Lisinthir framed his face with his hands and pressed a smiling kiss on his mouth. “Your accent is execrable and your grammar bereft. I will obviously have to educate you properly.”
He tried again, because it was likely to evoke either mirth or want and he was well with either. “Yes, please?”
That quiver—that was not laughter. Lisinthir bit Jahir’s lower lip, silencing him utterly, and said, “Enough for now. Come.”
He allowed himself to be guided by the wrist, as it was all the contact he could bear while recovering from the throbbing memory of teeth on his mouth. That pinprick edge, nearly slicing....
Jahir’s bedroom on Veta was a small, cozy room, with a bed large enough for one person set close to Vasiht’h’s nest, and the entirety of it designed for minimal stimulation. By mutual decision neither he nor Vasiht’h brought their work into it, entertained guests there, requested false windows... it was a refuge as secure as an old blanket. It was noth
ing like this palatial chamber with its vaulted ceiling and an entire wall of clear flexglass overlooking the base’s starry-night-like interior. The bed sat on a raised dais, as if to draw all attention to itself. There was something threatening about the implied exposure, and the sight of it would ordinarily have sent him backpedaling. But he was, he thought, lubricated. And more importantly, Lisinthir had immediately halted and was studying him.
Then he said to the suite, “Blank the window,” and the view vanished. With the room enclosed, some of the vertigo vanished. Jahir sagged, eyes closing.
That fingertip touch on his jaw… all that tender concern, wedded to the crispness of the analysis. Rarely had he felt quite so seen. “Better?”
“Thank you,” Jahir whispered.
A smile. He was being backed toward the wall again, which suited him… he wanted to lean on it. Now that the room felt friendlier, he was again cognizant of the alcohol’s languor, and willing to let it make free with him.
“So then, back to the matter of possession, mm?”
“Deflowering,” Jahir said, to tease him.
“Later for that,” Lisinthir promised. “We have time. Tonight I want only to enjoy the warmth of another body in my arms.”
It was hard to talk with his cousin’s fingers tracing his lips. “And is that all I am, then? A warm body?”
“Hoping for compliments,” Lisinthir chided, smiling again. He moved his fingers aside just enough to kiss Jahir’s mouth, then said, “Of course not. I am a man of discriminating tastes. Few are the warm bodies I permit in my bed.”
Jahir found a chuckle. “A queen and an emperor? I suppose I am in rarified company.”
“The most, yes.” Lisinthir drew back and tugged at his tunic. “Strip for me while I bring us something to drink.”
Oddly the first thing he thought of was the cold. “Completely?”
“Waist up will do for now.”
“Ah,” Jahir said. “I understand. As for a physical exam.”
“You continue to draw the most appalling comparisons, cousin.”
“I suppose that sounded….”
“Awful,” Lisinthir said with a laugh. “I forgive you. But strip now.” And he vanished into the dark leading toward the central chamber, leaving Jahir with his fuzzy-headed ambivalence and the lingering sense that it was good to be seen. He would very much like to continue being seen. So he pulled the tunic off and the shirt beneath it, and the undershirt he used as a matter of course against the chill the Pelted seemed impervious to. By the time Lisinthir returned with a tray, he had found himself listing back against the wall again, his skin stippled with gooseflesh.
“You don’t feel the cold?”
Lisinthir set the tray on a bureau—the two discarded glasses of port with the bottle, plus a pitcher of water and tumblers—and turned toward him. “I admit, not as much as I…” He stopped, and his gratified appraisal put a flush on Jahir’s cheeks. “I know you don’t duel, nor do you fight.” Lisinthir approached, set a hand on Jahir’s chest near the collarbone. “Your build does not evoke that sort of exercise, even if I hadn’t known you didn’t practice. So what has given you this enchanting physique, ah, cousin?”
“I swim,” Jahir murmured, looking away from the fingers gliding over his shoulder, down his arm, finding the division between defined muscles. “I like swimming.”
A surge of levity, sunlight-bright. “Of course you do.” When Jahir looked up, Lisinthir said, “Because water is a completely foreign environment, and learning to navigate it safely is a challenge and a strain, and yet you find beauty there, and in the striving. What else?”
Jahir inhaled sharply, wanting to hide his fluster and knowing his skin betrayed him. “I’m not you, cousin.”
“Manifestly not. But that does not make you incapable of enjoying a challenge.” Lisinthir slid his hand down to Jahir’s wrist, pulling it up against the wall above their heads. Light pressure first, and then his cousin rolled his palm open and flattened it in a gesture obscenely sexual for a motion so innocent in other contexts. “You might be an individual. But we were shaped by our environment. Inescapably.”
The kiss that followed this was shattering. A breath on dry lips first, and then a chafing that left him quivering, one that increased until he needed the pressure trapping him to the wall to stay upright. When Lisinthir let him breathe, his other wrist was beneath the first, and both aching from how hard they’d been trembling.
“Breathe,” Lisinthir whispered, brushing his nose against Jahir’s.
“So that you might steal my breath again?”
A smile he felt against his cheek. “Later for that. For now, I want you more present.”
“I thought the goal was…” Jahir trailed off. What was the goal? It was hard to think with Lisinthir leaning into him. His cousin remained clothed, and the contrast of fabric against skin was too intense. With his arms trapped, he felt far too exposed, and something about it grated against his desire to trust. “Was for me to be less present.”
“No,” Lisinthir said. “Not tonight. Tonight I need you lucid enough to respond to me so that, for instance, I can tell you are uncomfortable. Is it the trammeling?”
“I think it’s the clothes,” Jahir admitted. “I don’t know why.”
“You don’t have to. I do.” Lisinthir leaned back and pulled his shirt off, shaking his hair back over his shoulders, and then he was back, hand on Jahir’s wrists and skin against skin, and that made everything explode, fade into white haze. The proximity of his cousin’s mind—his desire, his sword-like intellect, the hyper-focus, the sensual interest, and over all of it, a tenderness like wet honey….
“Better?” Lisinthir asked against his mouth, smiling.
“Better!” he breathed, shocky.
“And then this no longer troubles you,” Lisinthir said, pushing on his wrists.
Did it? He tried flexing them. Swimming through his own confusion, his needs… he could barely do it. “I think… so long as it isn’t literal rope.” He thought, anyway? Or was rope acceptable? But his cousin was speaking.
“You need the illusion of escape.”
That focused him again, the playfulness of it, needful contrast against the violence of his response. “Illusion?”
Lisinthir grinned. “Swimming has made you beautiful, cousin, but there is more to breaking free of someone than strength. One must want to be free.”
Teasing. He remembered how to do this. Almost. He tried for Chatcaavan, couldn’t make the words arrange themselves in his mind, settled for Universal. “And if I wanted to prove that I needed to be won before I surrendered my virtue?”
His cousin laughed, delighted. “Do you want to fight? I’d win.”
“Are you sure?”
His cousin was leaning in for another of those kisses, and Jahir wanted it, but it was so much, too much too soon and yet not enough. The bantering, the playfulness slowed his thoughts, made it possible for him to wait when he wanted so desperately to be on the other side of this. When their lips were about to touch, he yanked his hands down. Lisinthir’s grip was light enough that he should have snapped his hands away with ease.
But he couldn’t move them.
Jahir’s panic spiked his own heartrate so hard Lisinthir found himself sweating. He cupped his cousin’s chin with a thumb and forefinger and made him meet his eyes. “What?”
“I can’t move,” Jahir whispered. “My arms.”
Puzzled, Lisinthir looked up at them. “I’m barely holding them down.”
“But I can’t move them…!”
His first instinct was to reply, “Of course not. I don’t want you to.” And that… made him freeze. He looked again at the sight of his cousin’s hands pinioned beneath his and deliberately thought that he should be free.
Jahir jerked his hands to his throat and began shaking so hard Lisinthir could hear his teeth chattering. He snatched the blanket from the bed, pulled it up and around his cousin’s shoulders, and
guided him to the bed’s edge. “Sit.” And hastily, more to himself than to Jahir, “Please.”
Fortunately his cousin was too far gone in his own reaction to notice his. Jahir’s knees gave, dropping him onto the edge of the bed, and when this did not seem to quell the panic, Lisinthir sat behind him, wrapped his arms around him, and pulled him down onto the bed. That this inspired a new paroxysm did not escape him. His cousin might not have realized the particulars of what had just happened, but Lisinthir wouldn’t gamble on it.
Because he had done it, hadn’t he. He’d wished Jahir trapped, and he’d made it happen with his thoughts.
“Lisinthir,” Jahir whispered.
The shaking was getting worse, not better. Lisinthir turned Jahir onto his back and touched his chin. “Stop. Stop and look at me.” He allowed his cousin to look away because he needed to prove to them both that he wasn’t somehow compelling him. When Jahir met his eyes, Lisinthir said, “If it can be done, it can be fought.”
“I… I don’t know… I don’t know if I….”
“Stop!” Lisinthir growled, shaking him a little by the jaw. “You are panicking. What do you tell a patient gripped thus?”
Even presented with a scenario that should have jarred him into thinking again, Jahir remained tremulous, and the only reply he managed was, “Breathe.”
“Then breathe,” Lisinthir said, sitting on his own reaction: impatience, fear, nameless things he didn’t recognize in himself. It was no good; he knew Jahir could sense them through their skins. But he mastered his bodily expression of them, and if the respite he earned them was brittle, it was better than what they’d had a few minutes ago.
More slowly, Jahir said, “You say it can be fought. But I don’t know if I am capable.”
“You have had a mindline with an alien for nearly a decade now. You have been in the Alliance all that time, honing your talents on its members. You have been practicing the use of this talent actively for years. If not you, then who? So. I will try to duplicate what I have just done. And you will try to notice me doing it, and then we will see how it might be thrown off, and we will do this together. Do you know why?”
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