Hart of Winter

by Parker Foye

  The hungry wash of lust made Luc blink and shake his head again. He followed Rob’s gaze to the window of the boulangerie and saw the reflection of the crowds passing by in the main shopping area. Heat flared to his cheeks, and Luc slid off Rob’s thigh. Luc surreptitiously tugged the flaps of his coat to hide the tent in his jeans.

  “You make a good point,” he admitted. They were lucky no one had been by already. Hells, they were lucky Luc’s curse hadn’t interrupted them.

  Rob adjusted himself blatantly in his jeans, a lascivious grin on his kiss-swollen lips. “We could take this elsewhere?”

  “Not—not yet. I don’t think. That is—you’re staying around, right? For a while?” Luc used to be good at this. He’d certainly gotten laid enough. Yet Rob made him tongue-tied.

  “I’m staying around. And you have my number,” Rob said. Evidently Luc’s incoherence made no difference to their possible future dates together.

  Dates. Who was Luc becoming, honestly.

  Before he could overthink it, Luc brushed quick kisses against Rob’s stubbled cheeks—one, two, three—like a nervous bird. He stepped back and waved. “Bye!”

  Then he strode quickly away before doing anything else foolish. And if he touched his lips to try to keep the memory of Rob’s kisses, that was between Luc and the night.

  Chapter Four

  ROB had barely locked his hotel room door before he shoved his hand into his jeans. The memory of Luc’s kiss, his warm body crushed against Rob’s, the lust-dazed look in his eyes—Rob came faster than when he first figured out how his dick worked. He slumped against the door, cushioning his head with his beanie.

  “This is escalating quickly,” he muttered and pushed away from the door.

  He washed his hands, then changed into boxers and a T-shirt and put away his clothes before staring out the window at the piste. Red lights studded the mountain while intermittent lights illuminated the village below. Reports said they were guaranteed inches overnight, and Rob listened for the muffled boom of the snowmakers but couldn’t hear anything. Maybe the resort had weather witches instead. Luc might know.

  He had his hand on his phone before he realized. Groaning, Rob deliberately switched his phone off and tossed it onto the armchair in the corner of the room. He needed to halt his fall down the rabbit hole. Olivia had called it a crush, but Rob knew it mightn’t be so harmless. He fell easily, and in Les Menuires he had a long way to drop.

  Closing the curtains, Rob headed for bed only to sigh and fetch his biscuit box from his suitcase. The rest of his belongings had been unpacked on his first day, but the repurposed shortbread tin stayed packed away unless he was using it. Just in case he needed to leave in a hurry.

  Other people had valuables, and mage-guaranteed security spells to match, but Rob had a biscuit tin, dinged at the edges where paint had been chipped away. It had been his great-grandmother’s, where she kept her threads and needles for sewing old-fashioned workings during the rationing years. She had threads unraveled from clothes unable to take more repairing and needles painstakingly slivered from shrapnel. Magic thrummed from the dented surface like light reflecting from a mirror.

  Rob mightn’t ever become a great cursebreaker, but he had his great-grandmother’s gift for weaving. “Weaving” was once a literal description, referring to products made by hearth witches on their looms, but the term had grown alongside technology. Some theorists said all craft using external props was weaving when it came down to it, to differentiate them from mages and their internal magic, while others insisted only those producing cloth could ever be considered true weavers. But Apolonia, Rob’s great-grandmother, had called herself a weaver, and so Rob did. He’d inherited his cat’s eye choker from her along with her talents.

  He’d given Ava Gloss a square he made from her hair and told her to burn it along with several items he raided from the family store, based on gut instinct and familiarity with cases from the Lentowicz archives. She’d been skeptical but played along. Her hair growth stopped overnight.

  Rob sat comfortably cross-legged on the hotel bed and pulled out his crochet things, thinking about beanies—suitable for winter, easy and quick, with lots of capacity for pushing intent into the thread—only to return them again. Not quite right. He scrubbed his hand through his hair. The urge to weave wasn’t something that struck him often, but sometimes his hands knew more than his brain.

  Rob picked at the items in the tin. Though he’d never discovered how, Apolonia had cast an extension on the tin, and it held far more than the dozen shortbread biscuits’ worth of items the cover advertised. No one in the family had ever noticed, though, same as no one noticed the tin in the family store until Rob found it as a kid and dusted it off. Like it was waiting for him.

  Ready to abandon the search, Rob’s fingers suddenly stumbled across the material for Luc’s… whatever it would turn out to be. Rob grinned.

  “Perfect.”

  OLIVIA called him during breakfast. Rob brushed croissant crumbs from his face as he answered the video call, then propped his phone against the salt and pepper shakers. Chatter from other tables filled the hotel restaurant with a low hum, but Rob sat tucked away in a quieter corner. Along with the usual audio spells, Olivia should be able to hear him clearly.

  “I’m on holiday,” he said when he saw her face, refusing to acknowledge the whining note in his voice. “And it’s Sunday.”

  Olivia leveled a look at him and moved in the way that meant she’d rolled back and forth in her wheelchair. Rob had always interpreted it as an impatient gesture. “Can’t I be calling as your loving cousin?”

  “Are you?”

  “Nope,” she said, popping the p.

  Rob shoved the rest of the croissant into his mouth on principle. He would’ve slurped his coffee too, but he’d drunk it all already.

  “Whaddya want?” He couldn’t bring himself to spray crumbs, but Olivia glared anyway.

  “It’s about the show.” Olivia must’ve seen something on Rob’s face, as she spoke more quickly. “They called about the interview being pushed forward, something to do with scheduling. When I—”

  “I’m in France!” Rob broke in.

  Olivia rolled her eyes again. “I know, and I told them, and I’ve managed to delay them, but they’re pretty insistent, Rob. You signed a contract. It doesn’t look great to run away like this. And it’s not as bad as you say it is.”

  Rob shoved crumbs around his plate with his finger, blotting them up.

  “Rob.”

  He wiped his fingers on his napkin and adjusted the phone to stop light bouncing off the screen. “I know. I’m being a dick, sorry. Thanks for stalling them. I appreciate your help. I’ll contact them and apologize. It’s just….”

  “Just what?” Olivia asked when Rob didn’t continue.

  He shrugged. “You’re a better breaker than me. Hells, half the family is. It feels ridiculous to be some ‘expert of the week’ for this one-time thing.” He looked around and lowered his voice. “You know I’m still struggling with my cursebox.”

  “Still? You got that when you were thirteen!”

  “Exactly. It should be you doing this. You’re easily the best in the family.”

  “I know I am. Don’t worry, I’m building a narrative as the family expert before I get my episodes later this season. I’m going for a whole ‘Oracle’ vibe. Do you think you could call me O? Or is that too close to copyright infringement?”

  “I think you should read less comics.”

  Olivia brought her phone close to her face, giving Rob a close-up of her smug grin and gleaming teeth. “But you got the reference,” she said in a singsong voice. Then she ended the call.

  “Always with the last word,” Rob muttered.

  He picked up his phone to send a snarky text to Olivia and found a new message from Luc. A brief flash of paranoia gripped him—would Olivia have known about the message? Her silence about Rob’s new cursed friend didn’t mean she’d forgo
tten. How far did her “Oracle” powers extend?

  Rob forcibly shook off the questions and opened the message. There’s a bar on Plein Sud you have to visit. Are you busy today? Short notice surprise half day from the chalet.

  A cursory internet search revealed the Plein Sud run had a chalet-style bar, which the website showed filled with skiers and snowboarders dancing on tables in an eye-searing array of colors. Rob texted back.

  I’m in.

  He’d call the studio later.

  Probably.

  “WAIT, back up. Tell me the part where she chased you through the snow again.”

  Luc rolled his eyes and bumped Rob’s shoulder with his own. “You know, you’re taking way more delight in my suffering than I’m comfortable with.”

  Rob snorted. “No wonder Amandine said you could have the day off. Workers’ comp.”

  Luc abruptly cackled, then flushed and pressed his gloved hand over his mouth as if to push the sound back in. The glove made no difference, and Luc’s eyes crinkled as he lost himself to laughter, glee lighting his dark eyes under the sweep of long lashes. Rob had it bad. Everyone must be able to tell by looking at him. Everyone including the family sharing their gondola cabin and speaking in possibly Dutch, likely about how gone Rob was for Luc.

  Could anyone blame him? Apart from being a skier—why anyone would choose to ski instead of snowboarding, Rob had no idea—Luc seemed annoyingly perfect. Even his terrible laugh and inability to win or lose gracefully was endearing. And the things Rob would do to that body given half a chance…. He licked his lips at the memory of their heated kisses. Luc’s multiple layers made Rob feel like a Victorian gent coming undone at the merest glimpse of a bare wrist. He’d developed a mild obsession with the thin strip of skin between Luc’s glove and the cuff of his jacket.

  Luc’s laughter finally puttered out as the cabin swayed on the approach to the lift station. They stood and gathered their equipment, stepping onto the rubber mats of the station after the family and exiting into the glare of the mountain. Low winter sun bounced off the snow, making Rob squint. He shielded his eyes and read the noticeboard advising which runs were open or closed; most were open after the fresh dump of snow the night before, including the Goitschel black run that led to the bar. He grinned at Luc.

  “Sure you’re ready for this? We can take the Be—Bu—Bouquetin”—Rob struggled with the pronunciation, but Luc just waited for him to finish—“lift down if you prefer.”

  Luc hefted his skis onto his shoulder. “Shove off! And I promised you booze at the end, didn’t I?”

  “Don’t forget table dancing,” Rob reminded him as they walked toward the flat area where people were strapping into bindings and clicking into skis. “According to the internet, it doesn’t count unless someone’s dancing on a table.”

  Stepping into his skis, Luc looked down at his clunky ski boots and back at Rob. “I may have made an error.”

  Rob made a controlled fall—the fastest way to get onto his arse in the snow—and wiggled his much softer boots at Luc. “See, this is why snowboarding is superior. I could totally dance on a table with these.”

  “Promises, promises.”

  Rob strapped into his bindings and jumped up, hopping to check his straps were right. Secure, he made his knees soft and slowly slid to the top of the run, fastening his helmet strap, then tugging on his goggles as he went. His earlier injury had completely healed, thankfully. Snow shushed as Luc followed.

  The view made Rob rethink ever going home. Cradled in the palm of the mountains, sun bright in a clear blue sky, cold kissing the back of his throat on every breath, Rob felt tiny and enormous at once. Tiny and enormous and about to throw himself down a mountain strapped to a plank of wood—again. For fun.

  He knocked the back of his hand into Luc, who had pulled his scarf and goggles to cover all of his face apart from his red-tipped nose. Rob could tell he was smiling. Rob wanted to smother himself in the snow at the realization; he was gone for Luc, and they’d only seen each other three times in their lives.

  Rob pushed the thought from his mind. “Last one down gets the first round?”

  “You’re on.”

  Luc pushed off gracefully, and Rob allowed himself to watch for a second before pulling his body around to point his lead foot downhill. He studied the fall line, concentrating. There was serious business at stake, and he had to get his head in the game. Drinks at the resort weren’t cheap.

  Leaning his weight forward, Rob rocked onto his heel edge before sinking his knee to come around onto his toe edge in a lazy turn, getting a feel for the texture of powder under his board. From a quick search, he’d learned Goitschel could be a pain in the arse with thin snow, but under his edges, the snow came close to perfect. Rob whooped and sank his hips, carving through the glittering snow and probably grinning like a fool, his heart pounding in joyful rhythm.

  Vibrations rumbled through his feet and up his body as he traversed the slope, driving him to push for an extra burst of speed. Identifying Luc by his black-on-black-on-black outfit, Rob turned into the mountain, leaving a clean line in his wake, then rode his toe edge to look back at Luc.

  “Show-off!” Luc shouted, voice muffled by his scarf.

  Rob waved over his shoulder and pointed toward the bar ahead. He needn’t have bothered, as the place boomed out music snow couldn’t muffle and people crowded the terraces in bright splashes of color. Glittering sparks sprayed from the roof in time with the beat.

  Turning slowly at the end of the run, Rob unfastened his bindings, stepped off his board, and twisted to grab it by the nose. Luc came to a stop beside him and clicked out of his skis.

  “I suppose it’s my round, then?” Luc asked, looking at Rob sidelong. He’d tugged down his scarf, and Rob saw his lips were slick with condensation from his breath against the fabric.

  Rob licked his own lips and swallowed thickly when Luc copied the motion, his dark eyes flashing. Wait, what had they been talking about? Drinks, right. Rob definitely needed a drink.

  “Yeah, your round. Something cold, please. Something that tastes like victory.”

  “No one likes a bad winner,” Luc said, grinning. “Be right back.”

  Rob would be pouring the beer on his dick if it didn’t behave. Shaking his head at himself, he gathered their stuff and piled it near the external wall of the terrace, making sure to remember where he’d left it. The plan was to have one or two drinks and head back to Les Menuires in slightly wonkier lines than those carved on the way out. Simple. Easy.

  The plan became complicated around the second double vodka, when Rob realized he was leaning so far into Luc’s space, their helmets kept bumping together. They’d gravitated closer as the music and crowd became louder, especially after promised displays of table dancing, which was when Luc switched them to vodka to catch up with the ski bunnies, but neither of them had remembered to take off their helmets.

  “This is so ridiculous! Bloody helmets. Why are we still wearing them?” Rob asked.

  Luc giggled—what a major blow to Rob’s self-control, learning Luc giggled—and reached out to fumble at the strap under Rob’s chin. He unclicked the clasp, steadying himself with a hand at Rob’s waist, poking his tongue out the corner of his mouth in concentration. His touch branded Rob’s skin everywhere they were in contact.

  “L-Luc, what’re you doing?” Rob asked, words tripping over themselves and his face burning as he stared at Luc’s tongue. He’d been staring a lot. Luc had been staring back, but neither made the first move. If it weren’t for Rob’s baggy snow pants, he’d be walking bow-legged.

  “Helping,” Luc said. The clasp released, and he crowed, tugging off Rob’s helmet. “See?” He unclipped his own helmet with ease and dropped it at his feet, revealing hair curling at his temples and neck. His hand was still on Rob’s waist.

  I see my fucking ruin, Rob didn’t say. Keeping silent, he took his helmet and clipped it through his belt loop. It clattered on the rai
lings they leaned against, and he shifted his hips to accommodate the shape. The movement made him brush against Luc, who froze like a deer in headlights. He looked terrified.

  So much for that. Rob knocked back his drink and stared into the empty glass. “Look, Luc—”

  “I want you so much. Can I kiss you?”

  “Hells yes,” Rob breathed.

  Luc obliged with enthusiasm. He tasted sweet, like the orange he took with his vodka, and his hands were strong where they gripped Rob’s waist through his jacket. He bit at Rob’s lips, making heat shoot to Rob’s dick, and his tongue demanded entrance Rob gladly allowed. They kissed hungrily, Luc rocking his hips into Rob’s, and even through their layers, he could feel the interested bulge of Luc’s dick.

  Rob framed Luc’s face with his hands and deepened the kiss. He ran his fingers through Luc’s slightly sweaty hair and cupped the back of his skull, swallowing Luc’s thick groan. Luc jerked his hips, and the motion made Rob’s helmet clatter against the railing. He started at the noise and broke the kiss, trying to collect himself, but his precious few thoughts scattered when Luc mouthed at Rob’s wrist, exploiting an erogenous zone Rob didn’t know he had. Warm suction over the thin skin made it extremely difficult to think. Rob moved his hands to cup Luc’s arse as much as possible through snow pants, and he pressed kisses along the prickly three-o’clock stubble on Luc’s jaw.

  “That’s cheating,” Luc gasped, breath hitching when Rob worried his earlobe with his teeth. “Fuck, why haven’t we been doing this all day?”

  “No idea.” Rob pressed a kiss to the bolt of Luc’s jaw, then withdrew reluctantly. He pressed his hand to Luc’s chest to prevent him following. “No. Wait. We’re getting carried away again.”

  Luc stamped his foot like an angry horse. “Not fair!”

  Rob snorted. “What’re you doing?”

  Flushing to his hairline, Luc groaned and rested his forehead against Rob’s. “Shut up. I just learned the color of your hair. I had plans. Why are you doing this to me again?”