Page 50 of Warlords, Witches & Wolves

“Try saying that in a louder voice.” He pulled his arm free. “I don’t expect you to stay. Good night.”

“Stop, will you? Yes, it was a shock, but it doesn’t scare me. I am here. I want to stay.”

“No, you don’t. You have other plans, and if you were as smart as I know you are, you’d be running far from me.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Not until something better comes along. Stuck here with a monster is not what you want, we both know that. Good night.”

Absolon was leaving. Ragnar struggled for the right words to say, searching for an apology or a reason that would hold Absolon to him, but all the talking he’d ever done had never done much. He had to act. He cast off the blanket and ran to Absolon, grabbed his arm hard, and pulled him back. The force was strong enough to turn him, and as Absolon opened his mouth to argue, Ragnar kissed him.

Absolon resisted, his hands coming up to push against his bare chest. His fingers dug into Ragnar’s skin, but Ragnar kept kissing, eyes screwed shut, hands going up and into Absolon’s hair. He felt so familiar, the same as all those other nights in the dark with nothing else to cling to. Absolon relented, stayed, stunned perhaps, but Ragnar would use whatever he could. His mouth softened, his jaw opened and moved, his tongue searched and stroked, and the kiss expanded, became more than a shield yet not quite a weapon. It was a kiss like the ones of old, the ones of desperate need that had been unlike those he’d ever shared with anyone else.

Absolon’s hands relaxed and smoothed around his back, holding him close, but Ragnar was only barely conscious of his touch, lost as he was in the softness of Absolon’s lips, and the familiar passion of his mouth. The more he kissed Absolon, the more a gap in his chest opened, releasing a yearning that he had kept locked down for longer than a year. He let it out with a moan into Absolon’s hungry mouth.

Coarse hands enlivened his skin like he’d drunkakvavit. Absolon led him into the house, laid him on his bed and made love to him with a frenzied but mournful devotion.

* * *

Ragnar wokebeneath the crush of half of Absolon’s heavy body on him and listened to his gentle snuffling. From the heat in the sparse room, it was going to be a warm day, probably their last until spring came and the flowers woke from their slumber to greet the returned sun. Hopefully Absolon would wake before then.

Ragnar turned his head to get a better look at Absolon’s dwellings: a single long room with a hearth at the far wall, two tables and benches, shelves that held dishes and cups, a cupboard mounted on the wall, and a collection of farm tools that gathered dust and cobwebs.

Absolon grew up in something similar though would have shared it with his mother, his two brothers and two sisters. Their father had died of stitch and sting, the ailment in his lungs stealing the man when Absolon was thirteen. What did he think of having all this space to himself?

As for Ragnar, it was barely bigger than the kitchen in his father’s castle, though, he had to admit, a damn sight more comfortable than the forest he’d been exiled to. At least this was a home.

He scratched himself, stretched to get some blood flowing into the parts of his body that were going numb beneath Absolon’s weight, and stirred him from his rest. Absolon smacked his lips and struggled to open his eyes. Ragnar brushed the white hair out of them and caressed his brow. The lines of worry and age had fallen from his face and he appeared so much like the young man he’d been when they’d first met.

Angelic.

Now more so than ever.

Absolon pried open his bleary eyes. Sleep had fled and been replaced with trepidation and a trace of confusion.

“Good morning,” Ragnar said as brightly as he could.

Absolon grunted, threw back the blanket, rolled off the straw-stuffed mattress, and searched for his clothes. He gathered them into one hand.

“What’s wrong?” Ragnar asked.

“That wasn’t supposed to happen.” He hmphed. “Not again.”

“I’m glad it did.”

“What?” He stopped like he’d been slapped.

“I’m glad it did.” He rolled back onto the bed, put his hands behind his head, teasing Absolon with the full display of his body.

“You always were about your own pleasure.”

“I wasn’t thinking of me.”

“That’s a first.”

“Well, not just me. We were always good at that, and last night was exceptional.”Better than exceptional. Intoxicating and addictive.“But I thought you needed to relax a little. You’re not as much of a monster as you think you are.”

“You think because you let me fuck you that means I won’t hurt you.”

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