Page 81 of The Lost Art of Finding Where You Belong

“Come for me, dear heart,” Brannal told him. “I want to feel you come on my cock.”

And that was all it took, Perian was spurting all over the bed, clamping down on that big cock. Brannal managed a couple more stuttered thrusts, and then he was coming too with a groan of pleasure. Perian felt like he could feel the spurt of come filling his whole body, which was absurd. He felt suffused with contentment.

Perian collapsed onto the bed as soon as Brannal pulled out, and Perian watched blearily as the man padded to the water closet and returned with a cloth to help clean Perian up, get him out of the wet spot, and then pull him into his arms. He yawned.

“How was that?” Brannal asked carefully.

“Was awesome,” Perian managed, even as sleep tugged at him. “Wish we could have been doing it for the last week.”

Brannal laughed. “We’ll make up for lost time,” he promised.

That sounded perfect to Perian.

Brannal was as good as his word. He had plenty to catch up on: if it wasn’t training or reporting to the Queen, it was hearing about a new Mage who had come into their magic and making sure someone was dispatched to look into it and retrieve them if needed. Or weeding through all the reports of sightings and figuring out which ones sounded legitimate and sending a team to investigate.

It was making sure the castle was running smoothly, and it was ensuring that no one had heard from Fomadin. Yes, it turned out there was a whole series of reports solely to check on banished people. (It wasn’tjustFomadin, and so it wasn’t just for Perian, but still.)

But steadily, the volume diminished as Brannal caught up, until it was just the normal flow. A few days later, the doctor was able to remove Perian’s stitches, with Brannal watching anxiously like a mother hen. The stitches came out, the doctor confirmed the wound had healed, and Perian had a memento in the form of a thin scar running along his forearm.

It also meant he had the doctor’s seal of approval to go back to training. When Brannal started making noises about waiting “just a day or two to be sure it’s fine,” it was Perian’s turn to put his foot down.

“Are you trying to tell me what I can and cannot do?” he asked.

Brannal was smart enough to immediately say, “Absolutely not.”

Perian smiled. “I’m going to training tomorrow, and I’m going to tell Onadal I’ve been given a clean bill of health. He knows exactly what happened to me and exactly how long since I’ve last been training. Right?”

“Right,” Brannal said with a sigh.

So Perian went to training the next morning… while Brannal stood on the sidelines and watched him theentire time. With his arms crossed and a stern expression on his face. He went full-on Summus about it, keeping a narrowed eye on every single person who was in the training yard at the same time as Perian.

At the end of the training session, Perian headed over to him, and he could see the tightness in his eyes.

“Do you know that when you stand like that, it really shows off the muscles in your arms? It’s very attractive.”

Brannal rolled his eyes and let his arms fall to his sides.

“Yeah?”

Perian hummed an agreement. “It’s really hot. I mean, I think most people may have been more worried you were going to toss fireballs at them if they so much as looked at me funny, butIthought it was really hot.”

Brannal sighed. “I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

“Iknow,” Perian said more seriously, reaching out to squeeze his arm. “And honestly, maybe that was a good idea for the first day back, a reminder that there really could be fireballs if anyone decides they’re going to do something stupid. But it’s not going to work every day.”

“But—”

Perian shook his head. “Absolutely not. First of all, don’t you have a job to do?”

“I can work around it.”

“By what?” Perian asked. “Working at night instead? I can tell you right now, if you’re about to trade off our cuddling time, we are going to havewords.”

Brannal’s lips tipped up into a reluctant smile, his body losing some more of its tension. “I wouldn’t dare.”

“Good,” Perian said firmly. “And while you are clearly capable of striking more fear into the hearts of everyone here than anyone else I know, it was actually a little counterproductive.”

Onadal, Delana, and Bennan had been the only ones willing to spar with Perian while Summus was looking on, gazing grimly as though he was poised for an attack.

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