Page 107 of Heart of Winter
Slowly, still holding the dagger, he turned around.
He hadn’t heard the door open, but Erik stood with arms folded, one shoulder braced in the doorway. He’d lost his heavy fur cloak, and stood in his richly embroidered tunic, trousers, and boots. The fire was the only light source, but it caught the beads in his hair, and the otherworldly blue of his eyes. He was smiling, smug and happy – and predatory.
Unable to take his eyes from him, Oliver set the dagger back on the mantel and swallowed with difficulty. “Well. I’m open to suggestion if you have a better idea.”
Erik’s grin became a smirk. He straightened, stepped inside, and shut the door behind him.
23
They were alone together.
They had been earlier, when Erik braided his hair, but then there had been a feast and a hall full of guests waiting, public performances to put on.
Now there was only the dark of night, and a massive bed, and the two of them, with only distance and a few layers of clothes between them.
The first Erik took care of immediately. He crossed the room in a handful of long strides, the beads in his hair clicking together with the force of his movement. In the time it took to reach Oliver, his expression slid from darkly intent to openly wondering, so that, when he finally reached out with one hand to cup Oliver’s face, he stood before him trembling, faintly, with emotion.
Erik took a short, sharp breath, his thumb smoothing across Oliver’s cheek, and said, “You’re shaking.”
“So are you.”
And he was: Oliver could feel Erik trembling in the touch of his fingers, and in the front of his tunic, which he’d taken, quite unaware, between his fingers. Oliver gripped the soft velvet with his own unsteady fingers and leaned into the hand that held his face.
“I feel like there are things that ought to be said,” Oliver said.
Understanding flickered in Erik’s gaze. No doubt he’d listened to his own inner voice chiding him, informing him of all the reasons this could never work.
He said, “Will saying them change anything?” Lips curved in a faintly sad smile.
It hurt to swallow; Oliver ached all over, with want, and need, and worry, and the sort of anticipatory melancholy that could ruin this, if he let it. So he shoved it all down, tightened his grip on the tunic in his hands, and said, “Not in the slightest.”
“I thought not. Say them later, then,” Erik said, and leaned down to kiss him.
It was gentle at first, a lingering press. Chaste and almost sweet. Like a question – an invitation.Do you want this? Do you want me?
Yes, you silly sod. Oliver stood up on his tiptoes and kissed him back, open-mouthed, eager.
He knew then how carefully Erik had been holding himself in check, because he let go with a deep groan that reverberated through his chest and into Oliver’s knuckles, where they were pressed against it, still caught up in his tunic. Erik gripped Oliver’s hair with both hands, angled his head, anddevouredhim with kiss after kiss, wet and frantic.
Oliver lost himself in the heated, slippery slide of it, eyes shut, fingers clenched tight in fine velvet. He wanted so much – wanted everything – but he didn’t dare pull away or loosen his grip, for fear that this was all a dream, and that it would dispel like smoke if he so much as paused for breath.
It was Erik who broke away, finally, panting – but didn’t go far, thankfully. He rested their foreheads together, hands sliding out of Oliver’s hair and down the back of his neck; they smoothed across his shoulders, and then down his back, reeling him in even closer. “Gods, you’re eager.” He reached to thumb at Oliver’s kiss-damp lower lip, tracing back and forth across the width of it.
“Is that a problem?”
He chuckled. “No.” He kissed Oliver again, slow and deep, and then trailed damp lips along his jaw, his ear; pressed a string of kisses down his throat, fingertips sliding over his pulse point on the other side.
Oliver’s breath came quick and ragged through an open mouth, his pulse thunderous in his ears. He’d imagined this in lurid detail, so many times, but now that it was happening, he felt weak as water, and clumsy as a blushing teenager again.
Erik nosed at the collar of his tunic on one side, and slipped his fingertips beneath velvet and linen on the other; his breath was warm on Oliver’s skin, his hair silky-soft where it brushed his throat.
“Oliver,” he murmured, shifting back up so the words rumbled right in Oliver’s ear. The hand at his collar delved deeper, palm splaying across the top of his bare shoulder, and his other hand moved to the laces of his tunic and slowly worked them loose. “This isn’t the first time you’ve done this, is it?”
Oliver was so distracted by the heat of his hand on bare skin, the brush of his lips on his ear, the thoroughly devastating purr of his voice, that it took him a moment to register Erik’s actual words. “I – what?” The fingers at his throat pulled the laces looser, and looser, and, oh, gods, Erik thought he was a stumbling, awkward virgin.
“No,” he said, more emphatically than he’d meant.
Erik laughed, and that was deep and rumbling too, and shiver-inducing.
