Page 66 of Sparring Partners
“Aries. The bent line of stars represents the horns of the ram.”
“Hmm, I think there’s a lot of artistic license going on.”
Adrian laughed, and Luca smiled.
“See that distinctive W formation?”
“No.”
Adrian tutted. “Then look harder.”
“I am looking. There’s—oh.” And there it was, a huge W that now he’d seen it he couldn’t not. Adrian’s chuckle vibrated through him and Luca huffed. “Ididn’t spend my youth gazing into the night sky playing constellation bingo. It was far more misspent.”
Beneath him, Adrian shifted. Bringing his lips close to Luca’s ear, Adrian’s warm breath sent a shiver across Luca’s skin in the mild autumnal air.
“All I’ll say is, I learnt lots of things from lots of farmers in lots of fields that didn’t have much to do with the night sky.”
“Please, just tell me none of it involved sheep—that hurt!”
The hard slap on his backside brought a tingle to his arse cheeks — along with a pulse and a flood of warmth to another place.
“No livestock was harmed at any stage in the education of Adrian Hardy. Now behave. That bright W you can see, that’s Cassiopeia. She was a queen in Greek mythology, but gran always said she was really a Celtic princess who was banished to the night sky for running away with her true love, a lowly slave. Gran could read the sky like nobody I’ve ever known.” Adrian hesitated, and Luca felt not just the shift in him, but heard the catch in his voice.
“Adrian?”
“After all these years, I still miss her. She’d sit with me for hours, the two of us gazing into the sky, as she told me all the old stories everybody else had forgotten or no longer cared about. I loved her so much, and I knew she loved me best out of all my family.
“I was always an awkward kid. Quick to argue and jump to conclusions. Never listening to reason, too proud — or bloody minded — to admit when I was wrong.” He barked out a short, humourless laugh. “No change there, then. But she knew how to calm me down, how to make me stop and think. When she died, it was like I’d lost my anchor.”
“She sounds remarkable. I wish I’d met her.”
“I wish you’d had the chance to. You’d have liked her, and she’d have adored you.”
Luca caught his breath as Adrian flipped them around. Adrian gazed down. Everything about him was hard and intense.
“Adrian? What’s?—”
“I never did this with him.” Adrian’s voice was quiet and uneven. “It’s important you know. I never, not once, shared the night sky with Sam, just like I never told him about sitting under the stars with my gran, just like I never told him about the Lady’s Well. You’re the only one, Luca, the only one I’ve ever trusted enough to share this with.”
Luca placed a hand against Adrian’s cheek, dark stubble rough against his palm.
Trust. The word caught at Luca’s heart, plucking it like a guitar string and reverberating all the way through him.
Under the stars, together in a way Adrian had never been with Sam, a man who’d destroyed Adrian’s trust as he’d broken his heart, Luca couldn’t stay silent.
“And do you trust me? Completely and without reservation? Do you trustyourselfto believe everything I’ve ever said to you, and will say, with be the truth?”
The silence pressed in on them. Nothing stirred, nothing moved. The night held its breath.
Luca’s heart squeezed, the pain in his heart sharp and real. His hand began to slip from Adrian’s face, but Adrian caught hold and laid a kiss on his palm.
“Yes,” he whispered. “I’ll always trust you.”
Adrian found Luca’s lips. Soft, warm, tender kisses filled not with heat but with care and reverence. Kisses Luca loved, and craved more of, but as he closed his eyes and gave himself up to all those kisses that made his heart sigh, a whisper like a cold breeze on a warm day shivered through him.
Adrian trusted him, but could Adrian really and truly trust himself?
CHAPTERTHIRTY-TWO
