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Raider gazed down at him. His face was flushed, his eyes partially closed. His lips were parted slightly.
When Seth tugged his arm, Raider slid from the saddle, falling heavily into Seth. Seth lowered him to the ground and pressed two fingers to Raider’s jugular. His pulse was elevated and his breathing shallow.
Seth peeled open Raider’s partially closed right eyelid. His pupil was completely blown and had all but swallowed the amber iris. Seth checked the other eye, but it looked normal. Then he realized he was looking at the arcane one.
It was a good piece of artifice. He could hardly tell except for the barely visible lines within the mechanical pupil and the fact that it wasn’t reacting like the other eye.
Of course, the right eye was clearly also arcane, given the way it sometimes flashed, but it seemed to function more like a natural eye. In any case, it was reacting as the left was not.
But reacting to what?
A head injury most likely. But when Seth lifted Raider’s head to feel around his skull for blood or swelling, he found none. Then Raider reached up and grabbed Seth’s neck. When Raider pulled him down, Seth was so surprised that he didn’t resist. Not until Raider’s lips met his own.
Then Seth froze.
He stayed frozen as Raider’s mouth began to explore his, as Raider’s tongue sought entrance. Then, with a mind of their own, Seth’s lips parted.
Raider’s tongue swept hotly into his mouth.
Arousal, always barely repressed around Raider, surged into Seth’s groin, thickening his cock for the second time in less than an hour.
Seth gripped Raider’s hair at the scalp, as he had so often fantasized about doing. He tugged Raider away, half thinking to end this, half thinking to expose the man’s throat and claim it with his teeth.
It took Seth a long, long moment to decide.
Raider’s lips were parted, his eyes still partially closed, his striking face flushed along those gorgeous cheekbones. Surely Atri, goddess of the erotic arts, had made this man. He was the most tempting, sensual feast Seth had ever seen.
Whenever Raider was needling him, arguing with him, it was easier to keep that at the edge of his thoughts, to mask it with irritation. But now, with Raider vulnerable before him, with Seth hard and aching, it was undeniable.
Raider was breathing shallowly, his stomach contracting, his hips lifting. At the sight of Raider’s cock tenting the loose blue silk, the flared crest outlined so erotically, Seth let out a sound of raw desire.
It was hearing himself that snapped him out of it. Seth closed his eyes and took a few practiced breaths.
Something wasn’t right here. He needed to be objective and in control—because Raider clearly wasn’t.
Seth gently lowered Raider’s head to the ground and released his hair. Sniffing away a sudden tickle in his nose, Seth flicked open Raider’s kaftan to hunt for clues as to what ailed him.
With no external evidence of a head wound, Raider’s confusion made little sense—and his arousal made none.
Though Raider’s right side was scraped and bruised, neither that nor the cut to his left arm explained his strange state. His torso and face were speckled with dirt and grit, but that also failed to explain—
Seth sneezed violently. Eyes watering, he scrubbed his kaftan sleeve across his face—and left a yellow streak on the white fabric.
What the …?
Seth swiped his hand across Raider’s face and studied the powdery yellow dust that came away on his fingers. The dust was mixed with sandy grit, but there was definitely a yellow powder there. It was all over Raider’s torso as well. His pants too.
Not powder.
Pollen.
Quiva pollen, like Raider had warned him about at the well. Seth thought back to the scene of the jackal fight, picturing the craggy slope. It had been studded with yellow-flowering scrub—with quiva—and Raider had fallen straight through it.
Shit.
Raider didn’t have a head injury. He was high. On what he’d described as a potent aphrodisiac.
Seth had dismissed the idea because bazaars were always full of powders and elixirs reputed to induce lust. They were always fake.
