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He knew this for two reasons. One, Raider didn’t own a tent. And two, Seth’s rich, earthy scent was very much in his awareness, despite the fact that Raider was quite sure he was alone.
These facts he could sort through. The rest, however, was a blur.
Raider stretched to wake himself up and test out his body. The minimal stiffness said he’d been asleep only a few hours. The ache in his balls said … what, exactly? Obviously that he’d been hard, but what had happened?
He tried thinking back, but his brain was a foggy landscape. Images popped up through the fog, vague and disconnected.
Jackals leaping at him.
Tumbling down a rocky slope.
A jackal with Seth’s chakram in its skull.
Seth’s lips parting against his …
Raider closed his eyes as arousal spilled through him. He breathed steadily until it faded, not wanting to get hard again. His balls already felt bruised.
Sitting up with a supreme effort, Raider scrubbed at his face, trying to dispel the haziness. He needed to move and get out in the fresh air and figure out what the hell was going on.
The dusky landscape visible beyond the raised tent flap was familiar. He knew that rocky peak and the slope down to the scrubby meadow. He could see both horses grazing.
Raider shivered in the cool of approaching night. In the desert, days were hot and nights were cold. He found his silk kaftan nearby and pulled it on, but his saddlebags, which held his cloak, were nowhere to be seen.
Firelight, however, bled the promise of warmth through one of the tent’s closed sides, and he could smell roasting meat. His stomach growled.
Raider crawled out of the tent with general success, but as he tried to get to his feet he swayed dizzily. It took a minute for the world to stop sloshing around. When it did, he found Seth’s eyes on him from where the Curator was sitting on the far side of a campfire.
Seth didn’t say anything. In fact, his expression was positively stony as he reached up to turn the spit where three rabbits were roasting above the flames.
The Curator was wearing no kaftan or cloak, only his black arcane clothing. Below the heavy shoulder guards, the firelight did an admirable job of highlighting every contour of his bare arms.
Despite the fact that Seth looked perfectly unalarmed, habit made Raider scope out his surroundings. His horse looked fine, and Seth’s gelding was grazing at a wise distance from her. There was no sight or sound of danger. The stars were just pricking their way into the deepening blue of the sky.
Spotting his saddlebags in the tidy campsite, Raider walked over to them, feeling steadier with every step. Crouching, he dug for his wool cloak, marveling at the fact that Seth had not been through his things. Of that Raider was certain because Seth’s multi tool lay undisturbed at the bottom.
(It went without saying perhaps, but had his and Seth’s positions been reversed, Raider would absolutely have gone through Seth’s bags.)
“It’s still in your system,” Seth observed as Raider slung on the blue cloak and plopped down by the fire.
For some reason, the sound of that voice, deep and not entirely happy, made Raider’s heart skip.
“What happened?” Raider asked.
“You don’t remember? Any of it?”
“I remember the jackals. And falling.”
Seth focused on the spitted meat. Raider had been out for a while if Seth had had time to hunt and dress three rabbits.
“You fell through quiva. You were out of your head.”
Raider closed his eyes, remembering. Ah, yes. He could see it now, the quiva-studded slope and its clouds of pollen. More details started coming back: riding away, then lying on the ground. Had he fallen off his horse?
Other things too, though they had a feverish quality that made him unsure if they’d been real: his tongue stroking into Seth’s mouth. Seth’s body, hard and hot against his own.
Then later, darker things. Less welcome images. The ones that always intruded when his mind was vulnerable.
“It’s coming back to you,” Seth said. “The bad parts.”
