It seemed an age that Briar was only aware of the way Rowan’s chest rose and fell against his own while rain played percussion on the roof. Helooked into Rowan’s eyes. Dark, they reflected a yearning Briar felt deep in his bones. A yearning he’d done a poor job of resisting. Rowan’s next breath shivered. His scarf had come undone, so it was easy to grab the ends and pull.
Rowan leaned in by a tentative fraction, and Briar surged up to meet him the rest of the way. With the heady crush of lips, the cold became a distant thing. Briar pulled him closer, cursing every mote of space between them. He wanted to soak in the scorching bath of Rowan’s aura. Rowan, who was breathless and beautiful, eyes half lidded in the slants of moon-light. Briar kissed him again, tasting rain.
The deep baritone of Rowan’s voice rumbled with relief and longing all tangled together. As if Briar enchanted him more than the woods, he took a powerless, uneven step forward. Briar stumbled on tiptoes and instinctively wrapped both arms around his broad shoulders to stop from falling into the wall. Only Rowan was crowding him back against it anyway. Cold wood at his shoulder blades and Rowan pressed hot between his legs. Kissing him still but less guarded, and with his tongue, too.
Tangled in one another, they kissed until the rain hammering the leanto quieted to a patter. By that time, what little resistance remained in Briar melted. He needed Rowan’s hands on him without the barrier of clothes.
“Let’s go.”
Rowan, the consummate gentleman, said, “Ah—are you sure?”
Briar, not a gentleman at all, guided Rowan’s hand between his legs to feel his certainty. “Do I seem unsure? If it hadn’t rained, I’d tell you to just lay me down in the heather.”
Rowan choked on whatever response he’d mustered. Taking Briar’s hand, he led them across the fields to his cottage. They paused only at the fences, where Briar, in the process of crossing, instead sat and pulled Rowan in for more of what they’d had in the lean-to.
There was just enough time in between for Briar to think that this might be ill advised, and if Vatii had been there, she’d have laid into him for his indiscretion. There hadn’t been anything about kissing mask-less aldermans in his prophecy. But Vatii wasnotthere, and there hadn’t been enough time spentnotkissing Rowan for the blaze in Briar’s heart to dwindle. Just once, he told himself, couldn’t hurt. Just one moment to give in to whatever it was that burned between them.
Inside, the cottage was quiet except for the rain tapping the windows and dripping from their clothes. Rowan pulled his shirt off, letting it slapto the floor in a sodden puddle. It stopped Briar in his tracks. For two reasons.
The first was that Rowan, only half undressed and in the dark, made Briar’s breath stop. He didn’t have the wood-cut physique and washboard abs of Alakagram models—he was densely muscled under a layer of padding. The impressive breadth of his shoulders tapered to his waist, and a pattern of dark hair did the same from his chest down past his jeans. His belly hung a little over his belt, a sight Briar couldn’t help but devour.
The other reason was that Rowan had never seen the tithes decorating Briar’s arm.
Instead of undressing, Briar stepped in close, stroking his fingers through the hair of Rowan’s chest. He rose on his toes to kiss him, slower. Rowan leaned in to his touch, shivered with an eagerness that turned Briar molten. To test a theory, he ran his hands down lower, stopping below Rowan’s navel. The response was definitive. Rowan stifled a moan in Briar’s mouth.
It had been a long time since anyone had touched Rowan like this. That scar had left him starved.
“Should I slow down?” Briar asked.
A strangled growl.“No.”
So Briar helped him remove his pants, then let his hands roam where they couldn’t reach before. Rowan’s expressions captivated him. Caught between eyes fluttering shut at the overwhelming pleasure of being touched and opening to drink Briar in. Briar thought,I want to give you everything you’ve missed since that scar made you lonely.
The cold caught up with him, though, and he shivered, still in his wet clothes.
Rowan said, “You’ll catch your death.”
Briar bit his lip. Rowan misinterpreted his hesitation.
“If you’ve changed your mind—”
“I haven’t,” Briar said.
He just hadn’t considered what Rowan might think of the tithes. Part of him knew Rowan wouldn’t mind. Not because his father used the same magic, but because this was Rowan. The latter part unnerved him. When had he come to feel like he knew the man so well that this, one of his best-kept secrets, did not feel like something he’d ever been hiding anyway?
He peeled his shirt off. It splashed to the floor. Rowan beheld him with mouth slightly open, gaze sliding down. He took Briar by the wrist—theone with the tithes—and drew him close, turning his arm over to see the rest. Sigils and bands of runes covered his skin in a sleeve of inky symbols that started just below his wrist and ended below the shoulder. There were more now than there’d been when he first arrived, and Rowan slid his hand over all of them, then the naked skin of Briar’s shoulder. His fingers traveled until they landed at Briar’s hip.
“You’re gorgeous.”
Briar leapt into his arms and kissed him again, not chastely. Rowan walked him back through the hall. They lost the rest of their clothes as they went, stepping out of boots and wet jeans until they were in the living room where a ladder led up into a loft. Briar detached himself long enough to climb.
In the loft above, a blue swath of moonlight streamed in from the window, falling over the quilted bed. It smelled of campfires. A gas lantern hung from the ceiling beams. On the rough-hewn wooden bedframe, a tartan blanket was folded over the foot in case the quilt was not warm enough.
Before Rowan made it all the way up, Briar sprawled on the bed in what he hoped was a seductive lounge. It worked. When Rowan made it to the top, his eyes went dark looking at him stretched out on his back. He crossed the small space quickly, knocking Briar’s knees apart to lie between them, and the soft crush of his body was enough to make Briar see stars behind closed lids as they picked up where they left off. Only now with no clothes, which made a great deal of difference. Briar could hardly grow a beard, so he reveled in the sensation of soft hair tickling his skin, the rasp of stubble against his throat when Rowan kissed him there. It set off flares of heat in him that steadily built.
Worse was the way Rowan’s belly trapped Briar’s arousal and rubbed against it without properly addressing how hard he’d become.
Patience lost, Briar pushed against his shoulders until Rowan rolled. Briar went with him, sitting atop his hips. An attractive flush had crept all the way from Rowan’s neck to his cheeks. The barrel of his chest heaved unevenly.
