“Hmph,” Ruan sighed, but he did not bring it up again.
Ruan had been working for him on and off for a year, when the council finally came to a decision regarding the quarry expansion. Much to Benil Branwood’s dismay, the plans to expand the mine were halted. Instead, city funds would be allocated to improving the main road and creating six new residential streets. Once more housing was in place, the city council would reconsider the Branwood proposal.
“I’m buying one of those new houses they’re building off the main road,” Ruan told him, the next time he arrived to take up his post outside of Adrissu’s tower.
“Is that so?” Adrissu replied, his tone disinterested despite the slight smile that twitched at the corners of his lips. He remained turned away from Ruan, looking down at the tome that he was reading. “You’ve saved up that much, then?”
“Thanks to you, yes,” Ruan replied. Adrissu could sense him watching him, waiting for his response, but he remained silent. “Adrissu, I...”
Something inside him thrummed at the softer tone of Ruan’s voice, and he couldn’t help but glance up, their eyes meeting from across the room. Adrissu could feel the heat rising in his face—first desire, then shame as he recognized the emotion—but there was enough distance between them that he hoped Ruan could not tell.
“Adrissu,” Ruan started over, his voice rough. “I do want to thank you. I don’t know why you took such interest in me that day, but... I appreciate you hiring me. I really wouldn’t have been able to do it without this job. Maybe once I’m settled into the new place, I can have you over for once.”
Adrissu turned away. He wanted to scoff at the admission—wanted to respond with scorn and derision the way he had a hundred times before. But Ruan had never been so...softtoward him, and his mind had gone completely blank. No words came to him.
His throat suddenly felt very dry.
“You’re welcome,” he managed to get out without his voice breaking. He did not risk looking back, but he could feel the heat of Ruan’s eyes on him for a long moment. Finally, the human turned away, and he heard the door swing open and close once more. His lunch break was over.
Adrissu could barely string together a coherent thought for the remainder of the evening. Was that really all it took to undo his self-control? A few words of thanks, and all his carefully constructed walls had come down?
His body ached with the knowledge that he was helpless to the damned fated bond. He’d had a hundred chances to cut Ruan out of his life, yet he had continued to keep him around, if only at arm’s length. But clearly Ruan did not want to be held at arm’s length any more, and of all he had learned about Ruan so far, he could be certain that the human was almost as stubborn as he was.
The thought was so consuming that he did not realize when Ruan had returned at the end of the afternoon.
“Are you alright?” Ruan’s voice came, only a few feet behind him, and Adrissu nearly jumped. “Ah—sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“You didn’t,” Adrissu said quickly, reaching out for the gold piece that he kept on his desk each day. Normally, he would toss it to Ruan from the other end of the room. Now, with only a few feet between them, he held it out for the other man to take.
Ruan eyed him for a moment, his expression somewhere between confused and appraising, then he took the gold piece from Adrissu’s hand. His fingers brushed against Adrissu’s palm and lingered there for a beat longer than necessary.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said, then turned to go.
“Goodbye,” Adrissu said faintly, watching him leave with wide eyes.
It had been many years since he’d taken his elven form; though it was not constant, he had spent the better part of the past twenty-seven years inhabiting this humanoid body. In that time he had rarely experienced any kind of sexual urge: he was quite sure that he had not felt any such base desire until after that cursed day, when he first spotted Ruan across the courtyard of the mercenary guild. Butnow—something about the contact of Ruan’s fingers on his palm, brief as it was, set his blood ablaze. His cock strained shamelessly against the layers of his robes and trousers. Hating himself for it, he reached into the folds of his clothing to take it in his hand, sending shivers up his spine at the tentative touch.
Instinct immediately took over, and his body yearned for relief—it would have been embarrassing if he had not wanted it to be over quickly. A few hard strokes was all it took for his muscles to tense and his cock to shoot its release, making a mess of the underside of his desk.
Panting, he leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. Shame flooded him the moment it was over, and his blood still boiled with unmet need.
“Damn it,” he growled, covering his face with his clean hand. “Damn him. Damn it!”
When Ruan moved into his new house, a few months later, he invited Adrissu to have dinner with him. Adrissu declined.
Around the same time, Benil Branwood and one of the other council members, a human woman named Ellisa Tanner, invited him to attend a small dinner party that the Tanner family was hosting for some other prominent community members. This time, Adrissu accepted.
The council of Polimnos, which acted as a governing body of the small city-state, consisted of only five members. Polimnos had only flourished and grown in the decades that Adrissu had lived there; he was certain the council was poised to expand very soon, and strongly suspected that they were going to ask him to join them.
Part of him wanted to decline. Elves were quite long-lived, but not the way dragons were. While he might be able to get away with living in Polimnos for an indeterminate length of time without raising suspicion, eventually official documentation with his name on it could start to raise questions. But on the other hand, Polimnos had changed so much in the twenty-five years that he had lived there: things were bound to change again, the method of governance included, and his name would be lost among outdated records.
Adrissu had little lust for social power; the knowledge that he had already brought the city to the ground, and could do so again any time he wished, was more than enough for him. But to be able to officially guide the town in the direction that he wanted had a certain appeal. After all, he was arguably the most permanent resident of Polimnos, so why shouldn’t he have the most say?
But until they offered him the position, it was only conjecture. So he went to the dinner to see if that was, in fact, the ulterior motive behind the invitation.
He arrived promptly at six in the evening; he had never understood the human custom of purposely arriving late. He had been to the Branwood estate a few times, but not the Tanner family home. It was smaller than the former, but closer to the center of the city. He knew Ellisa Tanner was a widow who had several grown children, lived with only her adult daughter, and owned a flower shop in town. He was not entirely sure what Ellisa Tanner had done in her life to earn a spot on the small council of Polimnos, and their interactions over the years had been few, but he liked the woman well enough. She was far more tolerable than Benil Branwood, at the least.
When he arrived, Ellisa’s daughter answered the door.
