“Oh,” I whispered.
She stared out at the ring for a moment. “Me, I figure laughing at life is better than mourning what we can’t have. Aeldryc, he has another way of forgetting. He throws himself into duty and honor and all that.”
I smiled at her. “I like the laughter approach, too. And sex.”
She cackled. “Can’t forget the sex. Don’t fuck it up, Crane. I am personally invested in this distraction. The whole Guard is. We have a betting pool on when you’ll get him to laugh in public. I’ve got three gold crowns on next Tuesday.”
I smirked at her. “Next Tuesday? No pressure.”
She burst out laughing and clapped me on the back, so hard I almost fell off the fence. “You got this, kid. Just keep making those tiny shorts. He can’t look away.”
On the field, Aeldryc moved.
The staff spun in his hands—a blur of dark wood, too fast to follow—and he closed the distance to Rynvael in two strides and the strikes came in a sequence that was nothing like the one-two-three-four. This was cascading, layered, each blow arriving before the defense for the previous one was complete. Rynvael was good. He blocked the first three hits, parried the fourth, and slipped the fifth.
Aeldryc pressed the attack, a relentless tide of wood and motion, until Rynvael’s defense faltered. The staff cracked against his ribs and he staggered, and Aeldryc didn’t stop. He launched another strike, low, sweeping Rynvael’s forward leg, and the guard went down to one knee, and Aeldryc reversed the staff and brought the butt of it to rest against Rynvael’s throat.
The training yard was quiet.
“Good,” Aeldryc said. He withdrew the staff, offered Rynvael his hand, and pulled him up. It was clean and professional and the point was definitely made.
“He’s still the best I’ve ever seen.”
I didn’t respond. I was too busy processing the fact that I was sitting on a fence in a crop-top waistcoat and silver collar, watching the most dangerous man I’d ever met put an elite soldier face-first in the dirt. He’d done it because he was embarrassed that I’d made him look at me instead of the drill, and the primary emotion I was feeling was not fear, guilt, or concern.
It was horniness.
Which was going to be a problem. Because training was going to last another two hours, and I was already bored and now I was also desperately turned on, and the combination of boredom and arousal was, historically speaking, a Pip Crane disaster zone.
His chain shifted around my cock and balls, the links seeming to thicken as they held me. I tried to think of something unsexy, like tax returns or grocery lists.
None of it worked. Aeldryc was running another sequence, his undershirt dark with sweat, his arms flexing with each strike. I had two more hours of this, and nothing to do but watch and want and slowly lose my mind.
The chain around my waist pulsed once, a warm check-in. Aeldryc, on the field, didn’t look at me this time. He’d learned. I pressed my hand against the silver and felt his magic hum against my palm and knew something had to change.
On the field, Aeldryc disarmed Thyren in twelve moves, and Vaelith said, “Showing off for his boy.”
“Fuck, I need something else to do with my time,” I said.
Vaelith smirked, pushed off the fence, and took her turn in the ring.
Chapter 14
Aeldryc
“I’mjustsaying,ifyou think about it logically, the whole system is flawed.” Pip walked backward ahead of me. The chain between us swung loosely, catching light from the sconces. His crop-top waistcoat—a garment I still did not understand but had stopped protesting—rode up as he gestured, showing a flash of golden stomach that I wanted to put teeth marks on so people knew it was mine. “You have all these soldiers, right? And they train every day. And they’re super hot, obviously. But they’re also super bored, because there hasn’t been a war in, what, two decades?”
“Three.”
“Three decades! That’s a lot of pent-up energy, Aeldryc. A lot of... tension.” He wiggled his eyebrows. “You know what would help with that?”
“I suspect you’re going to tell me whether I like it or not.”
“A rewards program.”
I turned down the corridor toward my rooms. I had reports to review.
“Like, say a soldier does something impressive. Saves a kitten. Wins a tournament. Looks particularly good while sweaty.” Pip spun on his heel, walking forward now, falling into step beside me. “And as a reward, you could let them... enjoy me.”
