“Which would you prefer?” Wren asked with as much dignity as he could muster under the circumstances.
Butcher expression of intrigue turned wry. “Shall we combine them?”
Wren’s pulse stuttered. “We might.”
The wry expression became a smile that went straight through Wren like a bolt of lightning from his heart to his prick.
“In that case,” said Wren, forcing a casual tone over his fluttering heart as he gestured to the pentangle, “we shall begin by lying down here.”
Butcher cast a curious glance from Wren to the pentangle and back again. “If I might make a suggestion.”
“By all means,” said Wren.
Butcher spun his cloak off his shoulders and spread it out on the pentangle, creating a carpet of furs over the cold, hard ground.
Wren had to admit that seemed a much more sensible—and comfortable—prospect, and said so. He caught but a glimpse of the smirk Butcher cast him in reply before he forced himself to turn his attention downward to the matter of his own clothes. Shrugging off his frock coat did not go quite so smoothly as Butcher’s sweeping gesture with his cloak. Likewise his fingers fumbled with his cravat, the buttons of his waistcoat and boots, and his trouser ties.
Butcher followed suit, tugging his tunic over his head.
Wren hadn’t seen a bare male body other than his own in longer than he cared to remember. His gaze wandered over from his own fumbling buttons to drink in the sight of Butcher’s undressing.
It did not disappoint.
In his medieval garb, Butcher had struck an imposing figure. This proved no less true as the clothes fell from his body. If anything, it seemed his tunic, cloak, and hose had disguised the true power of his muscular frame. His linen undershirt and brais gleamed silvery-cerulean with the moonlight above and blue flame below. Then these too peeled away. Corded sinews rippled beneath his sun-kissed skin, broadening his shoulders, knitting tight against his ribs and over his slender waist. His hose had done his strapping thighs no justice, and his well-turned calves would be better served in breeches and stockings, for any footman in livery would display them with pride. To say nothing of the two sharp lines that led from the crests of his hipbones down to a stalwart standard of true virility.
Yet Wren’s eye caught details of still greater interest, for over-lapping, tracing, and cross-hatching Butcher’s handsome frame were innumerable scars. Punctures, slashes, and scrapes abounded, some puckering into the flesh beneath, some upraised like cords of hempen rope wrapped ‘round the muscle, some as light and faint as pen-strokes flicking across a page. Wren found his attention drawn particularly to a long diagonal gash across Butcher’s navel, from the crest of his left hip to his lowest floating rib on the opposing side, and to a sunken star-burst puncture just below his left collarbone and above his heart.
Wren forced his gaze away from Butcher’s bared skin and pulled his own under-shirt over his head, leaving himself naked in the literal as well as figurative sense. Butcher had liked him well enough in the garret, with all his clothes on, but what lay beneath Wren’s own shirt couldn’t prove anything other than disappointing. Ten years of clerking had certainly not improved his muscular definition. Except perhaps in the legs, which had their exercise in his walks—to meet the Restive Quills several times a week when he’d been a member, then to coffeehouses throughout London, and now to Hyde Park. The rest of him remained soft, and while he’d retained the generally slender shape of his youth, he grew softer still with every passing year. The slight pouch of his belly beneath the trail of hair from his navel on down paled in comparison to the taught skin over rigid flesh on Butcher.
But as Wren tugged his head free from the neck of his under-shirt and laid it aside with the rest of his clothes, he glanced up to find Butcher staring at him not with disappointment or disgust, but rather with increased interest.
Wren forced his nerves to steady despite the cold night air on his bare skin and the fluttering of his pulse. “Shall we begin?”
Butcher required no further prompting to stride forward and capture Wren’s mouth in a hungry kiss.
If Wren had any lingering doubts of Butcher’s desire for him, they vanished in that embrace. The taste of Butcher on his tongue, how greedily Butcher devoured him in turn, his woodsmoke musk filling Wren’s lungs, the clasp of those rough hands on his shoulders and waist, the stark contrast between the chill night air around him and the delicious warmth of bare skin against bare skin—all too much for Wren, and yet never enough, for he found himself ravenous for more, his hands clutching at Butcher’s back to bring him closer, his nails digging into scarred skin. It felt as if a bonfire burned within Butcher’s ribcage, the thrumming of his heart almost as rapid as Wren’s own feverish pulse. Their legs tangled. Butcher’s readily apparent stirring interest brushed against Wren’s own, bringing their half-hard cocks to full attention. Wren shivered with everything but cold. Just when he thought he’d go mad from it, Butcher broke off their kiss to let him breathe.
“Wren,” Wren blurted, gasping.
Butcher stared down at him. “What?”
“My name. It’s Wren. Honest,” he insisted as Butcher’s expression only grew more bewildered. “My mother was fond of songbirds, and—well, that’s not important. It’s just, I wanted you to know my name, if we’re to know each other in this way.”
Butcher continued looking at him with an expression Wren had never before seen on his handsome features. Then, as a smile plucked at the corners of Butcher’s lips, Wren recognized the look as one of wonder.
“Wren,” Butcher repeated, giving the name a weight and reverence such as it had never had before. “It suits you.”
“Thanks,” Wren murmured, though the word felt inadequate.
Something seemed to trouble Butcher as well. A furrow had appeared between his brows. He looked not quite at Wren for a long moment, then returned to meet his gaze with his jaw set in determination. “Shrike.”
“Shrike?” Wren echoed.
Butcher shivered as if someone had just danced over his grave. His arms convulsively clenched around Wren. Then he relaxed—by a concentrated effort, it seemed—with a wistful smile. “Few know it. But… you may call me by it, if you like. My fate is already in your hands.”
It dawned on Wren that the fae held names dearer than mortal men. “Does it pain you to hear it?”
“Not from your lips.”
