Page 47 of Sword Dance

“I am so sorry, Varazda. The situation I helped to place you in last night … I can only beg your forgiveness.” And he had thought he had been doing the right thing by playing along.

“I don’t think I’m quite bringing my point across. There … are … things I have wanted to say yes to.”

“Oh, I see.” Another laden silence. “Such as?”

“I like kissing. Sometimes.”

“Last night?”

“Yes.”

Damiskos leaned forward to look at him. The gold stud in his nose glinted in the lamplight.

“I’ve been trying to remember,” Varazda said, with a self-conscious lightness, “whether I had ever kissed a man without a beard before last night. I don’t think I had.”

“I have a beard,” said Damiskos, rubbing his jaw.

“You have stubble—I meant a beard.” He made an explanatory gesture, wiggling his hennaed fingers.

Damiskos laughed. “Right. And so—what did you think?”

“Haven’t we covered that already?” Varazda’s voice was soft, and he was looking down at his hands in his lap. “I liked it. I was turned on. That … as you may have gathered … doesn’t happen all that easily.”

It obviously cost him so much to talk about this, and Damiskos didn’t know if he was ashamed to have desires at all, or that his desires were not equal to an intact man’s, or what. He wondered if Varazda was even sure what bothered him.

Rather boldly, Damiskos said, “Want to see if we can make it happen again?”

Varazda looked up in surprise. “What—right now?”

“Yes, of course right now! Immortal gods. We’re sitting on your bed, talking about how beautiful you are and whether or not you like sex—it’s surprising I even needed to say anything.”

“I am literally a eunuch, First Spear.”

After that they were both laughing, Varazda giggling helplessly at his own joke, and the mood had shifted again. Varazda reached out and slid his fingers into Damiskos’s hair, taking a gentle handful, and leaned in and kissed him, as gracefully as he had done in the doorway in front of Helenos years ago, or whenever it had been.

The first kiss became a whole series of kisses, gentle and uncomplicated. For Damiskos it was like kissing someone he’d known for years. Warm and intimate and comfortable. Varazda drew back and looked at him for a moment, his lips red, his expression open and affectionate.

“That’s your yes?” said Damiskos.

“Very much so.”

They moved together again, a little awkwardly this time. There was some fumbling and a near-collision before they sorted out what they wanted; Damiskos pulled Varazda onto his lap, and Varazda settled himself carefully astride Damiskos’s thighs, bracing his hands against the wall by the bed. Damiskos took Varazda’s face between his hands and kissed him again.

Varazda shifted his hips, moving closer, and Damiskos moaned.

“Sorry,” Varazda murmured against his lips.

“Uh? Sorry for what?”

“I don’t know—was that the wrong thing, or not enough of the right thing?”

He had rubbed up against Damiskos’s cock, and Damiskos would certainly have liked much more of that, any time.

“You’re out of practice, huh?” he said. “With your lilies and your pomegranates and whatever.”

“Shut up.”

Damiskos laughed. His fingers burrowed into Varazda’s hair, and the kiss that followed was messy and urgent.