Page 56 of Fought it Through the Teeth

Bohdi goes rigid against him.

Every muscle in his body locks. Morgan feels it, the instant, total tension, the held breath, coiled stillness, fighting every instinct he has, and then a hand comes up and circles his wrist. Not roughly. Firmly.

Bohdi pulls back.

He holds Morgan's hand away from his face, the grip on his wrist steady, and the distance between them is the width of a breath and it might as well be an ocean. Morgan looks at him and thinks, Oh. Okay then. The words form in his head with the flat, calm clarity of a conclusion long expected and finally confirmed, and underneath the clarity is a pain so deep it doesn't register as pain at all. It registers as absence. A door closing. A light going out.

He swallows around his own heart.

"Would you want me if I wasn't the prince?" Morgan asks. His voice is very steady. The steadiness is the most dishonest thing about him, manufactured, constructed, held in place by the same stubborn will that got him through Ivan's hall and Ivan's yard and Ivan's study with his composure intact. "Or is it that you don't want me at all?"

Bohdi sucks in a breath.

The sound is sudden and unguarded, and Morgan hears everything in it. The surprise. The pain. Bohdi has spent two years making sure nobody asks this question, and Morgan has just asked it. For a moment, one long, terrible moment, Morgan is certain he's crossed a line he won't be able to walk back. That the question was too direct, too raw, too honest, and that Bohdi is going to release his wrist and get out of the bed and put the wall back up and Morgan will never get this close again.

Then Bohdi uses the grip on his wrist to push.

The motion is sudden and decisive and Morgan is on his back before he understands what's happening. Bohdi turns and presses him down into the mattress, one hand on his wrist pinning it to the bed beside his head, and the weight of him settles over Morgan, chest to chest, hip to hip, the broad, hard, overwhelming reality of Bohdi's body above him. Morgan's eyes go wide. His breath leaves him in a rush. The man he loves is pinning him to a bed with one hand and looking at him with an expression that strips the careful distance away and leaves nothing but the raw, exposed thing underneath.

He can feel Bohdi's erection. Unmistakably hard against his thigh, pressing through the fabric of both their trousers with an insistence that makes a mockery of every performance of indifference Bohdi has ever delivered. The evidence. The proof that Morgan has been asking for since he was old enough to want it, the physical, irrefutable confirmation that Bohdi wants him, has wanted him, is wanting him right now with his hips against Morgan's body and his hand on Morgan's wrist and his face two inches away.

"I want you despite the fact that you're the prince," Bohdi says, the words forced through his teeth.

Morgan can't breathe.

"I want you on my arm," Bohdi says. His voice is tight, strained, years of holding a door shut and having it kicked open from the inside. "I want you waiting for me on the docks. I want you in my bed." His grip tightens on Morgan's wrist. "But I can't have you, Morgan. Do you understand?"

The moment stretches.

The room is gray and cold and the bed is warm. Bohdi is above him and Morgan is beneath him and the distance between their mouths is nothing and the distance between their lives is everything. Morgan lies on his back and looks up at the man he loves and sees the cost of it written in every line of Bohdi's face.

Because Bohdi is not saying he doesn't want him. Bohdi is saying he cannot survive the cost. And Morgan knows exactly what that cost is, knows it better than anyone else alive, because he grew up watching it being built. He grew up watching Bohdi and Eskil forge the thing that sits between them, the loyalty, the trust, the bone-deep reliance of two men who have been each other's foundation since they were children. He has watched Bohdi kill for Eskil and bleed for Eskil and make ugly choices in the dark for Eskil and carry the weight of those choices without complaint. He has watched Eskil trust Bohdi with the kingdom, with the army, with his own life, with Morgan's life. He has watched the two of them stand together in the great hall at Valen and press their foreheads together and close their eyes, and the bond between them is the only constant either of them has ever had.

Bohdi will not gamble that bond for anything, least of all for Morgan.

Morgan nods.

He nods wordlessly because his voice is nowhere to be found. It has fled, retreated to whatever place voices go when the body they belong to has received information that is simultaneously the best and worst thing it has ever heard. I want you on my arm. I want you in my bed. I can't have you. All three at once. All three true. The complete, unbearable shape of it laid out before him, a design for something that will never be built.

Bohdi holds him a beat longer. His grip on Morgan's wrist doesn't ease. His body doesn't move. And the look on his face, fierce, agonized, furious, tells Morgan that letting go is the harder act. That staying is what every nerve in Bohdi's body wants and leaving is what every principle in Bohdi's mind demands, and the war between the two is tearing him apart from the inside.

Then Bohdi shoves himself off the bed.

The motion is abrupt and violent and graceless, not a withdrawal but an expulsion, Bohdi physically throwing himself away from what he wants. Then he's on his feet and raking a hand through his hair and turning away, and the air where his body was is cold against Morgan's chest.

Bohdi starts gathering their supplies.

Morgan lies where he is.

He stares at the ceiling. The ceiling is low and stained and unremarkable and he looks at it and does not move for a long time.

He closes his eyes. The ceiling disappears.

He understands. He has always understood. And understanding has never once made it hurt less.

Chapter 28

Bohdi