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Ludvig’s eyes immediately went wide. “He did?”
I nodded. “I think he was feeling desperate about things. He…he wants to flee the estate, and all of Good Port, all of the frontier, if I’m not mistaken, and he was upset when we told him about the lockdown. I think he told me as a way to try and convince me to go with him.”
“Why does he want you to go with him?” Ludvig asked.
That opened an entirely new can of worms.
I sighed and scooted back in my chair, resting my elbows on my knees and planting my face in my hands. I stayed there for a moment before lifting my face and saying, “I can’t be sure, it seems mad to me, but I think Dmitri likes me.”
Ludvig didn’t quite laugh, but he came close.
“You are everything a man could ask for in a companion, Anton,” he said. “Of course he likes you. And it makes perfect sense that he would want you to flee with him.”
“Why?” I asked, a little too sour.
Ludvig’s smile grew. “Because you’re clever and brave,” he said. “You’re a good man. And frankly, you’re beautiful to fuck. As much as you protest otherwise, you love pleasure, and you respond so deliciously.”
He made a wry sound that was something between a groan and a laugh and adjusted the way he reclined.
My eyes popped wide. Ludvig wasn’t actually getting hard thinking about fucking me, was he?
“I don’t want to go away with him,” I said, just in case he had the wrong idea.
“No, of course not,” Ludvig said without hesitation. “You want to stick around Good Port and spend more time with your new friend. What was his name again? Hank?”
“Hayk,” I said, shrinking in on myself again. “But I just met him, Ludvig. I can’t form my entire life around a stranger.”
“Why not?” Ludvig shrugged. “I did.”
I stiffened. “When? When did you do that?”
Ludvig stared at me with an amused look. “When I paid Karpov the slaver to snatch you away from Dunsk and land you in my bed,” he said.
I snapped my mouth shut as heat spilled into my face. “That’s different.”
“Is it?” Ludvig asked. “I knew I wanted you from the moment Karpov delivered you to me. He could have brought me any young nobleman, but he brought you. And I liked the look of you from the start. Not just the look of you, I liked the way you were quiet and considerate when you could have been bullish and argumentative, like Jace.”
Even I cracked a smile at that.
“I knew from the first hour that I wanted to at least attempt to make things work with you,” Ludvig went on.
My smile died. “But they didn’t,” I said. “They didn’t work. We’ve gone our separate ways.”
Ludvig shrugged. “That doesn’t mean our time together was a failure. If you ask me, we’ve given each other so much in the last two years. My life is better for having known you, and I sincerely hope I’ve helped you to overcome those things you were holding onto from your life in the cities.”
I knew what he was talking about. He meant my unnatural attachment to my father. And he was right, he had helped me to work through that. I was still embarrassed that the whole thing had happened in the first place, but I understood that the desire I had for my father was a desire for approval and praise, not love or a need for sex.
“There is nothing at all wrong with fancying yourself in love with someone at first sight,” Ludvig went on in his kindest voice yet. He even reached for my hand again. “Especially when you have been so starved for love and acceptance for as long as you were. There is nothing at all wrong with seeing a man you like the look of and wishing to explore that. Particularly when he likes the look of you too. You are a free man, Anton. You can wander down whatever path you’d like and see where it takes you. You have no obligations, no duties to fulfill anymore. Not even Dmitri, though I know you said you would be his pup.”
“I did say that, but I don’t feel obligated to honor that particular agreement, not now,” I said.
“Why?” Ludvig asked, one eyebrow raised. “Has Dmitri done something wrong?”
“He…he was brutal to Hayk.”
That was all the explanation it took for Ludvig to understand enough about what I meant to nod. “Dmitri always has been an ass.”
For some bizarre reason, that statement and the way Ludvig delivered it, as though we were two friends grousing about a common enemy, set me at ease more than anything else either of us had said so far.
