AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I laughed. “Come on, Lea. You and Darius can have me whenever you want,” I said. “Enjoy yourself with someone new tonight.”
Leander looked at me like I was being a wet blanket, then squeezed my ass. He leaned in for a quick kiss, then moved away. “Alright,” he said, “but if you change your mind….”
“I know,” I said, waving him toward the pool, where the Solstice revels were still going on.
I watched everyone in the pool for a moment with a pang in my heart. We were all so young. None of us had truly had a chance to live yet. Only a small part of me believed there was a real risk of anyone being killed in the morning, but everything around me since the destruction of the mountain pass made it feel like any given breath could be my last.
We were all balanced on a knife’s edge, and we knew it.
I turned to go, but was pulled back by Appius.
“You’re really leaving?” he asked.
The despair in his blue eyes and the anxiety that screamed from him gave me pause. Appius couldn’t have been that young. There was a minimum age for the healing course. But in that moment, he looked like he was just a beautiful, dark-haired boy wearing a man’s body.
I couldn’t walk away. I didn’t really want to. Appius needed someone, and so did I. Since Dushka wasn’t there, since I didn’t have the first idea when I would see my love again, I decided to grab the next best thing.
“Do you want to come with me?” I asked. I quickly added, “I’m only going to sleep. I’m exhausted, and tomorrow is going to be another long day. But you could come with me, if you’d like, and sleep with me. For comfort if nothing else.”
Appius glanced back toward the pool. His soft lips parted for a moment as he took in all the fucking and splashing. He was scared, there was no doubt about it. I wondered if he knew that grabbing comfort where it could be found was actually braver than going along with the crowd when what you really needed was peace.
“Alright,” he said at last, turning back to me. “I’ll come with you. I…I don’t want to be alone tonight anyhow.”
I smiled at him and went so far as to grasp his hand and lead him out of the main room and into the adjacent changing room so we could don our clothes and coats.
The college was eerily quiet as we walked from the bathhouse to my dormitory house. The entire city was strangely quiet for the night before Solstice. There should have been music and laughter in the air, children squealing over their new Solstice gifts and shouts of rejoicing.
Instead, everything was still, and the new snow that drifted down from thick clouds was like a shroud, burying us before we were actually dead.
“Do you think the king’s soldiers are going to kill everyone in the college for healing those people?” Appius asked as we reached my room and peeled out of our clothes again.
“I honestly don’t know,” I sighed, folding my things and setting them on the bureau. “I hope not.”
Appius nodded, but that was all the conversation we had.
I climbed into one side of my bed, and Appius scrambled into the other. I could feel his panic in the tension of his body, the slight trembling of his hands as he reached for me, then pulled back, then tentatively stretched out a hand again.
“Come on,” I said, rolling to my side, dragging him in, gesturing for him to roll so that his back would be against my chest, then drawing him into an embrace. “It’s just sleeping. You can still tell everyone you prefer women and that nothing happened between us.”
“I…I’m not sure it’s as simple as that anymore,” Appius mumbled.
I laughed and closed my eyes, holding him close. “Nothing it that simple. Ever.”
ChapterTen
Appius was still in my bed and my arms in the morning. He’d flipped during the night, and I’d rolled to my back, so he was sprawled across me, snoring gently.
I didn’t hate it.
It was kind of sweet, actually. From what I knew of Appius, he was a country boy, he’d only just arrived in the biggest city in the Old Realm a few weeks before, and even though he had a fine physique and looked the same age as me, he was inexperienced with life. He almost made me feel like an older brother…if older brothers slept naked together and occasionally got each other off.
Then again, there were Leander and Darius.
I let Appius sleep on, even though I was too hot under the blanket we shared and needed to get up and take a piss. Dushka would have liked Appius. Appius wasn’t the sort of man he usually liked to watch me fucking with, but he would like him all the same.
Dushka preferred to watch me manhandled by rough men who were bigger than I was. He particularly liked to watch me being held down or restrained by thick, muscled arms and pounded like I was being taken against my will, which I never was. I had no idea why he liked the fantasy of his younger lover being raped by another wolf, but he definitely did. He never failed to come, usually all over my face, while whoever our chosen companion for the night was held me in a helpless position and rammed his cock in me. I never failed to come either.
Someday, I would have to ask Dushka what the appeal of that particular fantasy was. Someday, I hoped to be able to introduce him to Appius. And Leander and Darius. Hell, even Lucius and Mara. Maybe he’d arrange for me and my friends to do some exhibition fucking, as Peter had called it, like we’d done at that very first meeting of leaders, before the Alliance had even been formed. That would be a laugh.
