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Enzo smiled. “With any luck, I shall likewise become old and flabby and wrinkled by then, and we would make a well-matched set.”
Another wistful smile graced Fiore’s perfect lips. “Perhaps. But if I accept the offer of a man older than myself—perhaps much older—then he will slip his mortal coil before I pass the bloom of youth, and thus I shall not know the pain that would come when he tired of me and sought another younger blossom.”
Enzo stared at him.
Fiore’s smile faltered. “Too truthful?”
“No,” Enzo assured him, even as his mind continued to whirl with what he’d heard. “Never.”
Fiore reached for his mask.
Enzo froze.
Yet the gentle hand did not touch the ties or seek to pull it down. Instead the fingertips slipped beneath the protruding beak to trace the bristled line of Enzo’s jaw. A shiver of illicit pleasure ran across his skin.
“I do like you,” said Fiore. “Very much.”
Enzo felt the same and more besides. He would have said so, but Fiore spoke on.
“I’m content to remain with you for as long as you’ll have me,” Fiore continued. “But I have to plan ahead. I don’t want to end up a bitter dried-up hag with nothing to my name and no one to look after me.”
“You won’t,” Enzo assured him.
Fiore smirked. “I know.”
That hadn’t been at all what Enzo meant. But Fiore seemed determined not to hear him.
~
CHAPTER FOUR
Many gentlemen had promised Fiore many things throughout the years. Money, obviously. Myriad luxuries and delicacies. Silks, jewels, horses, houses, ships. Even when Fiore knew damn well they didn’t have it. And even when they did, he knew damn well they’d never waste it on him.
None had delivered on their promises. Fiore had always known better than to press the issue.
Enzo’s offer, however, had a different ring about it.
He’d spoken not in the throes of passion. Nor in the afterglow. Nor even in an attempt at seduction whilst they negotiated their encounter. Instead he’d made his offer out of the clear blue, a soft and gentle thunderclap that nonetheless rang in Fiore’s ears, whilst they’d wandered arm-in-arm through the city as casual as anything. Perhaps it was the tender timbre of Enzo’s voice, like one who’d stumbled across some wondrous creature in the wilderness and feared his words would startle it. Or perhaps it was the pleading in his dark eyes, the only part of his face Fiore could see and yet which contrived to speak more than the whole of most men. Despite Fiore’s better sense, despite all his experience, the offer sounded unaccountably genuine.
And entirely too tempting.
It was, after all, everything Fiore had sought ever since he realized his own inevitable mortality. No more trying to catch the eye of a dozen fresh strangers each night. No more waiting and wondering when his looks would fade at last and rob him of the only stable career he’d ever known. No more submitting to the whims of those who cared not a whit for him. No more feigning desire when he felt none.
Which, frankly, sounded like a foolish dream.
A return to familiar ground would set his mind to rights. And so he turned to his companion and enquired, “Shall we retire to theKingfisher?”
Enzo served him an astonished blink—whether because Fiore had caught him deep in thought or because he hadn’t expected the afternoon to go in that direction, Fiore couldn’t say. At last he replied, “Only if you’re feeling up to it.”
Which threw Fiore into an astonishment of his own. Few men seemed to even hear him when he expressed discomfort. It’d been surprising enough that Enzo noticed his wince at the beginning of their stroll. To have it remembered some hours and adventures afterward… Well. Fiore certainly appreciated it. But his profession demanded a certain response. “I’m game for anything.”
A smile warmed those masked eyes as Enzo replied, “Then lead on.”
Fiore did so with a sure step despite the frantic spinning of his mind’s wheels. He had perhaps overplayed his hand in showing Enzo the capricci. Vanity had informed his motive, true enough. But the capricci contained his own desires as well as a means to gauge Enzo’s. His memories of verdant valleys remained dim and distant, as indistinct as the sfumato haze hanging over the painted forest. While he had no singular distinct recollection, a sort of satiety overcame him whenever he encountered something similar, and the fashionable capricci produced in Halcyon sufficed to send his mind wandering off down bucolic pathways of never-was and never-were.
And then Enzo had beheld him thus wandering. Which was at best humiliating and at worst dangerous. Though Enzo didn’t seem to mind it. That was something. What, Fiore didn’t exactly know, but it was something.
He ought to have shown Enzo the mask-makers or lace-weavers or glass-blowers. The latter Fiore found a fascinating science, though the island itself had clogged with sight-seers in the centuries since the glass-blowers were permitted to come and go freely rather than remain their whole lives in their quarter lest the secrets of their art escape. Enzo would’ve probably liked it, as well. But then there was Fiore’s vanity and his eagerness to show off Enzo to his friends as much as to show off his friends’ work to Enzo, and then Enzo’s offer and his promise. Now, when Fiore ought to have changed the subject by introducing new sights, his flagging courage instead forced him to retreat to his ship with his tail between his legs and his would-be paramour in tow.
