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Predictably, he tried to thrust into my hand. I chuckled in his ear and loosened my grip, frustrating him once more.
“Ren, I need-”
“I decide what you need, darling. Try again.”
His shoulders dropped. “I want to come.”
“Permission denied. This isn’t about what you want.”
Mathias obligingly mewled out his complaint yet neither of us voiced the truth he’d spoken last night that this – me setting the scene in apparent disregard of his wants – wasexactlywhat he wanted. It heightened our enjoyment for us both to pretend otherwise, and to be safe in that shared pretence. Fuck, to know that he hadn’t just been humouring me…that he truly enjoyed everything I gave him? I’dknownthat really, of course I had: I wouldn’t have ever done it otherwise, but hearing him speak it aloud yesterday had eased that ache in my heart that insisted I was taking advantage of a man who, before he met me, really had been so charmingly innocent in such things.
When I’d drawn out my teasing touches long enough to be rewarded with a half-choked sob from my lover at how fucking unfair he undoubtedly considered I was being, I pulled my fingers free and gave his ass a light slap to ground him.
“I’m going to fuck you now,” I lied.
“Yes!” Mat growled, raising his face from where he’d planted it firmly in the blankets in visible vexation. “Now!”
And then I paused. “Oh. My braid’s come loose,” I told him sadly, tugging at my hair with my fingers to make it true. “I need to go and retie it.”
Mathias stared at me from over his shoulder, his eyes flashing with warning. “It’sfine.”
“No. I won’t be able to concentrate.” I drifted towards the door to the lodge’s other room, revelling in how his muscles tensed and his glare turned frigid. “Stay there while I sort it?”
“Renato!”
“I’ll just be a moment,” I said.
I was, naturally, a hell of a lot longer than a moment. Instead, I took my sweet time, loudly clattering around in the kitchen to dissuade him of the idea that I could possibly be waiting as impatiently as he presumably was on the other side of the closed door, even though I really was. But fucking him and fuckingwithhim were my two favourite pastimes, and tonight I was getting to do both.
When I allowed myself to open the door again several minutes later, the pile of furs was empty. My pulse ratcheted in gleeful anticipation, before I realised that Mathias…wasn’t in the room at all.
His clothes were gone, no longer discarded across the floor. The window hung wide open.
And the third thing that had changed was the scrap of parchment left on top of the furs. It had been scrawled upon in Mat’s neat handwriting.
Gone for a walk. Don’t wait up.
He’d known as well as I that this had been his chance to set the tone for the rest of our scene. If he’d still been where I’d left him, I’d have been nice – or as nice as I was ever capable of being. If I’d found him no longer bent over but instead lazing insolently against the wall or the fireplace, he’d have earned himself my crueller side.
But leaving the Dios-damned room altogether?
I huffed out a low laugh, glancing back at the open window. I was going to bring the brat to fuckingtears.
-
I followed Mat’s footprints in the snow to find him leaning against a tree overlooking the frozen lake. With his arms folded and the moon at his back, he cut a dashing silhouette of insolence and pure sex.
“Zdravstvuyte,” he said casually, cocking his head at my approach.
“Don’t fuckinghellome,” I retorted, amused and turned on. The best combination, in my opinion, and the heated look Mathias shot me suggested he felt the same. “If you have any last words, I suggest you speak them now.”
He only turned his gaze heavenward. “It’s a nice night,” he commented to the stars.
“Really? That’s what you’re going with?”
He shrugged with arrogant nonchalance. “Cold, though.”
No shit. The temperatures were so fucking low up here that even myteethwere cold. That was not a sensation I’d ever wished to experience and I could have gone my whole life quite happily without it, but some stupid fucking Mazekhstani royals had chosen to settle their capital so far north they might as well have planted their flag in an ice floe. It was hard to imagine that my beautifully warm lands lay only a few days’ ride south, but it wasn’t just distance separating us. It was altitude as well, and as Quareh clearly had the best of Riehse Eshan’s climate, the northern countries were left with this freezing – yet admittedly pretty – mess of a weather system.
