Page 112 of The Sun King's Noon

“Quite,” Kaelen echoed and spun so abruptly that he stubbed his toe and yelped a curse.

Richard fled.

* * *

Flint had not stirred.He lay as Richard had left him—an arm flung across his face, breath whistling through his agape mouth.

Richard shook the man’s shoulder. “Flint.”

Nothing.

“Flint, I must speak with you.”

A grunt. The arm plopped down.

Richard shook harder. “Flint, wake. This is a matter of some urgency.”

One bleary eye cracked open and regarded Richard with distaste. “What hour is it?”

“Just past midnight?—”

“Then fuck off, handsome.” The eye closed. “Let me sleep.”

“But Flint.” Richard knelt by the bed. “He called me beautiful.”

The eye opened again. Flint sighed, voice croaky. “Did he, now?”

“Well—” Richard rubbed his nape. “He did not use the precise word, but the meaning was—Flint, you must hear it for I cannot keep it inside me. I—I only asked him, you see, casually, whether he intended to purchase a gift for Ravi?—”

“Mmmm.”

“—because well, at the ball we attended as soldiers, Ravi was his date, and I had convinced myself that Kaelen harboured some affection in that direction, but, Flint, he then said—he told me of a man he had seen at the ball. In a maroon corset with gold thread.Mymaroon corset, Flint, withmygold thread, for it was I who wore it, and he said—he said the gods had set down whatever else they were making before I was born and shut their workshops and put aside the rivers and the mountains and the stars, and worked only upon him—uponme, Flint—with their very finest tools, and that when they were done they stood back and looked at their hands and knew that nothing they ever made afterwards would compare?—”

Richard’s chest heaved. His heart was at it again. The hammering. The fizzing. The tingling in the fingertips. Why, his own face would not stop feeling like a bonfire.

Flint rubbed at his eyes. “Lovely. Are we done?”

“Have you not heard a word I said? I do not know what to do. I do not know what is to be done?—”

“Handsome. I am begging you. Let me?—”

“Flint, I must court him. Properly, you understand. I must show him that I—” Richard tugged at his ear. “That I am also—that he is also—that the gods, when they set to work on him, also did rather well with—with him?—”

Flint huffed. “Just get on your knees and suck him off like everyone else.”

Richard cringed. “Must you be so unspeakably vulgar?” He rose and flopped onto the foot of Flint’s bed, narrowly avoiding the man’s shins. “I shall court him as is fitting. I—I shall buy him something.” His eyes widened. Yes. That was a good thought. “Tomorrow, I shall purchase Kaelen a gift.”

“A man,” Flint intoned, facing the ceiling, “would simply be happy to get sucked off.”

“I am not—” Richard spluttered. “I merely sought advice for his gift. Not—not vulgarity.”

Flint hummed and raised his foot under the blanket to nudge Richard’s shoulder. “No better gift for a man than to have his cock sucked.”

Richard rolled his eyes. “Perhaps in your depraved world.”

“In every world!” Flint lightly kicked at Richard’s head. “Who doesn’t like having their?—”

“Regardless”— Richard caught the foot and wrenched it down—“never shall I kneel and show such submission.”