Page 39 of Fought it Through the Teeth

Bohdi's mouth crashes into his and Morgan whimpers into it, actually whimpers, a sound he will take to his grave before admitting he made. Bohdi's hand slides from his waist down the curve of his spine and lower, cupping his ass, fingers pressing into the muscle, pulling him tighter, closer, until there is no space at all between them. Morgan can feel every inch of Bohdi's cock against him, and his own cock is trapped and leaking between their stomachs, and he thinks, with total sincerity and absolute conviction, that if he does not get this man inside him in the next five minutes he is going to come untouched against Bohdi's stomach and never live it down.

He has never been this close to anything in his life. Not just to coming — to having. To having the thing he has wanted so desperately and so hopelessly and for so long that the wanting has become load-bearing, so fundamental to who he is that he has never been able to imagine what he would be without it. And now it is here. Bohdi is here. Bohdi is hard against him and kissing him and making sounds into his mouth that Morgan is going to remember every night for the rest of his natural life. Morgan is in his lap and Morgan asked and Bohdi said yes, not with words but with his hands and his mouth and the arm banded around Morgan's waist, holding on as though letting go would end him.

Which is when the heavy wooden door clatters open.

The sound is enormous in the stone chamber — wood on stone, the scrape of hinges, the echo bouncing off the walls and the water and the low ceiling. It rips through the steam and every nerve in Morgan's body fires at once, not with pleasure but with the cold, electric shock of adrenaline.

Bohdi breaks the kiss. Morgan's eyes go wide.

The single clear thought in his head is this: they cannot be caught like this.

He is here to wed the chieftain. He is a bride of the Wolfe clan, promised and presented and paraded through the civilian quarter for the clan's approval. Being found naked in a Rengaran warrior's lap in Ivan's own bathhouse gets one or both of them killed tonight, and not in any metaphorical or political sense. Ivan will have them dragged into the yard and gutted in front of his warriors, because a bride who cuckolds the chieftain before the wedding is not an embarrassment, it is an act of war, and Ivan does not respond to acts of war with diplomacy.

Morgan moves.

Bohdi's hand slides out of his hair. Morgan lifts himself off Bohdi's lap and shifts sideways onto the stone bench a body's width away. His back presses against the wall of the pool. His hands find the ledge and grip it. The water settles around them both, disturbed by the motion, and Morgan pushes his wet hair back from his face and arranges his expression into something that bears a passing resemblance to calm and absolutely no resemblance to the man who was begging to be fucked thirty seconds ago.

His breathing is too fast. He slows it by force — in through the nose, out through the mouth, the way Eskil taught him when he was young and frightened and learning that the world was full of things that would eat him if he let them see his fear. His heart is slamming against his ribs. His cock is still achingly hard beneath the water and there is absolutely nothing he can do about that except angle his body toward the wall and pray the steam is thick enough to obscure it.

He just manages to get his breathing halfway even when one of Ivan's men rounds the corner.

The man is thick-necked and broad and wearing the boiled leather of Ivan's personal guard, and he steps into the bath chamber without hurry. His eyes sweep the space and Morgan watches him assess the scene without interest, sent to deliver a message and doing his job and nothing more.

If he sees anything out of the ordinary, it doesn't show.

"Prince Morgan," the man says. His Wolfe dialect is thick but intelligible. "The chieftain requests your presence in his study before dark. He asks that your bodyguard join you as well."

Morgan registers the second part of the request as he is processing the first. Ivan wants Bohdi there.

Morgan turns it over. Decides it is a good sign. Maybe the man is finally coming around to Bohdi's presence. Maybe the week of charm and sparring and shared ale have finally convinced Ivan that Bohdi is an asset rather than an obstacle. That certainly makes their timeline easier. If Ivan is comfortable having Bohdi in the room, then the opportunity they need — Ivan alone, unguarded, within reach — becomes less a matter of engineering and more a matter of patience.

"We'll come directly," Morgan says. His voice is steady and pleasant and reveals absolutely nothing about the fact that he can still feel the ghost of Bohdi's cock against him, branded on his skin.

The man nods. He turns and walks out. His footsteps echo on the stone and fade, and the heavy door swings shut behind him, and the chamber is quiet again except for the sound of water and the hiss of steam through the vents and the hammering of Morgan's heart.

His eyes stay on the door.

He can hear Bohdi beside him. The sound of his breathing — rough, labored, not yet under control. The small movement of water that means Bohdi is shifting on the bench, adjusting, probably dragging a hand down his face the way he does when he is processing something he'd rather not be processing. Morgan can feel his presence the way he always feels it — a gravitational pull, a warmth, a weight in the air beside him that his body is oriented toward the way a plant orients toward light.

He does not look at him.

Because if he looks at Bohdi right now — flushed and wet and breathing hard and wearing whatever expression he is wearing — Morgan is going to climb back into his lap and finish what they started and to hell with Ivan and the clan and the mission and the kingdom and every single thing that is supposed to matter more than this.

The silence stretches. The water drips. The steam curls between them.

Morgan stands. The water sluices off his body and the air hits his skin, and he is still hard. There is nothing in the world he can do about it except step out of the pool and reach for the linen cloth on the rack and wrap it around his waist and not turn around.

He hears Bohdi stand behind him. Hears the water move.

They dress in silence, backs to each other, on opposite sides of the chamber. Morgan pulls his clothes on over damp skin and the fabric sticks and clings and he does not care. His hands are steady. His breathing is even. His face, when he catches his reflection in the polished bronze panel by the door, is composed and reveals nothing.

Nothing except his eyes, which are bright and fierce and full of something that no amount of composure can conceal.

He opens the door. He walks out. He does not wait for Bohdi, because waiting means standing in a doorway while Bohdi passes close enough to touch, and Morgan does not trust his hands right now. He does not trust a single part of himself right now.

He walks through the corridor toward Ivan's study, and Bohdi's footsteps fall into rhythm behind him. The distance between them is three feet and it might as well be a canyon, and Morgan walks into it with his chin up and his heart hammering for entirely the wrong reasons and the taste of Bohdi still on his mouth.

Chapter 18