Page 106 of Setting the Break

Indrie can barely hear him through the roaring in his ears. He is riding Eskil in earnest now, his hips moving in a rhythm that is less controlled and more desperate with every stroke, his thighs burning and his stomach pulling tight and the pleasure building low and heavy in his body, a heat coiling at the base of his spine. He can feel every inch of Eskil sliding in and out of him, the drag and the fill and the deep pressure that keeps catching him right where he needs it, the slap of his ass against Eskil's hips, and his cock is bouncing between them, hard and neglected, and he does not touch it because he wants to come from this, from Eskil's cock inside him and nothing else, and the realization that he might be able to sends a shock of heat through him.

Eskil's hands come to his hips again, gripping, and he plants his feet on the mattress and starts to meet him. Thrusting up into Indrie on every downstroke, driving deeper, and the force of it jolts through Indrie's whole body and sends him lurching forward and he catches himself on Eskil's chest and the new angle is almost too much. Eskil's cock is hitting him deep and hard and perfectly, driving against that spot with every upward snap of his hips, and Indrie cannot keep up, his rhythm falling apart, his hips stuttering, and Eskil takes over.

He holds Indrie's hips in place and fucks up into him, fast and relentless, using the leverage of his feet on the mattress to drive into him from below, and Indrie braces himself on Eskil's chest and takes it, takes all of it, gasping and shaking and making sounds that would mortify him if he had any capacity for mortification left. Each thrust shoves a broken noise out of him. He is so wet now that the slide is easy, Eskil's cock pistoning in and out of him with a wet slap that fills the room, and Indrie can feel himself clenching around it helplessly, trying to keep him in, trying to keep him deep.

Indrie gets his hand around his cock and strokes once, twice, the head so sensitive that even that light touch makes his toes curl, and on the third stroke Eskil drives up into him at the exact right angle, grinding against that place inside him, and everything inside Indrie pulls tight and crests and breaks.

His orgasm breaks over him in long rolling waves, blinding. His hole draws down around Eskil's cock in rhythmic, milking pulses and his own cock pulses in his hand and spills across Eskil's chest and stomach in hot, thick streaks, striping the ink and the scars, and his mouth opens on a cry that he could not have stopped for anything in the world. He keeps coming. It rolls through him again, a second wave on the back of the first, his body shuddering, his hole fluttering wildly around the cock still buried in him, and he can feel how open he is, how completely Eskil has him.

Eskil's rhythm breaks. Indrie feels it happen, feels the controlled thrust give way to something ragged and desperate, Eskil's hips snapping up into him in short hard strokes, chasing the finish, fucking him through it, and Indrie is still shaking and gripping him and it is enough. Eskil comes with both hands gripping Indrie's hips hard enough to bruise, his back arching off the bed, his head thrown back, and the sound he makes is low and long and gutted. He pulses inside Indrie in hot waves that Indrie can feel, deep and intimate and overwhelming, filling him, spilling into him, so much of it that Indrie can feel it start to leak out around the thick base of Eskil's cock even while he is still coming, dripping down over Eskil's balls and onto the sheets.

Indrie collapses onto his chest.

For a long time there is nothing except breathing and the slowing of heartbeats and the warm sticky mess between them and Eskil's arms wrapped around him so tight it is hard to tell where one of them ends and the other begins. Indrie's face is pressed against Eskil's chest, his ear over his heart, and the heartbeat under his cheek is rapid and heavy and gradually easing. Eskil's spend is leaking out of him in a slow, warm trickle, smearing between their bodies. Eskil's hand is on the back of his head, fingers moving through his hair, and his other arm is banded across Indrie's back, holding him down against his own chest.

Indrie is trembling. Fine, involuntary tremors running through his legs and his arms and his stomach, the aftershocks of an orgasm that took everything out of him and left him wrung out and boneless. He can feel Eskil softening inside him, the fullness easing, and the slide of him as he slips free makes Indrie shiver and tighten his arms. Come follows, a warm gush of it, and Indrie makes an embarrassed sound against Eskil's chest that Eskil answers by kissing the top of his head.

Eskil looks down at him. His hand stills in Indrie's hair and his expression shifts, the post-orgasmic haze clearing just enough to let something larger through, something that changes the whole surface of him and nothing at all underneath it. He cups the side of Indrie's face and runs his thumb along his cheekbone and says, quietly, "I love you."

Indrie smiles. It is small and tired and so full of happiness it hurts. He presses his face back into Eskil's chest and closes his eyes and feels Eskil's arms tighten around him.

The fire crackles. The candles gutter. The dried flowers from the bed are scattered across the pillows and caught in Indrie's hair and pressed against the damp skin of Eskil's shoulder. The room smells like oil and sex and the herb sachets Indrie hung in the wardrobe weeks ago that have turned these chambers into something that smells like both of them.

"Indrie," Eskil says.

"Mm."

"For the record." Eskil's voice is low and rough. "Our first night was not what you think it was. You did not lie there and give me nothing. You gave me everything. You gave me something no one has ever given me, and I have never once felt I was owed anything more."

Indrie's eyes burn behind his closed lids. He presses his mouth to Eskil's chest, over his heart, and leaves it there.

"But," Eskil continues, and his hand resumes its path through Indrie's hair, slow and steady. "If you want to ride me like that every night for the rest of our lives, I will not object."

Indrie laughs. It bubbles up out of him, wet and breathless and joyful, and he buries his face in Eskil's chest and laughs until his shoulders shake, and Eskil holds him through it with his arms around him and his mouth pressed against the top of his head.

"Maybe not every night," Indrie says, and then, testing the word out loud for the first time against Eskil's skin, "My dear husband."

He closes his eyes and listens to Eskil's heartbeat and falls asleep in his arms, in their bed, in the home he chose, held by the man he loves, on the first night of the rest of his life.

EPILOGUE

MORGAN

The yard is louder than usual at dawn.

Morgan stands on the keep steps with his arms crossed and watches the organized chaos of horses being saddled and carts being loaded, grain sacks roped down under oilcloth, weapons checked and rechecked and checked a third time because Eskil's warriors are nothing if not meticulous about the things that keep them alive. The snow from two days ago has been trampled to brown slush under hooves and boots, and the air is cold enough that every breath comes out in a cloud. Morgan hates winter with a specific and well-documented hatred, having never once been built for it.

Bohdi is beside him. Ingrid is on his other side, her hands clasped in front of her and her face composed in the way that means she is holding something back with both hands.

Morgan watches Eskil check the girth strap on his horse. Dagny is down in the slush with her sleeves shoved up past the elbow, hauling on the last rope over the grain carts and arguing with somebody about the knot, because she is not riding and has decided to be loudly useful about it instead. Garrik is already mounted, likely still tender but doing an impressive job of hiding it. Fenris is beside him on a sturdy mare, his staff strapped across the saddlebags, listening as Garrik murmurs something to him no one else can hear. Eskil's thirty are forming up behind them, breath smoking, armor dull in the gray light, and there are not enough of them to look like anything but what they are meant to look like.

Indrie is standing by his horse, looking up at it. He has accepted his fate. He would also like it noted for the record that he does not enjoy it.

Morgan goes to him first.

He does not say anything. He just walks down the steps and crosses the yard and pulls Indrie into his arms, and Indrie grabs hold of him and hangs on. Morgan gets his arms around his shoulders and holds him tight against his chest, and Indrie's hands fist in the back of his coat, and for a long moment neither of them speaks.

"Take care of yourself," Morgan says, into the top of his head, where the short hair is already escaping the braids Morgan put in for the wedding. "And take care of him. He won't do it himself."