Page 69 of Setting the Break

Bohdi's hands slow in his hair. "You're sure?"

"Everybody on the council knew the plan. Anybody could have overheard it, or been told it over a drink. But the timing's too neat. They were on the border farms within days of us riding out." Morgan opens his eyes and looks at the ceiling. "There's somebody in Valen talking, Bohdi."

Bohdi turns it over. He does not brush it off. Morgan thinks in ledgers, every piece set against every other piece, and when something does not balance, Morgan is the one who notices. If he says somebody is feeding the Wolfe, then somebody is feeding the Wolfe, and Bohdi needs to take it to Eskil.

Tomorrow. Tonight belongs to something else.

He rinses Morgan's hair, pouring water over his head out of cupped hands, and Morgan sputters and swats at him and calls him several things that are not at all complimentary. Bohdi grins and keeps pouring.

"I thought about you," Morgan says.

It comes out of nowhere, dropped in between one splash and the next. He is not looking at Bohdi. He is looking at his own hands in the water, fingers spread, watching the ripples come off them.

"On the road," Morgan says. "In the creek. Under that boulder. I kept thinking, what would Bohdi do? And the answer was always something violent and quick, and that wasn't available to me, so I had to work out the Morgan version."

"And the Morgan version was to fall in a creek twice and lose a fight with a bramble."

"The Morgan version was to get home." He turns his head just enough that Bohdi can see his profile against the fire. "I've never done anything on my own before. Not really. There's always been Eskil, or you, or both of you. I've been useful. I know I've been useful. But being useful behind a desk isn't the same thing as being able to manage on a road."

Bohdi wraps both arms around him across his chest and pulls him in tighter. Morgan's hands come up and rest on his forearms and hold on.

"You are the most capable person I know," Bohdi says, low, right against his ear. "And I'm counting your brother."

Morgan is quiet for a moment. Then his fingers tighten.

"Don't tell Eskil I said any of that," Morgan says. "He'll worry."

"He should worry. His little brother came home through hostile country alone with a dagger and a bad temper."

"And a horse."

"A horse you fell into a creek with."

"The horse fell in with me," Morgan says, with dignity. "It was a joint decision."

The water is going warm instead of hot and Bohdi ought to get them both out of it before they shrivel. But Morgan is warm and loose against his chest, and the closeness is doing something necessary to the frayed edges of him. He has spent the last several hours in a very controlled kind of panic. His body has not yet caught up to the fact that Morgan is here and in one piece and leaning on him. His pulse is still running high and there is a tremor in his hands that he has been hiding since the stable yard.

He has fought his whole life. He has watched men die in front of him and eaten his supper afterward. He put Morgan on a road alone and rode the other way because Morgan told him to, and the day and a half since has taken something out of him that he did not know he had.

Morgan shifts in the water and turns around until he is facing him, chest to chest, knees on either side of Bohdi's hips and hands on his shoulders, his wet hair hanging down around his face in heavy strands. It puts their mouths close together. Morgan's eyes are dark and fixed and asking something his mouth has not gotten to yet.

Bohdi finds his waist under the water. He presses his thumbs into Morgan's hips and draws slow circles there, and Morgan's breath catches.

"What do you want?" Bohdi asks.

Morgan's fingers curl into his shoulders. "You know what I want."

"Well, obviously, but I want to hear you say it."

Morgan holds his eyes. There is a flush climbing his throat, visible even in this light, and his pupils have gone wide. He leans in until their foreheads touch.

"I want you, Bohdi," Morgan says, quiet and steady. "The same thing I've always wanted. You."

Bohdi kisses him. It is slower than by the door and more deliberate. He runs one hand up the length of Morgan's back and feels the muscle move under his fingers. Morgan presses into him and opens his mouth, and Bohdi licks into him, and Morgan makes a low sound in his throat that goes straight to the base of Bohdi's spine.

Morgan's hips shift in his lap. The movement is small and deliberate, a roll that seats him tighter against Bohdi, and the friction of it through the warm water sends a pulse of heat straight through him. Bohdi's hands tighten on his waist. Morgan does it again, slower, watching Bohdi's face while he does it. The look on Morgan is the same one he wears at the council table when he knows something nobody else has worked out yet. Smug. Certain. Daring Bohdi to do something about it.

Bohdi does something about it.