He cuffed their cocks together, fingers wrapped around the hard shafts. If Dylan wanted to argue he’d have to wait until later. Somerset fucked his hand roughly, the underside of his cock rubbing against Dylan’s. Pre-come and spit slicked his palm and smeared along his cock. It dripped from between his fingers.
Pleasure built in Somerset’s balls like snowslip, that building feeling about something ready to give. Dylan gasped under his attention, sweat shiny on his chest and flushed throat. He chewed his lower lip, already bruised from Somerset’s kisses, as he thrust up against the cup of Somerset’s hand.
He came first, his spend dripping onto Somerset’s knuckles and jeans. Dylan sagged back against the wall, his weight hung from leather straps, and breathed raggedly. His throat worked as he swallowed.
Somerset jerked his hand down his cock a few more times, threads of ice caught back into his balls, then stepped forward. He pressed his body against Dylan’s, sweat-slick skin to sweat-slick skin shoulder to balls, and thrust roughly against the tight, flat span of his stomach. He leaned forward to grab a kiss from salty lips as he spilled himself over both of them, sticky and wet.
They stood there for a minute, breathing each other's breath, and then Somerset reached up to untangle Dylan’s hands. Dylan sagged into him, limp and loose, until he pulled himself together and straightened up.
He leaned back against the wall and reached down to pull his jeans up with clumsy hands.
“It’s not…what happens if Yule finds someone else to be Santa?” he asked. When Somerset gave him a curious look, Dylan shrugged. He dropped his hands from his jeans, leaving the waistband agape to flash come-smeared skin and hair. “It’s not like anyone picked me. Not even you, Saintmaker.”
OK. SkellirorSomerset he could accept from Dylan’s mouth. Saintmaker still left a bad taste.
Dylan hadn’t noticed.
“And after a year, I still can’tfeellike I’m what Yule wants for the job,” he said as he looked down at his hands. His wrists were red, rubbed raw by the leather. “I…when the wolves took Irene and Alice, I was useless.”
Somerset put his finger under Dylan’s chin and tipped his head back up. He leaned in and dropped a quick, salted kiss onto his bruised mouth.
“YouareYule,” he said. “And we’ll find the wolves. We’re getting closer. We’ll have Irene and Alice back before you crack the Whip.”
There was still something worried at the corners of Dylan’s eyes, but he nodded reluctant acceptance of the reassurance. Before Somerset could push more, the door to the stables swung open and cracked against the wall.
“Well, now I have to learn to knock,” Stúfur said as he turned his back. The nape of his neck was bright red.
Somerset looked down at himself. “You’ve seen it before,” Somerset said dryly.
“Yours,” Stúfur said. “Nothis.That’s Santa. I don’t want to see that.”
Somerset scoffed at that as he tucked his cock away and buttoned his jeans. Then he waited until Dylan made himself decent.
“What is it?” he asked.
Stúfur half turned, one eye squinted open. Once he was reassured that he wasn’t going to see anything he turned the rest of the way around.
“They’ve found something,” he said.
Somerset swore under his breath as he crossed the stables in two long strides. “Next time,” he growled as he pushed past Stúfur and out the door, “lead with that.”
“I am still going through the accounts,” Enid said. She absently unpinned some of her hair and then pinned it back down, more severely, again. “Based on what Lucas said, he’s had almost nothing to do the changeling brokering. That was all Demre. The only fingerprint he put on it was to approve the pay-out schedule, which was standard procedure for everything.”
She stopped as she pulled one of the stacks of paper toward her. Her hands were so clean they glistened, but her nails were flaky and her cuticles raw.
“What I did find,” she said, “is the petty fraud that the Duke of Belling mentioned. It didn’t just go unnoticed because most of our kind still struggle with modern economics, but because most of what he skimmed was from the Yule coffers.”
She pulled a sheet from the stack and held it out.
Dylan took it from her. He read it twice, to double check, and finally raised his eyebrows.
“That would definitely put me into my overdraft,” he noted.
Jars plucked the paper out of his hand and frowned at him. The crease between his eyes slowly deepened until, in a fit of pique, he just handed it to Somerset.
“How did he have access?” Jars asked
Enid shrugged. “An accomplice?” she said. “Convenience? Someone approved him, as Demre and Hill’s representative, to be on the account and then didn’t remember to rescind it? It could be any of those.”
