Ragnar went limp beneath his teeth. He exhaled in a shocked-sounding rush. And then he rested his hands on Leif’s waist, the grip punishingly tight. Clinging desperately.
Leif didn’t draw blood, but when he lifted his head, saw that he’d left a gratifying mark behind on Ragnar’s throat.
“You fool,” Leif murmured against his ear, and heard Ragnar’s quick inhale, felt his chest swell against his own, andwanted. “I’m not going to marry Amelia.”
“You could,” Ragnar said, muffled against his shoulder.
“Yes, but I don’t want to.” It was really only once he said that he realized how true the statement was. A previously undetected knot of tension loosened under his breastbone. “I don’t particularly want to bed her, either.”
Ragnar pulled back, but only as far as Leif would allow, fingers still hooked in his torq. It put them almost nose-to-nose, Ragnar’s features blurred this close, but his eyes very blue, and very wide. “Liar,” he accused, but the bright, mischievous spark had returned to his voice; a glimmer of it.
Leif snorted. “No. Most days, I’m so randy I’d have a run at a convenient knot in a tree.”
Ragnar pulled back a little more, the torq digging into the back of his neck, his lips hitching upward at the outer corners.
Soberly, and honestly, for the first time since meeting the Lady of Drakewell, Leif said, “I like Amelia, yes. I admire her strength. Is she attractive? Of course. Could she want me? Yes, I can scent it on her.”
Ragnar’s face fell.
Leif continued, “She gives you the occasional sidelong glance as well.”
Ragnar’s brows went up, and…oh. Well. Leif didn’t like that much at all.
“She’s lonely,” he said, firmly. “She misses her dead lover, and she’s not a wide-eyed virgin. She hungers, same as anyone.”
Ragnar considered a moment. His gaze lowered to Leif’s mouth, eyes growing hazy and half-lidded. “Not like us.”
Leif’s pulse jumped, and Ragnar’s did in response; a delicious feedback loop of heated excitement that it would be all too easy to succumb to. “No,” he agreed, “not like us.”
Ragnar leaned in.
Leif shifted his hand to the front of his throat, and pressed his thumb to the torq, right over his Adam’s apple.
Ragnar stopped short, brows lifting, breath stuttering.
“I might not want her,” Leif said, “but I’m not going to let the Sels take her this way.”
Ragnar sighed, long-suffering. “Curse you for being aprince.”
Leif grinned, and leaned in to bite quick and sharp at Ragnar’s bottom lip.
“Ow! I said prince, not brat, you fucking welp,” Ragnar complained, but was grinning, too, already licking the blood off his lip.
Leif smacked him lightly on the cheek and withdrew. “Stop being so insubordinate.” He turned, and started back up the hill, not doubting for a moment that Ragnar would follow. “If you’re good, I’ll let you ride Amelia’s horse.”
“Oh, thank you, your grace,” Ragnar said, dripping sarcasm. He caught up to Leif’s steady stride with a few jogging steps, until they were side-by-side. In a low, completely respectful, and, more importantly, sincere voice, he said, “Thank you, alpha.”
Leif bumped their shoulders together, and though the situation at large was grim, Ragnar exuded a tail-wagging sort of relieved happiness, and Leif felt ready to lead.
~*~
It was midday by the time their war council—such as it was—met in the dining room of the chateau. All the chairs were missing, a few broken bits of leg by the hearth revealing their fate as firewood, so they stood around the table, the ever-present maps spread across the dusty wood, curled at the edges, spotted with muck of unknown origin from traveling, loathed by all of them at this point.
Reggie moved to stand at the head of the table, and no one dissented.
He noted that Leif had brought his thrall, the two of them standing shoulder-to-shoulder, arms folded, like equals. Ragnar wore a disturbingly smug expression that Reggie didn’t trust at all; he wanted to ask that he be sent out of the room, but he didn’t outrank a prince, not even a Northern one. And Leda had vouched for his bravery when the Sels entered camp.
With an inward sigh, Reggie put him out of his mind, and focused on the real task at hand.
