They ate, and they talked, looking for common ground they’d never find. Soren spoke bluntly, offering no deference to Vanya, but it was refreshing in a way to be treated as someone other than a prince.
The servants cleared the meal when they finished, whisking the dishes and plates away. Other servants arrived with a platter containing a multitude of small desserts. Soren went right for the flaky, nutty square of pastry drenched in honey, getting his fingers sticky. He shoved it in his mouth and licked his fingers clean.
Vanya leaned back on the low bench, eyes on Soren. “Come here.”
Soren raised an eyebrow, but he stood from his bench and came around the glass table without argument. Vanya settled his hand against the side of Soren’s knee, dragging it up hard muscle shown off by the trousers’ design. He slid his fingers beneath the fabric, fingers splaying against the curve of Soren’s ass, thumb resting against the tie there on his hip.
He tipped his head back and met Soren’s half-lidded gaze, gray eyes gone dark with something they both wanted. The quiet between them was as heavy as the hot evening air and charged like a thunderstorm.
“You’d make a fine courtesan,” Vanya said after a moment.
Soren snorted. “I noticed you had your servants hide my uniform. I’m not walking around the palace in this tomorrow.”
Vanya dug his fingers a little harder into warm skin. Soren rocked forward a bit on his feet. “You did so today.”
“I walked inside your walls, not where the public could see. What would your people say of their prince so openly fucking a warden instead of a whore?”
“Some of my country’s best assassins were whores. And I’m sure there would be nobles who would wonder what House had superseded your duty.”
Soren tilted his head a little, staring down at Vanya as the servants bustled about the table, removing the dessert tray and discreetly leaving behind a smaller one filled with tiny vials.
“If you couldn’t trust your courtesans, is that why you married when you did? Because you wanted someone in your bed?”
“There is very little difference between a sacrifice and a spouse when it comes to marriage between the Houses.”
“That sounds more like a gamble than love.”
“I told you before why I married. She sleeps in the nursery.”
Vanya had simply neglected to tell him what was lost in their marriage bed after Nicca died in childbirth. He trusted Nicca to provide him an heir, because that was what both their Houses had wanted, had contracted for. Perhaps in time he could have trusted her not to kill him at the behest of her mother, but they hadn’t even had a calendar year together before she was burned to ash.
Vanya did not trust easily and never would. There were many ways for the Houses to slip an assassin into his bed. He should know, as he’d worked with his mother to send such hidden threats as gifts to recalcitrant Houses in the past. He slept alone most nights in order to see the dawn.
Soren’s hand settled over Vanya’s, callused fingers stroking over skin. Then he moved to undo the ties on the trousers, letting the fabric pool around his ankles. Vanya tightened his grip, letting his gaze drop from Soren’s face, down his faintly flushed chest beneath the gauzy robe, to the half-hard cock between his legs.
“Is this what you want when I bring the border reports? Me in your bed because you know I won’t put a bullet in your back?” Soren asked.
Vanya dragged his hand up over Soren’s stomach and down to curl his fingers around Soren’s cock, giving it a firm stroke. The way Soren rocked forward, a breath hissing between his teeth, made him remember all the little sounds he’d forgotten the warden had made the last time they’d been together like this.
“Does it matter? I want you, so I’ll have you, and you’ll let me, won’t you?”
To prove his point, Vanya gripped the edge of the gauzy robe and pulled Soren onto his lap. Soren went without protest, settling across Vanya’s thighs, knees pressing into the soft cushion of the bench. Vanya reached up and caught Soren’s chin, pulling the other man down into a slow, deep kiss that tasted of honey and cinnamon, sweet like the dessert he hadn’t gotten to try.
This was better.
When they finally broke apart, Soren’s lips were clean of honey, and the depth of his desire could be felt in the hardness pressing against Vanya’s stomach. Vanya leaned forward and pressed a kiss to Soren’s chest, lips catching on the thin gold links of the medallion’s chain.
“No one will care that you’re in my bed. You’re a nameless, stateless warden, who I owe a debt they know nothing about, but it is a cost I can easily pay when you finally come to me with hand outstretched,” Vanya murmured.
You’re safewas what he didn’t say, because he knew better than to speak of things that could never be taken back.
Vanya turned his head, lips brushing against soft gauze as he placed his mouth over one dark nipple through the see-through fabric. He sucked hard on it, running his tongue over the fabric and the quickly hardening nub. Soren shifted on his lap, hands coming up to cradle Vanya’s head as he bit gently at the skin beneath his teeth.
“The wardens will care,” Soren murmured when Vanya finally lifted his mouth from the tender ministrations he’d provided. The robe was damp over both Soren’s nipples, skin reddened beneath it, and the flush to his chest had gotten deeper.
Vanya leaned forward far enough to retrieve a vial from the small tray on the table, pressing a kiss to the side of Soren’s neck. “The Poison Accords will not be broken by me having you.”
And have him Vanya did, there in the courtyard as the servants went about their evening duties around them. Vanya had never minded an audience, and Soren didn’t seem to care, not when he had three of Vanya’s fingers pressed deep into his body, mouth fallen open around quiet moans of pleasure. Vanya sucked kisses into warm skin, teeth catching on fabric, on gold, as he stroked Soren to a slow hardness before bringing him over the edge with sure hands.
