“More,” Wren moaned.
Shrike pressed a finger to his lips to quiet him. Wren licked it. But as he opened his mouth to try and suck it—to draw Shrike in, to show him what he intended for the rest of him, what he hungered for more than anything—Shrike withdrew his hand altogether.
An unseemly sound of protest escaped Wren’s throat at this unjust deprivation. Any further argument halted as Shrike brought the rim of a drinking horn to Wren’s mouth. The taste of lingonberry water wasn’t quite what Wren had wanted, but a thirst he hadn’t realised he’d possessed struck him as it touched his tongue, and he drank down the horn in earnest.
No sooner had Shrike set the empty horn aside than Wren pounced on him.
“Please,” he gasped against Shrike’s lips when need for breath forced him to break off the kiss. “Please, please, please…”
Shrike kissed him again. A delight, as ever, yet Wren feared he meant to shut him up with it and would still leave him wanting.
But even as the fear crossed Wren’s mind, he felt a well-accustomed weight settle across his thighs. Beloved hands cradled his jaw as Shrike straddled him. A slight cant of his hips sufficed for Wren to slip inside the familiar and perfect sheath.
Already slick with what the others had given him, yet still he felt tight as a vise around Wren’s prick. He rolled his hips, and Wren moaned into his mouth, overcome. To have Shrike’s strong arms around him; to fill his every breath with his vanilla-woodsmoke musk; to plunge again and again into that tight wet heat; to take his sword in hand in turn and stroke its satisfying heft in his fist; to have his Shrike again, even after all this—it took all Wren had left in him to hold off until he wrung sweetbursts of mistletoe from Shrike’s cock before he, too, spent, deep within his Shrike. He collapsed in his embrace, satisfied at last.
Wren awoke, he knew not how long after, still gently yet firmly held in Shrike’s arms. Someone had thrown the rabbit-fur cloak over their bare legs. He heard Shrike’s low burr overhead, conversing with someone he couldn’t quite perceive with his cheek laid against Shrike’s chest. With an effort, he raised his head and craned his neck to see to whom Shrike spoke.
Hull sat beside him in all his Payne’s grey glory. Neither he nor Shrike seemed to have noticed Wren’s stirring. They remained in earnest discussion. Wren caught snatches of it here and there, his mind still muddled by the afterglow.
“…skeps,” he heard Shrike say, amongst other things, and Hull echoed it in his response.
Wren licked his lips. Both they and his tongue felt rather dry. He thought he might listen better if he had something to whet his whistle. He attempted to slide upright.
The moment he moved, the conversation ceased as both Shrike and Hull snapped their attention to him.
“Good morrow, our Holly King,” said Hull.
Shrike, meanwhile, slipped his hand through Wren’s hair and murmured into it. “How d’you feel?”
“Good,” Wren said with more honesty than he might have done otherwise, adding, “Thirsty.”
Hull reached out of Wren’s sight and returned with a drinking horn of lingonberry water. He handed it to Shrike, who held it to Wren’s lips as before. Wren drank deeply.
An ecstatic yelp came from behind him. Wren turned to find Rikke some ways off, his arse propped up on his knees and his head buried in his folded arms to muffle the unseemly sounds that burst from his throat as Drude claimed him from behind.
“Rikke is insatiable,” Hull confided in an apologetic tone.
Wren could hardly blame him.
“If I may be so bold as to ask, m’lord,” Hull continued. “Would you consider granting me the gift of letters? I know our runes already,” he added as Wren blinked in bewilderment, “but I should like to learn yours. I can repay you with honey. Or mead. Or assistance in beekeeping. Or something else, if you prefer. You need but name it.”
“Certainly,” Wren replied. Then, “Why?”
Hull gave him a wry and wistful smile. “Acquiring skill keeps boredom at bay. I’ve spent the last century beekeeping, and whilst I enjoy it, I require something more.”
Wren still didn’t quite understand. Yet further enquiry felt rude. He turned to Shrike.
“Fae perish when they lose the will to live,” Shrike murmured.
Something Wren had heard already. How it applied here, however, baffled him. Still, he worked at it, until at last he realised, “D’you mean fae can literally die ofennui?”
Shrike and Hull gave him identical confused looks.
“Of boredom,” Wren elaborated.
“Oh, yes,” Hull said as Shrike nodded solemnly.
“Well,” said Wren, still digesting this discovery. “I certainly wouldn’t want you to die for want of literacy.”
