“Valerie.”
Fergal blinked. “Valerie?”
“She’s smart, observant, loyal to you personally, and Brennan underestimates her completely. She won’t have official authority, but she’ll know if he tries to undo your reforms, and she’ll report it.”
The slow smile that spread across Fergal’s face was like watching the sun come out after weeks of gray sky. “That’s actually brilliant.”
“Don’t sound so surprised.”
“I’m not surprised that it’s brilliant. I’m surprised that you thought of using an omega in a strategic role. You’re evolving, old man.”
The “old man” earned him a look that would have quelled lesser men, but Fergal absorbed it with the immunity of someone who’d been on the receiving end of Gregor’s disapproval often enough to have developed complete resistance.
Gregor reached over and turned off the lamp. The room dropped into darkness, softened only by the faint glow of the lights along the baseboards—a security measure Gregor had installed their first week, providing just enough ambient light to navigate without fully waking.
In the dark, he could hear Fergal’s breathing. Still too fast. Still too shallow. His mind was still running, still churning through problems and scenarios and the thousand small fears that came with a crown neither of them had wanted.
Gregor shifted closer. His hand found Fergal’s hip in the dark—warm skin where the borrowed shirt had ridden up, the jut of bone beneath his palm. Fergal’s breathing hitched, just slightly, at the contact.
“What are you doing?” Fergal murmured.
“Taking care of you.”
“I don’t need?—”
“You do.” Gregor’s thumb traced a slow circle against Fergal’s hip. “You need to stop thinking. You need to be here, in this bed, with me, and nowhere else. And you’re not going to get there on your own tonight.”
Fergal was quiet for a moment. Then, very softly, “No. I’m not.”
Gregor leaned in and kissed his temple. Then his cheekbone. Then the corner of his jaw, where the close-cropped beard gave way to the softer skin of his neck, and Fergal’s breath stuttered out of him in a shaky exhale.
“Let me,” Gregor whispered against his skin.
Fergal’s hand found the back of Gregor’s neck, fingers curling into the short hair there. “Yes.”
The word was barely a breath, but it unlocked something inside Gregor—a tenderness so fierce it bordered on pain. He kissed Fergal’s mouth, slow and deep, tasting chamomile andwarmth and the bone-deep exhaustion that Fergal wore like a second skin.
Fergal kissed him back, but the distraction was still there. Gregor could feel it in the slight tension of his jaw, the way his body was responding even as his mind lagged behind, still tangled in seating arrangements and threat assessments and the thousand burdens of a king.
Gregor would have to go deeper. He’d have to pull Fergal so far into the physical that there was no room left for anything else.
He slid his hand from Fergal’s hip to the hem of the shirt and pushed it upward, his palm skating across warm skin. Fergal’s stomach was lean, the muscles taut from the tension he carried every waking hour, and when Gregor’s fingers traced up the center line of his abdomen, those muscles twitched and fluttered beneath his touch.
“Gregor—”
“Shh.” He pressed a kiss to the hollow of Fergal’s throat, feeling his pulse jumping hard against his lips. “Just feel.”
He took his time. The urgency of their first encounter—the desperate, clothed frotting that had been more collision than choice—was absent tonight. In its place was something slower, more deliberate, something achingly tender and sweet.
Gregor pushed the shirt higher and followed it with his mouth, kissing his way up Fergal’s chest. He found a nipple and traced it with his tongue, and the sound Fergal made—a sharp, startled inhale followed by a low moan—told Gregor he’d found a weak point in Fergal’s defenses.
He exploited it without mercy. His tongue circled, flattened, flicked, and his teeth grazed just enough to send Fergal’s hips jerking forward. Fergal’s hand tightened in his hair, and the small, desperate noises falling from his mouth were losing their coherence, words dissolving into sounds.
Good. That was good. Gregor needed him wordless. Needed him past the point where his extraordinary mind could form sentences, past the point where strategy and fear and grief held him in their grip.
He kissed lower. Fergal’s ribs, each one a ridge beneath his lips. The dip of his waist. The sharp angle of his hip, where the soft pants hung low. He pressed his mouth to the sensitive skin just above the waistband and felt Fergal’s entire body shudder.
“Oh god,” Fergal breathed. “Are you?—”
