A brief pause. Ira nodded.
Arthur knelt before him, unbuttoned his trousers, and peeled them off. His stomach swooped as Ira’s bare thighs appeared, then his calves, transitioning smoothly from human legs to wolf paws. Ira’s chest heaved.
Arthur’s tongue stuck in his throat, but he said, “About earlier...”
Ira looked away. “You don’t need to explain.”
“No, I—I do. I do.”
Arthur had been thinking about it all day. Wondering why he cared so much what the villagers would think when he was deep in the forest and they’d never liked him anyway.
Standing, he reached for the first toggle of Ira’s shirt. “It was nothing to do with you. It’s... This is all very—very new to me. Everything about it. For God’s sake, I’ve hardly even courted anyone. None of the young women in the village has ever been interested, and I’ve never... I thought I hadn’t found the right girl. And now...”
He let out a breath, feeling foolish for never realizing. All those years longing so desperately for Cormac to notice him. Stumbling through every interaction with any man with nice eyes or an air of kindness. Attraction. Crushes. He’d read about love endlessly, dreamed about it, longed for it, yet he’d never understood his own feelings.
How could he have known, when none of his books showed romance as existing between anyone other than a man and a woman? When every marriage and courtship he’d seen had been the same? Only that single fisherman and his friend, living together in a shack with a single bed, might have given him the idea that romance could look different. But it hadn’t, because his father had offered another explanation.
He wondered what his father would say about this now, or his mother. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know, not that he’d ever find out.
What about Charlotte? His stomach twisted, but she wasn’t here. For the moment, Arthur could imagine she’d understand. He finished undoing Ira’s toggles in silence.
Ira shrugged out of his shirt, grimacing as he worked it over his injured shoulder. He was naked, now. Firelight gilded the feathered curve of his shoulders. His buttocks. His antlers and paws. His gnarled right leg, a map of scars.
He was beautiful.
He tugged furs from his pack, settled one on the floor of the cave and wrapped another around his shoulders. Arthur sat beside him.
“And now?” Ira said softly.
Arthur tried and failed not to let his eyes follow the trail of hair down Ira’s stomach. Nether regions: thoroughly human. For now. He glanced hastily away, running a hand through his own damp hair.
“I’m not sure,” he admitted. “But I know I care about you. And I find you—you’re very—well, I think you’re beautiful. And I wish I hadn’t pulled away earlier.”
Ira’s eyes flickered over him. Fingers curled, he touched Arthur’s cheek.
“Can I...?”
Arthur shifted closer, and closer, and closer. Then hethought,Confoundit, and he crawled right into Ira’s lap, straddling him as he had last night to shave away the greenery on his face. Ira’s breath hitched.
Biting his lip, Arthur ran his fingertips over Ira’s antlers. They were hard and bony, not as smooth as he’d expected. Ira’s eyes fixed on his face.
Arthur flushed. “Sorry, I, er, I was wondering what they’d feel like. Can you, er... feel anything, when I...”
Ira shook his head.
“If you’d caught me this summer,” he said hoarsely, “before the velvet sloughed off, I would’ve.”
Arthur traced his fingers down the side of Ira’s face. His cervine ears, silky soft. His neck. His uninjured shoulder, black with smooth, glossy feathers. Ira caught his hand, pressing it to his chest. He pressed tighter and tighter, his pulse raced, his eyes flickered over Arthur’s face, so Arthur leaned in and kissed him.
A moment of surprise, in which Arthur thought he might have done it wrong and started pulling away. Then, with a soft growl, Ira pulled him back in. Arthur’s stomach tingled. He looped his arms around Ira’s neck and kissed him with more certainty. Ira’s mouth was hungry on his.
His claws tangled in Arthur’s hair. Arthur trailed a hand down his body. Ira inhaled sharply, but Arthur stopped at his stomach, liking its softness, its rise and fall.
Ira gripped him so tightly his claws dug into Arthur’s sides. Arthur gasped into his mouth—but he found he liked it, the pressure, the slight stab of pain. With a low groan, Ira slid one hand lower and lower, trailed a curled finger over Arthur’s inner thigh—
“Wait,” Arthur breathed. “Wait, wait, wait.”
Ira jerked away. “Sorry. I should’ve—”
