“Your neck.” Bellamy forces his gaze up. “Let me see.”
Rakos turns around, lifting his hair up from his neck in one hand. “I should probably just cut most of my hair off.”
“I like it long,” Bellamy says, distracted by the bare, wet expanse of skin before him. Rakos is only a few inches taller than him, but nearly twice as broad, and those shoulders are even better without cotton and wyrmskin hiding them. Bellamy has always had a thing for shoulders.
He doesn’t realize what he’s said until Rakos half-turns with a grin. “Do you?”
Bellamy flushes. “There’s some dye behind your ears. I’m going to bed.”
Bastard is more than capable of hunting for herself, but Bellamy still leaves treats for her before sliding into bed. He curls up facing the wall, then gives into temptation and turns to face the door. Watches through his eyelashes as Rakos gathers up their discarded clothes and the room key and leaves the room—
Still shirtless.
A sour feeling twists inside Bellamy. Why should the laundry boy and everyone else get to see Rakos half-dressed and barefoot too? The thought itches like the coarse cotton rubbing the back of his neck. Will the laundry boy be able to look away from the contours of Rakos’s waist?
Will he say something witty, and will Rakos smile at him too?
Will Rakos laugh? That warm, low laugh that creeps like roots into Bellamy’s heart, breaking the foundation of his reservations?
Bellamy snorts. He sounds like Claude obsessing over Mother, when he has no right to Rakos like that. Rubbing his tired eyes, he turns over in the lumpy bed. Though he intends to stay awake, exhaustion carries him away before Rakos returns.
***
For once, Bellamy doesn’t wake to a cold blinkmink nose in his ear. He wakes warm. Not quite comfortable, because the mattress is terrible, but warm and clean. After days of sleeping on the ground, this is practically palatial.
And thankfully, the room’s single bed is big enough that Bellamy hasn’t woken up plastered against Rakos. Eyes still closed, Bellamy buries his face deeper in the pillow and stretches out his legs.
Until his toes collide with a smooth, warm surface.
Eyes flying open, Bellamy barely suppresses a squeak. Rakos’s face fills his entire field of vision. They aren’t plastered together, but this might be worse. Face to face, heads resting on the same pillow. Scarce heated inches separate them beneath the blankets. The only parts touching are Bellamy’s toes against Rakos’s—shin, that’s Rakos’s shin—which he doesn’t dare pull away.
The slight distance is somehow more agonizingly intimate than sprawling together in a hollow tree. More intimate than listening to Rakos bathe the night before.
When Bellamy exhales, his breath stirs a fallen strand of Rakos’s hair.
Rakos’s eyes remain closed. His body rises and falls. Hands buried under the pillow, his jaw slack. He’s still asleep. And Bellamy, dazed and dizzy but more awake by the moment, is free to examine him unimpeded.
The brown hair doesn’t suit him, but Rakos is still the most attractive man Bellamy’s ever met. He’s entranced by the precise lines of Rakos’s eyebrows. There’s an indentation above one, as if Rakos once wore jewelry there.
Claude always cautioned Bellamy against trusting courtiers. Getting too close. She never forbade him from dallying, but few men or women wanted to pursue Bellamy anyway with Claude and Julien breathing suspiciously down their necks. Novels and imagination were easier outlets for Bellamy’s sexual curiosity, with a few brave exceptions.
Here and now, though, Rakos doesn’t know who Bellamy is. There’s an incredible, unexpected freedom in that. The way Rakos touches him so casually—a clap on the shoulder here, brushing elbows there. Rough or gentle.
Rakos treats him like an ordinary person. Ordinary people have casual dalliances, right?
That loose strand of hair slides over Rakos’s forehead. Bellamy’s fingers itch to push it out of the way, and his pulse pounds in his throat. In the golden light of morning, all the reasons he shouldn’t reach out seem unimportant.
We all make mistakes, Rakos said.Live and learn.
Would it be so foolish to live a little?
Assuming Rakos is interested in him, of course. Which is doubtful. Breathing a silent laugh, Bellamy withdraws his foot from Rakos’s leg. The languor of sleep dissipates as he sits up, jostling the mattress as little as possible.
He can’t resist brushing that stray strand of hair back. And as he withdraws his hand, Rakos’s eyes slit open.
“Were you watching me sleep?” he accuses sleepily.
“No,” Bellamy denies. But Rakos doesn’t look mad, and irresistible curiosity pins Bellamy in place. Maybe this question is a mistake. Live and learn. “But would it bother you, if I were?”
