Page 22 of Noble Charms

Aria looked down at his fingers, at his perfectly filed nails, shiny in the dim light of his one single gas lantern that hung above them. Finally, eventually, he nodded yes.

He heard Ellor get up, and felt him kneel at Aria’s side. “I’d like to offer you a kiss, too.”

Aria looked down at where Ellor sat upon his floor. A lord—a duke, in fact—at his feet. “You needn’t do that,” he whispered.

“Do what?”

“My floors—surely they’re not good for the finer fabrics you wear⁠—"

Ellor’s hand cupped Aria’s face, and forced him to look back into Ellor’s wolfish brown stare. “Kiss me.”

Aria did.

Not much later that night, the steam was gone from their teacups, Aria and Ellor lounged upon one of Aria’s many rugs, and Aria had been stripped to nothing but his tight black underclothes. His chest rose and fell, winded from how deeply Ellor kissed him again and again.

Ellor ran a hand down Aria’s neck, to his smooth, pale chest, and when he leaned in this time, it wasn’t to kiss Aria again. He instead licked a hot, wet stripe along the edge of his ear.

Aria whined as the feeling shot straight through him. Improper. Elven ears were sacred. Respected as a sign of their history and abilities with magic and⁠—

Aria turned his head, offering Ellor greater reach to lick him again. This time, he bit. Hard.

The stinging sensation amplified everything, and he thrust himself up, against Ellor’s hard, exposed abs, unable to stop. He made some kind of sound he wasn’t sure he’d ever heard before as Ellor clamped down against his earlobe, and then sucked.

Aria said, “Ellor—I’m—” We shouldn’t, he didn’t say. Please stop, he didn’t say. I’m afraid that I can’t trust you, he didn’t say. Instead, he said, “Touch me. Please?”

He got a laugh, a kiss, and a quiet reply, “Told you.”

Aria blinked through blurry eyes at Ellor’s grinning face. “What?”

Ellor kissed him again—a simple peck on the lips—and said, “I’m going home, my darling.”

And then he stood up. Aria gasped in shock, pushing himself to his elbows. “Wait—wait.”

“I told you. You were going to beg for it, and I was going to say no.”

Aria’s heart thundered, making it hard for him to think. “You’re serious.”

Ellor redressed himself, smiling all the while. “Oh yes.”

“How dare you—” Aria started, standing. White-hot anger grew with every heartbeat.

Ellor stepped close. “Oh, you must forgive me. I meant what I said. I want to see you again.”

“Wh—"

He pecked Aria’s half-agape mouth, and took off towards the door. “We’ll go to bed next time.”

Ellor was halfway down the stairs outside before Aria’s mind returned. He placed a hand over his mouth, where Ellor kissed him.

Memory was a funny thing, because he wondered if Ellor was the prince Aria had always sought, and the answer came to him in the voice of Noble Yves St. Clair. There are no princes in New Hieroph. There are, at best, rakish men that will ask you for far more than a dance.

His soul, the thing that spoke to him his whole life, remained quiet.

NOBLE

Noble arrived at the platform, checked his watch, and smirked. “I’ll be late, you said. I’m always late, you said. Well, Morgan—take a look.” He presented the back of his wrist, his golden watch face sparkling in the mid-morning sun that filtered in through the green conservatory-style glass roof above them. The small hand on his watch had not quite reached ten yet. “I’m early. Like I said I would be.”

“Oh, Noble, my naive young ward,” said Morgan. He was broad, visibly muscular even in an understated black cutaway coat, with gray skin and dark gray ram horns that stretched from his forehead and wrapped around his small round ear. His tail swished back and forth, betraying his pleasure at Noble's supposed failure.