Page 87 of The Boy Bride

“I … Thank you.”

Realization dawned as he was following Vanu back toward the house, bows and empty quiver abandoned on the range.

“Did you like watching me shoot?” Lill asked.

Vanu shot him a look full of … something. “I liked it a lot.”

“I didn’t think you would.”

“Didn’t want me to know you’re the better archer?” Vanu was going up the stairs to their balcony.

“I’m not!” Lill scurried after him. “I couldn’t even draw your bow.”

“Eh, that’s just muscles. Not saying I’m a bad shot. I’m an excellent archer. You’re better.”

“And you … And that … ”

Vanu swung round at the top of the stairs to look at him. “Turns me on? Makes me want to go to bed with you? Yeah. Like a fire wants something to burn. Shit. I’m scaring you again.”

“No! You’re not.” The only possible answer, and a lie. “I … It’s not your fault.”

“No?”

Lill shook his head. He had to tell the truth, and it felt like turning unarmed toward a weapon. “I am scared, but it is not your fault.”

Vanu was silent, standing with his arms braced on the balcony railing, for so long that Lill thought he was going to say forget the whole thing.

“When I was a boy,” he said finally, looking Lill in the eye, “had a couple of friends, we used to do things to each other—figuring out what we liked, you know? And uh, doing more of it, when we had it figured. Messing around. I guess … you never had that.”

Lill shook his head, willing Vanu not to ask why.

“Used to go in the hayloft,” Vanu said. “But we’re grown up, you and me. We can use my bed.”

“Let’s go,” said Lill.

They went into Vanu’s room, took off their boots, and lay down on the bed, facing each other. The deliberateness of it was terrifying. Lill wanted to curl up into a ball and hide. And also, he wanted Vanu to touch him. It had been two weeks; they needed to get this over with.

He knew Vanu had been trying to put him at ease, talking about learning what he liked with his boyhood friends, suggesting it could be like that between the two of them now. It wasn’t his fault—he wasn’t to know—that just made Lill think of boys who had broken the rules of the Order being beaten bloody in the main courtyard while the rest of the pupils watched.

Vanu shifted a little closer, so his forehead was almost touching Lill’s. Lill could feel his warmth.

“What’s your favourite part of your body?” Vanu asked in a whisper.

“My brain,” said Lill readily. “The Sukiyan sages say it’s the seat of intelligence, and if so, it’s always served me well. Though in Suna they maintain⁠—”

“And your tongue, because you like to talk?” Vanu suggested.

“Yes, yes. That too.”

Vanu put his hand to Lill’s face and slipped his thumb inside Lill’s mouth, past his teeth, onto his tongue. Lill felt caught, suddenly, like an animal in a trap. And not like that at all, because it felt …

He started trying to say something around Vanu’s thumb and made incoherent noises instead. Vanu withdrew his hand.

“I’m sorry,” said Lill. “You meant a part of me that you could touch. I think I’m so clever, but sometimes I’m … just an idiot, aren’t I?”

Vanu shook with silent laughter. “No. Well … ”

He shifted closer and kissed Lill. His tongue slid into Lill’s mouth, and it didn’t feel like an invasion. Lill could feel how careful he was being. Don’t think, he told himself sternly.