Harbor (On the Wind #3)

18. Tybalt

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

TYBALT

O restes wanted to talk , and in my post-orgasmic haze, that had sounded like a brilliant idea.

All right, even well fucked and exhausted as I’d been, it hadn’t been a particularly comforting idea, to continue to discuss feelings and arrangements and expectations and?—

Well, it was just, when someone had an expectation of me, I invariably failed to meet it, and I rather liked the way Orestes looked at me now with something like fondness. I didn’t want that to disappear when he knew me better and realized I was more mess than man.

But talking hadn’t seemed impossible when he’d just had my dick in his throat and before that, my ass cheeks in his strong hands for the better part of an hour.

It was another thing, when I woke at sunrise with a cold shock of dread.

The feeling came up on me before I’d even remembered the specifics. Orestes wanted to talk. Desired exclusivity. We were to set terms.

I was horrified by the whole ordeal. Eager to escape, even with his ridiculously large, naked body tucked under the blankets beside me.

I was a gentleman, however, and I’d promised to lick his prettily veined cock to spending, so I made good on that before I fled his room, citing meetings as my excuse, promising to see him later.

But meetings?

My father and his advisors had seemed none-too-pleased when I’d slipped into the room to shadow him, and it was propriety alone, I thought, that kept him from telling me to get out.

Who’d known that an honest conversation was just the thing to inspire me to work?

It was, however, inescapable.

Yes, yes, I could have disappeared on Orestes, found some lover to parade around in front of him until he got the idea, and ruined the whole thing. I’d half a mind to do just that, except that the memory of how I felt beneath his touch, the object of his full concentration—it was too wonderful to give up easily.

So, tail between my legs, I knocked on Orestes’s door that evening before supper.

He opened it a moment later, brow arched high. “Finished with your meetings?”

The way he said it, voice dripping with sarcasm—he knew it’d been an excuse. Now that my father had a more promising future, there were no real duties I had to attend to. I’d fled from Orestes, plain and simple.

I nodded. “Would you... still like to talk?”

In answer, Orestes swung his door open wide to let me in, and I slipped inside.

Even after he shut the door, Orestes didn’t say anything. He moved about his room, overlarge and far too patient and—damn it all, why wasn’t he saying anything?

Flushed, I glanced at him.

He met my eye calmly. Continued to say nothing. He was waiting for me , the bastard.

I sighed. “I get the sense that you’d like this conversation to be open and honest.”

A tiny smile softened his square features. “I’d like that, yes.”

“And you, um... you understand that openness and honesty aren’t exactly desirable traits in a prince of Urial?”

“I do.” He crossed his arms, and his smile had disappeared.

Rocks dropped into the pit of my stomach.

“Does that mean I should expect you to flee every time I want to have an earnest conversation with you?” he asked.

“No!” I gripped the post of his bed as urgency made me dizzy. He was angry. Already, I was ruining everything. And I was—I was lying.

I sighed through my nose and glared at the carpet before I tried again. “Well, maybe. But I don’t mean to. And I came back. ” Didn’t that count for anything?

I looked up, searching his carefully controlled expression for any sign that he might ease up on this point.

He gave nothing away, and I pressed the crescent of my thumbnail into my first finger until it began to sting.

“So,” I continued, “in the spirit of openness and honesty, I’d like to ask for your patience while I, ah, adjust to more... earnest conversations.”

“All right.”

At least he’d uncrossed his arms.

“And I can promise that I’ll try not to run at the mere hint of one approaching,” I said.

Orestes’s lips twitched again, and I smiled too. Amusing him made all this lighter, and when he sat on the edge of his bed, I felt less like I was getting ready for a dressing down.

“And when I do run,” I continued, “I’ll come back once my head’s on properly, if you can just confirm for me that—well, that you don’t find it irksome or unnecessarily needy when I’m... eh, open and earnest .”

Orestes snorted. “When you participate in conversations I’ve asked you to?”

I nodded, and Orestes seemed to realize it wasn’t a joke, because his lips went soft and his pupils widened when he looked at me and slowly, he shook his head. “No, Tybalt. I don’t mind when you’re honest with me.”

“Good!” I bounced on the balls of my feet, rocked to one side, and shrugged. “Great! So then, to the matter at hand: You would like to fuck me.”

Orestes’s wide mouth twitched. “I thought that much was apparent.”

“And you would like to... only fuck me. No one else?”

It wasn’t as if that was entirely unheard of, but the only people who’d ever desired exclusivity from me were romantics who didn’t know the way of the world. Paris had been so assured of our intwined destinies that it hadn’t even occurred to him to ask for exclusivity, and whenever he alluded to it, well, I just didn’t correct him.

“Yes,” he said. “You interest me.”

Why did just that much make my heart beat faster?

“And you’d prefer that I only fuck you?”

Orestes nodded, only the slightest inclination of his head, but abundantly clear. “It simplifies things. Avoids a confusion of feelings.”

“Right.” Yes, because I was such a master at feelings that they never confused me. “Do you have someone back in Nemeda?”

“Would it matter to you?”

I sucked in my cheeks. Would it? It wasn’t as if he’d be the only promised man I’d ever slept with, but...

A little.

Which, believe me, I fucking hated . “I just want to understand the lay of the land between us,” I said, “and if we’re going for openness and honesty?—”

“No,” Orestes admitted. “I’m not involved with anyone back home.”

I could breathe a little deeper for that, even as a strange, cold dissatisfaction swirled in my gut.

“All right. Then there’s no reason we can’t come to some kind of agreement. Except...”

“Except?” Orestes cocked his head, his interest piqued.

“Well, I’m a man of voracious appetites. Do you think you can keep me satisfied?”

A wicked smile slowly overtook Orestes’s handsome features. “Would you like to try me now?”

I couldn’t tear out of my shirt fast enough. “Absolutely.”

What followed next was a scramble to get naked, to get him naked. When I stepped close to him, he tugged me into his lap. I liked the feel of him beneath me—my thighs in his lap, his wide body bent around mine as he plundered my mouth. He was easier to kiss this way. Gods, it was easier to touch every part of him, and to get him to touch me.

Soon his oiled fingers were inside me, slick and bent just enough to— oh fuck . Light sparked behind my closed eyelids as I bucked against him. I loved the feel of his huge hand between my legs, spreading me apart, like he could hold me up with only that.

Perhaps openness wasn’t so bad, if it allowed him to handle me like this, without restraint. I didn’t know if he was so bold because he was Nemedan or it was simply a quality of Orestes himself, but strangely enough, I didn’t think it was because he was taking me less than seriously.

“Hold yourself,” I rasped against his lips.

He gripped the base of his cock, keeping it steady as I held his shoulders and tilted my hips. His blunt head pressed against my ass, the overheated ring of muscle giving way as I sank down on him.

The cry trapped in my throat turned rough and needy when my balls brushed his hand, still trapped beneath me. He withdrew it, only to reach for my throat. He didn’t squeeze it, merely cupped beneath my jaw and tilted my face up for a kiss that—gods, it was like he meant to open me up in every conceivable way. I whined into his mouth, rocking desperately against him, clinging to his round shoulders, pleasure escaping me in each gasp and sob against his swollen lips.

I needed?—

I just needed?—

His hands on my body, stoking tiny flames beneath my skin. Finger trails leaving gooseflesh in their wakes.

His cock, buried deep inside me. So full. Each movement dragging inside in just the right way to make the rest of the world seem fractured and distant.

His slick tongue, delving into my mouth. Claiming, like I belonged to?—

I shivered, chasing that peak just beyond the edge until it hit me like an avalanche.

My cock jerked between us, my come covering our skins, smeared across the black hair that trailed down his chest and disappeared between my spread thighs.

His mouth had fallen open, but he was silent, almost rigid beneath me. A delightful shiver worked across my skin as I watched him come apart, still buried in my ass.

For a few minutes, we stayed like that, silent and still, trapped by each other’s gazes.

Then, something strange and giddy came over me, and I snorted. At first, it was just the once, but then I laughed in earnest. I sagged forward, snickering into his salty sweet shoulder.

Orestes’s arms came around me. “Tybalt?”

I could only laugh more, but I shook my head. I was fine. The only problem was?—

Was I happy? The bubbly feeling in my chest felt a bit like that might be the case, but it was absurd.

I was horny, not happy. And I’d do well to remember Orestes had another home and?—

Fuck it. Right then, I’d allow myself to be happy and not beat the feeling down too much, no matter how much worse it’d hurt later.

“I’m fine,” I assured him, lifting my head. With my hands braced on his shoulders once more, I lifted myself up, hissing as his half-hard cock slipped out of my ass in a sticky, oily, perfect mess. “Com’ere,” I muttered, flopping onto my side on his bed and dragging his arm around me.

Orestes came all too willingly, and I decided that if this was only for a little while, I might as well enjoy having him.