Harbor (On the Wind #3)

30. Tybalt

CHAPTER THIRTY

TYBALT

N emedans could become birds.

Had I not seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t believe it.

And Orestes had said Paris was Nemedan now. It all fit together. But, as usual, my thoughts were tripping over the realities of what this all meant.

I didn’t think about how my people would react if they were to learn about the Nemedans’ gifts, or how that might further alienate them from our southern neighbors.

I hadn’t even wanted to know how Paris had managed it, but of course it was something as soppy and ridiculous as falling in love. That man could fall in love with a stick on the ground if you gave it a name and said it was lonely.

Even as Orestes admitted the particulars involved—sex and love and illness and—whatever. None of that mattered if it all hinged on love.

Orestes didn’t love me.

“Do you honestly think that?” he asked, voice hitching on emotion that I couldn’t name as he stared at me. Was that... horror on his face? Something like it.

I shrugged. “I told you—love plays no role in affairs between men, or in—in Urial. Lords don’t... we aren’t... we aren’t susceptible to that kind of thing.”

Orestes snorted. “Really? That’s the case you want to make? You, Tybalt, have no soft feelings whatsoever.”

I hated the way he said that, like he could see every fault and failing I’d ever had, laid out plain between us. Nervously, I licked my lips and glanced down at my knees.

“You’re the one who insisted on no feelings.”

“I know,” he growled, shoving himself to sit up, holding his weight on one arm.

“And you’re questioning the wisdom of that now?” When I met his eye, he looked conflicted. Gods, he looked tortured . “Do you intend to stay in Urial?”

“Well . . . ” He grimaced.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Just because he wouldn’t admit the truth didn’t make it any less prevalent. “You’re not staying. You hate it here.”

He stuck out his chin. “Not all of it.”

“Only almost all of it?”

For a moment, his lips pursed and he looked away.

“See?” I said. “You don’t want to be here, and believe me, I can understand it. You’re simply laboring under a delusion made from a near brush with death and subsequent isolation.”

“For fuck’s sake, what are you talking about?”

I waved at the quiet lodge around us. “We’re stuck here while you recover from a grievous wound. You almost died for me. Your mind needs to make sense of that, make it seem worth it, that the risk wasn’t all for nothing?—”

“Tybalt!” Orestes hissed, his brown eyes flashing as he gripped my wrist and pulled. I half tumbled into his lap, and for a moment, we stared at each other, bodies bent and curled toward each other like summer flowers straining toward the sun.

“I’m not saying I’m nothing.” All right, that was precisely what I was saying, but it very much wasn’t the point. I steadied my hand on his shoulder and leaned back from him. “Just that the last day has been emotionally fraught, and you’ve gotten swept up in it. You almost died. I might’ve been killed. It’s a lot. Add to that, I’m maintaining the fire—which yes, given how warm-natured you are, I do suspect you love—and it’s all gotten muddled. I’m not entirely unreasonable. I think you’re capable of love. You simply don’t love me.”

Even Paris, who’d been so steadfast in his affections, had only ever thought he loved me.

“I love the fire?”

“Mmhmm.”

“But I don’t love you?”

“Right.”

He huffed, turning his head. Had he felt better, I got the sense he might’ve marched out of the room. Of course, no one liked to be told how wrong they were, much less when it was so obvious to anyone with sense.

“You’re ridiculous,” he snapped, “and I won’t have you tell me how I feel.”

Orestes curled his fingers round the nape of my neck and drew me in for the sweetest kiss I’d ever gotten. It was a slow, firm exploration of my lips, even before he slipped his tongue between them. Somehow, he was able to table his frustration with me long enough to make my heart skip and my skin warm and my whole body languid with want.

I made a sound all together ungentlemanly as he did, but it was all right. We were alone, and this fool thought he loved me. Even with all my doubts, I could tell his tolerance for my nonsense was higher than normal.

When he broke the kiss, he tipped his forehead against mine. I left my eyes closed, enjoying the sweetness of his breath against my wet lips.

“If you want me to believe it,” I whispered, “why don’t we do an experiment?”

“What kind of experiment?” Despite how bone-deep tired Orestes sounded, he was still up for humoring me. Perhaps that was something like love.

“Fuck me. If I take wing tomorrow, bam, you’ve proven me wrong. Love is real, you do love me, and we—we go from there.”

Orestes’s next exhale was sharp and annoyed. “It’s dangerous, Tybalt.” He reached up and cupped my cheek, easing me back enough that I opened my eyes and met his. “More often than not, the illness is deadly.”

I scoffed. What was all this? Magic and birds and deadly feathered frenzies? “I’m certain I won’t die. And if I do?—”

He tipped his head to the side. “What?”

“Well, I was meant to die out here anyway. Someone wanted me dead—likely someone very important. It’s not like you’ll get in trouble. You’ll be fine, and I’ll die having tasted love. It’s more than some people ever get.”

Orestes shoved me back. “I’ll be fine? I’d be responsible for your death, having proven that I love you, but you think I’ll be fine.”

I shrugged. “You wouldn’t be?”

“No.”

No, you idiot , my mind supplied before I realized—Orestes hadn’t said that. He wouldn’t say that kind of thing to me. He might deny me a thousand times, but he’d never do it as derisively as the voice in my own head: a voice that sounded suspiciously like my own father.

“What if I make you a promise?”

His expression grew pinched and skeptical. “What kind of promise?”

“If you really love me, I won’t—” I bit my lip. I didn’t believe in this, exactly. It was just... if loving me was possible, why didn’t my father? “I won’t ever let that be the reason I leave you.”

Orestes’s nose flared. He nodded, breath coming sharp and quick. “I’d take that promise.”

I grinned. This felt like victory to me.

His middle was freshly bandaged, though the wound had looked well enough. I stared at it, weighing how much it might endure. “If we go slow and careful, can I have you?”

Conflict warred in his eyes. “Should we wait until I can—if you get sick while we’re out here and I’m hurt?—”

I sighed. “You’re just trying to put off being proven wrong.”

“I’m not wrong.” How could a man sound so steady and sure when talking about something as confusing as feelings ?

I rolled my eyes. “Fine. Whatever you say.” With a hand on his shoulder, I pushed him back into the pillow behind them. “Then lay there and be sweet for me.”

Orestes was staring at me with wide eyes, biting his lip as I looked down his enormous body. One nice thing about being a bird was that he shed both cloth and feather without question, and all this time, he’d been so gloriously exposed to me. Sure, when I was more worried about him, my mind hadn’t wandered in this direction quite as easily, but now, I could drag the blanket down, slide it over his skin, and even that small friction was enough for blood to rush to his heavy cock.

It lay against his belly, half hard and formidable, and I knelt, shimmying down in our nest until I was head-to-head with it.

His skin here was velvety soft when I dragged my tongue from base to tip. Orestes hissed, his heels pressing into the blankets and tangling them up in his feet.

I looked up. “Do you want me to stop?”

Another conflicted gaze from him, and my stomach twisted. I was afraid he’d turn me away and I—I didn’t want that.

Then he let out a shaky breath. “No, fuck. Please, don’t stop.”

His giant hand cupped my head and he urged me back to his dick. I took it with both hands wrapped around the base of his thick shaft. This had never been my forte, but I liked the way that Orestes was staring at me when I looked up. His lips were hanging open, his cheeks flushed, and, well, if sucking cock made him look like that, then I’d give it my best.

Swallowing the whole thing down was impossible, but I teased him with my lips and tongue, pushing him down against the back of my throat until it was almost too much, then sucking as I pulled off him. The way his skin tugged with the movement made him buck his hips—tiny aborted thrusts meant to drive him deeper into my body.

Fuck, I wished he would. I wished he’d roll us over and shove himself in my ass and make me forget everything about love and assassins and feelings and the threat of loss that tugged at me when I held his pretty brown eyes with my own. He’d leave one day, and it hurt, and hurting wasn’t for right now.

Right now was for sucking Orestes’s cock and making him dread the way he would one day leave me behind.

When he came, arching against the nest we’d made and crying out a curse, I knew I’d miss him too.