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There is but a single sacrosanct day of rest and celebration among all the long months of Hubert’s year, the incessant demands of a faithless new government always so eager to veer off her painstakingly charted course, the voices that bark over his lady’s calm direction without adding anything of value, the wolves that prowl the edges of the Prime Minister’s good graces as though he is still some greenhorn general and not a proven helmsman of state, the demands of paupers and princes alike in unending, ungrateful clamor—
There is but a single day and this is not it.
Still. Hubert cannot be considered master of all who live beneath the palace’s coffered ceilings if he cannot manage to orchestrate an afternoon together on the day of their fourth anniversary. There will be no audiences today, no state dinners. All diplomatic visits have conveniently rescheduled themselves to next month thanks to Brigid’s Queen inviting all the world’s dignitaries to a spring fete. No armies are in the field on training maneuvers, no trials are scheduled in public nor private court, and the Emperor herself summoned Hubert’s elite staff for an impromptu stress test of their ability to act in his sudden absence.
The only thing on their plate for the afternoon is what Hubert carries on the silver platter in his hands. By Hresvelg’s regional reckoning, the fourth year of wedded bliss is celebrated with fruit and flowers, and this year at last Hubert shall best Ferdinand at his own game. Ever since their first anniversary, Ferdinand has boasted that Aegir’s traditions are far superior, its rewards the sweeter, its ‘romantic narrative’ of unsurpassable depth, all despite the blatant fact that the first three years share the very same mundane offerings of paper, cotton, and—well, the leather served for a memorable day, so clearly the ancients knew something of devotion after all.
This year is the first the paths diverge, and Hubert has played his hand to the fullest. When Ferdinand returned from his sunrise ride, the grooms offered him a sweet pitcher of blueberry violet lemonade alongside apple-carved chrysanthemums for his loyal mare. Morning’s tea service accompanied a plate of lilac blossom scones, the placement of every frail petal overseen by Hubert himself as the bakers displayed their worth under his careful eye. They labor even now on an Ordelian delicacy arriving after their supper: a box of candied pansy pavlova to sit on the Prime Minister’s desk and tempt him through week’s end.
How could Ferdinand possibly prefer a year of linen? Never mind that Aegir’s reckoning claims salt as its eighth gift and fails entirely after the tenth. Perhaps the Aegir of old had so little love that even ten years could scarcely be endured.
The lunch that Hubert has planned in meticulous detail, down to every pinch of salt and sketch of its plating, will win him Ferdinand’s heart for another decade and a half, two years for each divine dish. He pulled the plates from the oven with his own hands and a kiss of magic to ensure their freshness, and he feels the heat of them still, radiating through the ornate silver to burn anticipation into his palms.
In truth, he could bring anything to their meal and it would suffice — a slip of crust dragged through yesterday’s gravy, a spoonful of bone broth, roast carrot snapped in twain. Anything from his fingertips to Ferdinand’s lush lips, and Hubert will have his fill for days.
Service has ever been its own reward.
As Hubert nears the turn off toward the Prime Minister’s office, a politely muted cacophony of young voices drifts to his ear. He stalls in the hallway, glancing briefly at the tray in his hands, then presses his back to the wall just around the corner and out of sight. The encyclopedia of callers at the Prime Minister’s door would run for many volumes, but only one troupe reaches such a strained pitch — and indeed, a mournful glimpse toward the office reveals a gaggle of students in the prim uniform of Ferdinand’s mentorship class, ducklings gulping for the ceaseless breadcrumbs of his attention.
Hubert needs none of their sharp little gazes on the midday feast he’s prepared. He waits in silence, craning his ears to pick up the patter of barely-intelligent arguments and the answering bell of Ferdinand’s resounding approval as it washes out of the open doorway and over his pupils.
Ferdinand speaks to them with the same force and brash clarity that he uses in front of the Adrestian Council, never underestimating the knowledge of his juniors but ever happy to clarify his points further. Hubert has hinted, delicately as he may, that should a dashing role model have spoken to him with such trust and warmth at age eighteen, a certain unwise affection may have been nourished in the hormone-clouded maelstrom of his ill-formed brain. Judging by the warm praises Ferdinand issues now, and the warmer cheeks of his students, the lesson remains unlearned.
Alas for the simple pleasure of warping into the office unannounced to send all those insipid children scattering in terror. Were today destined for a different tenor, he would be happy to earn Ferdinand’s cruel punishments in return, but for now he lets the urge, and the annoyance, pass as little more than a scorpion’s sting, sharp yet generally harmless.
Soon enough the students chime an eerie chorus—thank you, Prime Minister!—and disperse into smaller raucous gangs of fist pumping and laughter that echoes in Hubert’s chest, a viscous nostalgia settling in his lungs. He sighs to dispel it at once. It has always been clear enough why Ferdinand takes such pride in mentoring the leaders of tomorrow.
For all that Hubert once mocked him as a flea, an annoying little bloodsucker feeding on the attention of all those around him, the truth is simple: Ferdinand nourishes. It is what he does. From the minds of the youth to the hearts of the people, from the Emperor’s battered trust to Hubert’s…
Everything.
Heart. Body. Whims.
He cannot shape it into the proper words, that raw, breathtaking indulgence Ferdinand bestows upon him with such ease, as though the word love can hope to contain the harmony of flesh from sacrificial to matrimonial altar, the whispered hymns of heartbeats in the dead of darkest night. It is as air to him, if air could smother; as blood, if such could fill the chambers of his shriveled heart instead of painting his hands to the elbows in gore.
That Hubert brings a tray of fruit in exchange for such wealth is laughable, yet there he stands in the doorway, knuckles rapping against the lacquered wood.
There is no answer.
From the state of the Prime Minister’s formerly well-organized office, the reason for such dereliction of husbandly duty is clear. Crisp parchment in a dozen hands litters every available surface, four folio binders of research notes lie open on the floor, flagged with ribbon and colored scraps, and even the tea table has vanished beneath the careful sprawl of maps and treaty drafts, to say nothing of the desk itself. A head bowed in earnest study is all Hubert can spy behind the piles of library books the students have earmarked for reference.
Hubert slips inside and locks the door behind him.
“Ferdinand?”
Only a hum in answer, fond and utterly distracted.
With a quick survey of the structural stability of each pile, Hubert sets his tray on the most suitable array of documents and circles the desk with grim purpose. His gloved fingers—linen, today, as a snide little reference to Aegir’s anniversary-related inadequacies—curl into Ferdinand’s hair with sudden force, hauling the man away from his work and in for a tender, frenetic kiss.
Hubert’s tongue sweeps along his own lower lip when he pulls away, as though tasting his husband’s mood thereon. His tone sharpens to a singular point. “Put down your pen.”
It takes a moment for the dazed delight in Ferdinand’s eyes to calibrate back to clarity. His arm finds its way around Hubert’s waist on instinct, fingers resting on the bony slope of one hip. His lips, insufficiently red from far too few kisses, twist into a ponderous line under the burden of his weighty thoughts.
Normally Hubert would bow to the demands of duty. Today he crooks a sly smile and reaches across the desk to pull the cloche from the lunch platter, freeing the ambrosial scents to spill free. Ferdinand’s gaze fixes on Hubert’s fingertips as they flit over each plate in puckish uncertainty; the hand on Hubert’s hip flinches into a bruising grip. The honeyed gold of the boa pilaf, the wine-dark slaughter of confit duck smothered in pomegranate molasses, the crystalline shimmer of sugared Albinean berries atop lush coconut cream tarts—he can feel the stutter of Ferdinand’s heartbeat, the shake of his breath—all of these Hubert ignores, and his fingers close upon a plate bearing a single slice of Magdred forest gateau.
He draws the plate to his lap, warming himself under the intensity of Ferdinand’s smoldering stare for a long moment, then reaches for the slice with both hands. The silken dark chocolate ganache paints his white gloves as he breaks it into sumptuous halves in his palms, letting the syrupy cherries bleed red down to his skin, and it takes all his strength to restrain a smirk as Ferdinand keens high and needy in the back of his throat, a hound howling on command.
Hubert lifts a hand and laps the decadent cream from his fingertips, teeth worrying at the stained linen to draw forth another hint of rich liquor, his gloves a saccharine parody of blood and bitter mire. With a crooked smile, he offers his palm for Ferdinand to kiss.
The Prime Minister sucks in a sharp breath through his nose, gazes up with such blinding adoration at Hubert’s looming perch, and opens his mouth—
“I cannot,” Ferdinand declares. Sheer remorse colors his resolve, as though this borders on disgrace instead of annoyance. He gestures expansively to the state of his desk and office with as much weight as he once gestured to the fields of war. “I set my students to the construction of a new tariff system for the western sea that would ease Brigid’s import burdens without opening us to complaints of favoritism from the Albineans—an impossible task, you understand—and they have not only brought me a proposal but a signed declaration of assent from the Nuvelle merchant association! I cannot reward their diligence by putting this aside for even a moment. If we can have a new mechanism in place by the height of summer…”
He trails off, hopeless and hopeful in equal measure as Hubert takes stock.
It is a sign of progress that the desk of the Prime Minister bears more than that of a glorified political murderer, to be sure. Still, Hubert grieves the days when his own desk buckled under the weight of tedious bureaucracy while Ferdinand was free to strut the training grounds in full glory. Well. He is certainly no less glorious now, of course—softened by a position that demands little more than long nights and firm handshakes, perhaps, but there is no lack of power beneath the lush curves peace has brought him—he has ever been the wildflowers that follow the Emperor’s razed earth.
Hubert abandons the larger slice of cake on its gleaming plate and crumbles the half-wounded gateau into manageable morsels of well-balanced chocolate, cherry, and cream. He feeds them to Ferdinand in short order, soiled thumb wiping over his lips when the last disappears without protest, never lingering long enough for Ferdinand to catch it between his teeth. Satisfied at this meager lunch break, Hubert sits back, just out of reach for any pursuing kisses.
“Very well,” Hubert announces, clipped and, possibly, more cranky than he means to allow. He did not spend three months crafting this day only to be stymied by schoolchildren on a quest for extra credit. “I will wait.”
Ferdinand’s brow pitches to a worried point. “Hubert, it may take me well into the evening. I can hardly expect you to—”
With the slightest pressure, Hubert leans into the hand at his waist. His eyes slide meaningfully from Ferdinand’s face to his lap, and then lower, a gentle insinuation of his head towards the darkened carpet at Ferdinand’s feet. It takes only a moment for Ferdinand to catch his meaning and, Hubert notes with no small pleasure, catch fire.
A few easy hours of Hubert’s head pillowed on that thick thigh, Ferdinand’s cock warm and beloved between his raw-bitten lips—yes, that would serve quite nicely. He notes the heavy swell of Ferdinand’s burgundy trousers with a simmering delight. The last time he offered such pious devotion, Ferdinand choked at the sight of ruby red welling in a split of Hubert’s lower lip, a slim wound that Hubert worried at with his teeth day after day in hopes it would scar. This time, with luck, it will.
Hubert smiles in devastating promise. “No trouble at all.”
With a jolt, Ferdinand jerks his head toward the opposite wall, as if he cannot grasp the fickle threads of reason with Hubert darkening his field of vision. All the better. Hubert need only reach out to tip his head back towards temptation.
But the hand at his waist holds firm, Ferdinand’s thumb stroking with sudden force over the fabric just above one of Hubert’s hidden knives. Ferdinand’s voice is still so calm as he asks, “Is your heart set on being patient for me, love?”
It is set on being with you, Hubert howls behind his teeth, unwilling to let such nonsense pass his lips even now. He shivers in place of answer, ducking his head to stare fixedly at the dim haven beneath the desk.
“What of being patient at a distance?” Ferdinand hedges, a sudden blush painting the freckles of his cheeks into stark relief. He gives Hubert an apologetic squeeze, ensures he is adequately balanced on the edge of the desk, then pushes back the chair and hurries across the room.
In the far corner of the office stands an imposing cabinet that, rather than holding a locked safe of documents or rare vintages for victorious evenings, generally contains a change of riding clothes in case of perfect afternoon weather, a few pressed shirts for impromptu changes when Ferdinand forgets an engagement and cannot rush home to change out of ink-stained sleeves, and, newly, a flat box wrapped in embossed paper and snowy white ribbons. Hidden in his office so that Hubert would not find it in their home. Of course.
“I intended to save this for tonight,” Ferdinand continues at a rush. Instead of pushing it immediately into Hubert’s hands, he keeps it pulled near his chest, as if protective of whatever lies inside, fearful of Hubert’s ire, or quite possibly both. “But if the mood strikes you…well. I would not object to some. Encouragement in my endeavors. Though truly, I must enforce a certain distance if I am to accomplish the work at all.”
Confusion tempers his sullen fury at being put aside, put away. Hubert bites his tongue and grasps the box as reverently as he can bear, the way he holds the reins of one of Ferdinand’s prized foals — smitten and scowling. What will he possibly do with new linens for an afternoon, save a professional display of sheet-folding? No, for all Hubert’s jibes, Ferdinand has surely pushed tradition to its furthest conclusions. There will be no monographed handkerchiefs within the box.
The mummified remains of an eagle, enshrined in linen wrappings by long-dead priests, perhaps? There are scarce mentions of linen as body armor for early imperial mages, due to its light weight and ease of enchantment, though if Ferdinand expects him to recreate a historical set play he will shove the blasted gambeson down the man’s gullet. Older magical texts occasionally use linen for their pages, and he has acquired many a linen canvas for the Emperor’s portraiture.
At Ferdinand’s nod, Hubert slides free the ribbons and runs his fingers under the edges of the stiffly embossed paper. His fingers leave smears of melted chocolate and burgundy syrup upon the box—a tinge of spite at this gift, whatever it may be, outclassing his own in Ferdinand’s view.
He lifts the lid.
Silk. Black.
“What,” Hubert croaks, abruptly reduced to little more than a desiccated frog at the feet of a god, “Is this?”
A slim collar, a sheer bralette, stockings with a mess of silken ribbons along the matching garter. All of the finest quality, the silk unmarred by a single out of place stitch, and utterly, agonizingly lovely save for one little detail: the size is that of a broomstick, not a buxom cavalier.
“Happy anniversary,” Ferdinand croons, leaning in for a soft, lingering kiss. If he notices Hubert’s tremble, he makes no sign. “Per Aegir’s superior traditions, the fourth anniversary is for silk!”
Hubert cannot breathe, yet still he rasps, “It is for linen.”
“No, that would be the twelfth. Do not get ahead of yourself, my darling.”
Ferdinand’s hands close on the bend of Hubert’s elbows, steadying him with the simplest touch. There is not an ounce of mockery — there is no possibility of such from his loving husband, though Hubert feels the shuddering tension of inadequacy against his every ghoulish, gnarled bone. Ferdinand wants to see him in this. Ferdinand wants to sit at his desk and gaze out at what may as well be mummified remains, be their wrappings silk or linen. Dainty little strips of black to cage scarred and sickly flesh, exquisite finery for knife-sharp edges that refuse to take on a single pound of healthy weight, no matter how well Ferdinand has taught him to take his supper.
Ferdinand wants this, in truth. And Hubert wants…
He does not reach for the gift with his sullied fingers, but he reaches for his husband’s hand, swiping a gloved thumb firmly over the peek of skin at Ferdinand’s wrist. They have many such gestures, a lover’s language to ease the way of things they scarcely dare asked for. This one signals an offering of power, of unconditional control.
“I am, as ever, in your hands.” Hubert breathes in the words, that his lungs may remember their shape, their certainty.
Clearly, this is not going according to Ferdinand’s plan. His husband jolts not at the touch but its meaning, jaw gone slack and mouth ajar, silent, for a long moment.
Too long a moment. Hubert shrinks back with the force of a child laying their hand on a hot stove, spurned and furiously wounded by his own behavior, shoving the box back into Ferdinand’s hands so he can retreat from it all: the suffocating expectation, the inevitable disappointment, his idiotic faux pas in invoking such play at this moment, when Ferdinand wishes only to—
Tip Hubert into a furious kiss, snarling at the sluggish barrier of his lips and demanding every ounce of obedience so offered. Hubert’s own breath slips from his control, returned in sharp gasps only when Ferdinand drags his teeth to Hubert’s neck instead, seeking the yellowed bruise he left nights prior over Hubert’s hummingbird-wild pulse point. Ferdinand hums some trivial rot against that very spot—I have you, I will keep you safe, my darling my darling—as he brings it back to full purpling bloom.
The box, crushed between them, falls forgotten to the carpet as Ferdinand pulls roughly away. Wild eyes sweep the desk beneath them, the papers, the cloche and still-steaming tray of food. His hands close on Hubert’s collar, removing the pin with careful clarity and setting it on the lunch tray. Five knives follow in short order, Ferdinand’s efficiency devastating after a decade of disarming his lover, and even when Hubert twitches a shake of his head, still Ferdinand presses his thumbs along the line of Hubert’s collarbone to confirm he cannot feel the clasp of the usual bandoleer of poisons.
Satisfied, Ferdinand slides a hand under Hubert’s knee and drags it downward, lifting the leg so he can unbutton the cuff of Hubert’s jodphurs and slip his thumbs beneath the leather of one well-fit boot. They have each played valet for the other, in truth and in games of greater interest, but it is never so tactile as this, Ferdinand’s hands set on a course of speed that leaves Hubert manhandled, aching, at every moment. Damn the man for his excellence in even this.
No touch lingers, yet all of Hubert burns, smothered all the greater under such attention as the cloth slips away. Ferdinand strips him of even his smalls there in front of the desk, as if he intends for an entirely different lunch service than the one—two—that Hubert had pushed for. Yet he tugs Hubert away into the room instead, a bloodhound on the scent of perfection. Circles the tea table, nods to himself like a man possessed before he fetches the gift, drops it in distraction as he transfers every reference work in the vicinity to an open reading chair, then turns and smiles, broad and smitten, as his hand rests in welcome on the table where they have taken their afternoon tea every day of their marriage.
Hubert nearly balks. Yet his feet move as quickly as his pulse, compelled onward by the pure wonder in his husband’s eyes.
“Here?” Ferdinand asks, as though there is any question. Everything within the room will be in full view from the Prime Minister’s desk, but the tea table lies at the very center of his mind’s stage, of his foremost memories in this room. There can be nowhere else.
Once Hubert assents with the barest nod, the world grants him at least one small mercy: Ferdinand turns away to fetch the lingerie and does not see the ungainly curl of Hubert’s spine as he climbs onto the pedestal. He presses his palms against the spots where ten years of steaming teacups on forgotten saucers have marred the wood with twin sigils of devotion. He reminds himself to breathe.
Yet when Ferdinand returns with the box in his hands—shaking, now, as they did around a ring box so many years earlier—and drops to his knees before the table, gazing up with a reverence too bright to bear, Hubert forgets even that. It is not a matter of the world fading to a whisper outside the walls of this room, or his vision narrowing to the space between them. There is only the touch of his husband’s fingers against his skin, and nothing more.
His gloves disappeared at some point, sodden with forgotten plans. He only notices it when Ferdinand takes his bare hands with a firm grasp to press kisses to the hollowed palms, to lap the last traces of chocolate and cream from his blackened fingers. Hubert closes his eyes against that farcical offering of a noble head in his hands, his fingers trembling without any purpose to guide them beyond the horrors of rest.
Ferdinand leans back on his haunches and sighs, blissful beyond rational belief. He takes one of Hubert’s legs—that is all he does, take and take and take as his own, consuming all that Hubert is, all that he has ever been, and spinning it in his fingers like a storybook wretch turning pitch into stardust. The rasp of his rough fingers, his own gloves now gone, stroking along Hubert’s lean legs until they find all the odd callouses where hidden knives in their holsters have rubbed the skin raw for a lifetime too long.
And over these unfeeling paths, this sallow scar-knotted skin, slides the first whisper of silk.
Gorgeous. Just look at you.
Ferdinand’s palms trace the wiry tendons of his calves through that sheer veil, smoothing out every crease in the fabric. All that holds Hubert together is the secret code tapped against his newly shrouded toes, Ferdinand’s inane custom of counting them one by one every time he undresses his husband—to confirm none have gone missing or gained friends since last I saw you—as if any of Hubert’s experiments could be so benign.
Steady hands clip the garter into place, one reinforced band and then the other. The ribbons hang loose, tickling Hubert’s thighs like the unchecked fronds of a willow, and he twists from Ferdinand’s unexpected touch at his shoulder instead of his waist. Fury forces his eyes open once more at the sheer insolence of Ferdinand leaving a piece unfinished, only to lose all its heat at the sight of Ferdinand lifting the shimmering silken bra to drape over Hubert’s ashen skin.
Oh, but you are lovely. And so very, very good for me, my dear.
Surely this was the smallest size, if not a custom order entirely, and still it hangs loose on his sunken chest, a wavering latticework across the jut of his ribs and the sparse hair trailing down the valley that joins them. If there is meant to be a structure, a meaning behind the construction beyond the maddening shiver of silk sliding against his nipples, pebbled and kissed with perfunctory diligence as Ferdinand moves on to the laces at the back—
To think this is mine.
Every thought skitters wild. Ferdinand’s hands at his throat, a broad ribbon strung between them. The delicately hemmed edges a brand against his skin, every stitch a pinprick of awareness that he has been bound, collared, and none of it is new but it has never been this, a heavy jewel dangling low to rest in the notch of his jugular, a treasure adorned instead of a shackled hound choking against its master’s tags.
Tell me. Say it. You are mine, are you not?
Adoration or question, Hubert does not know, but he blinks back the sting of his eyes as he nods, pressing his face desperately into the hand his husband offers. Ferdinand does not pull away for a long moment, waiting until Hubert’s ragged breaths slow into a languid rumble in his chest.
“Almost done,” Ferdinand promises, clear and even, as he braces Hubert’s hands onto his shoulders, then spreads Hubert’s unsteady legs.
The final piece is little more than a suggestion of fabric. Ferdinand gathers up the dozen ribbons strung from the garters and divides the first pair from the set. These he winds around the muscle of Hubert’s thighs, a sleek mirror of the shadowed bruises that curl up Hubert’s arms whenever he feeds too much of himself to miasma’s grasping hunger. They disappear over the jagged ridges of his hipbones and cross just above his tail bone at the back, looping onto a delicate belt that Ferdinand fixes to the narrowest point of his waist.
A throaty chuckle, deep and warm, escapes Ferdinand as he arranges the second delicate pair of straps. He wraps the remaining silk ribbons around one fist, and reaches down with his free hand to—ah!
“Ferdie!” he gasps, bucking into that seeking hand, all the hazy shades of his arousal bursting into agony the moment Ferdinand touches him. He cannot remember when he—how could any of him grow flush and proud when he has tried so desperately to shrink into his own bones at such treatment? Yet still his cock twitches, pitiful, as Ferdinand gives it a fond pat and slides a thumb along the slick underside of its crown, indulgently gathering up all that leaking precum and bringing it to his lips.
And with sudden certainty, Hubert knows this is all he will be allowed to feed his husband, all his plans be damned.
Ferdinand croons some lovesick, loathsome nonsense as he twines one of the ribbons around Hubert’s cock and ties it off just below the head so that the fine silk will soak up whatever spills in his aching. That makes five ribbons settled. Only seven more. If Hubert can survive seventy lashes of the whip, he can survive seven strips of silk.
Six, seven—his hands claw at the plush velveteen expanse of the Prime Minister’s shoulders, forearms rigid as full rigor, when Ferdinand ducks to arrange the straps that will frame the narrow slopes of his rear. There are no gloves in this ensemble, he realizes, only the noxious black ash that taints his veins and paints fine patterns up his forearms, as though that, too, is naught but silk in Ferdinand’s vision. The twist of bone in his own arm is foreign to him. Radius, ulna, the lithe gap between where a clever blade may pass, Hubert has known all of these with vicious familiarity since the age of five, yet the sight of his own skin laid bare and still, not hastily swept over by soapy sponge or frenzied lover’s hands, hastened from one covering to the next, is as jarring as the slide of his toes within their fine frippery.
Eight, nine, ten, all conveniently passing between the join of his thighs in unintelligible configurations—cheeky, aren’t we, he would tease if his tongue could manage more than a heady hiss of frustration. Ferdinand trusses him up with a sailor’s proficiency, as if the only nautical strain left in the Aegir blood is the twist of a silk rope in a statesman’s fingers as he drapes his catch in kingly netting.
Eleven. Twelve.
And Hubert, fool that he is, finally sneaks a look at his lover’s face, at the dark greedy gulf of his blown-wide pupils ringed in burning amber, the curl of his ruddy lips in rapturous smile, the slip of teeth as he catches Hubert’s gaze and holds it, honors it, sanctifies it with the softest press of lips Hubert has ever felt brush against his own.
“Now,” Ferdinand hums as he stands, circling the table and making minor adjustments to Hubert’s pose. Legs tucked up and apart, spread into a glorious frame for Hubert’s needy, throbbing cock. He pulls Hubert’s hands behind and rests them at the small of his lover’s back, knowing well that Hubert will keep them there, bindings or no. “Be good and patient for me, beloved.”
And duty pulls him away.
Ten feet away, no more.
No less.
The sight of the Prime Minister bent over his desk is as familiar to Hubert as the sight of his own hands twisting a knife, mundane and devastating, the whisper of potential in every shuffled page as Ferdinand paints his own path forward of incorruptible law and steadfast service, retooling the very state that Hubert once hoped to eradicate, lest any vermin remain after his many purges. Ferdinand knows anger and vengeance as well as any man, has marched blank-eyed and bloody to Hubert’s door to give his reports, but he does not know spite. And as each year passes, Hubert finds that even-handed restraint all the more appealing.
Except when applied to himself. All this—pageantry—has been planned in excruciating detail, whatever Ferdinand’s protestations that it simply occurred to him. Hubert’s blood pulses in happy terror in his ears as he flexes each muscle in turn, testing the bonds to find they are not bonds at all. His wrists are free, his legs possessed of their full movement despite their wrappings, and not even an inch of easily torn silk keeps him in place, merely the fact that his husband has placed him there, on display, and so he must remain. A trick of volition, to crave his husband so dearly that he will relinquish all else.
Ferdinand’s pen slows to a halt and his eyes flash upwards, Hubert’s ribcage rising on a desperate breath as he arches forward on the leash running from his heart to Ferdinand’s burning gaze. Yet Ferdinand’s eyes do not fall upon him, do not even stutter his way as the tea table creaks dangerously and leaves Hubert in pitiful misery, unable even to crane towards his husband’s too-distant touch. Instead those keen eyes settle, gleaming, upon the silver lunch tray.
The Prime Minister reaches for a plum and prosciutto galette.
Bastard, Hubert barks, soundless and straining in his fury. The crisp break of the flaky crust under Ferdinand’s knife may as well be a hammer to his kneecap, for all the envious agony that flares in Hubert’s breast. He selected the recipe and each individual ingredient, the sweet burst of plum as fresh as the harvest’s finest, the shredded sprinkling of buttery ham from Goneril’s most illustrious farm, the sharp pop of black pepper hidden within the rich undertones of honey and caramelized onion—all of it crafted with one image dancing before Hubert’s eyes, that of his own battered hand holding perfection to Ferdinand’s divine lips.
Ferdinand smiles around his fork and returns the small, empty plate to the tray. His hand closes next upon the small porcelain ramekin of golden-dusted souffle, and they shiver in distant unison as the sigilware dish breaks its magical hold, the spell dissolving like a dandelion head releasing its seeds to the wind. The Imperial kitchens possess the finest sigilware of the entire continent, and though Hubert has often scoffed at the cost of such magic to preserve fussy souffles from their inevitable fall, it is worth every gold coin to see Ferdinand’s eyes shine at the lofty heights of that delicate puff.
The dish sings for autumn as Ferdinand sinks his spoon into it, the airy union of egg and cream joined by a richly spiced harmony of pear, squash, and a heavy syrup harvested from the trees of northern Faerghus. Each spoonful glows with the same dark tones of a sunset’s final breath, the same color of Ferdinand’s plaited hair, his half-lidded eyes and their amber lashes.
Hubert cranes his ears for each clink of the spoon against the ramekin as Ferdinand devours it whole, sighing a little ah! of delight as he finishes. Then, never one for waste, Ferdinand runs his finger along the inside of the dish and brings the final crumbs to his mouth, eyes flicking up in smug recognition at his audience. They soften the moment they catch sight of Hubert, tracing every silk-limned angle of him as if it has been years since Ferdinand saw his beloved.
And then, with his eyes still glowing warm and sated, Ferdinand picks up his pen and resumes the work.
The steady scratch of the pen, of progress, is all that fills the void. Hubert refuses to look down at himself, at the maddening foolishness of his bones so tenderly adorned, even as he twitches at the room’s stale air upon him. Unmoving, he does not even feel the frail silk, only the shards of its absence where his skin goes chill with gooseflesh, desperate for touch. It is worse when he closes his eyes and the world narrows further still. With every tremble he feels the lithe prison of his cock, the knot that kisses far too soft against his crown, none of it truly needed to keep him hard as iron and waiting, waiting. In the darkness, with only the familiar ghosts of chamomile, bergamot, and pine, he feels it crowd in upon him.
The pen’s nib upon his skin, the harsh revival of a palimpsest scraped clean and re-inscribed with the ways of a new world. Our world, hums the feathering breath against his neck, an illusion of strength just out of reach as his body sings for it, sings, as all of him sinks into a warm abyss of over-steeped tea.
He blinks back to himself to find Ferdinand watching.
It is not gloating, not smug. Ferdinand’s face lights with the keen pleasure of a scientist that has trapped a brimstone moth in a jar, vicious in his curiosity as he lays aside the preserving pin and board and settles in to watch its breathtaking struggle instead. Not torture, say his twinkling eyes. Knowledge. The love thereof.
Hubert will have his head for this, will break out bit and bridle, braid that lush mane into reins and blindfold his husband with strips of burlap, anything to convey the way this lustrous finery rakes venom across his flush skin. He will not have his own chance for silk until their twelfth anniversary by Hresvelg’s reckoning—or lace, perhaps, if he borrows Varley’s eighth—but he is patient, he can wait and plan and outclass even this, orchestrate a custom set of regalia dripping in rubies and gold, a harness for his husband’s fat tits and a glittering bauble for his—
Ferdinand moans in breathless delight around the first mouthful of boa pilaf, and Hubert nearly paints the table, the carpet, with proof of his desire.
The wood creaks as Hubert chases friction against the cruel air, which grants him not even the relief of aroma wafting from Ferdinand’s desk. He trusted the household chefs for every dish save this, a recipe offered by Brigid’s Queen when she learned of his plans. It glows in the light as if dusted with richest saffron, ambrosia from the sun’s own table to grant the strength to rise each morn. Fearful the cooks would turn up their noses and alter its refined elegance, Hubert practiced this one himself, perfected the blend over weeks of testing and drew it from the saucepan before the morning broke, spelling it and secreting it away for later service.
This plate is from his very own hands, and Ferdinand does not know, does not care, and swallows it down like any other. Hubert’s hands claw at themselves, nails into unfeeling flesh, for even he cannot be rational enough to escape the truth on display: that for all Ferdinand nourishes the world, it treats him back in kind, and Hubert is only one pitiful pinprick of sustenance beside a teeming table.
Vestra has no lands, no traditions outside the family horrors, but if it did Ferdinand would surely be using them now. The fourth anniversary is for vengeance: for every time your husband has made you feel useless and small like a porcelain teacup, feed it back to him tenfold. Let him choke on it.
It is not fair—worse, it is not true. Ferdinand will lap the frustrated salt-stains from his cheeks, will croon his adorations between Hubert’s thighs and grant him such rewards for this service, for that is the truth of it. This is service. All his life Hubert has carved the path for imperial boots to tread, prepared the feast and sent another to serve the tray, declining all recognition, all honor. He has thrived on it, survived on it, and now that hunger is ash in his stomach, a tremor of brutal longing as Ferdinand dips his spoon into the molten center of a wine-poached zanado, tips it against a satin peak of chantilly cream, and brings it to the blessed parting of his tender smile.
Is Hubert meant to beg? Does Ferdinand wait for him to break, more fervent than any torturer who has ever dreamed of paying the Emperor’s shadow his dues? If he calls out, whispers Ferdie with tremulous voice, pitiful and undeserving, will Ferdinand let him once more dip his blackened fingers into the pinked cream of that peach cheesecake and drag it reverent to the wet warmth of Ferdinand’s mouth?
No. There is no need.
Ferdinand gave him his objective. He has obeyed. He is patient. He is good.
Soon Ferdinand will carry over that final plate of cream tarts and pluck a sugar-dusted berry from its center, hold it in his lips to kiss against Hubert’s gasping mouth and paint them both in sweet nectar. He will take Hubert’s hands and laugh, buoyant and proud, as he warms them inch by inch with the rough press of tongue and teeth, devouring now his favorite delicacy of all, teeming table be damned. He will coo in earnest at the prickling chill of Hubert’s skin, already meager circulation pitifully impaired by a handful of ribbons, and revive the burn at the core of him with a single brush of scarred knuckles against Hubert’s painfully ignored cock.
That is all he needs. Ferdinand’s warmth, the way every sumptuous inch of him presses against Hubert’s hollowed caverns, kindling and spark to his sharpened flint.
He uncurls his fingers. Sinks into the bruises of his knees. Lets his heavy head lull forward.
Breathes.
“Darling?”
A pause, seconds or an hour.
“Almyran.”
Pine is the answer, drawing in the familiar aroma of their tea time to drift around him, Ferdinand’s presence slipping through his fingers like steam. A flash of heat, of awareness, and gone.
Hubert’s eyelids flutter against the sun filtering in through the curtains.
“Cold,” he murmurs, soft.
A thud and a crash, like a crossbow bolt shot through the peaceful silence. Hubert lurches from the noise, miasma pooling on reflex in the palms of his lax hands—but then Ferdinand is there, everywhere, hands braced to Hubert’s shoulders as if he is casting faith enough to drag Hubert howling back to life from beyond the precipice.
“Hubert! What do you need?”
That commanding voice so far away asking question after question after question. Only orange in his vision, a field of citrus for scurvy-riddled flesh. He grins, wild, to prove himself whole, and the world shifts beneath him.
So very warm, these arms that hold him and ease his stiff bones from their post. When he turns his head there is only bliss, the generous expanse of his husband’s broad chest radiating heat through the damask vest. Hubert presses his cheek to the pattern with a mumble of thanks.
His toes twitch in their silken veil. Again, again to feel that smooth shiver, to memorize the caging of the empty spaces between. He focuses on it, tries to, as his vision shatters into lurching tar and violet constellations, Ferdinand’s hands coming up to clutch his head like a treasure.
And then they are home.
There is no mistaking the great oak four-poster bed with its lavish coverings, colors demure but of finest craft and impossible thread count. Hubert frowns against the pillow, rumbles half-formed queries at the emptiness beside him as fragments of the warp spell prickle electric through his nervous system.
He peeks out dolefully just as Ferdinand flings back the covers and hurls himself into the bed like a soldier covering a lover from enemy fire, molding every extremely nude inch of skin against Hubert’s cowering husk and smothering him in molten heat, blessedly oblivious to the fact that he is every current threat to Hubert’s well-being.
“Ferd—”
Ferdinand hushes him with a wretched whisper, curling around his husband until both of his forearms are pressed from elbow to fingertip against Hubert’s back, two borrowed wings against his spine.
There is hardly the room to squirm, to breathe, in such an embrace as this. Hubert can feel Ferdinand’s frantic heartbeat in his own throat, pressed so tightly against that magnificent chest that it rattles through him on every wheeze of air. It is concern, Hubert knows, but it makes no sense with his cock near to stabbing Ferdinand through the thigh with its vigor.
He tilts his head in the direction of Ferdinand’s nearest ear and hisses, “It will take a more effective sleeper hold than this to send me under, Prime Minister.”
Ferdinand’s chin settles onto the crown of his head, a sharp weight. “You sent yourself under. Hubert, you have not strung more than two words together in hours. You frightened me.”
“Enough to bring me home,” Hubert snorts, then presses a kiss to the tense shift of Ferdinand’s shoulders, taut and newly offended. “Apologies. I do not mean to make light of your concern and defense of me, but you have no need to fear. I suppose I simply…drifted, in my thoughts of you. You did not need to stop.”
The hands pressed against Hubert’s back splay their fingers, ten sharp points of pressure against the wiry muscles there. Rage. Hubert knows this man inside and out, yet still each glimmer of pure, unadulterated rage fills him with a certain wonder.
“Yes,” Ferdinand says, absolute. “I did.”
This time, when Hubert squirms for freedom, those stalwart arms let him go. Ferdinand watches warily for any sign that Hubert means to flee, as if he would voluntarily turn away from his husband’s lush refuge in favor of scuttling away into one of his darkened, lonely laboratories. Not an uncommon occurrence in the early days of their courtship, but it has been many a year, and the unexpected eggshells crushed under Ferdinand’s firm gait give Hubert pause.
He takes a deep breath and braces against the hand Ferdinand raises to feel his rising ribcage, both of them leaning into the security of touch, the familiar way Ferdinand’s thumb rubs slowly over the ridge of one rib as though polishing a fragile masterpiece. It would be so easy to brush off the murk of the past few minutes and sink into Ferdinand’s supple curves.
Instead, Hubert drags tweezers to his hazy thoughts and pries the pieces apart. “Allow me to prove my clarity of thought,” he hums with a casual roll of his hips, pointed reminder nudging against Ferdinand’s thigh. “Judging by our change of scenery, I expect you activated the warp glyph I lay under your carpet. Not its intended purpose. Still, I cannot slight your instinct.”
Hubert has no qualms about taking their pleasure wherever and whenever they can, as long as he has his magic quick at hand, but there are certain things they do not drag outside of their well-fortified bedroom. A vicious creature driven half out of its wits by the siren call of submission is surely one of them.
Beyond the spell’s splash of freezing water against his numbed instincts, all Hubert recalls is a worrisome haze. The shadows through the window at Ferdinand’s back shifted during his scattered recollections, but no more than two, three hours worth of daylight had slipped away, scarcely the length of stupor Ferdinand implied. And there had been a question, a noise, the speed of rescue—ah. He bows his head to drag a fleeting kiss across the furrows of Ferdinand’s brow. “Did you leap the desk, you ridiculous treasure?”
“You frightened me,” Ferdinand repeats, utterly miserable.
It is all Hubert can do to assuage those lingering fears with a trail of gentle kisses from temple to temple, wandering in delightful distraction to the bitten bow of Ferdinand’s lips, the soft creases of laugh lines in his cheeks and the corners of his eyes, the scratch of stubble where he missed a patch on his jaw, no doubt from eagerness to dash away to his morning ride. Hubert nuzzles into the sharp bristles there, chuckling darkly against Ferdinand’s skin. “My knight in—well.” His hand drags down from Ferdinand’s neck to the soft whorls of copper hair along his chest, a needy path that tempts Hubert’s fingers lower still, across the rolling hills and valleys of Aegir and down to his prize. “Not much armor at all, it seems.”
Ferdinand’s hands close on his waist, thumbs sliding under the taut belt of Hubert’s dreadful ensemble. “Would you prefer I relieve you of yours?”
Skin to skin, Hubert had nearly forgotten. There is no frisky cadence to Ferdinand’s words now, even though the shadows have begun to pass, but Hubert is nothing if not a master of driving the Prime Minister to dance to his tune. “My. Do you imagine me burdened like this?” He gestures expressively to the dwindling space between their bodies, arching well enough for the silk bra to drape away from his torso in a sly parody of cleavage. There is no mistaking the shaky breath that rocks through Ferdinand’s chest. “I suppose if it is between suffering and ecstasy, then I would choose—”
Calloused, unyielding, glorious hands haul him back down between the sheets, and Hubert offers himself up to his victory. Ferdinand mapped every inch of him in the early days of their courtship, ink-stained kisses marking the faded, fragile parchment of Hubert’s skin, where it stretched thin over collarbone and rib to reveal each branching vein, all of him sanctified and committed to memory in one of the finest minds he has ever known. Now Ferdinand explores the familiar land with a stranger’s wonder, tracing every glossy river of silk and the way his flesh gives way to new shapes where the ribbons have pulled too tight.
His hands roam, but Ferdinand’s lips never wander, refusing to do aught but devour Hubert in brutal affirmation, skimming the roof of that poison-tongued mouth, lapping soft, grounding himself in the reality of Hubert beneath him as though Hubert is the dream. Feverish indeed, to have this radiant faery king braced against him and make not a sound—but how can Hubert dare speak, dare gasp or groan when Ferdinand all but purrs, trembling on little whimpers as his hands knead into the soft muscles of Hubert’s rear, jabbing his hardening cock mindlessly against Hubert’s hip, whining into Hubert’s mouth like a calf deprived of all the world.
Greedy mongrel that he is, Hubert needs more than even this. There are no traces of cheesecake or rich cream in Ferdinand’s kisses, no echo of Hubert’s work, no sustenance. He twists into Ferdinand’s traveling grasp and works his own hands free from where they have been trapped by the press of Ferdinand’s broad torso over him. Slides them upwards to his own feverishly mapped treasure, each scarred palm cupping one of his husband’s heavy tits, the weight of promise.
He sighs, content, into Ferdinand’s mouth, just as the man pushes up on one elbow and pulls abruptly away.
If Hubert thought himself a bug in a glass before, it is nothing compared to the intensity of Ferdinand’s honey-dark gaze boring down upon him now, pinning Hubert wild-eyed between his happy handfuls and the bed.
Ferdinand reaches out with his free hand, runs a firm thumb over Hubert’s lips with enough force that his teeth press into the flesh beneath. “Ravenous raven mine… You know how I feel about you missing your meals.”
Disappointment tinges the whispered words, and Hubert’s heart lurches, the preserver’s needle skewering him through.
Ferdinand moves, as if to get up, to leave, with Hubert curling desperate against and around, careful with his nails even as he clutches for purchase—Hubert brought the meal, he did not disregard it of his own volition, he was good—
Yet as soon as Ferdinand’s legs part, they settle again as impossible pressure to either side of Hubert’s long-forsaken cock, a solid block of muscle flexing around him. Ferdinand has shifted so high in the bed that his bosom now sprawls on full display directly before Hubert’s eyes, as if to say here, have your fill. A strangled, desperate little noise scratches its way free of Hubert’s throat as he glances from that heaving bounty to the fond twinkle in his husband’s eyes.
“Would you like to earn back my favor, darling?” Ferdinand smiles, and there can be no doubting his words are neither threat nor punishment, that he does not speak of true failure at all but an opportunity to serve. “You always threaten to bring me off like this. Make good on it.”
Someone wails brokenly as Hubert seizes upon one peaked nipple, the shiver of sound echoing between them without master. It could not matter less—what use is pride, when Hubert has his prize at last? Ferdinand’s rosy bud between his lips, lavished by his tongue, tremulous pleasure blossoming wild in his husband’s feverish form. He presses closer, nose brushing against the soft copper fur and its faintly lingering kiss of orange-blossom soap—Ferdinand’s own teasing reference to the rival anniversary tradition, Hubert realizes with a low moan of approval, rocking his hips into the suffocating friction between Ferdinand’s thighs. He redoubles his efforts, sucks and caresses and worships, unafraid just this once to be loud, and his free hand finds its way back to knead into Ferdinand’s untended breast.
Ferdinand hums thoughtfully, a feigned disapproval that Hubert can spot at fifty yards, and he yields bonelessly as Ferdinand reaches between them to tug Hubert’s hands away.
“Good boys do not eat with their hands,” Ferdinand reminds darkly, breath tickling the shell of Hubert’s ear as he tucks those thin wrists away at the base of Hubert’s spine in an iron grip.
Far from disarming him, it sends a shattering pulse of arousal through his every nerve, burning where their bodies touch and along every silken channel. Hubert’s lips twist in a feral smile as his teeth sink blissfully into his mouthful, gouging the brand of his devotion as his tongue works at the sensitive nub. Scarcely does he pull off to even breathe until Ferdinand cries out again, and again, and bucks once more against the friction of Hubert’s stomach though all it achieves is the slide of equestrian thighs along Hubert’s throbbing prick.
Only once Ferdinand’s words have spilled free—ah, darling, like that yes, yes—and broken against the shore of Hubert’s unrelenting adulation, nothing but desperate gasps of pleasure and pleading, only then does Hubert press a final kiss, for now, and turn to the other breast bearing down upon him, gravity drawing it tantalizingly near to his lips. He cranes his neck effortlessly to lavish attention upon that needy peak, suckling at the sensitive skin with greater care this time, a soft counterweight to the bruising throb of its neighbor, purpled from Hubert’s affections.
Ferdinand seizes around him, thumb pressing too sharp at those delicate wrist bones, other hand scrambling for purchase in Hubert’s tussled hair, his cock dripping wet against Hubert’s sweat-slick belly. There is no space, no separation, only the brutal kiss of Hubert’s lips as he chases absolution, driving into the channel of Ferdinand’s thighs.
“Saints,” Ferdinand wails, voice breaking in a way Hubert knows so very well, “The way you devour me, oh, oh, if only this would sustain you we’d—”
Hubert jolts breathless at the image, the thought alone, of Ferdinand allowing, enabling, sharing such a dream of intimacy, that Ferdinand would offer so much to see him fed.
He spills on a sob, curling viciously into Ferdinand’s embrace.
The cool air of their bedroom settles unpleasantly upon Hubert’s clammy skin. He does nothing about it, could not fathom a change when Ferdinand’s hands are busy stroking so gently over Hubert’s ribs. He twitches as they pass over an old wound from an ice spell, a spot Hubert adamantly refuses to call ticklish, and his hips roll of their own accord, a painful drag of oversensitive skin through the newly slick passage of Ferdinand’s thighs. Dazed, Hubert pulls a hand to his own stomach where no matching mess greets his searching fingers.
A low laugh shudders through them, chest to chest, and Ferdinand’s stiff prick rocks forward to catch at the divot of Hubert’s belly button, a reminder of his failure, a taunting promise. Ferdinand sweeps up Hubert’s hand and presses a kiss to the knuckles. Then, with considerable care, he eases onto his back and drags Hubert along with him, manhandling his husband back to his favorite resting spot.
Yet when Hubert finally catches his breath and turns to bestow a quiet, smitten smile, he finds Ferdinand’s brow heavy, burdened with far more than the sweet headiness of afterglow.
The moment Ferdinand has his husband’s attention, he can hold back his questions no longer. “Hubert. Why did you not tell me when you caught chill?”
“I told you to pay it no mind,” Hubert rumbles, his head still pillowed upon his husband’s chest, cheek pressed to the curve of one breast. There is a lovely plum-red stain spreading next to Ferdinand’s nipple, and he intends to watch it to full bloom, viciously pleased by the patterning of his own teeth.
“No. Earlier than that.” A heavy hand comes to rest in Hubert’s hair, combing through the dark locks with all the gentleness one affords a stranger’s cat, and all the wariness. “After we began our play, I asked you to be good and… Well. You were very good for me indeed, my darling, but I never asked for your silence.”
He scowls, shifting his weight to turn Ferdinand’s way only to have his head caught in a firm grasp. That is what good means, Hubert does not argue, struck by the riptide of worry in his husband’s searching gaze. It is not the correct answer. He does not know what the correct answer is. It is not his own head that tucks in its chin like a stupid child trying to shrink away into nothing.
Ferdinand’s grip eases and slides away to cup the back of Hubert’s head, resting at the base of his skull where feathered hair meets the silk ribbon. Slowly, as though assembling an argument of chief importance, he says, “If you grant me control, then all the responsibilities of that role are mine. It is not your duty to fill in the gaps of my commands. It is your duty to obey, and to communicate to me your successes and failures that I may act accordingly.”
The collar tightens around the bob of Hubert’s throat as he swallows, heavy as any iron.
“I need you to trust me—”
“I do.”
“You trust me with your person,” Ferdinand says carefully. “I would like you to trust me with your desires as well.”
Four years of marriage, and Hubert would not even admit to goosebumps of the unpleasant sort. To not wanting the tray of his loving labors ripped out of his hands and enjoyed without him.
“You are an ornery, devious, slippery bastard, and you are mine. I am not prepared to lose you to your worst instincts,” sighs Ferdinand, even as he accepts Hubert’s fraught silence.
He has accepted it far too long.
Eyes burning from squeezing them so tightly shut, Hubert curls tighter against the steady drum of Ferdinand’s heartbeat beneath his ear and spits out the words. “I wanted to be with you.”
Six words.
You could have said so, Ferdinand ought to say. But he won’t. He will never shove Hubert’s flaws down his throat, never make him bleed unasked, even when the asking is the true torture. He only listens, and considers, and adjusts his plans, as though Hubert is not a moldering bag of knives to be tossed at a problem, but a full nation of contradictions to be placated and reared to thriving.
Hubert pushes away from Ferdinand’s chest, giving himself just enough leverage to crawl forward and loom over Ferdinand’s shocked face. His words drip venomous with those two shivering hours of neglect. “If you want me for some…festooned floozy, you will keep me at your feet. If you want me for your masterpiece, you will keep those faithless doe-eyes on me.”
A choked breath. “Yes.”
“Good.” Hubert kisses one freckled cheekbone, then drags his teeth across that flush skin in promise. He braces on his knees, shivers at the delicious ache of their bruises, and shifts as if to leave, only to pin Ferdinand’s prick beneath his bony ass and bestow a petty roll of sharp hips directly into its plumped length. “And if you ever hope to eat another crumb of the food I have brought you, you will suck it from my fingers after stuffing me on your fat, dripping cock. Am I understood?“
“Yes!”
With a razor-lipped smile, Hubert eases back and straightens his spine, all the many silk ribbons digging pitch black pathways into his alabaster skin as he looms above. He settles every ounce of his weight directly upon his straining mount and tips back his head in imperious display of every spot Ferdinand has not yet marked.
“Then you’d best start earning your dinner.”