Tempted by Ruin (Sons of Britain Book 4) Read online

  “Thing’s heavier than a drowned sheep,” Safir said. He eyed Palahmed’s cloak, then lifted an eyebrow at his brother. “Noble.”

  Gawain snatched his cloak. “Thanks,” he said and headed for the track, proof of his bad decisions dragging the winter-dead grass beside him.

  ~ ~ ~

  Palahmed watched him stalk away.

  Proud hawk. Proud and reckless.

  Safir leaned close. “You can breathe now,” he murmured.

  Palahmed pushed him away. “Get fucked.”

  “Everyone has the same good wish for me this morning.” Safir clapped a hand to his chest. “I have to say, it’s rather heartwarming.”

  “Idiot.” He scowled at Safir’s breeches. “You’re soaked to the knees. Should have let it go—it’d serve him right.” He turned and strode after Gawain, who had already put a fair gap between them.

  Safir fell in beside him. “For what? Completing his mission? Getting back to camp in a timely manner?”

  “For attempting a high-water crossing aided by nothing but undue confidence,” he growled.

  “He was doing fine until you showed yourself.”

  “And a good thing I did.”

  “Is that so?” Safir said. “I must’ve missed the moment when you lent him a hand.”

  “Didn’t deserve a hand, taking a risk like that.” He ground his teeth. “Could’ve lost the ring.”

  “Yes,” Safir drawled. “You dragged me from my warm bedroll before dawn to ensure the ring made it back to camp.”

  Their bedrolls weren’t that warm; it was fucking freezing out here. He’d believe spring was coming when he felt it on his skin. Shouldn’t have given the lad his cloak. Didn’t deserve that either, by God.

  “Know what I think?”

  “Can’t imagine,” he muttered, then kicked himself for encouraging the man.

  “I think you care.”

  “Of course I care. Rhys is paying us to get that ring.”

  “Not about the ring,” Safir said. “About our Gawain.”

  Heat flooded his face. At least he could blame the cold. “You’re wasting your breath.”

  “Palamedes.”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “Brother of my blood. Savior of my own young stupid arse.” Safir chuckled. “Do you think me blind?”

  Would that he were. Mute, as well.

  “Do you think I haven’t noticed? That in the time since you laid down that silly challenge—and credit me, brother, it was a challenge—you’ve only grown more attached? I have six years of evidence.”

  Palahmed looked away, trying for an aloof scan of the trees lining the track. Up ahead, Gawain was stretching the capacity of his shorter legs, likely intent on putting as much distance between them as possible.

  Which was fine. More than fine: it was reasonable, intelligent, and precisely what Palahmed had wished him to do.

  Six years, five moons, and nineteen days ago.

  Give or take a day. He wasn’t a fucking astronomer.

  Safir snorted. “You just corrected my count in your head, didn’t you?”

  “I did not.”

  Safir’s arm came across Palahmed’s chest, and then the fool stepped in front of him.

  “You’re in the way.”

  “You’re in a way, too. A bad one.”

  Palahmed tried to slip past, but Safir blocked him again.

  “What’s stopping you?”

  “You are.”

  “With him,” Safir said, his voice barely more than steam in the air. “Why won’t you give in?”

  “If you imagine Gawain would welcome such a thing, you’re a dreamer.”

  “I don’t have to imagine it, Palahmed. It’s as plain as the mud on your cheek.”

  Palahmed moved to wipe it away, a breath before he saw the twinkle in Safir’s eyes. He jerked his hand back to his side.

  Safir gave him half a smile. “Six and a half years is a long time, brother—to observe you…and him.”

  He glanced over Safir’s shoulder, hating that he couldn’t stop himself. Gawain was nearly out of sight now.

  “Why won’t you let yourself have him?”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “You know why not.” His body was betraying him at all turns this morning. First the blush, then his eyes, and now his tongue. He didn’t want to meet his brother’s gaze, but after a long silent moment he couldn’t help but do so.

  Safir’s brown eyes looked as dark and soft as a doe’s, and all he could see in those deep pools was the boy. Not the one he’d given the challenge, but the one he’d pulled from the clutches of a wealthy man and dragged half a world away, to this chillier place. The boy he’d tried to make a home for since.

  “He’s a man, Palahmed. Has been for some time now.”

  He swallowed. “I know that.”

  “Do you? You treat him as if he’s got no more beard than a peach.”

  “He hasn’t.”

  Safir’s lips quirked. “Fair enough. But he’s a man grown. A brave one, even if you won’t admit it. He has, by all accounts at Rhys’s, stamina beyond imagining. And he wants you.”

  “Nonsense. I’m practically a graybeard. One with stamina well within the bounds of imagining.”

  Safir grinned. “You aren’t wise enough to be gray yet, so don’t flatter yourself. What have you, thirty-five years?”

  “And if he’s looking for a new father?”

  “Would that be so terrible?”

  Palahmed glared daggers.

  Safir ignored them. “Think of it. He would look to you for everything. And you’d be there to provide it.”

  The warmth that flashed through him at the prospect was dismaying. The thought of giving that to someone—Gawain, only for the sake of argument…

  It felt like gazing upon paradise.

  “A sweet picture, isn’t it? Save your denial, I can see the truth on your face. Right next to the mud.” Safir reached up and swiped a thumb across Palahmed’s cheekbone.

  “I truly had mud on my face?”

  “Since you woke me.”

  So it had been there the entire time he’d been arguing with Gawain.

  Excellent.

  “You need someone to take care of you,” Safir said.

  “That’s what you’re for. To care for me in my old age.”

  “As tempting as that sounds,” Safir said, chuckling, “I won’t always be here.”

  Now something altogether more alarming gripped him. “What do you mean?”

  “One of these days I’m going to go off on my own.”

  Palahmed stared at him. Safir left all the time, sometimes for weeks, but he always came back. Always.

  “I’ll have to make my own way at some point,” Safir said. “As nice as it is to bask in the suffocation of your loving care.”

  Palahmed scoffed, but his heart pounded. He hadn’t smuggled his brother from Arabia to Cymru to lose him. “You’ve never taken care of yourself. You live from coin to coin and bed to bed. You aren’t about to change now.”

  He regretted the words immediately, but Safir, being Safir, only said easily, “Perhaps.”

  The rest of the walk was silent, which set him further on a blade’s edge. Safir never stopped talking. That he did so now felt like a punishment, or some wayward point he was laboring to make. Palahmed could think of nothing to fill the void, with the effect that he heard Gawain’s voice long before they reached camp. It didn’t carry the irritated bite it often did when he spoke to Palahmed. Instead, it floated on laughter.

  Then they stepped into camp and it ceased, as if Palahmed had shot it from the sky with a stone from his sling. Gawain squared his shoulders to him, causing Arthur and Bedwyr to turn toward him as well.

  “That’s that, then,” Arthur said. “The sooner we deliver this to Rhys, the sooner we get a hot meal.”

  “And a warm bed,” Gawain added.

  Safir clapped the lad on th
e shoulder. “Won’t have any trouble finding that, will you?” His gaze flicked over to meet Palahmed’s.

  Gawain lifted his chin. “I won’t. So I won’t be needing this.” He unlaced Palahmed’s cloak.

  “Don’t…” But the hawk was quick, resettling it on Palahmed’s shoulders. He could only hold himself still as Gawain retied it.

  For a brief, wild moment, he wanted to apologize for his snapping, to congratulate Gawain on a mission well done, near-drowning notwithstanding. He even took a breath of humility to do so.

  Then those pale, chapped fingers rose and patted him on the jaw. “You need it more than I do, old man.”

  Palahmed closed his mouth.

  Then he walked carefully to his bedroll and bent aching knees to prepare it for the trek back.

  Chapter 2

  Arthur watched Gawain leave Rhys’s council chamber, followed by Palahmed and Safir. When the door closed behind them, Rhys turned eagerly back to him and Bedwyr. “Are they fucking yet?”

  Arthur looked at Bed, who bit down on a smile, and it was enough to make Rhys groan.

  “Stubborn arses!” The powerful lord of trade picked up a scroll weight and threw it against the wall, where it thumped harmlessly off one of his many richly colored rugs. He slumped with a sigh. “What do I owe you?”

  Rhys had bet that Palahmed and Gawain would give in to their painfully obvious but long-resisted attraction over the winter missions. Bedwyr had bet they would hold out until after the summer campaigns, when the fabled seven-year mark rolled around. Ridiculous, both of them. The winter treks were too fucking cold to make those two anything but crankier. But there was no way they would last until autumn. Summer was long and wet and warm, and Arthur had his own wager to protect.

  He shook his head at Bedwyr’s grin. “You can stow that smug look. You haven’t won yet.”

  “Yet.” Bedwyr turned to Rhys. “I’ll take a hot bath and a private room.”

  “That’s two things,” Rhys grumped, as if he couldn’t afford to pay a wager a thousand times as great.

  “A hot bath, then.”

  “And a private room,” Arthur added. “Both our wagers are still in play.”

  “Yours is dead in the water,” Bedwyr murmured.

  “We’ll see what’s what in the water,” he murmured back.

  “Leave off,” Rhys snarled. “My hall stinks of muddy hounds and unwashed men, and my only escape is this chamber, where I’ll likely die under this heap of correspondence. Don’t need you two lording your impending celebration over me.”

  “You have a wife,” Bedwyr said.

  Arthur snorted. Of all the things he loved in the world, the moments when Bed strutted his confidence were among the best. Sometimes Arthur was the only one to notice. With Rhys, one of his father’s oldest friends, Bedwyr was more gregarious.

  Quiet or bold, it made Arthur’s cock hard every time.

  Rhys leveled one brown forefinger at Bed’s nose. “So do you.” He crossed to the scroll weight and picked it up. “They’ll be glad to see you. Want to borrow a couple horses?”

  “Trying to rush us off?” Arthur teased.

  “Whyever would I do that?” Rhys said wryly. “No. Enjoy your respite. Your bath and your private room. And your young family.”

  Arthur tipped his head in acknowledgment, grateful for the thousandth time to count Rhys among their allies. Their family arrangement was…unusual. Two men, each married to a woman, in the usual way for their people. Arthur to Bed’s sister, Gwen, and Bedwyr to Elain, daughter of Ban, another lord of these river lands. Except the true bonds—the blood bonds—were between him and Bedwyr, and between Gwen and Elain. Making it all richer, and a fair bit more complicated, were Gwen’s sons.

  But Arthur had a bath and a bed to enjoy before he needed to think on that.

  “I’ll see you again soon enough,” Rhys said. “Something’s afoot.”

  “What is it?”

  “I’m awaiting word. Let you know when it comes. Perhaps you’ll be less annoyingly in rut for each other by then.”

  Bedwyr chuckled.

  “Go.” Rhys shooed them with his hands. “Be someone else’s problem.”

  They stopped a few times on their way through the hall to greet old friends, but Arthur was glad to escape into the cold, clean air outside and cross to the brothel, the domain of Rhys’s wife, Caron, who also let chambers to those who could pay her price.

  Or to whom her husband had lost a wager.

  The building was even larger than Rhys’s hall. Arthur would have liked to think that, had his marriage to Gwen been a true one and not only a social and political convenience, he’d have been brave enough to live in her shadow. He wasn’t certain he was, though, and respected Rhys and Caron all the more for the partnership they showed the world.

  “What are you thinking about?” Bedwyr asked.

  Arthur raised an eyebrow at him.

  “Save it for the chamber,” Bed said quietly. But he had the slightest curve to his lips. They’d made no secret of their bond, and Rhys’s had proven to be a welcoming place, as that went. Still, Bed preferred to leave their more brazen expressions of lust for when they were alone.

  Fine with Arthur. “Hoarding it like coins to spend.”

  “On what?”

  “Save it for the chamber, man. You’re embarrassing me.”

  Half an hour later, Caron had installed them in one of her better guest chambers. It boasted a wide bed, two oil lamps and a brazier, and carpets of all colors. A large wooden tub sat in the middle, more than half full of steaming water. Before they’d so much as removed their boots, a knock sounded at the door. Arthur opened it to a lad bearing a large basket.

  “Mistress said.”

  “Bless your mistress.” Arthur took the basket and sent the boy off with a coin.

  “Thought you were saving your coins.”

  Arthur set their bounty on the small table against one wall and lifted the cloth. A loaf of bread lay underneath, along with a clay pot of stew, a smaller pot filled to the rim with sweet butter, and two bright red apples. He smiled. “Remember when Gwen would bring us baskets of food at the shepherd’s hut?”

  “I remember.”

  Bed had moved silently to stand just behind him. The soft rumble of his voice slipped under Arthur’s skin and made him shiver. “Alas, no sweetcakes.”

  “Not what I’ve a taste for.” Bedwyr turned him around and pulled him into a kiss.

  When he became aware of himself again, he found his fingers curled in the thick hair on Bed’s chest. “When did you take off your shirt?”

  “When you were faffing about with the basket. Come, before the water gets cold.”

  The heat felt as good as ever. Settling back, Arthur drew Bedwyr down to sit before him. As large as the tub was, it was a close fit, Arthur’s knees battling for space with Bed’s broad ribs, but he would have bent himself into stranger contortions to feel this man’s body against his. He filled his hands with the warm bulk of Bed’s chest and belly, then pulled his dark hair aside to nuzzle his neck. Bed made a noise both content and encouraging, and Arthur took up Bed’s stump and began to massage it.

  Bed groaned. “Gods, that feels good. Your hands are your best feature.”

  “That so?”

  “By far.” He heaved a great sigh and sank heavily into Arthur’s chest. “Can’t imagine anything else coming close.”

  Arthur smiled and kept rubbing. These were some of his other favorite moments, when Bed initiated a game like this. They never spoke any rules, but the object was always the same: prove him wrong and they both would win.

  Arthur excelled at this game.

  He lifted a foot from the water. “Not my toes?”

  Bed’s head rolled side to side on Arthur’s shoulder, his eyes closed. “No.”

  “My hair?” He lifted a hank of it to float in the water before them.

  Bed cracked open an eye. “Middling.”

  Ha. He had i
t on good authority—Bed’s own rough voice in the dark—that his hair fired the man like flame to a pitch-soaked torch. But such was the game. “My arse? You’ve said you like it.”

  “I do like it, and I have said so. But no. Your hands win.”

  He squeezed the muscle of Bed’s forearm, working down to his truncated wrist. “My eyes?”

  Bed turned to look at him. His own eyes shone in the lamplight as he studied him. His cheek quirked above his beard. “A close second,” he murmured.

  Arthur stroked his thumb up the underside of Bed’s wrist. “My cock?”

  He knew Bed’s expressions—all of them—and so he saw it: the spark that said his tinder had caught. “Hmmm.”

  “Hmmm, what?”

  “I might have forgotten you had one of those.”

  “Forgotten?”

  Bed shrugged.

  There was a fair bit of splashing after that, and then they were toppling onto the broad bed, laughing. Just as Arthur had hoped, Bedwyr pinned him to the mattress. Ducking his head, he licked Arthur’s chest in hot stripes that sent blood straight to his poor neglected cock. He tilted his hips to remind the pertinent party. Bed chuckled softly and settled between his legs. Holding Arthur’s gaze, he brushed his lips up his stiffening shaft and took the head in his mouth. Arthur hissed at the heat, then again at the rough, wet texture of Bed’s tongue on him.

  After a long, slow suck, Bed released him and nodded. “You may have a point.”

  Then he swallowed Arthur down, and they both won.

  ~ ~ ~

  Bedwyr woke on a sea of contentment, buoyant and warm. He stretched, arching into the bedding, his muscles singing, and then realized his thighs were pinned. Arthur lay between his spread legs, propped on his elbows. His mouth was bathing Bedwyr’s cock in wet heat.

  The chamber was dim, lit only by the glow of the brazier and dawn light filtering in from under the eave. Both were rosy and lent Arthur’s long fall of hair an added touch of fire. Bedwyr reached down and swept it aside just in time to watch his cock emerge from between Arthur’s lips. Gods, he was a sight. One Bedwyr would never get used to.

  “Good morning.”

  Arthur blinked lazily and curled his tongue, as if he were collecting honey. “Morning.”