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“Give me a moment.” Evemer said. “We’ll run it like a chess game, and—”
Incredible. Unbelievable. Trying to come up with a scheme at a time like this! “You can run it however you’d like,” Kadou said, carefully patient. “But come back here and finish kissing me first.”
“This is serious,” Evemer said. His stern tone was rather ruined by the wreck of his hair. Kadou did not reach out to fix it. “It’s damaging to everyone if this turns into a scandal. We’ll have to handle it as delicately as possible. You’ve studied tactics, haven’t you?”
“War tactics?” Kadou said, incredulous. “Who are we going to war against?”
“What’s Arikman’s first principle?”
“Win the battle before the enemy knows it’s occurred,” Kadou answered slowly. Evidently he wasn’t going to get the rest of his kiss before Evemer had his opening gambits lined up. He crossed his arms and sighed. He’d always heard marriage was about compromise. “All right. Tell me your plan.”
Evemer considered, staring blankly at the fountain. “We will keep any connection between us beyond the professional one secret for a little while. Perhaps four to six months.”
“You want me all to yourself, don’t you? That’s what you’re saying.”
“Can’t blame a man for expecting a honeymoon,” Evemer said, still dreadfully serious, but there was the touch of a smile at the corner of his mouth. He glanced at Kadou and—there was a bit of that moonstruck look again.
“No, you really can’t,” Kadou said pointedly, giving him a deliberate and hungry once-over, but it seemed to go over Evemer’s head. He should have taken Evemer back to his rooms for this instead of the garden, but they were so much farther away. There was a bed there. There was a door that locked. Kadou could have just taken off all his clothes until Evemer got the point. “You can’t start planning six months from now, though. There’s matters to attend to in the short term.”
Evemer nodded sagely. “Of course. You’re quite right. Certainly there may be some rumors about us before then, but Tadek can help with managing them, and he’ll make sure no one will believe them—”
“I was thinking even more in the short term. More immediately, you might say.”
Evemer frowned. Kadou could almost read thewhat have I missed?thought running across his eyes. “Oh. Yes. Request me to be appointed to your service permanently—probably Melek too, for camouflage. That will help with logistics. No one will think twice about why I’m near you so often.”
“As good as done,” Kadou said. “But more immediately than that. It’s an extremely urgent matter,” he said, mimicking Evemer’s serious tone.
“What is it?”
He cleared his throat and felt a bit of a blush come to his cheeks. “I was thinking you might like to finish off the last bit of business in regards to marrying me before you start plotting out your entire chess game for the next year.”
Evemer paused and, rather choked, said, “Oh. Yes. Of course. Ah, tonight?”
It was barely past lunchtime—tonight waseonsaway. “If you like,” Kadou said. “But I’m also thinking, why wait?”
Evemer looked increasingly poleaxed. He swallowed, staring at Kadou, apparently unable to look away. “The house?”
The house might as well have been on one of the moons. There were hundreds of people between them and the locking door, and they’d have to drag Tadek along, and he’ddefinitelycatch on and giggle the whole way home, and then there would be excuses to make and kahyalar to dismiss, and they’d have to find a crowbar to get rid of Tadek, and that’s if there weren’t any urgent messages that interrupted them . . .
And besides, if Kadou gave himself any time to think about this, he could very well work himself into a fit of nerves about it, and that wouldn’t at all contribute to the mood of a romantic afternoon alone.
“I’m thinking,” he said slowly once again, pitching his voice low and inviting. “Why wait?” And then he reached out again, caught Evemer by the tails of his sash, and dragged him back in.
“Here?” Evemer said, scandalized.
Kadou bit back a laugh and pulled Evemer’s face down, close enough to kiss. He brushed his lips over Evemer’s cheek, the corner of his mouth. “Against a wall in a garden is nicer than against a wall in a cold wine cellar, isn’t it?”
“Kadou—”
“Stop talking,” he said. He kissed him slow and deep, and smiled into the kiss when Evemer made that little sound of need. Kadou let his hands run down Evemer’s neck, his shoulders, his chest, his ribs and belly, all achingly slow—and then further down, until Evemer gasped, and groaned softly, and pushed into the press of Kadou’s hand. “Yes?”
Evemer only made that sound and tugged at the knot of Kadou’s sash with shaking hands, fumbling at his buttons, pulling the layers of his fine court robes open, sliding his hands around Kadou’s waist.
It was ferociously gratifying to be able to touch Evemer properly, to yank open his clothes in turn and trace the lines of his ribs, the planes of his back and shoulders, the cut of his hip. Kadou had not realized the extent to which his hands were hungry for Evemer’s skin until there it was, under his palms and against his chest, so intensely smooth and warm and perfect that it was almost a touch-taste itself. It was almost iron—the pressure of a wall at his back, the taste of salt from Evemer’s skin, a sigh into a kiss.
There would be time later, Kadou reminded himself, to do it properly, to push all of Evemer’s clothes off his shoulders, to leave him bare and all Kadou’s, to take a full inventory of what was his: each of Evemer’s scars, each freckle and mole and strangely placed hair, each birthmark, each muscle as magnificently shaped as if it had been individually carved from fine-grained golden wood. All Kadou’s. Nothing had been only his before, and likely nothing ever would again—just this. Just Evemer and that soft, barely vocalized breath of sound he made that hit Kadou’s veins like sizzling oil.
Gods, that sound. That sound was going to be his doom. It was already unmaking him. One day when he had time and a bed and a locking door between them and the rest of the world, and preferably fifty miles too, he’d take inventory of every place that he could brush his fingertips against to get Evemer to make that sound, and whether he would get the same response with his nails, and at what pressure, and, and, and.
