Deven and the Dragon - Eliot Grayson Page 0,60

pitiful, like the little boy he’d been when Andrei first came to his parents’ castle as Fiora’s tutor. Andrei had knelt down to put himself at eye level, and smiled, and offered Fiora a beautifully illustrated book about owls he’d brought as a gift for his new student. Fiora still had it, in pride of place alone on a shelf in his hoard. And then, even softer, Fiora said, “I love him. I’m — I’m sorry.”

After a long moment, Andrei reached up — probably wiping his eyes, and the gesture made Fiora sick with misery — and turned. His eyes were red and water clung to his lashes. “What will I tell your parents? They trusted me to watch over you — Fiora, my dear boy. There must be some way out of this. I can’t bear it if there isn’t.”

“Maybe he’ll fall in love with me,” Fiora said, and wished he hadn’t. Voicing his pathetic hopes made them seem all the more absurdly thin. “I’m not completely unlovable, am I? He seemed to —” Fiora felt his face getting hot, and broke off, biting his lip.

“Any man you were kind enough to favor would be a fool not to love you,” Andrei said, with such conviction that it nearly broke Fiora’s heart all over again. “Only — my lord, I’m very much afraid that he is a fool, and that he’s not worthy enough of you to realize how very lucky he is to be given such a gift.”

“Then the curse will take me,” Fiora said, and the words seemed to settle into his very bones, which ached with the weight of them. “And that will have been my own doing. You can’t blame him for this. He doesn’t know.”

“We’ll find a way,” Andrei said fiercely. “We will. And I’ll wring that bastard’s neck if he doesn’t do his part. I might anyway. But we will find a way.”

Fiora nodded, even though he knew, from the burning of his esophagus and the slowly-increasing pain in his throat, that they wouldn’t.

Riding in the rain was actually fun — or it might have been, if Deven hadn’t been forced to go more slowly so as not to risk the mare’s ankles in the mud, thus delaying his return to the castle.

“Fuck it,” he muttered. “We can trot.” He urged the horse on, patting her when she whickered at him.

He’d hated to leave Fiora that morning — hated even leaving the bed. Getting up and leaving that room meant dealing with everything else that wasn’t Fiora, all naked and warm and willing, and everything else was bloody well overrated.

“When you come back, I think I’ll try my hand at making you beg,” Fiora had whispered in his ear as he draped himself over Deven’s back, while Deven sat on the edge of the bed and tried for the fourth time to get his boots on.

One of the laces broke, Deven startled so much at that.

And fuck, but his cock had gone rock-hard again. That didn’t seem possible after the morning they’d had. Fiora had begged. His wanton pleas had been so detailed and explicit that even Deven’s ears burned, and Deven had satisfied every single one of them. At length.

“What did you have in mind?” Deven asked hoarsely.

“Well,” Fiora purred, licking the curve of Deven’s ear, “I thought I might ride you very, very slowly,” and licked again.

Deven had fixed his boot lace and gotten out of the castle at last, but he’d certainly felt motivated to return.

Riding in the light summer rain was pleasant enough. Riding with a cockstand to rival the flagpole in front of Ridley’s town council hall was not so pleasant.

At last the castle gates came into view, and Deven pushed the mare into a canter. The drive was graveled and the rain hadn’t affected it much. The sun wouldn’t be setting for a couple of hours yet, but with the overcast it felt later. Deven had tried his best to keep his visit short, but he’d already promised his aunt and uncle in a note written a few days before that he’d visit that day, and no matter how much he’d hated to tear himself away from Fiora, he’d needed to keep his promise. Uncle George had roped him into fixing the latch in the stable after all, and then there’d been a few more little maintenance issues to see to, and then Aunt Phina had wanted to sit him down and harangue him about what the