A Royal Affair (32 page)

“I do not know what you mean. Is it not the rolling of the deck and the pitching and the—”

“Be quiet!”

He was for a while, then put his arms around my chest and hugged me tight. “If it is not a physical thing, then what is it? I do not understand.”

“I do not either, except it comes upon me—a flash of memory that is more real than what is happening here. I can smell things, feel things, and I am not here but there, and then I am sick again.”

“And then the tears come?”

I gritted my teeth at this. Given the balance of our relationship so far, this was not something I wanted him to know or discuss.

But then he said something that surprised me greatly. “One of my veterans is like you, only he did not suffer what you did. He was captured by the infidels and saw his comrades very badly treated. The memory of their suffering takes him just as yours does. He says he is back there, hearing their screams and seeing their bodies, and then he cannot bring himself back to where he really is. He cries most pitifully.”

I was silent for a while, thinking about this. “What does he do?”

“Oh, he drinks. But I am not advocating that for you. You do not need to drink, for you have me.”

I actually managed a rueful laugh. I
was
feeling better. Somehow the smell of the ship was not so bad when lying in his arms. I said tentatively, “Perhaps the mind can heal as the body does, given the right treatment.” He put his hands back to my head and began to gently rub his fingers against my temples, so I added, more to myself than to him, “I wonder if I opened up a head and looked inside, I would see horror imprinted on the brain—images.” His hands stopped for a moment and then resumed. I was feeling very relaxed and sleepy by this time, not having slept for two nights and being so emotionally exhausted. He continued to stroke my head, and I do not actually remember falling asleep.

I remember waking, though. I woke to find myself held in arms. I screamed and jerked up, flailing and fighting. I stumbled and tipped off the pallet, then scrabbled and made it into the dayroom. I think I must have been a very frightening sight. I certainly terrified the couriers who were variously sleeping or talking, waiting upon their king. Naked, wild-eyed, and screaming, I ran for the outer doors, which I physically crashed through. I almost made it to the deck—the only place I felt safe—when the guards brought me down. In my mind they were the crew of the whaling ship, and I was being brought down now as I had been then—released to attempt to flee, only to be hunted through the ship until my hiding place was discovered and their fun with my body continued. These two were no match for me, and I floored one with a blow to his face. The other I kicked, but it was a soft blow only, for I was naked. I followed up by smashing him into the wall and attempting to crush his throat. I am not an easy man to restrain, even when in my right mind.

Aleksey had taken time to throw a robe around his naked body, and then he was there, taking command of the other guards who had piled out of their cabin on hearing the commotion, claiming that I was in a delirium and should be taken back to the cabin. He then, thank God, emptied the dayroom. I had never seen people so glad to be told they would not be needed again for the rest of the night. They scurried away faster than the ship’s rats did at Faelan’s shadowy passing. I was not delirious. I had just thought I was back in a small cabin being restrained. I was furious, though, and humiliated and very, very upset.

I had not wanted to come on this journey, but I had done it for him, and now everyone had seen me like a woman fleeing ravishment. I was completely undone and wanted no comfort. I refused to allow him to hug me as I stood at the cabin window. I would take no comfort from words either. I had hurt him when I fought him, but I think I hurt him more by my rejection. I could not explain. How could I, without telling him how it had been and what it felt like for a man to be held down by other men, with men shouting encouragement and laughing and getting better positions to watch and then to take their turn? How it felt to have your body invaded. I could not tell him that for many months I had groveled like a whore so that rape would become the semblance of love, so that James Harcourt might keep me to himself and not…. I could not tell him that I had lost myself and my sense of being a man, and that in his heart no man recovers from that essential loss.

I thought I would lose Aleksey that night. I would have given me up had I been him. But Aleksey was not me; he was entirely his own man, as I had begun to discover. He left me to my grief and misery in the dayroom and went to bed. When I knew he would be asleep and I would not have to engage with him, I went in too.

He was waiting for me. He was naked, stretched out on the large bunk on his belly, the smooth planes and lines of his body sleek and pale and beautiful. The lamp was swinging slightly with the motion of the ship, and his beauty passed in and out of shadow with its movement.

I avoided his eyes, not wanting him to see that I had been crying once more, that I was tense and very afraid. This… temptation… was not what I wanted in the state I was in. He lifted his shoulders, arching his back, his head hanging down, not looking at me. “I’ve lost you, haven’t I?” It was exactly the sentiment
I
had been thinking about
him
. I crossed over and put a hand on his waist. It almost went lower of its own accord. “I forced you to come on this crossing, and now you will not even let me help you.”

“No, Aleksey, it’s not like that. I’m—”

“
Please
.” He turned to face me. “I want you. I want you to want
me
. Like… this.”

And God help me, I did. He could see by the outline in my breeches that my body did, that it had responded to his wanton nakedness without me confirming this in speech. He unlaced me, and my coverings fell to the floor. I could deny nothing then. Even so, I tried to forestall his eagerness. “This is not the place… I’m not… I am….”

He shifted slightly, one leg bent up, and all was exposed to my sight. He took my hand. “I am a king now, Niko. Everything I say is obeyed; everything I want is given to me. I have so much power that I think I will swell up and burst sometimes. You are the only one who reminds me of what I really am, the only one who will tell me when I am wrong. You are
my
king, Niko, and I need you. Please do this for me.”

His seduction was poised on a knife-edge between complete disaster and total success, and I hesitated, my thoughts so chaotic that I could not slow them down and calm them. I would have denied him and left, my sickness and self-disgust great enough to overcome my body’s desire, but his hand held something out of sight under the pillow.

That insignificant object changed everything.

He saw the direction of my look and colored, concealing it more. His voice faltered as he admitted, uncertainly, “I found some oil. I thought it would be… needed, but then… I think it is whale oil and—oh, God’s teeth.” He collapsed theatrically onto his face with a muffled, “You are
such
hard work to seduce, Niko.”

And I began to laugh. It was all so ludicrous. Nothing was wrong with my body or his or the world. I had him in front of me, naked, willing, beautiful, and we were alone. The only thing preventing me from gaining what I had wanted for so very long was in my own head. So I just took it out and put it to one side—I would rail and fight and scream and cry another night. Tonight, I wanted this.

He heard my laughter and turned to speak, but I pushed him farther into the bunk and climbed in alongside him, stretched out, naked, my flesh touching his all along his lean flanks. I took the little jar of oil from his hand. “It is almond oil, fool, and will do very well.” He kissed me then, and we were both very ready for the loving contact, having had something of a shock and an unpleasant few hours. I held his face and inspected where I’d inadvertently hit him. I kissed a rising bruise and whispered my apologies. He whispered back that I now had four death sentences against me, as hitting the king had added to my score. I murmured a few suggestions for how I would like to die at his hands, and he laughed, as most of them were anatomically impossible.

We were delaying the moment; we both knew this. But it suddenly seemed of huge import, this thing that I had done so many times without thought but he never had. I knew he’d thought about it a great deal, though. He was more than ready. I took the oil and sat up, straddling his thighs, and to his surprise began to pour it over his back and shoulders, working it in with my hands, squeezing his flesh hard, pushing and pummeling. He groaned with pleasure, as all men do when so treated. Gradually I worked my hands down to his ribs, pressing deeply into his spine with my thumbs, then farther down, cupping the pale globes of his backside, which were hard from riding. By the time my thumb found him and pressed where all my thoughts were now turning, he was urging me on, begging. It was a delightful sound. I swelled as much from his words as from the sight of the tightness waiting for me. I poured the remainder of the oil from a great height onto the tiny indentation, so it teased him in falling, and he arched, dipping at the waist, pressing his own pleasure into the pallet.

I slid one finger inside him.

I
TOOK
Aleksey three times that night, which I should not have, perhaps—he being so new to this activity that one such intrusion would have left him sore and unable to sit comfortably to his royal duties the following day. But we were as one in our desires, he as eager to feel again and again the secret pleasure a man can feel at such completeness. He had to describe it for me, for I had never felt it. Penetrated by the crew onboard the whaler for their savage entertainment, my pleasure had never been considered, and it was my belief that only a man willingly participating in such things is blessed to enjoy it as Aleksey did. I had the proof, for the pallet was soaked the next morning with his spills. Mine, of course, were not spilled.

I used him shamelessly, and he lay like a doll made of rags in my arms as dawn rose over the ocean to the east. We had blown out the lamp some time ago and were watching the glow strengthen, regretting the coming of the morning. My terror was completely gone. I believed that I must call him Doctor Aleksey. I felt so much a man that morning that all my appetites had returned. I was starving and full of repressed energy. If we had not been trapped on a ship, I would have taken Xavier for a long ride through a snowy forest and smelled the wintry pine in the air. Being on a ship was unpleasant, even without my more particular fears.

I was stroking Aleksey gently in a long run of finger from the base of his neck down his spine to the place of all our pleasure that night, swirling it around and then trailing it back up. I had seen men’s spines broken and torn loose on the battlefield, their bodies mutilated and mangled, and preferred a man’s body like this: whole and perfect. He was not asleep but not quite with me either. I was on my third day without sleep and was past the point of tiredness, now jittery almost with exhaustion. But we had both gone many nights without sleep in the war, and I would not trade one moment of my time that night with Aleksey for the most dreamless sleep a man could have. I bent down and let my lips take the place of my finger, putting my tongue where no man should, perhaps. He only blinked sleepily and turned to meet my gaze. He did not forbid it, so I continued, a fourth penetration but this one only my tongue and soft and easy for him to bear. We could hear voices at the outer dayroom doors. Our time was done.

I withdrew in body and spirit and allowed him to leave the bunk, watching as he moved around the cabin naked. After a few minutes, I began to laugh, and he turned, quizzical. I shook my head in despair at my own mood swings, a trait I seemed to be catching from him, but commented dryly, “I thought you might have forgot how to do that unaided. I am very glad you have remembered how to hold it yourself.”

T
HAT
FIRST
day after our greatly increased intimacy, I felt as if I owned the entire world. I stood on deck as the ship pitched and rolled and could hardly contain my spirits within my body. Most everyone else was sick. Out of sight now of any land and in the full force of the northern sea’s fury, I seemed to be the only one not hanging like death upon the rails. Perhaps Aleksey was right: I had become inured to the sensation. At breakfast, I had eaten like a condemned man (actually, upon reflection, it may have been the sight of me demolishing a hunk of pork and apple smothered in thick gravy that was now responsible for so many courtiers being indisposed), and now felt as full of life as the sails cracking and flapping above my head.

Of course, I knew the real reason for my return to life and health: Aleksey. He was my doctor, my medicine, and my cure. I craved him again. Like any man who has possessed another in such a way, I felt a sense of total ownership of his body, and as he stood conferring with those counselors still standing, I knew that he was aware of this in me. How did it feel to be king and master of all he surveyed, save me, who mastered
him
and ruled
him
? How did those around us not feel this emotion, these thoughts shooting between us as real as the great power of the wind in the sails? I could see it, tangible, in front of my eyes as I stood close to his huddled group. Unable to bear not touching him and hearing his voice, I moved closer and bowed, inquiring whether he would like to check upon the horses, given it was rough with the ship swaying and rolling and swaying and…. I sent a few more courtiers to the rails and lifted my eyebrow. I repeated my suggestion, which, of course, actually meant
us, below decks, no one else present
.

He nodded in a very majestic way, I thought, and accompanied me down the ladder to the lower deck. We had one or two courtiers with us for a while, until we entered the bowels of the ship where the horses were tethered. They had not had the benefit of fresh air for some time, and the smell was indescribable. So we lost our little flock of hangers-on and were alone, except for the stableboys. These we gave a thorough tongue-lashing, as the floor had horseshit that had not yet been cleared. The infraction was minor, really, as the place was as clean and tidy as any such place can be, given the circumstances, but it gave us the excuse to dismiss them. As they were scurrying away, Aleksey relented and said that they should avail themselves of the breakfast in the state rooms, as very little of it had been eaten, except by the savage colonel at his side. They grinned and ran for it, before their punishment became less attractive.