Cloak and Silence (The League #6)(11)
Author: Sherrilyn Kenyon

Ture closed his eyes and savored being held again. How he hoped this wasn’t the mistake Maris feared it to be. “I think my paperwork can wait.”

Maris pulled back with a deep, sweet laugh. “Work first. I’ll still be here and I’ll still be hard for you.”

His eyebrow shot north at the last bit. It was so out of character for his prim and proper soldier-statesman.

Maris kissed his brow and stepped back then gently nudged Ture toward his desk. “Quicker you get done…”

Quicker he could dine on what he hungered for most.

Biting his lip, Ture went to run the receipts and batch the credit slips while placing reorders for the morning. All the while, his gaze kept wandering over to Maris, who sat on the couch with his link in his hands. “What are you doing?”

An adorable smile curled his lips. “I’m a fierce gamer. Right now, I’m slaughtering Hauk who’s playing against me.”

That surprised him. He would have never guessed Maris was one of those. “You game?”

Maris shrugged. “It was part of our training when I was a soldier and while I don’t relish a real kill, fake body counts entertain me to no end.”

“I would never have thought that of you.”

“I know, right? Underneath all this mountain of incredible sexiness beats the heart of a little kid.”

Ture laughed at the image in his head. A part of him envied Darling for the long past he’d had with Maris. “What were you like as a child?”

“Brooding. Aggravating. Temperamental… Haven’t really changed, now that I think about it.”

“I wouldn’t classify you as brooding or temperamental.”

Maris flashed a grin. “No disclaimer on aggravating. Noted.”

Ture laughed again. “You are not aggravating, Mari.”

“Just wait. You haven’t seen me in the morning. I assure you, I have PMS until two…sometimes three in the afternoon. Not even Darling wants to deal with that bitch.”

“I’ve heard sex cures those symptoms.”

Maris looked up from his game. “Excuse me?”

Ture shrugged playfully. “It’s what the women who work for me say. Not that I know. I’ve never slept with a woman. Have you?” He knew from what Maris had told him a few weeks back that, unlike him, Mari had at least made an attempt. But he didn’t know if Maris had ever gone through with it.

A nice shade of red crawled up from his neck to cover his face. “I was engaged to a woman once.”

That disclosure floored him. Funny how that had never once come up. “Really?”

Maris nodded as he returned to his game. “I love her still, but not like that. She’s more of a little sister. Which is why I couldn’t go through with the wedding and how I knew beyond a doubt that I was g*y. She wanted children and I didn’t want to force her, and them, to live a lie with me. And to answer your earlier question, I had more than my fair share of women. Believe me, I tried everything I could to be straight. I really did. The last thing I ever wanted was to tell my family of blue-blooded ruthless military heroes and assassins that their son wasn’t like everyone else. I knew none of them would take it well, and they did not disappoint my fears.”

“It must have been hard for you.”

Maris sighed. “I don’t think it’s easy on anyone. No one wants to be different, especially not when they’re young.”

That was true. Like Maris, he’d done his best to deny it, too. But in the end, it’d been a futile battle. No matter what he did, he kept coming back to the undeniable fact that his body just didn’t react to a woman the way it did to a man.

Neither did his heart.

“So how did you break it to Darling?”

Maris laughed. “I didn’t. He caught me drooling.”

Cringing, Ture couldn’t imagine how frightening that had to be. “Did he hurt you?”

“No, he couldn’t have cared less. That’s what I love about him. He told me that it made no never mind to him that I was g*y, but that if I ever grabbed his junk, I’d be missing mine.”

Ture arched a brow.

“It was funnier when Darling said it. Usually I’m funnier, too. But I’m back to that nervousness you evoke.”

Ture left his desk and moved to stand in front of Maris. “I find it hysterical that I make you nervous when you’re the one who’s been trained to kill.”

He turned the game off and rose to his feet. The heat in his gaze seared Ture. “I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t even be contemplating this.”

“I told you, Mari. I’m a grown-up. I don’t play those childish games with people’s emotions. I respect what you share with Darling and I always will. All I want is a chance to prove to you that not everyone is an ass**le. That I can share you and treat you the way you deserve to be treated.”

He cupped Ture’s cheek in his hand. “Don’t break my heart, Ture. It’s been shattered enough.”

Ture pulled him into his arms so that he could show him just how much he wanted to be a part of his world. Closing his eyes, he breathed Maris in. “Come home with me, Mari. Let me hold you like I’ve been dying to since the moment I saw you skidding into my cell with both blasters blazing.”

He laughed at that. “All right. Take me home and I’m yours.”

Without another word, Ture locked up the restaurant and led him to his transport.

Maris was even more nervous than he’d been as he watched the shadows and light play against Ture’s perfect features. While his body was still healing from the damage the League had done to him, Ture had very few external injuries left. Maris hoped none of his own healing injuries interfered with his plans tonight. All he wanted was to make love to Ture until they were both unable to walk.

“What do you do in the rain?” Ture asked out of the blue.

“Excuse me?”

“Weird random thought about when you were in the pool. You said that torrential downpours could expose you. What do you do on rainy days?”

“Try to stay in. If we have to go out, we wear a lot of rain gear and make sure the rain doesn’t touch our skin.”

“Have you ever been accidentally exposed?”

“Not as an adult. The last time it happened, an ass**le at school had thrown me outside the locked doors of our gym in a record storm while I was changing clothes. Darling came out to find me and helped me to hide it until I went back to normal.”

“I can see why you love him.”

“Yeah… He’s seen me through a lot of hell.”

Ture turned a corner. “I’m amazed, given your uniqueness, that your parents sent you to a school with humans. Is that normal?”

“Not at all. Most Phrixians never even meet a human. The few who do usually only meet them in battle. I was the unfortunate exception.”

“Why?”

“League mandate. They wanted a member of the immediate ruling family to study human behavior so that we wouldn’t be so warring against them. They couldn’t take Kyr because he was heir at that time, so my father held a random drawing for the rest of us, and mine was the name the computer spat out.”

Ture heard the bitterness in Maris’s tone. “You really don’t like humans, do you?”

“I didn’t like my classmates. Humans are all right so long as they’re human.”

He couldn’t agree more. “Did the League’s plan work?”

“Might have had the g*y son not been sent. As it was, my father blamed my personal choice on the exposure to an inferior species at such an impressionable age. In the end, all it did was fuel Kyr to rise up in the League ranks and wage his own war against the rest of the worlds. And my father now hates all humans with an unreasoning madness.”

“I’m sorry, Mari.”

“Thanks, but you didn’t do it. I don’t know what happened to Kyr. He wasn’t soulless until he was seventeen. Something he won’t talk about changed him forever. Whatever it was, it killed what little compassion he had and turned him into the monster he is today.”

Ture heard the sadness and regret in Maris’s tone. “You still love him?”

“He’s my brother. I’m not the one who disowned him. And even though I don’t agree with his actions or opinions, it doesn’t sever the blood tie we share.”

That was the heart that had won Ture’s affections.

Ture pulled up to a small parking garage and docked. Maris got out first and waited until Ture joined him. It was a nice apartment building just a few blocks from the restaurant. A uniformed doorman let them in.

Maris didn’t speak as they entered the lift that took them to the top floor. Ture’s place was at the end of a long, elegant hall.

Ture unlocked the door. “I’m hoping Anachelle’s asleep.”

“She’s not asleep,” Anachelle called from a bedroom in back. “But she’s closing her door and putting on her noise-cancelling headphones. You two have all the fun you want and don’t even think about me being here. My room fridge is fully stocked and I’m locked up for the night.”

Maris laughed. “I really like her.”

“So do I. Let me check on her and I’ll be right back.”

Maris stayed in the living room, but he could hear their playful exchange as Ture fussed at her for being awake and not resting.

“Go mother the boyfriend you don’t have and tell him that yes, my feet are up. I’m fine, Grandma.”

Ture was still smiling as he returned, shaking his head. “She’s incorrigible.” He headed for the kitchen. “Would you like some wine?”

“I better not. I don’t want to be tipsy.”

Ture arched a brow at that.

“I had a bad drug and drinking problem for a while. Really don’t want to go back to it.”

“Sorry. I didn’t know.”

Maris draped his jacket over the back of a chair. “It’s not something people wear on a scanable collar around their necks. Hey, Universe, I’m a recovering addict.”

“If it makes you feel better, I had a brief bad period myself.”

Maris locked a gaze with his that sent a shiver down his spine. “Doesn’t make me feel better for you. It sucks to be all alone in hell.”

“But you always had Darling.”

Maris didn’t comment. There had been a brief time, due to his own stupidity, when he’d been alone. But he tried not to think about that.

And he prayed to the gods that he never had to go through something like that again.

Ture came up behind him and wrapped his arms around Maris’s waist. “I have to say you look delectable tonight, but nothing like what I expected.”

He sucked his breath in as Ture teased his earlobe with his teeth. “I’m not always a flamboyant queen. I do have occasional moments of screaming normality.”

“It makes no never mind to me how you dress, Mari. I adore all facets of your personality.” He slid his hand down to cup him while he continued to swirl his tongue around Maris’s ear. His breathing turned ragged.

Leaning back, Maris ran his hand through Ture’s hair, and closed his eyes while he savored the sensation of being held and touched again. It’d been way too long. And it made him ache for the one thing that had always eluded him.

A real relationship with someone who could give as much as he took.

He was so tired of selfish users. Of people who were even more emotionally damaged than he was.

His heart pounding, he captured Ture’s lips as Ture sank his hand down into Maris’s pants to stroke him. He growled at how good it felt.

“You are really hard.”

Maris smiled. “I’ve been like this since you called.”

Ture’s eyebrow shot north.

Turning to face him, Maris wrinkled his nose. “I have stamina the likes of which is legendary.” He pulled Ture’s shirt off then brushed his hand over his muscular chest. “And while you may be master of the kitchen, your skills pale in comparison to what I can do in a bedroom.”

“By all means, let me see these skills of which you speak, my lord.” Ture gasped as Maris picked him up and carried him as if he weighed nothing. While Ture wasn’t weak by any means, Maris’s strength was inhuman.

Literally.

Ture guided him to the bedroom. When he started to turn on the lamp, Maris stopped him.

“I work better in the dark.”

Knowing how self-conscious Maris was about his physical scars, Ture pulled his hand back. “Next time, I want light and I think I’m highly offended that you just called this work.”

Deep laughter rang rumbled in his ear as Maris laid him on the bed. “Fine then, I pleasure better in the dark.”

“That still doesn’t sound right.”

“Yes, well, I can use my tongue for speaking to you, or for…”

Ture gasped as Maris teased his nipple. Chills spread the length of his body as he hardened to the point of pain. “By all means, don’t let me interfere with that.”