Page 76 of Garden of Poisoned Delights

“Oh.” Levi hopped up on the island, nudging the fish aside, kicking bare heels against the wood while he thought about it. “And you don’t want to?”

“Um.” Lazaros shot Iason a look, but Iason gave nothing away, eyes as clear and bright as glass under the sun.

Levi flashed him a grin, let his knees drift apart, softened the muscles of his thighs and leaned back on his palms. “You shouldn’t be so quick to reject a god, you know.”

“Ignore him,” Iason said. “He thinks a lot of himself.”

Levi didn’t bother to correct him.

“He’s concerned because he’s not part of our relationship,” Iason said, to Levi. “Humans sometimes don’t like sharing.”

Levi thought of his brother Arwyn, the way he’d once asked Levi to drown all of Staria because a traveling bard had said Declan’s eyes looked like rainclouds. “Sometimes gods don’t, either.”

“A prospect slightly more frightening than displeasing a couple of humans,” Lazaros said, lifting his mug like a toast. “More than anything, it’s that I think of you both as friends, and I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

“How? I don’t think your cock is–”

“That’s not what he means, dragon.”

Lazaros cleared his throat unnecessarily. “You’re a couple. I don’t want to come between you.”

“That sounds like exactly what you want, to me,” Levi said.

Silence, and then it was Lazaros that snorted, like he couldn’t help himself, clapping a hand over his mouth.

Iason didn’t laugh, but there was a healthy amount of amusement in his tone. “I think we’ll be all right. We know you’re not trying to, ah, cause any disruption in our relationship.”

“You really could have been a politician,” Levi told him. “You said that like a Katoikos imperator.”

“Be quiet, dragon.”

“Are you worried you won’t like it?” he asked Lazaros. “Or that you will?”

“Which of those answers is more respectful, Lord Tempest?”

“Pick the other one,” Iason said.

“I’m not going to fuck you if you don’t think you’ll like it. What’s the point? But I’ll fuck Iason, and he can fuck you, he’s the one you’ve always wanted to–”

Lazaros leapt to his feet, chair skittering back on the tile, the sudden sound of it interrupting Levi’s drawl. “I should be going, let you two talk it over.” His voice was more of a squeak, and he was hurrying to the sink with his mug like a clownfish darting for the safety of the reefs while being chased by a shark.

Levi ignored the very tedious and dull leave-taking rituals humans engaged in, until Iason returned to the kitchen.

“You’re terrible,” Iason said as Levi grabbed at him, drawing him in for a kiss. He wrapped his legs around Iason, then his arms. “Ach, are you an octopus, then? Or a dragon?”

“That question is beneath me to answer,” Levi sniffed, and smiled when Iason rolled his eyes. “He does want to fuck you—or have you fuck him. I can’t figure out how humans decide which of those they want, it really should be both.”

Iason was, in many ways, a different man than the one Levi met in a storm-tossed sea, but in some ways he was the same. The tendency to get lost in his thoughts was still there, his ability to go cold and still in a way entirely different than Levi. But those moments rippled and broke easier now, like wind pulling waves up from the smooth surface of a still sea, and he smiled at Levi now and touched the tip of his finger to Levi’s nose. “It should,” he agreed, “but people like different things, dragon.”

Levi tried to bite his finger, and Iason let him, so Levi sucked on it lightly and enjoyed the way Iason shivered as he slowly pulled his head back, teeth dragging, until he could speak. “I like you.”

“And I like you,” he said, “any way I have you, or you have me. That’s why he didn’t want to ask. He knows how I am.”

“How you are?” Levi tossed his hair. “Enthralled by me?”

“Well, yes.” Iason moved closer, playing with the strands of Levi’s hair. He looked pensive. “I don’t normally want to fuck people.”

“Right. You were saving yourself for a god.”

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