Page 8 of Arrows

The vial of oil was heavy in his pocket. He tried to imagine what would come next. He couldn’t. Couldn’t even begin to guess what a magician would like.

The kettle was real and ordinary. He could deal with that.

He’d just finished with the tea when a ripple of fabric—tent-canvas, and then silk and lace—rustled into existence. Van froze, standing absurdly by the table, too tall and too clumsy and too afraid and too excited to turn.

“Good evening to you.” The Sorcerer of Averene strolled around into Van’s eyeline. So close, so tempting: Van could see every golden eyelash, every tiny arch of an eyebrow, the single stray wisp of hair floating along a cheekbone. He was wearing green and blue, oceanic and shifting, color layered with iridescent depth. His face was the face poets and historians had written about. His eyes were blue and infamous and utterly unreadable, mysterious as gemstone labyrinths. They gave nothing away.

Van felt the heat, the ache, in his body, rising in reply. He knew Lorre was—something more than human, something else. The eyes proclaimed as much. But everything else was so seductive, so luscious…

He managed, “I made tea?”

Lorre laughed. And took a step away. Some pressure eased. “So you did. And you found cups. Were any of them clean?”

“Um…”

“Oh, never mind, I can do that.” A wave of one hand made drinkware sparkle; Lorre wandered over to the bed, sat down, and then flopped dramatically onto it in a swirl of seascape patterns. He stretched both arms over his head, too, and pointed his toes, like a kitten.

Van poured tea, hastily, and started to come over; Lorre said, not moving, “Honey,” and Van did that as fast as possible.

He perched gingerly on the side of the bed. “Are you…all right?”

“Oh, fine.” Lorre pushed himself up on an elbow, then sat up to take the mug. “I was explaining relocation to rocks. They think like granite. I feel like granite, at the moment. Heavy. I’ll want you in a minute.”

“Um. Yes.”

“Very sweet. Such a nice boy.” Lorre vanished into tea, downed half of it, resurfaced. “Sugar, wild strawberries…food…oh, you didn’t eat.”

“Was I…supposed to?”

“Well, if you wanted. Or not.” Lorre was looking at the spinach tarts; Van had a feeling this was an order, and hopped up to bring the plate over. Lorre grinned at him, and ate four strawberries and three tarts and two iced cakes in quick succession. He was even pretty while eating, neat and slim and elegant. “You should have something.”

That was, if not a command, unquestionably a suggestion. Van picked up a spinach tart. Nibbled. His stomach was full of nerves and hunger, not so much for the tarts.

Lorre stayed quiet while Van finished the tart and the smallest cake, perhaps thinking. His gaze was distant; his fingertips pulled fire out of the air again and turned it into tiny animals: a rabbit, a frog, a leaping fawn, a gamboling hedgehog.

Maybe Lorre wanted him to talk. To ask questions. Van tried, shyly, “I like that one. The hedgehog.”

“Hmm? Oh. Yes.” The animals twinkled and faded into disappearing amber dust. “Have you finished?”

“I think so?”

“Good.” Lorre slid off the bed, came to stand in front of him. Van, still sitting in place, abruptly had a summer-eyed magician poised above him; a wave of Lorre’s hand sent the plate and cups and kettle off to the pink and black marble table.

Lorre put out a hand. Touched Van’s hair, ran fingers through dark waves. “Vanilla?”

“Um. I wanted to…we thought…”

“Ah. You wanted to impress me, or something along those lines. People do try that, on occasion.” Lorre’s fingers curled, not quite a tug. “You needn’t have bothered. But I suppose I appreciate the effort. I like touching. And I want your hands on me. Sensation. Skin. Is that acceptable?”

Oh yes. So much yes. The arousal from earlier had come roaring back; it hammered in his pulse, between his thighs, in his cock. “Yes, please.”

“So polite,” Lorre said, amused; and then Van’s clothing, borrowed shirt and all, had gone, and he found himself being shoved back into the bed, magician’s hands running along his biceps, chest, stomach, lower.

Lorre was beautiful and infinite and commanding. Van got lost in feelings, glimpses, shattering star-soaked moments. Lorre’s hair brushing his skin. Lorre’s fingers wandering everyplace, as if trying to memorize him. Lorre’s slim waist and tight body and smooth skin.

The heat of the brazier. The tastes of strawberries and tea and sugar. The scents of vanilla, honey, some sort of flower Van didn’t know, a hint of sea-salt and water. One of the rumors suggested, he recalled hazily, that Lorre’s mother was a water-spirit, one of the old elemental powers. Maybe that explained the oceans.

He did not know where his own oil had gone, but they did not need it; Lorre conjured slickness out of the air, and his fingers were warm, and he clearly knew how to touch a man’s body. Van moaned and begged and made desperate noises, and generally forgot about coherence and sense and rationality. Those fingers, those cool blue eyes, pinning him in place. Yes, yes, please.

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