Page 16 of Corin and the Courtier
“You can make it on your own.”
Aster giggled again, rubbing his nose against Corin’s neck. It tickled, like a spider on his skin…ugh, all right, that made his erection go down a tiny bit. One firm thigh pressed between Corin’s legs, nudging up against his cock.
Corin bit back a groan, his arms tightening against his will. So much for that.
“I really can’t.” And now Aster had started purring again, damn him, sounding like sex on legs. “I need you to carry me. You have such strong arms. Always watched you when you were training.”
All right, that was it. Every man had his limit, and Corin had officially reached his. He bent down and hoisted Aster behind his knees, regretfully sliding his hand off his ass in the process, and swung him up into his arms.
His strong arms that Aster had always admired while Corin wielded a sword, apparently.
Aster laughed, whooped, and tightened his grip around Corin’s neck, tipping his head back on his shoulder and grinning up at him dizzily.
“How the fuck did you get so drunk so quickly?” Corin demanded, striding for the stairs. Fuck. This. He had to get Aster into bed and out of touching range in the next thirty seconds or he’d cross the line of gentlemanly restraint and then some.
The question had been mostly hypothetical, but Aster laughed and said, “I drank half the bottle like you’d drink a glass of water.”
“Half the bottle.” He could only take the stairs two at a time while going up and burdened with the weight of a full-grown man, but he’d be there in a second. Hopefully before Aster threw up on him or he took him right there on the stairs. “You’re joking.” God, he hoped he was joking.
“No, I’m serious,” Aster said, turning his face into Corin’s shoulder. “Mmm. You’re really warm. I left the rest for you, it’s downstairs.”
“I don’t—I don’t need any brandy.” He desperately needed all the brandy. “You’re going to bed, and I’ll—I’ll go drink that brandy,” he finished lamely. Because he certainly would.
He jumped up the last few stairs, crossed the landing, and shouldered the bedroom door open. Thank God. A couple of steps across the room and he could dump Aster down on the bed and beat a hasty retreat. Get downstairs again. Drown himself in liquor. Go for a drunken flight around the mountain in the storm, that’d be fun, he hadn’t done anything that irresponsible in years.
There. The bed. He dropped one knee, leaning down and laying Aster out more gently than he’d planned to. He couldn’t really help it; Aster tipped his head back against Corin’s arm and blinked up at him with wide, shimmering eyes, now the color of the clear sea around the southern islands where Corin had spent a few years in his early youth. He’d swum in that sea. Now he feared he might drown in its likeness. The arm behind Aster’s knees came away easily enough, but the arm under his shoulders lingered. He couldn’t help that either. Aster’s arms stayed around his neck, one hand playing up into the hair at Corin’s nape.
He couldn’t break Aster’s gaze, his breath coming quicker, and Aster’s heart hammering against him where their chests were almost pressed together.
He had to go. Now, he had to go, because warm, brandy-sweetened breath wafted against his mouth and he could read his welcome in the flush on Aster’s cheeks and down into the hollow of his throat. If he kissed that soft pink mouth, Aster would open and allow him in, probably moan, go pliant, spread his legs. Corin could plunder him until he’d discovered every sweet secret he possessed.
And for all the good judgment Aster had at his disposal at the moment, Corin might as well go downstairs and fuck that half-empty bottle of brandy.
“Let me go,” he said, voice hoarse. “You need a nap.”
Aster smiled, intimate in the scant inches between their faces. A lover would see him like that every day. Or a husband would. And Aster had the next best thing to a husband, to whom he’d given his word. Even if he’d been sober it would’ve been wrong.
The thought should’ve given Corin strength to resist. Instead, it made his chest hurt.
“Only if you lie down next to me. You’re so warm,” Aster said again, snuggling up against him. “Or you could lie down on top of me like a blanket.”
“I’m too heavy to be a comfortable blanket,” he gasped, hoping that logic would suffice for a drunken man. “Now let me go, if you please.”
Corin squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, praying for strength and that when he opened them, he’d be a thousand miles away with his cock in a nice soothing snowbank. Or that Aster would let him go.
When he opened them, Aster had tilted his head at an impossibly coquettish angle and bitten his rosy lower lip, and he’d wrapped his arms more firmly around Corin’s back. For an instant he resembled Belinda so strongly that Corin’s vision went sideways, a jolt to his nervous system.
“I’d like you on top of me, even if you’re heavy,” Aster said. “I think you should stay. You can do anything you want to me.”
And that was when something in him simply snapped.
ChapterSeven
When Aster got verydrunk, he could hear the words coming out of his own mouth. Sometimes he could predict them. But he could never, ever keep them in.
Even when they really ought to be swallowed down, stomped on, and then lit on fire. Even when he knew he’d regret them terribly in a few hours.
But Corin had his arms around him, and he’d carried him up the stairs, and this time Aster had been awake to enjoy it, and it’d been as lovely as he’d thought it would. Those arms didn’t shake at all holding him up, and then Corin had actually run up the stairs without breathing hard. Well, he had been breathing hard. But maybe that was because of the terrifyingly large cock Aster had felt pressing first into his belly, when they were standing, and then into his hip.
