And he touches my jaw.
His fingers are warm and probing over my stubbled skin, and his stare is so intense that I can barely endure it. He traces along the bone from my ear to my chin, and then he takes my chin between his fingers, searching my face.
“So you weren’t lovers?”
“I never slept with the President, no.”
Sidney hears the subtext in my carefully chosen words, and his mouth flattens. “What does that mean?”
“He sent me to his former Vice President. As a . . . gift. Only once.”
“Hmm. Did you love the Vice President too?”
For the first time, I’m able to say it out loud. “Yes. I loved him. And I loved Ash. I loved his wife too. I loved them all, I wanted to be with them all.”
“And now? Do you pine for Embry Moore and Greer Colchester even as you grieve for your President?”
I take a deep breath, staring into Sidney’s firelight eyes, feeling his warm fingers gripping me. It feels safe. It feels beautiful.
Beautiful enough to let go of something I’ve held onto for too long. “No,” I say. “I don’t pine for them. And Ash—I grieve and I mourn, but maybe I can . . .”
I trail off. I don’t know what words I want, I don’t know what words I mean. How can I explain that I’ll always mourn Ash, but that right here—tonight, with the snow swirling and the firelight flickering in this cathedral of books, tonight with Sidney’s cruel mouth and conqueror’s eyes—I’m ready to set the mourning aside? That I’m willing to consider something new?
Someone new?
Sidney’s fingers tighten once and then he releases my chin. So he can take my hand.
It’s such a simple touch. The warmth of fingers interlacing and palms pressing in a cold room. And yet because it’s him, because it’s this sharp-edged ice god touching me, I feel his touch everywhere. Skating over the furrow of my spine and teasing at the creases of my knees and thighs. Brushing over my nipples and ghosting over secret places no one’s touched in months and months.
My cock, which was gradually stirring in his presence, is now so hard that I know he’ll be able to tell if he looks down, even in the dim room.
“I want to be the one, Ryan,” he says in that crisp, elegant voice of his. “The one you begin to try with, and the one you open up to. I want you to be mine, like you were his.”
My heart is hammering so hard that I feel like everyone in the room must be able to hear it, even as my brain tumbles over and over trying to parse his words. “You want me to be yours, like I was his,” I repeat slowly.
What does that even mean? He wants me to be his aide? He’s offering a job? Or he wants me to love him and serve him, but not share my body?
Sidney bends his head slightly so that our eyes meet again. “Do you understand what I’m asking?”
“No, Mr. Blount.” If he wants to hire me, then why hold my hand? If he wants me to serve him like I served Ash, then why are his eyes dropping to my mouth even now, as if he’s already making plans for it?
He blows out a breath. “I’ve phrased this badly. I shouldn’t have brought his memory into it—but I couldn’t help it. I’m jealous of him.” His mouth twists at the corner with irony. “I’m jealous of a dead man. I’m jealous of how faithful you are to his memory when you didn’t even fuck, and I’m jealous that he had the use of your body at all, even if it was only to give it to someone else. I want that right. I want that faithfulness.”
Our hands are still held tight, and he puts his glass to his mouth with his other hand, taking a sip of scotch. I’m about to do the same with mine, just to do anything, perform any gesture that makes this surreal moment real, but he shakes his head and lifts his drink to my lips instead. The glass is cool, the whisky rich, and when I part my lips to accept it, his eyes darken with pleasure.
It’s so erotic to be fed like this, given something from a powerful man’s glass and at his hand, and it’s so sexy that I don’t even care that we’re not shrouded from view, that Auden and Cremer could look over here at any time and see us holding hands, see us sharing this moment.
Sidney doesn’t seem to care either, because when I finish drinking, he lowers the glass to the stone windowsill and then uses a thumb to wipe the wet trace of whisky from my lips. And then he puts his thumb to his own mouth and licks it off.
I nearly slump against the window.
“I don’t want you to be my aide,” he says, giving his thumb a final dart with his tongue. “I don’t need a servant, and I don’t want you to be either of those things for me, at least not in the way that you have been in the past. When you serve me, when you act as my squire, it will be a choice and a game we play. I want to be your master and your only king, I want you to belong in my keeping, I want to fuck you and to care for you and to learn about you and share your time and your body and maybe your heart after enough time has passed. Is that a problem?”
Which means can I?
He can. If he’s asking what I think he’s asking.
“It’s only been two days,” I say, as I consider what I really want to say. What I really want to ask.
