Safir woke in the night to find himself alone in the bed.
The space next to him held no heat, but when he pressed his nose into the bedding, Morien’s scent filled his lungs. And there—that heap on the floor. The man had left his clothing.
He’d shifted.
He was somewhere outside right now, flying.
When Palahmed had stolen them away from their boyhood home, promising him a world of wonders beyond it, neither of them could have imagined this would be one of the wonders.
Safir knew a man who could become a magpie. And he was getting to know that man better by the hour.
He lay back and pulled the blanket up to his smile, and he waited.
Sometime later, he heard a sound he hadn’t realized his mind had stored away: the quiet shush of air through feathers. He felt the air’s movement on his cheeks, then heard the light thump as Morien landed on the floor. The tiny scratch of his claws on the stone. Then a quiet grunt, followed by a creak as the man slid into the bed beside him.
He shuffled in the bedding so Morien wouldn’t be surprised by his wakefulness, then touched his arm. His skin felt hot. “You’re so warm for having been outside.”
Morien rolled over to face him. “Shifters tend to run hotter than other men. Or so I’m told.”
“Who told you?”
“My mother.”
“She’s a shifter?”
“Yes. She shifts into a swallow.”
“Not a magpie?”
“She was already a shifter when my father met her. He can turn a human, but he can’t alter another shifter.”
“And his child takes his form.”
“Yes.”
“Is she…tall, your mother?”
Morien chuckled under his breath. “She is a large woman. By all measures.”
“I imagine so.” Rhys wasn’t nearly as big as Morien. Safir let his hand rove over the man’s broad chest, the barrel staves of his ribs. “Do you miss her?”
“Sometimes.”
“Don’t swallows fly to and fro, between Africa and here?”
“She’s too busy to bother checking in on me. She’s midwife to her people. She also governs them.”
“No. Am I sleeping with an actual prince?” Rhys certainly knew how to choose them. “Oh, hold on. Is your father’s wife Caron a shifter?”
“A hedgehog.”
Safir laughed out loud. “She is rather pricklesome. How did they meet, Rhys and your mother?”
“She had traveled from her home in the mountains to the coast of the Middle Sea to meet a man she meant to marry.”
“Who wasn’t Rhys, I’m guessing.”
“No, but he was quite taken by her finery.”
“Magpies like shiny things.”
“Do they?”
Safir ran a finger down the man’s warm chest. “So what happened?”
“This would-be husband made it clear that, once they were bound, he expected to rule and for her to obey him. She laughed in his face. Then she went straight to a drinking establishment to quench her rage. Guess who kept filling her cup.”
“No. Did Rhys take advantage?”
Morien’s teeth flashed in the dim light. “Every time he refilled her wine, she sloshed half on the ground, on purpose. Apparently nothing happened until hours later, when they were fully enlightened and fairly sober. Still, I was a bit of a surprise when I showed up in my father’s hall.”
“What did Rhys do?”
“Are you always so nosy in your sleep?”
Safir bit back his grin. Playfulness in this man was a rare and precious thing. He wasn’t about to waste it. “Go on. Tell me.”
“Well, I’d flown, so I had no clothes—”
“An excellent state of affairs.”
“Not the first time you meet your father, unless you’re an infant. I swiped a blanket off the laundry line and draped it around me. I was only sixteen and skinny. Looked a bit of a beggar. In retrospect, I think that’s how he knew—we shifters have to keep clothes stashed in several places, you know. He made me shift for him, just to be certain, and asked me a lot of questions. Then he took me in, and I began to serve him. He’s been generous.”
Not the first word Safir would’ve chosen to describe Rhys, but the man was fair. Perhaps he’d held a little soft spot for his lover in that seaside city. “How have you found Cymru?”
“It’s my home now.”
And what must that be like, to see this land from the sky? To have flown here from Africa? Safir had come by sea, but this man had traveled under his own power. He smoothed an appreciative hand down Morien’s arm. “Do you always fly under the moon?”
“Mostly.”
“Why?” Secrecy, he supposed.
But then Morien nudged close and licked across Safir’s lower lip. “It’s the only time I find you alone.”
Oh, but there was a long tally of implications there—that Safir kept a lot of company, that he never paid enough for those folk to spend all the hours ’til sun-up in his bed. That he was promiscuous and cheap, basically.
But his hackles didn’t rise at the insinuations. For one thing, they were true, and he had no shame about either. More important was that Morien had kept track, and made his visits when he had because he’d wanted to be in Safir’s company. He’d wanted whatever bit of himself Safir could give him.
He could give him a fair bit, just now.
“What if I’ve got someone hidden under the bed, hmm? What if you’ve narrowly missed catching us?”
“Then he’s going to have one cold, lonely arse for the next hour.”
Safir did laugh out loud at that. Morien caught it with a hard kiss. Safir pushed into his body, deepening the kiss, torn between pressing his own desire to show Morien something new and letting him make discoveries on his own.
In the end, he gave in to the sheer strength of Morien’s own agenda. Pushed onto his back, wrists pinned above his head, Safir let himself sink into the bedding, to feel the wet, eager press of Morien’s lips on his throat, his nipples, the bones of his hips. The last coherent thought he enjoyed was that Morien’s arms were really very long, and then the man took Safir’s cock in his mouth, in full, and he gave up thinking too.
He drifted there in the dark for hours, it felt like. All the sensation in his body might have centered itself on his prick, but Morien let go of his wrists and set out, it seemed, on a mission to touch as much of Safir’s bare skin as he could find with two hands. Those long, warm fingers kept Safir’s entire body alive, brushing, scratching, pinching a little when they discovered a ticklish place that made Safir squirm.
Mostly, they made him insane in completely innocent ways so that by the time he did feel the hot tightening in his core that meant release was galloping up on him, he’d surrendered to being trampled by it.
He managed not to shout, but only because he stuffed his mouth full of wool blanket.
He came back to awareness tucked close to Morien’s chest. Something was rattling like knuckle bones in a cup, and he realized his teeth were chattering. That hadn’t happened since he was an untried lad, just discovering the wonders of sex. A touch embarrassed, he bit down on his tongue to quiet the clacking.
But not quickly enough. “Are you all right?” Morien asked.
“I’m fine. More than.” Leaning back, he pulled Morien down for a kiss.
“Why are you shaking?”
“Must have gotten cold,” he lied. “Like my friend under the bed.”
Morien pulled him close again. “Let’s warm you up, then. Your friend’s out of luck.”
Safir pressed his face against the solid heat of the man’s neck. His friend was out of luck—all his friends back at the brothel. For he was quickly losing interest in sleeping with anyone besides the man who held him now.
When had he ever thought of the future?
And when had he ever considered a lifetime exploring only one man’s body?
A shiver of alarm rippled through him, and Morien pressed him closer to his spicy warmth.
Desperate to feel normal again, Safir latched his lips to the man’s throat, took hold of his cock, and began to stroke.
And hoped that Morien’s gasps of pleasure meant he couldn’t feel the trembling in Safir’s hand.