The Gathandrian Trilogy 01 - The Gifting

wish.” Then he gave a short laugh, “I will not give you that opportunity again. Believe me.”
    “And if I do not wish?” Simon could scarcely credit the boldness of his question, but Ralph did not chastise him.
    “Then what happens here, tonight, is a secret only you and I can share. But it will happen again. And then the choice will no longer be yours; it will always be mine.”
    “You lie,” Simon said, and this time his words brought Ralph’s head up as if he’d slapped him. “The choice has never been mine; it has always been yours. I will do what you want me to, whenever you want it. Damn you, you know .”
    So much Simon couldn’t say. So much he needed Ralph for. Most of all, this . Though the admission already condemned him.
    No more words. Two paces brought the Overlord closer still, Simon’s skin crying out for Ralph to touch him. By the time their first kiss ended—the need to take air forcing the two men apart—the Lammas Master was already half-undressed, tearing his overshirt and Simon’s in the effort to be free. Moments later, Ralph had tumbled him onto the bed, Simon’s mind spinning and his breath coming in gasps.
    Ralph’s body overpowered his, his fingers reached into Simon’s thoughts, and drew out the sweetness of them, matching need for need and joy for joy. Too fast . Too… Simon hadn’t… On the bed linen he scrabbled for connection, sweat glistening his skin as his world, physical and mental, exploded into a rainbow of green, fizzing into lemon and silver, scarlet and gold. A shower of stars that burst over Simon’s flesh but did not destroy him. Flight. Burning sun. The wild expanse of sky. He might have cried out. He didn’t know, could no longer tell, body and mind now not his own, but merged with Ralph’s in a dance he’d never expected to taste like this .
    The last thing he remembered before the sky swallowed him up was Ralph’s whisper of surprise. Simon.
    When he woke, the air seemed lighter and he sensed, without looking for the window, that it was somewhere near morning.
    “Would you like wine?”
    “Please, my lord.”
    The Lammas Master eased the beaker into Simon’s fingers, the heady scent of its contents waking him more fully. “When we are alone, like this, there is no need to give me the titular honour you owe me. Do you understand?”
    After a moment’s pause, his heart still taking in the strangeness of it all, Simon nodded and drank, draining the beaker dry. It tasted of nothing. He was aware only of the nearness of his companion.
    Ralph smiled, but when he next spoke, the subject was not one Simon had anticipated.
    “I understood you were not a virgin, Simon Hartstongue,” he said. “I had not expected that, of course. You have been a traveller for so long and, here, we have always heard the rumours of such people. But I had not realised you had never fully tasted another, body and mind. Still, you have done so now. I have given you that joy, at least.”
    “My ignorance troubles you?”
    “No. It surprises me. That is all.”
    He took one breath, then two, as the flickering images of Ralph’s previous joinings faded from the memory of their own recent one. As he had known Simon’s past, so Ralph had not been able to keep the knowledge of his from Simon either. There had been four of them. All women. One more special than the rest. He understood already that Ralph’s next coupling would not find him as important as she had been. He thought then that his next, after Ralph—should there be one such—would find nothing but the Lammas Master filling his blood.
    “Ralph,” he said, for the first time calling him aloud by his given name, and rejoicing that he’d granted him the right to say it. “ Ralph .”

    Johan
    “Ralph.”
    Simon’s voice shakes Johan awake and for a moment he doesn’t understand where he is and then the memory returns. The sky above is growing dark and he can see the first glimmerings of more familiar stars. They are nearing Gathandria, but will they reach it in time? The air is rippled with the emotions of his companion’s arousal and Johan forces himself to be as still as possible. The man must have been dreaming. Or lost in his memories. He would be appalled if he knew how much he has revealed in that one word alone. And how much, for a moment of clarity, Johan can see inside him. Images Simon himself is unaware of. One image. For a while, the only sound is the lapping of the water and the breathing