manlier!”
Alain ducked his head at her words and put his hand over his heart. “My lady—”
Gerard, however, had drawn his sword with a growl. “It is a contest, lady, for just as you seek completion and the breaking of the fairy’s curse, so I seek it. Alain!”
Alain had drawn no weapon but Mira, heart thudding again, had no illusions he was not as ready to wage battle as Gerard. “Yes, brother of my heart.”
“Outside.”
“Yes, Gerard.”
Again, Alain inclined his head, but though it gave the appearance of him following Gerard’s command, Mira was not fooled. Alain was his own man. Her breath hitched faster in her chest when Alain followed Gerard out into the garden.
When they fought over her.
The room was not the best he’d ever been given, but it was clean and bright, and the bed was softer than any had ever been in the barracks of the King’s Guard. The basins, one filled with hot water and one with cold, were of finer porcelain, too, as were the cloths Gerard now used to wash the worst of his wounds. Alain’s blade had some time ago become nicked, and the cuts it gave were ragged. He hissed as he smoothed the water over his bleeding flesh.
It gave him no small pleasure to hear the same pained noises coming from the room Alain had been given. Though the rooms were separated by a door, it hung open. Gerard could hear Alain’s measured pacing as he bathed and dressed his own wounds. He might have taken more pride had he known his comrade’s injuries to be worse than his own, but Gerard was no fonder of lies told to himself than he was of untruths told to him by another.
Neither had held back in their fight to prove who was better suited to bring the lady Mira her completion, but, as in all else, they were so even in skill neither had been able to win. They were not a pair of matched ponies to draw a carriage, he mused as he watched Alain’s shadow lengthen and shorten in the doorway. Rather they were as firmly opposite as the sun and moon. Like a lock and a key, Alain and Gerard were fair to useless without one another.
“Alain!”
The shadow paused and in the next moment, Alain’s familiar form appeared in the open doorway. “Yes, Gerard.”
“Come here.”
Alain did at once, and though he refused to show any sign of it upon his face, Gerard ached inside for the days before the dark fairy had come between them. No woman ever had, not even the prettiest. No man had, either. Yet the dark fairy, on a whim they’d never understood, had taken the core of their friendship and used it to tear them asunder.
“I have missed you,” Alain said simply, and Gerard hated and admired him for his ability to put voice to his emotions. “It’s been overlong since we were able to practice together.”
It was just like Alain, Gerard mused, to make it as though they’d been exercising rather than trying to kill one another. He wanted to keep from smiling but felt his mouth curve anyway. “Aye, brother of my heart, I have long regretted our distance as well.”
Only Alain knew him well enough to know there was more to what he felt than what he said. Of all the lovers Gerard had ever taken, only Alain had also been his friend. He reached to grab Alain’s wrist and tug him forward, and Alain stepped toward him without resistance.
“We have never let a woman come between us before,” Gerard said. “Only that bitch of a fairy has ever separated us. Let us not allow this like-cursed lady to widen the gap.”
“Mayhap,” Alain said as he ran his hand through Gerard’s hair, “she can help us bridge it, Gerard.”
Alain had ever been the one of them to think more thoroughly, and Gerard had always been the one to take action. Together it had made them formidable foes to any who opposed them. Now Gerard would listen to his friend, to his brother of the heart, and they would take their action together.
“The fairy cursed us all three with desire,” Gerard said. “All the same curse. Might we all have the same cure?”
“I think we might.”
Alain’s fingers tightened in Gerard’s hair briefly as Gerard’s hand on his wrist pulled him yet closer. It was not often that Gerard was the one looking up, but he did so now. Alain’s gaze held a hotness he recognized. His cock had become thick and pushed the front of his breeches.
Alain gasped aloud when Gerard tugged open the laces of his breeches and drew forth his erect cock, and louder when Gerard slid the hot flesh between his lips, for it was not often Gerard’s pleasure to provide this service. Gerard opened himself to take in Alain’s length, sucking hard. Alain’s hips bumped forward as Gerard’s hands found his ass and gripped. The muscles of Alain’s thighs jumped and twitched as Gerard sucked and licked all the way down to the root and up again, paying special attention to the crown. One hand left Alain’s ass to grip the smooth foreskin and slide it back and forth as his mouth worked.
It might not have been Gerard’s habit to suck Alain’s cock, but he did it well nonetheless, for he knew just what Alain liked. In moments Alain’s guttural growls were becoming the slow, deep moans that signaled his release, and now it was Gerard’s turn to seek his own pleasure.
Without preamble he removed his mouth from Alain’s erection and stood so suddenly Alain had no time to react. With his fist gripping Alain’s prick, Gerard captured Alain’s mouth in a harsh, demanding kiss. It would leave them both bruised, but the small pains were as nothing compared to the damage they’d already caused each other, and Alain’s moan and the throb in his cock told Gerard he didn’t mind.
“You think you deserve to spill?” Gerard growled into Alain’s ear, his own cock as hard and thick as granite at the thought of what was to come. “Do you really think I’d take your seed down the back of my throat?”
Alain had his triggers and Gerard knew them all as well as he knew how to make him come. “No, Gerard.”
Gerard let his hand drift along Alain’s cock before letting go of it. “How long has it been since anyone’s taken a strap to your ass, Alain?”
“Too long.” Alain’s voice pushed from gritted jaws, and Gerard heard the truth in it. “Not since you, Gerard. That last time.”
That had been a long time then, for the dark fairy had cursed them more than three moons before. Until this morning with Mira, it had been just as long since Gerard had beaten anyone, though he’d taken countless women to his bed while seeking to break the curse.
Gerard gripped Alain’s chin in his hand and looked hard into the other man’s eyes. “It’s been too long then.”
He ordered Alain to take his position against the plastered wall, his hands at shoulder height and fingers spread. They had no safe word. They didn’t need one. The position of Alain’s fingers would tell Gerard how much pain he was able to take—today, with his previous injuries, it might be very little. The wider apart his fingers, the more he could take. If he closed them together, Gerard would know to ease off.
Just as using his mouth to service Alain was not his habit, neither was undressing him, but Gerard knew Alain was so close to coming, his cock already so hard, that bending to remove his breeches would only give him additional pleasure. Gerard intended to keep Alain balanced on the knife’s edge for a sufficient time, so he was the one who pulled off Alain’s breeches until Alain stood naked.
Gerard admired the lines of Alain’s back and ass as he pulled the sturdy leather strap from his bag. The leather was supple and oiled and fit his fist exactly. He tugged it between his two hands to snap it, and his cock twitched at the way Alain’s muscles jumped, though he showed no other sign he’d heard.
“By the time I’m done,” Gerard said, “your back and ass are going to be on fire, Alain.”
“Please,” Alain murmured.
Gerard laid the strap in even lines along Alain’s