Dhanneth wanted to meet in his own office. Irregular, but Jedao didn’t have to explain himself to anyone if he wanted to indulge his aide. He cleared his schedule and set out.
The double doors with the outrageously oversized Deuce of Gears emblem receded behind him. Dhanneth’s quarters were near his own, yet it felt like an infinity road separated them. Ashhawks flew and flared and died on the wall tapestries, and were reborn in outlines of shimmering thread and fire-polished beads. He touched one of the threads in passing, on the grounds that no one was likely to upbraid him for doing so. It didn’t unravel.
Since he was currently a major, Dhanneth’s door had no emblem. It was marked simply with his name and rank. Jedao announced himself to the grid while he wondered what Dhanneth’s emblem had once been.
The door opened. “Sir,” Dhanneth said. He was standing.
Jedao crossed the threshold. The door swished shut. “You were closemouthed about the disciplinary issue you wished to discuss,” he said.
Dhanneth didn’t salute—overly formal, although it wouldn’t have been out of character—or invite him to sit. Instead, he grasped Jedao’s arms and crushed him close. Dhanneth’s head bent and his mouth met Jedao’s, hot and yearning. Like all Kel men, Dhanneth went clean-shaven, yet a faint hint of stubble brushed against Jedao’s skin like fine sand.
Jedao froze, tempted. Then he gripped Dhanneth’s shoulders and shoved him back, just enough to get some distance. It wasn’t intended to begin a fight. A flash of knowledge: if he’d meant to cause injury, he would have stepped in closer.
Dhanneth didn’t resist him, but his eyes burned with a mixture of longing and desperation and unkindled nights.
I won’t do this to you, Jedao said in the drum code.
Dhanneth swallowed dryly. When he spoke, his voice was rough. “Isn’t this what you want?”
Their paths had crossed in the dueling hall. Dhanneth hadn’t spoken then. But why would he, in front of all those people?
Jedao closed his eyes. “You know what they do to hawkfuckers.” The obscenity came easily to his mouth. “What would happen to you if anyone found out?” Hell, he could have Dhanneth up on charges for touching him, unjust as it was.
“You’re not a Kel,” Dhanneth said. “What do you care?”
“You’re out of line.”
Dhanneth closed his eyes. The sweep of his lashes was shockingly dark, defining a crescent curve. He breathed in and out, then, face twisting, yanked himself out of Jedao’s grip. “Let me be something to you,” he said. “Anything.” As though the black fabric scalded him, he stripped his gloves off and cast them to the floor.
Jedao knelt to pick them up. “Don’t,” he said. The similarity of the gesture to the obeisance to a hexarch did not escape him. It didn’t escape Dhanneth either. His breath huffed out in response.
The gloves scarcely felt like they could encompass someone’s honor. Yet here they were, resting in Jedao’s palms. He folded them neatly and set them on the edge of Dhanneth’s desk, right next to an inkstone that had been carved in the shape of cavorting lions, and was gilded besides. Jedao couldn’t imagine grinding something so beautiful down for ink.
Dhanneth embraced him from behind this time. His arms were thick with muscle, and he had large, square hands, scars revealed by their nakedness. He blocked Jedao’s attempt to twist away, grip tightening painfully on Jedao’s waist. He kissed Jedao’s neck, his mouth more insistent.
“Why?” Jedao whispered when the kiss ended.
“You want it,” Dhanneth murmured.
He couldn’t deny it. That didn’t mean he had to give in. I want you to help me destroy the hexarch.
Then I will, Dhanneth said. I will find out what I can. But we will need a way to communicate. The heat of his bare hand stung as he slid it into the waistband of Jedao’s pants, fingers curling into the hairs of his belly, then angling lower.
Dhanneth’s hand moved again. He used the other one to brace Jedao against the wall. Jedao gasped, head thrown back. His hips canted, unavoidable angles.
“This isn’t real,” Jedao said, half a groan, not sure when this had stopped being a cover story. “You don’t really, it’s not, it’s, it’s, it’s formation instinct. You wouldn’t want this if—”
Shit. Was that what was going on? Except how could that be the case when only Dhanneth reacted to him like this, while all the other Kel hated him?
Dhanneth closed his fingers around Jedao’s cock. Words fled. “Jedao,” Dhanneth said, amused, “no one chooses who they love. It’s no different.”
Jedao’s counterargument dissolved in the rush of sensation as Dhanneth began to stroke him with his thumb. Jedao struggled to still himself. Failed. “Dhanneth, no—” He grabbed Dhanneth’s wrist and tried to wrench his hand away.
Dhanneth’s mouth brushed the lobe of Jedao’s ear, and Jedao’s grip loosened. “Let me please you,” Dhanneth said. “If you cry out too loud, they’ll hear you. No one will do anything about it. Who are they going to complain to, after all? Their commander? Their general? The hexarch they never see?”
For once someone wanted him. Jedao’s control dissolved. He bit down and bloodied the inside of his mouth. “Cut me,” he said, hardly hearing himself. “Burn me up.”
Dhanneth turned him around and forced him to face the wall. He reached around and undid Jedao’s buttons, one-handed, with remarkable dexterity. Helped him undress. Jedao shivered as the cool air hit his skin. Dhanneth traced his scars. “You’ve been hurt.”
“Then you know what I like,” Jedao said. A dangerous thing to suggest. When had he stopped caring what people did to him? He might once have propositioned Kujen-Inhyeng, but that didn’t mean he had a good idea of what people did when they coupled. He should have spent more of the intervening time researching pornography of the sort that every soldier had access to.
Dhanneth left him standing pressed to the wall. Jedao wondered if he had misapprehended the situation. Then he heard Dhanneth’s footsteps and craned his head. Dhanneth had returned with a stoppered vial and a length of yellow cord. “Yes,” Jedao said before Dhanneth could tell him what either was for. The specifics did not interest him, although this was a hazardous frame of mind. “Do whatever you want to me.”
Dhanneth made no attempt to hide his arousal. “You are very young,” he said, not coldly, not warmly either, but with a hint of wildness. Kujen had not tamed him as completely as he thought.
Jedao submitted to having his wrists bound. He tried to figure out what knots were being used, an impossible task when he couldn’t see what was going on behind him. The cord held him like spider-steel and silk-promise. He did not ask Dhanneth why he kept it ready to hand. Maybe all Kel did and he’d never thought to ask. As Dhanneth adjusted the knots, Jedao fantasized about being forgotten here, the Kel swarm going into battle without him as the years advanced, until even the threadbare legend of his crimes was nothing more than a breath in the halls.
Later, Dhanneth unbound him and took him into the water closet so they could clean up. It wasn’t any more inappropriate than what they had already done to each other. Jedao splashed his face with cold water and tried not to think about all the places where he was sore. Dhanneth had been very discreet about where he had cut Jedao, even if the cuts were already healed over.