Aleksey's Kingdom (A Royal Affair #2)(2)

After regarding me for some time, perhaps waiting for a greeting, Aleksey released Boudica to her paddock and came closer, his hands behind his back. “Do you not want your present?”

“Am I a girl needing trinkets to sweeten me?” The log split with one of those perfect blows you can only reproduce once in a while. I smiled privately and lined up another.

Aleksey picked up my shirt, which was draped over the log pile, and sat down, idly running his fingers over the material. Faelan slumped down at his feet with a sigh of pleasure. “He is glad to see me. I do not see why you are not too. It is very hard to have ridden so eagerly to get home and tell you my news—and give you a present—only to be treated so rudely.”

“One day you will return and find Faelan has died while you have been gone, and then you will be sorry—he is ten, Aleksey. That is a great age for a wolf, and he pines for you when you are not here.”

“Out loud?”

“No, in his heart. He is miserable and can settle to nothing.”

He picked up a long splinter and began to clean his nails, a deep frown upon his perfect features. “Perhaps he should tell me these things sometimes. When I am here.”

I sunk the axe into the block and went over to him and straddled his thighs, then took up my shirt and wiped the sweat off my face and naked chest. He lifted his eyes from the small task he was employed upon and watched the slow movement over my muscles. I slid my hand around the back of his neck and leaned closer, my mouth mere inches from his. “He is a dumb animal, Aleksey. You need to interpret his mood better—read his body language.”

He cupped me gently, a rueful pout upon his lips. “I am trying to interpret this. It resembles the axe handle. What could it mean?”

I lowered him to the ground, pressing it against him to give him a clue. He smiled wickedly and kissed me, a long, loving meeting of mouths. “You could come with me, Niko.”

“If I came with you, I would not have the pleasure of your absence. The peace and the quiet….” I was too busy kissing and exploring to play the game for much longer. I was close to admitting just how much I had missed him and showing him this very forcibly with my body.

But he was Aleksey. He suddenly pushed me off and darted one hand back up to the woodpile. “I forgot your present!”

“Aleksey!”

“No, wait. It’s a letter from Johan. To you, or I would have opened it—if it had been to me, which I think it should have, as he is my friend, not yours.”

But I had seized the letter from him and tossed it out of reach. Johan would understand. He was a man.

Aleksey’s breeches came down very swiftly, revealing the only present I needed. I took it eagerly in my mouth, as if he had brought me some sweet offering of sugar. He tasted better to my mind, despite a day in the saddle. He groaned and stretched upon the dry earth under the hot sun, then stripped off his shirt before spreading his arms and grabbing small handfuls of dust as his pleasure mounted.

One of the great delights of our enforced exile was that the monarch of this small kingdom could lie in the bright midday sun completely naked and be sucked to completion by another man, and the only stake he faced was one of flesh and blood, which was soon to take him another way.

I turned him onto his belly in the dirt after I had swallowed all he had to offer. He deserved to be mounted thus and reminded of his place in the scheme of things. And besides, although I loved to see his face when I took him, I cherished seeing his hard buttocks just as much, to spread my fingers over them as I thrust in, parting them to their extreme, stretching as I plunged to hear his gasp of delight. I relished the moment when he would inevitably push up, rising from his slim waist, twisting around for a kiss. I kissed him willingly, ignoring the slight smirk I sensed hovering around his lips. No doubt he would see this taking very differently: having returned home he’d successfully manipulated me into forgiving him his absence and rewarding him just the way he wanted. I would have pulled out and punished him by teasing my cock over him, promising reentry but withholding that extreme pleasure, but he had been absent two weeks, and that meant many, many such entries had been lost to me. I was not a man who found it easy to deny myself this indulgence. Actually, I cannot recall one instance when I had voluntarily denied myself Aleksey’s backside. Unless when giving him mine, of course.

We finished most satisfactorily with me coming deep inside him and he frustrated, for he had risen again after the relief my lips had given him but had not now been brought again to fulfillment. I left him in this state, disheveled, naked, hard, sitting alongside me as I retrieved Johan’s letter. I didn’t let him find his own easement either and told him I’d bind his hands behind his back if he tried it. This was something new we were experimenting with—me tying him up occasionally—so he did not take this threat lightly. As a king, this new interest of mine went very much against the grain for him, and it was taking a long time to coax him into playing with me in such a way. He would come around.

I prayed Johan would forgive me opening his letter in such circumstances, but I was fully intending to rise again very soon and finish my annoying king off properly, so holding one of his hands, preventing him touching himself, laughing and fooling, I tried to read poor Johan’s news. I was hoping it was confirmation they would soon be joining us.

I had no objection at all to Aleksey having a little more company from an old warrior he thought of as a father and a young wife who adored her husband. It was only soldiers in the colony I had a problem with Aleksey seeing. But then, as I frequently reminded him, he did not have a very good record with the military. He had seduced a senior officer in his own army on the road to war!