Aristide undressed Cyril as he had the first night they saw so much of each other’s skin: patiently, savoring. The wrapping had been more beautiful then—platinum shirt studs through starched white piqué, rather than plain horn and cotton. More layers, loops, hooks, and catches. But he took longer now, lingering, unsure of what he was allowed.

First he uncovered the familiar scar: the shining line that bisected Cyril’s stomach. The one he had never asked about. He traced it with a finger, and wondered if he would dare, someday.

“You do that for all of them, we won’t sail with our ship.”

“Hush,” said Aristide. The first command he’d ventured. He laid it down lightly, almost teasing. Cyril rewarded him with a small smile and silence.

Aristide peeled him like an apple from which he meant to carve one single, spiral ribbon. Steady, delicate, slow: teasing himself as much as anything. Cyril should have been keening by the end of it, sweat at his temples. He would have been, then. Now he had his eyes shut tight, brows furrowed, his lower lip pinned between his teeth. Half-hard, yes, but only that. And his expression belied his arousal.

Aristide paused, fingertips just touching the bare skin of Cyril’s thigh. “We don’t have to—”

“No,” he said, curling his fingers into Aristide’s waistband and pulling at the button fly. “I want you to make me forget.”

So entreated, Aristide vowed to put the whores of the Prince and Temple to shame.

All those perfunctory afternoons with Daoud, all that time he had spent wishing for someone who would plead, someone who would play the power games that pleased the capricious, predatory part of him … it fell away and he lost himself in the taste of Cyril’s skin, the smell of him, the flex of his calves as he put his heels to the mattress. Need twisted into a knot at the base of Aristide’s spine, making his whole body clench and ache.

But Cyril turned his face into the pillow and said, eyes shut again, “I’m sorry. I can’t … I just—”

“Your hands then,” said Aristide, strangling on the words. “Queen’s cunt, please.”

Shame vanished from Cyril’s expression, swept away by shock at hearing Aristide beg. He’d surprised himself as much, and wasn’t ready when Cyril sat up fast, throwing him off-balance so he fell back in turn.

Aristide had forgotten how, when Cyril’s pupils widened with desire, they left only a fine ring of frosted blue like creeping ice at the edge of a black pond. Or, as they hung above him now, with the reflection of the bedside lamp bright in their center: like the white ring around the moon on a cold night before snow.