Duck! (Avian Shifters Book 1) (24 page)

Raynard said nothing as he turned Ori onto his side and spooned behind him. His slicked shaft kissed against Ori’s hole again and Ori’s fretting subsided. Steadying Ori with a hand on his hip, Raynard pushed into him again.

Ori murmured his pleasure into the pillow as Raynard gradually rocked his way back into him. Ori knew Raynard’s body well after all the months he’d spent with him. Raynard had so much control he’d be able to keep up the slow steady thrusts all night if he wanted to. Maybe he could even maintain them forever.

Ori gripped the sheet in front of him. Forever. At one time, he’d really believed that might happen, and he’d lost himself in the way that had felt.

Raynard reached around Ori and moved his hand over his skin. He caressed and teased again and again, as if he’d missed being able to touch Ori whenever he wanted to—almost as much as Ori had missed Raynard doing that.

Ori whimpered softly against the pillow, turning his face into it, so his master wouldn’t hear his weakness. Everything was going to be perfect for them. If all his master could grant him was one more night together then, Ori couldn’t ruin it.

“Hush.”

Raynard brushed his fingers against Ori’s cheek, guiding him to turn his head and look over his shoulder. Their mouths met. The kiss was softer now, gentler. Raynard’s lips reassuring as they caressed.

Ori cautiously parted his lips and let his tongue creep out to join in. Not to lead, his master would never allow that, but he let Ori play a little as he followed behind his master.

One slow, heartfelt thrust after another, Raynard brought their bodies together again and again. He was getting closer to coming. Ori could feel the change in Raynard’s movements as he tensed. Raynard held back, controlling himself until the last second. A final, deep thrust and his hand returned to Ori’s hip, holding him still as he spilled inside him, marking him out as his submissive in the most basic way any man could.

Ori collapsed, exhausted, onto the sheet as he felt Raynard pull away. He couldn’t even bring himself to reach out and try to stop him. It was over. He knew it then in a way he’d never really let himself believe before.

Closure apparently felt like someone was driving a stake into his chest and twisting it around, not really killing him, just making Ori wish it would.

Raynard stroked Ori’s shoulder. Ori opened his eyes, and Raynard gently guided him to turn around and rest his head against his chest.

“Just for a little while,” Raynard whispered, not quite looking him in the eye.

Ori nodded as he snuggled in closer to Raynard’s body. He’d slept like that so many times, lulled into slumber by the beat of his master’s heart. Raynard pulled him closer still, as if he couldn’t bear the idea being torn away from him any more than Ori could.

He closed his eyes as Raynard slid his fingers through his hair, but he quickly opened them again.

They only had a little while. He wasn’t going to waste it sleeping.

“Sleep.”

Ori lifted his head, just enough to glance at his master.

“I’ll still be here when you wake up,” Raynard promised.

Ori couldn’t do anything more than stare at him. His master had given him an order; he expected him to obey it. They both knew that. Ori reluctantly lowered his gaze and rested his head on his master’s chest again. Raynard switched off the light.

It was wrong to lie to his master, but Ori did his best to let his breaths fall into a slow sleeping rhythm while he remained as wide awake as ever.

A few minutes passed and Raynard’s chest rose and fell underneath Ori as he sighed softly into the darkness.

“Good boy.”

The words were barely a whisper. Ori wasn’t even sure he’d have heard them if they hadn’t vibrated through Raynard’s chest directly into his ear. He closed his eyes a little tighter. His master was pleased with him.

Curling himself closer against Raynard’s body, Ori nuzzled against his skin.

“Hush, I’ve got you,” Raynard whispered.

He obviously still believed that Ori was asleep. It was wrong to take advantage of that, but Ori couldn’t help but let out a little whimper—maybe as if he was having a less than pleasant dream, or as if his aching joints were even more painful than they really were.

“Hush,” Raynard whispered to him again, as he gathered him safer against his body. “You’re fine. Everything’s going to be just fine.” He pressed a kiss to Ori’s temple.

Ori sighed slightly as he settled, not brave enough to keep up the pretence, no matter how much he wanted Raynard to continue whispering to him that way.

As much as he wanted to fight real sleep when it danced around the edges of his mind, Ori couldn’t hold it at bay forever. It wrapped around him, blending with Raynard’s hold on him and lulling him into a deeper slumber than he’d ever been able to manage when he was away from his master’s side.

* * * * *

Raynard looked up when Ori jerked awake and let out a startled little whimper.

He watched as his fledgling reached out and slid his palm across the sheet where Raynard had slept through the night. When he failed to find him, Ori dropped his head back onto the mattress. His whole body shook as his fist closed around the thick satiny sheet.

“I told you I’d still be here when you woke up.”
And masters always keep their promises.
Raynard had never known it could be so hard to keep such silly, sentimental words back.

Masters keep their promises; they look after their submissives. Masters…

Except he wasn’t Ori’s master anymore, and he never should have been in the first place.

Ori spun around, tangling himself in the sheets as he turned to face Raynard. Lifting a hand, Ori pushed his fingers through his hair, brushing the pure white strands back off his face. “Sir…”

“I’ve already told you that there’s no need for you to call me that…sire.”

Ori dropped his gaze. Raynard went back to tying his shoelaces. He’d said he’d still be there when Ori woke up; he hadn’t said he wouldn’t be dressed and ready to leave.

“Do you remember your promise?” Raynard asked, doing his best to keep all trace of emotion out of his voice.

Ori was still staring at the bed they’d shared when Raynard looked up.

“Ori?” he prompted.

“Yes, sir.”

Raynard let the silence stretch out between them.

Ori closed his eyes. “I’m to get the identifier tattoo and stretch my wings properly, sir,” he recited.

Raynard sat there for several minutes, staring down at his shoelaces as if they contained the answers to every question in the universe. “It’s for the best. You’ll see that over time.” He couldn’t bring himself to add the honorific, couldn’t bear to see Ori flinch the way he did every time Raynard called his former fledgling by his new title.

Ori said nothing, quite possibly because there was nothing left for either of them to say. Raynard rose from his seat. He clenched his hand into a fist at his side as he forced himself not to walk across the room toward Ori. He headed for the door instead. His fingers were already on the handle when Ori finally spoke up.

“If you ever change your mind, sir—I’ll still be here. I’ll still…”

Raynard closed his eyes for a moment, but he didn’t look over his shoulder. Stepping out of the room, he resisted the temptation to vent his frustration on the woodwork and closed the door carefully behind him.

One of Ori’s new servants was clearing away the things from the dining room. He looked up when he heard Raynard walk through the entrance hall, but Raynard couldn’t bring himself to acknowledge the servant’s existence. He strode past him, as fast as he could without breaking into an actual run.

Out of Ori’s apartment, he kept going, desperate to be out of the building. He had no idea where he’d go. All he knew was the longer he stayed in there, the harder it would be to resist the need to rush back, to snatch Ori out of his bed and take him with him.

“Raynard?”

It wasn’t Ori’s voice. Raynard forced himself to look over his shoulder anyway. Hamilton stood in the doorway leading into his office. Raynard clenched his teeth.

Ori wasn’t the only man he had to answer to regarding his behaviour before Ori’s first full shift. All the avians were accountable to the elders of their chosen nest. There was no way he could leave, at any pace, and let Hamilton think he was running away from that fact.

Raynard walked slowly back down the corridor, his steps calm and measured, every trace of emotion wiped from his face. In Hamilton’s study, he closed the door behind him and stepped up to his desk, allowing no trace of hesitation or reluctance to creep into his body language.

“You wished to speak with me?”

Hamilton picked up a tumbler of scotch and handed it to him. Raynard stared down into the amber liquid for several seconds before tossing it back in one go.

It was a bad idea to start drinking at breakfast time, especially when he was going home to a house that currently contained a very large selection of fine spirits and no fledgling submissive.

Raynard set the glass on the desk very carefully. His hand didn’t shake. When he lifted his gaze to look across the desk, his eyes didn’t waver.

Hamilton stared back at him, his fingers steepled together as he rested his elbows on the well-cushioned arms of his chair. “Our swan is…well?” he asked.

Raynard was tempted to pick up the glass and pitch it at Hamilton. Ori wasn’t
ours
, he was Raynard’s—his and no one else’s.

“Ori will be fine,” he snapped. He would be fine, he reminded himself—providing his former master stayed the hell away from him.

Hamilton made a noncommittal noise in the back of his throat.

Raynard sat down opposite him, barely resisting the temptation to tell Hamilton to get whatever the hell it was he wanted to say over and done with.

“Ori mentioned that you told him about the role ducks tend to flock toward.”

Raynard shrugged. Picking up the empty glass, he turned it around and around between his fingers. The light caught against the crystal, sparkling and shining as if all was right with the world.

“What would you have told him if you knew he was a swan?”

“Obviously, I wouldn’t have wasted my time telling him about ducks,” Raynard bit out.

“You’d have told him about swans instead,” Hamilton said.

“Of course.” Raynard’s jaw ached as he ground his teeth together harder than ever.

“And what would you have said?” Hamilton asked again.

Raynard pushed himself up out of the chair. If the elders wanted him raked over the coals for the way he had treated a swan, he’d take it. Hell, if they wanted him to be publicly whipped, he deserved it for hurting Ori. But not this, not Hamilton pulling his time with Ori apart, piece by piece.

“Raynard?”

Raynard shook his head as he reached the window and looked down into the courtyard below.

“Maybe you’d have said that swans are the gentlest souls of all the avian species,” Hamilton suggested. “That they have to be protected and cosseted from the outside world—that they aren’t suited to being thrown into society and left to fend for themselves.”

Raynard swallowed down the bitter taste in the back of his mouth, wondering if there was any more scotch where that last double had come from.

“Perhaps you’d have told him that swans are too easily taken advantage of, too easily used and abused by those who don’t understand their true worth. They need the constant support and guidance of those who have their best interests at heart if they are to flourish.”

Raynard closed his eyes and clenched his fist tightly around the glass still in his hand.

“Or maybe you’d have mentioned to him that that’s why they are generally appointed some sort of guardian—a man who is often taken from one of the highest ranking local families and—”

Raynard spun around. “You can’t mean to—”

Hamilton merely gazed back at him over his steepled fingers.

Raynard strode across the room. He slammed his hands down on Hamilton’s desk. “Don’t you think I’ve already hurt him enough?”

“You consider him damaged, then?”

Raynard took a deep breath. He looked down at the desk. The glass had shattered beneath his hand as he’d smashed it into the mahogany. His palm bled where he continued to crush the shards against wood. “He’s strong,” he said, the words barely more than a whispered hope. “He’ll heal.”

“I’ve seen him show strength,” Hamilton agreed.

Raynard took his hand away from the broken glass. Peering into the wounds, he absentmindedly checked them for splinters of glass before wrapping his handkerchief around the broken skin.

“Once,” Hamilton added.

Raynard knotted the cotton in place. Red immediately seeped through it. One show of strength wasn’t much, but it was something—it was a start that could be built upon.

“That day you brought him back here wearing your collar—he was strong then, strong enough to floor a bullying crow, to take a whipping from his master and enjoy every lash, strong enough to serve you in whatever way you saw fit.”