
Touch | Clare London 2 MY DREAM moved in the middle of the night like blood: smooth and thick, seeping through my body as I slept, its tendrils warm and wicked. I couldn't ignore it; I couldn't protect myself against it, for it possessed me. And pain followed in its wake, as vivid as the fear and shock associated with a sudden flow of real blood. The small hand that nestled in my palm started to slip away. It took its warmth and comfort with it. Loss stripped me of its company and bereaved me of its love. I couldn't do anything to cling to it, for my body was weak and my mind confused. And then the anguish struck. It's a dream. I knew that in both my head and my heart, but the hurt felt real. How could that be? My eyes ached, my ears hummed. A youthful voice echoed around me, laughing and crying by turns, but no one ever came into view. The sound was fading fast. I was determined to move this time, to fight back, to keep that tiny hand within my grasp, but I seemed unable to control my limbs properly. Wherever I lay, I was wracked with discomfort, and every movement felt clumsy. Frustration! Too hot, too cold, near or distant, I had no idea what or where I was. Touch | Clare London 3 But for one last, marvelous moment, the fingers of that small hand brushed against mine, the plump fingertips still tickling my skin. The love was still there. It understood. It was still mine. It cared. And then I awoke, panting, my hands fisted around empty air and my naked body straining to reach something that didn't exist. My bed linens were crumpled and sweat-stained beneath me. I would have cried aloud if there'd been anyone to hear, but I was alone. The dream only came when I was without company, as if it knew when I was at my most vulnerable. I pulled myself up to sit against the head of my bed, clutching the edge of the mattress with a shaky hand, waiting for the thudding of my heart to ease and the familiarity of my bedchamber to return my senses to me. Even with company, I was always alone. I recognized the truth of that with sudden, sharp bitterness. I'd lost that unconditional, innocent love a long time ago and had never recovered it. Or my own capacity for compassion, some might say. But there were few people who knew me well enough to make such criticism, or who dared to. And I had no time for such weakness nowadays, such vulnerability. I didn't deserve it. Charrz... a lingering whisper chastised me, but I shook my head, fully awake by now. Just a dream. Of course. But the tears on my cheeks took far longer to dry. Touch | Clare London 4 "HE'S nothing but another slave," I said sourly. The sun had passed the midday point hours ago, but my head still hurt badly from the late night before. There'd been heavily spiced food at the Council festival and excessive wine, rich as bull's blood. I'd felt lethargic all day, though that was to be expected after the overnight attentions of an enthusiastic bedmate... or three. I had a grain-trade meeting set for early evening, but at that moment I knew I probably wouldn't turn up. It wouldn't be the first time I had neglected my pompous Council duties as Chancellor. And now my servants had burst into the anteroom of my private quarters and flung a jumble of bone and flesh at my feet, all of it accompanied by their excited jabbering. The noise jarred on my sensitive ears. I was in poor humor for visitors, and they should have known it. I might personally break the limbs of at least one of them, but perhaps not until I felt more physically robust. Hul saw my look; he knew me perhaps the best. He had been with me for over a full Earth season-set, and that was quite an impressive reference for a servant of my department. "See him for yourself, Chancellor Chariz," he insisted. The others fell silent around him, as they were used to following his lead. "The Lady's housemaids were taking him to her quarters, but we told them he had to be interrogated first." He nudged at the captive on the floor with his boot. "Kneel up before the Chancellor, idiot, like I told you." I ran an aimless hand through my thick hair and glanced at the heap of cloth and limbs beneath me. Despite my youth, I was used to seeing groveling. I'd been appointed Touch | Clare London 5 to a senior position in the household as soon as I reached adulthood, when many men toiled for the same honor for another twenty season-sets. I was therefore used to debasement before me. It bored me, of coursebut then, there wasn't much in life that didn't, and Hul knew that. "He's still nothing but a slave," I said. I stepped around a chair that was piled high with official papers, and I saw one of the other servants cringe back before me. I was unusually tall for my race and strongly built, and I knew my look was angry. I wore my rich velvet cloak with the heavy neck chain of my Council position, and I knew how impressive I appeared to the lower castes. In fact, I often played upon it. "I have plenty of slaves, Hul. Boys who groom my horses, girls who serve my food, young men who spread their gangly limbs for me at night so I can relax for a good moon's sleep. I'm sure the Lady of the household has plenty, too, for I know for a fact her appetite is as mature as my own." One of my other servants flushed, and I knew then who was the Lady's favorite this moon phase. I appraised him quickly and decided he was barely worth the effort. Maybe he would be the one I whipped in punishment for disturbing me today. He was a slender, brown-eyed youth who seemed unable to do anything but wring his hands nervously all the time he was in my presence. But then the Lady of the householdwho, to my chagrin, was also my motherwas known for choosing her bedmates by quantity rather than quality. There were many who said that was one of the few traits of hers that I'd inherited. I didn't challenge them. Touch | Clare London 6 Didn't it suit me to be thought of as too self-indulgent to care? Hul sulked a little. "Believe me, Chancellor, I wouldn't have brought you just another lackey. The barracks have been gossiping about him ever since they brought him in, and the kitchens are bubbling with curiosity. Even the Magicians are disturbed" "They are?" His sly gaze turned to me. I knew he saw the tease of a smile at the corners of my mouth. It was a favorite pastime of mine, the baiting of the Magicians' caste. "Yes, Chancellor. They are very disturbed." I sighed exaggeratedly. "So what is it about him?" I nudged the body myself with my buckled boot. The tangled legs sprawled apart, and the young man rolled on to his back on the wooden floor. His eyes darted up to catch mine, and for a second the breath caught in my throat. "His skin is pale," I said, my voice sounding a little hoarse. "Like a city dweller. But he has... those unusual eyes. A most unattractive combination. I see no evidence of useful strength, no hint of amusing perversion. If he's just another tedious empath...." I turned sharply on Hul. "The Council has a flock of them already, supplicants clinging to the coattails and sucking at the cocks of the Magicians. I've no interest in breeding my own such sacrificial lambs." "No, sir," Hul insisted, though he winced at my crudeness. He was, of course, well used to my anger, and I often made it clear I hated to waste my diplomatic talents on Touch | Clare London 7 the lesser castes. "He doesn't ask to join the apprentices, Chancellor. He's something different." Hul wasn't a fanciful man. He had come to the household as a boy from the farms, bartered by his family for the promise of a few coins. He had no empathetic skills himself to offer the Magicians, but as he grew to manhood, he'd been an adequate groom on my mother's staff and then an agile if unimaginative bedmate for me. When I swiftly tired of that, he begged to remain on my staff and serve me. He had a finely honed sense of duty and had brought me many interesting things in the past, both people and objects, all to assuage my boredom, if only for a dragonfly's snatch of time. I looked again at the creature now kneeling before me, his head dipped to his thighs, his hands crossed behind his back in the traditional pose of submission. His head was bare, and his long, dark hair was ill-trimmed and carelessly combed. He was probably as tall as me, but his shoulders were no broader than a girl's, and I could see his skin stretched thinly over the awkward knobs of his young spine. He'd been stripped to the waist in the manner of my own household servants, and his trousers were far too large, held tightly around his waist with additional cords. I saw a couple of fresh red welts on his lean torso. "So did you taste him, Hul?" I asked softly. "How was he?" One of the other servants whimpered with embarrassment, but Hul flushed and shook his head. "He's been well used at the barracks, Chancellor," he said. "He was accepting of the attention, so it seems he's been fair game. But we haven't used him at all, just found Touch | Clare London 8 him the trousers and cleaned him up a bit. Any bruises he has are from the soldiers, believe me." I raised an eyebrow. A young man already used to surrendernot even the promise of seduction to tantalize me. In my opinion, the day was deteriorating rapidly. "He is an empath, though," I said. I had felt the thread between us as he caught my eye. I knew that I was susceptible to them, being partly empathetic myself, a dubious inheritance from my father. "I have no time for those who try to read my mind and blend my emotions on their own blank canvas. I don't have my mother's tolerance for such nonsense." "I wouldn't dare suggest such a thing, Chancellor," Hul said hurriedly. "That's business for the Magicians, no one else. But word says that they're already aware of him, that the tales from the barracks have made them nervous of what he can do...." "Word drops from your mouth like drool after clumsy self-pleasure," I drawled, gazing down at the prisoner. Hul bit his lip. "Has the Chancellor suffered more broken nights this season?" He lowered his voice as if he didn't want the others to hear. "Your rest has been disturbed too often, maybe? Your entertainment last night was lively, I know, but your mood today is uncertain and your expression particularly strained" I whirled around to face him again and he flinched. For a second, and to my horror, I caught a flicker of pity in his eyes. He had, indeed, known me a long time. "How dare you imply" Touch | Clare London 9 "Nothing, sir, nothing, I assure you." I frowned. "Come back later with something to soothe this pain in my head. That's all I suffer with. And tell me the whole story of this unfortunate peasant. Swiftly. You may notice my patience is also particularly strained." Hul bowed his head, obviously glad to have forestalled the worst of my anger. "The senior captain of the garrison who captured him protests that the youngster used his powers on him. That he... influenced him." "What?" I spared another glance for the man at my feet. "A pathetic crumb of insignificance like this? It was probably just a lewd joke over ale in the barrack room. A strong soldier moaning like a violated kitchen maid? I think not." It just illustrated the lack of imagination in our military ranks. So many tales abounded of magic and memory call, but when faced with it in reality, the commoners crumpled in blubbering fear. I yawned, intending my servants to see it as a sign of boredom, not tiredness. Empathy was an innate gift, but its application nowadays was nothing but a trick, of course. It was a skill both learned and worked, like that of weaving or weaponry or making eager bedmates whimper aloud as they were peeled open like rich, moist fruit. I had spoken often and passionately to the Lady about the Magicians. My opinion was that she should never have allowed them sanctuary in the city, as they were subversive and attracted all manner of detritus to our land, trails of men seeking an easy answer to the pathetic dissatisfactions of their lives. However, her response to these complaints rarely altered. I had to admire my mother's consistency, even in Touch | Clare London 10 matters of hypocrisy. She thought I should confine my skeptical opinions to my "midnight meetings," as she scornfully referred to my extensive time in the bedchamber. I should be mindful of the rich sinecure I earned as a Chancellor, which allowed my current lifestyle of "indolence and sexual depravity"her words again. The usual result of our confrontations was that I would back down on the argument with my frustration unappeased. Amusingly enough, the job of Chancellor to the Treasury was one that I did well, albeit with sporadic commitment, but it had been awarded under her personal patronage in the first place and could, presumably, be just as imperiously taken away. As I languidly stretched a hand to my mouth, I felt the captive's body quiver beneath my gaze. "Your assessment is wise, Chancellor Chariz," Hul said smoothly. "But as I said, he's caused a large amount of disruption and has been hastily passed from garrison to Council Offices. The senior captain who complained is currently under suspension. He left his post while on duty to follow the prisoner and seek a further meeting with him." I raised a curious eyebrow. Hul's gaze flickered to the figure on the floor and was then snatched back again as if the mere glance scalded him. "His skills seem very strong." "So I assume that he sees things." I sighed. It was nothing new. Any well-trained empath could mimic the fortuneteller. I'd even done it myself sometimes to amuse gullible bedmates. "He sees a man's thoughts, his dreams, and his desires" "No," said Hul, very sharply now. "He makes them happen." Touch | Clare London 11 THE young man lay face down with rightful submission at the foot of my writing table, a blanket around his upper body. Hul had herded the servants away like the goats they so closely resembled, hurrying to escape both my annoyance and the taste of my whip. Left alone, I intended to perform the interrogation they'd suggested. I'd shed my official robes and jewelry, unfastened my shirt down to the lower line of my ribs, and loosened the ties of my trousers. Thus relaxed, I sat comfortably back on my couch. There was only a gull's wingspan between me and my captive, but I felt no threat from such a fragile creature. I ran a fingertip down the decorated handle of the aforementioned whip, and from the sudden tension in his shoulders, I guessed that he could see my movement out of the corners of his eyes. He lifted his gaze to me. I'd never seen a creature like him. Hul's gossipmongers reported that he'd been traveling the harsh northern heath for several moons to reach the city, and I could see he was thin and obviously ill-nourished from his journey. Even with my servants' cursory attempts at dressing and cleaning him, he still looked whey-faced and travel-worn. What a contrast he was! We city-born were all brown-skinned, a mark of our superiority. I had no pits or freckles on my face from rough outdoor life; my skin was smooth and my muscles well-formed. In comparison, the captive was extremely pale and there was a straggly scrub of beard around his jaw. Touch | Clare London 12 But there was a luster to his flesh that set him apart, and his hair caught my fascination. It wasn't the familiar black of my race, but looked as if it had red, autumn-rich tones instead, although in its current condition it lay lank about his shoulders like the dull, dead leaves underfoot. I wondered absentmindedly whether he dyed it for some reason of cult, and I would discover his natural, plainer colors between his skinny legs. I knew of some pleasure slaves who did that to make themselves appear more exotic. I could believe that he was some half-caste, an aberration of birth from one of my even more sexually liberal cousins roaming the outside tribes for rough entertainment. It happened frequently and excited little disgust nowadays. But then there were his eyes. They had startled me, for they were autumn-rich as well. I'd never seen anyone in the city with eyes like that. The outside castes had common brown or grey, and although most of my peers were also brown-eyed, theirs had the clear, piercing shine of privilege that set us apart from the rabble. No one had ever displayed eyes that looked as if they would change with the seasons. Dark color at first glance, but as I looked more carefully, I could see golden threads in the iris, flame-red flickers and expressions of warmth and wind and weariness.... "Name?" I snapped. He didn't look away, and I was struck by his lack of fear. He must have known that I could have him whipped or even hanged at the drop of my elegant palm. "My name is Oriel, sir," he said. His voice was low but masculine enough to be a surprise. I'd thought him barely Touch | Clare London 13 out of his adolescence, but it seemed he was older than I'd imagined. "Oriel?" I laughed aloud, knowing he would see my bright teeth and the curve of my rich lips. It was distracting for many, I knew. "The name of a creature of the Air, when you appear to be nothing more than one who crawls in the ditches of Earth. Did you steal the name?" "No, sir," he said, quietly. "You can call me something else if you choose." I frowned. Ridiculous fool! "Where have you come from, Oriel? You don't have the look of anyone I've ever seen in the city. Where's your homeland?" He shrugged, very slightly. The blanket slipped from one of his shoulders, exposing the pale skin so that it shone in the lamplight of my chambers. I found my eyes drawn toward the young flesh but blamed such a malaise on my overindulgence the previous night. Even though my reputation was predatory, I really couldn't see that this callow youth would satisfy any adult appetite of mine. I may have been only a few Earth turns older than he, but my maturity could be measured beyond his in the leaps of a spring-season hare. Why, then, did I feel a most uncharacteristic nervousness? "I don't remember any homeland," he said without a trace of pathos. "I've been a traveler since I was a child, and I live where I'm given shelter. People have often been kind to me." Touch | Clare London 14 "Why do you think they should give you shelter, Oriel?" I asked, curious despite myself. "I don't expect it," he said quickly, and his eyes flared with some angry spirit. "They offer it to me. I accept it and serve them as they wish." "Serve them?" His looks intrigued me, but his passive attitude irritated me. "Are you an escaped slave? A professional bedmate?" I reached forward and snatched the rest of the blanket from his upper body. He made no move to cover his naked torso. I searched the pale skin for a brand but found nothing except the clumsy bruises I'd seen before and scratches from the journey over the heath. "I see no mark of ownership on you, no punishment scar from the prison camps." He bit at his lower lip, the skin easing out from beneath small white teeth. "I don't belong to anyone, sir. I serve people because they protect me, because they connect with me." "Why?" His eyes narrowed at my question. "Why should anyone protect a scrawny twig like you, Oriel? What is it you offer them, that you tempt them with? I can see you're an empath and maybe one with unusual skill. Perhaps you twist those skills to fool the idiots you meet, pretending to understand their deepest desires and offering to help them attain them for the reward of coins and food and a warm bed...." "There's no pretense!" His face was flushed now, and his voice rose in volume. "I take nothing but shelter, and I move on as soon as they've finished with me." He struggled upright, though still on his knees. "I don't think people are Touch | Clare London 15 idiots, sir. I've been sheltered by kindness and tolerance. I thought to find it here, but I'll move on if not." I shook my head impatiently. I needed no childish angst here. "Be silent!" I stood swiftly and grasped the whip. With a single flick of my wrist it curled around his arm and tugged his protests to a startled halt. "I'm the one who'll tell you whether you move on or not. What did you do to the garrison captain who captured you?" "Nothing." He gasped. "Is he hurt?" "Not that I know. But why has he been stood down from his duty? Just from meeting a nobody like you?" "He protected me when he found me," the youth said simply. "He sent all the others away and took me into his own quarters. He connected with me, so I had to serve him. He had a lot of pain. It hurt me very deeply too. He asked for my help." "Asked?" What was the strange creature going on about? "Was this a physical pain? Are you an herbalist healer of some kind?" He frowned as if frustrated by my inability to understand. I should have whipped him there and then for his insolence, but my curiosity got the better of my anger. "No sir, he didn't ask in words, of course not. No one talks to me in that way. In fact, he denied any connection with me at all, when he was questioned. But both the pain and the desire were heavy in his mind, and when we connected, so did his needs. His mother's very ill. She's far from the city, though I don't know where, and he's been told Touch | Clare London 16 there are only ten moons before her death. He couldn't go to her. There was no one to help him." "So you helped him." The contempt and disbelief were barely hidden in my sharp tone. "You accepted his protection, and in return you had to serve this grieving son, is that right? And let me guess what happened then. I assume another message came that the old woman was completely healed and will go on to live many more Earth turns, praising her miracle deliverance at the hands of her devoted son and the charlatan that you obviously are." He looked back up at me, and I felt an unpleasant shiver throughout my whole body. "There's no such message yet," he said through tightened lips. "But there will be. Why do you doubt it? What possible motive could I have to trick a devastated man like him? Or you?" I moved suddenly, and the whip hummed again across the room. Oriel whimpered with shock. I grasped his throat with my left hand and dragged him to his feet, up onto his bare toes. He groaned into my face but didn't struggle to pull himself free. The whip had barely licked at him, but I could see the thin scrape of livid red flesh across his upper torso, newly forged. "Aren't you scared of me?" I hissed. "I can see through your games, and I've no patience for fools!" "I know," he gasped. "You've connected to me too, sir." "What?" I was startled and my hand loosened its grip. His feet touched the floor again, the excess length of his borrowed trousers sagging around his thin ankles. I twisted Touch | Clare London 17 his head around to face me. "Tell me what else you've done, you fraud. How many others of these services have you provided?" He gazed back at me. "At what Earth turn do you want me to start?" He didn't seem to see the insolent arrogance of his reply. "You're far from an old man," I said, most harshly. "I meant since you started this chicanery of `helping' people." "I've been under other people's shelter since I was eleven full season-sets," he said softly. "And for all the time since. I don't remember anything before that." "You've been on your owntravelingsince you were only eleven?" His shrug was almost imperceptible. "It's always been my way." I stared into his face and watched his dry yet well-shaped lips answer me with calm words. Such a strange, conflicting blend of deference and assurance. He was amazing! He was shorter than I by a mere hand-span, and that was unusually tall for a servant. He was slim but his shoulder felt reasonably muscled, and his breath moved gently and steadily in his bare chest. The whip mark was fading quickly. The astonishing eyes were sharp and deep with wary instinct like an animal's, but none that I'd ever seen in real life. And he didn't have an animal's defensive fear. He didn't beg for my forgiveness; he didn't weep like a frightened housemaid. He was something, I suddenly realized, rather alien to me. Touch | Clare London 18 I released him, pushing him away none too gently. I didn't force him to drop back to his submissive pose. "So answer me directly. What else have you done?" He dropped his gaze for a second, but maybe he thought I'd see that as an expression of guilt, so he looked back up. If he caught any flicker of uncertainty in my own gaze, I made sure it didn't linger. He needed to know what kind of man I was, that people feared me, and rightly so. That everyone said I could not beshould not bedeceived. "I've helped a man find his lost family. A woman's been reconciled with her daughter. Crops thrived where the weather had destroyed the seed. Farm animals had bones re-knitted and sicknesses purged." "Tricks," I said disdainfully. "Or at the very least, you've applied a perceptive mind to a broad knowledge of herbs and natural remedies." "A family has found a jewel that thieves took two Earth turns ago. A barren woman has borne children to comfort her. Men achieved new positions of work, and children gained friends where before they were bullied." He didn't seem to care that I scorned him, nor did he recite the events with pride. He listed them as a journal, nothing more. His voice was slow and calm, lapping gently at my hearing. I couldn't remember ever hearing anything quite like it. It was young yet old, gentle yet insistent like warm, fierce fingers on my pampered flesh. He had an eerie kind of charisma. For the first time, I felt a throb of carnal interest in my groin although I'd decided early on that he had no potential as a bedmate. I had every intention of leaving him for my mother or the servants. They were both equally deserving of my castoff playthings. Touch | Clare London 19 I shrugged, seeking to regain my concentration, still contemptuous of him. "Nothing of that impresses me. Is that the best you have to amuse me and bargain for your safety?" This time when he stared back, there was a shift in his expression that reached more deeply than the moonless dark of his pupils. I had been read by empaths before. I knew to expect the strange alienating tug at my nerve endings. But this was much more than that. This was a wash of chill and then warmth across my whole body, a disordering of my emotions as if a slim hand had reached inside my head and run my inner self through its intrusive fingers. I think I may have gasped with the sudden shock. Oriel certainly saw some reaction in me, for his eyes widened and he instinctively moistened his lips. The connection between us faded almost at once. "I won't say any more if you dislike it," he said quietly. He stood patiently, and his gaze dropped again to the floor. "You disbelieve me, and it's not for me to argue. Everyone should be honest about it." I snorted an expression of my disgust. I reached for his hair and wrenched his head back up to face me, ignoring his gasp of shock. "What did you mean, about me?" My voice sounded sharp, and I realized I'd drawn him very close to my body. "You said 'you've connected with me too'." I laughed aloud. "I definitely don't have any need of help from a runt like you." "I know what you think, sir," he said. Such a ludicrous lie sounded disturbing in his gentle, careful tone. "Your thoughts and desires entered me the moment you touched Touch | Clare London 20 me. I can't prevent or control it. The initiative comes from you. You determine how you use me. That's the way it is." "Then I demand you stop the games and stay away from my mind." For the first time I saw fear in his eyes, the edges of color clouding over with dark shadows of horror. "You're strong in mind, sir. It's painful to receive you." The words were drawn out of him raggedly now, like a thin blade might pick out threads of torn tissue from a glistening wound. "But I don't do anything to accept or reject. The person just connects with me, and things happen. All of it happens." "So you're saying you're some kind of catalyst." It was a possibility, though there was still no sensible support for his outrageous tales or for what he claimed he had made happen. I tugged his head to one side then the other. His neck was slender, the skin taut, and it would bend under my hands like a reed. The pulse in his throat was fascinating, warm against my palm. Sexual excitement uncoiled slowly in my groin, sleepy but intrigued. I'd wasted enough of my valuable time on him already, yet I was determined to find out his liesexpose the trickery! Then perhaps I'd use him and dispose of him. My free hand brushed along the pale, bristled skin of his chin, tugging at his lower lip with my thumb. His young frame shivered a little under my hands, and my sudden spike of arousal told me he might yet be an interesting toy. "So what did you see of my thoughts, you spy?" "There's no point in speaking of it." He tried to protest, but I pinched at his throat in warning. He winced and began again, his voice clear and low. "I see your impatience with Touch | Clare London 21 idiots, with delay, with frustration. I see your need for control." "True enough," I said. "And I think you could have learned that from your time anywhere in the city, and especially from any of my embarrassingly inadequate servants." There was a strange nagging in my head that I blamed again on last night's wine, lying heavily on me. "You imply that the connection happens alongside protection and kindness shown to you." I smiled, a little cruelly. "I'm not aware of showing you any such thing so far, apart from allowing you to live a little longer than might have been expected" "The connection happens when and how it chooses. I must still serve," he interrupted, and suddenly I felt a chill in the room. When I gazed into his eyes again, the pupils were dilated, the blackness seeping into the halo around them. He didn't appear to focus on me, but he spoke to me nonetheless. "It's purely at your demand. Your desires still enter me, even if they're of anger and revenge." His eyes rolled, and his body stiffened under my hand. "Your solitude was disturbed, and you were angry about it. One of your servants has fallen and broken a leg. He'll be in pain for weeks, and it's likely he'll always carry a limp. You needed reprisal. Now you have it." He drew in a huge gasping breath, the sound wheezing in the quiet room. I was temporarily speechless. I had wanted to use my whip on my servants when the useless tribe burst in on me this afternoon, but I had made that protest half in jest and only in my own thoughts. Now I had a stranger in my room who claimed to be the unwilling Touch | Clare London 22 catalyst of people's wishes, and by the gods of Earth and Sky, he was disturbing me. "Oriel" But I doubt he heard me. His eyes closed, his hands clenched at his sides, and then he sank to the floor in a dead faint. HUL had come to my door to inform me of the shocking accident in the kitchens. Apparently the brown-eyed servant had fallen down the rough stone steps and landed awkwardly. He'd broken his leg, his screams ringing out throughout the lower corridors until someone came to his aid. I remembered clearly that I'd scorned him earlier because my mother had a lascivious interest in him and for his complicity in disturbing my day. I did now, indeed, have my reprisal. It was unsettling. I moved thoughtfully back into my quarters, closing and locking the door behind me. I peeled off my shirt and boots and walked bare-chested and barefooted into my bedroom. This was my haven, my favorite and most personal sanctuary from the tedium and disappointments of public life. Sometimes, I suspected, of all my life. As I stepped across the thick rugs on the floor, I breathed more calmly and felt my muscles relax. I had a generously sized bed with dark sheets and covers of the richest, most tactile fabrics I could find. I had wines and cordials available and fresh fruit and nuts brought in daily. There was a bathroom through a side door, always well stocked with oils and soaps from Touch | Clare London 23 around the city. No one came here except by invitation, though I would confess that my invitations were careless and often. I sighed. Maybe not as often as rumor in the household had it. I'd postponed my trade meeting and informed Hul I was retiring for the night. He knew that meant no disturbances. When Oriel had fainted, I'd lifted his senseless body from the floor and brought it to this room. He'd been a featherweight in my arms, his skin warm and pliant, and his wasted limbs as lanky as a new colt's. I'd dropped him onto my bed with little ceremony. Now I stood here again, watching his body as it lay unconscious, his limbs making shallow dips in the soft covers, his hair tangled under an outstretched arm. What was I to do with such a creature? I knew that my mother and her superstitious housemaids would take charge of him in the beat of a heron's wing. They would love the drama of such a foreigner, pet him for his strange looks, and beg him with their piteous, fluttering eyes to grant their dearest wishes. He would be their own personal fortuneteller. Your desires still enter me.... You needed reprisal. I'd been shaken by his foretelling of the accident, but the servant could have fallen at any time. There were often mishaps in a busy household. "A coincidence," I said, though my voice sounded less sure. Oriel stirred on the bed, obviously hearing me. His eyes slid half open, his gaze catching the reflection of my lamp, the pupils luminous in the dimmed room. "Get up," I said sharply. Touch | Clare London 24 He struggled to a sitting position, glancing around to see where I had brought him. He rubbed the back of his hand across his face in a sleepy gesture, and I felt that strange frisson again. "Are you recovered?" I asked abruptly. His eyes hooded briefly and he nodded. He swung his legs slowly over the side of the deep mattress. "Thank you for allowing me to rest," he said softly. "They only see your arrogance and aggression. You hide your compassion well." "You sound like a memory-caller at the fairground stalls," I snapped. "Trite, cheap talk. Or do you expect some payment for it? You can have the lick of my whip around your shriveled balls, if you like." He didn't flinch, a slim, half-bare figure swamped by the plump comfort of my fleeced covers. "I know that's your way. You use crudeness and cruelty to intimidate them all. To keep people away from you." His voice was a little sluggish but still absorbing. "You're respected in your work, but they're all scared of you. They obey you without question. They accept your lies as truth." "Lies?" My heart beat a little faster. "I prefer to call it diplomacy, fool, and you'll watch that tongue, or I'll slash it off for sport and let the servants season the supper broth with it!" He shook his head, eyes wide. "No, not the lies of politics, of your work. I meant the lies to yourself, the lies about your love for your mother, about your loneliness, about the loss of your younger brother" Touch | Clare London 25 I struck him then, and the slap of the blow reverberated around the room. He cried out and slid off the bed on to the floor, scrambling with hands and knees to keep his balance. "How dare you talk about me with such familiarity!" I growled. "Who gave you that right?" "You did," he gasped. "You spoke to me, sir! Your sadness, your anger. I can't deny it. The connection's rarely been so strong. I didn't know any better than to say it." I bent down to him, wrenching his head back again. There was a red, shining weal on his face made by my hand. His pupils were dilated and he was panting slightly. "Is this how you inspire people to connect with you, Oriel? With violence?" "Sometimes," he whispered. His gaze met mine, a braver resistance than any of my servants had ever shown after such a blow from me. "They do what they want. As a child, they often struck me. Now I'm older.... Sometimes they use me instead." I grimaced. "Is that what the captain did? Saved you from the common soldiers only to use you himself? What kind of protection is that?" "It's how I serve." His voice was teasing at my nerves again, yet the tone was steady and almost unemotional. I didn't often feel so lost in a situation, let alone admit it aloud. "You're a ridiculous mystery, Oriel! You describe yourself as a helpless, passive victim, used by your masters sexually and otherwise and still following like a household dog, begging for more abuse. Yet your eyes show strength you shouldn't have." I looked back down on them, which was Touch | Clare London 26 perhaps my greatest mistake. But I couldn't help myself. I felt drawn into his weird, disorienting gaze. Even as I felt unfamiliar shame at losing my temper with him, I wanted the touch again. Far from finding him insipid and disinteresting, I now felt the strongest flame of desire that I'd ever known flaring suddenly to life inside me. He drew in a deep gasp as if he'd felt it too. I let go of his hair and forced myself upright again. For a moment I was frozen there above his kneeling form, trying to regain control over my feelings. My trousers tightened across my groin, and my fingertips brushed lightly across the flat muscles of my belly, tormenting the goose bumps that sprang in response. My body ached, fiercely. I groaned. "Is this your magic working on me?" "It comes from you," he whispered. His face was level with my groin, his hands fisted gently at his sides. He dropped his gaze away from mine and turned instead to my arousal, straining against the fine cloth. "I can only respond. Let me serve you." With gentle but confident hands, he teased down the fabric, letting my cock spring out to blessed freedom. I tried to remember when I'd last been swollen so hotly, so swiftly.... Never. His mouth was damp and warm, and it sucked me in with a youthful enthusiasm. I stumbled back against the bed, keeping myself upright, supporting my thighs against the mattress. I gripped his hair and wound it around my fingers, guiding his head back and forth along me. His tongue licked gently as he sucked, circling regularly around the head. It was a caress that I was especially fond of, and Touch | Clare London 27 one that my inexperienced bedmates took some time and instruction to master. Oriel either had an instinctive skill or the true understanding of my needs as he'd already claimed. I wanted to despise him and his tricks. I wanted to abuse him as I had so many before. Perversely, I didn't want to enjoy this! But I felt the serpent of climax stretch and yawn in the pit of my groin as if he'd been neglected for tens of moons not for mere hours as was the truth. Oriel's palm cupped at my tightening balls, rolling them gently between his fingers, his mouth sinking right down on me until I nudged at the back of his throat and his lips nestled into the curls at the base of my shaft. I groaned, barely recognizing my voice. I often used this as foreplay, and I had excellent control of my body. I could watch a companion suck me for a long time before I was ready for release. It stimulated me before the harsher reality of entering a body and thrusting to completion. Tonight, I didn't need foreplay. My control deserted me, and the stimulation was totally consuming. I must have pulled hairs from his head, the ferocity of my reaction so shocked me. I began to thrust my hips against him, shuddering, buffeting his kneeling form. I cried aloud as the climax swelled my cock, spewing seed into his young mouth. My senses whirled and I experienced a sharp vividness of color and sound that I'd never known before. The muscles of my legs tensed then surrendered, almost buckling beneath me. It's just sexual gratification. Reason clung to me by its fingernails, brushed away by the wave of pure, magnificent sensation. Last night you had three young men to do this very thing to you to amuse you in just this way. Touch | Clare London 28 I wasn't amused in any way now. I was stunned. I was speechless. I may even have been scared. Though never a praying man, I begged that I didn't let the sob inside me escape to a servant's ears. I barely cared. It was so much more.... Oriel pulled away slowly, my softening cock sliding from his lips. A thread of my seed dribbled from the corner of his mouth. "You want it to be real," he whispered, his words a little slurred. "You are so alone, so afraid. You want to be satisfied. For the first time." I sank back down on to my bed, my trousers creased and snagging at my hips, the muscles of my thighs shaking with tension, and my eyes stretched open with shock. My cock fell half-limp against my thigh, the damp flesh still warm and raw with sensation. I wanted more. Much more. "Take off your trousers," I said hoarsely. "Wash and shave yourself and then get into my bed." He stumbled to his feet and stared at me, his hand already at the waist ties of the trousers. "Prepare yourself for me." It was a mere whisper from my dry throat. My mouth ghosted other words, other desires. I ached to press my lips against his pale skin. I could barely focus on his face, my eyes were so misted with my astonishing need. "Now!" AFTER Oriel had fallen asleep, I lay awake for hours until the sun of the next day crept above the waning moon. There were three or four early morning calls to my door, but I Touch | Clare London 29 ignored them, and in the end the callers gave up and left me alone. They presumably thought the dissolute young Chancellor was still drunk at a tavern somewhere or buried deep in his sheets with a couple of anonymous young bodies, tasting their sweetness, a regular entertainment for him. I myself had created the reputation of such a shallow rake, and been proud of it. But the previous night's experience had been far from regular. Far better and far, far more disturbing. When the dawn's light slithered through my drapes, I peeled myself out of the crumpled sheets and went to wash. I wandered back into the bedroom, still combing through my clean, damp hair, the warm water drying on my body with a fresh scent that should have invigorated me. I was naked, as I usually was in the mornings. Oriel was now awake, his pale fingers loosely gripping the sheet around him and his disquieting eyes watching my progress across to the bed. I paused a few steps away and tossed my comb on to a nearby chair. "You're beautiful," he said softly. It was an unusual greeting, though a sentiment I was used to. "Yes, I am." I shrugged, knowing the movement was especially graceful. "Thank my mother for my features and my wayward father for my elegant affectation." "I will," he said in all seriousness. I laughed. "That was sarcasm, Oriel. Do you take everything at face value?" "Do you take nothing?" he countered, and then he flushed. "You dislike my boldness, sir. I forget...." Touch | Clare London 30 "The whip is elsewhere," I murmured. "I'm in no mood for punishment." My heart began beating too quickly just at the sight of those eyes, the steady, admiring gaze, the pale shoulders above the dark sheets, and the hair curling at his neck, now silken from washing in fresh water and with proper oils. That hair had slipped through my fingers last night as his body arched up against mine. I had smelled my own perfumes on him but also an inimitable smell of the man himself. His skin had been drawn taut across his ribs and salty to the taste. His knees had gripped willingly around my torso. And although he'd been tight to enter, he'd relaxed when I commanded and moved when I asked. Then his cries had been soft, pleading whimpers, and even when I burst my seed inside of him, he still clung to me, his body seeming to crave the contact. I hadn't let go of him all night. Now I sat down on the side of the bed and reached for him. He lifted his pale, clean-shaven face obediently eagerlyand I kissed his soft lips, sticky with the remains of sleep and silvery trails of my seed. "But you are beautiful," he repeated, breathlessly. "That's what they all see when they look at you." "Just looks," I said. "Accident of my birth." I traced the light blue veins under the thin skin of his jaw. "You won't serve me with flattery, Oriel." "This cynicism.... Why do you act like this?" He frowned, nestling his head against my hand. "It's not clear to me." I ran my other hand down the smooth planes of his chest, watching the muscles of his belly tighten and his Touch | Clare London 31 nipples harden in response. He had indeed proved to be an astonishingly rewarding plaything. I had a strong desire to roll him over on to his belly and part his buttocks, to lick hungrily at his crack until the saliva bubbled and his skin puckered with need and he was lubricated enough for my cock to breach him yet again. "Maybe the connection doesn't work so well with me after all." He sighed. "This is different. I've never felt the flow like this, as if in two directions. I don't understand." "You're young...," I murmured, the lustful vision still vivid in my mind. "I'm not much younger than you!" he suddenly snapped, startling me. "And have you seen what I've seen, in a hundred different minds and hearts? Have you felt emotions that battled with your own, that made you cry when you weren't sad, made you open your legs when you wanted them closed, pushed you away when you wanted to offer comfort? Have you allowed future events as intruders inside your mind and then watched them happen in reality? This is the only way I can live with it: to surrender, to absorb, to serve. But you... you draw it out of me. You're touching me in the same way. It's not happened before." I stared at him, amazed at his outburst. "You use a lot of people, Chariz," he said. His voice was calm again, but I was concerned to see moisture in his eyes. He was disturbed by me. His passive obedience was shaken. "You may call me that in my bed," I warned. "You may use my name. But not outside of here" "You distract me!" he said. He pushed the sheet away from his body and knelt up to face me, his face flushed. Touch | Clare London 32 "You're scared of so much that it swamps me, and yet your thoughts tug at me in return, and I can't make out what you want. You must help me!" I raised my hand to strike him again. My fury was so close to my desire! But I didn't see any answering spark of fear in his expression. Despite my heart beating even faster and my breath shortening with anger, I stopped, pulling back the blow. "Don't treat me as a fool, Oriel. I'm the same as everyone. Of course I am. Your tricks will offer me riches or political power or just more hot, eager bodies in my bed to make the days and nights pass, to get me through another moon phase without boring me to an early grave. That's what this is all about, of course." "No," he whispered. "You want none of it. I feel such confusion and pain. That's why I struggle so much to serve you." I laughed without humor, stepping back and attempting to steady my breathing again. "That's enough." He ignored me and repeated, "You want none of it." His words tumbled out of his young mouth like pebbles rolling under the fast flowing stream. "But you want so much more instead! You want to belong, to be satisfied. To be at peace with yourself. To have another... to understand you." I looked at him and I felt a deep, wearied fright in my bones. I had never heard my soul crystallized into words before. Touch | Clare London 33 I'D SAT through a long and tedious meeting with silver merchants from the western province. The city needed raw metal for the restoration of the Magician's chapel, and the Lady had offered to sponsor it. The merchants saw our city in need and their asking price had spiraled accordingly. Whilst I disagreed with the Lady's economic decision in this, as in many other areas, it was my duty to obtain the best result for her. It wasn't until the leader of the merchants was actually signing the agreement, whilst still bemoaning the loss of a few coins per ounce off the price, that I realized Hul was the only servant left with me in the Great Hall. I don't know what it was that alerted me first, but the sudden chill of alarm coursed through my body like the snow-season wind. I caught Hul's eye and saw something there that confused me, something that wasn't mine to command. Restlessness: nervousness. Pity, again? "I must leave you, gentlemen," I said abruptly. I ignored Hul's agitation and strode past him, leaving him to make weak apologies on my behalf. I walked along the corridors, brushing past startled servants, knocking into more than one obstruction or another, human or otherwise. Panic was rippling at the edges of my mind, increasing my speed, making me unusually clumsy. And then I broke into a run. The Lady herself stood at the entrance to my quarters. The door was open though I knew I had locked it, and two of my servants were on their knees before her. Several of her housemaids clustered around her rich satin skirts, and a couple of her stronger grooms stood in the doorway to my Touch | Clare London 34 anteroom. They all turned as I approached, their faces pale with various shades of fear. "Mother," I said, my voice as sharp as a blade. "I don't believe I invited your visit." Her eyes flashed at my hostility, but she was more than equal to my temper. She stood only two hands' span shorter than I, her body slim and her features exquisite, accentuated by sharp cheek bones and luminous eyes. Her hair was supplemented with false pieces and piled high on her head, decorated with combs and jewels. She was as beautiful as any woman in the city, but her power made her particularly stunning. "You have something of mine," she said. She was used to speaking to a hall filled with acolytes and politicians and her voice admitted no argument. One of my servants dipped his head even further towards the ground, anticipating the conflict to come. "I am the Lady of this household, and I can go wherever I wish." "Where you're not wanted." I sneered openly. "Where I scorn to be!" she snapped back. "I will wash well after I've left, Chariz. I have no desire to wallow in the sexual sewage that amuses you so easily." "Whereas yours, I know, is blended especially for you," I growled. "By your tame trolls masquerading as Magicians." She realized that I wasn't planning on being as dutiful as I should be, and she saw my eyes dart toward my rooms, seeking movement there. The grooms had gone inside; she must have ordered them without my seeing. I heard the sudden cry of a young man caught unawares. Touch | Clare London 35 "Halt!" she called into the room. "Hold him there." She waved my traitorous servants aside and ordered her housemaids to step away from her. Then she walked to the side of the corridor with me. "No ugly scenes now, Chariz." Her voice was smooth but it was still a warning. "I've allowed you the proper respect by coming for him myself rather than allowing the Magicians into the private quarters." "Why are you here? What business is it of yours?" She winced at my aggressive tone. "Son, do you know that one of my housemaids is now a child bearer? The woman was seasons past her fertilityand moaned so tediously about itbut she touched that strange youth when he was first brought here, and now her womb is miraculously full of fruit. It's just been confirmed by the nurses." She saw the skepticism on my face and sighed with impatience. "He must be put to better use than as your toy. Come now, Chariz, you canand doplay with any body in the city. This one is mine." I reached out a finger to her cheek, just to see if her skin was as chill as her words. I thought I saw her struggle not to pull away in disgust. "So he grants wishes, like some magical sprite it seems. What will be your demands of him, mother?" "Don't act like a selfish child, Chariz!" she snapped. "It's not for me. It's for the city, for all the needs that our people have." I dismissed her political lies, leaning in against her so that no one else heard the bitter words I hissed into her ear. "More sinuous bodies in your bed? More gold in your Touch | Clare London 36 Treasury? More power to your Council position? A better son?" Her eyes widened. "Chariz," she whispered. "I have never said such a thing, as you know. Your antagonism keeps us apart" "Mine?" Her eyes darkened but she lifted a hand as if to touch me in return. Shocked, I felt my body lean toward her, my heart aching for reasons I did not wish to examine more closely. I pulled abruptly away. There was a brief commotion at the door of my quarters, and the grooms reappeared, clutching Oriel between them. He was bare-chested, dressed only in the owl-gray trousers that I'd gifted him with on an earlier day. I'd gone to my meeting that morning leaving him naked and sleeping deeply in my bed. He'd been sleeping there for almost seven days now, and I'd never once felt the need for any other bedmate. He had become as much a part of my life as daily meals. I hadn't realized how essential he was to me until now. He looked straight at me, and the fascinating eyes weren't frightened at all. They were sad. "No," I said clearly as I strode over to the grooms. "Release him!" Despite there being two of them, they cowered back from me. One of them dropped his hand from Oriel's arm. My reputation for gratuitous viciousness had its advantages. "This young man is my Companion," I said. "He is under my protection." There was a collective murmur, and the grooms glanced nervously at the Lady. She moved quickly to my side and her Touch | Clare London 37 eyes were hot with anger. "Companion? You can't choose him for that role, my son. You can only choose a woman, a child bearer, or at the least a trained bedmate" "I have enough of them forced on me," I interrupted, my voice intentionally harsh. "He's the one I really want. Are there Council rules that say I cannot choose a male? Rules that limit me to a specific number of official Companions? If so, you may take all the others back, and I'll keep only him." One of her housemaids sobbed suddenly with shock. My mother frowned at the unwelcome distraction but she continued to stare into my eyes. I hoped that she saw her own determination reflected there. "You must have child bearers!" Her voice was as soft yet full of danger as the hiss of a snake. "For the sake of the family, Chariz, to ensure the continuance of the line. I know you dislike it, so I allow you to meet your minimum duty with the ones I choose, then spend your private time with the youths you prefer. But this offends the very household! You go too far." "I'll go wherever I wish," I said, just as softly, but echoing her own firmness. "Out of the city if needs be." I met her gaze with my challenge and was startled to see a tear at the corner of her eye. Maybe the light was too bright for heror the confrontation with her recalcitrant son too wearing. "But you have everything here," she protested. "You wouldn't survive outside of the city, away from your comforts and riches and my bounty." Touch | Clare London 38 "I'd be willing to try." We stared at each other for long moments. Her breast heaved with shortening breaths. My own heart felt tight and breathless inside my chest. "I don't know what the Council will say about this," she said at last. The words seemed awkward to her, and her look was more confused now than angry. "What's wrong with you? I've never known you to show particular care for any of them." I glanced over at Oriel, then back to my mother. I answered her with a rare moment of honesty. "Neither have I," I murmured. "Neither have I." IN THE early evening, I lay naked in bed with Oriel, his head resting in the crook of my arm, our breath calming slowly as the sweat dried on our skin. The last hour had been both exhausting and thrilling. He'd been lithe and energetic beneath me, crying for me to take him then groaning when I did, for I was too excited to be careful enough with him. My grip on him was tight, raising bruises on his fair skin. I'd thrust into him harshly, allowing the climax to race through me too quickly, allowing my mind to fill with the crude, raw passion of it, clouding my other thoughts, blocking out even the person whose body I'd claimed so deeply. But he'd responded in kind, his fingers clinging to me, his hand reaching for his own cock when his desire had been too much to resist. He'd cried aloud with me as we came. As I sank down onto him, spent, his teeth grazed my neck in an affectionate parody of possession. Touch | Clare London 39 It had been one of the best times I'd ever had. "How does it happen, Oriel?" I murmured into his ear. I wondered if he'd understand me. Then, of course, I knew that he would. "I don't know." He sighed, his lips moving against my skin with damp breath. "I don't control it. I don't know where it comes from or where it'll go." "It's a strange, fearful power" "It's not power," he interrupted, and I felt his slim body tense against mine. "I don't wish for power over anyone. I want to help." "You are used," I protested, though more gently than I would have done some months ago. His naivety still irritated me sometimes. It was several weeks after my confrontation with the Lady, and I allowed Oriel to move around the household now, as everyone knew that he was under my protection. But I constantly worried about his vulnerability to others. Often I'd return to my rooms after a meeting or disciplinary issue with the staff only to find a gaggle of housemaids clustered around him, offering sweet herbal teas or new clothing or just trying to make him sit beside them for a while. Trying to touch him. And it wasn't just the tiresome women who laid claim to his attention. I'd find him in the gardens or distracted in the Council library, listening quietly to the working men, young and old, as they talked to him. I assumed at first it was the novelty that drew these people in like houseflies, curiosity to see the young man who purportedly brought miracles in his wake. Then those early days passed, and the visitors became more determined. The Touch | Clare London 40 people who came to him now had hands clenched with pain and eyes full of need. The houseflies became parasites. I turned my head to brush my lips against Oriel's hair. How could I have ever thought it dull! After proper care it now shone like the russet of pre-snow season leaves. It smelled of sun and fruit and the constant touch of my fingers. "I don't want you to be used any more." I felt his smile against my chest. "You don't need to protect me, Chariz. This is the best time ever for me, but I can only serve. One day you'll pass me on, and I'll leave the city again for a new home" "No!" I alarmed even myself with the strength of my cry. I rolled him away from me onto his back, leaning over him. My hair fell loosely over my shoulders, brushing down on to his face, a stray thread sticking at the corner of one wide, beautiful eye. His gaze was still dark with passion, searching my face for guidance, turmoil, and need flickering together.
I remembered his eagerness in bed with me, how demanding he'd been. He was no longer the passive slave who'd been delivered to me. "Things are changing for you, Oriel!" He frowned. "I don't understand...." "Remember how you felt that day, when the Lady tried to take you away, with the men's hands on you? You told me later what pain it caused you to suffer them. And yet how do you feel now, in your daily life, with the servants and household staff jostling you from morning to night, with all the whining beggars coming to call on your magic?" "It's not gone" Touch | Clare London 41 "Hush." I kissed him, reassuring him. "I know it's not." There were still tales around the household of the wonders that followed in his wake. But some of the feelings Oriel had shared with me made me question him now. "So, is it still as strong? Do you still feel the connection as keenly?" I'd heard plenty of reports of financial windfalls and swift recoveries from illness. The servant who'd broken his leg had also come to him and was now walking without a limp. I believe Oriel had even found the missing pet of one of my cousins' children. But as time passed, I heard fewer tales of lives saved and children bornno real miracles like the ones when he first came to me. Oriel sounded nervous. "No. It has grown weaker. I.... They do not ask as much of me, perhaps." "Or you don't hear it. They can't reach you as easily." As selfishly. Oriel stared at me, obviously trying to understand what I was suggesting. I wasn't sure I knew myself. "You can't stop it happening to me, Chariz." "I can try," I protested, anger heating my words. "How might this power ever leave you, Oriel? How can we release you from it completely?" "I don't know," he said, and his eyes flickered with sorrow or fear, I didn't know which. He only ever looked distressed when we spoke of his strange servitude. "By death, obviously. Or I used to think I would just wear out like old clothing, fading like one of the bright household cloths in the high sun. Each time someone connects with me, it saps my energy." Touch | Clare London 42 "But less, as time passes!" He smiled gently at my forcefulness. "Yes, it appears so." I ran my fingers through his hair, tugging playfully at a tangle. "Do I wear you out?" My question was only half in jest. "No." He sighed deeply as my hand ran down his chest and over the small swell of his belly. His legs parted eagerly underneath my pressing body. "You're very different. This is all very different. You don't demand gifts of me like the others. Why is that?" I stilled. "I don't need magic. I don't need anything from you." Apart from this. He frowned. "Not true. But you keep it well hidden, I cannot reach that place in you. It's strange..." "Hush," I said, more harshly than he deserved. "Enough." "Yes, Chariz." Oriel smiled, though he still looked puzzled. "And it's true, I feel stronger with you, not weaker." Comforted, I leaned over him again and kissed his warm flesh, my tongue licking gently at the pulse in his throat. "I won't let death be your only escape," I whispered, spreading his thighs, tracing the straining muscle with my thumbs. His head went back on the pillow as my cock plunged into him, his mouth opened in a soundless sigh of pleasure. Not for the first time, I wondered who might be serving whom. Touch | Clare London 43 IT WAS very late at night, and in the darkness my breath was ragged and nervous. Sweat glistened on my chest in the reflected moonlight and my limbs were tight with tension. I hadn't slept at all. "Chariz?" Oriel was a drowsing silhouette at my side. His breath was somewhere between a sigh and a yawn. "It was just a dream," I murmured. But when had it ever visited me, with a companion beside me? Maybe Oriel was not the only one for whom life was changing. He stirred slowly as if half asleep, but somehow I knew he was alert. "Tell me." And I found I wanted to; it spilled from me in a wave of anguished relief. "My brother died, Oriel," I whispered. "His name was Adram. He wasn't even a full season-set old. One night he stopped breathing and he died." Oriel went still beside me. We were both naked, and I felt his hand settle on my bare chest, skin to skin in his uniquely comforting way. "Many babies aren't strong enough to live." "He should have been," I said. It was so difficult to talk about this. I didn't want to look weak, and yet... I was shaking. I was surrendering. The pain was deep inside me, claiming me, destroying me from the inside out. It possessed me in the dark, raw, lonely night. It chewed me up like prey, stalking my dreams. It had always done so. "I saw him in his shroud. He looked perfect. More beautiful than I will ever be. I loved him more than anything I'd ever seen before." Touch | Clare London 44 Oriel's lips touched gently at my cheek. He didn't ask the stupid questions that others might have done. He knew at once what I meant. "How old were you, Chariz?" I swallowed hard. "No more than nine season-sets. Old enough to know." To grieve. I'd allowed myself so many indulgences over the years, yet never that one. "She should have looked after him more carefully." My voice was quiet but bitter. Oriel knew I referred to my mother, the Lady. "If she was dissatisfied with what she produced in me, she should have tried all the harder with him." His voice whispered back in the moonlit room. "It wasn't her fault. She grieves too." "My father left shortly after Adram's death," I continued, determined to speak of it at lastall of it. "I haven't seen him for years. That was how he chose to show his grief. He abhors the idea of spending time with his family in the city. With his Companion and firstborn." "You are too like your mother, Chariz," Oriel murmured. "She's intimidated by you, like so many others are. But she still cares for you." I scarcely heard him. "You told me you saw it in memy grief. My loss." Oriel nodded, very slightly. His hair brushed my neck. "No one knows about Adram, Oriel. It all happened before she was appointed as the Lady. It's our tale alone, our family shame." I wondered how this foreigner had known of it, how I could have told him when I'd never told anyone before. But there was also a burst of liberation in realizing I shared it with him. Touch | Clare London 45 His kisses trailed softly down my neck like the touch of cool spring-season ferns. "It feels as if they abandoned you, as if you were never enough to compensate them for the loss of a baby. It's not true, Chariz. People act out of ignorance and fear. It's not always deliberate. They didn't know how to behave toward you, how to manage their pain." "And you do, you homeless, kinless stranger?" My words weren't meant to be cruel. "Better than you." He sighed and kissed again, lapping me, his tongue rough as a kitten's on my flesh. "Use me, Chariz. Bury it in me, the pain, the misery. Lose it in me. That's what you want, isn't it?" I didn't know what I wanted. I had never opened myself like this before. For the first time in my life I felt as if I were the one who had been entered and used. Laid bare. Oriel whispered gently beside me. "Chariz, do it. I've touched the Lady. I've been touched by men who knew your father, even if they were only servants. Touch me now and see what you want." "Ridiculous," I growled, but I let him roll gently across my body, his hands stroking my skin and his bony feet pushing the sheets away from us. It didn't take much to rouse me nowadays, and I felt my cock stir eagerly. I had always been sexually greedythat was common knowledge in the citybut I'd never before felt the fresh joy that came with touching Oriel's body. It was as if he were a new excitement every day, a sensual discovery that thrilled me and seemed to bring new sensations every time. Touch | Clare London 46 I was becoming poetic with my promiscuity, it seemed. And yet, if I were honest with myself, I had no claim to that description either anymore. I was no longer so casual with my affairs, so indiscriminate with my partners. There were no others! Only Oriel. I caught Hul's gaze on me occasionally as we passed in the corridors, and his expression was a picture of wary surprise. He continued to offer me rich food and new, thrice-mixed wines, but I refused them. He fetched me gamin young men for my bed, but I yawned and forgot where I left them. I was a disappointment to him, perhaps. In order to maintain his respect, I had last week whipped him and hanged him naked by the wrists from the rings in the west corridor for a few hours. I rather think that my credibility was restored in the servant quarters. But considering it was an exercise that would once have afforded me much entertainment, it now left me unsatisfied, and... unsettled. "This is all I need," I murmured, reaching to caress Oriel's back. "I won't use you like they do." "No," he whispered back, his breath flavored with my evening gift of flowered sweets, his thick, lush lips trailing the damp shapes of kisses at my neck. "Don't think of that. Don't hide from me. I want to do this, to share this. Don't hide from yourse~~." I grunted and sighed rather petulantly, but his soft touches were hard to resist. His soothing lulled me. His whispering was insidious. "Chartz..." His voice was awed, plaintive. "Think of your brother." He pressed his lips to my cheek and slipped his hand into mine, his palm sweaty against my cooler skin. Touch | Clare London 47 His body tensed suddenly. I sucked in a breath as if I'd been struck in the gut. It was just like the first time he connected with me and yet different enough to shock. It was as if I saw through his eyes. I swear that I saw the heath and heard the wind whistling at my back. I felt the cold creeping around my ankles and down the back of a shirt I knew wasn't mine. I felt fear and weariness and the need to find shelter. And worst of all, I heard them: voices in my head, many of them, yet without words. Just complaints and fears and irritations and shocks and delights and desires and ecstasies.... The jumble was overwhelming. The sounds were like nagging claws. They were in my ears, the pressure growing behind my eyeballs and squeezing my emotions. I groaned aloud. "No!" Oriel whimpered again, and I could hear his voice echoing inside me. "Not that!" The distressing, clamoring sights and sounds left me, and instead I felt the return of comfort. There was a soft chuckling sound all around me, and I wanted to smile, just to open my eyes wide and laugh for no reason at all except that I was alive and warm and well-fed and there was care and attention all around me. I thought I heard Oriel gasp, but it didn't alarm me. There was a hand still holding mine, but it felt so much smaller than Oriel's. It was cool and plump. And then that, too, was gone. I was curious about the change, nothing more than that. Puzzled, maybe, and a little confused. The warmth was still there and the softness, too, but the chuckling had gone, and instead I could hear ragged, choking sobs in a female voice I recognized but didn't wish to Touch | Clare London 48 identify right now. I didn't want to question anything, for I was sure of my place. I had no concerns that might trouble me because I was sheltered. Nothing really mattered because any problem was for others to bear, not me. I had been in a good place... and now I was in another. The hand tugged at me, and now it felt like Oriel's again. "Chariz? Do you feel me?" I smiled. I yawned and stretched slowly on the bed, feeling every crease of the silk, every brush of the weave against my skin. "Of course I feel you, you're here beside me. Where have I been, Oriel? It was good. I was well-loved. Where did we go?" I rolled over on to my side to gaze into his eyes. "Chariz...." What had happened to him? I was shocked to see fear in his eyes, fierce and blade-bright. His body was shaking uncontrollably. Who or what had done that to him? Had ~? "What's happened?" I started to panic, my gut heaving, but I couldn't seem to move quickly. I felt sluggish, clumsy, drowsy, the same feeling as when I couldn't wake properly after a night of self-indulgence. Or like the mornings after my dream. My heart constricted in fear. "How do you feel?" Oriel whispered. He peered at me, his face parchment-white and gaunt, his voice breathless. "Tell me, Chariz, that you feel good. For that, it will be worth it...." No! I pushed myself up to sitting, the bed dipping beneath me, my hand pressing down with his into the covers. "Oriel! Gods, I hurt you. How can that be?" My strength was returning, though the nausea still nagged at Touch | Clare London 49 me. I slipped my hands underneath him, lifting up his loose limbs, clutching him close to me. I could scarcely hear his breathing. He smiled weakly, his eyes rolling back to focus on me. His speech was slow but clear. "Adram suffered no pain, felt no resentment, no anger. He was so small. He just was there, and then he wasn't. He was weak from the birth and couldn't manage to live, but it wasn't anyone's fault. Did you understand that, Chariz?" "What did you see?" The words felt like brambles in my dry throat. "I saw that he felt your love and he gave it back to you without question. He could never do anything but feel, and that he did honestly and instinctively. He wasn't old enough to take on the miseries and hypocrisies of adults. Was that what you wanted to know? To calm you?" Oriel coughed, suddenly wracked with some kind of spasm. I could feel his slender body still shaking in my arms. I leaned over to reach for my robe, to go and call for help, but he grasped my arm to stop me. I looked down at his hand. His fingers were strained, gripping like a cadaver's. "Oriel. This is appalling...." He shook his head, a little, jerky movement. "I'm well enough. Wait a moment for me to recover. I... You cannot help, Chariz, there are no medics, no magicians that understand this. But it was the right thing to do. You wanted to feel your brother. You shared that with me...." Touch | Clare London 50 "I felt you too!" I knew what that first vision had been, what I had experienced alongside him. "When you were lost, when you were alone." Oriel sighed. Some color was coming back to his cheeks, though he still lay close to me as if he craved my warmth. "But now I'm not." His tone was stronger. It was almost as if he had regained enough energy to challenge me. "Chariz, this is my gift. Better that I spend it on you, on giving you what you want." I shook my head, burying my face into his neck, breathing against his pulse as if trying to strengthen it through his skin "Don't you ever do that again!" I couldn't believe the fear that had washed through me when I'd felt how drained he was. After all, what had I suffered in life, having always been indulged, having grown up in privilege and sufficiency? I had lost nothing in life except my brother, and that was a long-remembered pain, based on my childish confusion. Even in the dream.... "No more," Oriel murmured sleepily. "The dreams will ease now." I stared down at him, wanting nothing more than to hold him in my protection for ever. No, I'd lost nothing else and had nothing else to lose. Until now. How had Oriel changed me so much, so quickly? He sighed and wriggled out of my grip to lie back down on the bed. He looked almost normal again, though exhausted. "I have never shared it with someone like I do with you. It's... amazing. No one has ever seen... me." He Touch | Clare London 51 laughed self-consciously, his cheeks pink with embarrassment. "No one's ever cared to look." I frowned but softened it with a smile. I stroked along his cheek, my fingers snagging on his lower lip, tugging it down. "You're ridiculously, passively kind, Oriel. People will take advantage of that. By the gods of Earth and Sky, must I look after you every minute of the day, like a child?" He smiled, too. His tongue slipped from between his lips and licked at my fingertips, his eyes on mine. "Passive is not always a bad thing." His voice was low, hoarse. "To be under your protectionto be in your handsisn't the worst place to be." I raised an eyebrow and laughed. "You're provoking me?" I'd been scared at the effect our strange communion had on him, but at the same time I felt extraordinarily refreshed, as if a weight had been lifted from my shoulders, as if a burst of energy had personally rejuvenated me. I felt aroused, too, and not just because of his body lying beneath me at my mercy. I felt like a much younger man, and an excited, nervous, naive one who hadn't spent several hectic years learning and lusting over every sexual practice that existed in men's imaginations. I laughed softly just to hear myself because I was sure I'd sound as different as I felt. And Oriel laughed back. His eyes widened and happiness shone like jewels in them. "Yes," he murmured. "I never thought I would dare... but yes, I am. Chariz" He never finished his sentence because I rolled him over onto his belly, and his moan of willingness was conversation Touch | Clare London 52 enough for me. I rubbed my swelling cock between his buttocks, the heavy shaft sliding trails of wet, eager moisture along his smooth skin. His arms reached across the bed to either side as if he flew with birds' wings, his fingers grasping the sheets like claws. He lifted his ass so that I could enter him and cried out with pleasure, even louder than my own cry. And when I released myself inside him it felt as if I had released so much more than thick, sticky seed. It felt like ice breaking. Like pain thawing. I SHOULDN'T have been surprised that my mother didn't let me rest. A few evenings later, I received another call to visit her at my own convenience, which of course meant at once. Even so, I took my time in dressing with Oriel's help. Maybe it was because I took such joy in watching him kneel at my feet, feeling his hands on me as his fingers smoothed down the fabric of my shirt, his deft buckling of my long boots, his thoughtful frown as he sat back on his heels to examine the whole effect. "Am I acceptable?" I smiled down at him, watching the lamplight flickering in his pupils. The turbulent colors of his eyes were at rest in this quiet time between the fading daylight and the moon's new shine. "You're beautiful as always," he replied. His hand reached up to brush the polished gold of my official chain, hanging low from my neck. There was moisture in his eyes, and only weeks ago I'd have scolded him for being so Touch | Clare London 53 pathetic because it was ridiculous that someone like me could raise tears of anything but fear in another man. But I didn't scold today. Instead I lifted him to his feet and I kissed him first on his lips, then with my open mouth caressing his jaw. I pushed his head to the side and his hair away from his neck so that I could nip and suckle on it like some desperate, nursing baby. He laughed as I grew fiercer, his voice shaky. My teeth grazed the tight skin of his throat and he moaned aloud. "The Lady...," he protested through his gasps, still smiling. "She wants you." "But I want you," I muttered. "And while she's in her chambers, practicing how she may enhance her beauty or playing with her pet magicians until she remembers or can be bothered to meet with me, you are here. Now. Already with me." I slipped my hand down between his slim thighs and felt his arousal swell against my palm. He laughed again, still protesting, but I took him there and then. I turned and pushed him up against the wall beside the bed, pulling down his soft trousers and parting his legs for me. His fingernails dug into the weave of the wall hanging as he anchored himself as best he could. I swiftly released my cock before it pushed its way out of my trousers by the mere force of its desire, and I slid a hand under his right thigh to lift up his leg. I pressed firmly against his entrance, taking a breath to balance my racing heartbeat. "Chariz." He had a way of murmuring my name that both excited and pleaded with me. It was full of desire and pleasure but also anxious, as if he feared to believe it was all true. Touch | Clare London 54 "Yes," I murmured back to him. "I'm here. I want you. All you have to do is feel me." He was still oiled and wet from an earlier time, for I'd taken him after our shared supper. Now I slipped into him easily enough, even though he gasped with the thrust. I was late arriving at my mother's chambers. Rather surprisingly, she was waiting for me, sitting at her desk with a couple of her housemaids at her side and one of her Magicians at her shoulder. "So very tardy, Chariz." Her voice was a sneer. "Your manners are as boorish as ever." I inclined my head in a mock bow. "And your greetings as uncivil," I countered. "Good evening to you, Lady. Forgive me for living and breathing outside of your exclusive worship." Her eyes flashed as if she wanted to continue the argumentwe were well used to this kind of banter between us, of coursebut the Magician behind her tapped lightly on the floor with his cane as if to remind us all of his presence. Her eyes narrowed. "I need something from you, Chariz," she said abruptly. "You must not refuse me." I raised an eyebrow, outwardly calm though my heart beat faster. "Mother, you are the Lady of the household. No citizen here dares to refuse you anything reasonable." "Reasonable," she repeated. "That is so rarely a word that I associate with you, son." I shrugged. The housemaids were staring at me whilst trying not to be discovered doing so, and none of them Touch | Clare London 55 looked pleased to see me. At least one of them had tried to inveigle herself into my bed at one time but had been refused. Maybe the others had, too, but their faces all blended into the same, insipid, kitchen-puppy features as far as I was concerned. My sexual adventures had made me plenty of enemies. "Your meeting with the silver merchants was concluded recently," my mother continued. "I have received their first endorsement of the contract, and the deliveries will begin next week." "But...?" It was obvious from her tone that there was more to come, probably complaints about my rude departure from the meeting. "They wished to audit the accounting records." She was obviously bored with the topic herselfnone of my relatives had ever shown any interest in financial matters, despite a strong political appetitebut her restlessness made me nervous. "They sent a clerk to examine the books." "They sent?" I frowned. "Mother, are you saying such a man is already here? That you have allowed him access to my department without even the courtesy of letting me know? You know I'll hold you responsible for any disruption I suffer from the manhandling of my staff or the Treasurers." She waved a hand. "It's academic. The man is already out of your department and in a detention cell." I stared at her. What had happened? Had I been so infatuated by Oriel that I'd lost touch with everything that was happening in the household? "What are you saying? You're talking nonsense." Touch | Clare London 56 The Magician behind her winced, but my mother was used to my contempt. "Chariz, shut your gaping mouth and open your ears instead. I am not entirely without sense, for I sent a couple of grooms to monitor him. An insipid, inconspicuous person he was, and I did not anticipate that he would be too much trouble. But he tried to evade the grooms and was eventually found wandering around my private chambers." "A fool," I said sharply. "But surely not to the extent that you had to incarcerate him." "Papers were found on him!" The Magician interrupted in excitement. My mother stiffened slightly and the man flushed with shocked humiliation "My Lady, forgive me" "Speak to my son," she said shortly, her eyes on me. "Maybe his arrogance will listen to you." The Magician had gone pale and was afraid to meet my eyes. It seemed that my reputation had preceded me yet again, and this specimen was one of their more timid apprentices. "He... the man had papers from the merchants, Chancellor Chariz. They have written about using the silver negotiations as a mere ruse. Their real intention is to obtain access to the Lady's household." I turned my glare to him, enjoying the way that his pale features became an almost translucent white from fear of my reaction. "Why?" "Wh-why ... ?" "Did these papers say why? Was it to steal from us? To spy? This household is not particularly secure from a military point of view, and we have been infiltrated before. Touch | Clare London 57 But I believe that our reputation for swift, sharp punishment is enough of an alternative deterrent." I glanced at my mother, for once calling on her for support and verification. "I remember some traveling players and thieves last snow-season whom I whipped severely on capture. Only half their original troupe survived the subsequent imprisonment. And then some mercenaries, here three seasons back and hoping to rob us of our family treasures, who were laid out on the rack and their flesh carved into a most attractive pattern for my edification and that of my drinking friends at the time." I yawned and then made my tone scornful to hide the nervousness I felt. "What new threat can there be from a bunch of silver tradesmen? What in the name of my illustrious mother and her hallowed household do we have that could possibly make them take that risk?" Even as I spoke, I realized the answer. My mother stirred gently in her chair. The Magician shut his eyes, as if to ward off my anger. "It's Oriel, then." My voice was low and chill. The Lady nodded. "I believe so. News of his power has obviously reached further afield than your bed. I assume that they consider him a prize worth risking your unruly retribution." "So have the spy killed." I shrugged. "That way we are safe, whatever his intentions." "No." She frowned. "I need that silver for the chapel. I dare not jeopardize the deal if this man is nothing more thanwhat were your words?a fool. The papers may be misleading. They may be fakes. There are other possible explanations for this strange behavior." I stared at her, still Touch | Clare London 58 not quite understanding. "The foreigner can find that out for us. I need you to bring him to the cells with us to question the prisoner." "You want him to be your interrogator?" I frowned. "It doesn't work that way." She rose from behind the desk. "Don't play me for a fool! That's exactly how it works! His powerswhatever they are are not his to control. Or so I believe. They are passive, Chariz. They are for others to draw upon as they wish. As I wish." I was silent for a moment. "Mother, that's monstrous, even for you. He is innocent of all this. I don't want him involved." She stared back at me, her dark eyes lit with puzzlement. "Chariz, has he bewitched you in more ways than through your cock? I have never known you to shy away from the more unpleasant jobs nor deny that they need to be done. Perhaps I need to remind you that this is the security of the household that we are discussing, the potential danger to your lifestyle and all you hold dear. Yes, I also remember those mercenaries. And when they were caught, you were the first to suggest the strongest punishment. The walls of your corridors still creak with the echo of their screams." "Not Oriel," I said doggedly. "I'll kill the spy myself. Blame me if he turns out to be some benign crusader instead. But I don't want Oriel used like some water pump, turned on and off at your whim, kept as some item of household inventory, to be covered and uncovered as the season demands." Touch | Clare London 59 "You are the fool," she said, slowly. "I can see it in every word that you speak, in the clench of your fists." She shook her head, wonderingly. "I have never seen such care in you for another person, Chariz. But you insisted on taking him in, and now you must take the consequences. You cannot have the pleasure without the responsibility, or you will not keep your position in the household. You are a creature of mine, remember, before he became one of yours." I had promised myself I would protect him, shelter him. "You will not have him" "Go and fetch him," my mother said. Her voice had grown in volume and strength, her tone the sharpest I had heard for a while. She reached out and took hold of my Chancellor's chain, tugging me closer. "Go now, and it will soon be over." WE STOOD outside the detention cell, listening to the harsh, wheezing breath of the man inside. This deep within the household, the walls were thick stone and damp with stale condensation. I'd been here many times to deal with prisoners. I had often welcomed the harsher face of justice, but now I couldn't imagine being a more reluctant visitor. "Oriel, I don't want you to do this." He looked up at me, eyes clouded with worry, though he tried to look brave. "Chariz... sir. It's no worse than I've done beforethan has been done to me before." He looked younger than he had in the daylight, smaller somehow and more vulnerable. He glanced over to where my mother stood Touch | Clare London 60 with her pathetic Magician and a selection of her grooms chosen for their companionship of muscle rather than mental ability. "I will be glad to help the Lady." I felt sick in my stomach. I'd never felt fear like this before. I could not describe what it was nor identify why it struck me so keenly. It should have shamed me, and it was important to me that I kept face in front of the Lady. Oriel had only to be near the prisoner, to try to find out from his intentions whether he was friend or foe. That was all. Then I would take him away from here, no matter what insults she might use on me, and go swiftly back to my room. I would bathe him in the warmest scented water, feed him the freshest fruits until he laughed and protested he'd had enough and juice dribbled from the corners of his mouth, and then roll him naked on my bed until his skin was flushed with need and his legs stretched up to my shoulders. Oriel smiled slightly and blushed. I suspected he could feel the desire that swamped me. He touched me once on the arm, and then he went to stand beside the grooms to be let into the cell. We would watch him from the safety of the viewing area outside, a small, walled-in platform where we could see through the high window of the cell. I stood next to my mother, though my body shrank away from her. She knew I disapproved of this whole investigation. The Magician waved the grooms and Oriel through into the cell. The door closed solidly behind them, the wooden frame shuddering against the force. They locked it, too, though I didn't imagine there was any physical threat from the silver merchants' man. I could see him through the window, laid out on a pallet set against the far wall. He looked as if he were ill, and he didn't stand up even when Touch | Clare London 61 the grooms announced their authorization from the Lady. His face was a sallow, shadowed color which was surely not entirely due to his dank, new guest quarters. The Magician waved again at the grooms through the window, and they pushed Oriel down on to a chair beside the pallet. He sat without a complaint. One of the grooms let his hand linger too long on Oriel's shoulder, kneading the flesh as if he measured him for market. I marked that man at once for future attention. Then they stepped back against the wall, out of our sight. Oriel stretched out one of his slim, graceful hands and rested it on the prisoner's arm. That was all he did. My stomach lurched. I didn't know how it could happen, for I wasn't touching Oriel or even in the same room, but I felt my heartbeat skip gently and re-settle in a different beatone that I knew with certainty was Oriel's. It was slower than mine and made my muscles loosen and relax, just like they did when he hugged me for no particular reason. Just like they did when I'd slip into the bath alongside him, spilling water on my rugs and making him laugh and complain in equal measures, just like they did when he sang quietlyand unfortunately quite tunelessly in my ear at night. Just like they did whenever I was with him. And then he sat bolt upright. His head went back, and his back arched awkwardly. My heartbeat started to race, and my hands clenched at my sides. "What is it?" My mother was questioning her Magician. "What have you told him to look for? Has he finished?" Touch | Clare London 62 I wasn't looking at her or her minions, not even at Oriel. I was staring at the prisoner on the pallet and the glint in his eye, seeing reflections of the limpid light from through the window and watching the glistening trickles of water down the walls above him. He moved the hand by his side in a surprisingly graceful shape, then back again. Then he followed the pattern again, the movements weak but clear, again and again. I leaped from the platform, knocking a couple of housemaids to the side and shocking everyone. I ran down to the door and started to pull at its lock. "Get him out!" I yelled. The man who stood at the door as guard was staring at me with confusion. I turned back to look at my mother. "Get him out! That's no silver merchant's clerk! There's no plot to steal our treasures or even to kidnap Oriel. This has all been a distraction, a sleight of hand. He's a Magician himself! Can't you see?" I pulled helplessly at the door while the bemused guards looked to the Lady for direction. I glared at the Magician by her side, his face white and his eyes shocked. "Look at the prisoner's hands!" I shouted. "It's some kind of spell or incantation. I've seen similar things before when your charlatans are entertaining my mother with your supper tricks. But this is something else, something more dangerous." I left the guards fumbling with the door lock, and I ran back. I pushed through the Lady's grooms as easily as if they were weakened children, reaching for the Magician and grabbing him by the throat. "Why aren't you in there with them, you coward? Can't you recognize your own putrid kind in that treacherous bastard?" Touch | Clare London 63 "Chariz!" My mother cried out in amazement, but I heard the cell door swinging open at last. I loosened my grip and let the feeble fool crumple back down at her feet. I turned back toward the cell. "What are you doing to him?" If the guards hadn't moved forward, physically pushing me back, I would have rushed right in. The grooms who had gone in with Oriel came stumbling out, and I wrenched at my captors' arms, trying to force my way around, to go to him: to go to Oriel. But I didn't need to, for he came out shortly after, rubbing his eyes as if he'd stepped out from a dark place. His limbs were trembling and his feet were unsteady, but he could still walk. He was breathing very heavily. I knew that, even if I hadn't seen the awkward rise and fall of his chest, because I felt the same throbbing in my own chest. We were together. We breathed as one. He stopped outside the door, leaning against the wall, and lifted his head toward me. It seemed to take a great effort. I looked into his eyes, and the blood screamed in my veins. I burst free of the guards and took a step toward him. Oriel crumpled to the floor, senseless. HE Was curled into a ball on the couch beside me, panting shallowly. We had been taken swiftly to one of my mother's guest rooms, the nearest one we could reach. Oriel was not capable of walking by then; I had carried him in my arms all the way. When I laid him on the couch, I felt as exhausted as if I'd run for miles. It took me several minutes to gather breath and speak again. It isn't natural. The fear was back Touch | Clare London 64 with me, for I knew I was a strong, if not an athletic man. Or I had been before now. My mother had questioned Oriel herself about the prisoner, though she stood a few feet away. She seemed fascinated by his face, her gaze never leaving him, her brow furrowed. "Foe," he had answered her question. The words dragged themselves from his dry lips, weak but clear. "You must not trust him. He means... harm." "I knew it!" She turned to me, her eyes blazing with triumph. "You see how necessary this was, Chariz? This youth has confirmed that there is a threat to me and my household. I will announce the spy's execution tomorrow, and you may oversee it if you wish. Choose whatever method is your pleasure." "He will die," whispered Oriel. I dropped off the couch on to my knees, on a level with his head. A housemaid gave a shocked little moanit was unheard of for an official like me to kneel before a servant. And the son of the Lady herself! I watched the trouble Oriel was having just opening his eyes. "Oriel? Don't speak." "...he knows he will die." His throat bobbed painfully. An unhealthy red rash had sprung up on his neck. "Of course he will die!" I growled. "For causing you distress alone." "No... sir. Chariz. Please listen...." Oriel turned his head to face me, and any further words died on my lips. He had looked like this since he staggered from the cell, and I had never seen such coldness in his face, such a draining of life Touch | Clare London 65 and emotion from his youthful features. His eyes were wide, the black of his pupils bleeding into the irises. The beautiful medley of color had turned into something dark, in turmoil like the depths of foul, fetid water. There were grey circles underneath his eyes, a sallow, shocking smudge against his fair skin. His face looked as emaciated as if he were mortally ill, and his hands still shook all the time. "What ails you?" I reached out for him, but he shrank back. "Don't touch me!" His voice rasped. His body seemed to be a heavy weight to him, and words scraped from his throat like the sound of dusty parchment being torn. "You know how we are together, how we share our feelings. You will absorb more of it, too, and that I cannot bear." "Absorb what?" I was almost hysterical with anger and frustration. "Tell me what he's done to you, Oriel! Tell me what I must do to make it right. Tell me how he must die for his treachery" "I have told you. He already dies," Oriel interrupted, his voice hard and slow. It didn't sound like him at all, the usual gentle flow of his words made ugly in his throat, like stones that had fallen into the breach of a spring stream, damming the water's melody. But he'd never spoken to me with such determination before. "Don't you understand? His purpose to carry through the assassination plot has kept him going, but now the poison they gave him has seeped through his body enough to kill him. He will accept death as his martyrdom." Oriel's breath rattled in his chest. "He has shared his desire with me. Now it will happen." Touch | Clare London 66 "Assassination? His desire?" My voice was hoarse, though the words shrieked in my head. I remembered the scene in the cell and the prisoner's face. The sunken cheeks and the dark-circled eyes were a horrible reflection of Oriel's own looks. "What do you mean, it will happen?" My mother stood some distance behind me but I could hear her voice clearly. The atmosphere in the room was breathless and still with tension. "Chariz." I didn't turn to her. "What does he mean? What has the prisoner done to him?" Her voice shook slightly. "I didn't understand.... I think that this was not a plot to kidnap, but to kill. Chariz, I had no idea.... Son, I am so sorry this has happened." "What plot?" I gritted my teeth to prevent the screams from escaping. "What has happened?" She gave a barely imperceptible gasp. "I think he came solely to kill Oriel." I didn't want to take my eyes from Oriel, but I swung my head slowly around to stare at both her and the Magician. The Magician was in the grip of her grooms, and his voice was full of terror, now, both of his mistress and her son. "I believe there has been fear in the Magician's Circle, my Lady, my Lord, fear of the foreigner and his strange tricks. Some factions believe him to be a threat to the householdto the whole world itself. He is an abomination, an aberration!" His eyes rolled alarmingly. "We cannot allow such things to exist. You must understand that. They undermine the real magic of the city." Touch | Clare London 67 "Oriel is not a thing." I wanted to kill the Magician. I wanted to disembowel him and to string his entrails between the tip of his cane and the pit of his ass for all to see and for Oriel and me to laugh over. But in the same breath I couldn't find the energy to argue with such a stupid man and his murderous caste. I wanted him to be gone. I wanted never to leave Oriel's side. I wanted... this not to be so. Oriel sighed, but very gently as if the mere passage of his breath hurt him. "It's... strong. His desire, the hate. He wants me dead. He wants me to share the agony of the poison... the way it devastates his body. It's clever... especially created for him, to do its job fast and well. To allow for no turning back. No salvation." "But that's his fate, his suicide," I snapped. Oriel's eyes were also rolling, the blood vessels like tiny red script on the white surface. His breathing was even shallower, his fists clenched so tightly that the knuckles seemed to want to burst from his skin. "You're away from him now. You're not the one who took the poison. He will die, and you will live." Oriel sighed again. "Too much hatred... too much pain. He shared it with me knowingly. I will die too." "No," I said, my voice grim. "You did not connect. You will not connect." Oriel tried to shake his head and failed. He was losing the energy to speak. "I couldn't help but do it, and he knew that. It will happen." My mother moaned behind me. "Chariz, please... we can make him comfortable at least." Touch | Clare London 68 "No," I said, again. The word was my mantra, my magic. "This is not happening. He will survive this. He's with me now, and I give him strength." "Chariz...." She touched my shoulder, but I pulled away from her, my eyes never leaving Oriel's face. "Chariz," she pleaded, begging the back of my head because I would not give her my attention. "You heard him. You run the risk of being affected by this yourself, and that cannot be! I do not understand the connection you have with this strange creature, but you must come away, now. You cannot afford to endanger yourself. You are the heir to the household." Oriel nodded. "Yes... go." Any other words were too soft to catch. "No," I said, stubbornly. Why wasn't anyone listening to me? I drew a deep breath and opened out my arms. "Step back from him!" my mother called out. There was a strange panic to her voice, and if I hadn't known better, I would have thought she was scared for me. "Chariz...." Oriel's eyes focused on me, black and deep and lost in the pain of leaving. "He's my Companion. Didn't I tell you so?" I hadn't believed that I could raise tears in a man, and yet now it seemed I had a full measure of them myself. "He's with me now. I share him and all he feels... all he is. I'll take this from him." I leaned forward before anyone else could reach me, slipping my arms around Oriel and locking my hands behind his back. My body pressed against him from torso to hip. We were together, and I kissed those pale, drained lips as if my life depended on it. Touch | Clare London 69 Because, of course, it did. The last thing I heard was my mother's anguished scream, wailing something about my face. The last thing I felt was Oriel's whooping breath gasping between my lips and a soft, warm froth from his mouth slipping over my tongue. Then nothing. IT HAD been warm in my dream, though when I moved to the side there was a bitingly cold draft. I rolled back, seeking to be against Oriel's body again. He wasn't there. There was pain in my chest, a tightness in my throat. I tried to smile. I would have laughed, too, if there had not been such a thick silence around me. Had they come for me, too? To take me away into the darkness? Someone touched me then, fingers intertwining with mine, a plump, soft palm burning me but like ice rather than flame. I cried out and discovered sound had returned. There were other voices that joined with me. I thought I recognized one as Oriel's. I felt the energy seep from my limbs and my muscles loosen. Was this the end? If I were called away, there was so much I would lose, so much I would miss. I couldn't ever remember feeling such a depth of regret. Go back, Chariz. Touch | Clare London 70 The small hand tugged at me, almost playfully, then released its grip. I found that I could smile, after all. The fingers tickled my palm as they left, just as before, but this time, I kept smiling. And I slept quite peacefully. THE morning was pale and cold, as it often was in the eastern province. I swung my legs over the side of the shallow mattress and got slowly to my feet. The bed springs creaked a little, as did I. Over on the dresser was a basin, generously large but chipped. I puffed out a sigh, watching my breath like mist in the air. The water in the basin would need the ice broken on its surface again. I did it quickly, as I had learned to do, so that my fingers didn't go numb. I had also learned not to look too closely into the speckled shard of mirror that was propped behind it. I could shave without looking now, at least until I reached the final patches. I was still a little clumsy with them. I knew what I'd see if I looked at my reflection, and I still wasn't reconciled to it. But that would come, no doubt. The sun's rays filtered across the thin bedsheet from underneath a half-torn drape. I turned, admiring the silver sheen that trickled over Oriel's pale, folded limbs. He shifted, letting out a soft moan. I slid back onto the bed beside him, shifting lazily on to my belly and staring across into his face. Startled, I saw that he was already awake. I blushed and blustered. "Damned bed is the most uncomfortable thing I've ever slept in. It's no wonder you're Touch | Clare London 71 restless." He didn't answer me, and although his head was turned to me, his eyes seemed to be focused elsewhere. "Oriel, is the sickness bad again?" He shook his head slowly. "No, I'm much better. You know that. I'm stronger every day." He rolled to his side, pushing himself up on to one arm and facing me. His eyes ran down the length of my body. "It's too cold to sleep naked, Chariz. You should wear a shirt." I smiled. "And cover my gorgeous body from your view? How else will I continue to fascinate you? To drive you wild with desire?" I dipped my head and kissed his shoulder. I was still moving slowly. My limbs ached early in the mornings, and the muscle tone was still sorely wasted. Our strange, involuntary exile had taken its toll on me too. Up until now, I had rarely traveled on foot farther than my carriage steps, yet Oriel and I had covered all the miles to the eastern province in less than a month. And we would likely move on farther when the curiosity about us grew intrusive again. But for now Oriel was laughing, and I loved to hear the sound, soft and musical. He no longer sang much to me, partly because we weren't meant to draw any untoward attention to ourselves and partly because I complained so bitterly each timethough tempered with a smileabout his lack of talent. But then his laughter was a far, far better gift. "You don't need to try to fascinate me," he murmured. "You already do. I wouldn't want anyone else. I look at you and I... want to be yours." He flushed, the reddening skin very prominent on his thin neck. He was starting to put Touch | Clare London 72 weight back on but not fast enough for my liking. In faint light, he still looked like a recovering invalid. Indeed, we both were. I rolled on to my back and stared at the ceiling. "To be mine is all very well. But I'm no longer the strong and powerful master, am I? I'm" He silenced me, sliding over and pressing his lips to mine, murmuring into my mouth. "Chariz, I'm sorry." I frowned. "You're sorry? What for?" "This is not what you want. This not what you were born to. You have no rich residence any more, no important political position. This isn't what you deserve" I nipped fiercely at his chin to stop him before he became distressed. "It doesn't matter. We'll go back one day." "When we're better?" He was suspicious of my distraction, but he liked to hear me talk of it. "When people can bear to look at us again?" I nodded and kissed him to hold back his questions, for I didn't have any real answers for him yet. "And so what do you want in life, Oriel?" He frowned, looking confused. Maybe no one had ever asked him this. "All I've ever wanted is for this to stop. This servitude, as you call it, absorbing other people's disgusts and desires. I'd like to be someone without this gift, without this curse." "And then?" He smiled, his confusion gone. "But I want the same as you!" Touch | Clare London 73 I never ceased to be amazed at the way his strange ideas could startle me. "The same as me?" "To belong," he said simply. "That's what we both want, isn't it? To have a true home, to have a true companion." The emotion caught in my throat, making my voice hoarse. "Not riches? Palaces? Retribution against those who've sapped your energy, who've robbed you of a home and childhood?" Who nearly killed you? "Do you feel that way yourself?" He challenged me, though his eyes were soft. I shook my head slowly. "You once said it to me. What I want now is the truth. To be satisfied, to be real." He nodded. He never questioned my sincerity any more. His finger brushed lightly across my nipple, making it tighten. "I want only what I have. If I cannot have peace, I want this: to be with you. To live as long as we can like this. Your mother" I made the usual sound of disgust when she was mentioned. "No," he protested. "Listen to me. She gave this to us." "This?" I lifted a hand and waved my once-elegant fingers around to encompass the hovel where we had slept incognito for the last few weeks. "Remind me to send gifts of gratitude to her at the next festival season." He nudged at me. "Your cynicism is unfair, Chariz. She let us go. She let me live, and she let you be yourself, at least until you are recovered." Maybe he felt me tense up beside him, for he placed a hand on my belly, holding me still. Soothing me. "She wanted to talk more to you before we left." Touch | Clare London 74 "She couldn't meet my eyes," I growled. I looked away from him too. "She could not bear to look at such a ravaged face where once there had been her exquisitely beautiful son and heir." As soon as the prisoner had died, I'd hurried with Oriel away from the household, away from her. Yet I'd been surprised how much it hurt to inspire pain in her, despite our enmity. She'd been horrified. She'd seen the face of one who had drawn himself and his lover back from death but not without suffering a cruel loss. I'd been physically devastated. I had been robbed of the health and handsomeness that I'd always taken for granted. My mother had seen her son's face and form reduced to that of a corpse. My spirit had been too weak to give anything more than the barest life to me and Oriel. The poison had taken everything else. That time, I had been the one to give, not to take. If I'd stayed to talk further to her, maybe I'd have found that I satisfied her at last. I sighed, and Oriel shook his head, nuzzling his lips into my throat so that I arched back toward him, sighing with a lazy pleasure. "She said that for a moment... you looked like him. Like Adram, the child she lost. The child that she loved." "The other child" "That she loved the same as you," he interrupted. Was he angry with me? Shame was a new experience. "And she has had a full life with you. So much more than she had with him. She has had years to see you grow, so much more to share with you." Touch | Clare London 75 I frowned, and it was his turn to sigh, knowing this conversation was a familiar topic and one I often rejected. Yet it would wait for another time. We had little else to entertain ourselves, with strength too feeble for heavy work yet not enough money to be idle. "Your bitterness has been calmer recently, Chariz. I don't want it to eat away at you any more. You want something as different from that as the sun-season is from the snow." "And that's what I have," I said softly, watching his eyes flicker as he gazed at me. "I have you." "Yes." There was a strange tone to his voice, a hint of worry. "You have everything you want now." I stared at him for a long moment, my fingers tracing around the tiny bump of his belly, feeling the muscle ripple in his groin. "We can't stay here forever, can we, Oriel?" His breathing stilled, and now it was his turn to look away. "No, Chariz. Of course not. You have a real home to return to, and I will have... to go. How soon do you want me to leave?" I grinned, a most unusual expression of mischief for me. "Never. I'm teasing you, you fool. I just don't want to be stuck in this hovel for years so that I grow old here, itchy from infested termites and covered with mold. We must look for somewhere new as soon as the snow-season passes. We'll keep traveling, supporting each other through this." "I don't understand." He looked young and vulnerable again, and it made my heart ache to hold him. "You mean I can stay with you?" Touch | Clare London 76 "You must," I said quite firmly. The words hissed out, the cold making shapes of them in the air. "I'll always want you. You must always serve me. I want you beside me at all times of day and nightand as a man, not as a pet passed from barracks to bedroom. As my Companion, remember? I made my choice. I treasure it." "And the others...?" He looked confused. "How will I stop them from connecting with me?" The danger of it, said his frightened eyes. I twisted my fingers into his hair and pulled myself more closely against him. "I don't entirely know. But I think we'll find out together. We have seen such changes. You draw from me as well as I from you. I think together we're stronger." I tugged on his head, forcing him to look back into my eyes. "Be honest and show some of my selfishness. Do you really have what you want with me?" There was a sudden, shocking fear in my mind that his own desire was to slide back into slavery to others, that I was no longer the man he could admire. "I do," he whispered. I leaned over him, and his mouth opened to take my tongue, to let it lick greedily around the taste of him. "I have everything. I don't have your education and breeding, so maybe it doesn't sound so pretty...." I laughed aloud. "Pretty enough!" The day ahead seemed so much more pleasant, so much more promising. "So maybe there will be a release from your curse if you accept my service in return, if we protect each other. I want to do that for you, Oriel. Maybe you'll no longer have to mold yourself to the shadows of other people's desires. You'll control your empathy. You'll find a way to be free of it." Touch | Clare London 77 "But not from you!" The words fell from his lips like startled, scattered birds. "No," I soothed. "Never from me. Unless...." He was puzzled again, ready to be frightened. But he wasn't the one to feel fear. I swallowed carefully. "I've changed so much. I look... I'm not so beautiful. When you look at me... do you see...?" He smiled then, a boyish smile, a mischievous smile. "Vain as ever, Chariz." He ran his hand along my face, stroking the sunken cheeks and the cruelly angular line of my jaw. My skin was no longer smooth nor glowing, my body no longer strong, my stride no longer quick and arrogant. He never mentioned it, but neither did he shy away from it. "We will change together," he said. "Be stronger together. Free of the bad, yet not of the good." His lips kissed at the line of skin between my ear and my chin. "Beautiful," he murmured. "Always." I reached for him, my cock stirring on my thigh and my skin warm with something other than sunlight. His gaze fastened on me, soaking down into my soul, suffusing it, caressing it with another creature's devotion. I felt as if great things might be achieved, as if I were being resurrected as a less confident man but a far more contented one. As if I truly would recover. A better dream, by far! "I belong with you, Oriel. My protection will always be true to you. Trust me." He was already shivering with anticipation underneath me, his legs outstretched around my hips and his hands Touch | Clare London 78 pulling me down against his groin. His fingers slid around my swelling cock, stroking me with confidence, knowing how to ask for his own pleasure. He was hungry for more than breakfast; hungry for me. The day was long and empty enough for us to treasure that thought. His smile was every answer I craved. It was enough of hope to build upon. Forever. CLARE LONDON took her pen name from the city where she lives, loves, and writes. A lone, brave female in a frenetic, testosterone-fueled family home, she juggles her writing with the weekly wash, waiting for the far distant day when she can afford to give up her day job as an accountant. She's written in many genres and across many settings, with novels and short stories published both online and in print. She says she likes variety in her writing while friends say she's just fickle, but as long as both theories spawn good fiction, she's happy. Most of her work features male/male romance and drama with a healthy serving of physical passion, as she enjoys both reading and writing about strong, sympathetic, and sexy characters. Clare currently has several novels sulking at that tricky chapter three stage and plenty of other projects in mind... she just has to find out where she left them in that frenetic, testosterone-fueled family home. Visit Clare's web site at http://www.clarelondon.co.uk and her blog at http://clarelondon.livejournal.com/. Touch was previously published in the Eternal Press anthology Masquerade. Also by CLARE LONDON http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com Touch OCopyright Clare London, 2010 Published by Dreamspinner Press 4760 Preston Road Suite 244-149 Frisco, TX 75034 http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/ This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. Cover Art by Dan Skinner/Cerberus Inc. cerberusinc@hotmail.com Cover Design by Mara McKennen This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of International Copyright Law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines and/or imprisonment. This eBook cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No part of this eBook can be shared or reproduced without the express permission of the publisher. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Dreamspinner Press at: 4760 Preston Road, Suite 244-149, Frisco, TX 75034 http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/ Released in the United States of America May 2010 2nd eBook Edition: Previously included in the Eternal Press anthology Masquerade.
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