Chapter 9: The Answer I Can Give

Jory's hands stopped moving.

The fire popped. Out on the plain, the pride was singing, ragged and happy, for two cubs who were safe in their mother's arms.

"I am not saying no," Jory said.

"Then say what you are saying."

"Yes."

Lucan went completely still.

"To tonight," Jory said quickly. "Only to tonight. The stone is a different question, and I'm not ready for that one."

"I know."

"Take it or leave it, Lion."

"I will take it," said the lion king, and the smile that came over his face was slow and helpless and young.

"It is the answer I can take. It is a very good answer."

Jory laughed shakily and sat back on his heels.

"I should tell you," he said. "I've never done this."

"Done what?"

"Any of it. There was no room for it, where I came from. Eleven years of staying alive, and that was all of it."

He hadn't planned to say so much.

Lucan's thumb moved on his wrist.

"I too have never," he said. "I am a king."

"I was not permitted to want, and then I wanted nothing. And then the stone had a hollow in it."

He stopped.

"And then?" Jory asked.

"And then you," said Lucan, and left it there.

Jory bent down and kissed him.

It was gentle at first, careful of the bandage and the long dark cuts beneath it.

Then Lucan's hand came up into his hair and the kiss changed.

"You are hurt," Jory managed.

"I am very well," Lucan said.

"Lie still," Jory said. "I mean it."

He pressed a palm to the bandage.

"If you tear those, I'll sew you up again, and you won't like what I say while I do it."

"Is that a threat?" Lucan asked.

"It's a promise."

The king lay back against the hides, and the purr rose through the den, and he did not look away.

Jory took off the tunic and let it fall.

The fire made a map of him in gold and shadow, the old bite on his shoulder, his thin ribs, his scarred hands.

Lucan looked at all of it with open, unhidden wonder.

"Beautiful," he said.

"I'm a mess."

"You are the most beautiful thing I have seen."

Jory had no reply to that, so he used his mouth for something else.

He took his time over it.

He learned where the king's breath caught and where it broke.

He went back to those places until Lucan swore softly at the roof.

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