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Kerik picks up the collar. With his other hand, he strokes Perl’s face again and lifts his chin? “You look beautiful on your knees,” he says breathily, meaning every word.

But Perl stiffens in his grasp. “What are you doing?”

“I am continuing what we were doing a moment ago. I want to put this collar around your neck and kiss you. I want to kiss you as my thrall and I know you want me to.”

“Kiss me?” Perl’s voice is suddenly hard. “No. I cannot. I swore an oath. I told you. Not until my work is done.”

Kerik stares down. “I have kissed you once already, before the Queen at the Silver Ball. I would do it again.” He drops his voice low, “I would do it differently.”

“I…” Perl begins. He has more colour in his pale cheeks than Kerik has ever seen. He leans back, getting to his feet. He is staring at Kerik in shock. Kerik cannot stop looking at the mark that rings Perl’s neck. Perl snatches up his jerkin from the bed and pulls it on.

Kerik gives Perl what he hopes is a pleasing expression and says, “I’m sure you’d be happier if you got back on your knees and allowed me to collar and kiss you.” He lets his expression change to something a little darker. “Unless you would prefer me to command you?”

“I would not,” Perl snaps. “You cannot understand how shameful it was for me to even kneel before you once and I only did it…, I only did it, to show you the grace I expect from you.” Perl is refastening the laces that hold his jerkin in place with shaking fingers. “You should not have removed my clothing. You should not have seen… what was done. I do not show that to anyone.”

“Don’t I deserve a small reward after taking that whipping?” Kerik says softly. “Your beautiful body. Your sweet mouth?”

“A reward,” Perl spits back. “A reward for taking a whipping you deserved and insisted upon.”

Kerik moves fast. He leaps from the bed and grasps Perl’s shoulders, ignoring the gasp of anger as he spins him around and throws him down on the furs. Kerik climbs up, caging Perl’s body. He is sitting right over Perl’s cock and he can feel it, half-roused through the leather of his breeches. “Or would you prefer it this way?” Kerik growls down at him. “I have been with many a man who does.”

But when Perl speaks he sounds angry, not aroused. “Mortal men,” Perl says in a soft snarl. “You think I will swoon if you display your strength like this? I am a fae of the Ice Court.”

“Your cock likes it.” Kerik grinds against Perl demonstrating Perl’s hardness by pressing down on it with his own.

Perl gasps, but swallows it. “Brute strength is meaningless. I have magic.”

“Then pretend you don’t. Pretend you are simply a beautiful mortal man and I am a prince, stronger than you, ravishing you no matter how you protest.”

“No, I…” Perl stammers, but he presses up, just for a moment. His cock grinds into Kerik’s. He is fiercely roused, blood-hard in his leather breeches. Their faces are a breath apart. “No,” Perl says. And he’s gone, vanished from under Kerik as if he has melted. Kerik falls into the bed. He rolls over and sits up. Perl is standing on the far side of the chamber, beside his desk.

“But you want it. You want this,” Kerik says, confused and smarting bitter from his rejection.

Perl looks at Kerik with eyes narrow, ice-blue slits in his pale face. “My desires are irrelevant," he says. “I have long decided never to act on them. Least of all with you.”

15

PERL

Over the next few days, Perl refuses to speak of what happened between him and Kerik. He tries not to let the truth of it dissuade him from his task.

It should not matter that Kerik knows this truth. What he was found doing with Seridil. What was done to him as a result. The foul desires he does his best to ignore. The entire Ice Court know the truth of it. Kerik was bound to discover these things sooner or later. If Vane had not told him someone else would have.

But in truth, Perl knows, it was always going to be Vane.

Kerik seems to deal with this in the same guileless easy manner he deals with everything. Letting things fall back into charm and flirting.

They take turns sleeping either in the thrall bed or in Perl’s bed and every night, Kerik makes some lewd suggestion that they should both share the bed and Perl rolls his eyes at him.

It is as if it never happened.

Except for the way the memory of kneeling on the floor is burned in Perl’s mind. The deep thud of arousal he had felt. Like nothing else. How much he had wanted to agree to the kiss.

But baring his neck for Kerik had been too much. Reliving his lowering with iron. That heavy reminder of how far he had strayed from what was expected of him. Even when Kerik had pinned him on the bed, enacted a scene straight from Perl’s most forbidden fantasies, he couldn’t find a way to break free of the weight of his shame.

And now the memory of Kerik throwing him down on the bed with all his bravado and easy mastery on display, haunts him. Perl had been able to smell Kerik’s desire, feel it and hear it in his cracking breath.

The only cure for that is not to think of it.