Red Seas Under Red Skies: The Gentleman Bastard Sequence, Book Two (Gentleman Bastards 2)

‘Did it hurt? Gods above, woman, no, that was—’

‘I don’t mean that.’ She gave him a firm poke in the scar that arced across his abdomen beneath his right breast. ‘That.’

‘Oh, that. No, it was wonderful. Someone came after me with a pair of Thieves’ Teeth. Felt like a warm breeze on a fine spring day. I loved every second of—oof!’

‘Ass!’

‘Where did you get such sharp elbows? You grind those things against a whetstone, or—oof!’

Ezri lay on top of Jean on the demi-silk hammock that took up most of the space in her compartment. It was just barely long enough for him to lie with one arm above his head (brushing the interior bulkhead of the ship’s starboard side), and he could have spanned its width between his outstretched arms. An alchemical trinket the size of a coin provided a faint silver light. Ezri’s witchwood-dark curls were touched with fey highlights; scattered strands gleamed like threads of spider-silk in moonlight. He ran his hands through that damp forest of hair, massaged her warm scalp with his fingernails, and she let her muscles go slack with a gratifying moan of relaxation.

The motionless air in the compartment was thick with sweat and the trapped heat of their first endless, frantic hour together. The place was also, Jean noticed for the first time, utterly wrecked. Their clothes were scattered in purest chaos. Ezri’s weapons and few possessions littered the deck like navigational hazards. A small net containing a few books and scrolls hung from a ceiling beam and tilted toward the compartment door, indicating that the whole ship was heeled over to larboard.

‘Ezri,’ he muttered, staring at the stiffened canvas partition that formed their left-hand ‘wall’. A pair of large feet and a pair of small feet had given it a serious denting. ‘Ezri, whose cabin did we nearly kick our way into a little while ago?’

‘Oh . . . Scholar Treganne’s. Who told you to stop doing that to my hair? Oh, much better.’

‘Will she be pissed off?’

‘More so than usual?’ Ezri yawned and shrugged. ‘She’s free to find a lover of her own and kick it back whenever she pleases. I’m too preoccupied to be diplomatic.’ She kissed Jean’s neck, and he shivered. ‘Besides. Night hasn’t nearly run its course yet. We may yet kick the whole damn thing down if I have my way, Jerome.’

‘Then it’s your way we’ll have,’ said Jean, gently shifting the weight of her body until they were laying on their sides, face to face. He ran his hands as carefully as he could over the stiff bandages on her upper arms; the only thing she couldn’t in good sense take off. His hands moved to her cheeks, and then to her hair. They kissed for the sort of endless moment that only exists between lovers whose lips are still new territory to one another.

‘Jerome,’ she whispered.

‘No. Do something for me, Ezri, in private: never call me that.’

‘Why not?’

‘Call me by my real name.’ He kissed her neck, put his lips to one of her ears and whispered into it.

‘Jean . . .’ she repeated.

‘Gods, yes. Say that again.’

‘Jean Estevan Tannen. I like that.’

‘Yours and yours alone,’ Jean whispered.

‘Something in return,’ she said. ‘Ezriane Dastiri de la Mastron. Dame Ezriane of the House of Mastron. Nicora.’

‘Really? You have an estate or something?’

‘Doubt it. Spare daughters who run away from home don’t tend to receive holdings.’ She kissed him again, then ruffled his beard with her fingertips. ‘In fact, with the letter I left mother and father, I’m sure I was disinherited at the best possible speed.’

‘Gods. I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be.’ She moved her fingers down to his chest. ‘These things happen. You keep moving. You find things here and there that help you forget.’

‘You do indeed,’ he whispered, and then they were too busy to talk for a good long while.