Pleasure and Purpose Read online

  "I plead your mercy, Alaric."

  "For what?" His heart had beat in a thunder a few breaths before but now settled like stone inside his chest.

  Edward blew out a ragged breath. "For never admitting I knew how you felt about me." A sudden, horrendous memory of school ripped through Alaric's mind, and he took a half-staggering step back. He'd been hiding beneath his covers, prick in his fist and breath coming fast, eyes closed, imagination filled with thoughts of Edward as he'd seen him only moments before, bare-chested and wet from the baths. Laughing. Hair falling too long over his eyes and being flung back with one hand while Cillian slapped at his arse with the edge of a towel. In his mind Edward had reached a hand to pull him close. In his mind, Edward's kiss had never made Alaric feel like this.

  They stared at one another until Edward once again looked away. Though the room was warm from the fire, a chill rippled over Alaric's bare skin. He'd been bare dozens of times in front of Edward, barer than this, but he suddenly felt more naked than he ever had. He grabbed up his shirt from the chair and slipped it over his arms, buttoning it with stiff fingers.

  "You're my friend," Alaric said when it seemed silence would strangle them both. "I've never doubted you knew it."

  Edward cupped Alaric's cheek before letting his hand slide down to rest on Alaric's shoulder. The weight of it shouldn't have been as heavy as it was. Alaric couldn't bring himself to pull away.

  Edward had ever been an ideal. Taller. Stronger. Smarter, handsomer, richer. Better loved. There'd been times with the two of them, Cillian and Edward, Alaric had felt as though he were running along three steps behind. But that had been in school, when they were boys and young men. Though they were scarcely older now, things had changed. Alaric took a step back at the thought of it. Things had changed. Between them and within himself. Edward, seeing the step, perhaps mistook it for retreat and moved forward to snag Alaric's wrist.

  "I have been unfair to you, Alaric."

  Alaric had never thought to be here, this way, with Edward staring from misty eyes at him. He'd never thought he might not wish to have his friends hand in his own, or that Edwards ever-present face might have been replaced in his mind with that of someone else. Even on the floor at Larissa's boots, performing like a lapdog for her every whim, Edward's face had sometimes swum up from the darkness to remind Alaric there was more.

  Things had changed, indeed.

  "You haven't," Alaric said. "Truly, Edward, you haven't." In Edward's dark eyes Alaric caught a flash of a bed, entangled limbs. A woman's blonde unbound hair. And the sight of his own face, twisted in passion. It was all in his head, of course, his imagination as vivid as it had ever been, but somehow, he thought Edward might be thinking of the same moment.

  "I don't know why it's been me. You and Cillian both . . . you both have ever been my dear friends."

  Even now Alaric expected the flash of envy that always came when Edward spoke of Cillian. "As you've both been to me."

  Edward let go of Alaric's wrist. "Did we leave you behind?" Hearing it put out that way, Alaric could only swallow the rush of emotions. Mostly anger and envy. No small part grief.

  "Yes. You did."

  Edward sagged and turned again to lean against the window frame. One hand came up to cover his eyes. Alaric watched him for a moment as the world spun beneath them, but unlike it had done in the past when he spun with it, now he stood still.

  "But should you have waited for me? Instead of moving on to find your solace with your lady wife, should you have stayed behind to wait until I caught up?" Alaric shook his head. "Should Cillian?"

  Alaric laughed. "Could he have? I've seen you both with those women, and I don't believe you could. No, Edward."

  "But all of this—"

  Alaric's voice grew stony. "All of this was my own doing. And I have nobody to blame but myself."

  Edward stared until a small smile crept over his mouth. "She's done it, has she not? Done this to you."

  At first Alaric thought Edward meant Larissa, that she'd sent him spiraling down into a mess of drugs and despair, and that was no small part true. But the rest of it had been him, and would have been him, no matter what. Because he'd chosen to embrace pain instead of fighting it.

  He looked round the room again, the floor swept and books tidied, the fire stoked and lit, and he realized who Edward meant. "Mina? Yes. I suppose she has." Edward laughed and rubbed at his eyes again, looking wearier than ever. "By the Arrow, they do work magic."

  Alaric wouldn't have called it that. He believed not in such a thing. "Go home to your bed before you fall over."

  Edward yawned so broadly his jaw cracked and scrubbed again at his face. "I should. My lady wife is patient, but not so patient she doesn't miss me." From far off, Alaric heard the faint sound of the hourly chime. Several had sounded since Mina had left him, and though she hadn't promised any sort of punishment should he not have finished all the items on the list she'd left, he couldn't help the itch of restlessness when he realized how many tasks remained. Well aware this came from within himself and not from anything she'd said, nevertheless he looked toward the door and no longer at his friend.

  "Are you happy?"

  Edward s question, such a strange thing for another man to ask, stopped Alaric stone solid. He turned, thinking of how to answer. He knew how happy felt, or thought he had. Mina had given him focus, which wasn't the same.

  "I might be," he told Edward cautiously.

  "She's meant to bring you solace," Edward said in a low voice. "They do that."

  "That's not the same as happy, Edward."

  "I know it." Edward laughed.

  Alaric laughed too, after a moment. "You and Cillian found yours. The Order does know its work. I'm sure Mina will do just what she's meant to. But I don't expect to gain what you and Cillian have."

  "No. I suppose you shouldn't expect such a thing." Edward yawned again. "Your mercy. I should go. But one more thing, Alaric, before I do. Cillian would have me give this to you."

  The envelope, sealed with red wax and Cillian's stamp, was too heavy to be an invitation, and knowing his friend as he did, Alaric rather doubted it was personal correspondence.

  "What is it?"

  "Think you I know the king's business?"

  Alaric smiled. "I think you know it better than he does, sometimes."

  "He wants you to return to take up your duties as his minister." Alaric blinked and tapped the letter before setting it on the table. "Does he? This is an official summons, then?"

  "The seal would make it so, yes. He's asking you not only as your king but as your friend."

  "He could have come to me and asked in person." Alaric knew this was splitting hairs and beside the point, but the thought of going back to court, to facing them all, to actually doing something undictated. On his own.

  Edward frowned. "Alaric—"

  "Never mind." Alaric waved a hand. "I'll read it. Thank you for delivering it." Edward nodded and looked as though he meant to say more, but whatever words rose to his tongue were shoved aside by another yawn. Pushing for an argument had never been Alaric's way. In the time it took for Edward to yawn again, for Alaric to breathe in and out, he thought of pricking at Edward to give himself reason for anger.

  "Go home," he said in the end, with a gentle push of his friend toward the door. "Go." The door opened just before they reached it. Mina stood no higher than Alaric's chin yet she filled the doorway top to bottom, side to side. Or so it seemed to him. Edward perhaps had a different view, though he gave her a half bow and a murmured greeting. Mina nodded at him with a smile, but didn't offer her hand. She stood aside as he left and only when the door had closed behind her did she turn to Alaric. She said nothing. She didn't have to.

  It was not the way it had been with Larissa. Larissa had ever done what she could to make him yearn for her, and he had, willingly enough. She'd taunted and teased him into a fever for the pleasure of pulling his strings, and he'd allowed that, too,