A Matter of Taste - Chapter 16

Elodie was even more affectionate than usual over the next few days, and I tried hard to convince myself that it had nothing to do with any effect that Bansi's departure might have had upon my mood or my bearing. The idea that he could affect my relationship with my daughter even now infuriated me, and that only made Elodie grow more somber and more determined to plaster herself to my side and drown me in her sweet, murmured reassurances that I was the best papa in the whole world and nothing anyone else said about me mattered more than that.

A few days passed, and we had almost reached an equilibrium. We were just finishing supper, and I was trying to compel Elodie to eat her vegetables without giving away how much her refusal delighted me. In the days before, she would have choked them down and watched me with every bite, as though to judge whether her sacrifice had served its purpose and made me happy.

That she refused me now, twisting her face up in an exaggerated expression of disgust and trying to wheedle and bargain her way to my surrender, eased the concern in my heart over how my upset might be affecting her. I liked her better this way, a fierce, stubborn force of nature, wholly and completely herself, better than the wide-eyed somber thing she had been over the past few days.

We were laughing, teasing and playing with one another despite the battle of wills between us, when a knock at the door made her leap from her chair. "I'll get it, Papa!"

A Matter of Taste - Chapter 15

I dozed, rousing occasionally to register Bansi shifting against me or to kick a leg out from beneath the blankets, and woke to a room that smelled like sex and glowed with the light of late afternoon.

Bansi still slept, sprawled on his back with all four limbs splayed haphazardly across the mattress. I climbed out gingerly, hoping not to disturb him, but he just snored loudly and rolled over to bury his face in the pillow.

I picked my way across the room, gathering my scattered clothing and donning it all again. When I went out to the sitting room in search of my boots, I found the dishes from our meal still scattered about, forgotten, and I gathered them up.

I carried the dishes to Bansi's kitchens and left them there to be washed by Bansi or, more likely, whatever staff he hired to handle the cooking and cleaning for him. When I returned, I found Bansi up despite my care to be quiet and circumspect, leaning naked against the doorjamb and scratching a hand through his hair. He looked muzzy, still half-asleep, but his gaze sharpened when he spied me. "You were going to leave without waking me?" His words were soft and wounded.

"No. I was going to come and kiss you good-bye," I said, and did so now, sliding into his arms and leaning in to press my lips to his.

A Matter of Taste - Chapter 14

We returned home half an hour after departing with enough food between us to feast on for a week. Bansi had charmed the cafe's chef, wheedled and smiled and talked them into sending us home with our dishes. Bansi slipped him a bill I didn't dare look to see the value of, to speed the bargaining along. And thus we came to be walking down the street, back to Bansi's new home, with baskets of food set on the cafe's own tableware and kept warm under heavy silver cloches. The aroma of the food wafted between us, and if it tasted half as good as it smelled, then Bansi's recommendation had been justly deserved.

We sat on the floor in the middle of his sitting room, surrounded by boxes and draped furniture. We balanced our plates on our knees and laughed that we ate like paupers from plates fit for royalty.

The food was divine, even better than I could have hoped for. You never found food this good, cooked to perfection and flavored so delicately, in the lower city. I sighed and leaned my back against a trunk and didn't let myself think about how nice it would be to be able to eat like this all the time. That way lay madness, or at least resentment and bitterness, and I was enjoying the meal too well to want to spoil it with such things.

Besides, there were other, more pressing things to spoil the mood with.

A Matter of Taste - Chapter 13

The next day, I made sure to check the front step before I woke Elodie. I felt only the heavy weight of inevitability when I opened the door and saw another package waiting there, wrapped and tied up neatly and addressed to me in that same familiar scrawl.

I brought it in and opened it carefully, holding my breath that the rustling of the paper wouldn't wake Elodie prematurely. The wrapping fell away to reveal an ornate teapot made of ceramic so fine it was nearly translucent, glazed with an intricate ironwork pattern and accented with bits of gold. Bundled up inside the teapot was a small paper sack that, upon opening, proved to be a tea blend that smelled of the same intoxicating spices that the cup he'd brought me the day before had. He'd also included a small jar of honey and a pot of cream sealed up with wax.

I kept the tea and its accompaniments for myself, a small indulgence, but packed the pot back up in its wrapping and set it aside, to sell at the market the next chance I had.

A Matter of Taste - Chapter 12

Morning dawned too early, and I woke groaning at the hour, at the long day ahead of me. Mostly, I groaned at the certainty that I would see Bansi again. I didn't know how to face him. The kisses we'd shared the day before had been different. Something had changed between us, the ground shifted and suddenly uneven beneath my feet, and my life was already a carefully-orchestrated routine, like one of those street entertainers one sometimes saw in the Walk, who somehow managed to dance and perform acrobatics all while keeping half a dozen balls or apples or melons in the air. That was my life, that was how I kept a roof over our heads and food on our table, the shop running and coin trickling into savings for Elodie's education. It was a dance I knew by heart through years of routine, and one in which only a hair's breadth separated success from failure. I couldn't be off balance. I couldn't afford to stumble.

And Bansi was like an earthquake, tossing the ground beneath me and throwing everything to chaos. I had to keep my feet under me. I had to keep him at a distance.

I opened the front door, ushering Elodie out before me into the chill morning, and felt the ground tilt off its axis at the sight of a little package on our front step, something small and rectangular, bundled up in brown paper and twine.

A Matter of Taste - Chapter 11

The smooth paving stones of Regent's Walk gave way slowly to the uneven cobbles of home. I lifted my gaze, then, and filled my lungs with the air of my city, my home. It was unscented here, plain like everything else we had for our own, and I liked it better. There was an honesty to it that Bansi's fine house and broad, peaceful streets lacked. We didn't try to pretend things were other than they were down here. We didn't spray perfume on the air to cover up our stench.

I stopped, then. Bansi was still walking, still had his arm hooked about me, and it pulled him around a few steps until he noticed, and stopped as well. I moved one step to the side. Bansi's finger pressed against my skin, then abruptly released, letting me go. I felt as though I'd finally shaken a mantle from my shoulders, and I could breathe again. "I don't need an escort here," I told him. "I know my way."

"Escort?" He smiled, laughed, made light once again. "What about a companion?"

"I don't need one of those, either."

"Do you think so?" He slid sideways, closer to me. This time, he looped his arm through mine. I looked down at where we were joined, twisted together like two strands of a braid, and had to swallow the knot in my throat. "Everyone needs companionship."

A Matter of Taste - Chapter 10

Bansi held me pinned, the wall at my back and his chest pressing against my front. I kept my legs banded about his hips and gripped his shoulders to take up some of my weight while his hands roamed over my sides. He pulled my shirt out from my trousers with a sharp tug, then slid his hands underneath and scraped his callused fingers over my skin. I shivered and arched beneath his touch, but there was nowhere to go but forward, pressing in harder against him.

"Gods. Fuck." He held me up with one hand curved under my thigh, and with the other he fumbled at the front of his trousers.

A Matter of Taste - Chapter 9

I did not hold out any measure of hope that Bansi might fail to return to my shop. I knew him better than that. I only hoped that perhaps the opportunity to laze about at home for the past six months had weaned him of his eagerness to meet me at my door in the cold hours before dawn. 

My hopes were founded, in this at least. I worked diligently through the morning, fueled by the knowledge that whenever he chose to arrive, it was going to spell disaster for my productivity for the rest of the day.

I did not suppose, after six months gone, that Bansi would count himself satisfied with only an hour during lunch in which to spend with me. Before, when he had returned from his long visits home, he had wanted to be at my side from waking to sleep for the first few days, as though he had starved in my absence and the only way to sate his need for my company was to gorge upon it. He was like a hurricane ripping through my life, when he had set his mind to something. The only thing to do was to hunker down and hope to ride it out.

He showed up at midday, looking bright-eyed and immaculate. He swept in like a king come to let his vassals pay homage, and caught me up about the waist while there were still customers in the shop to witness.

I fought him back and glared at him. He grinned at me and swept aside my work so that he could sit on my counter. "Ah, there's that look I've missed so much." He leaned in, elbows braced on his knees, as though expecting a kiss. I just gave him a flat look, and stayed well out of reach. His smile broadened, brightened. "Other lovers, they yearn for their sweetheart's smile, or miss the doting look of love in the other's eye. Me, I go too long without you to glare and snap at me, and I start to feel like something's missing." He sat back, then, leaning back on his hands, and smiled expansively at my little shop. "It's been godsawful dull without you, Ren."

A Matter of Taste - Chapter 8

We kept fucking, because I didn't know what else to do to keep him from worming his way under my skin, and because every time we did it made it harder to stop. If I called an end to it, if I refused him or failed to rise to his bait when he taunted me, then I'd be as good as admitting defeat. He'd want to know why, and the only explanation I'd have was because you're driving me crazy, and if I went and admitted that, there'd be no living with him. He'd probably strut around, beaming and proud, until he drove me to homicide.

Even worse than that was that he couldn't ever accept no for an answer. I told it to him, time and again, but no matter how many times I refused, he still asked me to come over to his place, or to have supper with him after work, or to close the shop for a day and take in the city with him. He kept trying to kiss me, though none so blatantly as the times before. He didn't pull me to him and claim what I wouldn't give, but I could tell he wanted it when we were pressed together, when he bent his head and hesitated, just for a breath, before pressing his mouth to my jaw or my shoulder or my throat. Sometimes, if I blinked my eyes open when we were both shuddering and on the edge, I caught him running his tongue over his lip or working it between his teeth until it was flushed red and tender, and I knew that it was because he was aching for the pressure of a mouth against his, the bite of teeth and rough scrape of stubble.

A Matter of Taste - Chapter 7

Most days, I walked from my shop to Corine's house weighed down with weariness from the long grind of another day's work. Today hadn't been any shorter or any easier, but the way it had ended had left me with a glowing sense of satisfaction and well-being. I should have found someone to fuck like that years earlier. After so long a time, it was easy to forget just what it was like, just how good it could be. I'd forgotten the way my skin hummed after being thoroughly fucked, the way everything good seemed better and everything bad seemed less consequential. The walk to Corine's was full of hills, and normally I dragged myself up them each in succession, wishing she were closer or my shop were elsewhere or my legs were stronger. But today, they seemed half as steep as they ever had before, and I climbed them easily.

Half of my satisfaction with the encounter came from the fact that it had been with Bansi. After weeks of enduring his presence, of trying to chase him off only to fail over and over again, of ranting and raging and doing everything I could think of to get him to leave me alone, only to have him turn back up the next day, and the next, it was glorious to turn the tables and finally be the one controlling the tone of the encounter. No more pleas, no more bribes, no more entreating eyes and sad, sad faces, just Bansi and me and the pleasure that I could take from him. All his little gifts and indulgences, and this was all I truly wanted from him. 

A Matter of Taste - Chapter 6

Bansi, for once, was as good as his word. He came by my shop every day that week, and the next, smiling at me like he was a friend come by to visit, not an unwelcome distraction. He flirted with my customers and discussed merchandise with them and brought me another basket of oranges to replace the one I had thrown out. This time, his smile didn't waver at all when I took them and threw them out back with the others.

He brought me lunch, when I was busy enough to justify keeping the shop open. I stared at it, arms crossed, mouth tight, trying to ignore the rumbling of my stomach because I knew I couldn't accept his bribes. If I gave in once, he'd take it for a victory, and then I'd never be rid of him.

I threw the lunches out, too. Undeterred, he brought me pears and decadent pastries laden down with butter and sugar. And he watched me with that same damned smile as I threw every one of them out, and said, "That's all right, I'll bring more tomorrow," as though I'd spoiled them by accident.

A Matter of Taste - Chapter 5

"Papa!" Elodie threw her arms about my knees and pressed her face against my trouser leg, mumbling against the weave, "Don't want to go."

I crouched down and scooped her up into my arms, made a show of stumbling beneath her weight. "Goodness! Did you grow in your sleep again?" She giggled, pleased, and then squealed with laughter when I pressed kisses against her throat. "What did Papa tell you? No fair growing up while my eyes are closed."

She laughed, then put her hands against my cheeks and held me back. "Papa," she said reproachfully.

I relented, and held her against my hip while I gathered up our things. "You're going to go play with Yvas and Aunt Corine. You love playing with Yvas."

She shook her head, her face set in a stubborn scowl. "He bit me."

"He what? The devil! I'll bite him back."

She relented, smiling, and leaned in against me, arms hooked around my neck and face smashed against my shoulder, like if she held on to me hard enough I wouldn't leave. "You wouldn't."

"No? Watch me. I'll bite him right on his behind, and tell him that's what he gets for not playing nice with my daughter."

A Matter of Taste - Chapter 4

I had to leave Leisl to get the midwife, though I hated to do so. I ran with all the strength in my legs and fell against the midwife's door, pounding my fist upon the boards with the last of my energy. When it opened, swinging inward, I stumbled and nearly landed in a pile at the woman's legs.

I didn't have to say anything. She took one look at my face and said, "Yes, I'm coming." She retreated inside the house only long enough to grab a bag, and then she was running, too, her feet flying down the street with an energy I no longer possessed.

I followed slower, sick with exhaustion and worry. When I reached my home, the front door was gaping open like the midwife had been in too great a rush to spare even the time it would have taken to close it, but the bedroom door was shut firmly between us, and the whole place smelled like a butcher's.

A Matter of Taste - Chapter 3

It should have been easy to remove Bansi from my life. I wanted it to be. But we had begun to build the image of our future as it lay before us, and I had been adjusting my life in that direction for the past year or more. Every day, it seemed, brought with it new reminders of what I had lost. Of what had been taken from me.

I felt empty, bereft. I felt as though a thief had come in the night and taken everything that mattered most to me. I wanted to track it down, to claim my life and return things to the way they were meant to be.

But there was no thief, only Bansi, and what I wanted from him couldn't be taken, only given.

I moved on. I worked, because work always needed to be done, and it gave my hands purpose and my mind focus. I still went to the market, and smiled through all the inevitable questions about why Bansi wasn't there at my side. I visited with Ilis and Corine, and I bounced Yvas upon my knee so they could work, and slowly, I was able to hold him and play with him and look on his bright, toothless smile without feeling the ache of the child I had wanted, and thought I'd nearly had.

Two months on, I had built a semblance of peace from the wreckage of my life with Bansi when a knock at the door came while I was working on my accounts.

A Matter of Taste - Chapter 2

A few days later found us wandering through the market on a lazy weekday morn. I had been trying to work, but Bansi had convinced me to let it be for a few hours, had cajoled with his beguiling smile and pleading eyes.

I was unaccustomed to leisure. It felt ill on me, as mismatched as if I'd tried on Ban's clothing, all embroidered ribbons and silk brocade. But it distressed Ban to see me work so, constantly, even as we talked and laughed through the evening. So I set my work aside and smiled and let him draw me out of the house, all the while calculating how I could make up the lost time. Ban would have frowned at me, if he'd known my thoughts, but I couldn't help it. It was who I was, and how I lived.

"Renad!" The shout went up across the hubbub of the market. It wasn't Bansi's, so I turned my head to seek its source, surprised by the interruption.

A Matter of Taste - Chapter 1

The clatter of carriage wheels on the street outside meant Bansi was home. This wasn't the most run-down part of town, but we were cozied up nice and friendly to the parts that were, and no one here had the luxury of horses to call their own, or the coin to tempt a hack. We were reputable people here — well, mostly — but I couldn't blame anyone for not wanting to venture too close to Copper Street. It still seemed more miracle than not to me that Bansi risked his carriage and his beasts so readily, and on my account.

I was sitting on the floor, the parts of a mantel clock spread around me. I'd bought it for nothing from a scrapper because it didn't work, and started messing about with the innards today because I needed the task to keep my mind and hands occupied while Bansi was off. Too much idleness and my thoughts started to reel, and my hands to shake.

Let it have worked, I thought to myself, gripping a gear so tight its teeth bit into my palm as his boots thumped up to my door.

He opened it without even a cursory knock, as was his way, and the breeze from the street carried the bite of decadent spices to me. I shut my eyes and breathed in the smell of him, and when I opened them, he was before me, grinning down at me with his crooked smile. "Got yourself pinned, have you?" His glance took in the cogs and springs spread out around me like a rug, the parts balanced delicately upon my crossed legs.

"You're late." I set aside the clock and started gathering up the pieces. "What do you think I do all day, sit about in idleness waiting for your grace to descend upon me?"

"Don't you?" His laughter was as rich and warm as the smell of him. "I'm crushed. No, wait, don't." He closed his hand around mine, stilling me. He crouched before me. His eyes danced with laughter. "I think I like having you caught here, like a fish in a net." He tugged me forward, leaned in and caught my mouth with his kiss. His lips curved. "Mine," he said against me.

I laughed, light, and parted for a deeper kiss. "As though you're the one who has cause to be jealous."

He stilled. I tugged against his grip on my hand, urging him back, but he drew away enough to look at me. "You're not, though." It wasn't a question. Why should it be? What he was doing, he did for me.

For us, I amended silently, and curled my fingers through his. 

A Matter of Taste - Masterpost

Renad Davyas is a man of simple tastes. The nicest thing he’s ever had for his own is Bansi, a spice merchant whom Ren wants to share a life with. But when the prospect of starting a family together gives Bansi cold feet, Ren’s left to pick up the pieces of his life and raise a newborn daughter alone. When Bansi returns years later and seeks to rekindle their relationship, Ren has no patience for his apologies and no time for his overtures. Bansi is determined, though, and not even Ren’s stubbornness can hold out forever. But the raw wounds left by Bansi’s betrayal and the secrets Ren is keeping might be too much even for love to overcome.

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16