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. 


We wanted this, both of us. Just because I was the one who'd brought up the idea of having a child, of giving Ban an heir so his family would shut up and stop fighting so hard to get between us, didn't mean that he was doing this for me. It wasn't a sacrifice. I'd told him from the start, if that's why he was doing this, then I didn't want to do it at all.

"No." I smiled at him and stole back the space he'd put between us. "I'm not." I swept the clockworks from my lap, freeing myself.

Ban sighed as though disappointed. He gave up the pretense, though, when I climbed up into his lap and grasped him by the waist. "Soon," I whispered between frantic kisses. "We'll have a child. Our own child."

"And then I'll never get you to myself again." He wrapped his arms around me, lifting me up to my feet as he got to his so that we never had to break apart. "We'd better take advantage of this while we've got it, before there's some tiny scrap of a thing with big eyes staring at us every time I try to get your pants off." He punctuated it by tugging at the waist of my trousers, drawing me with him to the bed.

I laughed and pulled him down with me, then rolled and got him on his back, my knees braced on either side. His hands settled on my hips, pulling at my trousers, inching them down. "Already?" I laughed down at him. I pressed my palm low on his stomach, where his hardness grew beneath my touch. "You've the stamina of a horse."

He dropped his head back with a bark of laughter. I couldn't resist the temptation of the long, dark line of his throat. I tipped forward, catching both our cocks between us, and bit at the side of his neck. "I'm not an old man yet, Renad."

"Good thing." I lifted my hips from his and wriggled a hand between us. He hissed as I curled my fingers around his cock. "I haven't near had my fill of you."

"Filled? Is that what you want?" His eyes glittered up at me, dark as onyx. His lips curved at the bite of my teeth. "I have done my share of filling today already, Renad. That woman wrung me dry."

"You've nothing left, do you?" The intricate brocade of his collar scratched my lips. I wanted past it, under it. I wanted his skin, golden and glowing beneath my touch. I held back my impatience with it. If I let it show, Bansi would have encouraged me to rip and tear. He liked it when I was aggressive, and thought nothing of the expense of what he would have to replace. But I was too much a product of Copper Street to waste even my own rough-spun clothing. I couldn't stomach the thought of destroying a garment that cost more than my little shop brought in in a month, just to satisfy my own impatience. Ban would have laughed at me for it. He had the luxury of that. He had never wanted in his life.

"Old man," I teased in a murmur, pressed with my kisses to the hollow of his throat. In truth, he was a few years older than me, that was all. But he liked to tease me for my youth, and I liked to give as good as I got. We were a well-matched pair, in that. "Shall I fill you up?" I let my tongue trace along the line of his collar bone. "I'll show you how a young man does it."

He groaned and dropped his hands to my hips. His fingers pressed in deep and possessive as he held me still so he could rut up against me. I may have teased him for his age, teased him for his stamina, but the truth was that I marveled at it. I couldn't have spent half the day with a woman and been ready to go again a half-hour later.

I couldn't have spent half the day with a woman to begin with. Bansi was indiscriminate -- though he laughed, if I said that where he could hear, and said, The word is flexible, Renad -- and could lie with a woman as readily as a man, but they did nothing to inflame my passions. 

I writhed my way down him until I was straddling his thighs and could push his shirt up to bare his stomach. I pressed my nose to him there and inhaled deep breaths. The scent of spices always clung to him here, where the winds couldn't whip it away and replace it with the smells of my own city. But he also smelled of something else here, some scent I'd yet to be able to identify, though I'd spent enough time with him by now to know all his fancy, expensive spices by name, and identify them with a whiff. 

I fancied it his own, unique scent, something particular to him that no one but I knew, and if I was mistaken, I didn't want to be told. It might have been a fanciful thought, and we had little enough time on Copper Street to entertain them, but it pleased me. It was my own secret indulgence, even more so than the tiny envelopes of precious spice that Bansi slipped into my drawers and cupboards when my attention was elsewhere, because he knew I'd refuse the gift if I caught him at it, and he wanted me to be able to eat like a prince.

I pushed the embroidered hem of his shirt up, past his stomach, past his chest, until it caught about his underarms, and then I let him wrest it off over his head, hurried where I was patient.

I sat back, letting the weight of my hips bear down against his, and smiled as I looked him over. My pale hands were stark against the brown of his skin, and I could not get my fill of him.

"Renad," he murmured, sliding his palms up my thighs. His fingers hooked in the waist of my trousers and tugged at them. "Old men are not known for their patience."

"I do not believe you have ever been patient a day in your life, old or young."

Bansi's teeth flashed with his grin. It was true, and he didn't deny it. I had learned to work and strive and save for the things I wanted. Ban had learned that if he threw coins at it fast enough, any problem could be made to disappear. He thought my reluctance to part with any coin, for any reason, was quaint. Sometimes he called it adorable, and then I had to wrestle him to the ground and sit on him, my pulse pounding with fury.

For my part, I thought Ban was reckless with his money. He passed coins about like they were compliments and thought nothing of the waste. I tried to restrain my horror, and tried not to think of what a terrible state he would be in should his family find that luck had turned against them, and their fortune was gone.

Somehow, we still worked.

Bansi pulled my belt loose, then tugged on the waist of my trousers once more. This time, they slid down easily and rode low on my hips. He drew my cock out and grasped it in his fist, stroked it slow and dry until my spine curled and I fucked up into his hand. 

His smile flashed again. "That's it." He urged me up onto my knees, off his lap, so he could tug the trousers down off my ass. "I know how eager you are. This is just a game." He dragged his thumb over the spot on the underside of my cock where nerves came together and made every touch exquisite. I dropped my head back and rolled my hips against him. "I do not care to play. Not today."

"No," I agreed on a breath. I climbed off of him and removed my trousers completely. He looked me over as I did so, his gaze long and slow and heated. "Today is for celebrating." I couldn't hold back the grin that spread over my face at the words. I didn't want to.

I couldn't remember the last time I'd been this happy. Maybe the first time I'd kissed Bansi, when I'd been so stupid in love with him and in awe of him, and I'd never really believed that he'd return the emotion. I'd kissed him because I had to, because it was too painful not to. And when he'd slid his hand around the back of my neck and kissed me back, my heart had thrilled so hard and so high that I thought I'd never get it back into my chest.

This was better. It wasn't just lust-addled hope and returned affections. This was a child. Our child. This was our future stretching out before us, long and wonderful, and knowing that we had only but put our feet on the start of the path, thus far.

When I returned to Ban, I knelt down at his feet and tugged his boots off, then his stockings. Before I could move up and do it for him, he'd unfastened his trousers and pushed them down, impatient even now. I helped him work them off over his feet, then kissed the inside of his knee. I made room for myself between his thighs as I crawled up, leaving kisses all the way.

He cupped a hand around the back of my head and pulled me in, so that when my breath washed over his cock it was stuttering with my laughter at his impatience. I teased him with a lick, with a single, lingering kiss, and then I pushed his knees up and worked my tongue down, down, until I grazed over his entrance and he jumped beneath me.

"Renad," he groaned, a low, needy rumble.

I grasped his cock and stroked it in response, though I knew it wasn't what he wanted. 

"Renad, where's the oil?"

I lifted my head and propped my chin on his thigh, looking up the length of his body at him. "I don't know." I gave him a blithe smile. "Where did you leave it last?"

The string of oaths he let out was more Bansi's language that my own. I didn't speak it, but Bansi used the more colorful phrases often enough that I probably could have sworn in it. He said he'd attained the habit as a teen because it angered his mother that he acted so crude, and he'd kept it because it was so fun. I didn't doubt him. Fun and rebellion seemed to be some of his prime motivations, even now. He'd fallen in love with me, after all, and I was practically tailor-made to infuriate his family. Common. Foreign. A man. 

When Bansi tried to twist out from underneath me, I pinned his hips down to the floor. "No. Stay here. I'll get it." I rose to my feet and fixed him with a stern look. "Don't move."

It took but a moment to dart into the bedroom, get the bottle of oil from its place on the nightstand, and return out to where Bansi waited for me. When I did, I found him sitting upright, his legs splayed and his cock in his fist, stroking himself as though we were in some sort of race and he'd determined not too lose.

"Ban." I frowned at him. "You don't listen at all, do you?"

"I do," he said. "When I want to."

I lifted the bottle of oil and wagged it between two fingers. "Do you want to now?"

His eyes lit. He laid back and reached for me, beckoning. "Come on, Renad. Fill me up."

I couldn't help but laugh. It only encouraged him, but he was so very good at bringing it out in me.

I knelt between his thighs again and thumbed the cork out of the bottle. Ban's eyes were fixed on me, so intent it made my heart flutter against my ribs, even now. I filled my palm with a puddle of the oil and stroked it over myself. Bansi's gaze was eager, ravenous.

Even in this, he was impatient. I'd have worked him open with my tongue, with my fingers, if he'd been willing to endure it. But he wouldn't.

I never got more than half a chance before he was twisting beneath me, pushing me back, demanding I fuck him in a voice gone rough and desperate. He liked it a little too fast, too rough, liked the sharp sting of being stretched faster than he could accommodate, just as much as he liked the fucking. And he knew I couldn't resist him when he was like that, wild and wrecked with desire.

I crawled up over him, nudging his knees wide with mine. He hooked a leg over my hip, his heel a sharp pressure against the back of my thigh, pulling me in, urging me on.

"Come on," he breathed again, tugging at fistfuls of my hair. He lifted his head up off the floor, his mouth reaching for mine, seeking.

I kissed him hard and deep. This time, I lingered long enough to notice the taste of something new, beneath the spice-and-musk he always smelled of. I sought it again, and found it in unexpected places. The inside of his lip. The roof of his mouth. The pocket of his cheek. 

I drew back and looked down at him, so close the tips of our noses touched and his eyes went slightly crossed trying to focus on me. "You kissed her?"

He let out a short huff of breath. "Renad, I was fucking her. My mouth is what you're worried about?"

"I'm not worried." I kissed him again, a light peck, to prove it. "I know what's mine."

He looked like he had more to say on the matter, but Bansi always had more to say on any matter, especially those that involved teasing me. I pushed into him before he could speak, and his head dropped back on a wrenched moan. His legs scrabbled at me, wrapping tight and pulling me in, urging me on. Bansi always wanted more than he was given.

I kissed his throat, his jaw, the tender spot behind his ear, and with each kiss I pushed into him a little bit deeper. He was always so hot around me, and impossibly tight. Every time I moved in him, his muscles clamped down even tighter around me, and I had to muffle my groan against his shoulder.

When he was too drunk on me to think of anything else, I tipped his chin up and kissed him. His lips shivered apart beneath mine and I swept in, claimed his mouth in long, deep, drugging kisses until I tasted only him on his breath.

I wasn't jealous. I wanted a child, and this was how we would have it. But if I'd wanted to taste lip color and jasmine perfume, I'd have been kissing a woman, not Ban. It felt wrong for him to taste of anything but spice.

We moved together perfectly. We always had. Even the first time, when it had been awkward and rushed and the both of us had been too impatient for anything like finesse, our bodies had seemed to know each other, and we fit together like key and lock. Made for each other. I pressed my kisses to Bansi's chest and felt the thrum of his pulse beneath my lips. I rolled my hips against his and smiled to feel the cadence shift. It hitched first, a fumbling stutter. And then it raced.

Ban moaned and arched up to meet me as I drove into him. He clutched at my hair, gasped against my ear, and shuddered hard. My hands slipped over his skin, too slick with sweat for purchase. He tried to grasp me about the ribs, but his hands skidded down to my waist.

He grabbed me hard, thumbs pressed just above my hip bones, fingers pressing deep lines across my back. "Renad," he groaned, wild, half-agonized. 

"Ban," I murmured in return, and slid a touch over the sharp angle of his cheek bone as my hips drove against his in a wild rhythm.

By rights, he should have come before me. He usually did, when we were together like this. But of course, I forgot that he had spent half the day with the woman, had already had his hungers sated any number of times, while I had sat home alone with nothing to do but grow hard thinking about it. I had been on edge most of the day. It wasn't so surprising that it took so little to push me over.

I locked my hips tight against Bansi's as I shuddered and emptied myself into him. He made a low, satisfied sound and pried open heavy-lidded eyes to look up at me, smiling like the cat who'd got the cream. "Ah," he said, and that one syllable was full of self-satisfaction. "So that's how you young men do it."

"It is how I do it." I withdrew from him, though the slide and pressure on my sensitized cock sent a shudder through me that was not entirely pleasant. When I was free of him entirely, Bansi made a low sound of loss and took his cock in his fist.

I stopped him with a touch on his wrist and pulled his hand away. "Stop that. Let me."

Bansi laughed and let his hand drop. "And you still have stamina to spare? Ah, you are a virile young man, aren't you."

I knelt on the floorboards between his thighs and hunched low to take him into my mouth. He sighed at the touch of my tongue and slid a hand carefully through my hair. He liked to grab and pull in his enthusiasm, but I did not care to be on the receiving end of it. But it pleased me that he was so conscientious of it, despite his own predilections. I pressed a kiss to his wrist in thanks, then returned to my task.

Despite both of our teasing about his age and stamina, it did not take him long to follow me off the peak. I knew where to touch and taste, how to stroke and kiss and suck him to bring him there quickly, and tonight, I had no desire to hold him there on the knife's edge and string the moment out until neither of us could bear it any longer. That could wait for later. Tonight, I just wanted him.

He came with a hoarse shout and the bitter taste of his seed on my tongue. I swallowed what he gave me and licked him clean, then sat up and grinned down at him.

His eyes were still shut, his chest heaving, his arms loose above his head. He looked delightful like that, all stretched out for the taking. I ran a finger over a line of sweat on his abs, enjoying this quiet closeness that came after our lovemaking. His abdomen twitched beneath my fingertip, then he caught my wrist in his hand. "Renad. That tickles."

I twisted my wrist in his grasp until he released me, then walked my fingers up his ribs, where he was less sensitive. He opened his eyes and smiled up at me, caught my hand again and this time pulled raised it to leave light kisses across the pads of my fingers.

"Sit up, Ban." I nudged him with a foot. "That can't be comfortable." I'd slept on my own floors enough times to know that they weren't. Ban's home had rugs so plush you could stretch out on them and sleep comfortably for a year, or so he said, but we only had coarse wooden floorboards here.

"I wasn't complaining," he said, and his smile didn't dim. But he sat up all the same, pushing himself upright with an affected groan. I laughed, which I was sure was the intention. But I laughed harder when he stretched his arms up overhead and arched his back.

"Ban. You've got my clockworks all over you." I was almost laughing too hard to reach out and pluck them from where they'd stuck to the sweat of his skin. "You must have been laying on them. Didn't you notice?"

He twisted to look over his shoulder. His lips quirked. "I had my mind on other matters."

He'd had his mind on me. I combed my hands through his hair and laughed when more springs and coils tumbled out. "I'm never going to get this back together properly now. You'll be shedding my parts for a week."

"I'll buy you a new clock." He took the parts out of my hand and left them scattered upon the floor. He scooped me up and rose to his feet, but still didn't set me down on mine. "A dozen of them. One for every room."

"You mean to move to me to a house with a dozen rooms?" I braced my arms against his chest, hands curled loose around the back of his neck. "Whatever shall we do with all of them? I'll get lost. You'll have to send the constable with his hounds to come find me."

He tumbled me down onto my back in the middle of my bed, then crawled up over me and pressed close along my side. There was little space in the bed for us to be otherwise, but even on the occasions when I came to the lavish chambers he rented in the city, with his bed big enough to paddle a boat across, we still liked to keep close, so it worked out fine.

"You will grow accustomed to it, in time." He kissed my temple and the corner of my eye.

"No," I said. "I do not think so." Bansi may have been used to homes with a dozen rooms or more, but my place only had three, and then only if one was being generous. I didn't think I'd ever lose my awe and chagrin at living a life of ease. But I'd do it for him. I'd ink a map on the back of my hand, if I had to.

I stretched my arm out across the pillow so Ban would lay his head upon it. He did, and pressed up close against my side, his chin digging into my chest and his arm draped lose across my stomach. I petted his hair and enjoyed the peacefulness. But as a few moments passed, I noted that Bansi was restless, that he shifted and fidgeted and sighed against me as though he couldn't get comfortable. When I lifted my head to glance down at him, his brows were furrowed and his expression one that did not at all belong on the face of a man who had just been well-fucked and by rights should be sated.

"Ban," I said. "Whatever did I do to put that look on your face?"

The look he shot me was startled, then guilty.

I might have convinced myself I was overreacting or imagining what I saw, if it weren't for that. I pushed myself upright, propping my shoulders against the headboard. Bansi rolled onto his back and stared at my ceiling.

"Ban?" 

He let out a long sigh and tucked his hands under his head. "Nothing," he said, and I nearly punched him in the shoulder for lying to me, and doing it so poorly. But then he continued. "It's nothing you did. I was just thinking."

I frowned and drew him close, pulled his head to my chest while I ran my fingers through his hair in idle comfort. "Dark thoughts, for such a time as this. What's troubling you?"

"Nothing, Ren," he said again. He pulled me back to down flat on the bed and wrapped his arms around me. The weight of his head on my shoulder kept me pinned, unwilling to dislodge him. "Go to sleep."

I shut my eyes and didn't move until Ban's breathing had turned slow and steady. But sleep was harder to achieve than it was to fake, and the twist of worry beneath my breastbone kept me up until well after the last street mongers had given up on hawking their wares for the night.