Emyr's Smile by Amy Rae Durreson Read Free Book Online

slowly relaxed.
    At last Emyr said, his
voice muffled in the blanket, “I don’t understand what you’re doing
in my life.”
    “I like you,” Heilyn
said, “obviously. In fact, I like you so much I’m going to cook you
dinner tonight.”
    Emyr looked up, his
face skeptical. “You can cook?”
    “Of course I can cook.
Well, I can scramble eggs, at least.”
    So they had scrambled
eggs. Emyr sat in his usual place at the kitchen table and they ate
singed and crunchy scrambled eggs as the futile rain hammered at
the shutters (Heilyn had never claimed he could cook well, after
all, so what had Emyr expected?). It almost felt like a normal
evening until Emyr said, “I’ll make up the spare room for you, if
you like. Or…”
    “Or?” Heilyn prompted,
the skin on the back of his neck prickling.
    “I… I’m not inviting
you to seduce me, mind. It’s just…”
    “You don’t want to be
alone in a storm.”
    “I always thought that
was the best way, but…” He swallowed. “You must think very poorly
of me.”
    Heilyn covered Emyr’s
hands with his own. “I could never think poorly of you.”
     
     

Chapter
6
     
    BUT WHEN they climbed
up to Emyr’s room, Heilyn felt less sure of himself. He’d never
shared a bed with someone just for comfort (top to tail in a cheap
inn to save pennies once or twice, but that hadn’t been intimate in
the way this was). He’d never even stayed until morning with a man
before. And this was Emyr, and that was Emyr’s bed, with its sheets
rumpled, and this was Emyr’s room, with the books he was reading
stacked beside the bed and an empty mug balanced precariously on
the edge of the basin.
    “If you don’t want to,”
Emyr started.
    “Just deciding my
strategy,” Heilyn said immediately. “I’m an expert blanket thief,
I’ll have you know.” And he dropped himself down in the middle of
the bed, where he could grin up at Emyr.
    “Ridiculous,” Emyr said
again, but it was fond this time. “Move over.”
    Heilyn rolled over, and
shivered a little as Emyr’s weight settled beside him on the bed.
He couldn’t quite make his body believe that it wasn’t about to be
loved, so he tried to slow his breathing. Emyr snuffed the lantern
and shifted in the bed again, the pillows tugging slightly under
Heilyn’s cheek. The bed smelled like Emyr, apple and dried spices
and ink, and Heilyn wanted to burrow into it and never leave. He
wanted to turn and curl up against Emyr, run his hands across bare
skin, and press quiet kisses to the back of Emyr’s neck. He could
hear Emyr’s breathing, slow and steady, and was suddenly convinced
that his own heart was beating at the same rhythm.
    “He wasn’t kind.”
    “What?” Heilyn said.
He’d thought Emyr was asleep.
    “What you said earlier,
about a kind heart—Aneirin wasn’t kind. He was passionate about
life, and he was fun, and he always had a big dream and managed to
drag everyone along to fulfill it, but he wasn’t kind.”
    “I’m sorry.” Heilyn
reached out blindly and found Emyr’s shoulder. He held on, as
tightly as he could.
    “He was furious when I
said I couldn’t go with him, but I had no choice. People needed me
here, and so I got angry too, and then he.. he died, and I was
never angry enough to want that.”
    “It wasn’t your fault.”
Heilyn thought about it, all the little bits and pieces of the
story people had let slip since he arrived on Sirig. “Nor was it
his fault. You were both so young, and it sounds to me like you
grew up, because you had to, and he stayed a child and didn’t
understand what you had to do. Nobody was at fault.”
    “That’s…” Emyr trailed
off and went quiet. After a while he said, his voice soft, “He
wasn’t, but you are.”
    “Are what?” Heilyn
asked sleepily.
    “Kind,” Emyr said and
moved. Suddenly he was on top of Heilyn, their bare chests pressed
together. Heilyn bucked his hips up without thinking, his whole
body shaking with the sudden contact,