Read Online The Lion and the Crow by Eli Easton - Free Book Online Page A

feet away from him at the fire, William patted a place next to him on the log. As they ate, they bumped knees and elbows, but neither moved to put distance between them.
    Now that William had taken the step he’d fought all his life, there was no undoing it, and he would not waste time on regret. He didn’t feel ashamed or confused. He felt… strongly protective. He wanted to shield Christian from any more pain in his life, including the pain Christian obviously expected in the form of William’s cruelty. William would never be cruel, not to Christian, not deliberately. But he didn’t have to be, because the situation was cruel enough. William felt the first knot of a great sorrow, born under his ribs. He knew how brief a reign this thing between them would have. It had to be brief, but that made him all the more greedy for every moment of it.
    William had heard the troubadours sing of love. His tutor had made him read The Song of Roland and much bad romantic poetry. He understood the notion of courtly love, had seen some of his friends pine for their beloved. He’d pretended amusement, teased them mercilessly, but he’d been envious. He’d always hoped that, someday, he would have a wife whom he would love thus, as if she hung the moon and the stars. He’d never met a woman who made him lose his head like that. But he could lose his head over Christian. Perhaps he already had. He recognized that the dewy perfection he saw when he looked at Christian was unrealistic, a sign of a heart struck by Cupid’s arrow. But it was so sweet he didn’t care.
    And you are my perfection, Christian had said. That infant bud of sorrow grew just a little more.
    It was dark when they finished dinner, and with no plate or cup to hold in his hands, they felt irreverently empty when Christian was only a breath away. William slipped an arm round the knight’s waist, relishing the slender solidity of him. When Christian did not object, William pulled him close. They had not talked about what had happened, and William’s sense of honor pushed him to rectify that.
    William cleared his throat. “If you were a woman, I would already be before your father on bended knee.”
    Christian said nothing, but he leaned further into William.
    “’Tis wrong in the eyes of God and men,” William said firmly, to explain himself. “I cannot regret you, Christian. But we cannot take this much further.”
    Christian tensed in his arms. “When I was thirteen,” Christian said slowly, “and in the sanctity of the confessional, I told our priest that I felt desire for men.”
    William’s hand, which had been rubbing Christian’s side, stilled.
    “He told me I was possessed by a succubus, a female demon that hungered for men. He told me he would pray for guidance to free me from this creature.”
    “For a week, I was terrified. I tried to feel this insidious being inside me. I prayed to all the saints, to Jesus, and the Holy Virgin to free me from it, to cast it out. I wondered what I had done to be vulnerable to such an attack. I wondered if I were truly as weak and worthless as my brothers had always claimed, deserving of their hatred and my father’s coldness. Why else would the succubus have chosen me?”
    “’Tis not so,” William breathed into Christian’s hair, feeling a murderous anger for the sake of the young boy.
    “The following week, when I returned to confession, eager to hear the priest explain how he would free me from the succubus, he told me that God had shown him the way. He made me follow him to his chambers. There, he made me undress and he forced me to kneel. He tried to put his hard cock in my mouth.”
    William growled.
    “He told me that in order to get the succubus to leave we had to give her what she wanted— a man’s essence. We would be forced to feed her until she had fled. It might take months, he said.”
    “I shall kill him,” William said darkly.
    “He’s already dead, gone in an epidemic of fever