Page 43 of Paladin's Hope
* * *
The man was absolutely witless. He had no sense of self-preservation. First he’d lunged into a trapped room to grab a corpse, then he’d been making excuses for a killer who had just come within an inch of throttling him, and now he was sitting here calmly, having just been kissed by said killer, as if that were normal and not really, really messed up.
Well. Perhaps not absolutely calm. Piper’s face was flushed and he was still breathing hard from that kiss. That terrible, foolish, glorious kiss.
Gods above and below, he shouldn’t have done that. He wasn’t even sure why he had. Galen never kissed. He preferred encounters where both parties walked away—occasionally a little stiffly, depending on what exactly had occurred—and went on about their day with the warm glow of lust satisfied and nothing else. Kissing felt like intimacy, not lust, and intimacy with someone like Galen was far too dangerous.
Most of the paladins he knew were the same way. Hell, compared to half of the Dreaming God’s people, Galen was practically celibate. It was a high-mortality profession, and less than half of them made it to old age. Hardly anybody wanted to leave a spouse or, god forbid, children behind. He’d seen the devastation that Marcus had been through, leaving his wife for her own safety after the death of the god. It was part of why he’d been so surprised when Istvhan had fallen in love up north.
Very well. If Piper didn’t have any sense, Galen would have to have sense for both of them. He couldn’t be trusted and Piper was a doctor and probably had some misguided notion that he could cure what was wrong with Galen, when it wasn’t that something was wrong, it was that Galen himself was wrong and broken. The only cure for someone like him was a sharp knife, but he kept staggering onward because the Rat said they needed him and sometimes he was able to fix things.
He doubted he could explain any of this, and Piper would have argued if he tried, but before he could say any of it, Piper said, “Spongiform erectile tissue!”
“Err…what?”
“Oh god.” Piper put his hand to his face. Galen could see the flush starting at his collar and rising rapidly. “I didn’t mean to say that.”
“Okay.”
“It’s…it’s what your cock is made out of. Not just yours. Mine. Everybody’s.” He made a helpless gesture toward his crotch, where Galen noted that there was indeed a definite bulge, apparently caused by the tissue in question.
“I see,” said Galen. He knew that he should still be wallowing in shame, and he absolutely was, but there was a tiny part of him that was feeling ungodly smug that his kiss had gotten that kind of reaction. Yup. Still got it.
The tips of Piper’s ears were blazing scarlet. “It’s also present inside the nose.”
“Goodness.”
“I know I’m babbling, incidentally.”
“Just a bit, yes.”
“This is what happens to me when I stop trying to be dispassionate about everything. It’s not that I’ve got a terrible temper or anything like that. It’s just that I start babbling.”
“I see.”
“It’s a bit of a problem in relationships.”
“I would imagine so.”
“And also if I keep talking about this, maybe you won’t get all tragic and paladinly and swear that you’ll never kiss me again. And I would very much like it if you did. Err, not be tragic and paladinly. The kissing part.” His blush wasn’t fading. In fact, it seemed to be deepening from scarlet to near-purple.
“Why aren’t you scared?” asked Galen hopelessly. “You ought to be. I came after you with a sword. Most people don’t get over that in five minutes.”
This actually shut Piper up for a moment. His color slowly began to return to normal. “I didn’t die,” he said finally. “I’ve felt dying dozens of times. You get used to it. If you don’t actually die, it just doesn’t seem worth bothering about.”
“You are going to get yourself killed!” yelled Galen, trying not to tear his hair out in frustration.
“This is the most dangerous thing I’ve done in years,” said Piper. “Probably in my whole life. It’s not like my job is going around fighting people.” For the first time, he sounded a bit annoyed. “Unlike some people I could mention.”
Galen took a deep breath and let it out again. All right. I probably deserved that. But still! I’ve got a sword and berserker rage! All he’s got is brains…quite a lot of brains, admittedly…and a bonesaw…and gorgeous fingers…
“Anyway,” said Piper, “being in mortal danger is bad, but surviving mortal danger is a well-known aphrodisiac. And this place is just nothing but mortal danger after mortal danger, isn’t it?”
The blush was starting up again. Galen wondered if the man was still thinking about spongiform erectile tissue.
Saint’s teeth, what’s wrong with me? Why don’t I just fuck his brains out right here and now and be done with it? I’ve done it often enough, with any number of people. I was completely willing to do it before I nearly killed him. Why am I making this so difficult for myself?
Because trying to kill someone ought to matter. Because he liked Piper, dammit. Liked him…well, rather a lot. Because it might mean something, and that meant sex might mean something, and that would be far more dangerous than this maze of traps they found themselves in.