Chapter 199: Chapter 199: Consequences

It turned out, to Rafael’s lasting horror, that trying to seduce his husband out of a training session only worked if his husband was not Gregoris Frasner.

Unfortunately for Rafael, his husband was Gregoris Frasner.

Which meant the smiling had not led to mercy.

It had led to Gregoris looking him directly in the eye, thoroughly unimpressed by Rafael’s increasingly creative innuendos, and then proceeding to work him through stretches, balance drills, resistance work, corrected posture, controlled repetitions, and what Rafael would later describe to Natalie, if ever asked, as a targeted campaign against the rights of elegant people.

Worse, Gregoris had enjoyed himself.

Not wildly. Gregoris never did anything wildly unless blood or battle demanded it. But there had been amusement to him all through it. Every time Rafael tried to turn a command into something suggestive, Gregoris had simply answered it, sharpened it, and made him do one more repetition for his trouble.

By the end of the session, Rafael had learned three deeply upsetting things.

First: Gregoris was stronger than both law and reason.

Second: Gregoris could apparently flirt and enforce discipline at the same time, which should have been illegal. And was more arousing than Rafael was willing to accept.

Third: Rafael’s body, traitorous and weak-willed in the worst possible ways, had not escaped the training merely because it had been distracted by his mate’s hands, voice, grin, and general criminal existence.

His legs still worked when they left the hall.

Technically.

Emotionally, however, he had already begun writing Gregoris’s downfall.

The first sign of disaster came on the stairs.

Rafael placed one foot on the first step toward their private wing, paused, and then stood very still with the expression of a man receiving tragic political news.

Gregoris, one step behind him, said, “What?”

Rafael turned his head with glacial accusation. “This is your fault.”

Gregoris looked at the stairs. Then back at Rafael. “You’re standing.”

“For now.”

“You’ll recover.”

Rafael stared at him in speechless offense. “Recover.”

Gregoris’s face remained calm. “Yes.”

“Gregoris, I am a duke.”

Gregoris waited.

Rafael put a hand on the banister and another dramatically over his heart. “I was not built for this.”

“You were built fine.”

“That is not comforting.”

Gregoris’s gaze moved once, brief and assessing, over Rafael’s posture, the stiffness in his thighs, and the microscopic hesitation before he shifted his weight. It would have been less infuriating if he had looked smug. But Gregoris, being Gregoris, only looked attentive.

Rafael narrowed his eyes. “Don’t inspect me like you’re evaluating a mission.”

“I’m checking your balance.”

“I hate you.”

“No, you don’t.”

Rafael took the next stair with great care and immediately regretted having bones, muscles, and the entire lower half of his body. A sharp ache flared through his thighs. His calves protested. Something in his hips announced itself like a formal complaint.

He stopped again.

Gregoris, infuriatingly steady behind him, said, “Rafael.”

Rafael lifted a hand without turning. “Do not rush me in my suffering.”

“I’m not.”

“You sound like you are.”

“I’m making sure you don’t fall.”

Rafael looked back over his shoulder, scandalized and pale with righteous grievance. “You think I would fall in my own house?”

Gregoris glanced at the stairs.

Rafael drew himself up. “That was not an answer.”

Gregoris’s mouth twitched.

Rafael gasped. “You smiled.”

“A little.”

“You are mocking an injured man.”

“You’re sore.”

Rafael stared at him with the deep, personal offense of someone discovering that his suffering was being clinically categorized. “I could be sore from something pleasurable, but no…”

Gregoris looked at him.

Rafael lifted his chin with tragic dignity. “You know what. If I have to suffer, you suffer too. No sex until I can move with dignity again.”

There was a brief, crystalline silence.

The kind that existed only when Rafael said something outrageous with complete sincerity and Gregoris had to decide whether to answer as a husband, a commander, or a man being threatened with strategic famine inside his own marriage.

Gregoris chose all three.

“No,” he said.

Rafael blinked.

Then he stared, full offense returning at once. “Excuse me?”

Gregoris’s hand remained steady at Rafael’s waist, the other still loosely holding his hand on the staircase landing as if he had not just rejected a formal declaration of spousal punishment. “No.”

Rafael drew himself up despite the ache in his legs, which made the act less impressive than he intended and more visibly stubborn. “I am imposing a consequence.”

Gregoris’s expression did not change. “You’re making threats because your thighs hurt.”

“That is not the point.”

“It is exactly the point.”

Rafael’s eyes narrowed. “This is not a military negotiation. You don’t get to overrule me.”

Gregoris looked at him for one long second, silver eyes steady and maddeningly composed. “You can refuse if you want.”

Rafael opened his mouth.

Closed it.

Then frowned, because that was not the response he had expected.

Gregoris continued, calm as ever. “But you don’t get to issue a dramatic sentence on a staircase like you’re sanctioning a province.”

Rafael stared at him in disbelief. “I can. I will move to the nursery for the night, and you can have the bed all for yourself and your authoritarian tendencies.”

Gregoris went still in the way that had made grown men in war rooms lose their train of thought and seasoned fighters remember, abruptly and in full, that Gregoris Frasner had once been feared long before he was ever loved.

Rafael felt it immediately.

“No,” Gregoris said.

Rafael blinked.

Then, because he was Rafael and self-preservation had always been optional in marriage, he lifted his chin. “Yes.”

Gregoris looked at him for one long second, silver eyes flat and clear. “You are not limping out of my bed, into the nursery, because I made you train for an hour.”

Rafael narrowed his eyes. “I am making a statement.”

“You’re being dramatic because your legs hurt.”

Rafael opened his mouth, fully prepared to continue on principle alone, but Gregoris had clearly run out of tolerance for speeches.

He bent and picked Rafael up.

Rafael let out a startled sound as the floor vanished beneath him. One arm went around Gregoris’s shoulders automatically, more betrayal from his own body. “Gregoris.”

“You’re done.”

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