Chapter 200: Chapter 200: Statements

“Put me down.”

Gregoris did not answer.

He carried Rafael the rest of the way up the stairs without effort, one arm under his knees, the other firm around his back, his expression gone cold in that quiet way Rafael had learned to take seriously. The amusement from the training hall was gone. What remained was the harder, older part of Gregoris, the man who had once frightened rooms into silence long before he ever became a husband.

Rafael frowned at him. “I was making a point.”

“You were being foolish.”

“That is a matter of interpretation.”

“No,” Gregoris said. “It isn’t.”

He carried him into their suite and straight into the bathroom, then set him down on the marble beside the bath. Only when Rafael was steady did Gregoris step back and turn on the water.

Steam began to rise.

Rafael watched him in silence for a moment. “You are overreacting.”

Gregoris looked at him then, silver eyes level and unsoftened. “You threatened to leave our bed because you were angry at me.”

“And you made me exercise despite knowing how much I hate it and everything adjacent to it,” Rafael shot back. “I’m an imperial secretary because I don’t want to move.”

Gregoris held his gaze for a long second.

“Yes,” he said. “And in response, you threatened to leave our bed like a spoiled brat.”

Rafael stared at him, scandalized by both the wording and the calm with which it had been delivered. “You are being very unpleasant for a man who married me voluntarily.”

“I did,” Gregoris said. “Which is why I know exactly when you’re serious and when you’re provoking me because your legs hurt.”

Rafael drew himself up, or tried to. The attempt lost some force under the sharp ache running through his thighs. “My legs do hurt, but the pride of my seduction having no effect on you hurts my pride, and that is worse.”

Gregoris looked at him for a moment, then stepped closer.

“It had an effect,” he said.

Rafael blinked.

The answer had come too quickly, and for one strange second that startled him more than resistance would have. “Excuse me?”

Gregoris’s expression remained composed, but some of the ice had thinned. Not completely gone, but changed enough that Rafael could now see the truth beneath the discipline.

“I wasn’t immune,” Gregoris said. “Your seduction worked.”

Rafael stared at him.

He then narrowed his eyes at once, because this was Gregoris, and nothing was ever allowed to be simple. “That sounds suspiciously like a sentence with an unpleasant second half attached.”

“It does.”

Rafael folded his arms with as much dignity as possible while half-undressed and aching. “I dislike that.”

Gregoris’s hand turned to the buttons of Rafael’s shirt. “You distracting me does not mean I stop training you.”

“There it is,” Rafael said darkly. “The brutality. I knew it was coming.”

Gregoris undid another button. “I noticed every look. Every pause. Every time you smiled at me like you were trying to talk me into bad decisions.”

Rafael’s outrage softened into interest despite himself. “And?”

“And I wanted to put you against the wall.”

That stopped him.

Rafael went very still, his lips parting before he could stop them.

Gregoris, seeing it, did not smile. He only kept speaking in that low, even voice that always seemed more dangerous when it stayed calm.

“But wanting that,” he said, “is not the same thing as letting you avoid the session.”

Rafael swallowed.

Well… That was both deeply flattering and deeply offensive.

“You are a terrible husband,” he said faintly.

“I’m a disciplined one.”

“You say that like it’s attractive.”

Gregoris’s gaze moved over his face. “It clearly is.”

Rafael opened his mouth, then decided not to answer, mostly because Gregoris was annoyingly correct and because the heat in his own face had become difficult to deny with any grace.

Gregoris finished stripping the shirt from his shoulders and set it aside. “You trying to seduce me in the middle of drills does not mean the drills disappear.”

“It should,” Rafael muttered. “That feels like the natural order of things.”

“It feels like your preferred one.”

“Yes.”

Gregoris’s hand settled briefly at the side of Rafael’s neck. Possessive in the absent, effortless way Gregoris often was when he stopped policing it. “And for the record, I enjoyed it.”

Rafael looked up sharply. “You enjoyed tormenting me.”

“I enjoyed you.”

Rafael looked away first.

That was becoming a pattern today, which he resented on principle.

Gregoris, mercifully or perhaps cruelly, went on as though he had not just said something capable of dismantling Rafael’s entire line of argument. “You were trying very hard.”

“I was trying to survive.”

“You were trying to win.”

Rafael sniffed. “Those are not mutually exclusive.”

Gregoris’s hand dropped to his waist. “Bath.”

Rafael let himself be guided forward, then paused at the edge and looked back over his shoulder with fresh calculation already rising in his eyes. “You know,” he said, stepping carefully into the water, “sex could be training too.”

Gregoris went still.

Rafael felt it at once and turned his head a fraction more, pleased despite himself. Gregoris was watching him with a look that had lost most of its earlier coldness and gained something far more dangerous – something focused, dark, and openly male in a way Gregoris usually kept under better control unless they were alone and Rafael had already done something reckless enough to earn it.

Rafael leaned one hand on the edge of the bath and sank deeper into the heat with deliberate slowness. “I’m serious.”

“I know,” Gregoris said.

His voice had changed.

Only slightly, but Rafael knew him too well to miss it. It had dropped lower, rougher at the edges; that usually meant Gregoris was no longer merely enduring one of Rafael’s provocations but actively entertaining it.

Rafael glanced back at him through damp lashes. “It involves movement.”

Gregoris stepped into the bath after him, eyes never leaving his face. “Mm.”

“Endurance.”

“Yes.”

“Flexibility.”

Gregoris’s hand settled on Rafael’s hip the moment he was close enough, large and warm and far too calculated. “You’re making a case.”

Rafael tilted his chin, encouraged now. “A very reasonable one.”

Gregoris drew him back against his chest, not even pretending this was only about helping him settle. “Reasonable is not the word I’d use.”

Rafael felt the heat of him at his back, the arm around his waist, and the unmistakable interest Gregoris was no longer bothering to hide and decided this was going significantly better than the staircase had.

“So you agree,” Rafael said.

Gregoris bent his head, his mouth brushing once against Rafael’s temple before he answered. “I agree that watching you try to turn physical conditioning into an excuse for me to take you apart in the bath is doing very little to weaken your argument.”

Rafael went still for half a second.

Then he said, with great dignity, “That sounds promising.”

“It is,” Gregoris said.

Rafael turned slightly in his hold, enough to look at him properly. “But?”

Gregoris’s thumb moved once against Rafael’s hip, slow and possessive. “But it still doesn’t replace training.”

Rafael stared at him in disappointment. “You ruin everything.”

“No,” Gregoris said, gaze dropping briefly to Rafael’s mouth before returning to his eyes. “I’m telling you that your seduction worked, that I’m very into this conversation, and that I still expect you in the training room next time.”

That was, unfortunately, an extremely Gregoris answer.

Rafael sighed and let his head tip back against Gregoris’s shoulder. “You are deeply committed to principles that do not support my happiness.”

Gregoris’s quiet breath touched the side of his neck, almost a laugh. “I support your health.”

“I support sex.”

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