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  Ori looked into the adjacent bedroom and his clothes. “Shall I—?”

  “Alone,” Raynard cut in.

  Ori quickly dropped his gaze again, trying not to let Raynard sense his disappointment. It was silly to think that the collar would have really changed anything between them. He might have become a submissive rather than a servant, but he was still a duck rather than a hawk. Raynard was his master. It wasn’t Ori’s place to assume an invitation to follow him around wherever he went. It was stupid to think the collaring could be as important to Raynard as it was to him.

  “Shall I lay your clothes out for you, sir?” Ori offered, as emotionlessly as he could manage.

  “That won’t be necessary.”

  “Yes, sir.” Ori mentally fumbled around for something else he might be able to offer Raynard, but found nothing.

  Raynard brushed his knuckle against Ori’s cheek. When Ori looked up, an amused little smile was twisting Raynard’s lips. “There are some places you can’t follow me just yet, fledgling.” He looked past Ori to the small window in the corner of the bathroom. There was no view as such. All that could be seen was a wall and a patch of sky above it.

  Sky.

  “Oh…”

  Raynard chuckled. He ruffled Ori’s sodden hair before he stepped back. “Finish up.”

  He didn’t leave the room. When he’d said that a submissive couldn’t assume he would be granted any privacy, Ori hadn’t realised that could mean he’d be provided with an audience at such unexpected moments. He turned his attention back to his shower, but his hands didn’t seem inclined to cooperate. The soap, the shampoo, everything jumped out of his hands. It took a lifetime of scrabbling around in the bottom of the bath to retrieve all the things he dropped before the last of the dust that had coated his body was washed away and he could turn off the water.

  His towel hung on a hook next to the bath. Resisting the temptation to hide his still flourishing hard-on with it, Ori rubbed at his hair.

  Within a few minutes, he was as dry as he was going to get. He glanced across at Raynard.

  “Follow me.”

  Ori hesitated next to his clothes as they walked through his bedroom toward the kitchen.

  Raynard glanced over his shoulder. “Move a set of clothes to the coat closet in the hallway so you can dress before answering the door. I expect you to appear dressed in front of everyone except your master.”

  Ori swallowed. He was going to have a permanent hard on walking around naked in front of Raynard all the time. No, Ori mentally corrected himself, that wasn’t quite right. He was going to have a permanent hard on that he had no chance of hiding. That would be the only real difference. It wasn’t as if he didn’t find Raynard as erotic as all hell when he was dressed.

  A glance at Raynard and Ori realised he was waiting for a response. “Yes, sir.”

  Apparently satisfied, Raynard nodded and led the way up the stairs. They reached the hallway and continued up the main staircase and along a corridor on the upper floor. Opening a door that looked no different to any of the bedroom doors, Raynard revealed another corridor, far narrower than those in the servants’ section of the house.

  The floor was shrouded in an even thicker blanket of dust than the rest of the house had been when Ori first arrived. Cobwebs hung in the corners. As he followed his master, Ori automatically added items to his list of jobs that would have to be attended to when his daily duties allowed.

  At the top of yet another set of stairs, the narrow space opened up considerably. A huge dormer window looked out over the garden. Ori stepped toward it. There was a small balcony on the other side of the glass, concealed from the neighbouring houses by the steeply pitched roofs on either side of it.

  “Open the window.”

  Ori did as he was told. It was too big to really be called a window. It was more like a door—taller than Ori and several feet wide. As Ori opened it, cool evening air poured into the room, caressing his bare skin.

  Fabric rustled behind Ori. Tearing his gaze away from the view, he turned around.

  Raynard was undoing his shirt. For a second, all Ori could do was gape, until Raynard looked pointedly at the far corner of the attic room. Ori followed his gaze and spotted a rail where several empty coat hangers lingered.

  Rushing forward, Ori picked up one. Raynard handed him his shirt. With clumsy movements, his eyes still feasting on the slowly emerging view of his master’s body, Ori placed the shirt on the hanger. By the time he’d returned it to the clothes rail and retrieved another hanger, Raynard was already kicking off his shoes.

  Ori knelt at his feet to take them away. He was still kneeling there when Raynard began to undo his belt. Ori froze, staring up his master’s body, but the hawk’s gaze was fixed firmly on the window and the sky beyond it. He obviously had other things on his mind. A blowjob wasn’t a priority. Ori carried his shoes away and put them beneath the hanging clothes. Raynard’s socks and underwear were soon folded on top of them, and his trousers were on a hanger.

  Removing his watch, Raynard handed that to Ori too. Raynard’s attention never once wavered from the sky and, while he showed no interest in looking in Ori’s direction, Ori found that he was free to run his eyes over his master’s body as much as he pleased without any fear of being caught.

  Each line of muscle stood out beautifully in the evening half-light. Ori watched, mesmerised, as Raynard stretched.

  Arching his back, Raynard lifted his arms and rolled his shoulders. His fingers brushed against the sloping ceiling. Ori bit his bottom lip, desperate to reach out and touch, but lacking the courage.

  The tension that was always present in Raynard’s movements seemed to fade away before Ori’s eyes. The dwindling sunlight flooded over his skin as he stepped toward the window.

  “The window stays open until I return.”

  “Yes, sir,” Ori managed to rasp out.

  Raynard looked over his shoulder at him then. A slight smile played around his lips, as if he was party to some amusing little joke the rest of the world would never understand.

  “Shall I wait here for you, sir?” Ori whispered.

  Raynard shook his head. “No. Go back downstairs.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Raynard stepped through the window and onto the balcony. One moment a fully-grown man stood looking down into the garden. A second later, a beautiful goshawk perched on the balcony railing, feathers shimmering in the light.

  Ori’s mouth dropped open. In some way he didn’t understand, it was as if there had always been both a hawk and a man there, but the picture of the man had faded back until the hawk became the only image he could see before him.

  Ori stepped forward.

  The hawk turned its head toward him. The look in Raynard’s amber gaze still had the power to stop Ori in his tracks.

  Then, without any warning, Raynard was away—swooping down over the garden. Wings extended, he quickly regained height to soar out over the town. Flinging himself onto the balcony after his master, Ori leaned against the railing, eyes open very wide as he traced the hawk’s movements. It circled effortlessly over the city, barely seeming to flap its wings. All too soon, it disappeared from view.

  When Ori dropped his gaze, his grip on the balcony turned white knuckled, his stomach turned over as he saw how high up he was. He quickly returned his attention to the sky as he stepped back from the balcony’s edge and closer to the security of the house.

  Once safely inside, Ori couldn’t help but study the sky again. His master was out there.

  Ori had his orders; he knew that. He was to go back downstairs. Raynard didn’t want him to wait there for his return. Ori absentmindedly ran his fingers over his collar and caressed the silver tag hanging from it. It was what his master wanted that was important now, not his own wishes. Reluctantly, Ori turned away from the sky and did as he was told.

  Chapter Four

  To a hawk flying high over
the city, Raynard Lodge was barely more than a dot—just one speck out of the thousands that littered a landscape that stretched all the way to the edge of the world. Raynard glided in swooping circles through the evening air. With his hawk instincts pulled to the front of his mind, it was impossible for him not to consider everything within his field of vision to be his own personal territory and every man who lived there to be his property.

  Yet, even with everything in this domain to admire, Raynard kept finding his attention drifting back toward his uncle’s house. Even in flight, it was all too easy for Raynard to conjure up a mental image of his new submissive waiting patiently for his return.

  A tiny tilt of the wings and he found himself circling back to the house, for all the world like a damn homing pigeon who couldn’t resist racing back to the boy.

  The balcony came into view. After so many weeks in human form, Raynard’s landing was nothing short of embarrassing. He completed his shift a second too soon. His human feet materialised several inches above the wooden boards.

  He landed heavily, only just gaining control of his hands in time to reach out, brace himself against the balcony railing, and stop himself from tumbling into a messy heap on the moss coated surface. The world spun as Raynard glared into the gloomy little room on the other side of the window. Ori, obedient little duckling that he was, hadn’t lingered there to see his master make a fool of himself.

  Raynard bowed his head for a few minutes, filling his body with deep lungfuls of air as he fought to push his mind back into an entirely human shape. Hawk or human, he still found his thoughts full of one man.

  Stumbling away from the balcony, Raynard headed off in search of his fledgling.

  Legs which thought they would be better off pulled up tight against his body while his wings took the strain, were not well suited to stairs. It was more luck than judgment that got him to the ground floor in one piece. When he caught sight of light shining from beneath the library door, Raynard was happy to avoid the awkward little staircase that led down to the servants’ area.

  He pushed open the library door, his hands still clumsy and uncoordinated after his shift. The heavy wood slammed into the bookcase behind it.

  Ori spun around. The book he’d been lost in fell from his hands and landed on the hearth rug. His eyes opened very wide as he saw Raynard standing in the doorway.

  Raynard stepped forward. Ori remained frozen in place, not even blinking as Raynard closed the gap between them with slow, deliberate steps. Stopping barely a foot away from Ori, Raynard looked down at the book Ori had been so fascinated by.

  “I wasn’t reading it, sir,” Ori rushed out. He dropped to his knees for a moment and picked up the book. As he rose, he turned to put it on the shelf.

  Raynard’s reactions were still as fast as a true hawk’s. He had his fingers wrapped around Ori’s wrist before the duckling had pushed the book halfway into the gap left between its neighbouring volumes.

  Ori hesitated, but when Raynard guided his hand away from the shelf, Ori didn’t try to leave the book behind. He turned the cover toward Raynard for his inspection.

  I wasn’t reading it, sir. As if he’d been caught committing some horrible crime.

  “Don’t lie to your master.”

  Ori swallowed. “It won’t happen again, sir.”

  Raynard shook his head. That was wrong—Ori was promising to avoid the wrong thing. “When you’ve completed your duties, you may have free use of the library—unless you’re foolish enough to lie to me again.”

  “Yes, sir.” Ori glanced up at him, apparently pleased with the permission, even if he was rather confused by it.

  With his head still full of flight and the sensation of air rushing beneath his wings, Raynard knew he was in no condition to make sense of Ori’s idiosyncrasies.

  Ori looked down. For a moment, it looked like a simple expression of his submission. Then, Raynard followed his gaze. His impatience hadn’t allowed time for clothes. Ori wasn’t the only avian naked and incapable of hiding his reaction to the man standing before him.

  Ori’s gaze caressed Raynard’s flourishing erection. When he dragged his attention up to Raynard’s face, an offering was clear in his eyes. Raynard wanted to come, and Ori was obviously more than ready to serve him in whatever way would please him best.

  There was just a hint of nervousness mixed into Ori’s expression. “At the nest, they taught me to… I do know what I’m doing, sir,” he whispered, as if he thought he might have to beg for the privilege.

  Raynard hadn’t believed there was anything that would make him stumble before claiming his new submissive that night, but the softly spoken words were a very effective trip wire.

  He could easily imagine the kind of lessons Ori received at the nest. The boy was such a gentle soul, and he’d probably never received a single kind touch from any man when he was at the club.

  Raynard released his grip on Ori’s arm. Stepping forward he rested his fingers gently on Ori’s jaw line. Tilting Ori’s head back, Raynard brushed their lips together in a kiss as tender as any hawk could ever bestow upon another man.

  Ori gasped against his mouth. His lips parted. Raynard ran his tongue against them, tracing a line along the sensitive skin. When he pulled back, Ori’s eyes were closed, looking for all the world as if it was his first kiss.

  It couldn’t have truly been that, but Raynard’s possessive side still bayed its joy at the idea. Ori opened his eyes. He stared up at Raynard, wide-eyed and impossibly innocent.

  It took every scrap of self-control Raynard possessed to step away from him, to get his instincts under control and have his inner avian tethered, hooded, and perched on a mental gauntlet.

  Another few steps back. Raynard sat on one of the overstuffed leather armchairs that Ori had unearthed from beneath the dust covers.

  “Bring the book with you,” he bit out.

  Ori did as he was told, a slight frown marring his normally smooth brow as Raynard lost all ability to mellow his voice.

  A cushion rested on the neighbouring chair. Raynard snatched it up and dropped it on the floor by his feet. “Sit.”

  Ori lowered himself onto the cushion and crossed his legs beneath him. He didn’t look away from Raynard once.

  “Start reading where you left off,” Raynard ordered.

  “Sir?”

  Raynard looked impatiently at the book on Ori’s lap. Ori followed his gaze. Opening the book, he looked up at Raynard again, before cautiously starting to read aloud.

  The words were tentative, but that didn’t matter. The most confident rhetoric in the world wouldn’t have registered with Raynard right then. Closing his eyes, he forced himself to concentrate on each meaningless syllable, to push his human side to the fore and try to understand what was being said. It was important to be able to understand human words and ideas when dealing with a man like Ori.

  Raynard knew he’d been right to stretch his wings before doing anything with the boy. His mind, as it slowly regained its humanity, was clearer than it had been for months. Opening his eyes, Raynard found Ori peering up at him.

  The words were still flowing. Every few seconds, Ori dropped his gaze to scan another sentence, but he quickly lifted his eyes again to stare damn near worshipfully up at his new master. The syllables faltered as their eyes met. Ori parted his lips and flicked his tongue out to moisten them. No further words emerged.

  Raynard knew that his mind was as human as it was going to get that night. There was only so much that words could do to push a hawk’s instincts away, and they did nothing at all to temper a dominant man’s predilections. Seconds ticked past. Raynard continued to stare down at Ori, unable to hide his fascination with him.

  Ori swallowed and Raynard sensed the nerves building rapidly inside him.

  “Scared, fledgling?” he asked.

  Ori dropped his eyes to the book. He nodded, just one jerky little movement. “But only because I th
ink you might send me away without allowing me to serve you, sir,” he whispered after a moment. He nibbled at his bottom lip as if he immediately regretted his moment of daring.

  Raynard quickly caught the sensitive bit of skin between his thumb and forefinger and took it out of range of Ori’s teeth. Ori’s tongue brushed against his fingertip.

  Raynard didn’t pull away. Ori wrapped his lips cautiously around the top knuckle of Raynard’s finger. A moment passed. Neither of them moved. The world hung in the moment, wings spread, riding the air currents.

  Ori looked up at Raynard, his eyes full of need—to be accepted, to be owned, to be allowed to serve and please his master. It seemed to come so naturally to him. Raynard supposed that was because it actually did.

  It was as hard to imagine a dominant duckling as it would be to picture a submissive hawk. Raynard smiled slightly at the idea. Ori caught the expression and immediately reflected it back, his lips caressing his fingers with the movement.

  Raynard took his hand away from Ori’s mouth. Winding his fingers into Ori’s hair, he pulled him forward a little. Ori’s eyes sparkled with relief as he moved onto his knees and leaned closer of his own volition.

  Raynard tightened his hold on the fledgling’s messy hair. Ori stilled, surrendering all control of his movements to Raynard as he gradually guided him nearer.

  Ori opened his mouth in expectation. Raynard brushed the head of his cock against Ori’s lips and feasted on the sight of him, so willing, so eager.

  Raynard rocked his hips. The tip of his cock disappeared into Ori’s mouth, and Ori quickly formed his lips into a firm seal around the girth of his shaft. Ori’s eyes dropped closed, and he made no attempt to hide how he savoured his first true taste of his master’s cock.

  Raynard could almost believe the little fledgling was imprinting on him—creating a mental vision of him inside his head which went beyond simple thoughts and senses and cut right down to the very instincts that made a submissive what he was.