Archive of Our Own ^beta

The joy and revelry of Satinalia was, as always, infectious in the most welcome sort of way. Lorenzo couldn’t recall a single year where Antiva’s celebration had been anything but the most decadent sort. If it wasn’t the vast array of foods and feasts, it was the swirl of beautiful masks and intricate outfits, the night market’s assortment of live entertainment, or the wine that flowed freely during this week.

Treviso had always been his home, and he loved to see it in this light. Tonight was the final evening of celebration before everything wound down to the traditional fasting, and the local nightlife had not disappointed. One of Matteo’s boys had brought him a flask of wine, a hunk of good cheese on the rind, and a delightfully herbaceous bread that he’d been savoring from behind the table of his booth.

Most of his wares had gone throughout the week, which left Lorenzo plenty of time to just indulge this evening. Last year had been terribly dull with the Antaam hunkered down in the city—even if they hadn’t actively interfered at all. The memory left a rather acrid taste in his mouth.

Ah. Nothing another drink of wine couldn’t fix.

He was so engrossed in his people-watching that he almost missed the hushed voices from somewhere in his periphery. It was nothing but the soft, half-silenced giggles of someone enjoying their evening, but—

“I’ve never done something like this before.”

“Ssh, stay quiet.”

That first voice—male, Antivan—prickled through Lorenzo’s memory as incredibly familiar, yet he could not place it. It was probably the alcohol muddling his thoughts. 

Another tipsy-sounding giggle met his ears, and it was all he could do not to shoo away whoever had thought to find a private corner in earshot. He turned, eyes narrowed a touch. For a moment, he had simply assumed it had come from the alley behind him, but whatever half-hearted, scathing remark he had died on his tongue—there was no one there.

“Did you want to go someplace more private?” He didn’t recognize the woman’s voice when she spoke, her tone hushed. 

There was a stretch of silence before an answer came. 

“No.” 

Lorenzo finally realized it then—through a gap in the slatted scaffolding that served as flooring in this part of the market, he could just make out two people silhouetted in shadows below. They were dressed in leather and silk, elegantly tooled feathering reminiscent of the corvids that inhabited the city on every rooftop.

Sneaky. Crows, probably. That alone made him hesitant to call them out, and bang his boot against the board above their heads. He watched as they peeled their festival masks off, discarding them with none of the reverence they seemed to have reserved for one other.

In the lanternlight that filtered down, he could see more detail than he particularly cared for. Something about it made him unable to tear his eyes away, even if the thought of being caught as a willing voyeur didn’t settle particularly well with him. 

They had to be Crows. The dark leather they were clad in nearly melded with the shadows below. It surprised him somewhat that they did not notice his presence—or perhaps they had, and had decided that it was worth it anyway. 

A sliver of light illuminated part of the man’s face, and it struck Lorenzo how utterly besotted he looked. He had initially assumed this just to be some sort of drunken tryst, but he found the gravity of the Crow’s expression almost uncomfortable to look at—something a stranger should not bear witness to.

Also, that was one of Caterina Dellamorte’s boys. He was sure of it.

Try as he might, Lorenzo could simply not tear his eyes away from what was unfolding below. He watched as the Dellamorte man caged the other Crow against the wall, a lascivious smirk curving across his features. When she leaned into him, cupping his face to draw him in for a searing, heated kiss, he swore he could hear him sigh as his eyes slid closed in bliss.

Maker, it was almost worse than just two drunken strangers necking in plain view. 

He sat back for a moment, rummaging in his shirt pocket for a crumpled pack of cigarettes. After lighting it in the lantern set at the edge of the table, he sat back, and took a long drag off of it. Quite the way to end the week, he supposed.

“Rook—”

Lorenzo watched the thin curl of smoke disappear above him before he cast his gaze down to the crack in the floor beside him. Rook? Like the chess piece, or the bird? She probably heard that all the time. 

Something fluttered in his chest as he watched the way she dragged her lips over the Crow’s neck, leaving open-mouthed kisses in her wake. The laugh she let out into the hollow of his throat betrayed the volume of alcohol she’d consumed, but the affection shared between them was so open, so freely given, that he found himself a little envious of it.

He reached for his cup, swirling the contents idly. Around the rest of the market, the celebration continued, oblivious to the heat simmering beneath the floorboards. If he were a better man, he’d retreat elsewhere to give them the benefit of some privacy—but he wasn’t. He’d made a half-assed attempt, at least.

A soft, guttural groan drew Lorenzo’s eyes downward again. He felt his mouth go dry—not from the wine in his hand—watching with rapt attention as Rook palmed her partner through his leathers, then set to work to undo his trousers.

“There’s a good boy, Lucanis,” she murmured, just barely loud enough for him to hear, “Always so good for me.”

Lucanis? Not Illario? He could have sworn the latter was the one always whoring around Treviso—Lorenzo didn’t pay close enough attention to the personal inner workings of the Crows to know for sure. The way that he was looking at her, though? That wasn’t a throwaway girl.

Rook sank down to her knees as she eased his cock free from his pants, a low chuckle winding its way up through the floorboards like smoke. He was nearly panting already, and looking down at her through half-lidded eyes like she was the one that made the sun rise. 

For all Lorenzo knew, maybe she did. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had looked at him that way. Dante, maybe? Maria? Certainly not with the intensity this Crow was putting out.

No, this was something else entirely.

Lucanis pressed his palms against the wall over her head, gaze hazy as he watched her. When she dragged the flat of her tongue up the length of him, the shuddering breath he let out made something tingle in the base of Lorenzo’s spine. 

He moved one hand to tangle in her hair—dark, wavy, maybe a touch purple—his sigh edging out into a low moan when she took him into her mouth. When his head tipped back, Lorenzo could see that his eyes were closed in surrender. 

That’s what this was—not force, not dominance—but a slow, blissful surrender.

Lorenzo had given and received enough head to realize that this woman loved it. Even with each pass of her lips over his shaft, every hollowing of her cheeks, he could just make out the faintest smile curved at the corner of her mouth. He wasn’t a gambling man, but he’d be willing to bet money she was soaked through her core over the reactions she was pulling from her partner. 

When Rook braced a hand against his pelvis, and soothingly rubbed her thumb along the bone, Lucanis very nearly rut back into her mouth. The full-bodied shudder that wove through him was telling. There was control there. Discipline.

Maker , they were probably breathtaking in bed together.

Imagining two complete strangers railing each other at home struck him as a little too far past the line, actually. For a moment, Lorenzo averted his gaze, focusing on a dim lantern that was hung off a balcony across the bazaar while he took another drag of his nearly-forgotten cigarette. He drew a long breath, trying to will away the uncomfortable state of arousal he was in. It didn’t work.

At least he was sitting at a table, he supposed. 

Despite the lingering shame, he soon found his eyes trailing back down. It was mesmerizing—if lascivious—the level of connection oozing off of the pair of them. 

Rook took him to the hilt once, twice—on the third pass, Lucanis’ spine went rigid, eyes closed and mouth agape. His breath shuddered through him, fingers tightened in her hair. She swallowed, nearly greedy in her enthusiasm, only releasing his cock from her mouth with a wet pop when he had slouched forward onto his forearm against the wall behind her.

“What a good boy you’ve been for me,” she cooed, barely audible as she tucked him back into his trousers.

“Come here, mi amor.” He helped her back up to her feet, and kissed her deeply. “You are a minx .” There was no venom in his tone, only the barest breath of a laugh until he coaxed her mouth open for another kiss.

She wrapped her arms around his neck, and pulled him close. “Let’s head home. You said a lot of things this evening that I’d love for you to make good on.”

Lucanis’ smile turned wicked at that, and his voice dropped too low for Lorenzo to hear his response.

Finally—finally—the pair of them disappeared back into the shadows on the scaffolding below, leaving him quite alone with his thoughts. That was quite an end to Satinalia. 

Lorenzo sat there at his table for quite a while, turning the cup of wine in his fingers until he’d emptied it of the last of its contents. Once his rather blatant erection had subsided, he made a quick exit to head back to his apartment. 

Surely, he could tell nobody about what he’d witnessed. That meant there could be no one to judge him for a quick release by his own hand when he’d settled into the bath later—just for tension relief, of course. 

Weeks later, he was having a cup of coffee along the canal at Cafe Pietra, the entire event almost a memory. Lorenzo heard someone approach the barista at the counter behind him, nearly spitting out his beverage when he realized it was the handsome Crow from that night at the market celebration. Somehow, he kept it together enough to turn casually away, and took a long draw off of his cup to cover.

“Aah, First Talon—what can I get for you?”

First Talon? First fucking Talon? He’d seen that man’s cock. He’d seen him receiving fellatio while drunk during holiday revelry. Had watched it—and he was the leader of the fucking Crows.

Maker’s fucking tits.