Athos gasps softly into the kiss, the shiver it sends through him still a delicious and unexpected rediscovery. Porthos’ mouth is warm and inviting, rough and greedy, the kiss utterly unlike those he has shared with women, and yet the passion is the same. Athos shifts closer, so that when their lips part, their foreheads can lean together.

This tryst of theirs can’t last, not when the shame and the consequences are so great. Now that the war is done, former allies already clamber to tear each other apart, and the Comte de la Fere has angered too many powerful men over the years to be left in peace now. Especially when one of those men is the First Minister of France. If any of them were to discover this unexpected result of the Cardinal’s little joke--

But none of that matters now. Now, there is only the heat between, powerful enough to block out everything outside this small room.