INDEX:
Link here to a general overview of the novel
Prologue, Chpt 1, Chpt 2, Chpt 3, Chpt 4, Chpt 5, Chpt 6
We begin here after Daav’s flashback memory following Sebastian’s post-magic collapse.
Chapter Seven
Sebastian
Pounding pain in my head. A slight vibration along my body. I wake, my blurred vision and the movement make my stomach roil. Shit. I swallow back bile and force breaths through my nose. My eyes focus ahead of me. Black dashboard, I’m in a car, but not one I recognize.
“You’re awake. How do you feel?” Daav’s voice, deep and concerned.
I turn to look at him sitting behind the wheel, driving us…somewhere. He wears a baseball cap. My hand strays to the one I realize I now wear.
“Yep. Dandy. Aaaah.” I press my hand to my splitting head under the hat. “Well, actually my skull hurts like a motherfucker.”
Daav grunts. He’s done a lot of that. The man is articulate as shit, but uses those grunts to delay committing to his actual thoughts.
“You didn’t hit your head on the presentation table when you fell, so I imagine the pain is from the Verse work and your exhaustion.”
The ‘I told you so’ is alive and well in the jerk’s voice.
Rolling my shoulders, I assess my situation. “Feeling a few bruises, I guess from the fall, but I’m okay other than the head.”
And of course the pain is a comfort itself, like a familiar lover curled up beside me. I’ve resisted Daav’s complaint that I need to take better care of myself, since the pain from self-neglect is an easy secondary benefit. Sure, I’m an idiot, but my demons are good company, and I’ve been lonely for a long time.
“My thoughts, too,” Daav says. “It’s why I decided to skip doing med magic on you and get us on the road. It is not my forté, unlike for you.”
“Where’s my car?” This is clearly not it.
“Back at your friend Jellisia’s. She let me borrow hers in temporary trade, which was kind given the deplorable state of your own. Yours is recognizable to the Conclave and others. My mind only now appreciates the effort it takes to stay hidden.”
“Yes, I know. You’re more of a fuck you in the face of a threat kind of guy, to stir up hot pursuit. For such a careful man, you’re reckless that way.”
He grunts.
I roll my eyes.
But he keeps glancing over at me. Daav can’t hide the worry in his face despite his dismissal of concern for my state of health.
“And where are you driving us?” I ask to break up the obvious train of his thoughts.
“Nowhere. I was hoping you’d wake before I ran out of gas to direct me, as you mentioned you had a place for us to stay out of sight. Plus, I didn’t think it appropriate to stay at Jellisia’s. She does not need the attention we would bring and…it didn’t feel right.” He shakes his head.
“So you carried me to the car and drove me off into the sunset? How manly, Prince.”
Another snort. He’s so predictable.
“It’s midday, but I’m glad you’re awake,” he says, voice softer than since I’d knocked on his front door.
“Missed me?”
He pauses.
“Yes.”
That answer is less expected, and churns my gut. Damn, but I’m gone for this guy. Have been. Always. I will try to keep him in my life, but as optimistic as I pretend to be, as determined, I can’t fool myself any longer that it’s a sure thing. Too much has happened between us, to us. And the crucible of our youth, the bonding from our shared traumas, may not be enough to overcome the hard reality of this uncertain world as adults reacting to shit as best we can. Shoulders burdened by the ridiculous baggage we lug around, I’m sick of mine. Daav has to be sick of his own. But that doesn’t mean I can or will jettison the baggage.
“Then you’re a lucky man. I’m awake now. Take a left at the next light, we’re headed to the wharf district.”
“Why?”
“A friend leases me an empty warehouse there.”
“Those are for processing fish.”
“Well, it does smell some, but this one’s empty. No fish. I figure we should be safe there for a day before we risk being found, by the Conclave or your father.”
He follows my directions, his driving a hundred times more careful than my own, and finally pulls around the back of the unattractive, squat cement building right on the wharf. The metal rolling door off the parking area is solid enough, although orange rust spots paint it liberally.
We don cheap sunglasses to finish off our disguises and I go for my key, undo the padlock, and shove open the warehouse door to a protesting screech.
“Come on.” I gesture at him, nervous all of the sudden, realizing what he’ll see.
We walk into the echoing space and I turn on the bank of lights, pushing the door closed again. Ripped plastic sheeting shifts underneath our feet as we enter.
It’s really just one large room, empty of the packing equipment for the fish, with metal shelving along the side of the far wall. A set of three long metal tables are shoved up against another wall. The tables are covered with more of my woodworking equipment, chisels, small whittling knives, circular saws, clamps, sanding materials and containers of paint and epoxy. Pieces of plywood and sheet metal are wedged between the back of the tables and the wall. Branches and tree stumps, as well as covered buckets filled with clay are tucked underneath the tables. A kiln off on the side is vented through a myriad of large, smudged casement windows, maybe ten feet off the floor, that ring the space to let in light from the waterfront. I keep a fraction of this at my apartment, the studio equipment at my place only allowing smaller scale projects.
Messy, but Daav already knew that about me. There’s no hiding, and I’ve never felt the need.
A long, sagging stained couch that had once been some shade of light blue but has long faded into beige rests at the far end of the space. I’ve spent many a night on its uncomfortable cushions. It pulls out into a bed, but the springs are for shit, so I usually keep it folded. A second loveseat is next to it, almost as faded and maybe once cranberry.
I continue to the loveseat and throw down the bag I’ve packed earlier today before we hurried out of my apartment. Daav remembered to grab it when he got me out of Jellisia’s. Then I linger by the seat, giving him space and time to settle into this new temporary reality. Giving myself the same. I breathe in the faint scent of the sea, the fish who once upon a time suffered their transition to the afterlife in this location. I’d burned plenty of incense, blew big industrial fans, sprinkled tons of powders to absorb the smell of the past. It only does the deed so well, and instead I embrace the last scent memory of the former life of this warehouse and use the idea of the sacrificed sea life and their glassy eyed deaths to inspire my creation. Maybe morbid, but hey, I embrace morbid well.
Daav walks to the middle of the room, about as big as a small under-regulation sized basketball court, and pivots his head in all directions to take in my home away from home.
Until he notices it, exactly as I’ve known he will. And my stomach clenches. I flick finger against thumb to dismiss the clench. He’s here. With me. And I won’t pretend.
My eyes travel over to where he focuses. Standing to the other side of the farthest table, a few yards beyond, is the statue.
The dark matte metal life-size figure balanced on a long, flat base of the same maybe six feet by three feet. The dancer has his face turned over his shoulder, arms up above his head with elbows bent out, leaning forward while raised up on the balls of his feet, muscled torso bent forward, shoulders and arms curved back. The large, bulging thigh muscles and glutes of his ass are engaged with his lift. Chest bare, his eyes are closed, a pure moment of joy. Only caught in the passion of his dance will he allow himself to touch any beautiful peace or ecstatic nirvana.
I’d memorized the sculpture with my hands after I’d used the bits to grind down the grooves and lines of the man and finished the fine work. To recreate one of the last memories I have of him dancing. To keep him any way I can.
When Daav lets loose in the studio, he’s an otherworldly, sharp force of line and energy. And for the years I couldn’t have him in person, I’d set out to recreate him in metal. To sculpt him into my life. Still, I’ve only allowed myself to do it once. This statue.
Daav approaches the metal dancer with slow, deliberate steps, pacing forward as if he can’t trust the object he approaches, like a mirage in the desert that may or may not be real.
“Me?” he says, tracing his finger along the raised forearm.
I drink in the sight of him now in my space, discovering this statue.
Fuck, but I want to sculpt him like that, a man wanting desperately to believe himself real, to believe in himself. Daav reaching for his identity, longing for it. His need is clear on his face, flickering through emotion to find a home base, and decide how to be in this moment. The impulse to create is so strong my foot taps the floor as I keep myself from running for my sketch pads to capture the vision.
But despite my recent thought that this might never be real between us again, I can’t resist him. And that impulse is greater. I move to stand behind him as he lingers with fascination over the dancer, wishing he’d turn around and risk being Daav with me. I don’t care which Daav. Any is fine.
He doesn’t turn, but speaks instead.
“Without you, I would never have found ballet. Do you remember?”
Of course I did. It was after that first time Victor used a whip on Daav. The tail had wrapped his shoulder and tore a gash, leaving a scar.
It was only months after the shit show of the attic. And of Clark.
My fingers flick at my side. The pain of that time licks up my skin, raking its nails. I let it sink in and embrace it.
Daav’s fingertips brush the shoulder of the statue where I’d recreated the same scar.
I remembered the moment when I realized it wouldn’t disappear and had kept staring at it while he dressed. Couldn’t help myself. He caught me watching one evening, and I ran away from him to the bedroom window. When he grabbed me to turn me around and face him, he found tears streaking my face.
‘You never cried before the attic,’ he had said to me then.
True, because I never want to add to his pain by showing him mine.
I’ll avoid it even now if possible, with his birthday so soon and our time together ticking down.
“I remember,” I say with a nod, although he can’t see it, still facing the statue.
‘He scarred you,’ I’d said to Daav back then, the words tumbling out. ‘You were perfect before now. He ruined you, and I hate him for that.’ I was so angry underneath those tears. I wanted to do something, anything to erase that scar, give him back what Victor stole.
I’m still angry.
Although Victor’s dead now. I threw one fucking party when I heard. Better to focus on that triumph than the flayed tatters from Victor’s cruelties.
Daav keeps speaking.
“We were in the den, hanging around, clicking through channels on the television, you stopped at a performance of ballet. Your face looked like you had just discovered how to turn lead into gold. And you said, ‘you should do that. You move like that all the time. You’re perfect when you move. That kind of perfect he can’t take from you.’”
He remembers my exact words. But of course he does. He’s Daav.
“I knew you’d love it,” I say. “Ballet meant practice, repeating moves until they’re just right. Until your feet bleed, your muscles burn, and you drop from exhaustion. You’ve always gotten off on that, Daav. And you move like a damn gazelle. You must have come out of the womb like that.”
“I watched that performance all the way through and hated when it ended. Like with your suggestion I was transfixed. And then at dinner you told Victor I needed to take ballet lessons, and told him it would help my magic. I was shocked that he listened. So shocked I agreed when he offered.” Daav’s fists squeeze by his sides.
“You love ballet. It was one of the best things I did. We all need something that’s just ours. Not about our mage work, not about serving our fucking country.”
Something just for him, just for me. For a long time, we’d been that for each other.
And it’s then Daav spins around, and as close as I’m positioned to him, he steps closer. Close enough that we’re like two circuits, our alternating current creating small jags of lightning to jump between our bodies. Our own Tesla coil, no need for wires or actual touch to trade energy. If the current was visible the light show would be enough to illuminate all the dark corners of the warehouse.
Not touching yet, but so damn close.
My dick hardens, tortured to life in the most amazing way with the sparks coming off him, so familiar and dear to me. The fucking amazing gift the universe had given us that first day when we were little kids, when the door opened with Daav standing on the doorstep.
“I want you,” he says, breath caressing my lips, cheeks. A tease of a promise, desire in his sea depth eyes.
“Okay,” I answer, unable to escape the loop of current between us. Not fucking wanting to.
“Just for now,” he says. “Temporary is all it can be.” A strangled grief hides in his voice.
His face is full of a different wish than his words, not that he’ll allow himself what he wants.
It doesn’t have to be all, but I don’t say that. It might scare him away.
“I told you, anything you need, Prince.”
And I need you.
“I cannot turn back the clock for us,” he says, as if to warn me away from assumptions, expectations. To warn himself.
“Just touch me already.” Verse twist it, I want him.
His brow wrinkles. “And no…pain. Not now.”
“Anything, Daav. I’ll keep fucking repeating it.”
It’s the truth. I don’t care what he gives me, how he touches me. I need him, any part he’s willing to give. It’s mostly true. Eight years and I want it as much as that first fumbling time between us at age thirteen when I didn’t even have a name for it. And if part of me does wish he’d give it to me hard and with a cornucopia of pain, wanting him to make me feel as brutally alive as I’ve craved these past years, I shove it down.
He pushes forward into me, finally, and the heat of the contact between our bodies forces a low groan from my lips. His hands move to my waist, the lightest of touches, and he backs me across the space toward the couch one slow step at a time. Driving us exactly where he wants. His smooth glide reminds me of a large predator stalking prey, although I don’t think I’m prey when I want this as much. Maybe I’m more like a hypnotized snake, swaying to the siren song of his snake-charmer.
My hands rest on his ass, feeling the clench and release of his glutes as he moves us. He borrowed a pair of my sweatpants this morning, the thick muscle of his thighs making my jeans too tight a fit. The strength of his body mimics the strength of his soul, and my heart leans into that power. Yes, this is all I want.
The back of my legs hit the couch, but he doesn’t push me down. Instead, he begins to untuck my shirt, pulling it from the waistband of my jeans, running thumbs over my hardness where it presses against my fly. Then burrows underneath the shirt fabric to trace patterns on my abs. A swirling design through the light hairs of my abdomen that lead down to that throbbing place needing his attention.
He nestles against my neck, inhaling as he cups the back of my head, weaving fingers into the few loose strands of hair that have fallen from where I’d secured them. His fingers cup my skull like it’s some precious object. My heart beats a fast race.
“You smell so good, Angel. Like mint and musk. You always did.” And then he’s reaching for the knot at the top of my head and pulling out the tie, releasing the hair so it falls down to my shoulders. Combing those fingers through the strands. Gentle, soothing. Only the slightest of tugs against my scalp.
I dig my fingers harder into his ass.
“Prince. More.” I can’t help the desperation behind the words.
“Patience. If this is all we are to have, I need it slow and gentle.”
And maybe he does, maybe he just needs to take care of me, and maybe I’d promised he could have it any way he pleases, but damn if I don’t grind my cock against his to urge him on, to get the friction I want. To get him closer. Close enough to sink inside him and merge skin, organs, blood. Everything.
The electricity jumps between us with even the barest contact.
And then he’s lifting my shirt up my body and I’m forced to let go of him and raise my arms with his movement.
Surprisingly, when the tee shirt is still up over my head and arms, he stops there, keeping me trapped and blind inside the fabric. I feel his mouth bend to my barbell pierced nipple and his tongue flicking over a taut bud, one, then the other. Alternating between gentle licks and firm sucks into his mouth. They tighten into hard points which the metal makes feel more sensitive and delicious.
“Daav, sweet agony, please. Don’t be an asshole.” Be mine. Already the darkness slithers awake. Whispering to me. His touch pets it alive, attracted as it is to him.
He withdraws his mouth and finishes pulling off my shirt, throwing it to the floor, and replacing his mouth with fingers as he rolls the nipples between them. He doesn’t pull at the piercings, fuck him. The pressure is just shy of enough pain and I push my chest into him. Wanting more. Hissing with the need.
He refuses to tighten his pinch and I moan again with frustration.
My hands grab his shirt. “Off,” I demand, pulling. My voice is full of the serrated demand though I try to keep it leashed to give him what he wants.
Still, he obliges, separating us long enough to remove it and throw it after mine.
Then it’s skin on skin, our chests pressed together and his mouth back at my throat, kissing along the skin as he runs hands up and down my spine. Shivers follow their path.
“Your body is a feast, Angel,” he rumbles against my ear and bites down gently on the lobe. “It always was. You are beautiful.”
“I’m no angel,” I gasp. Not with what I want done to me. What’s inside me. He’s used the name a couple times the last few days.
“Live with it,” he rumbles.
“Fuck, Prince. Harder.” The words push out from behind the lump in my throat. Too gentle. Too sweet, though I want that as much.
There’s always something so precise in how he touches. Whether he’s going gentle or hard. Like everything else about him. It drives me wild, because not in a million years could I hold myself back like he’s able. And truth be told I’m not sure I want to.
My hand burrows down underneath the front waistband of his pants, digging down inside the boxer briefs to reach for his hot, hard dick. His foreskin is already retracting, exposing his glans, and he shudders as I run a finger lightly over his frenulum. Smooth and silky and lovely.
“Mmmh, I love your hands, sculptor’s hands, Angel.”
“Can’t keep them off you. Mouth watering, Prince. All of you.” My grip continues down his shaft, pumping him from base to tip. Imagining that perfect thick girth pushing inside has me dizzy.
He pants. “Yes.”
And then his hands are at my jeans, popping open the button, pushing them down along with my briefs. Finally.
I’m forced to let go to step out of them.
Before I can return to him, he’s dropped to his knees in front of me, cheek nestling into my groin, pressing the hard length of my shaft into his skin, rolling scent over himself. I want nothing more than to dive into his own skin.
“I’m going to suck you off, Angel. I want to eat you. All of you.”
My balls are filled with fire, lifting high and tight just at his words. Although really I wish he’d get up here and let me drop to my knees for him. My mouth waters thinking of his wide dick down my throat and choking on it, the picture causing me to lick my lips.
As close as I can get, having every part of him inside me. Consuming me. The need has me climbing out of my damn skin.
Missed you. Love you.
“Let me take care of you,” he says as he gazes up my body like he knows what I’m thinking. “Think of it as the most kinky of tortures. Me serving you with just pleasure.”
I groan. “Fuck, Daav.”
And it isn’t that he’s never had me in his mouth, but he knows what I prefer.
“I want this, your cock.” He languidly trails his tongue up from my base, over my shaft, to the head where he tongues into the slit. “Your balls.” Then dropping back down to lick again, sucking one into his mouth. “Your taint.” His tongue keeps up its work, followed by his nose nudging under my balls, pressing into that bit of stretched flesh, inhaling me. “You smell delicious.”
And then he’s up licking at my cockhead again, swiping his tongue across the weeping slit where my precum has started seeping at almost his first touch.
His wet hot mouth swallows me.
“Ah, twist it, so good.”
His sea eyes are trained on my face, watching me as his cheeks hollow with suction. I watch my prick disappear in and out of those lips, an erotic sight I drink in. Like I can absorb him through my retinas, all of his light and color and energy.
“Ah.” My head falls back because the sensation is too much, too good. And truth be told something I rarely let myself feel. Not often did a Top at the club let their bottom come this way, or even consider serving them. And that’s fine by me. I don’t want that with them. The sex itself these last years has been a placeholder, a biological necessity conveniently served along with what I really wanted. The pain, the dark. Because anything else with someone not this man…. Never have wanted it. Nothing but Daav.
Touch me. Let me touch you. Missed this.
His hands are on my ass, pulling me into his mouth. Deep throating me as my head hits the back of his throat again and again. The suction increases. So tight, so wet. And although he’s called it a kinky torture to blow me, he’s still the one in control, making sure I take what he wants to give, driving the writhing need inside me higher.
He’s damn good at this. I’d forgotten. And it’s the torture he’s threatened.
Too much. A buzzing energy starts tripping through my body, demanding. Reminding me of the dark, calling for it.
My balls lift higher, full and tight. Daav’s fingers cup them, one hand moving from my ass cheek, a digit trailing down over my taint. Teasing close to the pucker of my hole. Fuck, but he needs to move it there. He hums against me as he surrounds my dick and the vibration brings me to the edge.
“Too close…. Going to come, Daav. Stop.” This isn’t how I want to go. Too soon.
With a last suck he pulls off me, a sheen of moisture on his lips. His pupils are blown, eyes the dark of the ocean before a storm.
“Fuck me, now!”
Hard, make it hurt. But I don’t say it.
He chuckles, the bastard, then clicks his tongue. Denying me. “My terms, Angel.”
He stands and shoves down the sweats, stepping out of them, and lowering us to the couch, hands returning to my waist in a firm grip and moving us with careful precision, the squeak of the springs bringing a desperate laugh to my lips, a reminder of our enthusiasm despite his exacting movements.
It takes no effort to move me, arrange me, his muscles a compact source of power with his constant workout from dance. I’m not weak, but he’s always been stronger.
Daav presses on top of me. The weight of him is real. It makes me real again after eight years. Wet coats my eyes, but I hold it back.
We’re naked, chest to chest, although he nudges my legs apart and rests between them, our cocks aligning, sliding against each other, hips moving with that irresistible need for friction.
Daav’s hands are cupping the sides of my head, and he kisses me. His mouth caresses my lips, the barest of brushes as he teases with the contact.
I rest fingers at the crease where his thigh meets groin. Skin firm and hot. The crinkled pubic hair there brushes the side of my hand. My tongue licks out to taste his lips and he pulls back at each attempt. Bastard. Withdrawing enough to keep them just out of my reach.
“Naughty, naughty, Angel.”
Playful Prince was a sight to behold, and I would have smiled up at the rare example of play time if my frustration and hard dick didn’t have me gripped tight. If my skin wasn’t jumping with both the need to be merged with him and the longing for a darker possession.
But he is the light. I know it, can’t deny that his lovemaking is full of who he is at the core. It drives me crazy, twisted Verse.
In a swift move, my mouth lunges for his and I bite his lip.
“Ow!” he grumbles, then smiles again. “Difficult for you, isn’t it?”
“I want you, Daav. Get over it. Fuck me, already.”
“You are your own worst enemy, Sebastian.”
“Like it that way, Prince.” I can’t decide if I enjoy it more when he uses my full name, the syllables rolling over his tongue like an incantation, or this new nickname Angel. I let the descriptor hover over me, feeling the scrape of it against my darkness. Most call me Seb, and I’d forgotten, until yesterday when he opened the front door to me, how much I’d missed the full name. Although really I want it only from him.
But he listens to my demands in part, his lips biting into my own, even if gentler than I like.
Yes, make me real.
His thumb travels down between us, brushing over my taint again and farther back, rubbing over the puckered entrance where nerve endings explode with pleasure. Circling, circling. Sweet agony, yes.
“Do you have any lube in that bag of yours, Angel?” he whispers into my ear as he keeps brushing my hole, teasing. Promising. Holding back. My hips buck forward with each of those damn swipes over the spot.
“Fuck, yes. Outside pocket.” Of course I’d packed it, hopeful, curse me.
“Your mouth is just as dirty as ever,” he says, but leans over from the couch, thankfully close enough to where I’d dropped the bag to grab it without moving his body completely from mine.
The cool air hits my skin as he moves away even the little he needs, and I already miss the press of his body, the heavy weight promising to grind me down. But then he’s back, the snick of the cap on the bottle sending another zing through me.
And his fingers are back at my hole, the digits wet from the lube now, circling me again. He taps at the puckered entrance and it pulses. I buck to get the fingers closer. To get them inside.
“I need you so much, Sebastian,” his voice into my ear, the words a growl and his breath a hot need against my neck.
“I think you’re the one taking your own damn time, Prince.”
A finger presses into me then, slowly, breaching past the first ring of muscle as I push into it.
I whimper with it. Want more.
“Hot, tight, you feel so good.”
“Promise you a fucking volcano if you get inside me. Your cock will be weeping prayers of thanksgiving if it comes for a visit.” My growl is all ragged edges, the dark needing him. My heart needing him.
My body moves against the fibers of the couch as I shift to get him closer to me. The scent of clay hangs in the air over the slight remaining smell of the ocean. An impulse to roll us in that clay, cover our bodies with the sticky, brick wetness of my supplies, flicks through my mind. To create us all new again like any project on my wheel.
“I know,” he says, and the layers of tenderness, laughter, lust and seriousness in his voice are ridiculously improbable, but they’re each true. He’s all of those things. Tender and controlled, fucking intense, focused, a sun centering the solar system, but needing to set, to hide away and not acknowledge its immense presence. He loves so fiercely. That’s always been true. He’s afraid of it, but it’s true.
A second finger joins the first, and all thought leaves as each brand of his touch becomes my life. My hips pump into the burn and delicious fullness. Not even close to the fullness I crave, the discomfort nothing to what I’ve taken but the fact it was Daav…. Verse twist it, but it’s everything.
Then he scissors his fingers, stretching.
Thank fucking sweet agony.
And me a panting mess as I fuck up into those digits, as he keeps up the stretching, my jerky movements calling him into me.
“Fine,” I pant, “you got the award for considerate lover, I’m all prepped, now get busy.”
“I sense a theme with you, Angel. I warned you.”
He wants it slow, wants to savor, but I know he wants me begging just as much. Wants to see the Sebastian who he remembers, mouthy, a bit too impulsive, who’d been his companion in everything for all those years. He’d been scared for me when I’d fainted after the healing. He’d forgotten that I accept and dive into the Verse work that calls me.
But this now, between us, merging our bodies is part of the reassurance he needs.
Plus I want him inside me more than I want to breathe.
Finally, a third finger, and his other hand at my chest, worming between us, tweaking a nipple harder than he’s allowed himself before, fingering a barbell.
“Yes.”
“It’s good that you have mastered your basic vocabulary.” But even now, his voice is rougher, throatier, his own arousal driving him as his hips twitch forward against me even as I pump into his fingers.
The wet trail of his arousal paints the skin of my hip.
“Asshole,” I manage between groans. “Please.”
He takes pity, his fingers disappearing, his body lifting up enough so I can gaze on his blown pupils, the sea colors retreating, the sheen of sweat on his chiseled cheeks.
It’s how I want it, face to face. Reminding me it’s us.
He’s reaching for my knees, hooking under them and lifting with that easy strength of his, when he freezes.
“Do I need…it’s been a long time between us. Condom? I assume there’s been…others.”
There has been.
But I’ve bartered with a mage or two regularly to make sure I’m healthy and clean, the price for my activity at the club. The Conclave’s none too happy if their stock falls prey to unnecessary nasties. I can fly under their radar mostly if I play by a minimum of rules.
He knows the Conclave’s requirements, so the question is about more than my health.
There’s always been honesty between us. Up until the end. Up until the letter.
“I’m clean,” I answer, breath panting, caught in fucking straining arousal and half drunk.
He still hesitates. Shit!
“Yes, others, but I’m clean,” I insist.
A flare of tension crosses his face, folding it in.
Don’t pull away. Please.
“Never for more than what I needed, Daav. Meant nothing. This is what I want.” My hips move to urge him to continue, bumping his dick against my taint, pressing up into my balls, all of me exposed.
Finally, he speaks. “You don’t want to ask me?”
If he’d had other lovers? No, I don’t want the answer. Although if I know my damn Prince, he hasn’t. Self-restraint, self-denial, reclusiveness. Those end now! Not with me.
“No, I don’t. Your business. And it doesn’t change anything between us. But even if you have, you would never put me at risk.”
“You trust too easily, Sebastian.” Censure, sadness in the voice. I want it gone.
“I trust you. There’s a difference.” And that’s enough conversation. My hand reaches between us and grasps his hardness, pumping once, twice.
He grabs my chin, holds it tight in his grip, disrupting my hold as he searches for something in my eyes. “Do you want this?”
The question isn’t about the sex. The sex, no matter the type, is always secondary.
“Yes,” I say.
He nods, drops my chin.
And then he’s finally lifting my legs, hooking his arms behind my knees to position me, shoving my hand away from him and lining his hard cock up with my hole.
Face flushed, lips red from the kissing, he’s fucking beautiful as he presses his cockhead against me, pushes through the ring of muscle, looser now. The burn has me clenching around him, wanting more of the fullness, and has me thrusting hips forward to force him deeper.
“Ah, Angel,” he rasps as I suck him deeper and he bottoms out, balls against my ass. “So hot, so good.”
His nails dig into my legs as he grips me, a little pain, that of any lover caught in the wild. He barely contains it, his hips beginning a thrust, steady for bare moments, before a deep throated moan and shiver takes hold. And he begins to piston in hard and deep, hitting my prostate with each savage stroke.
The pleasure’s almost pain and the dark of me loves it. Lightning and splintered ecstasy, too much of it, forcing gasps from me as the impact of his thrusts slide the couch against the cement. Balls deep in me. Impact. Again. Again. My skull is forced into the armrest as we lose control. Good. Yes.
Full and burning and my cock weeping with it, so hard I’m surprised I haven’t come already.
My eyes close with the power of the joining, the sensation sucking me under. Lit up with him, split open, nothing left to hide. Love, possession and belonging, brokenness, pain and pleasure enough to make me willingly give up all I am.
And underneath it, the whispers begin, grow louder, a call I’ve never heard before during sex with this boy, a man now, that I’ve loved forever.
The whisper of the darkness takes on the ugly cackles of the brambles’ misshapen energy, the Verse leaking out and reaching for my attention. It’s serrated tooth ugliness pushing through to the mundane world, demanding I fall into the painful place my magic lives.
What’s happening? It never seeks me out even when it’s longed for contact. The Verse is a place we have to purposefully enter. Not this! But the brambles touch is an acid burning, sidling next to me in a ghost form. Into this moment.
The shock of it slams my eyes open, and my vision begins to tint gold. I watch a gold striated sheen flicker through Daav’s eyes. The Verse pulls at him, too.
His stare is as intensely focused on me as mine on him, his own shock widening his pupils. As if he witnesses the same gold crawling over my vision. Daav’s hips falter, movements jerky as whatever has caught us, threatens to force us into magic, at the same time exploding the arousal between us into the atmosphere.
Too much, not enough, I’m splintering with it. And praying with barely coherent thought for the Verse to fold back away. Dangerous. Dangerous for us to open the Verse too near one another, as we touch. But it calls, demands.
It only led to disaster last time.
No! I shut my eyes against the brambles wicked pain, for once thrusting away the darkness even as I take Daav’s pounding, frantic for it.
Just him, not our magic. Not mages, just Daav and Sebastian.
Right here. Right now. The sucking, wet slam of our joined bodies, the strain of muscle as Daav restrains me with his powerful grip. Bruising. Sweet agony, I want his mark.
Love you.
Shoving the Verse away. Muscles clench with the effort. Leave!
It withdraws.
I weep with it, gasping hot breaths and tears running down my cheeks.
“More, faster, now,” my stuttering demands. He’s inside every part of me, and I’m bursting with it.
Every inch of me is alive and sensitive to touch and vibration and overload. My cock throbs, my nerves shock me open and the volcano I’d promised explodes.
I yell out as cum spurts from my cock, ejaculate rolling out without any need for touch. And behind me Daav cries out his release as my passage constricts around him, squeezing, forcing him over the edge.
And then he collapses on top of my body, dropping my legs as the weight of him presses into me, pinning me in my daze. Wet proof of my finish between us, smearing our skin, a leaking trail of his cum from between my cheeks.
Can’t speak, breaths panting out from me in an effort to suck enough oxygen back into lungs. The echo of the same somewhere near my ear as Daav struggles back to functioning.
Finally, he shifts, pulls out, rolling to his side and forcing my back against the couch as he settles in next to me, sharing the narrow platform which keeps up close and bodies tangled. The coarse hair of his leg rubbing against my own, dicks soft and pressing against thighs.
“Sebastian?” he asks, fingers feathering the damp hair falling at the nape of my neck. Entwining them again in the strands. Cupping me and dragging me closer to him, his forehead pressing into mine. A tender, confused morass of emotion leaks out from each of us.
Words tangle in my mouth. I love you and what happened and I’m afraid and don’t ever leave and this is everything.
“Are you okay?” he asks instead while I say nothing.
A torn laugh escapes me. “Perfect, Prince.”
“Have you ever….experienced that in sex?”
I laugh again, weakly.
“The Verse forcing its way? Fucking never, Daav. Never without calling for it, and that’s only outside of sex. Your quarter century power causing weird shit? You were always a prodigy.”
“That makes no sense.” The shake of his head rubs our foreheads together. He runs a hand down my side, almost absentmindedly.
I lean into him, lick into his mouth, bite at his lower lip. Needing the intimacy still in the face of the unholy strangeness. “Like there are rules? Like the last day has been what we expected? Or anything, ever was.”
He starts to answer, but beside me, his body goes rigid.
And it’s then I hear it above the pounding of our hearts.
The door to the warehouse screeching open. I’d forgotten to bolt it.
Fuck!
We’ve been found.