Chapter 15
Emery wakes slowly.
The room is warm. The fire has been stoked at some point during the night, fresh wood crackling softly in the hearth, and the light that fills the space is amber and diffuse, not sunlight, because there is no sunlight in the Underground, but gentle in a way that does not demand wakefulness so much as permit it.
Emery surfaces from sleep in increments rather than all at once.
He is warm. He is warm in a way that has nothing to do with the fire or the quilt or the thick mattress beneath him.
The warmth is behind him, pressed along the full length of his body, solid and vast and radiating heat that soaks through the thin fabric of his shirt and into his skin.
Bastian's arm is still around his waist. His hand is spread flat against Emery's stomach, fingers relaxed, holding him with the casual possession of reaching for him in sleep, finding him there, and not letting go.
Bastian is hard against him.
The press of it is unmistakable. The thick, insistent line of his cock against Emery's ass, separated by nothing but the thin fabric of their respective trousers.
Bastian's breathing is still slow and deep, not quite the rhythm of sleep but not fully awake either, the cadence of a body hovering at the threshold between the two.
His face is still pressed into the curve of Emery's neck.
His breath is warm against the skin behind Emery's ear.
Emery should get up. He should extract himself carefully from this position and dress and begin preparing for tonight because tonight is the operation and the operation requires focus and clarity and a mind that is not fogged by the smell of Bastian's skin and the heat of his body and the specific, devastating pressure of his cock against Emery's ass.
He pushes back against him.
The motion is small. A shift of his hips, an arch of his lower back that presses them closer together.
He does it before he decides to do it, his body moving on its own authority, responding to the proximity and the heat and the wanting that is already pooling low in his stomach, warm and heavy.
He wants him. He always wants him now. The wanting has become a constant, a background hum that lives beneath his thoughts and surfaces the moment Bastian is close enough to touch.
Bastian's breathing changes. A subtle shift, the rhythm deepening, and his hand on Emery's stomach tightens.
His fingers press into the muscle through the fabric of Emery's shirt and his hips roll forward, a slow, deliberate grind that pushes the hard length of him more firmly against Emery.
The sound he makes is barely audible, a low exhale that carries the weight of desire at the very edge of consciousness.
Emery pushes back again. Harder this time. More deliberate. He grinds against Bastian with a roll of his hips that is unmistakable in its intent, and the arm around his waist tightens and Bastian's mouth presses against the back of his neck, open and hot.
"Emery." His name, spoken against his skin, rough with sleep and want. The sound of it sends a cascade of heat down his spine.
Bastian's hand moves. Down from his stomach, sliding beneath the waistband of Emery's trousers without preamble, and his fingers wrap around Emery's cock, already hard, already aching.
The touch is hot and sure and Emery gasps, his hips jerking forward into the grip and then back against the hardness behind him, caught between the two points of contact and unable to choose.
"You're so sweet," Bastian says against his neck. The words are barely a whisper and his hand strokes once, slow and firm, root to tip, and Emery's eyes close and his mouth falls open and a sound escapes him that he could not prevent if he tried.
Bastian's other arm slides beneath Emery's body, wrapping around his chest, pulling him tight against the broad expanse of his torso.
Emery is held, contained. Bastian's hand works him with steady, unhurried strokes while his hips grind against Emery's ass in a rhythm that makes Emery's thoughts dissolve into white noise.
He is surrounded. The heat and the pressure and the arm across his chest and the hand between his legs and the mouth on his neck and he cannot think of anything except how much he wants more.
"Bastian," he says. The name comes out raw and pleading. He does not care. "I want you. I want you inside me."
Bastian's hand stills. His breath is hot and ragged against Emery's neck and the arm across his chest tightens for a moment, a compression that speaks to the effort of restraint.
Then his hand withdraws from Emery's trousers and Emery whines at the loss, a sound he would die before making in front of anyone else, and Bastian is reaching for something on the bedside table.
The click of a bottle. The slick sound of oil being poured. Bastian's hand returns, wet now, sliding down the back of Emery's trousers, pushing the fabric down just far enough. His fingers find Emery and press against him, slick and warm, circling with a patience that makes Emery want to scream.
"Tell me what you want," Bastian murmurs. His voice is low and dark and carries the resonance that settles in Emery's stomach, that sub-vocal vibration that his body responds to without permission. "Tell me, and I will give it to you."
"You," Emery says. His voice cracks. "I want you. I told you. Stop making me say it."
Bastian presses one finger inside, slow.
The stretch is minimal, his body still relaxed from sleep, and Emery exhales and pushes back against it and wants more.
Bastian gives him more. A second finger, curving, searching, finding the spot that makes Emery's body jolt and his breath stutter and his hand fly backward to grip Bastian's hip.
"Beautiful," Bastian says against his ear. His fingers work in and out, spreading oil, opening Emery carefully. "You are so beautiful. I want to wake up to this every day for the rest of whatever I am."
The words land somewhere deep in Emery's chest and he flinches from them.
Not physically. Physically he is pressing back against Bastian's fingers and making sounds he cannot control.
But somewhere inside, in the place where he keeps the ledger of every promise anyone has ever made him and every one that was broken, he flinches.
Every day. The rest of whatever I am. Bastian is ageless.
Bastian is saying forever in the language of a being for whom forever is not a metaphor, and he is saying it with his fingers inside Emery's body because the intimacy might make the words true, and Emery cannot believe him.
He cannot. These are the things people say in the dark to ease the slide of their bodies together.
These are the sweetnesses that men whisper when they are hard and wanting and willing to promise anything to the person beneath them, and they evaporate in the morning with the sweat and the heat and the urgency that produced them. They always have. They always will.
He can't mean it.
Emery presses back against his hand and does not answer.
Bastian withdraws his fingers. There is the sound of fabric shifting, of his own trousers being pushed down, and then the press of his cock against Emery.
He goes slowly, always slowly. The stretch builds in degrees, Bastian pressing forward an inch at a time, giving Emery's body time to yield.
It is different in this position. On their sides, Emery's back against Bastian's chest, the angle is shallower and the sensation is less overwhelming and more intimate, a steady, relentless filling that makes Emery feel claimed from the inside out.
Bastian sinks in fully. His hips press flush against Emery's ass and his arm tightens across his chest and his breath comes out in a shuddering exhale against the back of Emery's neck.
He holds there. Lets them both feel it. The fullness, the completeness, the devastating rightness of being joined in the quiet of the morning with no urgency and no audience and nothing between them except heat and skin and want.
Then he moves.
His thrusts are slow, long and deep, pulling nearly out before pressing back in with a rolling motion of his hips that makes Emery's breath catch on every stroke.
There is no urgency in it, no desperation.
He fucks Emery with the unhurried certainty of having all the time in the world and intending to use every minute of it, and each thrust presses against the place inside him that sends sparks cascading through his blood.
His hand returns to Emery's cock, stroking in time with his thrusts, slow and firm, matching the rhythm.
Emery is caught between the two sensations, the hand in front and the cock behind, and the dual stimulation is building him toward the edge with a steadiness that leaves no room for thought.
He is making sounds. He knows he is making sounds because he can hear them, low and broken and rhythmic, punched out of him with each deep stroke.
"Every day," Bastian says. His mouth is at Emery's ear, his voice rough and cracked at the edges. "You in my bed every morning. This. This is what I want. You are what I want. Until time unmakes me."
Emery squeezes his eyes shut. The words are inside him, in the same place Bastian is, filling him up, and he does not believe them.
He does not believe them because believing them would mean trusting someone not to leave, and no one has ever stayed, and the people who promised to stay were the ones who left first. Every time.
Without exception. Until time unmakes me is the kind of thing that sounds a vow and functions as a farewell, because everything Emery has ever been given has come with an expiration date stamped on the underside.
He can't mean it. He can't.