Chapter 10 – Reverie #3
"Please," I hissed, and a warm rumble of pleasure vibrated through my back.
Araxis's hand plunged down from where he'd been touching my hip bone, and the semblance of gentleness was gone: he reached, insistent, and wrapped his long fingers around my cock.
My breath whined out, my body rocking back against his.
His grip tightened around my length, palm shifting.
"Hm. You're dry." His thumb found the slit of my cock, and pressed. My body spasmed, sudden, and the sound that escaped me was a heated gasp.
"Yeah, we don't – Hn," his hand continued its certain exploration, fingers now a bit more slick as they traced the underside of my shaft. "I can't – not like you –" For all the fooling around we'd done, this was the first time he'd touched me so quickly, that he'd touched me first.
"But you like that," he murmured. "It feels good when you're wet?"
Words had, by then, entirely escaped me, and I found myself nodding instead.
Araxis's hand dropped away, and I whined, shifting to roll over and chase after him. "Stay," he said, firm. His hand pressed against my shoulder, keeping me in place until I settled, pliant beneath his touch, and he finally let his fingers leave my skin. "Who's eager and impatient now, hm?"
He moved behind me, the light in his cabin a muted pink that made the small room feel even smaller.
I could hardly see the wall in front of me, but it felt as if the rest of my senses had heightened to accommodate that loss: I could feel him move, his hand dropping away from me and settling on his own body; I could hear the shifting of fabric as the blanket moved, and then the soft sound of skin against wet skin.
A breathy little gasp hitched in his throat, and then his hand was wrapped around my cock again and deliciously slick, his skin skating over mine, fingers tighter, touch perfect.
He had touched himself, I realized dizzily, just for me – just for this.
"Good?" He mouthed the word against my shoulder.
I nearly choked on the groan I couldn't tamp down, writhing under his touch; it wasn't just the slick heat, or his hand – tightening and loosening, twisting, pumping, inexperienced but attentive to each hitch of breath and jerk of my hips.
It was all of it: his mouth on me, his voice in my ear, the smell of him, the heat of his body.
It was having had this for four days and wanting so many more.
"Araxis." My voice was hoarse, and his name was sweet in my mouth.
His thumb rubbed against the base of my cockhead. "I'm here," he said. "I have you."
Those words did it for me, a startling jolt of pleasure tipping me over the edge.
I came, release jerking my body forward as his hand kept me pinned.
His mouth found my neck and he bit down as I shuddered, teeth breaking the skin of my shoulder, a sharp and delicious pain; Araxis curled against me as I came hard, shaking under his touch.
My chest ached, eyelids pressed hard together, and I sucked in a long, shuddering breath.
"Fuck," I said, as Araxis's hand carefully released my dick.
My heart was quivering inside of my chest, trembling like a broken thing.
Behind me, Araxis trilled, amused, and the mattress shifted as he rolled toward the edge. I twisted, squinting at him in the dim light. "What?" I asked muzzily, and I knew the grin on my face was massive and stupid.
I could see the outline of his shoulders and the shape of his crest as he sat on the edge of the bed. "You always sound so surprised when you come. It's very endearing."
I scoffed, flipping over to face him. I leveraged myself up so that I was sitting in bed, my chest hovering just behind the pale expanse of his shoulders.
I reached out and touched the skin just above his hip, smooth and pale; my fingers were dark silhouettes against his skin.
"Well, you're surprising. You could put me out of a job, you know that? "
He trilled again, amused, but when he spoke next, his voice was lower, softer. "I have an excellent instructor," he murmured. "And would it be so bad, to be out of a job? Has it been so bad?"
I huffed out a breath, something near to a laugh, as one of my hands ran along the muscle of his thigh.
"It's been pretty nice," I admitted, my fingertips skating along the inside of his leg, tracing the faintest texture of ridges embossed into his skin – and, as my hand trailed upward, it met the slide of his slick, which had dripped down his thigh.
My grip tightened as Araxis's breath hitched.
"How long had you been waiting for me to wake up, all slick and ready?
" I ran my hand further up his pliant body, brushing the pink plate protecting his cock.
His body trembled against me, my other hand sliding around his hip and holding him in place while I slid my fingers down from his hidden cock to his dripping slit, tracing the shape of him.
Araxis sucked in a breath, chest rumbling in a way that made his entire body tremble.
Even though I'd just come, I could feel the faint stirring of arousal twitching in my cock.
I ran my fingers down his slit, gathering the glistening slick.
I caressed and explored, much as he had with his hand curled around my length.
"Long enough," he hissed, with a sweet little spasm as I curled a finger inwards, seeking the hot depths of his body.
"Are you always this ready?" I slid my finger from his slit, just a bit, then plunged it in again, and he whined out a needy sound. My thumb brushed the plate that protected his cock – could I do both at once? I thought I could – and he gasped out.
"I – Whenever you're around. It was –" A low moan cut off his words, and then he reached and caught my wrist as I rubbed my wet fingers up his length. His fingers tightened, holding me just off his body.
I froze, waiting, as he breathed hard.
"It was almost torture, training with you," he said finally.
"I've always taken pride in my self-control, and you…
obliterate that. When you touch me, I feel like I could forsake everything else, just to have more.
I am distracted when you're around, Sashen – but I want to be, more than anything. I want you here."
Heat throbbed in my chest, even as the words – I want you here – settled on me with the smallest shadow of discomfort. "Should I stop?" I asked, his fingers a vise around my wrist; I shifted my hand just a little so that he knew what I meant. "Was that –"
"Not too much, no. But I need to get us tea, and if you keep going, I'm going to come and then I'll need to come again, and we'll be here all morning.
" He let go of my wrist, and I shifted behind the smooth expanse of his back, blankets pooled in my lap.
In the dim light, his profile was sharp and impossibly perfect, and the corner of his mouth hooked in a pleased smile.
"More when I come back? And perhaps… we could talk. " He said it with significance.
I nodded, chest tight, and he turned and pressed a gentle kiss to my mouth, before stepping into the washroom to clean up and pulling on my hideous pink and black sweater. He tapped the lights a little brighter before leaving, and then he left me alone with my thoughts.
On the one hand, those thoughts immediately wanted to dive into an exhaustive cataloguing of what I might do to him when he returned.
Now that I'd had four days to taste his body, to learn the sounds he made when I was in it, to see how keen he was to please me, it felt like I was careening into a habit I wasn't going to be able to shake.
On the other hand…
I want you here. I wanted to be here too.
Would it be so bad, to be out of a job?
Perhaps we could talk.
My chest was tight, my throat hot. I rolled on to my back and blinked up at the top of Araxis's bunk, scrubbing a hand hard across my face as I forced myself to think about what came next for me, and what that would do to him.
Tomorrow, I'd ask to be dropped off near Thenat-6.
Maybe I'd even ask tonight. I didn't know what would be better, but Araxis was smart: even if I lied about why I was going to the arena – maybe to help with training, or, I don’t know, to hook up with some contestants to keep them happy – he'd figure it out.
Would he try to talk me out of it? Probably.
But what other option did I have? I had a massive debt Seraphim had claimed, and the entrance fee that I now owed to Alet Trident, and if I broke the contract with the media conglomerate, the fees on that alone were enough to bury me until the Tournament came around again.
I'd checked a couple days earlier, because something about the soft way he talked to me late at night, the way he'd looked at me when I was naked in his sheets, had made me feel, for a delusional moment, like maybe there was something between us.
Maybe there could be. He'd trusted me with the truth of who he was, clearly seeing that he could open himself up to me; maybe he needed someone like me in his life.
And now that I was sleeping so well by his side, now that he'd started looking at me in that particular soft way and was maybe (maybe!) thinking about asking me to stay – I thought he might be, really I did, and it was only partially due to my own daydreaming – I was well and truly fucked, and not in the way I enjoyed.
Because I was being chased by the unrelenting wolves of my own shitty life, and Araxis has enough on his shoulders already.