Chapter 6
Evran wakes to heat.
Not the slow, ambient warmth of the morning sun through shutters or the residual glow of banked embers in the hearth.
This is focused, deliberate, wet heat, concentrated between his thighs, and for a disoriented, sleep-thick moment his mind cannot reconcile the sensation with anything in his catalogue of waking experiences.
Then Vaike's mouth moves, and Evran's entire body jolts awake.
His hands fly to Vaike's hair. His fingers sink into the thick strands and grip, not pulling but holding, anchoring himself to something real because the rest of his body has left the earth.
His heart is in his throat and his lungs are in his throat and every coherent thought he has ever had is in his throat, and what comes out of his mouth is not a word.
It is a sound. A high, broken, helpless sound that he would be embarrassed about if he had the capacity for embarrassment, which he does not, because Vaike's tongue is doing something unreal and Evran's spine has turned to liquid.
"I—" he manages. "I — what—"
Vaike does not answer. Or rather, he answers by pressing closer, by sliding his broad hands beneath Evran's thighs and lifting them over his shoulders, and the shift in angle pulls a sob from Evran's chest that he couldn't have stopped if his life depended on it.
He is so surprised he can't find words. He was genuinely deeply asleep for the first time in two nights, and waking to this has disrupted something fundamental in the working of his brain.
He can feel everything. The roughness of Vaike's beard against the tender skin of his inner thighs.
The softness of his lips in contrast. The slow, thorough, unhurried way he works, as though Evran is a meal to be savored and Vaike has nowhere else to be for the rest of his natural life.
Vaike pulls back just enough to speak, his breath hot against Evran's skin. "I haven't had you in days."
Evran is gasping. His fingers are tangled in Vaike's hair and his heels are pressing into the broad planes of Vaike's back. The furs have been kicked to the foot of the bed, and the light is pouring through the window in pale gold, and he is completely undone.
"I've been — I've been next to you every night," he manages, and the words come out breathy and fractured and not at all the composed retort he was aiming for.
"Not good enough," Vaike says.
He takes Evran by the wrists.
Both hands, circling Evran's slender wrists in a grip that is firm without being forceful, and he presses them into the mattress beside Evran's hips.
Pinned. Held. Evran's fingers flex against the sheets, his arms stretched taut, and the position arches his back and tilts his hips up and Vaike swallows him down again.
Evran bucks. He can't help it. His body moves of its own accord, hips jerking upward, driving himself deeper into the wet heat of Vaike's mouth, and Vaike lets him.
Doesn't pull away, doesn't pin his hips, just takes it, takes all of it, his hands tightening on Evran's wrists as the only point of control while his mouth does things that should not be physically possible.
Evran sobs. The sound is wrenched from somewhere deep, somewhere primal, and it echoes off the stone walls of the room and he doesn't care.
He doesn't care who hears. He is pinned to the bed by his husband's hands and undone by his husband's mouth and the morning light is golden on Vaike's hair and the muscles of his shoulders and the world has narrowed to this.
To the heat and the pressure and the devastating tenderness of being wanted so thoroughly that nothing else exists.
He comes with Vaike's name in his mouth, half-shouted and half-swallowed, his body arching off the bed, his wrists straining against Vaike's grip.
The release is blinding, white and hot and total, a wave that crests and breaks and leaves him trembling in its wake, gasping, eyes wet, every nerve singing.
Vaike pulls off slowly. He releases Evran's wrists gently, thumbs brushing the insides of them where the pulse still hammers, and leans back on his heels.
Evran lies on the bed, breathing hard, his arms still outstretched where Vaike left them. He feels wrung out, emptied, rebuilt. He blinks the moisture from his eyes and the room comes back and he tips his head up to look at his husband.
Vaike is kneeling between his legs. The morning light catches him fully, and Evran's breath catches with it.
His broad chest, his heavy shoulders, the taut line of his stomach, the old scars that map his body like a history written in skin.
His hair is a mess from Evran's hands, falling around his face, and his eyes are blown and fixed on Evran with an expression filled with desire.
He is hard. His cock is thick and flushed and leaking against his stomach, and one hand is wrapped around it, stroking himself with slow, measured pulls, and he is watching Evran.
Evran shivers at the sight. His spent body has no business responding, and yet something low in his belly tightens and his breath catches and he wants.
He wants so badly. He wants to be the one giving, not just receiving.
He wants his hands on Vaike. He wants his mouth on Vaike.
He wants to make this man, this Warlord, this impossible, infuriating, beloved man, come apart the way Evran just did.
He pushes himself up. His arms are shaky, his muscles still liquid from the aftershocks, but he gets onto his knees on the bed and reaches out and places his hands on Vaike's hips.
The skin beneath his palms is hot and smooth, the hip bones sharp against his fingers, and Vaike's hand stills on his cock.
"Can I?" Evran asks.
Vaike reaches out. His hand slides into Evran's hair carefully, gently, fingers threading through the loose strands and avoiding the braid with the tenderness he always carries for the precious things. He pulls Evran in and kisses him.
The kiss is rough. Not careless but hungry, born of watching his husband fall apart and running now on the embers of his own restraint. Vaike's mouth is demanding, his tongue pressing past Evran's lips, and Evran opens for him and tastes himself on Vaike's tongue and moans into the kiss.
They kiss for a long moment. Vaike's hand in his hair, Evran's hands on his hips, their bodies close but not quite touching, the heat between them a living thing.
Then Vaike's grip tightens and he pushes gently, firmly, guiding Evran's head down by his hair, and Evran gasps as the wet head of Vaike's cock smears against his cheek.
The sound Vaike makes is low and rough and comes from deep in his chest, a hiss through his teeth that Evran feels in his bones.
Evran turns his head. His lips brush the slick head, tasting salt and heat, and Vaike's hand trembles in his hair. It's a single, barely perceptible tremor that sends a bolt of power through Evran's chest. He did that. He made the Warlord tremble.
He licks the wet head. A small, tentative pass, light and curious, the tip of his tongue tracing the slit, and Vaike groans. The sound is deep and guttural and it vibrates through Evran like a plucked string.
Evran takes him in his mouth.
He takes as much as he can, which is not all of it.
Vaike is a lot, in every sense of the word, and Evran's jaw aches with the stretch and his eyes water and his throat constricts around the thickness of it.
His left hand braces against the bed, holding himself up, and his right hand wraps around the length he can't swallow, his fingers meeting around the girth, and he works them together, mouth and hand, wet and tight, finding a rhythm.
Vaike doesn't fuck his throat. He never does.
His hand in Evran's hair is a guide, not a force.
Gentle pressure, directional, suggesting but never demanding.
He knows Evran is still learning, still new, still navigating the challenge of taking something this size into his mouth without choking.
And Vaike is patient. Vaike is always patient with him, in this as in everything, and the patience itself is its own kind of devotion, because it says I trust you, I will wait for you, there is no rush.
Evran pulls off to breathe. A string of saliva connects his lower lip to the head, and he swallows and takes a shuddering breath and looks up at Vaike through wet lashes.
Vaike's expression is gorgeous. His lips are parted, his chest heaving, his eyes half-lidded and burning, and the hand in Evran's hair is shaking.
Evran takes him in again. Deeper this time, relaxing his throat the way he's been trying to get better at. Because he wants to be good at this, wants to give Vaike everything. The head pushes past the resistance and Evran swallows around it and Vaike's hand clenches hard in his hair.
"Evran—"
The warning in his voice is clear. Usually, Vaike pulls out.
Usually, he finishes on Evran's stomach or his own hand or, on one memorable occasion, across Evran's chest while Evran watched with wide eyes and a racing heart.
But today Evran doesn't let him. Today, Evran pushes forward, takes him deeper, his hand tightening at the base, and he moans around Vaike's cock, a deliberate, vibrating sound that travels through the shaft and into Vaike's body like a current.
Vaike breaks.
His hand seizes in Evran's hair, tight, almost painful, every thread of control gone, and Evran feels him swell and pulse and then the flood of heat hits the back of his throat.
Vaike spends in his mouth with a low, shattered groan that Evran will carry in his memory until the day he dies.
Seeing him lose control, seeing the Warlord come undone, jaw clenched, muscles locked, every line of his powerful body taut with the force of his release, makes Evran's spent cock twitch with interest where it has absolutely no business doing so.