18. Chapter 18 #2
They move toward the bed. Evran isn't sure who leads, maybe both of them, maybe neither, maybe the pull between their bodies does it for them, but the backs of his legs hit the mattress and Vaike's hands are on his tunic and then they're going down, Evran first, Vaike following, and the bed receives them with the creak of the frame and the rustle of furs.
Vaike undresses him.
Slowly. Deliberately. His hands, the only hands that have ever felt safe on Evran's body, the only hands that have ever earned the right, move with a focused reverence that says I am reclaiming you.
The tunic goes over Evran's head. The trousers are unlaced and drawn down and discarded.
Vaike's mouth follows his hands, pressing kisses to each newly revealed stretch of skin, the curve of his shoulder, the dip of his collarbone, the soft plane of his stomach.
Evran reaches for Vaike's tunic. Vaike lets him take it off, lets him ease it over the injured shoulder with careful hands, and when Vaike is bare above him, broad and scarred and beautiful, the bandage white against his dark skin, the firelight painting him in gold, Evran's breath catches the way it always does.
The way it has every single time, since the very first.
Vaike is the most glorious, the most breathtaking man Evran has ever seen.
And he is looking at Evran as though Evran is the same to him.
Evran makes a decision.
It is not a conscious decision exactly, not a thought in words, not a plan formed and executed.
It is deeper than that, living in the place beneath language, in the body's own understanding of what it needs.
He needs to give something tonight. He needs to show Vaike, in the only language that has never failed them, that he is here, that he is present, that he is choosing this man, choosing this bed, choosing this life, with the same totality that Vaike chose him.
It is his turn to take care of his husband.
He presses his hands against Vaike's chest and pushes, gently, insistently, and Vaike goes. He lies back against the pillows, his dark hair spread around his head, his body stretched out beneath Evran. His eyes are dark and heated and watching.
Evran reaches for the oil on the bedside table. His fingers close around the vial, small, glass, familiar, and he uncorks it and pours it over his own fingers and reaches between his own legs.
Vaike's breath catches.
Evran works himself open with slick fingers, his other hand braced on Vaike's stomach, his thighs on either side of Vaike's hips.
It takes time, it always does, and he doesn't rush it, doesn't force it, lets his body ease around the intrusion the way Vaike taught him.
Patiently. Gently. One finger, then two, working in slow circles until the tension releases and the stretch becomes something else.
Vaike watches him. His hand wraps around his own cock and strokes, slow, lazy, unhurried, his eyes never leaving Evran's face. The heat of his gaze is a physical thing, pressing against Evran's skin.
When Evran is ready, when the stretch has become an ache that is pleasure rather than resistance, he removes his fingers and shifts forward. He positions himself over Vaike, one hand reaching back to guide the thick head to where he's open and slick.
"I am yours," Evran says.
His voice is steady. Clear. He looks down at Vaike, at this man, his husband, his heart, and says it with everything he has.
"Forever. Let me show you how I am yours."
He lowers himself.
The stretch is immense. It always is. Vaike is large, in every sense, and no matter how carefully Evran prepares, the first press of him inside is a shock, a fullness that borders on too much.
Evran gasps, his hands flying to Vaike's chest, his thighs trembling.
He stops, breathes, adjusts. Vaike's hands find his hips, both of them, broad and impossibly gentle, and hold him.
Not pushing. Not pulling. Just holding, grounding him, giving him something steady to anchor against.
"Take your time," Vaike murmurs, and his voice is wrecked.
Evran sinks down. Inch by inch, his body yielding, opening, accommodating, and the fullness shifts from too much to right, to complete, to the feeling of being as close to another person as it is physically possible to be, of having nothing between them, no distance, no doubt, no air.
He seats himself fully. Vaike is as deep as he can be, and Evran is stretched around him, and for a moment neither of them moves. They breathe. Together, in the firelight, connected in the most fundamental way two bodies can be connected.
Then Evran moves.
He lifts himself, slowly, finding the rhythm, the angle, and drops back down, and the sound Vaike makes is devastating.
Low and broken and full of need, undone by devotion rather than skill.
Evran does it again, and again, his thighs flexing, his hands pressed flat against Vaike's chest, and he rides his Warlord with a singular, focused determination that says I am here, I am choosing you, I have always been choosing you.
Vaike's hands guide him, holding his hips, adjusting the angle, moving him when his rhythm falters, helping him when his thighs burn and his breath comes short.
The hands are gentle, always gentle, always careful, even as Vaike's jaw clenches and his hips buck upward and his control frays at the edges.
It is the most exposed, the most vulnerable Evran has ever made himself.
Open and bare and on display, his body moving in the firelight, his face visible to Vaike with nowhere to hide.
Every sound he makes, every expression that crosses his face, the pleasure, the strain, the overwhelming emotion of it, is there for Vaike to see.
He hides nothing. He holds nothing back.
It undoes Vaike.
Evran can see it happening, the careful control cracking, the mask dissolving, the Warlord falling away until what's left is just a man. A man who looks up at Evran with an expression so raw, so unguarded, so absolutely shattered that it makes Evran's eyes burn.
Vaike's hands tighten on his hips. His hips drive upward, hard, and Evran cries out, a sharp, gasping sound that echoes off the stone walls.
Vaike does it again, and again, and the rhythm is his now, controlled and relentless, and Evran can do nothing but hold on and take it and feel the pleasure building at the base of his spine.
He comes first. Untouched, nothing but the fullness inside him and the friction and the way Vaike is looking at him, and it tears through him, white and blinding and absolute, his whole body clenching, his voice breaking on Vaike's name.
Vaike follows him over. His hands seize on Evran's hips hard enough to leave marks, and he drives up one final time and holds, and Evran feels the pulse of him deep inside, hot and flooding and claiming in the most primal way possible.
For a long moment they are suspended, frozen in the aftermath, breathing hard, Evran's hands flat on Vaike's heaving chest and Vaike's hands bruise-tight on his hips. The fire crackles. The room pulses with heat and the smell of them together.
Then Evran leans down and kisses him.
Sweetly. Softly. The barest brush of lips, tender beyond measure. He kisses Vaike's mouth and his jaw and the corner of his eye and his forehead, careful of the stitches, and Vaike's hands release his hips and come up to cradle his face and hold him there, close, their foreheads pressed together.
They breathe.
I would do anything to keep you, Evran thinks.
He doesn't say it out loud. He doesn't need to. He said it with his body, with his hands, with the open vulnerability of making himself seen. Vaike heard him.
They lie tangled together in the firelight, and the night deepens outside the window, and Evran holds his husband and is held by him and counts the minutes until Vaike's breathing deepens into sleep.
Because tonight, he has somewhere to be.