Chapter 15 #3
Gregor increased the pace, his hand working in tandem with his mouth, a twist at the top of each stroke that made Fergal’s thighs clamp against his shoulders.
He could feel the tension building in Fergal’s body—the muscles drawing tighter, the breathing going ragged, the restless shifting of his hips as his body chased the pleasure Gregor was building.
“I can’t… Gregor, I’m…” Fergal’s voice was wrecked, scraped raw, barely recognizable as the sharp-tongued prince who’d been arguing about seating arrangements an hour ago. His fingers tightened in Gregor’s hair. “I’m close, I’m so close…”
Gregor responded by taking him deeper, relaxing his throat, swallowing around him in a way that drew a sound from Fergal that was closer to a sob than a moan.
He wanted this. Wanted to feel Fergal come apart, wanted to taste him, wanted to be the reason that relentless, brilliant mind finally, mercifully went quiet.
He slid his free hand up Fergal’s stomach, feeling the muscles clenching and releasing in involuntary waves, and pressed his palm flat over Fergal’s heart. The heartbeat beneath his hand was wild, thundering, the rhythm of a man approaching the edge.
Let go, he thought, his mouth too full to speak. I’ve got you. Let go.
As if Fergal had heard him, his body seized.
His back arched off the mattress, his hand fisted in Gregor’s hair, and he came with a cry that he muffled against his own forearm—a raw, shattered sound that vibrated through them both.
Gregor felt him pulse against his tongue, tasted the hot, bitter salt of him, and swallowed, working him through it with steady, gentle pressure as the waves crested and broke and gradually subsided.
Fergal collapsed. His body went boneless, every muscle unlocking at once, the tension that had been building for weeks draining out of him like water from a broken dam. His hand slid from Gregor’s hair to his shoulder, fingers slack, trembling with aftershocks.
Gregor pressed a kiss to Fergal’s hip. Then his stomach.
Then his chest, working his way back up the body he’d just taken apart.
Fergal’s skin was damp with sweat and radiating the kind of heat that came from deep release, and when Gregor reached his face, the expression he found there nearly cracked him open.
Fergal’s eyes were wet, the glassiness of a man who’d been wound so tight for so long that the sudden release had broken something loose inside him. He looked younger than he had in weeks. He looked like a man who’d finally, briefly, set down every single thing he was carrying.
Gregor kissed his forehead. “Stay there.”
He retrieved a warm washcloth from the bathroom and cleaned Fergal gently and unhurriedly.
He dragged Fergal’s pants back up, lifting his hips with one hand and sliding the fabric up with the other, a process made more complicated by the fact that Fergal was approximately as cooperative as a sleeping cat.
“You didn’t…” Fergal started, his voice drowsy and hoarse.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re hard.”
“Observant as always.”
“Let me…” Fergal’s hand reached for him, but Gregor caught it and pressed a kiss to his palm.
“Tonight was for you.”
Fergal’s brow furrowed. “That’s not how this works. You don’t get to just—”
“Fergal.” Gregor’s voice was soft but final. “Let me have this. Please.”
Something in Fergal’s expression shifted—a flicker of understanding, maybe, or recognition of what this meant to Gregor.
The giving without taking. The act of service was its own reward.
The need to take care of the person he loved in the most fundamental way he knew how, without asking for anything in return.
“Okay,” Fergal whispered. “But I’m getting you back tomorrow.”
“I have no doubt.”
Gregor settled behind him and pulled him close. Fergal melted into him, thoroughly, comprehensively undone, his back against Gregor’s chest, his head tucked under Gregor’s chin, their bodies fitting together with the ease that still amazed Gregor every single time.
Within minutes, Fergal’s breathing had deepened into the slow, steady rhythm of genuine sleep.
Not the restless, surface-level unconsciousness that shattered at three in the morning, but real, deep, restorative sleep, the kind his body had been craving for weeks and that his mind had been refusing to allow.
Gregor lay awake and held him.
Someday, he’d have to find the courage to either tell Fergal the truth or let him go.
He wouldn’t. He knew he wouldn’t. The lie was a tumor, malignant and growing, and every day he didn’t cut it out, it grew deeper roots.
But cutting it out meant losing Fergal, and losing Fergal meant losing the only thing that had made three and a half centuries of living feel like they’d been leading somewhere.
So the lie stayed. And Gregor stayed, wrapped around the man he loved, guarding his sleep with a devotion that was equal parts selfless and selfish and that he would never, ever be able to untangle.
Gregor pressed his lips to the back of Fergal’s neck and made himself a promise.
I will be worthy of you. I don’t know how, and I don’t know when, but I will find a way to deserve what you’ve given me.