Chapter 15
His face was still against Asher’s chest and each inhale took effort, his lungs pulling just enough air to keep him conscious and no more.
He listened to the steady thumping of Asher’s heartbeat, his own thin and far away, but Asher’s was right there, present and insistent, and Levi pressed his ear harder against it because nothing else in the room had a rhythm now that the numbness had set it.
The numbness was worse than the grief.
The grief had been enormous and terrible, but at least while it was happening, he’d been alive. Every nerve lit up, every gasp painful, with the pain so large it filled every part of him and left no room for anything else.
Now? Nothing was all there was. His ribs ached from the sobs, but the ache arrived distant, muted, like something happening behind glass.
His fingers were stiff from gripping too long, and when he uncurled them one at a time, his knuckles cracked, louder than they should have in the quiet room.
Asher’s hand was moving on his back, a slow stroke from his shoulder blade to the base of his spine and back up.
It didn’t feel sexual…just one long stroke, steady and repeated.
Asher had been doing this for a while, Levi realized.
The rhythm was established, the warmth built up on his skin and never cooling.
He liked the warmth. He could feel that.
That didn’t feel as empty as the rest of him did.
Underneath the thing the grief had left behind was his body…the one that knew what Asher’s hands felt like, what they could do, what was already translating the pressure and heat of the stroke into something that had nothing to do with comfort.
I know what this is.
He’d known since the forest, since the sanitarium, and fought that knowledge on the ship because he needed, on some level, to believe the version of him that entered this nightmare still existed.
He wasn’t someone whose life revolved around wanting and desire.
He was the lonely, anxious kid who streamed games and tried not to cry on camera.
But in this body that wasn’t a body…he wanted now. He wanted so bad…
Levi lifted his chin against Asher’s chest and his lips pressed to the hollow of his throat where the collar dipped. The skin there was warm, and when Levi breathed against it, the hand on his back paused mid-stroke, then resumed — slower than before.
I feel dead.
Asher’s pulse accelerated under his lips. Levi opened his mouth, his breath warm against Asher’s throat, and could taste him: Salt. Heat. The taste of someone alive.
Something stirred under the numbness. Not the grief — that was done, emptied, sitting in his ribs like sediment. This was his body’s insistence that it was still here and it wanted proof.
He kissed Asher’s throat, pressing his mouth to the tendon, and felt it tighten under his lips.
Asher went still. Levi kissed higher to his jaw and then the corner of his mouth.
Each kiss was harder than the last, more deliberate, and he could feel his fingertips tingling where they pressed against Asher’s chest as warmth spread up through his hands and into his wrists.
“Levi…” The way Asher said his name was careful, almost frightened. “You just —”
“I need to feel you.” Levi shifted, pushing his hands up under Asher’s dress shirt. “Asher, please…”
Asher’s stomach was hot under his hands and Levi’s fingers were freezing and the contrast was sharp enough to feel real, so he pressed harder, spreading his palms wide, because the temperature difference was the most concrete thing he’d felt in twenty minutes.
More heat. More skin. More proof that he was still alive.
“You don’t have —” Asher started.
Levi’s teeth caught Asher’s lower lip hard enough to bruise.
Asher groaned against his mouth. The sound of it hit the base of Levi’s spine and he was moving, climbing into Asher’s lap, straddling his thighs.
Asher kissed him back, slowly and carefully, his hands on Levi’s face with an impossible gentleness.
I don’t want that right now.
Levi grabbed his wrists and pulled Asher’s hands away from his face, and pushed them down to his ass as he rolled his hips forward.
He let out a sharp gasp, his cock already hard in his business casual jeans, and did it again.
His face burned at the sound ripped out of him, but he didn’t care.
The numbness was worse than the shame, worse than the knowing what he did, worse than whatever this made him.
“Not gentle,” he gasped into Asher’s mouth. “I don’t want gentle.”
“Okay,” Asher said, squeezing his ass too hard, his voice dropping to a register that meant he’d stopped being the person who held Levi while he cried and become the person who was going to take him apart. “You asked for this.” Asher planted his hands on Levi’s shoulders. “Remember that.”
I may have made a mistake.
The thought arrived as Asher shoved him backward and down onto the carpet, falling over him and pinning him flat with his weight.
Levi’s skull bounced off the floor and the sting of it was still registering when Asher’s mouth crashed into his with too much teeth and tongue and force to be called a kiss.
Asher’s tongue pushed past his lips, his teeth catching Levi’s lower lip and pulling.
Levi’s hands tangled in Asher’s hair, dragging him down harder, because the kiss wasn’t deep enough, wasn’t close enough, even as their teeth clicked together and Levi tasted copper from someone’s lip.
Asher’s hands shoved Levi’s sweater up his chest, his palms burning against Levi’s ribs, but his mouth wouldn’t lift long enough to get the fabric over his head.
He yanked it to Levi’s armpits and gave up, his mouth dropping to Levi’s throat, then his chest, biting down on his nipple through the bunched fabric.
“Get this fucking thing off,” Asher growled against his chest, his hands trying to pull the sweater up while his mouth refused to leave Levi’s skin.
He moved back to Levi’s ear, his teeth closing on the lobe and sucking hard enough that Levi’s hips jerked up against him, as the sweater tangled around Levi’s forearms and Asher grumbled against the side of his neck — “off, get it off“ — his tongue tracing the tendon while his hands finally wrenched the sweater over Levi’s head and threw it somewhere behind them.
The cool air hit Levi’s bare chest in the same instant that Asher’s mouth came back down on his nipple — no fabric between the wet heat of his tongue and the edge of his teeth. Asher yanked at his own shirt, popping the buttons off in his fervor.
Asher kissed him again, deeper, his tongue sliding against Levi’s while his bare chest pressed Levi into the carpet, skin on skin from sternum to stomach.
Without breaking the kiss, Asher wrenched open Levi’s jeans, shoving the denim down his hips with an impatience that didn’t bother with finesse.
Levi lifted his hips as Asher worked the jeans and underwear off of his legs without looking, and Levi was bare on the carpet.
Asher’s pants felt rough against the insides of his bare thighs, his cock was pressed against the hot skin of Asher’s stomach, and every roll of Asher’s hips ground the fabric against him in a way that was probably going to chafe later.
Levi pulled at Asher’s waistband, because fabric was still between them and he needed it gone.
Asher helped with one hand, the other fisted in Levi’s hair, his mouth never leaving Levi’s in a kiss that had devolved into saliva and teeth and the sounds of two people trying to consume each other.
The jeans came off in a graceless tangle of legs, and then it was skin on skin everywhere, the heat of Asher’s length pressing against his.
“The bed,” Asher gasped as he tore his mouth away. “I need you on the bed.” He hauled Levi up off the carpet by his hair, and Levi stumbled to his feet with a hiss, his hands grabbing Asher’s wrist on reflex. Asher shoved him down onto the mattress hard enough that he bounced.
When Levi’s bare back hit the cotton, the softness registered like something his body had been starving for. The mattress gave instead of resisting, the sheets were cool against his heated skin, and for one disorienting second the softness almost made him cry again.
Then Asher was over him, his weight pressing Levi into the mattress, his mouth on Levi’s throat, and the softness didn’t matter anymore.
Levi pulled him closer, his legs wrapping around Asher’s waist, heels digging into the small of his back, and he lifted his chin, giving Asher more access to his throat instead of flinching.
Asher pulled back just enough to look at him. “You’re not fighting me,” he said, his voice rough with something close to disbelief. “You always fight me.”
“Not tonight.”
“Why?”
Levi looked at the face above him and the answer came out honest in a way he wouldn’t have been capable of when his composure was still intact. “Because I don’t have anything left to fight with.”
Whatever Asher’s face did in response was quiet and raw and nothing Levi expected. It wasn’t delight... maybe closer to the look he’d had on the floor while Levi was crying — and then it faded, replaced by hunger, and the hunger came back with teeth.
“Good,” Asher said, his lips on Levi’s collarbone. “Then I’m going to ruin you.”
His teeth closed on the ridge hard enough that Levi gasped, and the gasp was followed by a bloom of heat where the bruise was already forming.
Asher stayed there — sucking, worrying the skin between his teeth, deliberate and sustained.
He moved lower, dragging his tongue down Levi’s sternum, like he was savoring salt on his skin, pausing at a sensitive strip along Levi’s ribs where the skin was thinner and the suction there was hard enough that Levi hissed and his fingers dug into the sheets.