2. The Separation Decrees #2
They cleared the plates in silence. Miles washed, Gabriel dried. The rhythmic clink of ceramic against the drying rack was the only sound in the cottage until the last plate was stowed.
Miles dried his hands on a towel, then turned, leaning his hips against the counter. Gabriel was folding the drying cloth, realigning the edges with obsessive care.
“Gabriel,” Miles said, keeping his voice pitched low, soft. “Talk to me.”
Gabriel didn’t look up. “We talked. Widow Miller. The harvest. The weather.”
“You know what I mean. The coat... that was sweet. It will be lovely. But you don’t hyperventilate because of a sewing project.
You don’t lock the door in Briarleigh to hide a sewing project.
” Miles reached out, covering Gabriel’s hands to stop the restless folding.
“You are terrified. I can feel it coming off you like static charge. Be honest with me. What actually happened today?”
Gabriel froze. For a second, Miles thought he might break, that the mask would crack and the truth, whatever it happened to be, would spill out.
Instead, Gabriel dropped the towel and surged forward.
He collided with Miles. It wasn’t a soft kiss. It was frantic, teeth grazing lip, tongue demanding entry with a greedy, starving intensity. Gabriel’s hands were everywhere at once, tangling in Miles’s hair, gripping his biceps, clawing at the back of his shirt as if trying to climb inside his skin.
Miles staggered back against the counter, the edge biting into his lower back.
His body responded automatically—it always did to Gabriel—lighting up with a coil of tension in his groin that stiffened his cock.
He gripped Gabriel’s waist to steady them, opening to the kiss, tasting the wine and the sourness of fear.
But he didn’t close his eyes.
He watched Gabriel’s face, scrunched tight, eyes shut so hard the corners crinkled. This wasn’t passion. It was obliteration. It was a performance, a sleight of hand designed to dazzlingly distract the audience while the magician hid the rabbit.
Miles broke the seal of their mouths, pulling back just an inch. Gabriel chased him, a whimper catching in his throat, but Miles held him firm by the hips.
“Gabriel, stop,” Miles breathed. “This is... you’re deflection-fucking me. We don’t do this. Not like this.”
“I want you,” Gabriel gasped, his eyes flying open. They were wild, the blue-gray irises swimming with unshed moisture. “Is that a crime? I need you to touch me. I need to get out of my head, Miles. Please.”
“We can get you out of your head without ignoring why you’re trapped in it,” Miles countered, though his resolve was weakening under the press of Gabriel’s hips grinding against his thigh. “If you’re dissociating—”
“I am not dissociating,” Gabriel snapped, the flash of anger genuine.
He grabbed Miles’s face between his hands.
“I am here. I am choosing this. I don’t want to talk.
I don’t want to think. I want to feel you.
I want to know you’re here, with me, and not.
.. just please.” The anger dissolved into a naked, terrifying vulnerability. “Please, Miles.”
Miles searched Gabriel’s face. He looked for the glassy vacancy of the past, the doll-like compliance he hated more than anything. He didn’t see it. He saw desperation, yes, and fear, but he saw Gabriel. His Gabriel, complicated and messy and demanding autonomy even when he was hurting.
Denying him now would be a kind of disrespect of Gabriel’s judgment.
“Okay,” Miles said. “Okay, love. I’ve got you.”
He didn’t ask again. He bent his knees, hooked his arms under Gabriel’s thighs, and hoisted him up.
Gabriel made a startled, delighted sound, locking his ankles behind Miles’s back and burying his face in the crook of Miles’s neck. He weighed nothing, or perhaps Miles just had the adrenaline of a man trying to save his drowning lover.
Miles carried him through the small cottage, kicking the bedroom door open with his foot. He kissed Gabriel as they moved, softer now, trying to bleed some of the frantic energy out of the exchange, replacing it with the solid, immovable weight of his presence.
He lowered Gabriel onto the bed. The mattress dipped, the sheets cool and smelling of sandalwood. Before Gabriel could scramble up or start babbling again, Miles was there, crowding his space, hands deft on the buttons of Gabriel’s shirt.
“Miles, I need...I need you inside, I need—” Gabriel was rambling, his hands fluttering against Miles’s chest, trying to help undress him but mostly just getting in the way.
“Hush,” Miles murmured. He pulled Gabriel’s shirt off, tossing it blindly toward the hamper. “I know. I’m here. We have time.”
He stripped them both quickly, leaving the clothes in a pile that would offend Gabriel’s sensibilities in the morning but served the urgency of the moment now. Gabriel lay naked against the white sheets, his body a study in taut lines and pale skin, beautiful and remote, but vibrating with tension.
Miles didn’t climb on top of him. He grabbed the bottle of oil from the bedside table and moved to the foot of the bed.
“Miles?” Gabriel propped himself up on his elbows, looking confused and a little uneasy at the distance.
“Lie back,” Miles said softly. “Let me.”
Gabriel hesitated, then collapsed back against the pillows, throwing an arm over his eyes. Miles crawled up between Gabriel’s spread thighs. He could see the tremors running through Gabriel’s calves.
He set the oil nearby and placed his hands on Gabriel’s knees, stroking upward along the inner thighs, feeling the muscles bunch and then slowly unknot.
He leaned down, ignoring the center of the action for a moment to press a kiss to the soft, sensitive skin just above Gabriel’s knee, then higher, to the sensitive divot where thigh met hip.
Gabriel groaned. “Miles...”
Miles shifted, lifting Gabriel’s hips onto an extra pillow. He parted Gabriel’s cheeks. Gabriel was tight, clenched against the world.
Miles lowered his head and used his tongue.
Gabriel bucked, a sharp intake of breath hissing through his teeth.
Miles held him steady, hands gripping the curve of Gabriel’s buttocks, anchoring him.
He worked with a slow, relentless cadence, exploring the topography of Gabriel’s pleasure.
He laved the sensitive rim, teasing the mouth of muscle until he felt Gabriel gasp, his back arching off the mattress.
“Oh god, Miles, don’t stop, please don’t stop.”
Miles didn’t stop. He pushed firmly, using the flat of his tongue, swirling over the pucker, and then stiffening his tongue and pressing in, alternating the movements until the tension in Gabriel’s body began to liquefy.
He could feel Gabriel shaking, not with fear anymore, but with the sensory overload of it.
Miles hummed against his skin, the vibration earning a whimper from above.
When Gabriel was pliable, breathless, and melting into the sheets, Miles pulled back and wiggled his jaw to work out the tension from his efforts.
He crawled up the bed, holding himself over Gabriel with one arm. Gabriel’s face was flushed, his generous lips swollen, blue-gray eyes hazy and unfocused in the best possible way.
“Better?” Miles asked. He rose on his knees and reached for the oil, coating his fingers in the slick fluid.
“You have... excessive talents,” Gabriel wheezed, reaching up to drag Miles down for a kiss.
Miles kissed him deep and slow, sliding his oiled hand down between their bodies while bracing himself on the other elbow. He found the entrance damp and ready, thanks to his earlier ministrations, and rubbed one thumb over the twitching ring of muscle before pushing his index finger inside.
Gabriel broke the kiss with a sharp cry, his hips snapping forward to meet the intrusion. “More. Miles, more. ”
Miles added a second finger, scissoring them gently, stretching him. He kissed Gabriel again and again, drinking down the moans, tasting the salt on his skin. Between kisses, he watched Gabriel’s face as he worked him open.
“I love you,” Gabriel blurted out, his eyes squeezing shut. “I love you so much. You have to know that. I love you.”
“I know,” Miles whispered against his lips, adding a third finger, twisting his wrist to hit the spot that made Gabriel’s toes curl. “I love you too.”
“No, really.” Gabriel grabbed Miles’s shoulders, his nails digging in. “Whatever happens. I love you. You’re the only good thing. The only thing.”
The urgency in his voice tripped an alarm in Miles’s brain. It sounded too much like a confession—or a goodbye—but he pushed it aside. Not now. He wouldn’t dishonor Gabriel’s trust by analyzing him while his hand was inside him.
“You’re ready,” Miles said, voice rough. He withdrew his hand, the slick sound obscene in the quiet room.
“Fuck me,” Gabriel begged, wrapping his legs around Miles’s waist, pulling him down. “Hard. Don’t...don’t be gentle. I need to feel you.”
Miles adjusted between Gabriel’s legs, lining himself up. He looked down at Gabriel one last time, checking for any sign of hesitation. There was none. Only a hunger that mirrored his own.
He pushed into him.
Gabriel cried out, a broken, joyful sound, his head thrown back into the pillows. Miles gritted his teeth, the sensation of being sheathed in Gabriel’s heat nearly undoing him instantly. He held still for several heartbeats, letting them adjust, letting the intrusion become a connection.
Then he began to move.
He gave Gabriel what he asked for. He didn’t hold back.
He drove into him with long, powerful strokes.
The bed frame creaked in protest. Miles reveled in the way Gabriel came apart beneath him, the way his expression melted.
Every thrust seemed to knock a little more of the fear out of him, replacing the puzzling terror of the afternoon with the undeniable reality of this . Currently. Here.
“Miles, Miles, Miles,” Gabriel chanted, a litany, a prayer.