32. Tell Me Something
Tell Me Something
Alluin kissed me like I belonged to him. Kissed me with the fervor of a worshiper, moaning into my mouth, one hand sliding up along my back and the other burying itself in my hair. Heat flooded me as our tongues met, Alluin licking into my mouth with open demand.
I melted into the contact, my mind going blank with pleasure. Lu was kissing me. Lu was touching me. Lu was— was—
With a growl, Alluin shoved me onto my back, his weight landing on me and his thigh forcing my legs open.
I bucked into the contact helplessly, my cock already hard and my whole body desperate for his touch.
He responded with a hungry groan, capturing my mouth again and fitting our bodies together, his thick shaft a hot bar against my thigh.
One of his hands shoved my pajama pants down, baring my cock and palming my thigh to drag my hips against his.
His tongue ran against mine in a heated caress.
He kissed me with reckless need, licking me, taking me, an onslaught of desire that threatened to devour me whole.
I wanted it, needed it—couldn’t help myself, arching into his touch, obsessed with the feeling of his strong hand gripping my upper thigh.
I answered him with everything I was. I couldn’t do anything else.
I was so tired of holding back—of being too afraid of being not good enough that I wouldn’t even give Alluin the chance to decide if he wanted terrible poetry scrawled in a well-nigh unreadable hand.
If he wanted me—and gods, he kissed me like he wanted me—I was already his.
I whimpered when he broke the contact, overwhelmed and desperately wanting.
The tip of my cock ran against his bare stomach in the same instant his fingertips slid between my legs to brush against my hole.
“Oh, gods, Alluin—” I half-wailed, nearly coming then and there, the jolt of pleasure making my whole core clench and leaving me trembling with need.
“Give me tonight, Zhi. Just one night. I need to feel you being alive,” Alluin panted against my throat. His hands roved, cupping my buttocks, spanning my sides, gripping my hips to seat me more firmly against his thigh. “It can all go back to normal when we wake. I just want—”
One night. Just one night. It all flashed into my mind: what it would be like the day after, his casual ease as he walked away, the nauseating knowledge that he would fuck someone else—that I would fuck someone else. Having to live with him, having to see him, having to know—
“No, no—” The refusal came out as a sob. “No, Lu, I— I can’t—”
Alluin froze, his chest heaving as he panted, the fingers of one hand digging into the back of my thigh and his other arms wrapped under my shoulder, holding me captive.
His eyes slowly widened, horror and nausea replacing need.
“Oh, fuck,” he said in a shaky exhale. Alluin let out another sharp pant, his hand spasming on my thigh.
“I thought— Oh, gods, Zhi, I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have touched you—”
The apology hurt worse than his desire for only a single night with me, the dagger to my heart after the strike to my gut.
Hot tears fell from my eyes unbidden, carving their way down my cheeks.
“No, don’t— don’t apologize,” I moaned, my throat going tight with pain.
“Don’t. Don’t do that. I just— I can’t—”
He started to pull away from me, lifting his hips and pulling his hands out from under me.
“No,” I said, crying harder, my eyes burning as I grabbed him by the arm and held him there. “Don’t leave me, don’t be sorry—”
“Zhi, I…” Alluin let out a sharp breath, his face a mask of agony. “I don’t know what you want me to do, shaeulo. What should I do?”
That ‘shaeulo’ cut me to the bone. After being certain I would die and then watching Alluin almost die, all I’d wanted was another chance.
Now here it was, and I was fucking it up royally, like I always did, too pathetically needy to be the person that Alluin wanted.
I wasn’t good enough. I was never fucking good enough.
I had to cover my face with one hand, trembling and scoured raw.
“I’m so sorry, Lu,” I wept. “I’m— I— I’m so sorry, Lu, I can’t do this for you, I can’t be your— your fuckbuddy, I can’t, I just can’t.
” I forced myself to look at him through my wet lashes, grief twisting my expression so much that my face ached with it, the corners of my mouth shaking.
“I can’t give you one night. I can’t do it, it’s going to break me— I can’t, I can’t—”
“Zhi—”
I grabbed him by the shirt, my whole body tense and shaking. “I love you!” I half-shouted. “Don’t you get it? I can’t do this. I can’t be your— your fucking toy—”
“Zhiolas, I am completely in love with you,” Alluin said in a desperate voice.
I stopped moving. I stopped breathing, staring up at Alluin with my eyes wide and my heartbeat ticking in my throat.
My hands started trembling. I took one juddering breath, then another, a pair of hot tears tracking down my face.
Alluin moved carefully, tugging my pajamas back up before settling himself close to me and cupping my face, his shadowed eyes searching my expression.
His thumbs swept across my damp cheeks. I had to close my eyes, crying softly, the emotional exhaustion of days of battle and centuries of longing crushing me.
“Didn’t you know?” he asked softly. “I thought…”
My breath came out in shallow gasps. I couldn’t even answer Alluin, too agonized to speak. Everything felt like it had been upended, as if my life had been picked up and shaken by some callous god, my whole world strewn across a table like a seer consulting their herbs and bones.
Alluin was in love with me. But if he was in love with me now, he’d been in love with me for a long, long time. Decades. Centuries.
He’d given me his history, his name, his blood, his home, and his every possession to do with as I pleased.
He’d kept every letter I’d ever sent him, even the ones that had been put into a file by his secretary as coming from a crazed stalker.
He called me his shield-love. His shaeulo.
Noble. Loyal. Full of sunlit joy. Wild-hearted. Lovely.
He’d almost died for me.
And I’d been too much of a coward to even ask.
“No, no. Don’t do that. I know that look on your face,” Alluin said, resting his forehead against mine, breathing my air. “No more guilt. No more self-loathing. Talk to me, Zhi. Tell me something.”
I had to fight to force words out. My throat felt like it had been lacerated with glass. “What do you want to…hear?”
“Can you tell me what you want? Not everything,” he said, hurrying through the words when I let out another sharp sob. “Tell me one thing. Something I can do, or tell you, or…something. Just something.”
I nodded, squeezing my eyes closed. Another pair of tears welled out, but Alluin’s weight and warmth were so comfortably familiar and I was so tired that the tension was seeping out of my body. I didn’t have the stamina for suffering, not when comfort was so close at hand.
“Why only one night?” I got out, looking up at him through blurry eyes. “Why— If you love me, why—”
“Oh, shaeulo,” Alluin said, soft with sorrow.
He bent closer and nuzzled me, his nose running alongside mine.
“Because I didn’t think you wanted more.
I didn’t even truly think you wanted that much, but I thought…
” He looked away, shamefaced. “I thought you would let me have it anyway, because you love me and we almost died, and I asked because I’m tired and hurting, and I want you desperately. ”
“But… But if…” I started, sounding like a lost child.
Alluin shifted closer, putting more of his weight on me, his hands still cupping my face and his legs tangled with mine. “I know you love me. Of course I know you love me.” He brushed a gossamer kiss across my lips. “I simply didn’t understand how you love me.”
I exhaled shakily and let myself put my arms around him, my hands finding places to hold so that I was clutching onto him. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked, fighting back the tears that threatened to return. “If— If you wanted me.”
“Why didn’t you?” he asked in return.
Guilt sank into me again. Because I’m a coward. Because you’re perfect and I’m a stupid fucking coward—
“Stop. No guilt. I didn’t mean it like that,” Alluin said with gentle reproof.
“I know you don’t think you deserve my affection.
You’ve told me too many times for me to forget.
” He sighed and shifted, nuzzling up against my throat.
“You’re like a wild bird, Zhiolas. To cage you is to destroy you.
I didn’t tell you because I was waiting for you to choose me. ”
He let out another heavy breath. “I know who I am and what I could do to you. I’m overwhelming.
I’m possessive. Sometimes it’s difficult for me to even notice myself holding on so tightly.
It would be so easy for me to chain you without realizing what I was doing.
If you were ever to nest in my branches, I knew you needed to be the one to choose it, because if I chose it for you, it would surely ruin both of us. ”
I shuddered. “But, Lu, I… I didn’t even know I could. You didn’t tell me.”
“I didn’t. I know I didn’t. But I didn’t think that…
Zhi, I was certain you already knew that I was yours to claim.
I couldn’t imagine how you would ever think otherwise,” he said softly.
“I’m yours. I’ve been yours. I chose you long ago.
” Alluin curled closer to me, tucking one hand up under my shoulder again.
“I tried to show you that you could have me without making you feel like you had to be mine. I never wanted you to feel like you had to be anyone for me. To…” He swallowed again, and added in a small voice, “To have to live in a house where you can’t paint the walls. ”