Chapter 10 #5
August can feel Vale inside him, hot and heavy and so deep it feels as though Vale has reached something in him that no one has ever touched.
Not just physically, though physically it's devastating, but something underneath that, something that has been locked and guarded and alone for fourteen years and is now being held.
Then Vale rolls his hips, a small, experimental motion, and August makes a sound he's never made before, raw, wrecked, grateful, and they stop being careful.
Vale draws back and thrusts in, and the angle is perfect, dragging over the spot that makes August see stars.
August's legs tighten around him, his heels digging into Vale's lower back, and the new angle drives Vale deeper and August chokes on a moan that comes from somewhere he didn't know existed.
Vale does it again, harder, and August's nails rake down his back, leaving red lines that Vale will wear for days.
The rhythm they find is urgent but never cruel, every movement deliberate, every thrust an answer to something August didn't know he was asking.
Vale fucks him with precision and power and a devastating awareness of exactly what he's doing, and the sounds August is making are obscene, broken, completely beyond his control.
Vale's hand finds August's cock, wraps around him, stroking in time with his thrusts, and the dual sensation, the thick slide of Vale inside him and the firm grip around his cock, is blinding.
August's hands roam, Vale's back, his arms, his hair, touching everywhere he can reach because he spent fourteen years not being touched and he is making up for lost time with a ferocity that surprises them both.
His fingers trace the muscles of Vale's back, the flex and release of them with every thrust, and he pulls Vale closer, deeper, needing him in a way that goes beyond physical and into something primal.
Vale's control frays. His rhythm stutters, his breathing turns ragged, his forehead drops to August's shoulder.
"August—" he says, voice breaking on the name.
His hips snap forward, harder, losing their measured cadence, and the bed creaks beneath them and August doesn't care, doesn't care about anything except the feeling of Vale inside him and the sound of his name in Vale's mouth.
"Me too," August gasps. His cock is aching in Vale's grip, the pressure building to something unbearable, his whole body wound tight. "Don't stop. Don't—"
Vale drives in deeper, grinding against the spot inside him that makes August's vision white out, and his hand tightens on August's cock, stroking faster, his thumb pressing under the head on every upstroke, and the pleasure coils tight, unbearable, held at the breaking point for one suspended, breathless second.
And then snaps.
August comes with a cry that tears out of him from somewhere deeper than his body, his back arching off the bed, clenching hard around Vale, spilling hot over Vale's fist and his own stomach in long, shuddering pulses.
The orgasm rolls through him, and he shakes through it with Vale's name on his lips, every wall he's ever built falling at once.
The pulse of August's body around him drags Vale over the edge a heartbeat later.
He buries himself to the hilt, hips pressed flush, and August feels him come, feels the hot pulse of it inside him, feels the way Vale trembles through every wave, his arms shaking, his breath ragged and broken against August's throat.
The sound Vale makes is quiet, almost private, a low, rough groan muffled against August's skin, and it's the most intimate thing August has ever heard.
They stay locked together for long seconds, panting, shaking, hearts slamming against each other through the thin walls of their chests.
Vale's arms come around him, gathering him close with a gentleness that undoes the last thread of composure August has left, and August wraps himself around Vale in return, legs, arms, everything, holding on.
He can feel Vale softening inside him, can feel the mess between their bodies, and none of it matters.
Nothing matters except the warmth of Vale's skin and the weight of his body and the sound of his breathing, slowing, steadying, becoming something that sounds like peace.
Eventually Vale eases out, slow and careful, and the loss of him makes August wince, an involuntary sound that Vale soothes away with a kiss pressed to his forehead.
Vale rolls them so they're on their sides, facing each other.
Their legs tangle. Sweat cools on their skin.
The apartment is quiet except for their breathing and the distant sound of the city that doesn't know how close it came to disaster tonight.
Vale brushes damp hair off August's forehead with a tenderness that makes August's throat close.
His thumb traces the line of August's cheekbone, the same gesture, always the same gesture, and August leans into it the way he has every time, because some things become language when words aren't enough.
August reaches up. Traces the line of Vale's jaw, the scar, the curve of his mouth still swollen from kissing.
The face of a man who has been alive for three hundred years and has never, August suspects, let anyone this close.
The face of a man who chose a dying necromancer over the only institution he's ever known, and who is looking at August right now as though he'd make that choice again. Every time.
Vale catches his hand. Presses a kiss to the center of his palm. Closes his eyes.
August watches him. Memorizes him. The weight of his hand, the warmth of his mouth, the steady rhythm of his breathing as it slows toward sleep.
Memorizes all of it, because he's spent fourteen years knowing that nothing good lasts, and he wants to remember every second of this in case the world takes it away.
But for now, for tonight, the world is just this room. This bed. This man.
August closes his eyes and lets himself rest.