Chapter 13 #3
Vale slides one hand up under August's shirt again, palm flat against the small of his back, holding him steady.
His other hand stays on August's hip, thumb digging into the hollow above the bone, guiding his rhythm.
He thrusts up to meet each downward grind, slow and filthy, and the layered pressure of cock against ass through denim makes August's mouth fall open on a sound that is barely human.
"I want to see you ride me," Vale says, voice gravel-rough.
His mouth is against August's ear now, words low and deliberate, and he feels the full-body shudder that moves through August at the words.
"Want to watch you sink down on my cock.
Want to see you lose yourself on it. Every inch stretching you open, filling you until you can't think about anything else. "
August makes a sound that's close to a sob. His hips jerk hard, grinding down with sudden force, and Vale feels the answering throb of his own cock, trapped and aching, pulsing against the heat of August's body.
"Vale..."
"You'd look so fucking good." Vale's teeth close gently on August's earlobe, and the sound that produces is raw enough to make his own cock jerk.
"Legs spread over me. Hands on my chest. Riding me with that look on your face, the one you get when you can't think straight, when you're so full of me you forget to breathe.
" His hand tightens on August's hip, pulling him into a grind that drags Vale's cock along his cleft with enough pressure that August's thighs spasm.
"You'd be so tight. So hot inside. And I'd feel every single sound you make around my cock. "
August's rhythm breaks. His hips stutter, losing their measured cadence, devolving into something more desperate.
He's panting against Vale's neck now, open-mouthed, teeth grazing skin, and the wet heat of his breath is doing things to Vale's self-control that should not be possible from someone's mouth on his neck.
August's hands are fisted in his hair, pulling with an urgency that borders on painful, and his entire body is trembling, the fine, continuous vibration of a man who is very close to the edge and fighting it.
"I can feel how close you are," Vale murmurs, and rolls his hips up in a slow, grinding thrust that presses his cock hard against August's ass. "You're going to come like this, aren't you. In your clothes. In my lap. Just from grinding on my cock."
August whimpers. The sound is small and wrecked and comes from somewhere that has nothing to do with pride, and it goes through Vale with a force that nearly finishes him on the spot.
He tightens his grip and pulls August down one last time, grinding up into him with purpose, both hands on his hips now, holding him in place while he thrusts.
The fabric drags, friction building in a hot, rough rush, and Vale can feel August's cock pulsing against his stomach through the denim, can feel the wetness where he's been leaking, can feel the exact moment when August's body reaches its limit.
August comes first.
He buries his face in Vale's neck. A choked "fuck, Vale" muffled against skin, the words vibrating against his throat, and then his whole body locks up.
His thighs clamp around Vale's hips, his hands go rigid in Vale's hair, and his hips jerk in uneven, helpless pulses as he spills.
Vale feels the hot, wet rush of him soaking through denim, a spreading warmth against his stomach that is filthy and perfect.
August shudders through it, grinding down in short, sharp little thrusts, chasing the last of it, and the sounds he makes against Vale's throat are broken and breathless and wrecked beyond repair.
The sight of it, the sound of it, the feel of August coming apart in his lap, sends Vale over the edge a heartbeat later.
He thrusts up once, twice, hard enough that August bounces in his lap, and then he's spilling too, pulsing hard against the heat of August's body, flooding his own trousers in thick, messy waves that soak through the fabric and press wet against the cleft of August's ass.
He groans low in his throat, the sound rough and unguarded, and his fingers dig into August's hips hard enough to leave marks, holding him there, holding him close, while they ride it out together.
The orgasm rolls through him in slow, punishing waves.
It's not the shattering intensity of last night, when the fusion of their magic had turned the world white.
It's something deeper. Quieter. The steady, bone-deep release of a man who has spent three hundred years in rigid control and is, in the arms of a dying necromancer in a cluttered Old City apartment, learning how to let go.
They stay locked together for long seconds.
August trembling in his lap, Vale's arms banded around him, both of them breathing hard.
The apartment is quiet except for the sound of their breathing and the faint tick of the kitchen clock.
The room smells of sex and sweat and the particular warmth that exists only between two bodies that have been pressed together.
The grey afternoon light hasn't changed.
The research on the coffee table hasn't moved.
The world outside the window continues, indifferent to the fact that inside this apartment, two people who should be enemies are sitting on a couch in come-soaked clothes, holding each other with a tenderness that neither of them has vocabulary for.
Eventually August makes a small, wrecked sound and slumps fully forward, forehead dropping to Vale's shoulder.
His arms loop loosely around Vale's neck, body gone liquid and heavy.
His breathing is still uneven, still catching on the aftershocks, and Vale can feel the way his heart is hammering, fast and hard, gradually slowing toward something steadier.
Vale presses a slow, open-mouthed kiss to the side of August's throat, right over one of the bruises he left last night.
August shivers at the contact, a residual tremor, his body still oversensitive, still tuned to every point where they touch.
He turns his face into Vale's neck and breathes there, slow and warm, and the intimacy of it, the quiet animal comfort of being held and holding, is more disarming than anything that preceded it.
This is the part Vale didn't expect. Not the sex, not the heat, not the desperate physicality of two people who have been orbiting each other for days and have finally given in to the gravity.
He expected all of that. What he didn't expect was this.
The after. The way August goes soft and still in his arms when the urgency has passed.
The way his fingers trace absent patterns on the back of Vale's neck.
The way he breathes, slow and deep and even, as though Vale's shoulder is the safest place in the world, and for the first time in fourteen years, he has somewhere to rest.
Vale tightens his arms around him. His hand settles on the back of August's neck, thumb moving in slow strokes through the short hair at his nape, and August makes a sound that's barely audible.
A hum. Quiet and content and so far removed from the sharp, guarded man Vale had chased through the Old City a week ago that it seems impossible they're the same person.
They're not, Vale thinks. Not entirely. The man in his arms is someone August is becoming.
Someone who exists only in this space, in the warmth between them, in the unprecedented safety of being held by the one person in the world whose touch doesn't hurt.
Vale is watching August become himself, and the privilege of it, the weight of it, is not something he takes lightly.
After a long moment, August's voice emerges, soft and hoarse and slightly muffled by Vale's neck.
"I don't feel very rested."
Vale huffs a laugh into his hair, the sound rough and fond and startled out of him. "Yeah," he murmurs, tightening his arms around August's waist. "Me neither."
The apartment is quiet. The grey light filters through the windows.
The research waits on the coffee table, the map with its binding circle and its remaining threats.
Tonight they'll go to the subway. Tomorrow, or the day after, they'll face whatever Voss throws at them.
The world hasn't stopped. The crisis hasn't paused.
The rogue Templar is still out there, still dying, still clawing toward a vault full of relics that could unmake everything.
But that's tonight. That's tomorrow. That's later.
Right now, August is warm in his arms. His breathing is slowing toward sleep, each exhale deeper than the last, his body growing heavier against Vale's chest. His fingers have stopped their absent tracing and gone still, curled loosely against the back of Vale's neck.
The heartbeat that had been hammering minutes ago has settled into something steady and slow, and Vale can feel it through the thin wall of August's chest, pressed against his own.
August is falling asleep in his lap. In the middle of the afternoon. With come cooling in both their pants and a rift to close in six hours and the entire Order of Templars now aware of his existence.
He's falling asleep because he feels safe.
Because for the first time in fourteen years, someone is holding him, and the pain is quiet, and there's nothing he has to fight or flee or survive.
For the first time in fourteen years, rest is possible, and his body is taking it whether his mind has given permission or not.
Vale doesn't move. Doesn't shift, doesn't adjust, doesn't do a single thing that might disturb the man sleeping in his arms. He sits on the couch in August's cluttered apartment with research spread across the coffee table and cold tea on the side table and the afternoon going grey outside the window, and he holds a dying necromancer who is, for the moment, at peace.
His hand stays on the back of August's neck. His thumb continues its slow, steady stroke.
He has three centuries of memories. Battles and betrayals and long stretches of solitude that blur together in the way that centuries do when you've lived enough of them. He has seen empires fall and faiths fracture and the entire shape of the world change around him while he stayed the same.
None of it compares to this. To the weight of a man falling asleep in his arms because he trusts him. To the sound of breathing that isn't labored. To the warmth of skin that used to be cold.
Vale closes his eyes.
He doesn't sleep. Someone needs to keep watch, even here, even now. But he rests. In his own way. With August's heartbeat against his chest and the quiet apartment around them and the hours stretching out before whatever comes next.
It's enough. For the first time in three hundred years, what he has is enough.