Chapter 24
24
Toorin
“It’s quiet out there.”
Marc threw a leg over mine and snugged tighter against my side, his fingers drawing small circles in the hair below my belly button. “That’s a good thing, right?”
“Maybe.” I left off the maybe not . We were already on edge every minute of the day and night, picking up the binoculars to scan the river’s shoreline whenever we heard an unusual sound. It left us exhausted.
And the four-hour shifts we’d maintained around the clock for the last three days since we’d entered the Dry River didn’t help either. But shifts beyond the four hours when all your senses were on high alert were too draining, making it easy to lose focus or ignore a sound you shouldn’t.
Sunken vessels littered the shoreline like carcasses from a hunt. Hulls cut open, their vulnerable underbellies exposed and picked clean.
Having had little trouble—day or night—in the three days since we’d begun this dangerous folly only made my hypervigilance worse instead of better. The hairs on the back of my neck had remained at attention for the better part of the last day, waiting for the inevitable.
I’d expected trouble at the same narrow bend in the river that Bodie and I’d had years before, but it never came. Bodie relaxed. I became more cautious.
Something hit the side of the Lark with a loud thump. I bolted upright and would have run up on deck bare ass naked if Marc hadn’t grabbed my arm.
“Lie down. It was only a log bumping the hull.”
I listened closely for the telltale sound of people tossing grappling hooks and scrambling up the side of the Lark or Darwin calling out an alarm.
None came.
Easing back down, I kissed Marc’s forehead. “Sorry. I’m a little on edge.” The first part of that was necessary, the second part, not so much.
I don’t think I’d been that ill at ease since the first days after becoming captain of the Lark. Even though I’d grown up on her, being the one in charge, the shoulders on which all the responsibility lay, had been a difficult transition, even with Bodie by my side.
Post-war, people died all the time. Like all the time. That’s what happened when the majority of the world became inhospitable to life. I understood that but couldn’t fathom being directly responsible for anyone’s death under my watch.
That could be why this whole trip down the river had me on tenterhooks. I didn’t want anyone to die. But, moon and mars, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if someone died trying to help me .
Marc’s hand eased lower, and I stopped him with a hand on his. “What are you doing?”
The deliciously dark chuckle that escaped him gave me a semi. He rolled on top of me, his knees bracketing my hips. “If it’s not obvious what I’m doing, maybe I’m doing it wrong.”
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to have sex with Marc. I did. But the stress of the river ate me up from the inside out. I hadn’t even managed to swallow more than a bite of Lyric’s river eel stew before I’d taken my shift at the helm, and there is nothing in this world better than Lyric’s river eel stew. “I—”
I knew what I wanted to say, but the words refused to come.
Marc slid off me and lit the lantern.
“What are you doing now?”
He stood naked in the light, his arousal heavy between his legs as he held up the tin of salve Juniper had found in the settlement for me. “We forgot to put the salve on your chest.”
“I don’t need it. The bruises are nearly gone now.”
Marc climbed on the bed, straddled me again, and pulled the lid off the container. “It’s almost gone because this works. The borders have mostly faded to yellow, but the center looks bloody wicked.”
I didn’t have the energy to argue. “If you say so.”
Marc took that as permission, not that he needed any to touch me. I didn’t think I’d ever tire of having his hands on me.
He placed a dab of the salve in the center of his palm and rubbed his hands together until he’d warmed it. Then, his hands landed in the center of my chest with a gentleness that made breathing hard. He caressed every bruised and blemished inch, working the salve deep into my skin as if he could wipe the damage away with his love alone.
Love…
Did he feel about me the same way I felt about him? Did his stomach flutter when I smiled? Did he want nothing more than to have me in his arms all day, every day? Did he dream about me? About what a future together would look like?
He focused on his task, carefully covering every inch, every mark, every speck. He must have felt my eyes on him because he glanced up. “What?”
“I love you.”
Wait .
What did I say? I hadn’t meant to say it. I’d meant to say something else entirely. I think. Mostly.
His hands stilled. My skin tingled and warmed beneath his touch. One corner of his lips twisted with the softest, warmest, most endearing smile. That same warmth blossomed in my chest.
“I mean, I love how you—”
His smile faltered as if a nuclear cloud had covered the sun. Like the fifth world war had been yesterday and not almost a century ago. Why had I tried to qualify that statement?
To protect yourself. You don’t want to be hurt. Losing your heart nearly killed you the first time.
But losing my heart to Marc? I couldn’t think of a safer, more deserving person to trust it with.
He straightened and wiped his hands. “I think we’re done here.”
By the stars above, I couldn’t let my fear of my heart getting wrecked crush the most selfless man I knew. I wrapped my fingers around his wrist.
He stared at my chest, at my puckered, raggedy scar, before daring to glance up at me.
“That didn’t come out the way I wanted.”
“Clearly.” The disappointment in that single word cut cleaner than Juniper’s sharpest blade.
His eyes dropped from mine, and I tightened my grip lest he stalk out of the cabin. I didn’t think he would have cared if the rest of the crew saw him starkers. Ass out and all.
“Would you let me finish?”
“No. I think you’ve said enough.” He wrenched his wrist free and clambered off me.
A wave skittered under the hull, and I stumbled out of my bunk. Marc wedged himself in a corner for stability and grabbed his trousers.
I stripped them out of his hand and tossed them over my shoulder. Instead of arguing, he said, “You should get your sleep. You’ll be on watch again before you know it.”
“I don’t care about the watch. I care about you.”
“Great. Got it.” He put his hand out as if to push me away. How had I gone from this man snuggled tight against me to him doing his utmost to get away without us coming to blows? “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have—”
I held my hands up in surrender, but I had fight in my words. Fight for him. For us . “ Marcelis .”
He froze, the lamplight shining off the excess moisture in his eyes.
“Listen. Please .” He didn’t move or look at me. “I’ll beg if I have—”
“Don’t.” His voice bordered on a whisper but with too much authority to be one. “I don’t want anyone begging on my account ever again.”
I’d hit a nerve. A jagged and raw one as ugly as the one running down my sternum.
This time, when I held out my hand, Marc took it. Stepping into him, I backed Marc against the bulkhead. He wasn’t trapped, but he also didn’t try to leave. My hands shook as I brushed the pad of my thumb across his lower lip. “I really want to kiss you right now.”
His tongue flicked the tip of my calloused pad, and I took that as permission, though the hurt in his eyes hadn’t eased. I poured myself into that one kiss. Into that exchange of warm breath.
Into that brush of our lips
The tension eased from his body, and he dissolved into the kiss. It hit like a cloudless sky on a star-studded night. Like sails full of wind on a flat sea. Like the first rays of dawn after a storm-tossed night.
I broke the kiss and pressed my forehead to his. Then I said those three weighty words again. “I. Love. You.”
Marcelis
I. Love. You .
I ran my tongue across my bottom lip, tasting him there as the impact of those solemn words sunk in. This time, Toorin didn’t add a qualifier. He left those three little words dangling between us for me to pick up or toss away.
“Before… Why did you try to take it back?” As much as I didn’t want to hear the answer, I needed to know. Did he truly not mean what he’d said? Did he think those words were just something I needed to hear? I’d already told him I’d give him his heart back. I didn’t need false professions of love to do it.
His grip tightened on my hand, though I didn’t think he knew he’d done it. “Fear.”
A simple answer from a complicated man.
A dry chuckle ripped out of me. “Sorry. I’m not laughing at you. I’m…”
“Then what?”
“I… I get it. I’m scared out of my mind.”
Toorin turned away, scrubbing his hand through his hair. “I knew we shouldn’t have gone down the river.”
“What? No.” I took hold of his arm and turned him toward me. “I don’t care about the river. This . Us . It terrifies me.”
He came back to me, his hands on my waist, his thumbs drawing distracting circles on the points of my hips. “Why does it scare you?”
Uh, no. He wasn’t getting out of this that easy. “You first.”
“Bullocks,” Toorin muttered. He took a moment to gather his thoughts before speaking, my heart tapping out a rapid beat no seasoned percussionist could dare match. “I’ve never done this before. And it seems fast, and it seems not at the same time. But I feel what I feel and am tired of holding that back.”
“Toorin.”
“I understand if you don’t feel it. It’s not—”
“Toorin.”
“… like you have to. This whole situation is bloody unbelievable. It wasn’t long ago that Bodie and I anchored outside Toonu with nothing but chips in our pocket and—”
“Dick on your mind?” I finished for him. At least I finally got his attention.
The sly smile made me want to pin him to the bunk and not let him up until I’d done my wicked best to make him come as many times as possible.
“A bit,” he allowed.
I knew where he was coming from. This world didn’t promise us a tomorrow. It never had, and it never would. “I—”
He pressed a finger to my lips. “Don’t say it back unless you mean it.”
Taking hold of his wrist, I raked my tongue up the length of his upheld finger, then sucked it into my mouth the same way I’d sucked on his cock nearly every night.
The strangled sound scraped his dry throat a second before he pinned me against the bulkhead.
Thigh to thigh.
Hip to hip.
Cock to cock.
He kissed me with more tenderness than I’d anticipated and more love than I’d deserved. He blew me away with his worship.
His heart.
“Fuck me,” I ordered the man who usually did all the commanding.
Toorin scooped me up, wrapping my legs around his waist and trapping my leaking cock against our abdomens. He carried me to the bunk. Lying back, he took me down with him.
I glanced at the smear of precum on his skin. “Sorry about that.”
Toorin grinned. The type of grin that made my insides squirm and my cock spring a bigger leak. He dragged a thumb through the wetness, sucking it into his mouth, his eyes drifting closed as if he’d tasted the sweetest nectar on his tongue. Ooof . “I bloody love the way you taste.”
He pulled me in for a ravenous kiss. I may have had his heart, but he had my soul.
On his tongue, I tasted myself. Salty and sexy as fuck. I loved that he couldn’t get enough. That he would feast on me for as long as I allowed.
I ground into him, our cocks slick, our bodies aligned. His head fell back when I reached between us and took us both in hand. As amazing as that felt, I needed him inside me more.
He blew out a curse with a ragged breath as I released our cocks to reach for the lube. I stomped down on the mild panic when I noticed we were running low. Moon and mars, I hoped Metta hadn’t absconded with Toorin’s reserves.
Toorin took the tub from me. “Not yet.”
The brow I raised turned his grin mischievous. “I have other plans. Trust me.”
I did. With all my stolen heart.
The lantern burned low, and the light sputtered and faltered. I didn’t need to see Toorin’s face to feel his love. And fuck, if knowing that didn’t turn me on more. The only thing keeping me from reaching for the tub and taking what I wanted was my curiosity about what Toorin had planned.
He flipped us. My shoulder scraped against the bulkhead as I landed on my back. He scooted us to the middle of the narrow bunk and settled between my legs.
His hands curved around to the backs of my thighs. “Raise them.”
The breath left my lungs with a weak, raspy, “Why?”
I’d done many things with the courtesans eager to service me, but never had one been so… intimate .
“If you have to ask…” He didn’t finish the sentence. Then again, he didn’t have to. Whatever he wanted to do to me, I’d do and do willingly.
He lifted my legs to his shoulders, making me feel more exposed and somehow more treasured at the same time. He kissed the creases on my inner thigh, bending me nearly in two. He licked the crease, licked a line behind my balls, and sucked each one into his mouth in turn until they tightened against my body.
I reached for my cock. Toorin batted it away.
“You’re evil,” I managed.
He only smiled in return. I knew his destination, and by the gooseflesh on my skin, my body did too.
And I couldn’t wait for him to get there.
His wet tongue and warm breath had precum drizzling onto my chest, a sticky, unambiguous testament to what this man’s touch did to me. He spread my cheeks, my breath harsh from the position and the anticipation.
He held me steady as the Lark rocked, then used the flat of his tongue to toss my world. He laved and licked and sucked, devouring me to satisfy his hunger. I saw stars and endless darkness and a future with a man I wanted but didn’t deserve.
Then his tongue breached my hole, and I nearly lost my senses. I heard nothing, saw nothing, the pleasure building at the base of my spine. I wouldn’t last.
“I’m—”
Toorin immediately pulled off, the sense of loss all-encompassing. The bloody bastard. Whatever I said came out with a disappointed groan.
“You’re not coming without me,” he vowed, holding my pending pleasure hostage. He dropped my legs and reached for the lube, slicking up his cock and my saliva-dampened hole.
He lined himself up. Where I expected an uncontrolled railing, I got unrestrained reverence. Instead of speed, he gave me all of him. Every ounce, every fiber of the man he was. We’d already declared we were together, but it wasn’t until then that my head caught up with what my heart already knew.
Toorin was mine, and I was his.
I knew this the same way I knew Toorin existed on borrowed time.
He took his weight on his forearms on either side of my head, brushing away the excess moisture leaking from my eyes. “What’s all this?”
“Nothing.” At least not anything I wanted to discuss with Toorin buried balls deep inside me. He started to ask another question, but I canted my hips, and his eyes rolled back, hopefully scrambling that thought in his head.
As much as I adored Toorin’s tender side, sometimes what a man needed to clear all the negative thoughts out of his head was a good dicking.
I eased away to his tip and thrust against him, one hand on his hip and one tight grip on my aching cock. He bottomed out, the garbled groan sending a buzz through my blood.
“Harder,” I said as he neared the end of another stroke.
One of the things I loved about bunks on a boat was that you didn’t have to worry about the headboard thumping against the wall. Not that that had ever stopped me back at the chancellor’s residence.
Toorin rose on his knees, the grip on my hips fierce. I’d have bruises after, and I’d smile down on each and every one of them. Despite that, thoughts of Toorin’s mortality crept in. I couldn’t keep them at bay. “Maybe we shouldn’t—”
“Fuck that,” Toorin said as if he knew exactly where my mind went. “I’m not going to die.”
I didn’t know if he meant then or ever, but I took the thread—as thin and fragile as it was—and wrapped it around my heart.
His thrusts grew stronger. His strokes faster. The top of my head thudded against the bulkhead behind the bunk. Toorin’s grip tightened, his breath ragged in his lungs.
Sweat ran down.
His.
Mine.
Ours .
I jacked myself. My balls drew up tight against my body. Each time he hit that spot, I expected to blow. But the pleasure built higher and higher until I became one with the stars.
The pulses hit, my muscles tightened around him, and I held him close and took him with me.
I don’t know how long we lay there. Long enough for our breaths to calm, for the sweat to dry, and the cum to stick. Toorin weighed heavy across my body, yet I kept him there when he tried to move away.
“Stay.”
He relaxed into me, his mechanical heart whirring against the thud of mine. It had unnerved me a little at first. Now… now I couldn’t imagine it any different.
Toorin’s breathing slowed. Had he fallen asleep?
“Told you I wouldn’t die.”
I forced a chuckle, not wanting him to know how much of my brain space that worry took up in my head. He rolled to his back, and I followed, my hand over his heart. “I think this might be the longest you’ve gone between—”
“Trying to die?”
I bit him in that tender spot between his chest and his arm. Hard enough to make him squeak but not hard enough to leave marks. “That’s not even funny. Do you think…” I didn’t want to put words to what ran through my head, fearing what voicing them might do.
He cupped my face and kissed my forehead. “Do I think what?”
I rose on an elbow. The lantern had long ago burnt itself out, leaving only a faint outline of the man I’d protect at all costs. “Maybe Juniper knocked whatever it was back into place. Maybe she fixed it.”
The silence dragged on until Toorin finally said, “Yeah. Maybe.”
Only he’d said it like it was something I needed to hear, not like something he truly believed.