Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHRIS
H e wanted to tear my clothes off. I felt it in the spasms of his fingers, fast jerking motions as he began, again and again, to rip through the fabric, but stopped himself.
It was the care of someone who had once gone through danger to clothe me. It was the fierceness of Branca.
“Thank you,” I said when my jacket came off in one piece. “I really like that jacket.”
Ever since that cold time I always had a coat, no matter where we were. And I did like them red. Red to hide the flush in my cheeks that happened whenever I looked at him. When we touched like this.
Yes, some camera somewhere would catch us, and it would be obvious what they saw. There was no way to help that and stay together; so there was no way to help that.
His fleeting smile at my thank you was a ripple of big teeth. “Ho ho ho,” he chuckled, acknowledging Santa even as I dropped the remnants of him on the floor. “The coat must be red.”
I didn’t have to live in my past, but I wanted to keep it. All the things only we knew about each other. Like how he saw the world in shades of green and blue.
My thoughts flew away when he nipped my ear. The flame he lit with the threat and dragging heat of his teeth. It was familiar, thrilling, everything I needed.
That and his quiet growl when I grabbed the fur fringe over his chest dragged him closer.
We knew this dance. It was etched in us, from our skin down to our bones. All over.
No Santa bag. No red coat. Just me, hardening and melting under his hands like he’d cast a spell of ice and fire.
“You smell so good. ” Maybe only I heard the sparkles in that growling, tumbled-rock voice. Maybe they were just for me. He crowded into me, around me, and I kicked off my shoes and shoved away the rest of my clothes myself while his hands and mouth roamed. “You taste so good. I want to taste you everywhere. ”
“ Please. ” Then I had one last sane thought. “We can’t wake up Noah.”
“Beloved, your cries will wake this neighborhood before I stop.”
I swelled at the thought of it, naked hardness thrusting against his fur as I worked to fit our two different shapes together. I was warm where I touched him, cool everywhere else in the worn little kitchen’s open air. This was real. I could have this.
I wasn’t alone.
He looked down at my bag on the floor. “You must have something for such an occasion.”
“I do.” Crouching, I rummaged in the bag for the right item, feeling it come to my fingers as I called.
Balancing so near his thigh, I couldn’t resist rubbing my face against it, nudging the length I knew he had for me with my nose, and hearing his deepest growl.
When I stood, he immediately recognized what I had in my hand. “Never. Give that to me.”
“It will only take a second.”
“I won’t let you.” He took it.
Its ribbon, woven of blue shading into white, looped through the eye of a little silver knife like an edged needle and thread.
Before I could stop him Branca cast the spell, making a small cut in the thinner skin at the hollow of his elbow. He drew the ribbon over the blood then whirled it around, using the knife as its handle.
He put space between us—cold air—to circle the ribbon wider and wider then let it fall in a loop on the floor. It included nearly the whole kitchen.
His gray skin was thicker than mine. Harder to pierce. “I could have given the blood.”
“You’ve given enough. This is my present to you.”
I shook my head even as my thumb found the little cut and pressed down, urging his little wound to close. “So obsessed with giving me gifts I don’t want.”
The shimmer in the air said the spell had done its job. We were sealed in a bubble of silence.
No one could see us. I truly had him to myself.
It unleashed him. Dragging me upwards like a doll, his massive hands under my arms, he balanced me sitting on the edge of the kitchen table. I leaned back, worried it would tip.
Then I forgot to worry.
Those sharp teeth nipped their way down my chest with its sprinkling of hair. It must seem so bare to him, I thought hazily as those big rough hands spread down my smooth muscles, around my ribs, holding me still while he tasted my skin with his long flicking tongue. After centuries without mirrors what seemed most natural to me was his fur, not my naked skin.
I clutched his horns as his head bent, tasting me, crouching lower and lower. I felt him move.
It had been so long since I’d seen the top of his head.
That made me smile, and it felt like a sliver of sun in the dead of night.
Because of him. Me. Us. What was a myth compared to this reality?
I felt warm from his body between my thighs, his hands on me, his mouth. But I was warmer from merely being with him, having him back in my life as if the empty time had never happened.
I felt stronger. I could survive without him. I didn’t have to.
Another sharp bite on the inside of my thigh, almost-pain. It fired all my nerves, the sensation traveling upwards into my armpits, of all places. I’d forgotten that too.
Then a big rough hand reverently cupped my sac, his clawed hand brushing my white curls there so carefully, so gently, while his long forked tongue slithered everywhere, tasting everything I had to offer.
“Beautiful,” I could just make out the word in the sound he made, and I knew he was remembering too. Shooting me a wicked, upward look, he said more clearly, “The most beautiful cock in the world.”
“Branca.” I tried to scold, but it was hard to breathe. His long, coarse tongue left slow tickling sensations as it wrapped around my length from every direction and slid away with delicious, surprisingly delicate friction. It was the worst, best kind of tease, until he tasted the clear drop in the slit. That was worse.
I never liked those words but Branca loved them. Maybe he just liked me to object.
Maybe I was prissy? It had never occurred to me before, but maybe Branca wanted something else too. Lovemaking other than mine.
I couldn’t allow that.
I spread my thighs and thrust his way. “Please suck.”
Shocked, he froze. I wondered if I had chipped whatever held us together. Maybe broken it.
Then he growled again, that growl full of diamonds, and this time I could see flashes of light as his hands spread under my thighs and pulled , lifting me up so I had to fall backward, spreading me wide, laying me out.
With all the practice of a thousand years and the hunger of a hundred more, his wide mouth sucked down all of me, cock, balls, everything wrapped in wet heat and his shockingly clever tongue. His mobile lips protected me from his teeth to perfection. Always protected.
I make his mouth water. He didn’t have to tell me; I knew. His inside surfaces—his only soft spots—closed and slicked around me with near-violent suction, his clever tongue thickened and spiraled around my length, whipping around my tip, pulling me till I felt like a volcano ready to blow.
I didn’t want him to take me apart and put me back together too quickly.
“Too fast!” I panted as he held my hips up off the table, devouring me. He must know what I meant. I wanted this, to be with him. Wanted everything I’d missed. Everything we were.
He did know. I knew he did. I only hoped he would listen.
His lips came off with a filthy pop that he knew would make me blush. It did. I felt the heat in my face as he lowered me a little.
Words tumbled out with his growls. “Tell me you haven’t gone a hundred years without this.”
“You know I have.” I had.
“Nothing?”
“There was no you, Branca. It was you I missed.”
He made a pained noise, as if something twisted in him, and he twisted my hips to match. I had to follow, rolling helplessly over to sprawl on the kitchen table with my rear in the air, legs splayed.
I knew what he was going to do. “I haven’t?—”
“You’re still candy to me,” he muttered between my cheeks, the depths of his voice sinking almost too low to hear, and I felt that miraculous, magnificent tongue touching me there, tickling, tracing, melting me open and making my muscles shake and give up, seduced into relaxing. He had me. He always did.
He chuckled. Hunching over me like that couldn’t have been comfortable, yet he chuckled like he was sprawled in a golden chair.
“Someone better be getting lube for Christmas,” he said into me, words vibrating through my skin, lighting more fires.
And he laughed again as I scrabbled for my bag, unable to move; then he generously snagged it with one long arm and dropped it on the table by my head.
“I like you like this. My Christmas feast,” he rumbled, lips caressing one spread cheek, and my hands shook as I rummaged for the one very necessary thing.
I felt less than elegant, chest mashed into an old melamine table while I fumbled desperately in my bag and Branca laughed that low, rumbling chuckle into soft places where no one had been for a long, long time. But Branca never made me feel elegant.
He made me feel wanted. Needed.
Loved.
I found the right present, ripped it open. “Here.”
I think he was surprised. “Olive oil. Someone’s gift.”
“They’ll get one next year.”
Surely he’d noticed. Surely he knew. I wasn’t giving him anything that should have gone to someone else. I was taking this, selfishly, desperately. For me.
The cap’s seal snapped open. “Are you telling me,” Branca’s humor returned, “some kid wants Greek olive oil for Christmas?”
“They’ve never tasted it. They like to cook.” I didn’t want him distracted.
He wasn’t, just talking while he poured oil into his hand. I stilled as I felt it, gloriously slick, gloriously messy, carefully stroking the soft muscles of my cleft cheeks, pressing, exploring.
The first time we’d tried his fingers in me, his claw had nicked me. There was a little blood. Branca was so devastated he swore never to put his fingers in me again. I waited centuries for new inventions. The year he got thick rubber gloves for Christmas was one of my favorites.
As the world got bigger and bigger and some deserving kids only got one Santa gift in a lifetime, he got a gift from Santa every year. I wondered if he’d noticed.
Without gloves Branca moved painfully slowly, pressing only a knuckle against me, pushing the oil where we both needed it to go, muttering encouragements, endearments. I think I heard him say sweetness.
Then he paused, and I didn’t know what he was doing till I felt his lips on me again, so careful. His tongue swirled into those soft tissues, sneaking a mouthful of olive oil past the edge, spreading it inside with increasing pressure.
And pleasure that carried me far away from my awareness of where I was, who I was.
“Greek olive oil,” he said when he could talk again and I couldn’t. I was rock-hard, flexing helplessly into the air past the table’s edge, waiting for him, beyond desperate. “Remember those nights in the baths at Thessaloníki?”
Remember them? They had been the highlights of the fifteenth century.
The memory of him then, fur dripping with hot, clean water, teasing me, laughing, opened floodgates of emotion I thought locked away. I wasn’t just waiting for him now; I had always waited for him. Forever.
“Don’t keep me like this,” I gasped as one claw carefully traced the edge of my muscle there. I let it open for him as much as I could. “Please, Branca. Please. ”
His huge hand slipped lower. I felt its roughness engulf me, squeeze me. It was too much; it was perfect. I thrust against that familiar hard grip.
“You must be careful, Beloved.” He bent over me, surrounding me; I felt his furred belly against my back. “Let me take care of you. Don’t push.”
As always, he was afraid of hurting me with his inhuman gift; as always, I was aching for it. “I’ll be good.”
“Christophoros.” He said my name solemnly, lovingly; the sounds tripped off his tongue, even as the broad thick tip of him pressed gently against me, breaching me, slid into me with a welcome ache. “You are always good.”
I wanted to be good, I did. But I needed him more. I tried not to struggle for my need, let him give me what he knew I could take. I needed to feel him press deeper and deeper and deeper... I wanted it everywhere. All of him.
I felt his sigh in the hot breath on my shoulder, felt his moan in the skin of my back.
One arm came around, pulling me up against him, pinning me, while the other, I knew, held the base of him, controlling the depth. I wished I could see him, taste him, impossible as it was with him inside me. I wanted his gift everywhere. I wanted everything .
“Careful,” he warned, even as he sighed his own pleasure. It made me proud I could take as much as I had.
“Let me lay back down.”
Instantly he did.
I spread my arms across the table, gripping its sides, and my legs as wide as I could too. “I won’t do anything,” I promised, already sweating from the effect of his heavy weight inside me. “You can do anything you like.”
That made him truly growl, louder and raw as an animal.
I knew he both loved and hated it when I trusted him this way. Trusted that he was not an animal. And that he was mine.
He took a step back. I missed the press of him against me, but I knew what he was going to do.
Lifting my legs in his hands as if they weighed no more than paper, he leaned back and held me off the floor, balanced on my chest, spread-armed and helpless on the table. He was so long that I still had a generous length of him inside, and I gripped it as hard as I could, gripped everything so he could see my muscles flexing, holding myself up, yearning for him.
“Merry Christmas, Santa,” he panted, teasing me, and I laughed till he sped up, thrusts increasing, a little in depth, more in speed, unerring in aim, sliding over and over the spot that made me see stars, scream wordless sounds into the table that meant so good.
Anything awkward or sad floated away. I was wrapped in pleasure, my skin turning to fire, heating and glowing from the inside out. There was no time or space, only him, holding me up and making love to me.
Even the memories of all the cities where we had done this before, all the years, spun away and I only existed here, now, dissolving in his desperate, wild actions.
“Please,” I moaned, over and over till I lost any awareness I was saying it.
“Yes,” he told me in return, as if he hadn’t gone away, as if he hadn’t broken my heart.
That sliver of memory cut the moment. I gripped him inside, hard as I could, wanting this to last. My mouth worked without my direction, letting words escape I wouldn’t have said. “Don’t leave me!”
“Never,” panted Branca, brutally brusque as ever, and I knew it was true.
I could believe his body, believe with every stroke, every star I could see behind my eyelids that he was mine and I was his.