Chapter 40 #2
Shadows detonated around them—not at Jassyn, never at him—but at the unseen hands that had carved fear so deep it made Jassyn believe he had to apologize. As if he still owed obedience.
Lykor’s lungs burned as he drew a slow breath through his nose, waging war on the swell of fury that urged him to tear the world apart. Every muscle coiled to hunt whoever had dared make Jassyn shake like this, to rend them apart.
But he held the line. For Jassyn. Refusing to let rage devour a moment that needed something other than destruction.
Slowly, Lykor eased his claw away and dispelled his shadows. Then—deliberately where everything in him wanted violence—he gently lifted his hand to cup Jassyn’s cheek. To show he wasn’t flinching. That he saw him. That he wasn’t going anywhere.
“It’s your choice,” Lykor said. He swallowed down the fury burning at the back of his throat and extinguished Essence entirely. “Only yours. No one else’s.”
Jassyn blinked, seeming to meet his eyes almost by accident. “I don’t know why I kept them,” he whispered, looking away again.
A tremor shuddered through him—small, but loud enough for Lykor to hear every year he’d kept silent.
“I got rid of the tattoos,” Jassyn continued softly. “I thought that would be enough.” His breath left in an unsteady exhale. “But this…” He shook his head, gaze flicking to the faint glow between their bodies before drifting aside.
“I didn’t know what to do. If I’d taken them out, it would’ve felt like admitting they still had that power over me—like removing them meant I was still reacting to what they did.
” His fingers raked through his curls. “But I thought if I kept them…maybe that would make them something I chose. Something they didn’t own anymore. ”
A broken scoff caught in Jassyn’s throat. “But now saying it aloud makes it sound like I’ve just been lying to myself.”
The cost of those words split Lykor down the center—because Jassyn, trembling and carrying scars no one could see, was still willing to hand him those fractured pieces.
“There isn’t a right or wrong decision,” Lykor said, brushing his thumb along Jassyn’s cheek. “If you keep them. If you take them out. If you add more. It’s your choice. No one gets to take that from you again.”
Finally—finally—Jassyn lifted his gaze. Unshielded. Raw enough to cleave Lykor open.
Lykor didn’t remember deciding to move, but he leaned forward, already reaching. He wrapped his arms around Jassyn’s shoulders and pulled him to his chest, holding him as though he could protect him from the entire stars-forsaken world.
That was all he wanted. Just this. Just him.
But Jassyn didn’t stay folded in the embrace for long. A ragged breath escaped him. His lips grazed the edge of Lykor’s jaw as he drew back and planted a hand against Lykor’s chest.
Lykor froze at the sudden friction, realization striking a heartbeat later.
Jassyn wasn’t retreating.
He pressed in, grinding his hips forward in a slow, obliterating drag that stole the breath from Lykor’s lungs. Amber eyes lifted, reflecting starlight, gleaming with desire that burned away every shadow of hesitation.
And then his mouth crashed into Lykor’s—wild, claiming, choosing him with a defiant want that never flinched.
It wasn’t soft, and Lykor didn’t think it was meant to be.
He didn’t want it to be. Something in him answered that choice, recognizing a pull that had lived between them long before this moment knew how to burn.
Wings tore free from Jassyn’s back with a crack like thunder, fire licking along the membranes. Then they were both reaching—grasping, fumbling—hands frantic with the need to feel eclipsing every other thought.
Cloth vanished into the dark. Heat rose between them, no space left but breath and the gravity dragging them together.
Jassyn’s fingers wrapped around Lykor’s length in one sure, devastating stroke. Lykor hissed, his hips lurching helplessly into the touch.
His own hand closed around Jassyn in return. He meant to be careful, to avoid the piercings studding that fevered length, unwilling to risk even the smallest harm. But his thumb slipped, sliding too high, catching the ring at the tip.
Jassyn choked out a noise—curse or groan, Lykor couldn’t tell—his hips snapping hard into Lykor’s fist.
Lykor’s breath hitched, ready to apologize, but pressure sparked at the base of his spine as Jassyn’s fingers seized around him. Then he understood. That sound hadn’t been pain. Not with the way Jassyn writhed against him now, grinding harder into his palm, chasing that exact touch.
When their hands began to move together, slick warmth rose between their palms. Exploring now, Lykor shifted his grip. His thumb glided lower, brushing the laddered studs in a slow descent before rising again, the pad of his finger skimming the ring at the velvet head.
Jassyn bucked, his cock throbbing hard against Lykor’s palm. The sound he made—gasp tangled with growl, pleasure stripped past control—ignited something primal in Lykor’s gut.
He circled the jewelry again, wringing that sound from Jassyn again before stroking downward. His fist glided along Jassyn’s length, the metal catching just enough to draw out a shudder. With a broken breath, Jassyn rocked against him, grinding down to trap their hands and bodies together.
Desire surged. Restraint fractured.
There was nothing delicate in the way they touched now. Their mouths crashed again, hunger scraping hunger, two bodies devouring the distance until thought dissolved entirely.
The world collapsed to motion and heat, to the feral friction of contact, matched stroke for stroke. Their hands moved in mirrored desperation, every glide driving the other higher, harder, until Lykor swore his mind might rupture under the force of wanting.
A curse tore from Jassyn as his wings snapped shut, slamming their hips tighter. The full length of him pressed hard against Lykor. All breath vanished from Lykor’s lungs as sensation surged—molten, blinding, scattering sparks through every nerve.
Jassyn shifted on his thighs, caught Lykor’s wrist, and pulled it down.
He curled his own hand over Lykor’s, locking them both around the lengths of each other.
Their fingers tangled, grips tightening until warmth slipped between their palms. Every squeeze shot up Lykor’s spine, hauling him higher, until the world blurred at the edges and nothing existed except the relentless way Jassyn steered them.
Jassyn seized the back of Lykor’s neck and hauled him into another brutal kiss. Their mouths collided—biting, gasping, scraping—stealing breath and giving it back until Lykor no longer knew where his body ended and Jassyn’s began.
Only the impact between them remained—the grind of hips, the heat of their locked fists, a crucible of want breaking and remaking the space between their palms.
The noise Jassyn made slammed through Lykor, carnal enough to leave him reeling, primal enough to tighten his grip. He stroked over slick skin and the cool catch of metal, chasing those sounds. To make Jassyn tremble. To watch him come undone. To give him whatever he needed to break.
Pressure climbed fast—scalding, inexorable, coiling low in a razor-tight knot that threatened to snap.
Lykor’s thighs locked, his hips bucking into Jassyn as control bled out of him. His hand moved faster—wilder—driven by an overwhelming need to drag Jassyn into the same oblivion.
Heat gathered deep, a pull hammering into him with every unsteady breath Jassyn spilled against his lips.
Lykor felt it in Jassyn too—the shudder in his chest, the twitch of wing talons angling toward him, the frantic pulse beating against their joined grip. It set Lykor blazing, fed the furnace of his desire with every ragged gasp.
Reaching blindly, he drove his claw through the dark mess of Jassyn’s curls and tugged—just enough to make him arch. To keep him close.
Jassyn leaned in, his breath hot against the shell of Lykor’s ear. His mouth grazed the curve, drawing a growl from Lykor as he tugged the pointed edge between his teeth. His lips burned a path, unhurried and claiming, and it struck Lykor harder than any lightning he’d ever taken.
He broke with a snarl, and Jassyn’s name scattered with it. Light flashed behind his eyes and pleasure detonated through him so violently that the world disappeared. No couch, no room, no shape but the white-hot shock thundering up his spine.
Each pulse that followed struck like a cataclysm, his cock jerking helplessly in Jassyn’s grip until rhythm dissolved and he was nothing but sensation—strung taut between ache and release, undone from the inside out.
Jassyn followed a heartbeat later, catching himself against Lykor’s chest as his body seized. His voice fractured as heat spilled between them, wings snapping wide with the force of it, fire spiraling across the membranes.
When the final shudder chased down their lengths, Lykor didn’t know where he was. Who he was. Only that Jassyn remained wrapped around him, their locked hands slick between them in the aftermath.
For a long, breathless moment neither moved. Tremors still shivered through the narrow space where their bodies pressed together.
Jassyn eventually sagged forward, his forehead finding the curve of Lykor’s throat.
Lykor untangled his fingers from Jassyn’s curls and slid his palm down to where wing met shoulder, holding him close.
In the hush that followed, something fierce and unfamiliar took root behind Lykor’s ribs. Not rage or instinct or the sharp edge of survival, but something quieter. Terrifying in its softness.
Jassyn’s breath warmed the hollow beneath his jaw as if he had no intention of ever moving.
And for the first time, Lykor let himself lean into that warmth and simply exist.