Chapter 12 #4
He settles his hands on Ithyris's thighs and looks up at him and the expression on the prince's face is something Bryn wants to remember for the rest of his life.
Disbelief. Hunger. A reverence so raw it borders on pain.
His hands hang at his sides, not reaching for Bryn, not directing, just open and trembling slightly, and Bryn realizes the prince has no idea what to do with a person who wants to give him something without being asked.
Good. Now he knows how it feels.
Bryn leans in and presses his mouth to the base of the prince's cock.
Ithyris makes a sound. Low and broken and it vibrates through the stone beneath Bryn's hands.
He keeps his mouth where it is, his lips against the hot, slick skin at the root of him, and breathes there, tasting mineral water and salt and the faint, musky tang of the prince's release, and then he drags his tongue up the full length of the shaft in one slow, flat stroke.
"Fuck." The word punches out of the prince, sudden and raw. His thighs tense under Bryn's palms. "Bryn, you don't have to..."
"I know I don't have to." He presses a kiss to the underside of the head, where the skin is softest, and feels the prince's cock jump against his lips. "I want to."
He takes the head into his mouth.
The stretch of his lips around the prince is significant.
Ithyris is thick and hot and the taste is salt and skin and the remnants of what the prince left inside him minutes ago and Bryn should find that obscene and he doesn't. He finds it intoxicating, finds the intimacy of it intoxicating, the closed circuit of the two of them, and he hollows his cheeks and sucks and Ithyris groans so loud the cavern echoes.
He has never done this before. He has no technique, no experience, nothing to draw on except instinct and the sounds the prince makes.
So he goes slowly. He takes Ithyris deeper, inch by inch, working his tongue along the underside of the shaft, learning the shape of the prince with his mouth the way he learned it with his body.
The ridged texture of the scales that thin and soften here, the thick vein that runs the length and pulses against his tongue, the flared head that stretches his jaw and makes his eyes water.
The prince's hand finds his head.
Not pushing. Not gripping. Just his palm settling over Bryn's wet hair, his fingers curving against Bryn's skull, and the tenderness of the touch contrasted with the obscenity of what Bryn is doing makes his spent cock twitch in the water.
"Look at you." Ithyris's voice is shredded.
Bryn glances up without pulling off and the sight of him, lips stretched around the prince's cock, eyes wet, looking up at Ithyris from between his thighs, makes something in the prince's face collapse.
"You're so beautiful. Taking me so well.
Your mouth, Bryn. Your mouth is... gods. "
Bryn takes him deeper. He relaxes his throat the way he relaxes everything with Ithyris, by degrees, by inches, by letting go of one more piece of resistance at a time, and the prince hits the back of his throat and he swallows around him and Ithyris's hips jerk and his hand tightens in Bryn's hair, involuntary, and the growl that tears out of his chest is barely human.
"Sorry." The prince loosens his grip immediately, his fingers gentling. "Sorry, I..."
Bryn reaches up and takes his hand and puts it back on his head.
He presses the prince's fingers into his hair and holds them there and looks up at Ithyris and the prince stares at him and his pupils swallow the amethyst and his breath comes ragged and his fingers curl, gripping, and Bryn sinks back down.
He takes the prince apart.
He licks and sucks and works the length of him, tracing every ridge and vein, tonguing the slit where the prince leaks, pressing wet, open-mouthed kisses down the shaft and back up.
He takes Ithyris as deep as he can manage and pulls back slowly, dragging his lips tight, and then does it again.
And again. He learns what makes the prince's thighs shake and what makes him grip Bryn's hair and what makes him say Bryn's name in that broken, reverent voice that sounds nothing like a prince and everything like a man who is being undone.
"Your tongue." Ithyris is panting, his chest heaving, and both hands are in Bryn's hair now, cradling his head, not thrusting but holding, as though Bryn's mouth on him is something to be treasured rather than used.
"Right there. Under the... yes. Bryn. Yes.
Just keep... you're so good. You're so good at this. How are you so good at this?"
Bryn presses the flat of his tongue against the sensitive ridge beneath the head and sucks, hard, and the prince's spine bows and his head falls back and the sound he makes ricochets off the cavern ceiling and comes back to them doubled.
He can feel Ithyris getting close. The prince's cock swells thicker in his mouth and his hips are making small, aborted movements, restrained by a control that is visibly fraying, and his hands in Bryn's hair are trembling and the praise has dissolved into incoherence, fragments of Bryn's name and low Drekian words Bryn doesn't know and the occasional broken "please" that makes Bryn ache.
"Bryn." The prince's voice is shaking. "I'm going to... you need to pull back, I can't... it's going to be a lot, I can't control how much..."
Bryn wraps his hand around the base of the prince's cock and takes him as deep as he can and sucks and swallows and looks up at him and doesn't move.
Ithyris comes.
His whole body locks rigid, every muscle drawn taut, and his hands clench in Bryn's hair and his head falls back and the groan that tears out of him is deep and wrecked and endless.
The first pulse fills Bryn's mouth, thick and hot and copious, and he swallows and there is more, and more, and the prince was right, it is a lot, his hips grinding forward in helpless jerks as he empties himself across Bryn's tongue.
It spills from the corners of Bryn's lips, too much to contain, running down his chin and dripping into the water, and he swallows what he can and lets the rest go and keeps his mouth on the prince through every pulse, every aftershock, every ragged breath.
When Ithyris's hands loosen in his hair, Bryn pulls off slowly.
The prince's cock slips from his mouth, still half-hard, glistening, and Bryn rests his cheek against the prince's inner thigh and closes his eyes and breathes.
His jaw aches. His lips are swollen. He can taste Ithyris in the back of his throat and across his tongue and on his chin where the prince's release is cooling.
The prince's hand moves from Bryn's hair to his face. His thumb traces Bryn's lower lip, swollen and wet, and the touch is gentle enough to make Bryn's chest hurt.
"Where did you learn that?" Ithyris asks. His voice sounds as though it's been dragged over gravel and left there.
"I didn't."
The prince stares at him. Bryn stares back from the cradle of his thigh, his chin wet, his eyes watering, his hair ruined, and he watches Ithyris process the fact that Bryn just took his cock down his throat and swallowed his release and it was his first time doing any of it.
The expression that moves across the prince's face is so layered and so devastating that Bryn has to close his eyes against it because looking at it directly feels too much, the way looking at the sun feels too much.
Ithyris slides back into the water. He gathers Bryn against his chest and holds him, his arms wrapping around him from behind, his chin on Bryn's shoulder, and the warm water covers them both and the cavern is quiet except for their breathing and the soft drip of condensation from the crystals overhead.
They float in the silence. The prince's heartbeat is steady against Bryn's back. The bond hums between them, warm and low and satisfied, and Bryn leans into him and lets the water hold them and feels wrung out and raw and oddly, unexpectedly, proud.
He wanted to do that. Not because the prince asked.
Not because he owed Ithyris anything. Because he wanted to take the prince apart the way Ithyris takes him apart, and he did, and the power of it is a revelation.
The power of choosing. The power of kneeling not because someone expects it but because you want to see what happens to a man's face when you give him something he didn't dare ask for.
After a long time, Ithyris presses his mouth to Bryn's ear.
"You said if," the prince says.
"What?"
"If you were my husband. You said if." His thumb traces Bryn's collarbone beneath the water. "I noticed."
Bryn looks at the steam rising from the surface. He thinks: when. Not if. When.
He doesn't say it. He's not ready. But he thinks it, and the prince's arms tighten around him as though the bond carries thoughts too, and Ithyris presses his mouth to Bryn's temple and holds him in the warm water and doesn't ask for more than Bryn can give.
He never asks for more than Bryn can give.
That's the part that's going to break him.