Chapter 13 #3
Ithyris frees himself. Bryn hears the rustle of fabric and then feels the prince, the blunt, hot press of his cock against the crease of Bryn's thigh, and Ithyris is thick and hard and leaking and Bryn's body clenches in anticipation, remembering, wanting.
The prince shifts his weight against the wall, one arm hooked under Bryn's thigh, spreading him, and his other hand reaches between them.
His fingers find Bryn. Two, pressing in, and Bryn is still loose from this morning, still slick with the remnants of what the prince left inside him at dawn.
The prince's fingers slide in easily, the claws retracted, and Ithyris groans against Bryn's throat at how open he is and curls them once, pressing against that spot, and Bryn's hips jerk and his cock jumps between them.
"Still wet from this morning." The prince's voice is guttural. "Still open for me. You've been walking around the palace all day with my release still inside you and sitting in council meetings and arguing about grain tariffs and the whole time you were full of me."
"Oh gods." Bryn's voice breaks. "Oh gods, please..."
"Please what?" Ithyris pulls his fingers out and positions himself and the head of his cock presses against Bryn, hot and insistent, and he holds there, not pushing in, waiting.
Even now. Even in a corridor with Bryn pinned against a wall and both of them desperate, the prince waits. "Tell me what you want."
"You." The word comes out wrecked. "I want you. Inside me. Now. Please, Ithyris, I need..."
The prince pushes in.
One long, steady thrust, Bryn's body opening around him, taking the full length of him in a single slide that drives the breath from Bryn's lungs and pins him against the wall.
The stretch is immediate and consuming and perfect and Bryn cries out, sharp and high, and the sound bounces off the corridor walls and comes back to them and he doesn't care who hears.
Ithyris fucks him against the stone wall with a force that shifts Bryn upward on every thrust, his hips driving forward, his hands gripping Bryn's thighs, and the sound of his body meeting Bryn's is obscene, wet and rhythmic, echoing down the empty corridor.
Bryn is clinging to the prince's shoulders with his nails in his skin and his legs locked around the prince's waist and he is making sounds he will be ashamed of later and is not ashamed of now because now is the only thing that exists.
"This is what I think about." The prince's mouth is against Bryn's ear, his voice rough and ragged, punctuated by the force of his thrusts.
"Every time you argue with a courtier and your hands start moving.
Every time you lick your lips while you read.
Every time you catch me staring and your face goes red and you look away first. I think about this.
About having you against a wall. About being so deep inside you that you can feel me in your throat.
About making you come so hard you forget every person who ever made you feel as though you weren't enough. "
The words land in Bryn and detonate. The pressure at the base of his spine tightens and his whole body goes taut and his cock is trapped between them, untouched, grinding against the scales of the prince's stomach with every thrust, and the friction and the fullness and Ithyris's voice in his ear are converging into something he can't hold back.
"You are everything." The prince drives in deep and holds, grinding, his cock pressed against that spot inside Bryn, and his voice cracks.
"You are everything I have ever wanted and you walk around this palace in my shirts with my marks on your throat and you don't even know what you do to me.
You don't know. You read trade law and argue about tariffs and throw bread at courtiers and I am ruined, Bryn.
You have ruined me. Completely. Permanently.
And I would not change a single thing about you. "
Bryn comes.
The prince's voice does it. Not the friction, not the fullness, not the relentless pressure against his prostate.
Ithyris's voice. The crack in it, the raw, undone quality, the confession that the prince is ruined and the certainty that he means it.
Bryn's orgasm tears through him with a violence that whites out his vision, his cock pulsing between them, untouched, spilling across the prince's stomach and his own, and his body clamps down around Ithyris so hard the prince chokes on a groan and his hips stutter.
Ithyris follows him over. Three more thrusts, hard and uncoordinated, and he buries himself deep and comes with a sound that is barely human, his cock pulsing inside Bryn, the rush of heat flooding him, and the prince's forehead drops to Bryn's shoulder and his whole body shakes.
They stay pinned to the wall. The prince's cock softening inside Bryn, his release trickling down the inside of Bryn's thigh, his breath ragged against Bryn's shoulder.
Bryn's legs are locked around the prince's waist and his arms are around Ithyris's neck and the corridor is still empty and dim and the amber sconces cast long shadows and they are a mess, clothes destroyed, skin flushed, covered in each other.
Bryn starts laughing.
He can't help it. It's the absurdity. The crown prince of the Drekian Sovereignty just took him against a corridor wall for the second time today and Bryn came from the prince's voice alone and his shirt is somewhere on the floor ten feet away and if anyone walks around that corner right now they will find the prince's intended impaled on the prince with his trousers around his thighs and there is nothing about this situation that is dignified or appropriate or befitting a potential consort and he laughs because the alternative is admitting that he is falling and he is not ready for that word yet.
Ithyris lifts his head. His hair is disordered and his eyes are hazy and Bryn's laughter makes him blink and then his mouth curves, slow and surprised and genuine, and he laughs too, a low sound against Bryn's throat, and they lean against the stone wall and laugh and the prince's cock slips out of him and his release runs down Bryn's leg and neither of them moves to clean up because cleaning up would require separating and neither of them wants to.
"You are a menace," Bryn tells him.
"You kissed me first."
The prince carries him to the bath. He cleans Bryn up with warm water and careful hands and puts him in one of his shirts and tucks him into bed and climbs in behind him and wraps his body around Bryn's, his chest to Bryn's back, his arm across Bryn's stomach, his mouth against the nape of Bryn's neck.
Bryn lies in the dark and listens to the prince's breathing settle into sleep and thinks about what Ithyris said in the corridor. You have ruined me. Completely. Permanently.
He thinks: I know. I know, because you have ruined me too, and I didn't even notice it happening.
It happened in kitchens and libraries and thermal pools and on the back of a dragon in the sky.
It happened when you put your hand on the small of my back and when you waited for permission to enter my room and when you told me I didn't have to earn my safety and I believed you.
He thinks: the second trial is vulnerability.
He thinks he is beginning to understand what that means, and the understanding doesn't come from the sex or the bond or the prince's declarations in dim corridors.
It comes from the morning tea and the careful hands and the bare feet and the patience.
It comes from the fact that Ithyris never asks for more than Bryn can give, and that Bryn keeps giving more anyway, and that the giving doesn't diminish him.
It makes him more. More than the boy who held the walls up.
More than the scribe with the forged ledger. More than the second son no one wanted.
He closes his eyes. The prince's arm tightens around him. The bond hums, warm and certain.
He sleeps.