Chapter 12 #2
No one has touched them. Not in years. Not since the owner who discovered the sensitivity and used it as punishment, gripping the base and twisting until Zazyrus screamed. He has guarded them since. Kept them away from hands. The instinct is primal, protective, as fundamental as guarding a wound.
And Lethe just touched one.
Zazyrus's body reacts before his mind can intervene.
His hands fly up and seize Lethe's hips.
The grip is hard. His clawed fingers dig into the fabric of Lethe's pants, the points pressing against the bone beneath, and he's pulling Lethe toward him and his body is electric and the arousal hits him so fast and so hard that his vision whites out at the edges.
It blazes through his core, straight down, thick and immediate, and his cock stiffens against the confines of his pants and his breathing shatters into fragments and a sound comes out of his throat that is low and raw and involuntary.
Lethe freezes.
His hands fly to Zazyrus's shoulders. The motion is part defensive and part instinctive, bracing against the sudden grip, and his fingers clamp down on the muscle beneath them.
His eyes are wide. His mouth is open. He's standing between Zazyrus's legs with the beast's clawed hands gripping his hips and the beast's face inches from his stomach and the position is intimate and charged and Lethe is not moving, not breathing, every line of his body rigid with shock.
Zazyrus breathes in through his teeth.
He can feel Lethe's hip bones beneath his palms, the narrow frame, the warmth of his body through the thin fabric.
He can smell him, herbs and soap and skin, and the scent is everywhere, flooding his senses, and the arousal is a living thing in his blood, burning thick in his veins, and his hands are on the boy and the boy is between his legs and every part of Zazyrus wants to pull him closer.
"Don't," Zazyrus says. His voice scrapes out of him, guttural, barely controlled. "Touch."
Two words. Wrenched from somewhere deep, forced through the arousal and the sensitivity and the electric aftershock of the contact.
Not a threat. A warning. The kind of warning a man gives when he's on the edge of something he can't come back from and needs the other person to understand the stakes.
Lethe's throat works. Zazyrus can see it, the long line of it, the movement of the swallow, and the boy's pulse is hammering in the hollow beneath his jaw, visible and fast. His face is flushed.
Not shame, this time. Not fear. There is fear in his eyes, yes, the flicker of it, automatic and earned.
But there is something else beneath the fear.
Something that looks, terrifyingly, remarkably, unmistakably, like heat.
Lethe swallows again. His fingers are clenched against Zazyrus's shoulders and his voice, when it comes, is barely above a whisper.
"I'm sorry. I didn't. I didn't know. I'm sorry."
The words come out fractured, stumbling over each other, and the flush on his neck is spreading to his ears and his hands are shaking on Zazyrus's shoulders and he's not pulling away.
He should be pulling away. He should be terrified.
He should be backing up and reaching for the cage door and putting distance between himself and a beast who just grabbed him with clawed hands and made a sound that was not ambiguous.
He's not pulling away.
Zazyrus forces his hands open.
It takes everything. Every shred of control he possesses, every ounce of the discipline that has kept him alive in cages for years.
His fingers uncurl from Lethe's hips one by one, the claws retracting from the fabric with a deliberateness that costs him more than any fight in the arena ever has.
He removes his hands from the boy's body and places them flat on the stone beside his own thighs and the cold of the stone seeps into his palms and does nothing, absolutely nothing, to cool the fire in his blood.
Lethe lets go of his shoulders.
He steps back. One step. His hands drop to his sides and his fingers flex and his breathing is audible, quick and shallow, and his eyes are wide and bright and fixed on Zazyrus's face with an intensity that Zazyrus feels against his skin.
"I'm sorry," Lethe says again. Steadier now. Quieter. His hands find his satchel and he's packing it with movements that are too fast, too jerky, rolling bandages without his usual precision. "I'll. The wound. I'll bandage it. Let me just."
He tears a strip of linen. Steps forward, the minimal distance necessary. Presses the bandage to Zazyrus's forehead with fingers that tremble. Secures it with tape. His touch is feather-light and brief and he doesn't look at Zazyrus's eyes. He looks at the wound. Only the wound.
He finishes. Packs his satchel. Stands.
He leaves without looking at him.
The cage door closes. The lock turns. The footsteps retreat, faster than usual, and Zazyrus sits against the wall with his hands flat on the cold stone and the ghost of Lethe's hips beneath his palms and the arousal still thick in his blood and the boy's scent still in his lungs.
He wants to punch the wall.
He wants to drive his fist into the stone until his knuckles crack and the pain overrides the sensation and the memory of the contact and the sound he made and the look on Lethe's face.
The startled, flushed, wide-eyed look that held fear and heat in equal measure, and the heat is the part that is destroying him, because the heat means the boy felt it too.
Felt something. And Zazyrus responded by grabbing him and growling don't touch and the boy stuttered an apology and left without looking at him and Zazyrus may have just destroyed the only good thing in this pit.
He doesn't punch the wall.
He sits with it. The way he sits with everything.
The rage and the want and the guilt and the fear that he has done something irreversible, that the boy will not come back, or will come back different, guarded, the walls rebuilt thicker than before.
He sits with the memory of Lethe's fingers on his shoulders and the way they clenched, hard, and the way the boy's pulse beat visible and fast in his throat and the way he didn't pull away.
Zazyrus presses his palms against the stone and closes his eyes and breathes.
The thought is dangerous. The thought is a crack in a dam, and behind it, pressing, is the full weight of everything Zazyrus has been refusing to examine.
The want. The warmth. The way the boy's face looks when he smiles, when he flushes, when he talks about kittens and the sea.
The way his voice sounds when he says you'll be alright and means it.
The way his hand felt covering Zazyrus's, warm and sure and deliberate.
Zazyrus opens his eyes. The cage is dark and cold and empty and the boy is gone and the stone beneath his palms is unyielding and his horns still buzz with the phantom of a touch that lasted less than a second and undid him completely.
He doesn't punch the wall.
He waits.