Chapter 21 #2
"I’ve got you," Lethe murmurs against his hair. "I’m here. I’ve got you."
Zazyrus holds him close.
His arms tighten and his face is pressed against Lethe’s collarbone and his breathing is slowing, gradually, the tremors subsiding into a deep, residual vibration that hums through his body.
Lethe’s hands have stilled on his horns, resting, and the contact is warm and grounding and Zazyrus is held together by it.
His hand moves.
Down Lethe’s back. Along his side. To the front of his body, to the waistband of his pants, and his fingers find the edge of the fabric and pause.
Lethe’s breath catches.
"You don’t have to," Lethe says. Quiet. Honest. His hand covers Zazyrus’s where it rests at his waistband. "You don’t have to touch me. This is enough. You’re enough."
Zazyrus lifts his head.
His eyes are dark and liquid and focused entirely on Lethe and the expression in them is something that makes Lethe’s chest crack open the way Zazyrus’s cracked open when the kitten made him laugh.
"I want to." The words scrape out of him, rough and low and certain. "I want to more than anything."
Lethe’s hand lifts from Zazyrus’s. Permission.
Zazyrus’s fingers work beneath the waistband.
His touch is careful, the claws retracted, the broad pads of his fingers navigating the fabric until they find what they’re looking for.
Lethe is hard. Already, just from the kissing, from the horns, from being in Zazyrus’s lap with his hands on the most sensitive part of him.
The evidence of it is pressing against Zazyrus’s stomach and when Zazyrus’s hand closes around him Lethe’s entire body jolts.
"Oh." The sound is involuntary. Small and sharp and broken. Lethe’s hands fly to Zazyrus’s shoulders and grip and his head tips back and his eyes close and the flush that spreads down his throat is vivid and immediate.
Zazyrus strokes him.
Slow. Loving. The grip is firm and warm and encompasses him completely and the pace is unhurried, each stroke deliberate, a long, measured pull from base to tip that makes Lethe’s hips jerk and his breath fragment into pieces.
Zazyrus watches his face. Watches every micro-expression, every catch of breath, every flutter of his eyelids, learning him, mapping his pleasure the way Lethe mapped the pit corridors, with precision and devotion and total attention.
Lethe’s mouth finds Zazyrus’s.
He kisses him while Zazyrus strokes him, his hands gripping Zazyrus’s shoulders, his body rocking into the grip, and the kiss is messy and desperate and nothing like the careful first press.
This kiss is need. This kiss is Lethe coming apart and holding on and letting someone touch him because he wants it, because the touch is wanted, because for the first time in his adult life the hands on his body are there because he chose them.
He comes apart in Zazyrus’s arms.
The orgasm hits him with a force that bows his spine and tears a sound from his throat that is raw and honest and wrecked.
His hands clamp down on Zazyrus’s shoulders and his body shakes and his mouth is open against Zazyrus’s and Zazyrus holds him through it, his hand slowing, gentling, drawing it out, and his other arm locked around Lethe’s back keeping him upright and close and safe.
Lethe sags.
His forehead drops to Zazyrus’s shoulder. His breathing is ragged. His hands are shaking on Zazyrus’s skin, fine tremors, the aftershock of a body that has been touched with kindness and responded with its whole self.
"Stay," Zazyrus says. The word is low and rough and it is not a command. It is the most vulnerable thing Zazyrus has ever said. A request from a creature who has never been allowed to request, who has only been told and ordered and forced, and the asking costs him everything.
Lethe lifts his head. His eyes are bright and wet and his face is flushed and his mouth curves in a smile that is not tentative and not careful and not testing whether it’s allowed.
"I’m not going anywhere."
***
Neither of them sleeps.
They stay wound together in the dark, Lethe curled in Zazyrus’s lap with his head against his chest and Zazyrus’s arms around him and the tail looped around his thigh.
They trade slow kisses. Lethe’s mouth finding Zazyrus’s in the dim, pressing softly, pulling back, finding it again.
Zazyrus’s hand in Lethe’s hair, cradling, his thumb tracing the curve of his ear.
They breathe each other’s air. They memorize each other. The shape of a jaw under fingertips. The sound of a heartbeat through skin. The way a body feels curled against another body in the dark, warm and real and chosen.
Tomorrow everything changes.
Tomorrow the plan executes or it doesn’t and the consequences are absolute either way.
Tomorrow Zazyrus steps into the arena carrying the memory of this night in his body and the boy’s taste on his mouth and the knowledge that for the first time in his life, winning means something more than survival.
Tomorrow Lethe walks the corridors he’s mapped for six years with a stolen key in his satchel and a knife in his belt and the steady hands that have never failed him and the wolf that is awake and counting the seconds.
But tonight.
Tonight they are here. In the dark. In the cage. Wound together, breathing together, the two of them against the entire weight of the world that has been trying to break them.
It hasn’t.
Lethe presses a kiss to Zazyrus’s chest, over his heart. Zazyrus’s arms tighten.
The dark holds them. The plan waits. The morning will come.
They are ready.