Part Seven #2
“Because her son is awkward and alone and has no friends… or sweethearts. And she likes you.”
“You’re not awkward,” Tommick whispered fiercely. “You’re exactly as you should be. Well, all right, you’re somewhat awkward sometimes,” he added not a second after saying that first part. “But so capable the rest of the time that I doubt most notice.”
“I was scared tonight.” Dorrimin could admit that because it had been plain for all to see. “I wasn’t prepared for how scared I was.”
“I’m sorry.” Now it was Tommick with wandering hands tangling in Dorrimin’s hair.
“But it did get you to touch me.” He watched Dorrimin for another moment, then moved in slowly until their lips brushed.
Dorrimin felt him smile, or imagined he did, when Dorrimin’s breath caught but he didn’t pull back.
“Can I have you?” Tommick asked quietly, sharing another almost-kiss with him.
“Dorri? I’d have you until you’re sick of me. ”
Dorrimin didn’t think that would be possible. He had already expressed a desire to marry Tommick, though Tommick might have forgotten.
“I’ve never done any of that before.” Another confession, this one with his face hot, but Tommick didn’t look surprised. Dorrimin didn’t know if he was offended by that or not, but none of that mattered anyway, not with Tommick drawing him closer to give him a real kiss.
It was slow and warm, his lips slightly parted, and then Tommick did it again, murmuring something when Dorrimin slid his arms back around him.
Dorrimin vaguely thought he ought to be embarrassed at the sounds of their kisses, and the noise he made, nearly a whine, when the kisses paused, or the different noise he made, louder and needier when Tommick began to use his tongue in the kissing.
But embarrassment was difficult to care about when Tommick moved a hand down between them and under Dorrimin’s shirt.
Tommick made a little sound of his own, quite pleased, as if he were biting into a warm cookie, and began to stroke Dorrimin with no worries for the jangling under Dorrimin’s skin or the noises it drove from him.
He inched back to look Dorrimin right in the eye and used his hand as if he knew exactly what Dorrimin had done in bed that morning and he wanted to see it happen again.
“This first,” he panted, dropping a strange, heady kiss on Dorrimin’s open mouth, “and then I will burrow under your blankets and use my mouth. Dorri, you have no idea how I….” He didn’t finish, offering another, harder kiss when Dorrimin whined and pushed his hips forward.
He wasn’t even surprised when Dorrimin stiffened and spilled onto his hand.
He just sort of growled like no topper should do and then Dorrimin was on his back and trying to catch his breath while Tommick straddled him, hauling the blankets over them both as he did so that their bodies would stay warm.
Tommick’s hair was a mess, and his face looked darker with a flush, and he wiped his hand matter-of-factly on Dorrimin’s nightshirt before Dorrimin could tell him he kept handkerchiefs by the side of the bed along with a tin of an ointment to aid in exactly this sort of thing.
Dorrimin probably couldn’t have managed the words anyway, not once he felt how Tommick was excited too.
Then Dorrimin was lightheaded and hot and touching him, hands sweeping over Tommick’s beautifully warm skin beneath the borrowed nightshirt.
He was sure that courtship was supposed to happen before this part, but Tommick had tried his best, so the fault there had been with Dorrimin, and he could make up for it now by pulling Tommick down and offering his hand in the same way, if without the same skill.
Tommick shuddered and closed his eyes, rolling his hips so that it was almost like all Dorrimin had to do was let his hand be used. That rendered him even hotter. Tommick seemed to feel similarly.
“Dorri,” he said, mouth at Dorrimin’s throat, kissing and gasping for air. “Dorri, I….” Before finishing in Dorrimin’s hand and then falling down to shudder and roll against him a few more times.
He made quite the mess. Dorrimin shivered beneath him and allowed it.
There was a storm outside shutting down the city, wind screaming and howling all the way down the mountain, but Tommick was warm and content with him.
A sticky mess was easily cleaned. A sticky mess was nothing at all to Tommick’s breath over his skin.
That was poetry, possibly. Something like it anyway.
A sensation worth feeling, like Tommick removing his gloves to feel the crisp air, even though he really shouldn’t have and Dorrimin had frowned at him.
He didn’t know if it would be less poetic to say that he wanted to measure all of Tommick with his hands and, in doing so, learn how to touch him to better make him happy, so he didn’t say it.
“In the morning,” Dorrimin heard himself beginning instead, “if we wake early enough, I can fire up the stove and you can help me make breakfast for everyone. If you’d like.
” If Tommick was going to live with them someday, he’d need some lessons on things probably not taught in topper homes.
“Unless you are sore or too tired. Then you should rest.”
Tommick tensed, then relaxed against him.
Dorrimin continued. “If we are trapped inside by snowdrifts…”
“…We will do this again,” Tommick finished, although Dorrimin immediately squirmed to imagine doing that with his family awake and moving around downstairs.
“Yes,” he agreed anyway, “but also we will follow your suggestion and rearrange the windows of the store.”
Tommick raised his head, lifting himself partially off Dorrimin’s chest to do so. “Dorrimin,” he said after a moment. His voice was rough. “What?”
He seemed bewildered.
A raw, nervous sort of feeling went through Dorrimin’s entire body.
“You once compared to me an item in your emporium. You said that I was a one-of-a-kind and not for everyone, but that some people would pay any price for me. It was silly of you,” Dorrimin couldn’t help but add.
“Or so I thought at the time. But that’s you, really, isn’t it?
One-of-a-kind. Worth any price.” He didn’t want to get any mess in Tommick’s hair but he also needed to touch him.
“Your family might not see it, but I do. I don’t have the money to pay any price, but I will love you.
” He was shaky but said it anyway. “And I intend to marry you someday, if you’ll have me.
Once we’re a bit older and I have my Mastery,” he added, because he could still be sensible, “and you have your degree, and we’ve traveled a little.
” He forced himself to stay put while Tommick stared and stared at him. “If you aren’t sick of me by then.”
“Dorri,” Tommick said on an exhale, then sank back down onto him.
He wasn’t light, and still Dorrimin did not care.
“You should come to the college with me,” Tommick mumbled, pausing to kiss random places on Dorrimin’s chest, over his rucked-up nightshirt, beneath it.
“You can learn about art and I will show you off to every professor and all my friends.”
“I’m a stork,” Dorrimin insisted, blushing as Tommick tried to push his nightshirt all the way up.
“You’re a marvel,” Tommick insisted with another kiss, and then wriggled down under the covers where everything was warm, including his mouth.
The End