24. Art That’s Honest
ART THAT’S HONEST
LEV
W ind hurled raindrops at Lichenmoor. Asher craned his neck and peered around Lev to the window at his back.
“What’s wrong?” Lev followed his gaze, but the night only reflected a blurry tableau of Asher at the table posing as Lev’s last meal.
Asher blinked. “I thought I saw something. Never mind.”
Lev couldn’t shake the sensation, however irrational, that Asher could see Silas, or at the very least, sense him.
“Lichenmoor’s shadows play tricks, and the wind turns trees into figures and branches into limbs. I used to think they were the Green Man when I was young.”
“The Green Man?” Asher’s brow wrinkled.
“Pagan god of death and rebirth. I’ll give you a lesson later.” He turned Asher’s face away from the window. “No one is out there in this weather.”
As if to prove the point, a gust rattled the windows and branches scratched at the glass.
Mollified, Asher nodded.
“Good. Where were we? Oh, right…”
Lev nudged Asher’s feet apart, stepped into the space, and captured his lips in a reverent kiss, vowing to carve out his own heart and crush it in his fist before he’d ever hurt him again. Like a rose unfurling, Asher parted his lips and invited Lev in.
Asher’s hands roamed down Lev’s back and settled on Lev’s arse, palms mapping his curves before taking two handfuls and jerking him closer. Lev groaned. Asher’s rough handling sent his thoughts down a sideways path.
Did Asher top or bottom? Or perhaps both?
Lev preferred to top, but the idea of his brat of a protégé penetrating him threw his stomach through a loop and punched the air from his lungs, along with a confession. “I need you.”
Asher broke the kiss, breathing fast. “I need you too.”
“I’m glad we agree.” Lev curled his fingers inside the scarf Asher still wore, knuckles tracing the front of his trachea. “But you still haven’t answered my question.” He stroked Asher’s dick through his trousers.
“What was the question?”
Lev laughed darkly and removed his hand.
Asher whined. “Don’t stop.”
“You’re even sexier when you’re needy.”
Asher blinked, some of the lust-drunk haze clearing. “If you don’t ask your question, I’m going to show you how sexy I am when I’m angry.”
“Oh, trust me. You’ve shown me that already.”
“Lev…”
“Did you fuck Theo?”
What he and Asher shared was far too strong for some retaliatory fuck to erode, but he needed to know.
“What would you have done if I had?” Asher’s dimples winked with the flash of a smirk.
Lev’s stomach unclenched. He hadn’t realized how much of his heart was at stake until relief set in. He pulled the front of Theo’s wretched scarf toward him, loosening it from Asher’s neck and drawing him closer .
“I would have fucked his very existence from your memory and filled you from both ends until my come leaked from your pores.”
“Damn. I should have said that I had.”
“I’m happy to fuck you like you fucked him, but I’m not quite finished.”
Asher swallowed, Adam’s apple fluttering against Lev’s hand.
“What about the kiss on the stairs?”
Asher dropped his gaze. “He kissed me, and I let him because I was too afraid to look at you.”
“Oh, darling, I’m so sorry.” Lev tipped Asher’s chin up.
“Show me how sorry,” Asher said.
“Do you want me to get on my knees and grovel, Blakely, because I fucking will.”
“Later. Don’t you have a kiss to erase?”
They collided with such force, he nearly split his lip. Lev tugged Theo’s scarf from Asher’s neck and dropped it on the floor, exposing the mark he’d left. One wasn’t enough. He wanted to paint the rest of Asher’s neck rouge and spatter his skin with burst blood vessel freckles and hickeys.
“I like my mark on you,” Lev said, rather than scaring the lad with his bloodthirsty thoughts. He rubbed his thumb over the spot. “But you’re a masterpiece as yet unfinished.”
Asher rested back against the table on his forearms. “You haven’t seen the rest of me yet.”
“We must remedy that.” Lev removed his hands and reached for the bottom hem of Asher’s jumper.
“Wait!” Asher bolted upright, nearly knocking their foreheads together.
Lev bared his palms and edged back until their cocks no longer grazed. “I’m sorry. There’s no rush. We can stop.”
“It’s not that.” Asher examined the jumper as if counting the stitches, then looked up. “When you left me in the church, I was afraid I’d never be able to paint again. It sounds dramatic?—”
“It doesn’t sound dramatic. Art is dramatic.”
“My art isn’t just a passion for me, Lev. It pays the rent.” He raked his teeth over his bottom lip. “I’m not good at anything else.”
Lev selected his words carefully. “I’m sure that’s not true. I bet you’re good at loads of things.”
The truth was, while art had paid Asher’s rent, Lev had been the one who’d purchased his art—under various pseudonyms for obvious reasons.
Lev’s insatiable appetite and unwillingness to share had propelled the price of Asher’s art up by the thousands, and it wasn’t close to how much Asher deserved. His art was priceless.
Asher’s nose twitched. “Flattery won’t buy me paint.”
“I understand. Perhaps not when it comes to the price of paint, but I know what it’s like to suffer so much I couldn’t do the one thing that had any hope of easing my pain. I’ll never take your art from you. I promise.”
“What if another one of my tattoos scares you?”
Lev sobered. “Do you have a tattoo of Silas?”
Asher looked down at his jumper again. “No.”
“Then, I think we’re safe.” Lev tilted Asher’s chin up.
“Accolades, critical acclaim, prices paid at auction… None of that matters to me. My art on your body, however, is the highest honor I’ve ever received.
” He squeezed Asher’s hand. “You took my art and gave it life. I promise I won’t run away again. Please, baby, let me see you.”
Lev hadn’t meant to say it. He’d never called Silas baby. But the word was like slipping on a tailored shirt. It suited him.
Asher smirked. “Baby?”
“I don’t know what came over me.” Lev hid his face against Asher’s neck.
Asher stroked his back. “Don’t be embarrassed. Anything is better than pretty American. ”
Lev laughed into Asher’s neck, delighting in the goosebumps that lit up beneath his lips. “But you are pretty and American.”
“And you’re pretty annoying.” Asher’s fingers tightened on the bottom of his jumper.
Lev pulled back. “I promise. No running.”
Asher smiled with grim resignation and then his face disappeared as he wrenched his jumper and shirt over his head in one go and crossed his arms over his front.
Lev inhaled sharply. “You’re beautiful. Please let me look.”
Asher’s arms dropped.
“Take my hand,” Lev said.
“Why?”
“So I can’t run.”
Asher rolled his eyes, but he took Lev’s hand and knit their fingers together.
“Good lad,” Lev murmured and kissed his forehead, then started with the ouroboros.
When he saw the ouroboros this time, it didn’t hurt. Lev saw the symbol for what it was, what it always should have been—a chance at rebirth, at redemption.
His attention snagged on something familiar, a tattoo of Icarus plummeting down Asher’s side, cascading from his ribs to his waist.
“This is mine?” Lev asked, touching a feather.
Lev scarcely registered Asher’s nod, as he scanned the rest of him, gaze bouncing from tattoo to tattoo, all of them familiar, all of them his—the arched window of his childhood room, the silhouette of Lichenmoor’s towers, the fox he’d drawn to honor his mum, the dragon from the first floor landing, the disembodied eye staring intensely from Asher’s left forearm.
Tears burned behind his eyes, but the first tear didn’t fall until he saw his self-portrait, the one he’d created at his very lowest, the one Asher had seen fit to emblazon over his heart, even with his eyes scribbled out.
“Are you okay?” Asher asked and swiped Lev’s tears with his thumbs.
Lev nodded and flattened his palm over Asher’s heart. “You put me here?”
Asher’s pulse fluttered against his hand like a bird in a cage. “I wish I’d seen it before you covered your eyes.”
“I couldn’t get them right.”
Father had assigned him the self-portrait as punishment after he’d killed Silas.
Lev had tried to capture the grief and guilt he saw in the mirror, but his eyes always came out hollow, until, in a fit of fury, Lev had clenched a black marker in his fist like a toddler and scribbled over his eyes until the felt tip caved in and the plastic dug through the paper and carved shallow lines into the wood, not stopping until the marker broke in two.
Father had smiled when he saw it. “Finally, art that’s honest.”
Had Lev made anything honest since? He wasn’t sure.
“I know it’s fanatical…” Asher said.
“No, you’re perfect. Sorry. I was thinking about making that self-portrait.” He wiped his face. “Besides, I’m equally fanatical, if not more.” One day, he’d show him the collection to prove it. “If only I’d thought to tattoo your art on me first… and wasn’t so deathly afraid of needles.”
Asher grinned. “You, afraid of needles? That’s adorable.”
Warmth filled Lev. “I quite like the idea of you finding me cute.” He shifted onto his toes and stole a peek over Asher’s shoulder. “Do you have any on your back?”
Asher shook his head.
Lev rested his hands on Asher’s belt, pausing on the precipice of unlatching it. “What about down here, Blakely? Did any miss my notice?”
Asher cleared his throat. “No, sir.”
“Mm,” Lev purred. “Miles of blank canvas to fill.”
Lev freed the prong from Asher’s belt buckle, reached inside the top of his trousers, and wrapped his hand around his cock.
Asher had leaked a mess of precum in poor Theo’s trousers. Oh, well.
“Wait…” The dawning realization rushed to his head as he retraced his steps, scanning every tattoo gracing Asher’s skin again to be sure. “I’m the only artist.”
Asher nodded. “All of them are yours.”
“Why?” Lev asked in an awe-laced whisper.
“I wanted to keep you close.”
“I… I don’t know what to say.”
Asher squeezed Lev’s hand. “Tell me you’re not going to run.”
“I’m not.”
“Tell me it’s not too much, that I’m not too much.”
Lev cradled Asher’s face in his hands and bored his eyes into his. “Blakely, I could feast on your soul for all eternity and never be sated, let alone full. Give me all of you, even the pieces you think are too much.”
Asher tried to look away, but Lev didn’t let him.
“Give me the pieces of you that scare you, that you wish weren’t you. I want all of it. Understood?”
Asher nodded.
“Good.” He dipped his gaze for one last look.
“Beautiful. But I think I should see the rest of you to be sure.” He pulled Theo’s belt through the loops and tossed it aside, but when he reached the last trouser button, it wouldn’t budge.
“Curse Theo and his blasted clothes.” A thread tore, and the button shot off and skipped across the floor.
“Tantrums are beneath you, Mr. Marks,” Asher teased.
Lev scoffed. “I’ll buy him a new pair, and I don’t sound like that.”
Asher argued, but Lev stopped listening, attention focused on the exposed root of Asher’s cock, framed by short, dark curls. The rest of his length still hid inside. That wouldn’t do. With one swift tug, Theo’s pants dropped, and Asher’s cock sprung free, arcing in an arrow over his abs.
“Fuck me. Your cock in the foreground with my art in the background is…” Lev trailed off, unnerved by the sensation that someone was watching. He scanned the room and checked the windows. They were alone. Still…
“Hey.” Asher squeezed Lev’s shoulder. “Where did you go?”
Lev turned his head and kissed the hand still on his shoulder. “I felt like…” His vision focused on the tattoo of his eye on Asher’s forearm. “Wait. You’re left-handed.”
Asher’s brows darted together. “I thought you’d have noticed by now with all the time you’ve spent watching me paint. Are you sure you’re okay?”
Lev shushed him. “Every time you’ve jerked off, it was with my eye on you?”
Asher nodded.
“That’s…”
“Insane?”
“No.” Lev gripped Asher’s hips and boosted him onto the tabletop, knocking over a glass and sending cutlery and china flying off the other end. “It’s so filthy.” He wedged himself between Asher’s legs. “You’ve been mine all this time. No matter who touched you, I was with you. You wanted me.”
“Yes,” Asher confessed.
“I wish I’d found you sooner.” Before any harm had ever come to him.
“I’m here now, and I’m done waiting.”
Asher fisted a hand in Lev’s shirt and dragged him to his lips. Lev’s thoughts came in colors and shapes, flashes of inspiration, paintings he’d later create.
Chasing pleasure and connection, he rolled his hips into the cradle of Asher’s naked cock, wishing he’d thought to take off his pants first, yet unwilling to stop.
Asher moaned, and Lev swallowed the sound, deepening their kiss, drawing forth more noises to devour. Lev’s slacks were wet with Asher’s precum now too.
“Did you touch yourself and pretend it was me?” Lev asked.
Asher bit his lip and nodded.
“Show me.” Lev guided Asher’s hand south.
His protégé complied immediately, working himself with a tight grip that milked more precum from his tip as he gazed at the tattoo of Lev’s eye on his forearm.
Lev couldn’t look away. Remembering Asher’s need for praise, he said, “You’re so fucking sexy like that, my perfect lad, stroking yourself because I asked, coming for me all those times while you waited for me.”
Asher’s breath hitched. “Lev.” More precum oozed from his slit.
“You’re so wet, Blakely. Are you always like this?”
Asher bit his lip. “No.”
“Is it because I’m here?”
He nodded. His hand slowed. His eyes slowly shut.
“You’re getting close, aren’t you?”
Asher’s eyes opened. His hand froze on his cock. “I’m sorry.”
“Never apologize for taking your pleasure. I’m close too, and you aren’t even touching me. You can wait a little while longer, though, can’t you?”
Asher’s eyes closed on a nod, the muscles in his throat flexing and shuddering with his rapid breathing.
“Eyes on me,” Lev reminded.
Hooded hazel eyes parted.
“Good lad.”
Asher whimpered. Would he make that noise when Lev fucked him? Hopefully.
Holding Asher’s gaze, Lev lowered to his knees, planted his palms on his own thighs, and extended his tongue, eyes wide and supplicating, all but saying, Feed me.