Chapter 3
The hallway at the top of the stairs is dim and quiet, draped in the same deep reds as the rest of the Hollow.
Doors on either side, all closed. The sound of the crowd below is muffled now, a distant murmur that makes the silence between them feel larger than it is.
Emery's feet are silent on the floor. Bastian's boots make soft, deliberate sounds. He has not let go of Emery's hand.
Emery is reaching for the handle of the nearest door when Bastian stops.
He stops and turns and his free hand comes up to the side of Emery's face and Emery is being guided backward, his back meeting the wall with a soft thud, and Bastian is stepping into him.
Close, so close that the heat of his body is a furnace at Emery's front, and his hand has left Emery's to hook under his thigh, lifting his leg, drawing it up until Emery's knee is at Bastian's hip and their bodies are pressed flush together.
Bastian kisses him.
Emery has been kissed before. Quick, transactional things in dark rooms. Mouths that tasted of alcohol and demanded rather than offered. Mouths that were a means to an end, a preamble to something Emery endured because endurance was the price of survival. None of it prepared him for this.
Bastian kisses him with focused, unhurried intensity, his mouth hot and certain, his tongue sweeping against Emery's lower lip, and Emery opens for him without deciding to, his body responding before his mind can intervene.
The kiss deepens. Bastian's hand tightens on his thigh, holding him open, holding him up, and his other hand cradles the back of Emery's neck with a gentleness that contradicts everything Emery knows about what this man is capable of.
Emery's hands fly to Bastian's shoulders.
He grips the fabric of his tunic and holds on and kisses back because he cannot do anything else.
His brain, which is usually his most reliable asset, has gone quiet.
There is nothing in him except the heat of this mouth and the strength of the body pressing him into the wall and the terrifying, electrifying realization that he is not pretending to respond.
The gasp that escapes him when Bastian's tongue slides against his is real.
The shift of his hips forward, seeking friction, is real.
The sound he makes, low and desperate, when Bastian's teeth graze his bottom lip is real.
No one has ever kissed him with this kind of want.
No one has ever kissed him and made his pleasure the point, made the act of kissing him not a means to something else but the destination itself.
Bastian kisses him and the want in it is staggering, obvious, uncontained, and Emery is drowning in it.
You are acting. This is an act. You are a professional.
He kisses back harder. His fingers dig into Bastian's shoulders.
His raised leg tightens around Bastian's hip and pulls him closer and the hardness of him presses against Emery through layers of thin fabric and Emery's head falls back against the wall and a sound escapes him that he will never, under any circumstances, admit to making.
Bastian follows. His mouth is on Emery's throat now, hot and open, and the points of his teeth scrape lightly across Emery's pulse and Emery thinks, with a clarity that cuts through the haze: this mouth could kill me.
This mouth has killed people. This mouth has boiled blood and shattered bone and I am letting it near my throat.
He grabs Bastian's hair. The braid is thick and smooth under his fingers and he pulls, not gently, and Bastian makes a sound, low and hungry, a sound that vibrates against Emery's throat and settles in the pit of his stomach and makes his cock throb so hard he sees sparks at the edges of his vision.
Bastian pulls back. His lips are wet and his black eyes are half-lidded and his chest is moving with slightly heavier breaths and Emery stares at him and cannot remember a single contingency plan.
Bastian's thumb comes up and traces across Emery's swollen lower lip, feather-light, so impossibly tender for a man with the reputation of a natural disaster.
Emery remembers. He is pretending to be a whore.
Bastian thinks he is buying him. This is a transaction that is going to turn into murder.
This is not real. None of this is real. The softness of that thumb against his mouth is not for him.
It is for Desi, the dancer, the product being purchased, and Emery needs to remember the difference.
"The room," Emery says. His voice is wrecked. He does not have to fake that.
Bastian's thumb traces his lip once more. Then he takes Emery's hand again, and reaches past him, and opens the nearest door.
The door closes behind them and Emery's back is against it before the latch catches.
Bastian's mouth is on his again, hotter this time, deeper, his tongue sliding past Emery's lips with a certainty that makes Emery's knees threaten to buckle.
The hand that was on his hip in the hallway is now at the small of his back, pressing their bodies together, and the other is braced against the door beside Emery's head.
Emery can feel the wood vibrate under Bastian's palm.
He can feel the heat of him through every point of contact, inhuman and scalding, and his body is responding to it with a desperation that has everything to do with the man pinning him in place.
The knife is on your thigh. Get the knife.
Bastian kisses the corner of his mouth. His jaw.
The soft place behind his ear where the skin is thin and sensitive and no one has ever bothered to discover.
Emery's breath hitches and his hands come up to Bastian's chest, pressing flat against the bare skin exposed by his open tunic.
The tattoos are warm under his palms. The muscle beneath is hard and unyielding and Emery can feel Bastian's heartbeat, steady and controlled, a counterpoint to the frantic drumming of his own.
He pushes, not hard, just enough to create an inch of space, enough to breathe, enough to remember who he is and why he is here. "The bed," he says, and his voice comes out rough.
Bastian pulls back enough to look at him.
His black eyes are molten, heavy-lidded, and the scar across his left eye catches the lamplight and makes his face look carved from something harder than flesh.
He studies Emery for a long moment. Then his hands find Emery's waist and he lifts him, effortlessly, away from the door.
Emery's legs wrap around him on instinct.
His arms go around Bastian's neck. He is being carried across the room and he should feel ridiculous and instead he feels lit up from the inside, every nerve alive and screaming.
Bastian carries him with one arm under his thighs and the other hand spread across his lower back, his mouth working a slow, thorough path down the side of Emery's throat.
The back of Emery's knees hit the edge of the mattress and Bastian stops.
He does not drop him. He lowers him, carefully, until Emery is sitting on the edge of the bed with Bastian standing between his parted thighs.
The position puts Emery's face level with Bastian's chest. The tattoos are elaborate up close, intricate linework that follows the contours of muscle, disappearing into the dark of his skin and reemerging in patterns that look almost organic, grown rather than inked.
Emery's fingers trace one before he can stop himself.
Bastian makes a low sound, not words, something deeper, something that resonates in a register Emery can feel in his teeth. His hand comes up and cradles the back of Emery's head, fingers threading through his short hair, and he tips Emery's face up.
"Look at me," he says.
Emery looks. The black eyes are so close.
There is something in them he cannot identify, something patient and focused and unspeakably warm, and it is aimed at him, all of it, and he does not know what to do with the full weight of this man's attention directed at him as if he is the only thing in the room worth seeing.
You are a product he is purchasing. He is looking at you the way he would look at a meal.
Except that is not what this looks like. Emery has been looked at by men who want to consume him. He knows the difference. He has always known the difference. This is something else.
Bastian leans down. One hand beside Emery's head, pressing into the mattress.
The other still cradling his skull. He kisses him again, slower this time, thorough and searching, his tongue tracing the inside of Emery's lower lip before sweeping deeper.
Emery makes a sound into the kiss that he would deny under oath.
His hands fist in the fabric of Bastian's tunic and he pulls him down, wanting the weight, wanting the heat, and Bastian follows him onto the bed.
The mattress dips under Bastian's weight.
He is above Emery now, one knee between his thighs, the other braced at his hip, and his mouth has left Emery's and is traveling down.
His lips press against the hollow of Emery's throat.
His tongue traces the line of his collarbone.
Emery's head falls back against the pillow and his chest heaves.
Bastian's mouth is following a path of his making and the heat of it replaces the chill against his skin instantly.
He kisses the center of Emery's chest. The ridge of his sternum. The soft skin below it.
His fingers find Emery's nipples.