Chapter 3 #2
Emery jerks. A full-body spasm that he cannot control and does not expect, because no one has ever.
No one has ever taken the time to discover that he is sensitive there, that the lightest touch sends a bolt of electricity straight through his core.
They have always been ridiculously, infuriatingly responsive.
He has spent years ignoring it because no one else has ever noticed and noticing his own weaknesses without anyone to share them with is just another form of loneliness he does not need.
Bastian notices.
His fingers pause. Then they move again, deliberate now, circling slowly.
Emery's back arches off the mattress. A moan escapes him, raw and shocked, and he bites his lip hard enough to taste copper but it is too late.
Bastian has heard it. Bastian smiles against his neck.
Emery can feel the curve of it, the warmth of it, pressed into the tendon where his neck meets his shoulder, and then Bastian's thumb rolls across his left nipple with precision and Emery's hips buck involuntarily.
"Sensitive," Bastian murmurs. It is not a question. His voice is dark velvet against Emery's skin. He pinches, lightly, and Emery gasps and grabs his shoulders and holds on. "Very sensitive."
"Don't," Emery starts, and does not know how to finish the sentence. Don't stop. Don't talk about it. Don't make him acknowledge that his body is betraying every professional instinct he has built over years of careful, deliberate control.
Bastian does not stop. He lowers his mouth to Emery's chest and takes one nipple between his lips and Emery nearly comes off the bed.
The sound he makes is obscene. There is no other word for it.
His hands fly to Bastian's hair and grip the braid and his spine curves into a bow and his hips grind up against Bastian's thigh with a desperation he cannot fake because he is not faking it.
Bastian's tongue is skilled and merciless.
He flicks and circles and sucks and each motion sends another jolt through Emery's body until he is leaking in his pants, the thin fabric doing nothing to hide the wet spot forming where the head of his cock presses against the cloth.
His other nipple is caught between Bastian's thumb and forefinger, rolling and pinching in a rhythm that matches his mouth, and Emery is writhing beneath him and moaning and he sounds exactly the way he is supposed to sound except he has never, not once, sounded this way and meant it.
"I can feel you," Bastian says, his mouth still against Emery's skin. His thigh shifts, pressing harder between Emery's legs, and the pressure against Emery's aching cock makes him whimper. "You're soaking through."
Emery wants to tell him to shut up. He wants to say something cutting and clever and dismissive that will reassert his control over this situation.
What comes out is a choked, breathless sound and his hips grinding forward against Bastian's thigh and his fingers pulling at white hair with no finesse whatsoever.
Bastian plays with him. There is no other word for it.
He moves between Emery's nipples with his mouth and his hands, alternating pressure and rhythm and technique with patient, methodical precision, conducting an experiment and cataloging every result.
When he sucks hard, Emery keens. When he bites gently, Emery's whole body shudders.
When he pulls back and blows cool air across the wet, swollen peak, Emery arches and curses and his cock throbs so hard it hurts.
The knife is strapped to your thigh. Get it now, while he is distracted, while his head is down, while his throat is exposed.
Bastian's mouth begins to move lower. He kisses down the center of Emery's stomach, tracing the faint line of hair below his navel, and his hands slide down Emery's sides and grip his hips and Emery is pinned and exposed and his body is trembling with the need for more.
Bastian's lips reach the waistband of his pants. His fingers hook into the fabric. He pulls them down slowly, peeling them off Emery's hips, and Emery lifts without being asked because his body has stopped consulting his brain on decisions. The pants slide down his thighs.
The garter is on his left thigh. A thin leather strap with a slim blade tucked against the inside of his leg, hidden by the drape of the fabric. Bastian's hands are on his thighs now, sliding the pants lower, and his fingers pass directly over the strap. He pauses. Emery's heart stops.
Bastian's fingers trace the edge of the leather. He finds the knife. He pulls it free with casual efficiency, a quick flick of the wrist, and Emery watches him toss it off the bed. It lands on the floor somewhere behind him with a soft clatter against the rug.
He does not stop kissing Emery's thigh.
His mouth is pressed to the inside of Emery's leg, just above where the garter sat, and his lips are warm and soft and his breath is hot against the sensitive skin there.
He does not look up. He does not comment.
He does not ask why a dancer at a brothel has a blade strapped to his thigh.
He just keeps kissing, moving higher, his hands pushing Emery's pants the rest of the way off until they are gone and Emery is naked beneath him.
Emery's mind is screaming at him to move.
The knife is on the floor. He is unarmed.
He is naked and hard and spread open on a bed beneath the most dangerous man in the Underground and his only weapon is somewhere on the rug behind Bastian's feet.
He needs to move. He needs to roll, to shove, to put distance between them.
Bastian's mouth closes around his cock.
Emery's head slams back into the pillow.
His hands fly to Bastian's hair, gripping the braid with both fists, and a moan tears out of him that comes from somewhere deep and primal and entirely beyond his control.
The heat is staggering. Bastian's mouth is hot and wet and impossibly skilled, his tongue working the underside of Emery's shaft as he takes him deeper, and deeper, until Emery feels himself hit the back of Bastian's throat.
The sound Emery makes is not a word. It is not a moan. It is something guttural and cracked and desperate and his hips jerk upward and Bastian lets him, takes it, swallows around him with a controlled flex of his throat that makes Emery's vision blur.
Fuck. Oh, fuck.
His thighs are shaking. His fingers are white-knuckled in Bastian's hair.
His back is arched so hard the muscles in his stomach burn with it.
Bastian's hands are on his hips, holding him steady, and his mouth is moving with a rhythm that is both deliberate and ruinous, pulling Emery to the edge and holding him there.
Bastian pulls back until just the head is between his lips.
His tongue circles, slow and firm. Then he swallows Emery down again in one fluid motion and Emery cries out and his body convulses and he forgets where he is.
He forgets who he is. There is nothing in the world except this mouth and these hands and the unbearable, climbing heat in the base of his spine.
Bastian's right hand leaves his hip. Emery feels the press of fingertips against his inner thigh, trailing lower, skating across sensitive skin, and then lower still.
The pad of Bastian's finger traces him, slow and deliberate, circling without pressing in, and Emery's entire body locks up with the intensity of wanting it.
"Please." The word leaves him before he can catch it. He has never said it in bed. He has never said it anywhere. He does not beg. He would sooner die than beg and the word came out anyway and he cannot take it back.
Bastian's mouth does not stop. His finger presses in, dry and careful, just the tip, and the stretch is minimal but the sensation of being entered while Bastian's throat works around him is enough to send Emery hurtling over the edge.
The orgasm hits him so hard his vision whites out.
His whole body seizes, every muscle clenching at once, and the sound he makes is high and broken and lost somewhere in the pillow he has turned his head into.
He spills into Bastian's mouth in long, shuddering pulses and Bastian takes all of it, swallowing, his hands steadying Emery's trembling hips, and does not pull away until Emery has given him everything.
Emery lies there. He stares at the ceiling. His chest heaves. His body is vibrating with aftershocks. He feels hollowed out, cracked open, and he barely has time to form a coherent thought before Bastian is moving up his body and claiming his mouth again.
He tastes himself on Bastian's tongue. The kiss is deep and filthy and Bastian is still fully clothed above him and Emery is naked and boneless and he should be using this moment to go for the knife.
He should be using distraction to roll, to reach, to do what he came here to do.
Instead he wraps his arms around Bastian's neck and pulls him closer and kisses him back with everything he has.
Bastian's weight settles on him. The fabric of his tunic is rough against Emery's oversensitive nipples and the friction makes him hiss and squirm. Bastian is hard against his hip, the length of him unmistakable through his pants, and the size of it sends a complicated jolt through Emery's stomach.
Bastian sits back on his heels between Emery's spread thighs. He reaches behind his head and pulls his tunic off in one fluid motion and Emery forgets he is an assassin.
The tattoos cover his arms and chest in patterns that are intricate and stark against his charcoal skin.
The muscle beneath is sculpted, dense, not built for show but for use, functional power carried in every line of him, a body that is a weapon because it has always been one.
His stomach is flat and ridged and the V of his hips disappears into the waistband of his gray pants and Emery's mouth goes dry.