Chapter 12 #4
Bastian slides his hand from Emery's cheek, down the side of his throat, slow and deliberate, the pads of his fingers trailing heat across Emery's skin, and along his chest, over the thin linen of his shirt, and Emery's breath hitches and his hands curl into fists against his thighs.
Bastian's fingers continue down, tracing the line of his ribs, the dip of his waist, the jut of his hip, and his touch is unhurried and Emery is vibrating with the effort of holding still.
Bastian's fingers come to rest on the dagger strapped at Emery's thigh.
He touches the hilt. Traces the leather wrapping with one finger. His dark eyes do not leave Emery's.
"Do you want to try your luck again?" he murmurs.
Emery surges forward and kisses him.
The movement is a choice, not an involuntary thing, because nothing Emery does is truly involuntary.
He has trained the involuntary out of himself over years of discipline and practice and the grinding self-control required to let people touch you without flinching.
He is choosing to kiss Bastian Kane on a bearskin rug in front of a fire in a room he was not invited into, and the choosing is an act of surrender so complete that it terrifies him even as he does it, because surrender has always meant losing and this does not feel like losing.
This feels the opposite. This feels the way winning would feel if winning were something he did not know he was competing for.
Bastian's arms come around him and pull him into his lap.
The transition is seamless. Emery's knees bracket Bastian's hips, his hands find the warm, bare skin of Bastian's shoulders, and Bastian's mouth opens under his and takes the kiss deeper with a low sound that vibrates through Emery's chest and settles somewhere below his navel.
Bastian's hands spread across his lower back, pressing him closer, and the heat of him is overwhelming, not uncomfortable but consuming, warmth that soaks through clothing and skin and settles into muscle and bone until Emery cannot tell where his body ends and the heat begins.
He kisses Bastian in a way he has never kissed anyone.
Not performing. Not strategizing. Not calculating the angle of his jaw or the pressure of his lips for maximum effect.
He kisses him with his whole mouth and his whole body and the ragged, desperate thing inside his chest that has been starving for years and has only just realized it is allowed to eat.
Bastian undresses him there on the rug, unhurried, his fingers working at the laces of Emery's shirt with the patient dexterity of having all the time in the world and intending to use it.
He pulls the shirt over Emery's head and sets it aside, and the firelight finds Emery's bare skin and paints it in gold and shadow, and Bastian pauses, just for a moment, just long enough for his dark eyes to move across Emery's chest and stomach and arms with an expression that is not hunger, though hunger is part of it.
It is closer to reverence, the careful, aching attention of looking at something he cannot believe he is allowed to touch.
Emery's breath catches. He has been looked at by many people.
He has been appraised and assessed and undressed with eyes by patrons in the Hollow and clients in the guild and strangers in the street who see his face and his body and construct a narrative around them that has nothing to do with who he actually is.
No one has ever looked at him this way. No one has ever looked at him and made the looking itself an act of gratitude.
Bastian's hands find his ribs. His thumbs trace the lines between them, slow and deliberate, mapping the landscape of Emery's body with the attention of intending to remember every ridge and hollow.
His palms slide around to Emery's back and press flat against his shoulder blades, drawing him in, and Emery goes, tilts forward until their chests are pressed together, bare skin to bare skin, and the contact is so warm it is submersion, surrounding him completely.
He feels Bastian's heartbeat against his own. It is slower than his, steadier, the rhythm of a pulse that does not race because there is nothing in the world that can make it.
Bastian works at the waist of Emery's trousers, loosening the laces with his fingers while his mouth finds the underside of Emery's jaw.
He kisses the hinge of it, the soft skin beneath his ear, the line of his throat where his pulse is hammering, and each kiss is placed with deliberate precision, building something, a map, a pattern, a record of everywhere Emery is sensitive, and Emery tilts his head back and gives him access and feels his body open, a clenched fist releasing the thing it has been gripping so long the gripping became the shape of the hand.
Bastian lifts him just enough to pull the trousers down past his hips, and Emery assists because he cannot help himself, he shifts his weight, kicks free, and then he is naked in Bastian's lap with the firelight on his skin and the bearskin beneath his knees and Bastian's hands on his hips and the reality of his own arousal impossible to ignore, flushed and hard and visible between them.
Bastian looks down. Then he looks up and meets Emery's eyes and the look he gives him is dark and proprietary and soft all at once, a combination that should not be possible and that Bastian manages without apparent effort.
He works at his own trousers without breaking eye contact, and Emery helps, his fingers clumsy with urgency, tangling with Bastian's at the laces, until Bastian lifts his hips and pushes the fabric down and the sight of him draws a sharp breath out of Emery that he does not try to suppress.
Bastian is hard and thick and the sight of him sends a pulse of want through Emery so strong it borders on pain, a deep, clenching ache that starts in his stomach and radiates downward.
Bastian reaches to the side, a small glass vial on the hearth, of course, because Bastian is nothing if not prepared, and slicks his fingers, and the firelight catches the sheen of it as his hand moves between them.
"Come here," Bastian murmurs, and the two words carry more authority than a command from anyone else would.
Emery is already here. He is as close as two people can be without being inside each other.
But he understands what Bastian means and he shifts forward, lifts himself onto his knees, and Bastian's slicked fingers find him.
The first touch makes him gasp. Bastian's fingers are warm, warmer than they should be, warmer than any human's, and the slick slide of them against him sends a shudder through his entire body that starts at the base of his spine and radiates outward.
Bastian does not push in immediately. He circles, slow and patient, letting Emery's body adjust to the pressure, and the patience is maddening.
Emery has been touched by people who do not care about his comfort and by people who pretend to care about his comfort and by exactly one person who actually does, and the difference between the third and the first two is so vast it might as well be a different act entirely.
Bastian presses the first finger in and Emery's forehead drops to his shoulder. The sound he makes is quiet, choked, caught between a breath and a groan. Bastian's free hand is at the small of his back, steadying him, holding him close, and his mouth is at Emery's ear.
"That's it," Bastian whispers, and his voice carries the low, resonant vibration that Emery feels in his teeth, in his chest, in the marrow of his bones. "Let me."
The words are simple and devastating. Let me. Not a demand. An offering. Let me take care of this. Let me take care of you. Let me do the thing that no one else has done, the thing you have never let anyone do, the thing that requires the one currency you have spent your whole life hoarding.
Emery lets him.
Bastian works him open with agonizing patience, one finger becoming two, his wrist rolling in slow, deliberate circles that find the angle that makes Emery's hips jerk and his breath stutter.
He presses deeper, curls his fingers, and Emery bites down on Bastian's shoulder to keep from making a sound that would embarrass him.
The pleasure is sharp and specific and radiating outward from a point inside him that Bastian has found with the precision of knowing exactly what he is doing and having decided to be thorough about it.
Bastian whispers against his ear. Filth and sweetness, braided together so tightly Emery cannot separate them.
He tells Emery how he feels around his fingers, hot, tight, perfect, and he tells him what he wants to do to him, and then, so quietly it is almost lost beneath the crackle of the fire, he tells Emery he is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen.
The words sit in his throat, a syllable he cannot quite form, tasting of please and meaning I have never wanted anything the way I want this and the wanting is going to kill me.
He would do anything Bastian told him to right now and that is the most terrifying thing that has ever occurred to him, not the vulnerability of his body, which has been vulnerable to others many times before, but the vulnerability of his will, which has never bent for anyone.
Bastian does not make him beg.
He withdraws his fingers, slicks himself, Emery watches his hand move over his own cock with an attention that is almost academic except for the way it makes his mouth water, and then both of Bastian's hands are on Emery's hips, guiding him, and Emery reaches between them and takes him in hand and positions him and sinks down.