Chapter 27 #4
Which I thought I understood. Even if I didn't, I understood what needed to come after those words.
"I will honour the power you give me," I murmured, pressing a kiss to the back of one hand, then the next.
I gently rotated his wrists so that I could kiss each palm as well.
Then, carefully, keeping my lips against his skin as I spoke so that he could feel me with him, "I can hold you, if that's what you want, or I can tend to you.
I'm not experienced enough yet to know what's better. "
His eyes were still closed, although I could see the movement ghosting beneath his pale lids. "You are experienced," he said, quiet. "In all things. You have told me."
"Not with you," I said, nestling my cheek against his hand, his fingers tightening just slightly against my skin. "Not like this. So, what would work for you?"
His eyelashes were a dark fan against his skin, and then he opened his eyes, just barely, so he could look down at me in the dim light of our new bedroom on this old ship.
I loved him so much in that moment – his quiet courage, his tremulous uncertainty, the weight the universe had placed on his shoulders that he felt safe enough to shrug off when it was just the two of us – that I was certain I was glowing, that he could see it thrumming beneath the surface of my skin, that he could feel it in the way I touched him.
"I want," Araxis breathed, his stare an abyss, "to come undone against your body.
But Sashen –" He gave his head a minute shake, corrective, and I could actually track how it moved through his frame, how this thought straightened his spine and squared his shoulders and reminded him of his place, his position. "Beloved, you're hurt."
I smiled up at him. As if I'd let a little thing like that get in the way. "I'll save anything especially athletic for later, how about that? And it really doesn't hurt now. It's not bad."
The conflict was clear on his features, so I ran my palms up his thighs, firm. I studied him, and allowed my smile to slip away. He needed something he could give me, so that I could tend to him in the way he deserved.
"I lost it again," I said, the words spilling out of me like a confession.
"Control. Myself. I just – became violence, like I did back in the alley.
And so – so I think I'd like to remind myself that I can be gentle too.
That I'm not… just that thing. So I can hold you if you'd like, or I can make you come, but I really would like to – to take care of you, so that I remember that I have that in me too. "
And it was true. I could feel it as soon as I said the words, and Araxis's perfect features sparked with what looked like the particular pain of raw empathy. He reached for me, brushing my hair tenderly from my forehead, black eyes glistening.
"Then I would like –" He swallowed, unsteady.
"I would like to forget my own name. I want to forget everything except the way you make me feel.
Do you understand? I wish to be yours." It cost him something to say that; I could see, just from the cast of his features.
Like he was making his own confession; like he was ashamed of himself; like he was afraid I might say no or chastise him.
"I can do that," I said, and it had the feel of a vow. "But promise me you'll tell me if it's too much. At any point. And if it's too much in any way. I – I don't know yet."
He nodded and I pulled him to standing. I turned him around and lifted my fingers to his braid, working to undo the careful pleats I'd watched him put there.
As his quills slipped between my fingers, the tension began to drip away from his shoulders.
Even something as simple as this, undoing a performance of perfection, could help.
I wasn't done there, though. As his crest came undone, I stepped in close, brushing the mane of quills to one side so that I could slide my body against his, like I had so often when we'd been sword-dancing and he'd been pretending not to know the sequences.
I slipped one hand down to his hip, moving him just slightly so that he rocked back against me.
"Do you remember?" I asked against the skin of his neck, pressing my mouth there as he shuddered against me, pliant under the heat of my lips.
His crest rustled, and he nodded, still quiet.
"I couldn't believe how badly I wanted you," I said, nuzzling the soft skin beneath his ear, my hand slipping around his waist to the front of his jumpsuit.
"And how badly I wanted to undo that perfect composure of yours.
I thought about the sounds you'd make, how you'd taste; I thought about what I could do to you, for you.
I thought about it all the time, and I kept wondering what you'd do if I didn't step away. How far could I take you?"
"Anywhere," he said, voice low and hoarse. "You could take me anywhere, Sashen. I am yours to – yours – I –" He hesitated.
I had a guess. "You're mine to command?" I asked, sliding my hand down between his thighs, pressing upwards against his slit through his clothes.
A half-smothered moan buzzed in his pretty throat, Araxis's head tilting backwards as I pressed against him, my hand rubbing him through his jumpsuit, applying pressure.
My other hand reached up and tugged at his collar so that I could scrape my teeth down his neck, so that I could bite gently at the juncture between his neck and shoulder where he'd put the caldathess on me.
I mouthed the thin mesh of his base layer, his skin so close but just out of reach.
Next to my ear, his crest rattled in a chorus, like a forest in a windstorm, but the sound that left Araxis next was one of embarrassment, even as he alternated between grinding himself against my hips and my thickening cock, and then forward into the pressure of my hand on him.
"Sashen –" he started, already flushed a deep pink.
"Too much?" I asked, moving my hand away, although I left it on the plane of his lower stomach, fingers splayed as I held him.
His breath hitched; I could feel it through the expanse of his back, although it wasn't audible. "No, I –" He stopped, jaw tense.
"I want you to tell me," I said carefully.
"Because if you tell me, we can get it out of the way.
We're – talking about everything now, right?
What you want, and what I want and when those overlap.
But you have to tell me first, otherwise I won't know.
We won't." I let my hands drop away entirely and took a step back.
He made a soft, needy sound the moment I moved my body from his, turning to look at me with his glossy black eyes.
His purple tongue flicked out to wet his lower lip, leaving a sheen of moisture there.
"I – I like it very much when you use your teeth.
" At this confession, he flushed an even darker colour, dropping his stare away from mine to the floor.
"But I know that I shouldn't. It's not – how things are done. "
I studied him, heat prickling beneath my skin, a familiar flush. "You like when I use my teeth," I repeated. "And you shouldn't because the expectation is that you're tending to me. When I use my teeth, you're yielding to me, allowing me to exert control, which you also shouldn't want. But you do."
He couldn't look at me, but didn't protest so I thought I had it mostly figured out.
"When you asked me to come on you, you said it was like being marked," I said.
If anyone knew a thing or two about unlearning what sounded an awful lot like shame about desire, it was me, and I wanted to unpack it with him.
I wanted to help him see. "You like it when I tend to you the way a sinnenthi would. But – more than that, am I right?"
Araxis's chest stuttered as he drew in a shaky breath.
The picture was clarifying for me. "You like it when I take charge for both of us.
When I focus on getting you off, and when I tell you exactly what I want you to do.
It's – That's what I didn't understand last night, or this morning.
I thought you wanted to take control, but you wanted to give it to me. "
I'd offered myself to him and he'd tried to follow my instructions, hadn't he? And he'd felt most comfortable when I was telling him exactly what to do. Tell me to fuck myself open, I'd insisted, and he'd yielded. He'd given me the gift I'd said I wanted, and then I'd gotten angry at him about it.
His entire life was about control. With me, he was safe to let go and, within the parameters I set, he could be perfect. He could let me take care of everything.
I studied him, and instead of feeling like my chest was tight, it felt – open, like I could breathe more deeply.
I could take care of everything. I could be everything he needed, and it gave me power.
He could place himself in the palm of my hand, and I would honour that trust. I don't know what I like, I'd admitted, embarrassed and frustrated and upset – but now? If this was an option –
I bit the edge of my lower lip, heat tightening in my belly in a low, insistent throb.
"You know you were perfect," I said then.
"You did exactly what I told you to. You gave me what I said I wanted.
I didn't understand. I do now. And – I also understand that you like to do a good job.
You like to be told that you're good – that you're perfect for me, that you're behaving exactly as I want.
Exactly as I expect. You did, Araxis. You're perfect, and you're mine. "
I watched him carefully to see how the words landed, and he shivered, there in our bedroom on the ship, where all of his artifice had been stripped away by violence and danger until he was entirely mine. Raw and vulnerable. Mine.
"Do I understand?" I asked in quiet abayan, and Araxis's eyelashes fluttered before he let his eyes drift closed and, apparently braver for having the universe vanish before him, he nodded once.