3. Into the Trees #2
Canyon didn't answer. Instead, his free hand found Jace's, guided it to the massive bulge in his own pants. Jace's fingers fumbled with the button, the zipper, and then Canyon's cock was in his hand, and the reality of it drove the air from his lungs.
It was enormous. Eight inches at least, thick enough that Jace's fingers couldn't close around the shaft, circumcised, the head flared and hot, the veins standing in rigid cords that pulsed against Jace's palm with a heartbeat that was too slow, too deep, too deliberate to be human.
The skin was smooth, almost feverishly warm despite the chill of the night, and the weight of it, heavy, dense, throbbing with a need that Jace could feel radiating through the skin, was staggering.
They stroked each other in the moonlit clearing, hands working in counterpoint rhythms that built and built, cocks pressed together when their fists aligned, the slick heads bumping and sliding, Jace's leaner shaft rubbing against Canyon's massive girth, precum mixing between them in warm, slippery threads.
The sounds were obscene in the silence of the forest: wet, rhythmic, the slick-slap of flesh on flesh, Jace's ragged breathing and Canyon's low, rumbling growls that vibrated through Jace's chest where their bodies pressed together.
"You taste like want," Canyon murmured against his throat, tonguing the spot where his teeth had pressed, the wet heat drawing a ragged moan from Jace. "Salty and desperate and alive. God, you're so alive, your blood is singing under this skin, I can hear it—"
He bit harder. Not breaking skin, not quite, but close enough that a bead of blood welled beneath the surface, a bruise forming, and Canyon's tongue lapped at it with a sound that was almost a snarl, his hips jerking, his massive cock thrusting through Jace's fist with sudden, uncontrolled urgency.
His eyes flashed, literally flashed, the grey igniting to silver-white for a split second, the irises catching the moonlight and amplifying it beyond anything natural, and Jace saw it, saw the inhumanness of it, and instead of fear what he felt was a wave of arousal so intense his knees nearly buckled.
Canyon came first. The orgasm hit him like something breaking, his body going rigid, his head thrown back, his cock swelling in Jace's grip before erupting in thick, powerful jets that splattered Jace's stomach and chest, the cum hot and copious, streak after streak, each pulse accompanied by a grunt that resonated in the bones of Jace's hand.
The scent of it was overpowering, musky and mineral, with that metallic undertone, the smell of something ancient and powerful spending itself against human skin.
The sight and smell and wet heat of Canyon's release triggered Jace's own.
The orgasm ripped through him from the base of his spine outward, every muscle contracting, his cock jerking in Canyon's still-moving fist as he shot across Canyon's forearm, across the veined shaft still pulsing in his hand, his cum mixing with Canyon's in milky threads that dripped between them and fell to the pine needles below.
He came until his vision went grey, until his legs shook, until the only thing keeping him upright was the tree at his back and Canyon's body pressed against his front.
They stood like that for a long time, breathing hard—Jace's breath ragged and fast, Canyon's slower, deeper, already recovering with a speed that no human metabolism could explain.
Their cocks softened against each other, still pressed close, the combined mess of their release cooling on their skin in the night air.
Jace could feel Canyon's heartbeat through his chest, slow and immensely powerful, like the bass note of an organ, vibrating at a frequency that made Jace's own heart try to synchronize.
"You shouldn't have come out here," Canyon said quietly, and for the first time, his voice carried something fragile beneath the authority, not regret, but the recognition of a threshold crossed.
"I shouldn't have—" He stopped. His jaw worked.
He took a step back, and the cold rushed into the space between them like water filling a vacuum.
"But you did," Jace said. His voice was steadier than he felt. "And I came out here because something in me already knows what you are, even if my brain hasn't caught up."
Canyon stared at him. The moonlight carved his features into something mythic, the sharp jaw, the pale eyes, the dark hair falling across his forehead. He looked like something that had been standing in forests for centuries, waiting for a specific set of footsteps.
"Go back to your cabin," Canyon said finally. "Now. Don't stop. Don't look back."
"And if I don't?"
"Then I'll do things to you that you'll spend the rest of your life trying to understand. And you'll let me. Because by the time I'm finished, you won't remember how to say no."
He pulled back. His eyes held Jace's for one more scorching second.
"We're just getting started."
Then he turned and walked into the trees without sound, the darkness closing behind him like water behind a stone, and Jace stood alone in the moonlit clearing with another man's cum drying on his skin and the certain, bone-deep knowledge that nothing, not one single thing about his life or his understanding of himself, would ever be the same.
***
In the narrow bunk, he peeled off his thermal and stared at the mess on his stomach and chest, their combined release, drying in translucent streaks, the smell of it filling the small cabin with an intimacy that was almost unbearable.
He should have cleaned it off. Instead, he pressed his fingers into it, rubbed it into his skin, and felt his cock stir again at the sensation.
I can smell everything on you.
Your blood is singing under this skin.
We're just getting started.
Jace pressed his palm flat against his own chest and felt his heart hammering, wild, arrhythmic, the heartbeat of a man in freefall.
Through the cabin window, the forest stood black and silent, and somewhere in its depths, something that was not human and not quite anything else moved through the dark with Jace's scent on its hands, carrying the taste of him like a promise it intended to keep.
Sleep came eventually, but it was not restful. In the dreams, the trees had eyes, and the eyes were silver, and the silver burned.
When dawn broke, there were marks on Jace's neck, two small bruises, perfectly round, exactly where Canyon's teeth had pressed. He touched them in the grey morning light, and the skin pulsed with a heat that didn't come from his own blood.
And Jace Warren, for the first time since his divorce, felt something so overwhelming it eclipsed the emptiness entirely: the absolute, consuming terror of wanting something that might destroy him.
He pulled on his boots and walked to breakfast, and when Canyon's eyes found him across the lodge, Jace didn't look away.