CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE #2
Jules’ hand sits beneath the curling vine wires of Lachlan’s rig, rests right atop his heart where it beats strong and fast inside.
Lachlan watches him slowly try to trust it, sees the cracks.
‘You could be lying, though,’ Jules utters. ‘You could do that.’
‘I could, but I’m not.’
‘Why not?’
‘You’d know anyway, you always do.’
Jules’ free hand lifts to trace the scars Lachlan still has from the tungsten teeth in the vents.
Lachlan’s skin is warped with lilac ripples, ugly and uneven.
His back is a million times worse. Jules traces each one, hand staying firmly where it was put.
He smells how aquamarine looks under moonlight.
He is too fucking much, and Lachlan can never get quite enough.
Beautiful, angry, moody, lovely, so lovely, so dangerous.
‘I don’t know if I would,’ Jules whispers, like it scares him. ‘Are you just… letting me do what I like because you want me to be happy?’
‘I wouldn’t do that.’ Lachlan pushes his hair back, heartstrings breaking one by one as love sinks in through the cracks to flood and drown and make a new world from watery death, that’s how it feels, like drowning. ‘I love you.’
Jules’ expression creases with painful hope. ‘You weren’t pretending?’
‘I was pretending not to be…’ Lachlan trails off, suddenly afraid.
Afraid of this one last thing that’ll tip everything over the edge.
‘To be what?’ Jules asks softly, a little nasal from all the crying.
How does water spiral?
How does it happen?
Does hot and cold make the vortex the way it makes tornados or is it always the moon? Lachlan doesn’t know.
He only knows how it feels to be in one.
To be so thoroughly caught in awe of what holds him, both afraid and brave, helpless and master of his own fate.
If he walks it back now, it’ll break Jules’ heart and maybe Lachlan’s too.
Water can’t break stone, but it wears it down like nothing else.
Lachlan Tanner wants to give all that he is wrapped in silk to make it seem prettier somehow because what he is…
is a trained killer with a sharp mind for protection, but he wants to give himself in love, in supplication of loving and for the first time in his life, he understands all of what he never has.
‘I was pretending not to be in love with you,’ Lachlan tells him, throat tight. He presses Jules’ hand harder into his heart with his own, would push till it went through and let him feel it raw, take it.
‘You don’t even like me.’
‘I fucking love you, you brat, don’t even try to say I don’t.
I’m yours, Jules. I tried so hard not to be, but I am.
And it’s wrong. I’m older than you. You’re my charge.
I’m supposed to keep you safe. I know all of that, but I can’t stop loving you anyway so I’m just yours now until you don’t want me anymore and even then, I won’t be able to let go, not really.
I could leave but I won’t ever not be yours, Jules. Yours.’
Twin tears run down Lachlan’s face.
It feels so good.
It feels fucking awful.
Hurts. Heals. Breaks. Bonds. Bleeds.
Jules surges to kiss him.
Lachlan meets him halfway, so desperately cut open, made vulnerable by honesty. He knows the taste of this boy intimately, cannot ever get enough, wants it forever, wants to love him, love him so much that Jules will never, ever accept anything less, until love remakes them both.
‘I—I’m in love with you too,’ Jules chokes out and Lachlan knew deep down but hearing it just makes him insane, heart transforming into something just for Jules, only him, only him.
‘I have been for so long,’ he sobs while Lachlan kisses away all the tears, swallows his sorrow to keep forever, will nourish it as it grows to make a garden in the dark. ‘It hurts so bad.’
‘I’m sorry it hurts, baby.’
‘You love me?’
‘I love you so much,’ he swears, breathlessly fervent. ‘I can’t fucking believe you thought I was pretending.’
‘No one loves me,’ Jules whispers, lips still touching. ‘Not really. Not—’
‘I do,’ Lachlan tells him, holding his face with two hands. ‘I do.’
Jules looks at him the way no one else on earth ever has.
Lachlan can feel himself being weighed and measured. It’s like this boy can see all the way inside him.
‘You do,’ Jules agrees, finally. ‘You love me.’
‘Damned right. I love you so much, love you, love you, love you,’ Lachlan promises, kissing the words deep. He’ll say it forever if that’s what Jules wants. He’ll find ways, new languages, new gods to sanctify the bond.
He picks Jules up under the thighs and Jules is taller now, or he will be soon, but Lachlan’s stronger.
‘I am so fucking in love with you.’
Jules sinks his fingers into Lachlan’s hair.
‘Show me.’
Lachlan drives him backwards through another kiss, hands locked hard at Jules’ waist while the boy melts into him. They stumble across the room together until the backs of Jules’ knees hit the mattress and momentum sends them crashing softly onto the enormous bed.
‘You want that?’
‘I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t.’
‘We don’t have to—’
‘I fucking want it,’ Jules interrupts, pushy and bratty, God, Lachlan’s so gone for him it’s ridiculous. ‘I want it, so don’t you dare pull out the wishy-washy bullshit with me, Bodyguard. You’re not my first.’
Lachlan kisses him all over, shrugs out of his shirt and then has a brief resurgence of sufficient sanity to tell Danya through radio that he’s getting a few hours rest, no interruptions unless it’s serious.
‘Heard, Kestrel,’ Danya confirms.
Lachlan drops his rig on the floor when he pulls it off, then leans up on his knees to unbuckle his belt.
Jules’ hands roam freely over his chest, his sides, all the scars.
‘They make me so sad,’ the boy whispers, so ravaged by feelings, this one.
Lachlan pulls out his belt, pushes down the waistband but stops before anything can pop out.
He bends again to renew the stream of kisses, to make new ones, fresh ones, wet and delicious, each one is a promise, each one is a star in the new sky, ink still wet.
‘Pretend they’re seams, not scars,’ he tells Jules. ‘Pretend I was gone and someone sewed me up again and I came back.’
‘That’s not better, Lachlan,’ Jules tells him, voice rumbling with mild anger.
Lachlan’s mouth splits wide into a grin, jaw lax to trail wet marks of possession where he shouldn’t.
Teeth and tongue, this boy is his and Lachlan will obliterate anyone who tries to make it otherwise.
‘You’re not a monster. You’re—ahhh, oh fuck! ’
Lachlan sucks a bruising mark into soft flesh, knows it’ll show, doesn’t fucking care. ‘I am, though,’ he whispers like it’s a secret. ‘I’m a monster, Jules.’
Jules grabs Lachlan’s face to bring him back for harsh kisses. ‘Mine either way. My monster. My psychopath.’ Jules guides Lachlan’s pants down, underwear too and then gets a hand on Lachlan’s cock. ‘Oh, God, you’re so big. Fuck, I wanna taste it. Wanna taste you, please?’
‘No.’
‘Bodyguard.’
‘Me first.’
Lachlan wants to torment and love in equal measure until Jules is writhing, begging, unmade and reborn fresh in love’s wet gleam. He feels darkly playful as he moves lower, drags down Jules’ sweatpants.
‘This is OK?’
‘It’s very fucking OK, Bodyguard. Jesus Christ.’
Chuckling at the attitude, Lachlan nuzzles everywhere, unapologetically greedy, but he never got to do this and he’s desperate for it all of a sudden. He never had the freedom to explore on a bed like this. He wants to map him, learn him like a language and he will.
The thick hair around the base of Jules’ cock is coarse and Lachlan wants to chew it, but he can’t ignore what he really wants for long so he kisses soft skin over hard length until he reaches the sticky tip, thinks he’s not being especially graceful, but Jules doesn’t seem to mind when he threads his fingers through Lachlan’s loose hair and lets out a throaty, stuttered moan because Lachlan takes him down in one, all the way down until he can nuzzle into the coarse hair again, throat entirely relaxed around the welcome intrusion, no gag, no bodily panic, drown-resistance actually coming in handy for once.
He likes this, he loves it, actually.
God. Fuck. Fuck.
Lachlan’s eyes cross as stupid amounts of pleasure coil in his core, taking him slowly apart piece by piece.
Jules’ cock is thick and pretty, and Lachlan is going to need to make him come so fucking much.
He swallows around Jules, not even sucking yet, to a responsive round of mewls and whimpers.
Jules is pleading wordlessly, hips thrusting, careful at first but then Lachlan positions himself above for Jules to fuck his throat, use him how he likes.
That’s what he wants.
‘Oh fuck,’ Jules cries out when he realises.
He starts rolling his hips, shallow to begin with but then more and more as Lachlan proves he can take it, take anything and give the world back in return and if that’s not enough, other ones too, he’ll find them, bind them, bring them wrapped in silk like his heart, his monster heart, kill count lost but vaguely in the high four hundreds by now, he knows things no man should ever know who is lucky enough to be loved by the best two people on the planet in very different ways, he would die, kill, devastate, he’d do anything for…
‘Lachlan?’
He shakes himself, refocuses.
It felt like he was slipping somewhere dark and soft and strange.
Lachlan pins Jules’ hips, thumbs stroking the bones in silent apology.
Then he begins to move up and down, hollows his cheeks, makes it good, better than good, pulls almost all of the way off to tongue the slit before swallowing all the way to the hilt again.
‘Where did you go?’ Jules asks, panting.
Lachlan looks at him, naked and bathed in a light sheen of sweat.
Lachlan doesn’t answer, has forgotten how.
He strokes Jules’ navel, gives love with his hand and his mouth, hopes that it’s enough as he doubles his efforts to bring pleasure down like a forgotten rock in space clumsily seeking a new home.