24. Bad Decisions
Bad Decisions
Alluin, like very many ancient fae, was a creature of habit.
He didn’t change easily, and when he was stressed or unhappy, he tended to want things exactly the way he was used to having them.
The fact that he’d told me I could burn his house down was an outrageous acceptance of my general state of chaos.
He was happy that he’d come home to a completely different house with completely different furniture. It was rather shocking.
He’d made it exceptionally clear that the version of Zhiolas he wanted in his life was the fuck-up, actually, not the one trying his damndest to be respectable.
I only hoped he understood how much I appreciated his gravity and depth in return.
If I was a butterfly or a bleeding-heart dove, he was an everblooming and evergreen varama tree, deeply rooted in the stone, my home and shelter, and the one on whose branches I always wanted to rest.
I made him cover his eyes before I tugged him into his bedroom, my heart in my throat and every particle of my being parched for his reaction, a desert panting for rain. “Alright,” I said, sounding too breathless to seem at all casual. “Open your eyes.”
Alluin lowered his hands with an expression like he was bracing himself. That expression was wiped away as soon as he opened his eyes, his ears dropping and brows slanting. Alluin had to cover his mouth, trembling as he stared at his bedroom. At his bedroom.
Exactly recreating Alluin’s bedroom in a completely new location hadn’t been the simplest undertaking in the world, but it had been an interesting challenge, and it wasn’t as if I didn’t have a fortune at my fingertips to throw at the task.
Not everything was exactly the same—I hadn’t had the forethought to put that into the sale agreement beforehand, and the buyers hadn’t been thrilled at the concept of me literally taking an entire room out of their new house—but the layout was and the kinds of materials were, and so were the objects inside.
I came up behind Alluin and wrapped my arms around his torso, resting my chin on his leather-clad shoulder.
“I replaced your sheets. They were getting disreputable. But it’s the same cloth and the same dye, and I had Ruthie wash them a half-dozen times to break them in.
I got them custom-made,” I said, perfectly content.
“Most everything is built to specification, but the fresco mural is actually the same one from the old house. I’d like to remind you in advance that when you’re poking through the records and discover how much I paid to cause that to occur, do recall that you gave me equal authority and that this is what happens when you have an impulsive, demonstrative butterfly for a partner, so it’s all your fault, really. ”
“That was the idea.” Alluin wrapped his arms around mine and leaned some of his weight back against my chest. “I see you found the lamp.”
I grinned. “You don’t have to keep it,” I said, nuzzling my nose against his throat. “I recognize that it is objectively hideous. I just thought that you might enjoy seeing it here when you came home.”
“Of course I’m keeping it,” Alluin said, like I was being foolish. “There ought to be some other of your things in here, though. It’s your home, too, isn’t it?”
“Don’t be silly,” I said, beaming, warmth radiating through my ribs. “That’s what our bedroom is for.”
Alluin stilled in surprise for a moment, then turned to look at me, pulling out of my embrace. “‘Our’ bedroom?” he asked, looking tearful about it.
“It’s a big house,” I said soothingly. I took his hands and walked backwards out the door, tugging him with me.
“You’ve got a suite, I’ve got a suite, we’ve got a suite, and Dain’s got a suite.
There’s even a guest suite, though gods only know who might come visit us.
My parents, maybe. They’ve been making noises about wanting to meet you. ”
“Have they,” Alluin said, sounding amused. He followed me into our shared suite—it opened onto each of our suites, like we were royalty or some other form of snooty nobility—and looked around with a faint smile on his face and his ears perked. “Is that a door to a bathing room?”
“Mm-hmm. It’s a fancy one for us to share.” I went behind him again and started undoing the clasps for his leather armor without having to be told. “You should at least rinse off. You’ll surely sleep better without the dirt and salt making you itchy.”
He made a disgruntled sound as I helped him out of his cuirass. “Fine. Help me with my boots.”
I smirked and moved around to the front of him, getting onto my knees so I could reach his laces. “Since when are you in charge of me?” I asked in a playful challenge.
Alluin gave me an aloof look in reply. With a deliberate movement, he picked up one foot and planted his muddy boot on my thigh. “Well?” he asked in a low purr, his eyes hooded as he looked down his nose at me. “Am I in charge of you, Zhiolas?”
Icy mud seeped through my pants and heat flushed across my whole body.
I reached out to undo his leg guards like I might startle him, unable to take my eyes off his face, off that look.
My cock thickened with every beat of my heart.
The heady, heavy feeling of arousal pooled in my groin, needy and demanding, and I knew it showed on my face as much as in the outline of my aching shaft through my thin pants.
Ask me, I thought with desperation, begging him with my eyes as my fingers undid his bootlaces with the ease of long practice. Please ask me. Gods. Tell me. Take your cock out and make me break.
He undid his shoulder plates. Took off his arm guards and stripped off his gloves.
Moving like a panther, he pulled off his boot while I held it and set his foot back on the ground. His eyes flicked down my body and back to my face. A tiny smirk took residence on his full mouth.
Alluin set his other boot on my thigh and put his hands on his belt.
This was it for me, I decided, taking off his leg armor while I tried not to whimper at the sight of Alluin stripping off his shirt, his belt unbuckled and pants unlaced, the pale cloth of his underthings showing.
I was going to die of sexual frustration right here in my own bedroom, Alluin’s boot on my thigh and his body so close I could have leaned forward and buried my nose in the dark trail of hair leading down from his navel.
My cock was going to explode and I was going to bleed out and die on the floor.
Alluin had gotten thinner in the wilderness.
Leaner, his smooth brown skin sleek across defined muscles, the whole gorgeous span of his core tensing as he took his foot out of his second boot.
He removed his socks with his feet, stepping on the toe and tugging them off, then stretched with his hands over his head.
His pants slipped another half-inch lower on his toned hips. The cloth pulled taut against the bulge of his groin.
“There’s hot water, you said?” Alluin asked, as if I wasn’t currently on my knees for him with a raging erection, wearing the sort of terrified, turned on expression virgins have when faced with their first cock.
I swallowed. “Yes,” I rasped out. “Left-side handle.”
“Lovely,” he said in a purr, eyes flicking down my body again. Alluin padded past me, moving with easy grace, and shoved his pants down.
Pants and underclothes, baring the lighter skin of his ass and thighs, as comfortable getting naked in our bedroom as he was in the bathhouse. He kicked them to the side. I followed his movements helplessly, turning to watch him, unable to take my eyes off the movement of his thighs.
“Warm the bed for me,” he said with casual command, sauntering into the bathroom. The door swung closed behind him and snicked shut.
The words didn’t even register. I’d seen Alluin naked before, sure.
I’d even stripped him naked, helping him out of armor so that we could bathe after training.
But never like that and never in my bedroom, let alone after three years of not even seeing him, and I was so achingly hard and so dazedly focused on the underthings he’d kicked aside that I couldn’t think about anything else.
Like I was in a dream, I reached over and picked them up, shuddering at the feel of the warmth of his body. I shouldn’t be doing this, I thought as I slowly lifted Alluin’s clothes to my face and breathed in his scent.
Heat. Sweat. Sex. Maleness, and Alluin, and oh gods I was absolutely doing this.
I fumbled at my clothes, and then I had my cock in my hand and my face buried in his sweaty underthings, the wanton need thudding through me in a demanding, unyielding ache.
I couldn’t stop, didn’t want to stop, wanted Alluin so badly that in seconds my gems pulled tight against my body and the familiar, needy tingle in my groin built like a wildfire.
My calloused hand stroked my cock in hard, desperate jerks, every sharp movement sending a bite of pleasure through me. I panted against his clothes, my mind fixated on the strength of his body, the dominance in his voice, the smell of him.
Well? Am I in charge of you, Zhiolas?
Yes, the answer was fucking yes, and that thought sent me crashing over the edge of ecstasy.
I grabbed myself with his clothes, my seed pumping into the still-warm cloth, every inch of me dedicated to the fantasy of what it would be like if that hungry look in his eyes meant more than me being an easy mark.
His hands, his strength, his cock in my mouth…
I came down from it slowly, every panting breath harsh.
The back of my neck and the tips of my ears warmed as I stopped thinking with my dick and started remembering things like ‘manners’ and ‘morality.’ Huffing Alluin’s underthings—let alone jerking off with them—was far outside the bounds of our relationship.
I hadn’t asked. He hadn’t offered. I had absolutely no right to do something like that, no matter how worked-up I’d gotten from him teasing me.