12. Soren #3
His hand slides between us, wrapping around my cock, and the first stroke rips a sound out of me that I’d be embarrassed about if I had any capacity left for embarrassment.
His thumb drags through the slick mess on my stomach and uses it, stroking me in time with his thrusts, his cock deep inside me, his hand on me, his mouth on my bite, and it builds until there’s nowhere for it to go but through me.
I come hard. My whole body locks up, back bowing, nails clawing at his shoulders, my hole clenching so tight he gasps.
The orgasm rips through me in long, shuddering pulses, cum streaking his hand and my stomach and the bunched-up flannel I’m still half wearing.
For four or five endless seconds there’s nothing in my head but static and the feeling of him inside me and the taste of his skin under my tongue.
Then it ebbs, and I’m trembling, oversensitive, every nerve lit up.
Wren’s rhythm goes ragged. He thrusts twice more, deep and desperate, and buries himself to the hilt and comes.
The hot, thick pulse of him filling me, his cock twitching, the low wrecked groan he makes against my throat.
His hips grind against mine, working through it, warmth pooling deep in my belly.
His knot hasn’t fully caught, not this time, not with the pace we set, but the partial swell holds him inside me, keeps him close, and his cum leaks around his cock, mixing with slick, dripping to the sheets already ruined beneath us.
His full weight settles onto me. I take it.
I want it. His face is pressed into my neck, and his breath is hot and unsteady, and his heartbeat slams against my chest like it’s trying to sync with mine.
My hand finds the back of his head, fingers threading through sweat-damp hair, and I hold him there while the tremors slow.
For a few seconds, it works. The birds are birds. The bench is a bench. There’s only the wet heat of our bodies tangled together and the warmth soaking through the nest.
Then he shifts, easing his weight to one side. His hand cups my jaw, thumb tracing my cheekbone. He pulls back to look at me, and his eyes are so soft, so completely wrecked and present, that the thing I’ve been running from all night catches me in a single breath.
“Hey,” he murmurs. His thumb swipes under my eye. I didn’t know I was crying. “Talk to me.”
I wrap both arms around his neck and hold on. His cock is locked inside me, our mess cooling on my skin, and the bite on my neck pulses like a second heart.
“Don’t disappear,” I whisper. The words are out before I can stop them.
He goes still. Not pulling away; Wren never pulls away- but still. Alert. His hand moves to the back of my neck, cradling.
“What?”
“Nothing.” I press my mouth to his pulse. “It’s nothing. I’m being—“
“Soren.”
“Ridiculous.” I laugh, too brightly. It’s the laugh I use when I’m performing for everyone else. “Forget it. Just stay.”
But Wren doesn’t forget things. He stays exactly where he is, locked inside me, hand warm on my nape. Waiting.
And I break.
My chin trembles. My grip goes from holding to clinging.
“The birds stopped,” I say.
His hand on my neck doesn’t move. I can tell he’s listening intently.
“Six weeks.” My voice is small and wet, and I hate it. “Since Keats. There was always a rhythm, you know? Not exact, but I could feel it. Like someone out there was thinking about me. And then I got the bite and they just—stopped.”
I swallow hard. His cum is warm inside me, and I’m crying into his collarbone about another man’s gifts.
“I think he saw.” I press my forehead to Wren’s shoulder. “The bite. He saw it and—why would he keep going? I’m claimed. I’m yours. That’s how it works, right? You see the mark, and you know it’s done.”
Wren’s thumb traces a slow circle on the back of my neck. He hasn’t said a word.
“And the worst part is,” my voice cracks, but I keep going.
“I wanted both. Not instead of you. You’re everything.
You’re the whole thing. But the birds were mine too, and I never got to find out who, and I think wanting both is what jinxed it.
Like the universe saw me being greedy and decided to teach me a lesson. ”
Tears running faster now, soaking into his skin.
“I wanted it too much,” I whisper. “I always want things too much. And it jinxes it. It always jinxes it.”
Silence. His body warm and heavy around mine.
His hand slides from my neck to my jaw. He tilts my face up, gentle, impossible to resist. I can barely see him through the blur.
“Soren.” His voice is rough. Lower than I’ve ever heard it. “The birds didn’t stop because you wanted too much.”
“You don’t know that.”
Something enormous moves behind his eyes. Barely contained, pressing outward like water behind a dam.
“Yeah,” he says quietly. “I do.”
He holds my gaze. The room is so still I can hear the AC unit and my ragged breathing and the faint creak of the bed frame.
He opens his mouth. Closes it. His jaw works, and I watch him fight something.
Then he presses his lips to my forehead, long, firm, a kiss that feels like a promise and an apology braided into one, and pulls me tight against his chest.
“They’re mine. The birds are mine.”