Chapter 23 #2
Lavellin huffs, searching his face with an expression he can’t place.
“Sour.” It repeats his choice of words once more, rolls its eyes back at him.
“Yeah,” Torver grunts. “You’re being sour.”
Its top lip curls up for a second, its canines flashing at him. It blinks hard.
“Don’t pick fights, Torver.” It stands abruptly, violently removing its hands from its pockets. The contents of its pockets go flying: a small comb, two hair ribbons—and Torver’s string.
The wind catches it and places it neatly in the lapping waters of the tarn.
Torver and Lavellin scramble, their feet crashing over the shale and stones that rim the water. Torver’s hand finds the string first, but Lavellin is so close behind that their hands knock together. Torver straightens, relieved not to have lost one of his few relics from the Mere.
“It’s safe,” Lavellin says quietly. “I promised to keep it safe.”
Torver holds the string in his hand, yearns for the familiar burn on his skin. After a held breath released with a sigh, he presses it into Lavellin’s outstretched hand.
“Here.”
Lavellin’s long fingers close over it, and the fae returns the treasure to its pocket. “Thank you.” It gives Torver a small smile.
Warmth spreads through him before he can fight it. “You’re welcome,” he manages. Then, “Sorry.”
“I am going to touch you now,” it warns, before putting its arm around him.
Torver laughs.
Lavellin squeezes his shoulders. “I know you’re nervous about tomorrow. It’s okay to be scared. It’s the big day.”
Torver nods slowly, looking out at the cairn rising like a dark tooth at the end of the tarn. “Nothing to be scared of,” he mutters. “Bassen will kill the Beast and Eveling won’t be able to get its grubby hands on this corner of Hen Ogledd. Easy.”
Torver inhales at length and they stand in a charged silence at the edge of the water. Lavellin’s heat, the weight of its arm over him, is reassuring. Calming. Delicious.
“Do you fancy a swim?” he says suddenly. “We could look for Dunmail’s crown. Wouldn’t want to go and see him without it, would we?”
Lavellin smiles, chuckles low.
“If you’re sure, sweet thing.”
The words make Torver’s skin tingle.
It pulls its shirt over its head in a regal fashion, kicking off its shoes. Torver watches it wade into the still waters up to mid-thigh before it occurs to him to follow. His shirt forms a pile with Lavellin’s and he pulls his boots off, leaving them askew on the shaley shore.
The water is even colder than Torver was expecting and when he forces his legs to move, one in front of the other, the sharp sting of the tarn makes him gasp.
He’d regret his decision, were it not for Lavellin showing off for him.
It wades in further and crouches so the water laps at its smooth chest.
“Mmmm.” It releases a low moan. “Soothing, don’t you think?”
The water hits the back of Torver’s knees for the first time and the chill of it makes him yelp. He shoots it a look when it laughs.
It responds by splashing him. And of course, Torver can’t let it get away with that.
Beast below, he’s going to get his revenge.
He dives into the water, the cold knocking the air from his lungs, making his every muscle clench tightly.
But the wave splashes Lavellin in its angled face, and when he palms the water, scooping the stuff into the air—it lands in a twinkling shower over Lavellin’s hair.
It gasps and sputters in outrage, spitting water from its mouth and splashing him back.
The water ceases to feel cold, and splashing devolves into wrestling devolves into Torver holding Lavellin in his arms, cackling in triumph.
“Don’t throw me in!” Lavellin squeals.
Torver holds it on the surface, one arm under its legs, the other beneath its shoulders, a warning glint in his eye.
“Oh no? Do you not like the water all of a sudden?”
Lavellin pretends to protest, thrashing weakly and laughing.
It feels impossibly light in his arms and he feels caught, pinned by the sight of it.
His pulse quickens, realising that he doesn’t want to throw it in the water, doesn’t want to continue their game.
Because there’s droplets of tarn-water on Lavellin’s eyelashes, rivulets on its cheeks. And he could just dip his head for one second, just one unnoticeable second. He could dart out his tongue like a shameful little lamb and lap the water right from the warm silk of its skin.
It looks up at him from his arms. His face feels slack.
He doesn’t quite know what’s happening, doesn’t quite know what he’s doing.
Only that he wants this more than anything.
And he thinks, at last, fuck it.
Their lips only brush at first. Then Lavellin pushes forward, connecting their mouths, hungry and wanting.
He can feel the heady exhale from its nose on his cheek and it moves so slowly, so tenderly, that his previous drunken desires seem foreign to him.
How would it have hit him, held him down by the throat, drawn his blood with its teeth—given him what he thought he deserved?
Because he deserves this. Wants this.
Wants it to wind its hands through his hair, humming with pleasure. Wants to feel its lips part for him softly, like a flower opening. Its tongue to skim into his mouth, brushing over his own tongue, his bottom lip. His skin to spark wherever it touches him.
When he moans into it, his pleasure reverberates against its teeth. His body ignites under its gentle hands.
“Tell me to stop,” he begs, pulling it closer.
His tattered heart beats only for its half-lidded gaze. It feels wrong, excessive; not for the likes of him. Its gold-tipped canines graze his bottom lip and he shivers.
“Please,” he gasps between kisses. “Tell me to stop. Or I won’t.”
He can feel its smile against his lips. He delicately stands it upright, groaning as it presses kisses down his neck, across his collarbones, his bare chest.
Between caresses of its lips, it leaves words. Murmurs them into his wet, hot skin. “I thought—I would never get to do this. It’s all I’ve thought about.”
Torver kisses it with a building hunger; kisses its lips, the scars either side—and his pulse jolts at the sounds it is making.
Sweet little moans that send fire into the pit of him.
His head tips back as it tongues the lobe of his ear, and he loses himself entirely to the feeling.
Lust settles over him like a fog and all there is in the world is its mouth.
Its hands.
Its fingers pushing under the waistband of his trousers.
The water sloshes noisily when it leads him back to shore. Their hands entwined, tarn-water dripping from them. They return to the tent, breathing heavily.
Settling into the blankets, soaking them with his wet trousers, his dripping torso, he watches it enter the tent behind him.
It looks at him with a heady intensity, and before it can ask him if he’s sure, he reaches for it.
Runs his palms over the muscles of its stomach and chest, pulls it towards him by that waist.
And with that permission, its mouth finds his.
Their bodies press together and his hips move involuntarily, bucking softly, seeking friction.
Until its legs are suddenly around his hips, its weight pushing down into him before it crowds him into the blankets, its long hair concealing their longing like a silk curtain.
His heart hammers inside him like it wants to get out, like it wants to partake. His hands are full of its body, his tongue sweet with the taste of it, and his cock throbs inside his trousers, driving him slowly mad.
The sound of a twig snapping outside of the tent catches Torver’s attention. It pulls his gaze back with a finger beneath his chin.
“Eyes on me, sweet thing.”
And he nods, burning for it, his throbbing like a pulse.
“I—” The start of his sentence is lost in a gasp as Lavellins pulls at his trousers just enough to reach for him, to pull out his length and close its warm hand around it.
His words are lost in a brainless moan. Lost to the ether, to their shaking breaths. His feral groan like a wave of water crashing over him, alive to nothing but the feeling of it stroking him base to leaking tip.
It hums his name into his open lips and he quivers under its pumping hand. Its smooth, hard chest against him, compressing him to the floor. Pleasure coils through his body, gripping and releasing in waves.
Its pupils are blown wide so that its eyes are dark, and it grunts when his shifting leg brushes its crotch.
“Oh?” His voice lowers to a rumble, eyes glinting.
Lust makes him a different man, like he’s possessed by something.
He trails his hand down its hard body, grasping the fabric of its trousers, and Lavellin quickly yanks them off.
Eyes wicked, he looks to where it has both a cock like his, but underneath, a slick, wet hole that makes it shudder with pleasure when he pushes two fingers inside, slow and teasing.
Like a reflex, part of him wonders if it wants to hit him, push his face into the floor, draw a blade across his skin—he pulses his fingers before it gets the chance to decide.
“So you have both then,” he purrs, pressing a kiss to its navel. “I didn’t know that.”
Lavellin shakes its head. “Not both. Just me. We are—we’re like this—” It quickly gives up trying to explain fae anatomy and throws back its head, fanning hair over its shoulders in an arc, thrusting down on Torver’s fingers. Riding him with its eyelids fluttering. Moaning, quiet and delicious.
Torver’s face splits into a grin.
He curves his fingers, devours the way its breath hitches.
The sweat gathered on its chest forms a glistening bead that rolls down its hard torso.
Mindless, Torver leans forward and licks it up.
Salty and flowery, the taste of it dances across his tongue and he groans, swallowing hard before returning his mouth to its abdomen, tracing circles with his tongue, dragging his lips and teeth over its skin.