6
Miles
His fiancé laughed in delight as his back hit the bed with a bounce. When Hal reached for him, Miles didn’t make him wait.
He crawled onto the bed until he could drape himself over Hal. Press him into the bed with his full body, thrust his tongue back into Hal’s welcoming mouth and grind their hard cocks together. The expensive fabric of the trousers Hal still wore added delicious friction. He preferred Hal naked under his hands, but kissing him was so easy.
Kissing put them on even footing. An equal exchange of affection that cost only time and energy from each of them. Outside this cabin, under a night sky darker than he’d ever seen, the ship swayed as it traveled at speed toward a place he’d never imagined visiting. The place that birthed the man he loved and decided his fate, no matter how much Hal insisted New Angouleme had made him his own man.
Miles wanted to kiss Hal forever. Let everything else fade away.
Right here, time stood still.
He kissed Hal harder, licking past an echo of vodka, desperate to find escape in the exchange of lips and tongues. He wound a hand through Hal’s hair to keep that incredible mouth right where he wanted. Hal’s strong fingers dug into the muscles of his back and shoulders, stroking and gripping in paired desire to keep them close.
Every few thrusts, the tip of his leaking cock met the hard metal of Hal’s belt buckle. The bursts of contrasting sensation tore at his control. Miles bit at Hal’s lower lip, half-heard moans adding to the breath they shared. Balancing on the knife edge of pleasure until it burned Miles from the inside—
Hal rolled them on the bed and rose onto his knees in a single movement. Abandoned and exposed, Miles’s cock jerked into the empty air between them in protest. When Miles whined in frustrated solidarity, Hal held a finger to his lips. “Remember who we share a wall with,“
he whispered.
The cheerful admonition eased Miles further away from the edge. Once able to speak, he said, “I’m not the one who usually has trouble staying quiet.”
Hal peeled off his suit jacket and tossed it in the vicinity of the vanity. “And I’m not letting that stop you from fucking me,“
he said, making quick work of his shirt buttons while Miles unclasped that torturous belt buckle.
While Hal left the bed to remove the rest of his clothing, Miles fetched the lube they’d stashed in the nightstand and eased himself up against the pillows. He let his legs fall open as he slicked up his cock, then continued to drag a ring of his fingers up and down his stiff length. Half in display, forcing Hal’s attention. Teasing out the hunger that flared in Hal’s eyes as he stripped off his underwear. Half to again stoke the burn he wanted them to disappear into. Though always an active participant, Hal didn’t often take control in bed, preferring to relinquish himself to the care and attention Miles loved to lavish upon him. He wanted to take advantage of his current pain-free state to maneuver Hal any way Miles wanted him. Spread him open and feast until Hal lost his words, then fuck away the rest of their senses until they both reeled with mindless bliss.
Hal knee-walked across the bed until he straddled Miles, leaning down to kiss him again but resisting Miles’s efforts to roll them to the side. Maybe one night in a dozen, Hal wanted exactly what he wanted. Miles never let any of his few previous lovers dare, but Hal adored working himself open on cock. Hal wanted to feel everything, when the speed of werewolf healing erased so much physical evidence long before morning. The previous redness from Miles’s evening stubble had already faded from his cheeks.
And Miles wanted to give Hal everything. He’d come to this relationship with no wealth and no name, but he had his body, damaged as it was. He held his cock steady until Hal worked the tip past the first rings of muscle, then kept his hips still through sheer force of will. Gravity helped do the rest, and Hal was a treasure of silver hair and golden skin as he arched his back and eased his hips in tiny circles that threatened to shatter the last of Miles’s strained composure.
He ran his hands over every inch of Hal’s skin he could reach, from knees to neck. Finally, Hal opened his eyes and flashed Miles one of the wicked grins that had reeled him in from the very beginning. But their position meant distance even when they were as close as two people could possibly be. Miles fixed his eyes on Hal, but there was no avoiding that beyond the man he loved, they fucked on a strange bed. A bed that moved not from the force of their love-making but because they were on a ship carrying them farther and farther from home.
Hal moved faster above him, riding Miles with the power of knees still whole. Strong thighs bracketing Miles’s own while an even stronger tight heat hurled him back toward the peak he’d nearly reached before. Miles gripped Hal’s hip with one hand, heedless of the fingerprint bruises that would fade within the hour anyway. With the other, he teased and pinched at Hal’s nipples until the added sensation tore a low keen from his throat.
He curled a hand around his dick. Somewhere between the second and third stroke, he threw his head back with a growl.
Miles followed Hal over the edge, slamming up into him with unrestrained force. He wished he’d come with his face buried in Hal’s neck, teeth pressed to Hal’s throat in a way he knew drove the werewolf mad. Instead, he clenched his teeth around a strangled shout until his body stopped bucking and the energy drained out of him as fast as it had come.
And when he opened his eyes, the walls of the stateroom still surrounded them.
Hal leaned forward until their foreheads touched. He dropped gentle kisses to Miles’s lips until his breathing slowed. “I love you.”
Sometimes, they made out for ages afterward, both loathe to lose the intimate connection, until his cock swelled again. Until he could grind into Hal once more, slower but no less harder, and toy with Hal’s body until he milked another orgasm out of him. Until he could lick tears from the corner of Hal’s eyes and they ruined the sheets with sweat and lube and come.
Right now, though, he needed at least five seconds free of this damned bed, even though they’d barely disturbed the impersonal bleached fabric under them. “I love you too,“
Miles said, “even when you’re crushing me.”
Hal’s eyes narrowed so briefly Miles wondered whether he’d imagined it before he shifted, relieving the pressure against his lungs, even if not fully from his chest. Together, they crawled off the bed, then moved around each other with ease despite the unfamiliar bathroom.
With skin wiped clean, teeth brushed, discarded clothing added to the laundry bag, and damp towel kicked from the floor back into the bathroom, they returned to the bed. Under the bedclothes, this time. Miles returned the lube to his nightstand, and Hal shut off the lamp on the other.
The room plunged into darkness. In no rush to sleep, body sated but mind whirling, Miles stared up at the ceiling until his vision adapted.
Hal rolled his head on the pillow toward Miles. “Everything’s not okay, is it.”
The words weren’t a question. Miles wanted to bury his face in Hal’s chest and pretend he hadn’t heard them.
Even at his most fit, long before his injuries and the surgeries and endless physical therapy that followed, Miles would never have been strong enough to go toe-to-toe with any werewolf, much less one of Hal’s caliber. Many of the other nobles of New Angouleme turned up their noses at Lord Delacour’s decision to choose a human, but Hal had never once treated Miles as weaker. Lesser. Strength came in many forms, and one of the many reasons Miles loved Hal was that he valued all of them.
And sometimes, strength meant trust. Vulnerability. Instead of hiding, Miles curled toward Hal because he wanted to be close to the man he loved. Safe against his skin, breathing the familiar scent of sun-warmed fur even among unfamiliar bedsheets. He whispered, “I don’t want this trip to end. Being with you, being in your life, has already made me face so many unknowns. I’ve never feared them, because I’ve never doubted you. But meeting the rest of your family in Calaitum feels…different. Like the biggest unknown of all.”
The waves against the hull of the ship formed a different sort of white noise than the ever-present sounds of urban living. They comforted Miles just the same while gathered into Hal’s arms, as if they cuddled safe at home above the streets in New Angouleme rather than speeding across the water toward an uncertain future.