Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
brANCA
M y beloved was gone, I could tell. Here, wholly mine, but floating in that golden place where the pleasure goes on and on and on.
Giving me his trust, his vulnerability, his desperation.
Of course I had an animal urge to bury myself in him completely. To be encased in his flesh. But I always had animal urges. That’s who I am. I am too many things, none human.
What mattered was the connection between us, the place where I disappeared, a black spear thrusting into the soft space dividing his hard, muscled cheeks. Concentrated on the trembling thigh muscles before me, the straining hard shins in my hands.
I tried so hard to give him something, something that would let him see how much he deserved, how much he was worth.
He was so far gone. I watched him twist helplessly on the table, wordless moans never stopping. Occasionally I stroked the best spot just right and he jerked, helpless, from the detonating pleasure within.
I took everything he gave, let my selfishness take over. Because the hot, possessive feeling at the base of my spine throbbed with every stroke. Mine. Mine. Mine.
“I am the fool,” I told him, gasping out the words because they had to be said. “I spent the years waiting. I will forever be waiting for moments like these.”
He might not hear me, but I needed to say them.
My every precious memory was of him. Every craving. Stupidly, I wanted him to know how that felt.
I wanted him selfish because I was. I wanted him greedy.
I wanted him to want me. Desperately. Beyond reason. Beyond his everlasting need to give.
If not me, then somebody else. Someone he could walk with, anywhere, anytime, and still keep his mission. I wanted him to be selfish just once in his long life.
But he didn’t have it in him. I’d hurt him for nothing.
“I’m sorry, my love. I’m so sorry. I was wrong. I’m here now. I’ve got you.”
Some of it he did hear, because he flexed, beautiful muscles contracting from his neck all the way down his sweat-slicked back, and he arched, taking me a little deeper. When I held back, he tried to pull me deeper.
It was as close as he could get to caring about his own desire.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered again and gave him, not everything I had, but everything he needed.
His hand slipped against the table as he tried to raise his white head, sweat matting his curls; I pressed him down. He whispered, “Say it again.”
His words surprised me. In this state he was usually beyond them. I knew he was floating, close to the edge without going over, taking as much of me as he could; I knew how much he loved that. But he’d have to come soon. Nothing good lasts forever, and he was likely already aching for it.
I felt the growing insistence myself, the gathering tension, the pressure at the base of my spine.
But of that, I have iron control.
I shifted sideways and he cried out. Whether from pleasure or worry I would pull out, I didn’t know. I soothed him with sounds and shifted forward, just one inch, just as far as I was sure it was safe for him to take.
Arching again, he screamed into the table, wordless mouth open and wet on its slick surface.
That sound I knew. It was good. I quickened my pace.
“You’re going to come apart for me, Beloved,” I whispered, loud enough for him to hear over the sound of my flesh sliding in and out of him and his grip on the creaking table. “You’re going to scream. That’s my Christmas present. Do it. No one can hear.”
Then bracing, taking all his weight with one arm, enjoying even the slight pain of exerting myself like that for him, I leaned just close enough to slide my hand up his straining thigh and grasp the beautiful, swollen part of him longing for me there.
I wished I could see it. It’s so smooth, veined and perfect. It had to be red, maybe even purple with hot blood pooling behind his pale skin.
But seeing it would have to wait. I knew one other thing I could do for him that no human could. Something almost worth being me.
Leaning forward, I stretched my tongue out to its utmost and flicked it against the place where we joined.
The shudder went up him, through him, and some muffled non-word was his last conscious effort as his body locked, spasming, a long, deep, wordless groan escaping as he arched inward, curling toward my hand holding him, tightly, feeling the pulsing and hot jets dripping over my fingers.
I flexed my hips again, just slightly, just enough to keep moving for him, and the jets renewed.
Then he did scream for me.
This had happened before. The orgasms could keep coming, at least for a little while. I pulled out a little and sank into him again, and again, and once more.
Dry, I still felt him pulse.
His long, low moan wasn’t enough. As I said, I am greedy. Selfish.
His.
I did it again and there was an edge to his cry, as if he wasn’t sure he could take more, but he came again, inside pulsing against my flesh the way he pulsed in my hand, throbbing, gripped in a pleasure that wouldn’t let go.
“Once more, darling,” I whispered, and gave him five more quick, sharp thrusts, each one hitting that spot just right.
He slapped the table with both hands, bracing, arms shaking, and this time the scream was long, rising, definitely at its limit, almost too sharp.
He had no more to give. Shooting dry, shaking, the evidence of success dripping from my hand to the floor, he collapsed so fast I worried he might bruise.
That was enough for me.
With a roar, I let go. I felt my own peak, too long denied, surging up through me, out of me. It was a force almost beyond control, rushing through my bones, my blood, every muscle clenching toward him and around him. I saw white and stars. More than I deserved for Christmas Eve.
Too late I worried it would be too much for him; it was already jetting out of me, overflowing, and I knew it was filling him up.
This time his moan was ragged, but low, and I knew he felt it, knew he wanted it, knew he could survive, if not with one more orgasm, then with a last burst of core-deep pleasure that he’d remember no matter how long we both lived.
Instantly I pulled myself together, checking him for wounds, for blood. If ever I hurt him?—
“I’m okay,” he slurred against the tabletop, knowing how I worried.
“You are so spectacular.” Gently I pulled myself from him, knowing there would be a gush, reaching for a kitchen towel we would have to replace.
I looked at the clock. It was two minutes past midnight.
“Thank you for my present,” I murmured, gathering his limp, sweating body into my arms and sinking with him to the floor, pressing kisses against his skin. He turned his face into my fur, sighing the most satisfied sigh I’d ever heard, and I felt my heart swell. “Merry Christmas.”
“That was not for you,” he slurred, and I gloated over it, that little flash of selfishness. “Merry Christmas to me .”
“I think it was for me,” I told him gently. Because I have many faults, and one of them is wanting people to face hard facts.
He’d given up his list. His schedule. His visits. For me.
Helpless against the realities of time, which would not stop passing, I rocked him in my arms, keeping him warm.
CHRIS
Slowly things came back to me, piece by piece. Oxygen. The feeling in my hands. The ability to think.
Branca was likely already wondering what he’d done wrong. He was like that. Everything cut and dried, one thing or the other, and he was always bad.
And I was always perfect.
But I’m not perfect.
“That was good.” The word was not enough. “I feel like I’m glowing. Am I glowing?”
“Always.” He rocked me tighter against his chest. I flattened my hand against it, stroking the skin and fur, watching the play between his colors and mine.
We were a terrible mess, literally and figuratively, but Branca hadn’t forgotten how to let me come back to earth after flying that high, any more than he’d forgotten how to make love to me.
“I’m a mess.” And this was what happened after he took me all apart and left the pieces scattered. Everything I thought fell right out of my mouth. “I wish you’d bathe me like you did in Thessaloníki. That was the best part. But I won’t ask. Just give me a minute till I can move.”
“Ask me for anything.” His eyes looked almost human this close, dark-irised and deep set; the brow over them furrowed as if in puzzlement or worry. “I wish you would.”
“I’ve been selfish enough.” I sighed, shifted a little in his arms. “I just... I’ve never wanted anything more. Thank you, Branca. When someone’s waited a lifetime...” I gave up trying to move and went limp. It felt peculiar to be held up off the ground in someone’s lap, like I was small, or much younger.
It felt good, and right, and like everything I had missed for way too long.
“Never selfish enough.”
“I know you didn’t plan for anything like that to happen. Noah locked you in a closet and here we are. Whatever you planned for Christmas Eve...” That long list was still there behind my eyes like it had been for so long, like it always would be. “I had plans too, but maybe once a millennium or so I can just have what I want for Christmas.”
His lips dropped to the top of my sweaty head. “What we just did?”
“I wanted you. Just you.” I closed my eyes and imagined it was any other night, a night before that horrible one in Vienna, and we would fall asleep then wake up and spend the whole day together, and the next day after that, and the next day after that. “I know you wanted me to have some different life, and I suppose I can’t really convince you to stay. But for a minute I felt like you would. Like I had you back. And that’s what I wanted.”
He rocked for a moment, the hot smell of him and sex all around us, and for a few minutes more I could forget that I would have to forget him.
Bonus present, I thought wildly, suppressing a love-drunk laugh. Or whatever this was. Like a stocking stuffer. I tightened a clump of fur in my fist in case he planned to run.
I had just assumed, for so long, that he was mine. That I knew him. That nothing could keep him away from me.
That we had the same definition of love.
I wanted to be more like Branca. I wanted things to be clearer, with crisp lines between one thing and another. Love. Belonging. History. Desire. Generosity. Selfishness.
Good ideas and bad ones.
I closed my eyes. They say that no matter how long you live, your childhood memories are the clearest. I remember my parents, the ones who adopted me. They wanted me.
Then they’d died—probably just like the ones who gave me life—and I lost them, then everything else.
Cinnamus. That was my guardian’s name. So long in the grave his bones were probably dust, yet his work lived on, making me afraid to claim anything for myself.
“You belong to me.” I said it before I could talk myself out of it.
“Yes, I do.” I felt his voice in his chest, against my hand. So simple. No argument. No difficulty. Not very Branca.
I wanted him to say you belong to me as well, but he didn’t.
“I wronged you,” he said instead. That wasn’t what I wanted at all. “I’m so sorry. You should never forgive me.”
“I will, though. If you tell me what you’re thinking.”
“I’m thinking I am foolish. And you must bathe.” That was a cut-and-dried truth. “I am certain there is a bathing room upstairs. Can we get there without meeting the boy?”
“That kid is fast asleep. But yeah, I don’t want to risk it.” I pointed at the arch to the living room. “We can go through there straight into the bathroom.”
There was more silence than I expected so I looked up to see his face. His eyes are expressive in the light, more brown than black. They’re gentle, really. It’s only that he comes out in the dark, and his retinas reflect light the way his parents’ did.
He touched my head with the tip of his nose. “Shall I come with you?”
I didn’t understand why he was being so serious. My laugh was weak. “Since I may not be able to stand...”
Instantly he set me on my feet.
I’m not a small man. I’d missed that feeling of being small in someone else’s hands.
Treasured.
I put the feeling away. I am, as they say nowadays, a grown-ass man. I’d asked for exactly what I got for Christmas.
Mind-bending sex.
I told myself I wasn’t being a baby by grabbing his hand before I walked out of the glamor and through the archway.
Just being with Branca in the bathroom made me want to laugh again. He was stuffed into the small space and had to hunch to keep from putting an elbow through the little window.
I got in the shower and turned on the water just to save space.
Of course that meant it was cold when it hit me, and I shivered; it might even have sizzled, my skin was so hot.
I heard Branca’s little grunt of disapproval.
The shower gel was two-thirds empty. Once we used it to wash Branca, I’d have to replace that too. “Sure you don’t want to get in here with me?” I whispered from behind the plastic checkerboard curtain, trying not to wake Noah.
“You are joking.”
I was.
I felt good. Wistful, but good. I couldn’t help it. My textbooks had names for all the compounds pumping through my brain right now. Dopamine. Oxytocin. Vasopressin. So many modern words for things I would otherwise have imagined we both felt, the tenuous, invisible connection between us.
I wouldn’t be the last human to make that mistake, but I ought to know better.
Whatever Branca did next—and I could not guess what that would be—I understood myself better now. I had needed tonight.
I didn’t understand the ties between us, but if I believed Branca—and I preferred to—I had done nothing to break them.
And maybe, like magic, I could still make something of them, if I paid the price.
“Get in here.” Scrubbing a dry towel over my head and then wrapping it around my hips, I stepped out onto the shower mat—it was also checkerboard, and I couldn’t decide if it was ugly or not—then urged him into the tub like I used to do, tugging his fur.
He looked suspicious. After all, the most magnificent part of him was sheathed again, and he had not gotten as messy as me; still, fur or not, he needed a wash. He stepped in.
The tub creaked; we held our breath.
He yelped a tiny yelp when I turned the showerhead on his furry groin and glared at me. I just held the forefinger of my free hand to my lips, gesturing him to stay quiet, and dumped some mouthwash in his open mouth, forcing him to close it.
There was something pleasantly powerful about washing him down, scrubbing through the fur, even rubbing his sheath a little so part of that magnificence peeked out and I could wash it too. I used the shower gel and both hands to clean his face, up into the fur on his head, and behind his soft conical ears; he shook his head warningly, throwing suds everywhere, and glared again with one eye. Soap promptly ran into it, which must have stung. His face worked as he suppressed the urge to yell.
Then I had a huge, dripping Branca on my hands. A wet Branca smelling of—I checked the shower gel’s label—peaches and jasmine. And mouthwash. “I cannot go out like this.” He ducked but one of his horns caught the shower curtain.
I unhooked it before it made a hole. My heart lurched. “I didn’t say you would.”
And grabbing the hair dryer from the shelf under the sink, silently apologizing to Noah’s absent mom, I grabbed Branca’s hand and led him back through the bathroom door.
In the kitchen we were back in the glamor of silence. He looked at me. I looked at him.
There was an outlet on the wall above the kitchen table. Another thing we’d have to clean well before we left.
Or before I left.
I plugged in the hair dryer and got to work on Branca’s fur.