19. Chapter 19 #2
Eskil's brow furrows. The confusion is genuine, not performed, the raw bewilderment of somebody told a thing that does not correspond to any reality he recognizes.
"You think this has to do with customs? A sense of obligation?"
"Is it not?" Indrie's voice comes out fainter than he intends. “When I kissed you the other night–”
Eskil shakes his head. “You weren't in your right frame of mind, Indrie.”
“But neither were you,” Indrie manages, the words torn out of him. “That night on the ship– Eskil, the fruit makes you want anyone. You don't have to–” Gods, he almost can't say it. “It doesn't have to mean anything to you just because it did to me.”
Eskil's expression shifts. Something behind his eyes splits open. His hand comes up to cup Indrie's jaw, cradling his face as though it is a thing he cannot bear to let fall.
"Sweetheart," Eskil breathes, and there is that word again — the one that sounds precious in his rough voice, the one that has no business in the mouth of a man who has killed without flinching. "I wanted you before I ate that fucking fruit."
The arguments on Indrie's tongue lose their voice.
He stares at Eskil and the words rearrange themselves and he cannot make them mean what they seem to mean, because what they seem to mean is impossible.
Eskil's hand is warm on his jaw and his eyes are searingly honest and he does not look away, and Indrie's heart is doing something structural.
Cracking, maybe, or rebuilding, the two sensations so similar he cannot tell them apart.
Before. Before the fruit. Before the cabin. Before Indrie took off his shirt and crawled between Eskil's legs and gave himself to a man he thought would never want him.
Eskil kisses him again, and this time Indrie grips the front of his tunic with both hands and pulls him closer, and the kiss is deep and desperate and tastes of salt.
His own tears, he realizes, because at some point between sweetheart and before I ate that fucking fruit he started crying and did not notice.
Eskil's thumbs find the wetness on his cheeks and brush it away without breaking the kiss, and Indrie wants him so much it is an injury, a wound that will not close, and he does not want it to.
Eskil's fingers find the laces at Indrie's collar, working them open. The tug of cord sends a shiver down his spine, and Indrie laughs against his mouth, disbelieving and giddy and half-terrified.
"Are you really undressing me here?" he asks, pulling back just enough to say it against Eskil's lips.
“If I don't get your skin under my hands I'm going to burn this gods damned keep down.”
Eskil lowers his mouth to Indrie's throat and sucks a bruise into the tender skin below his jaw.
The sensation is so sharp and so good that Indrie's vision whites for a moment, his fingers tightening convulsively in the tunic.
Eskil's voice comes out low against his skin, a rumble Indrie feels in his sternum.
"Don't tell me you've never had someone fuck you on a desk before?"
The word, blunt and filthy in Eskil's rough voice, sends a bolt through Indrie that starts at the base of his skull and ends between his legs, and his hips jerk forward involuntarily. He gasps, heat flooding his face. "Of course not. I've only ever — on the ship —"
Eskil's hands still. His mouth lifts and he stares at him.
The expression on his face is something Indrie has never seen.
Shock and hunger and a tenderness so fierce it borders on violence.
His jaw works and his eyes rake down Indrie's body and back up with a new intensity, as though he is re-seeing every moment between them through a lens that has just come into focus.
Indrie stares back and the flush that climbs his cheeks burns all the way to the tips of his ears.
"You must have been able to tell," he says, and he is self-deprecating and small and he hates himself for it. "That before the ship I hadn't. That I had never been with anyone. I was embarrassing."
"Embarrassing," Eskil repeats flatly. The word comes out of his mouth as though it has personally insulted his bloodline.
He leans in, teeth catching the lobe of Indrie's ear in a sharp nip that makes his breath hitch, and his voice drops to something dark and rough that Indrie feels in the pit of his stomach.
"You're saying my cock is the only one you've ever taken?" His lips move against the shell of Indrie's ear, each word deliberate. "You took me like you were made for me, Indrie."
The sound Indrie makes is mortifying, a high broken whimper that escapes before he can trap it, and his hips rock forward of their own volition, seeking friction, seeking contact, seeking anything to relieve the aching pressure that has been building since Eskil's mouth first found his.
Eskil growls in response, low in his chest, possessive and dark, and something deep inside Indrie unclenches.
Eskil unlaces Indrie's shirt the rest of the way and pulls it over his head, his large hands brushing Indrie's ribs, his thumbs tracing the dip of his waist. He pauses to press his mouth to the notch of Indrie's collarbone, open and hot, his tongue tracing the ridge of bone, and Indrie arches into it.
Then his hands go to the ties at Indrie's waist, and Indrie lifts himself off the desk enough for Eskil to work his trousers down his hips, the fabric catching briefly before sliding free, and he kicks his boots off clumsily and then he is bare.
Naked on a desk in the library with his legs parted around the king of Rengara, and the absurdity and the intimacy of it collide in him and make him want to laugh and weep at once.
Eskil strips his own tunic over his head and the firelight catches the ink climbing his arms, the scars mapping his history, the hard planes of his chest rising and falling with quickened breath.
Eskil unlaces his own trousers and pushes them down his hips, and the sight of him sends a rush of heat through Indrie that pools low and insistent.
He remembers the weight of him, the impossible stretch, the way it felt on the ship, and his face burns.
Eskil reaches past him. The motion brings his chest flush against Indrie’s, the heat of him sudden and inescapable, and Indrie hears the soft scrape of something being moved on the desk — a lid lifted, the faint wet sound of something yielding.
Eskil comes back with a small covered dish, the tallow the servants leave for the desk lamps, soft and pale and giving under his fingers as he works a quantity of it into his palm.
It melts against the heat of his skin, turning translucent and slick, and the faint animal smell of it rises between them, warm and slightly sweet.
“Tell me if it's too much,” Eskil says, and his voice is low and serious and leaves no room for bravado. His thumb works the last of the tallow into the webbing of his fingers, making them gleam. “At any point. Do you understand?”
Indrie nods, his throat too tight for words. He can feel his pulse everywhere — in his neck, in his wrists, between his legs.
Eskil’s dry hand settles on his hip, thumb pressing into the jut of bone, steadying him.
The calluses catch slightly on the thin skin there.
His other hand, slick and warm, slides between Indrie’s thighs and lower, and when one finger circles his entrance Indrie sucks in a sharp breath and grips the edge of the desk hard enough that the wood bites into his palms. The tallow is warmer than he expected, almost body-hot already, and Eskil’s fingertip traces the rim of him with a patience that makes Indrie’s thighs tremble.
He circles once, twice, pressing just enough to make Indrie aware of how tightly he is clenched, how unused he is, how completely he is about to be opened.
The first press inside is slow. Careful.
Eskil watches his face, reading every small change, adjusting pressure and angle to each hitch of breath.
The intrusion is strange and intimate just like the first time and Indrie’s body resists for a moment, clenching instinctively around the thickness of even a single finger.
Then something in him yields, the muscle softening, and Eskil is inside him to the knuckle and Indrie exhales shakily and wraps his arms around Eskil’s neck because he needs something to hold onto.
He can feel the ridge of Eskil’s knuckle against the rim of him.
He can feel the heat of Eskil’s palm against the cleft of his ass.
“That’s it,” Eskil murmurs against his temple, lips brushing the damp hair there. “Relax for me. You’re doing so well.”
The praise makes him shiver. It goes through him like wine, loosening something in his chest even as his body remains taut and oversensitive.
Eskil moves, a slow deliberate thrust and then a curl, the pad of his finger dragging along the inner wall, and the sensation shifts from strange to good so quickly it takes Indrie off guard.
Heat blooms low in his belly. He makes a small sound, his hips tilting of their own accord, chasing the pressure, and Eskil hums approvingly and works a second finger in beside the first.
The stretch is sharper. Indrie bites his lower lip, his brow creasing, a thin sound catching in his throat.
Two fingers is more — the burn of it, the fullness, the way his body has to open around them.
Eskil pauses immediately, his free hand coming up to brush the hair from his face, thumb stroking along his cheekbone.
“Look at me.”
Indrie does. Eskil’s eyes are dark and intent and unbearably tender, the pupils blown wide, and there is sweat already gathering at his hairline.
“Is this all right?”
“Yes.” Indrie’s voice comes out thready. He can feel both fingers inside him, unmoving, a thick unyielding presence. “It’s just– It’s a lot.”
“I know.” Eskil presses his lips to Indrie’s forehead, lingering there, breathing him in. “Take your time.”