Chapter 27
Eskil
Eskil lies back against the pillows, keeping his weight off his right side, and watches Indrie undress.
His healer's hands tremble as they work.
Nerves rather than cold, the fine vibration of a man who is wanted and knows it and has not yet learned to take the knowledge for granted.
His fingers find the laces of his shirt and pull them free and the fabric loosens at his throat and his chest, and then he pulls it over his head and drops it beside the bed.
The embers cast a low amber glow that does more for his skin than any lamp could, catching the line of his collarbones and the dip of his waist and the flat plane of his stomach, and Eskil grips the sheets to stop himself reaching.
Indrie's hands drop to the laces of his trousers.
He hesitates, just a beat, a single held breath, and then pushes them down over his hips.
He has to wiggle to get them past his thighs and the motion is graceless and endearing and Eskil watches him kick them off the end of the bed and wants to put his mouth on every inch of skin that has just been revealed.
He stands there. Naked. Flushed from his cheeks to his chest, the color visible even in the dim light.
He is hard, curving up against his stomach, and his dark hair is half out of its braid and falling around his shoulders, and he is standing between Eskil's legs at the edge of the bed looking down at him with an expression that is equal parts desire and determination.
"Beautiful boy," Eskil says, because he cannot not say it. "Come here."
Indrie climbs onto the bed. He settles between Eskil's legs, straddling his thighs, hands braced on Eskil's chest, and the feeling of him, bare and warm and slight over Eskil's clothed hips, makes something primal and possessive coil tight in his gut.
"You're still dressed," Indrie says. He is flushed down to his navel and his voice is not steady but his hands are.
His hands are always steady. He reaches for Eskil's waistband and works the laces with quick efficient fingers, and Eskil lifts his hips, carefully, the wound pulling, and between them they get his trousers down and off, and then there is nothing between them.
Indrie's eyes drop. Travel down. And Eskil watches him look, watches his lips part and his throat work and his flush deepen impossibly–and the expression on his face, the wide-eyed half-daunted fascination of a man who has had this inside him twice and is still not entirely certain how–does something to Eskil that is violent in its intensity.
"I want—" Indrie starts. Stops. His voice is very small. "I want to. With my mouth. But I don't know if—" He swallows. "You will have to tell me if I am doing it wrong."
Eskil puts his hand over Indrie's where it rests on his chest. Steady and warm and grounding.
"You couldn't do it wrong if you tried," he says. "And I have been thinking about your mouth on my cock for two days, so the bar is not high."
Indrie's mouth opens and closes and he makes a soft strangled sound that might be an objection or might be arousal and is probably both, and then he slides down Eskil's body.
He goes slowly. His hands trail down Eskil's chest, fingertips tracing the lines of ink, following the tattoos the way he did in the library, as though mapping them.
His palms skim over Eskil's ribs, careful around the wound, and down the flat of his stomach.
The muscles jump under his touch. He pauses at the trail of coarse hair below Eskil's navel and follows it with one fingertip, a single line drawn downward, and Eskil's cock twitches against his stomach.
Indrie settles between Eskil's parted thighs.
He is on his stomach, propped on his elbows, his face level with Eskil's cock, and the expression on it, focused and intent, the same expression he wears when he is assessing a wound or measuring a dosage, should not be as erotic as it is.
The healer's gaze, clinical and thorough, directed at Eskil's cock.
It twists something dark and hot behind his ribs.
Indrie wraps his hand around the base. His fingers are slender and his grip is tentative and his hand looks obscenely small against the thickness of him, and the sight of that contrast, the delicacy of those fingers against the heavy flushed length of him, drags a groan out of Eskil from somewhere deep.
Indrie looks up at the sound. His dark eyes meet Eskil's through the curtain of loose hair falling around his face and his expression is uncertain and hopeful and desperately earnest.
"Like that," Eskil manages. His voice is rough. "Just like that. Tighter if you want."
Indrie's grip tightens. He strokes, once, a slow experimental pull from base to tip, and Eskil exhales hard through his nose.
Indrie does it again, watching his face with focused attention, adjusting his grip and his angle and his pressure, and Eskil realizes that Indrie is approaching this the way he approaches every new skill.
Painstakingly earnest. The thought makes him want to laugh and come at the same time.
Then Indrie lowers his head and licks him.
A single tentative stroke of his tongue across the head, tasting, testing, and Eskil's hand fists in the sheet and his hips jerk and the sound that comes out of him is not a word in any language.
Indrie pauses, tongue still against the slit, and glances up, checking, and the sight of him, dark-eyed and flushed with his tongue on Eskil's cock, hair falling forward, lips wet, is going to be burned into the inside of Eskil's eyelids for the rest of his natural life.
"Don't stop," Eskil says, and his voice barely functions. "Fuck. Keep going."
Indrie takes him into his mouth.
He is careful about it. He takes the head first, his lips stretching around the girth, and Eskil feels the wet heat of him close around it and his vision goes white at the edges.
Indrie sucks, gently, experimentally, and the suction is clumsy and perfect and Eskil groans and his hand moves from the sheet to Indrie's head, fingers sliding into the dark hair.
Not pushing. Never pushing. Just resting there, a point of contact that says I'm here, you're doing well, keep going.
"Use your tongue," Eskil says. His voice is a wreck. "Flat. Yes, like that, along the underside. Fuck, Indrie."
Indrie's tongue presses flat against the sensitive ridge beneath the head and Eskil's spine curves off the pillow.
The heat in his belly is already building, embarrassingly fast, because this is Indrie, and Indrie's mouth, and the combination of the sight and the sensation is too much for a man who has spent days thinking about precisely this.
Indrie takes him deeper. Finds a rhythm, bobbing slowly, his hand working the base where his mouth cannot reach, and the coordination is imperfect and the enthusiasm compensates for everything the technique lacks.
He makes sounds, soft wet satisfied sounds that hum against sensitive skin and send vibrations ricocheting through Eskil's nervous system.
He is enjoying this. Eskil can feel it in the way his body has loosened, in the way his free hand has come up to grip Eskil's thigh, in the way he shifts on the mattress and presses his own hips down against the bed seeking friction.
"Look at you," Eskil breathes. His hand tightens in Indrie's hair, not pulling but guiding, tilting his head just slightly so that the angle changes, and Indrie takes him a fraction deeper and gags, softly, and pulls back.
Eskil's hand loosens at once. "Easy. Don't force it. Only what you can take."
Indrie's eyes are watering, not from distress but from the reflex, and he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and the gesture is so artlessly obscene that Eskil nearly comes from the sight of it alone.
"I want to take more," Indrie says. His voice is hoarse. His lips are swollen and wet and his eyes are dark and liquid, and he says it with the same quiet determination he uses when he tells a patient he is going to fix them. Not a request. A statement of intent.
"You will," Eskil says, and his voice drops to something molten.
"Not tonight. Tonight you take what you can and it is more than enough.
" He brushes the pad of his thumb across Indrie's lower lip, tracing the swollen curve of it.
"You have the prettiest mouth I have ever seen and you have had it on my cock for three minutes and I am already close.
Do you understand that? Three minutes of your mouth and I am falling apart. "
Indrie whimpers. The sound vibrates against Eskil's thumb, still resting on his lip, and his dark eyes go wider and his flush deepens and his tongue darts out and touches the pad of it.
Eskil is going to die.
"Take me again," he says, hoarse. "And don't stop until I tell you."
Indrie takes him. Deeper this time, bolder, his rhythm steadier and his mouth hotter and his tongue doing things that no man three encounters into his own life has any business knowing how to do.
Eskil is distantly aware that Indrie is a quick study in all things and that this is apparently no exception.
His hand in Indrie's hair tightens and Indrie moans around him and the vibration shudders through his cock and into his spine and the coil in his belly winds tighter.
"I'm close," Eskil says. His voice is ragged. "Indrie. I'm going to come. Pull off if you don't want—"
Indrie does not pull off. His grip on Eskil's thigh tightens, fingers pressing hard into the muscle, and he takes him deeper, not all the way but enough, enough that the head hits the back of his throat and he swallows around it and Eskil shatters.