18. In Desperation
Chapter eighteen
In Desperation
Rerdas waited for Imalroc’s answer. He probably should be standing already, leaving Imalroc the space he needed, and returning to his own bed.
But the sheets there still stank of Umber, and his heart ached from holding the muzzle—he should’ve found a different way with that. It had been a nightmare of a night.
All he wanted was to be close to Imalroc.
The battleboxer leaned toward him as if he’d heard the thought. He hooked a finger into the collar of Rerdas’s undershirt, drawing him in.
He didn’t deserve to have Imalroc kiss him. He made a muted, faint plea against Imalroc’s mouth, but the battleboxer only tilted his head to a new angle, his lips gentle.
When Imalroc broke the kiss, he didn’t go far. He rested his forehead against Rerdas’s. Rerdas tried to wrestle his breathing back under control. They would say fair night, whisper it into each other’s mouths, and he would go. He had to. He’d already asked far too much of Imalroc.
But he couldn’t stop wanting. He’d come to the room guilty and miserable and still hoping, unfairly, that he would be held. He wanted to be comforted. Imalroc wasn’t in any condition to give him that, and he couldn’t ask the man to just shove aside his own troubles to make room for him.
Imalroc still leaned against him. The battleboxer stole a flash of a kiss, too quick for Rerdas to encourage more, and then pulled back slightly, glaring down at the mattress.
“What are you thinking?” Rerdas asked quietly. He hated that Imalroc might be tearing at himself in his head, wanting things he would never say aloud.
“Nothing,” Imalroc muttered, giving him a mutinous look that dared him to ask again.
The battleboxer was spoiling for a fight, a restless energy in his shifting feet and hands.
He wouldn’t keep still where he sat, and he didn’t have the look of someone who would flop back into the kind of healing sleep he needed once Rerdas did what he should’ve already done and left.
“What are you thinking?” Imalroc asked, turning the question into a jab.
“I’m… worrying about you. Wishing I could make you happy.” Gently, slowly, he reached to tuck a loose tendril of white hair back behind the battleboxer’s ear.
Imalroc scoffed, but he turned into Rerdas’s palm like it was the only good thing in the room.
Rerdas cupped the line of his cheek, watching Imalroc’s eyes briefly closed. When he opened them again, he stared at Rerdas until he suddenly straightened, his lips thinning and gaze flattening.
A reflexive apology was halfway out of Rerdas’s mouth when Imalroc silenced it with a hand clamped over his shoulder. A dull pain echoed from where Imalroc’s thumb pressed a bruise Umber had left at the base of his neck. Rerdas wanted to shrivel into dust and float away.
“He’s gone?” A muscle jumped in Imalroc’s jaw.
“Yes.” For now. The duke would want him at Marasette again, and he didn’t know how long he could delay it. He couldn’t meet Imalroc’s gaze.
Imalroc caught his chin, forcing him to look up. “You’re not his, Rerdas. You belong to yourself.”
It felt like being propped up and dusted off and set on his own two feet, and it wasn’t exactly what he wanted. He also wasn’t sure it was true. He swayed toward Imalroc, knowing his eyes were begging and there was a promise on the tip of his tongue that he shouldn’t, maybe couldn’t, truly give.
Imalroc’s gaze lingered on his mouth. Rerdas felt the phantom pressure of a hungry kiss before one was actually happening. The sound of their mingled breath and meeting lips was the only noise in the room.
It wasn’t what he should be doing, but he was sinking slowly back onto the mattress, Imalroc following him down, inevitable as nightfall.
He’d been starved for this since Umber had first stolen him from Imalroc’s room in Kibo. Just a little more, and he would make himself go. Imalroc leaned over him, pressing him down with the intoxicating weight of his body.
They had to stop kissing to get a proper breath. Imalroc lay on top of him, his face buried in the crook of Rerdas’s neck. Rerdas listened to his unsteady breathing and wondered if perhaps another taste wouldn’t be the worst idea.
“You make me feel like I’m dreaming,” he whispered into Imalroc’s ear.
Bared teeth flashed against his skin. “Careful, huntmaster.” The spark of restless challenge was back in Imalroc’s voice. “I might stop when you least want me to.” He tugged at Rerdas’s hair lightly, and his fingertips left a blazing path along the delicate skin behind Rerdas’s ear.
Light stretched from the corner where he’d left the lantern, catching on the sharp angles of Imalroc’s face and glinting in the ivory strands falling loose from his braid.
His tunic’s unlaced collar hung open, and Rerdas caressed the thick angle of muscle rising from his shoulder to the long line of his neck.
His mouth, lips flushed and gleaming still, begged to be kissed again.
Umber was gone at last, and Imalroc never needed to lift the Draalish sword again.
Rerdas would insist Etiana sign over the contract, deposit it in Imalroc’s hands, and then they could sort it all out.
Talk was for the morning. There could be more than just pain for them.
Perhaps they both needed a reminder of that.
Temptation beat in time with his pulse, resonant in his drum-tight skin.
Imalroc tapped his forefinger against the bow of Rerdas’s lips. “Stop looking at me like that. I’ll make you pay for it.”
His heartbeat sped, and he knew Imalroc, with his hand draped across his chest, would feel it. He wanted, achingly, to find out what the battleboxer meant and how exactly he would extract payment. “That didn’t sound like a threat to me.”
Imalroc stroked down to Rerdas’s hip and squeezed. Aftershocks of the touch radiated up Rerdas’s ribcage and down his leg. His cock thickened, and he was helpless to stop it.
Doubly so when Imalroc moved his hand. He traced the shape of Rerdas’s half-hard cock through his trousers.
Rerdas gasped, “Imalroc, we should—”
“I might send you back to your own bed with this”—Imalroc stroked the swelling, hard outline again—“untended. Unsatisfied.”
That did absolutely nothing to settle him. It wasn’t wise to keep on like this, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. All he wanted was more.
“You could,” he said softly. “But I hope you don’t.”
The corner of Imalroc’s lips rose in a smile. There was no gentleness in it, and Rerdas couldn’t look too closely at the way something deep in his gut leapt eagerly in response.
“Would it be better if I just kept you like this all night?” Imalroc asked, still making idle, maddening little touches along Rerdas’s length. He pressed against one of Rerdas’s thighs, and the stirring Rerdas felt there suggested Imalroc wasn’t as unaffected as he sounded.
“What would you do, huntmaster, if I told you to get up and go now?” Imalroc challenged.
He met Imalroc’s hooded eyes. “I’d do as you asked. I’d leave. Go back to my bed.” He tilted his chin back without breaking their locked gazes. “Strip naked. Get a hand on the mess you’ve made. Bring myself off as many times as I could, all night, imagining your hands, your mouth, your cock in—”
Imalroc put a hand over his mouth. “Fuck.” His wintry blue eyes narrowed again, gaze roaming Rerdas’s face. “I like to see you desperate.”
All Imalroc had to do was look at him long enough, and Rerdas would crawl for him. He had to know that already. He kissed the palm fastened across his mouth.
Imalroc shifted suddenly, rose on one knee, and brought his other leg sweeping over Rerdas’s torso to pin him down as if he’d suddenly decided this was a wrestling match.
“What—” He tried to rise, and Imalroc knocked him back down without even looking at him. He gripped Rerdas behind his knees and pulled his legs up and wide, bending forward. Even through the fabric, Rerdas could feel his hot breath passing over his leaking cock. His mouth was so close.
“Oh, gods.” A shock of stinging arousal pulsed into his balls.
“Maybe I’ll just make you come like this and send you back to your room dripping,” Imalroc said. He rubbed where Rerdas strained at the front of his trousers.
“If you don’t let go all over yourself first,” Rerdas gasped.
Imalroc reared up and twisted to look back at him, his grin half hidden behind his shoulder. “You think you’re good enough to make me forget myself, huntmaster?”
If he was going to get into a contest of wills with Imalroc, he would definitely lose. But he’d love losing. “Might be,” he said.
Imalroc curled a hand over his balls, delved back to massage an arrow of pleasure straight into that spot that made him pant, and Rerdas’s eyes nearly rolled back in his head. He tried to lift his hips, chase the sensation, but Imalroc kept him plastered to the mattress.
“Fuck it.” Imalroc rolled off him and hooked a finger into the tie of his trousers. “I want to see you. Take these off?” He looked at Rerdas, waiting.
“Anything you want,” Rerdas breathed. He didn’t give himself time to consider whether he should be doing this.
There was only so much he could deny himself.
His cock rose painfully tight, and it was a relief to pick the trouser buttons loose and slide free of his slippers so he could kick the clothes off entirely.
He felt like winter ground thawed by spring.
The ache of blood returning, waking touches, green and tender shoots cajoled upwards by the sun.
He stroked himself, looking all the while at Imalroc sprawled beside him. The battleboxer’s gaze tracked the exploratory motion of Rerdas’s hand.
“You look good laid out this way.” Imalroc’s fingers circled over the head of his cock, smearing wet. “You look like you should be used all night.” His hand ringed Rerdas’s shaft, gliding down and climbing again.
Rerdas had to let his eyes flutter shut. Once, he’d given up on ever feeling like this again. He’d chased echoes of what had been. And then Imalroc was there, a comet slicing through the dark, and it turned out his blood could still sing.
He kissed Imalroc again, too loose and aroused to do it with any finesse. It didn’t matter that the kiss was one open-mouthed, jerking gasp after another, not when Imalroc’s calloused hand was twisting slowly from the root to the head of his cock.
“This isn’t fair,” Rerdas managed, on stuttering breath. “You can touch me. And I can’t touch you.”
“And yet, look how you like it,” Imalroc teased. But he released Rerdas to untie the lacings across his trousers and ease them down his thighs, shoving his smallclothes down too.
Rerdas shifted onto his side, facing him.
“This’d be better with oil, but… can I try…
” He slipped a hand across Imalroc’s stomach, sliding down to stroke the hot silk of his cock.
Then he gathered them both in hand. Pressed their lengths together, shuddering at the heat.
He watched Imalroc’s face, giving him a moment to assess whether this was welcome.
Imalroc sucked in a hard breath, and his eyes shut. All he managed was a soft, “Oh. That’s…”
“Good?” He brushed the question across Imalroc’s lips.
“Y-yes,” Imalroc hissed.
Rerdas slid his hand greedily up and down. It felt too good to stop now. Watching the pleasure unfold on Imalroc’s face was nearly unbearable.
Imalroc nosed forward across the little space left between them and kissed him. It was just as hungry as before, but gentle as a sigh. Rerdas propped one leg over Imalroc’s hip, tilting toward him.
“Faster or slower?” he murmured.
Imalroc swallowed. “Slower,” he said, so quietly Rerdas wouldn’t have caught it were it not for the shape of his lips around the word.
Obediently, he slowed his hand. Tormented them both with his touch, until they traded panting breath.
He felt the moment Imalroc’s control truly began to slip. That ice-blue gaze reached into him, Imalroc’s pupils dark and devouring, his mouth nearly as wet as the head of his cock. He rubbed a hand up Rerdas’s flank, squeezing, hips moving faster.
“Close?” Rerdas asked, his hand speeding a little before he could help it.
Imalroc’s eyes narrowed. “If you are.”
Rerdas grinned, breathless. “I can do this all—”
Imalroc lunged, the wall of muscle that was his chest suddenly rising, looming over Rerdas on the mattress. His hands were at Rerdas’s hips, tipping him onto his back. He shoved the thin undershirt up to Rerdas’s neck and ran his tongue in one long, wet trail down his chest.
Rerdas arched, a frantic sound tearing loose in his throat.
“Tell yourself whatever you like, huntmaster. You can’t hide from me. Let me see more.”
He was out of his shirt and naked on the mattress the moment Imalroc finished that princely command, his heart beating half out of his chest. His situation wasn’t helped by the way Imalroc dragged his gaze down his body, taking him in.
His cock jumped, and he moaned aloud when Imalroc leaned in again and pressed them back together.
“More, huntmaster,” Imalroc breathed. “Faster, now.”
All he wanted to hear. His and Imalroc’s hands grew steadily slicker as they sailed back and forth in each other's hold. Rerdas thrust against the motion of their hands, desire thickening with every surging beat, his cock sliding easily against Imalroc’s.
He would not last through much more of this. Through his heavy lashes, he looked up at Imalroc, still balanced over him, riding him.
Rerdas switched hands. He watched Imalroc and slid his slick fingers into his own mouth. Sucked the salt from them.
“You—fucking shithead—” Imalroc gasped, hips churning. He plunged down and kissed him.
Rerdas couldn’t get enough of him, especially not when he was like this. He rocked in time with the heady retreat and return of Imalroc’s weight, pressure blooming into undeniable pleasure, entirely given over to it.
Imalroc bowed toward him, panting. “I want you,” he gasped, “so much.”
“You have me.” Rerdas was too lost to stop what tumbled out of his mouth. “Keep me. Please.”
Imalroc’s teeth bared against Rerdas’s neck, but his moan was unmistakable as he bucked into their hands. And there, there was the edge, and Rerdas had what he needed in a flood of heat pulsing out across his bare stomach as Imalroc tipped over it.
He meant to speak, to praise and promise, but his body clenched and unraveled, riding toward his own completion. Imalroc’s broken voice spilled into his ear, a strong hand claimed him, and Rerdas came hard, ecstasy winging from his throat and starlight dancing behind his eyelids.