Chapter 11 #4
He turned slowly, not hiding his wariness, nor the hard swallow he forced down upon finding Dashiell standing close in the half-light.
For a few long seconds, the vowsmith didn’t speak, didn’t move, before he lifted his hand to the hair at Nic’s temple.
Gentle as a breeze, that soft touch ghosted down his cheek, fingers coming to rest upon his chin.
Yet for all its lightness, Nic felt the trail like it had been seared into his skin, and it was all he could do not to hold his breath.
There was little difference in their heights, yet Dashiell tilted Nic’s face up to better catch the meagre light—a man seeking to look his fill, gaze hungry.
“You’re beautiful,” he murmured, and still holding Nic’s chin, he leaned close.
For a moment he held their lips a breath apart, before he brushed the tip of his nose against Nic’s—a forgotten gesture recollected upon a rush of memories, each of a time they had stood so while Dashiell asked his silent permission.
Chest tight, Nic returned the gesture, knowing what it meant and wanting its every consequence.
The kiss that followed began softly, pressed to Nic’s lips with the caution of one expecting him to disappear, to push away—a reasonable fear after their last kiss had ended in apology and anger over the breakfast table.
Likely it would again, but Dashiell’s overt desire was as intoxicating as the wine, suspending every impulse toward self-preservation.
Nic leaned in, deepening the kiss, knowing he might never again have the opportunity to do so. Every touch and taste and tiny moan could be the last and he wanted them all, lifting his hands to Dashiell’s face like this time he could truly hold him present forever.
As though Nic’s fervour had been the true permission, Dashiell’s hesitance evaporated upon a guttural, needy groan. His hands slid down Nic’s back to his hips and gripped tight, pulling their bodies hard against one another, the layers of fabric a cruelty.
With his thoughts whirling into a tangle, Nic gave ground until he hit the covered aviary, and they were back where they had left off in the hallway outside Nic’s rooms, gasping and hungry. Only this time when Dashiell pulled away, it was to shed his coat, his fingers plucking at stubborn buttons.
Coats and waistcoats abandoned, Dashiell once more pushed Nic up against the aviary, hard enough to shake the curving metal bars.
Nic might have protested against frightening the birds, but Dashiell slid his knee between his legs, stealing what little remained of his sanity.
So instead he tore at the buttons of Dashiell’s shirt and pulled it up over his head.
The man who emerged, naked to the waist, was magnificent, his hair tousled from its former neatness and his eyes ablaze.
Their long-buried ember had been fanned to an inferno now, as much by their incomplete history as the illicit moment they were stealing, by a night spent wanting and wanting and unable to have.
Nic ought to have felt cold when he pulled off his own shirt, but the warmth of Dashiell’s chest pressed to his allowed no chill as they backed toward the moonlight.
No words, just a shared need, just Dashiell’s hands and his heat and the breathless huff of his desire.
It turned into a short laugh as Nic’s heels hit the window seat and he overbalanced, dropping onto its worn cushions—the perfect symmetry of such a moment bringing them back to where it had all begun.
Nic remembered that first kiss for his own stunned joy, and for the way Dashiell had looked at him afterward, awestruck and shy.
But the years had changed much, for as they sank into the space their prior selves had occupied, there was nothing shy in the way Dashiell sat astride him, pinning Nic possessively in place.
Nic had never seen such fire in him. He had always been polite, mild, soft-spoken Dashiell, not this glorious creature, groaning against Nic’s open mouth as he ground their hips together.
God knew he had dreamed of this moment, but even in his wildest imaginings, it hadn’t been quite like this.
Able to reach nowhere else, Nic ran his hands up the smooth expanse of Dashiell’s back, causing him to arch and pull from their kiss with a gasp.
With another lover, he might have chuckled at such sensitivity, but all he wanted was to make Dashiell do it again, make him bare his throat so Nic could slide his tongue down its ridges.
All of a sudden, Dashiell pulled away, stumbling to his feet. Nic endured a flare of panic that once again it was over before it had begun, but Dashiell was pulling off his breeches, working with a speed that made Nic recollect all that had ever been said about a vowsmith’s skilled hands.
Following suit, Nic discarded the last of his own clothing, throwing aside his breeches to find Dashiell standing naked in the shreds of storm-mottled moonlight.
Nic almost swallowed his tongue. The years had filled him out, replacing a slim youth with a man so perfectly proportioned that a sculptor might have wept—he had a pair of muscular thighs and broad well-defined shoulders, yet there was a delicacy to the bones of his wrists and ankles that drew the eye just as hungrily.
For whole heartbeats, Nic found himself able to do nothing but stare. Dashiell stared back, tension growing every second they did not touch.
The vowsmith broke first. One step, two, and with the groan of a man goaded beyond bearing he pulled Nic close until they stood skin to skin, their kiss a fight for mastery.
But despite the anger he’d been carrying, here and now Nic realised he wanted nothing more than to lose, such that when Dashiell spoke his breathless question against Nic’s lips, he was ready for it.
“May I—?”
“Yes.”