Page 88 of Tending the Ache

"I know." Eskil bites the curve of his shoulder. Not hard. A press of teeth, a suggestion, and Indrie gasps. "I have been thinking about your hands for two days."

Indrie's hips are moving on their own. Small rocking motions, pressing down against the hardness beneath him, chasing the friction that pools the heat lower and lower in his belly. He is aware that this is medically indefensible. He is aware of it the way he is aware of the weather outside, distantly and theoretically, in a compartment of his mind that has been evacuated in favor of the compartment now occupied entirely by Eskil's hands on his body and Eskil's mouth on his skin.

Eskil's hands find the hem of his shirt and slide beneath. His palms press flat against Indrie's bare stomach and the contact, calloused and warm and enormous against the narrow span of his waist, makes Indrie gasp and rock down harder. Eskil groans against his shoulder, a deep guttural sound that goes through both of them, and his hands slide up Indrie's ribs, thumbs tracing the bone, fingertips skating over skin that pebbles in their wake.

"I have been lying in that bed," Eskil says, his voice ragged, his hands moving higher, "thinking about the sounds you made in the library. The way you looked when I was inside you." His thumbs find Indrie's nipples and press, and Indrie cries out, his back bowing, his grip in Eskil's hair going tight. "Thinking about the noises I have not discovered yet. The ones you have not made for me. The ones I am going to pull out of you one at a time until I have heard every single one."

Indrie whimpers. His forehead drops against Eskil's and their noses touch and they are breathing the same air, close and hot and shared, and Eskil's hands are on his chest and Eskil is hard beneath him and Indrie rocks against it and Eskil bucks up to meet him and the friction is maddening and perfect and not enough.

Eskil captures his mouth again. Licks into him, deep and slow, and Indrie moans against his tongue and grinds down in a rhythm that is becoming urgent, the heat in his belly coiling tighter with every roll. Eskil's hands drop from his chest to his ass, cupping, squeezing, pulling him forward so the angle sharpens and the pressure intensifies, and Indrie breaks the kiss to gasp and Eskil takes the opportunity to bite the hinge of his jaw and then suck the skin beneath his ear hard enough that Indrie knows it will bruise and does not care.

"Eskil." His voice is wrecked. "We shouldn't. Your wound."

"My wound can go fuck itself."

Indrie laughs, breathless and high and shaking, because the man is impossible and vulgar and Indrie is so in love with him that it hurts to breathe. Eskil's hands tighten on him and Indrie rolls his hips in a long slow grind that drops Eskil's head back against the couch cushion and shuts his eyes and pulls a sound out of him that is barely human.

And then Eskil groans in pain.

Not the low rough pleasured groan that has been sending shocks through Indrie's nervous system for the last several minutes. A sharp involuntary hiss, the sound a body makes when it meets a limit it did not agree to, and his hand flies to his right side and his face goes tight and the color that was flushed and warm drains out of it.

Indrie is off his lap before the hiss has finished.

The transition is instant. The wanting, the heat, the liquid warmth pooling low in him, all of it snaps off as cleanly as a candle being pinched. What replaces it is the healer. The healer who has been sitting at the back of his mind this entire time with his arms crossed, tapping his foot, waiting for exactly this.

"Let me see," Indrie says, and his voice has changed completely. Gone is the breathless barely coherent man who was in the king's lap thirty seconds ago. This voice is calm and authoritative and brooks no argument, and Eskil recognizes it, because it is the voice that sent Bohdi out of this bedroom with his tail between his legs.

Eskil waves him off. "It's nothing. It pulled."

"I said let me see."

He pulls Eskil's hand away from the wound and lifts the shirt. The stitching is intact, every suture in place, the careful even line unbroken, but the skin around the lower section is flushed and swollen where the tissue has been stressed by movement. By, specifically, the movement of a man bucking his hips upward with a healer in his lap.

Indrie presses the area gently. Eskil hisses again.

"You have aggravated the deep tissue," Indrie says. "The bone beneath was already bruised from the blade and you have just stressed it further." He looks up, and his expression is the combination of clinical concern and personal exasperation that only Eskil seems capable of producing in him. "This is precisely what I told you would happen."

"I recall you telling me a number of things. Most of them were threats."

"You do not take my threats seriously."

Eskil catches his hand. Will not let him retreat. Indrie is already pulling back, he can feel himself doing it, the healer reasserting control, the professional distance sliding into place between them like a pane of glass, and Eskil's grip on his fingers stops the withdrawal where it stands.

"Indrie."

Indrie stares at him. His heart is hammering. He is aching. His professional ethics are engaged in a pitched battle with the rest of his body and the rest of his body is winning by a considerable margin.

He takes a breath.

"If you lie down and promise to be very careful," he says, and his voice has gone quieter and steadier, and the meaning of it has shifted entirely out of the medical. "I will… take care of you."

The last part comes out less certain than the first. He hears it happen. He is a man who has been touched by exactly one person in his life and has been on the receiving end of it both times, and what he has just offered is not something he has ever done, and Eskil is watching him say it and will have heard the wobble.

Eskil's eyes darken. His grip on Indrie's waist loosens, not releasing but easing, giving him room to move, and the look on his face, barely leashed hunger held in check by something that is, impossibly, patience, makes Indrie's knees go weak.

"Come here," Eskil says.

He stands. Slowly. Carefully. He takes Indrie's hand and draws him toward the bed.