Page 89 of Tending the Ache

Indrie follows. Their fingers are laced and the walk from the couch to the bed is perhaps ten steps and every one of them is a choice, a closing of distance, a door opened that does not need to be walked through but is.

He walks through it.

Eskil sits on the edge of the bed. The sitting is careful, a controlled lowering, one hand braced on the mattress, and he looks up at Indrie standing between his legs and his expression is stripped of everything except want.

Indrie puts his hands on Eskil's chest and pushes him back against the pillows.

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."