Page 90 of Tending the Ache

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.

The orgasm goes through him like a wave breaking. He comes in Indrie's mouth, hot and pulsing, his hand fisted in dark hair and his back arched off the pillow and a sound coming out of him that is guttural and wrecked and too loud for the room. Indrie holds on. He swallows, or tries to, and Eskil can feel the working of his throat, the effort of it, and some escapes and leaks from the corner of his mouth and trails down his chin, and the sight of it is incredible.

Indrie pulls off. His lips are swollen and wet and his chin is slick and his eyes are glazed, and he looks thoroughly and comprehensively undone. Eskil reaches for him and hauls him up the bed.

He catches Indrie's mouth and kisses the taste of himself out of it. Indrie gasps into the kiss, trembling, and Eskil can feel him, hard and leaking against his stomach, hips making small desperate involuntary motions, seeking contact.

"Your turn," Eskil says against his mouth. He cradles Indrie's head with one hand and reaches between them with the other and wraps his fist around him.

Indrie cries out. His whole body arches, spine bowing, hips thrusting forward into the grip, and the sound that tears out of him is high and broken and helpless. Eskil strokes him with a hand that is sure and steady, his thumb swiping across the head, spreading the wet that is leaking freely.

"That's it," Eskil murmurs against his temple. "So hard for me. So wet." He tightens his grip and twists his wrist and Indrie sobs. "I have been thinking about this too. About getting my hand on you. About watching your face while you come apart." He presses his mouth to Indrie's ear. "You get this pretty flush that starts at your cheeks and goes all the way down your chest. Did you know that? The first time I saw it, on the ship, you were in my lap and you went pink from your face to your fucking navel and I nearly lost my mind."

Indrie whimpers. His hands are twisted in the sheets beside Eskil's head and his face is pressed into Eskil's neck and his breathing is frantic, short sharp hitching gasps.

"You're so close," Eskil says. It is not a question. He can feel it in the way Indrie throbs in his hand, in the rigidity of his body, in the desperate uncoordinated snapping of his hips. "Just from sucking my cock, Indrie."

He moves his mouth to Indrie's chest. Finds his nipple and closes his lips around it and sucks, tonguing the peaked flesh, and Indrie's back bows off the bed and a keening sound tears out of his throat. Eskil scrapes his teeth, gently, and suckles harder, and his hand works him in fast tight strokes, and Indrie is writhing against him, fingers twisted in the sheets, incoherent, shaking.

He switches to the other nipple. Laves his tongue in slow circles, then sucks hard enough to make Indrie scream, actually scream, a sound that comes back off the walls, and his hand tightens and quickens and Indrie's whole body goes rigid.

The orgasm rips through him with a violence that is almost alarming. His entire body seizes, his mouth open on a soundless cry, his back arched so hard his shoulders come off the mattress. He spills over Eskil's fist in hot pulsing waves, and the sound that finally breaks out of his throat is Eskil's name, cracked into two syllables that do not survive the journey intact.

Eskil works him through it. Strokes him until the aftershocks become twitches and the twitches become trembling and the trembling becomes the boneless slack-limbed collapse of a body that has wrung itself out entirely. He brings his hand to his mouth and licks Indrie's release off his palm, slowly and deliberately, holding Indrie's gaze while he does it, and Indrie watches him with glassy dazed eyes and shivers.

Eskil pulls him close and kisses him, slow and deep and filthy with the taste of both of them, and Indrie makes a sound against his mouth that is half moan and half laugh and entirely helpless.

They lie together. Eskil on his back, Indrie curled against his good side. Eskil's arm is around him, his hand tracing lazy patterns on the bare skin of Indrie's back, and Indrie's head is on his chest and his breath is evening out in warm slow gusts against Eskil's collarbone.

Eskil kisses him. His mouth, his jaw, his temple, the corners of his eyes. Small reverent unhurried kisses that serve no purpose except to map the skin of the man in his arms. Indrie tips his face up into each one, his eyes closed, his expression soft and open and unguarded in a way Eskil has never seen him while conscious. The wariness is gone. The vigilance. The perpetual low-grade alertness of a man who learned early that the world is not safe and has never unlearned it. All of it gone, dissolved in the heat and the dark and the slow steady rhythm of Eskil's heart beneath his ear.

Indrie clings to him. His arm is slung across Eskil's chest, his fingers curled against the far shoulder, and the grip has the quality of something deliberate. Not the desperate clinging of shock or fear but the conscious chosen holding of a man who is exactly where he wants to be and intends to stay.

"Is this what you want?" Indrie whispers. His voice is barely there, a murmur against Eskil's chest. "Me?"