Page 8 of Gagging the Gharial

Kyan got the buckle open one-handed, dragged the zipper down, and freed his cock. Sai was already hard, his short, thick cock flushed dark and exactly as Kyan had remembered it on every night he'd sworn he wasn't remembering. He wrapped his fist around the base and squeezed, slow, just to hear the pleading sound it pulled out of him, and got it, a punched-out moan that went straight through Kyan's chest and lower. He knew this cock. He knew the vein on the underside that made Sai curse, the spot just under the head that jumped his hips, the exact grip that turned the man boneless. A year apart hadn't taken one bit of it from his hands. If anything they'd spent twelve months rehearsing. He dragged his thumb through the precum that had begun to ooze at the tip and worked it down the shaft, and watched the scales flare gold along Sai's throat, the gharial in him rising to the surface the instant his control started to go. Kyan had always loved that more than he could say. The body that couldn't lie about how badly it wanted him.

He started slow. Slower than slow. A loose, teasing drag of his fist from root to tip, barely any pressure, more promise than friction, just enough to keep Sai hard and aching and nowhere near enough to get him there. Sai's hips came up off the couch, chasing, fucking up into the ring of Kyan's fingers, and Kyan eased his hand back out of reach and clicked his tongue.

"Easy," Kyan murmured. "You'll get there. I decide when."

"That's new." Sai barely got the words out.

"That's the whole thing. That's the part nobody bothered to show you." Kyan put his hand back and kept the rhythm even and merciless, twisting his wrist on the upstroke the way he knew Sai couldn't stand, dragging his slick palm over the head until Sai's whole body jerked, working him with the unhurried confidence of a man reading a map he'd never actually forgotten. "Out there you've been letting men rush you, or you've been rushing yourself, getting it over with fast so you can leave a place you can't stand. There's no leaving here. There's no hurry here. I'm going to take so long getting you there that you forget there was ever anywhere else you wanted to be."

Sai whimpered, and his hand came up like he meant to take over and drive himself, and Kyan caught the wrist gently and set it back down at Sai's side.

"Hands stay there," he said. "Unless you need them. You always get to need them, that's what the word is for. But if you're only reaching because you're impatient, then no. The pace tonight is mine. The word is yours. That's the trade. You keep the thing that stops everything. I keep the speed. Deal?"

He watched Sai weigh it, impatient and curious in the same breathless face, and watched the exact moment his ex-boyfriend stopped trying to grab the wheel and let himself be driven. That instant was the thing Kyan got off on more than any single act in the world, more than rope or toys or any position. The moment a man he wanted quit demanding his pleasure and started simply receiving it. Sai's lips had been going tight with every swallowed go faster, and then they stopped. His head fell back against the armrest. He let Kyan have it.

"You feel that?" Kyan breathed. "What you just did? You handed me something nobody could ever take from you by force. That's the whole secret. It was never me running you over. It's you choosing to give it."

Sai's eyes had gone wet at the corners again, and it wasn't grief at all. "Why'd you really come back?" he asked, ragged, while Kyan's hand kept up its slow unhurried torture. "To Vegas. The true reason, not the business one."

It wasn't fair to ask a man serious questions in this exact state, so Kyan answered with an unfair question of his own. "The business is the reason on paper," he said. "But I kept my place here when I left. I rent it out a few weeks at a time, that's all. One phone call and it's empty again inside a week." He tightened his grip a fraction and sped a fraction, just enough to pull a gasp out of Sai and wipe his face clean of everything else, then drew it back before he could tip over. "Why. You asking whether I could stay?"

"Maybe," Sai gasped.

"Maybe's an honest answer. I'll take maybe." Kyan kissed the bruise on his jaw, featherlight. "Let's get all the way through tonight first. Then you decide whether you still want a lion underfoot, after you've actually seen what one is."

Kyan was hard enough to ache inside his own slacks, and he ignored it completely, the way he'd been ignoring it for an hour. That night wasn't for him. That was its own pleasure, one he'd teach Sai some other night, and holding it made every moan and whimper out of Sai's mouth land twice as hard.

He brought him to the brink and held him there, ruthless, fist tight, slick, and relentless, until Sai was shaking all over and the scales had spread in a gold flush down his throat and over his chest and his cock was leaking steadily across Kyan's knuckles. Sai bit down on sounds that wanted to be begging. He didn't beg. He took it, thighs trembling with the work of holding still, handing Kyan the pace even as it wrecked him. Only when the trembling eased, when Sai quit fighting the pace and sank into it completely, did Kyan finally let him have it. He pumped him fast and sure through the last stretch, thumb riding the head, and Sai came with a shout he made no effort to muffle, spilling hot and thick over Kyan's fist in pulse after pulse while Kyan worked him through every shudder and growled praise against his ear, telling him he was perfect, telling him he'd taken it so well, telling him every filthy tender thing a year of strangers had never once thought to say.

For a while afterward neither of them moved. Then Kyan reached for the good shirt, thought better of using it, found a clean towel on the room's small shelf instead, and cleaned them both with the same lack of hurry he'd brought to everything else.

"Okay, wow." Sai dragged a hand down his face. "We never did anything like that. Before, it was a handjob, in and out, lights off. That was... not that."

"That was barely the first inch of a very long ruler." Kyan got them both sitting up, Sai loose and warm and heavy against his side. "And you took it beautifully. You wanted to know what you like? You just learned one thing for certain. You like being slowed down. You like not being the one in charge of how good it gets allowed to be. We'll write it at the top of the list."

Sai laughed, dazed and a little astonished, and the sound was the best thing Kyan had heard in twelve long months. Then Sai's stomach growled, loud in the hush of the room, and they both looked down at it like it had spoken out of turn.

"When did you actually last eat?" Kyan asked.

"I'd like a lawyer."

"That's what I thought." Kyan stood, put himself back together, and reached a hand down to haul Sai up off the couch. "Get dressed. We're going to get you some real food. Not a club soda and whatever sad thing lives in a vending machine."

"Right now?" Sai blinked up at him, still pink and not entirely steady on his feet. "It's the middle of the night."

"Vegas has never once cared what time it is. Up." Kyan tossed him the shirt. "I'm taking you to dinner. A real dinner."

Sai buttoned himself back together, slow and a little clumsy, and Kyan watched him do it and thought about phone calls and empty apartments and a thousand miles that had abruptly stopped feeling like geography and started feeling like a thing a man could simply decide to fix. He kept all of it behind his teeth. It was far too soon, and he'd done more than enough deciding for one night.

Back at the hotel sat a folder of figures he was supposed to be rehearsing for tomorrow's sit-down with his aunt, the pitch he'd flown there to make, the whole reason for the trip. It could keep until morning. He'd spent his entire life being early to the wrong things.

"Where are we going?" Sai asked.

Kyan smiled and pulled open the door on the heat and the noise of his aunt's club. "You'll see. Trust me. It's right up your river."

Chapter Six

Sai had left the club a hundred times with his head down, slipping out fast and ashamed after getting off with men whose names he forgot before the elevator reached the lobby. Leaving with his hand in Kyan's was nothing like that.