Page 67 of Fought it Through the Teeth

Chapter 35

Morgan

Morgan has imagined this more times than he will ever confess to a living soul, imagined it in specifics that would mortify him if anyone ever found them written down, in fantasies that started before he properly understood what wanting was and have only grown more detailed and more desperate every year since. None of it prepared him for the reality.

Bohdi gets a hand around Morgan's jaw and kisses him so hard that Morgan's back hits the wood and his clever mouth finally, finally stops working. Morgan makes a sound against his lips that is not a sound anyone makes while winning anything. When his knees give, Bohdi catches him, hoists him up with his good arm, ignoring the pull of the stitches in his thigh, and Morgan wraps his legs around Bohdi's waist and bites his lower lip, because he is constitutionally incapable of surrendering without making it difficult.

Bohdi growls against his mouth and tightens the hand in his hair and Morgan feels it down the entire length of his spine and thinks, oh, I am in so much trouble and I want every second of it.

Bohdi carries him to the bed and lays him down. Morgan props himself up on his elbows and grins up at Bohdi, who is standing at the foot of the bed looking at him with the quiet focus of someone deciding exactly how to ruin someone's life.

"Forget what you were doing?" he asks, and he pitches it exactly where he knows it'll land, right in the sweet spot between challenge and invitation.

The look on Bohdi's face, half hunger and half dark amusement, the certainty that he knows exactly what Morgan is doing and intends to make him regret it thoroughly, makes Morgan's stomach turn over.

Bohdi strips him with efficiency rather than reverence, pulling his clothes off as obstacles, and when Morgan tries to help, Bohdi pins both his wrists above his head with one hand and finishes with the other. Morgan arches into the hold and tests it and absolutely melts when it doesn't give. Then his ribs scream in protest and he sucks in a sharp breath through his teeth, and Bohdi freezes.

"I'm fine," Morgan says immediately, because if Bohdi stops now Morgan will actually die, that is the cause of death they will put on his headstone: cessation of contact. "Don't coddle me."

Bohdi releases his wrists and puts a hand flat on his bruised ribs instead, feather-light, studying the mottled purple-green of the damage with an expression that's gone from hungry to careful in the space of a heartbeat. His thumb traces the edge of the worst bruise and Morgan shivers and tries very hard not to squirm.

"I'm just checking," Bohdi says. "I'm not stopping."

Morgan eyes him warily and Bohdi huffs a laugh, but the hand on his ribs stays gentle, mapping the landscape of damage. It is so careful it makes Morgan's throat tight. He didn't expect careful. Not from Bohdi. He expected Bohdi to fuck him with all the tenderness of a declaration of war, which he was thoroughly prepared for, and instead Bohdi is touching him as though he's something that can be broken, which is infinitely worse.

"If you treat me like glass," Morgan says, "I will bite you."

"Oh, is that a promise?" Bohdi grins broadly, and leans down and presses his mouth to the bruise on Morgan's ribs so gently it's barely a kiss. Morgan's breath catches and his hand comes up to cradle the back of Bohdi's head, fingers sliding into his hair before he's decided to move. Bohdi's mouth trails across his damaged skin, warm and impossibly soft, tracing each mark with a tenderness that makes Morgan want to crawl out of his own body and hide somewhere Bohdi can't reach, because this level of devotion directed at him personally is far more terrifying than any fight.

"I mean it," Morgan manages, though his voice has gone thin. "Don't be precious with me."

Bohdi lifts his head. His eyes are dark and steady and full of something Morgan doesn't have a name for, something that makes his pulse kick violently in his throat. "I'll be whatever I want with you," Bohdi says, quiet and certain. "And right now, I want to take my time."

Morgan opens his mouth to argue, to say something sharp and deflective that will cover the heat climbing up his neck, and Bohdi puts a thumb over his lips and says, "Shut up, Morgan."

Morgan shuts up.

It is, he will reflect much later, possibly the only time in his life he has ever obeyed an instruction without complaint. The novelty of it is so startling that by the time he thinks to be irritated about it, Bohdi has already stripped himself. And the full sight of him in lamplight, tattoos and scars and hard muscle, the red hair trailing down from his navel, and his cock standing thick and flushed against his stomach, hits Morgan with a force that knocks every thought from his head.

For a second the mask drops entirely and Morgan just stares, lips parted, breath stuttering, because this man is so overwhelmingly, devastatingly real that every clever thought in Morgan's head shorts out at once. He's seen him before. He's looked his fill before, in stolen glances he thought were furtive and that were apparently, humiliatingly, not. But he has never seen Bohdi hard, intent, looking at Morgan with undisguised want. Wanting him. After years of being looked through, Bohdi is looking at him as though he is the only thing in the room, and the force of that attention is more than Morgan knows what to do with.

And Bohdi sees it. His expression softens for a fraction of a second, something warm and knowing and fiercely tender underneath all the dominance, and Morgan looks away fast, because that is too much, that single unguarded moment is more dangerous than anything else in this room.

"You're taking your time," Morgan says, and his voice is steadier than it has any right to be. "Should I find a book? I've got correspondence I could catch up on."

Bohdi's grin turns predatory. "There's that mouth again."

He puts a knee on the mattress, then both, and Morgan's heart is hammering so hard he's certain it's visible in his throat. He turns over, onto his stomach, and thinks yes, finally, and then Bohdi flips him back over.

One hand on his hip, the other hooked under his shoulder, and Morgan is on his back before he can draw breath, staring up at the ceiling with Bohdi kneeling between his spread thighs and looking down at him with a pleased, proprietary satisfaction at having arranged something exactly to his liking.

"I thought," Morgan starts, confused, because every fantasy he's ever had about this involved his face in the sheets and Bohdi's weight along his back, and this is different. This is Bohdi being able to see his face. This is nowhere to hide.

"You thought what?" Bohdi asks, settling between his legs as though he belongs there, and the brush of his hips against the inside of Morgan's thighs sends a jolt through him that makes his cock twitch visibly against his stomach. Bohdi's eyes track the movement and his smile widens. "You thought I wouldn't want to watch you fall apart?"

"Oh, you think you're that good, do you?"

"I'm very good, my prince."