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“You’re being a sap.”

He undid his belt, and the small metallic sound of it was very loud in the dark room. He held my eyes the whole time while he opened his jeans and lifted his hips and pushed the denim and his underwear down his thighs. Then he lay back against the pillows, and his cock sprang up against his stomach, thick and flushed and curving slightly to the left, the head dark and glistening. I heard myself make a sound that was not a word. It was low and old and entirely animal, and he heard it, and his pupils swallowed his eyes.

“Okay?” he said.

“Yes.”

“I need you to say it out loud.”

“I am very okay.”

“You sound like you’re in pain.”

“It is a pain I would not trade for anything I own.”

He gave a shaky laugh, and then he wrapped his hand around his cock, and I watched.

I want to say something about watching, because it has shaped my whole long life and very few people understand it. For a thousand years I have been a witness, standing at the edge of firelight and taverns and dance halls and watching other people touch each other, and I told myself that this was enough. But there was no glass between us now. There was a young man on a bed with his head tipped back and his lips parted, stroking himself in long slow pulls from the base to the crown, rolling his thumb over the slick head at the top of every stroke and spreading the wetness down the shaft. The soft, wet sound of it filled the room. I felt every stroke of his hand in my own body, in my teeth and in my fingertips and in the hard, heavy ache between my legs, and I gripped the arms of the chair until the wood creaked.

He arched, and his free hand slid up over his stomach and pinched one of his nipples, and a groan broke out of him. He turned his head on the pillow and found me with his eyes.

“Maksim.”

“Yes.”

“You’re not touching yourself.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“You told me to watch.”

“I said watch. I didn’t say you couldn’t—” He broke off as his hand sped up. “God, your face.”

“What about it?”

“You look like you want to eat me alive.”

“I do,” I said, before I could stop myself.

His breath hitched, and his cock jerked in his fist, and a bead of fluid welled up at the slit and slid down over his knuckles. “Tell me,” he said hoarsely. “Tell me what you’d do to me.”

I should have refused. I am an old and careful creature, and I do not say such things aloud. But the smell of him had filled the room like smoke, sweat and arousal and the warm sweet honey that belonged to no one else on earth, and my fangs had slid down without my permission, and I could not look away from the wet flushed head of his cock.

“I would put my mouth on you,” I said, and my voice came out low and rough. “I would take you in until you could not tell where you ended. I would hold your hips down on the bed and lick you until you begged, and I would not let you come until you had said my name a hundred times.”

“Oh, fuck,” Lex whispered. His hips jerked off the mattress. “Oh my God, Maksim.”

“I would swallow every drop.”

He made a sound like a man being struck, and his hand flew on his cock, and I gripped the chair so hard that the wooden arm cracked in my hand.

“Come here,” he said, breathless. “Please. Just come here.”

I do not remember crossing the room. I was simply beside him, half lying along his side, and he caught my wrist and pulled my hand down. He looked at it for a long moment, a large white hand, cold and scarred from old wars, and then he pressed his lips to my palm and wrapped my fingers around his cock.

“Is that okay?” he said.