“I’ll do anything that’ll keep that knife out of my carotid,” Conan said with a guileless smile. He meant it too. “And anything plus more if it’ll get me into your bed.”
And shower, and refrigerator…
Lam’s eyes met his. There was dark humor there, something bright and flashing. A bottomless expanse that felt exciting, interesting.
“All right, then try me,” Lam said.
It took Conan a second to figure out what he meant.
Struggle.
Right.
The obvious move was to use his hands, so Conan discarded the thought. For some reason he didn’t want to be obvious. He wanted to be impressive. Interesting.
So instead, in one quick move Conan pulled his legs up and clamped them around Lam’s sides. His body lurched with the motion, relying on years of core strength to turn and unseat Lam as they rolled to the side.
If Lam was surprised, he didn’t scream or drive the knife into Conan’s neck. Instead, he laughed and went with the motion as they landed hard on the cobblestone.
Somehow, Lam had managed not to knick Conan, and the knife was now sitting right under Conan’s jaw, scraping against the skin like a shaving razor.
“That was clever,” Lam said approvingly.
“I try,” Conan said with a grunt. These stones really were a bitch. “I kinda expected the knife for that.”
The blade traced down the length of his jaw to his chin and tapped there. “Usually that’d be your first strike, but I asked you to. You always take directions so well?” Lam asked.
It sounded like an important question.
“I can,” Conan said honestly, “if there’s something in it for me.” Then, on a whim, he tilted his head down into the knife, letting the blade press harder against his skin. He felt the moment it broke through, the burn and heat of blood.
Lam gasped, but it wasn’t one of surprise. Conan felt his own body respond to the sound, a heat coiling downward.
Oh. So it was like that. Conan could work with that.
The knife lifted away from his skin. Lam’s eyes were aglow, attention rapt on Conan’s face where he’d been cut.
“Is there something in this for me?” Conan asked, voice pitched low, intimate. Like they were in a bed together instead of laying on filthy cobblestone.
Lam licked his lips, eyes on the blood. Seconds spun by, and Conan let them.
“Yeah,” Lam said finally on a breath. Then he brought the knife to his own mouth and licked the blood off the tip.
“Fuck,”Conan said as he watched Lam’s pink tongue slide along the flat of the blade. It caught him unexpectedly, jagged and tearing through him. His cock started to stiffen so quick he felt the lack of blood to his brain, the dizzy spiral of it.
Lam noticed too, because the second he pulled the knife away from his mouth, he smiled with all those white teeth.
“If you make me have to kill you before we're finished, I’m going to be really upset,” Lam said seriously.
Before Conan could come up with another quippy answer, Lam started to get up. Conan automatically loosened his legs to let him go, and then Lam rolled Conan back onto his back before taking his seat once more.
Conan usually wasn’t the one being manhandled, but he had to admit, he wasn’t hating it.
“You’re the most interesting catch I've had in a while,” Lam said. “Try not to disappoint.”
The most interesting catch.
Conan had been getting the vibe that this was either a hobby or a profession for Lam, and it was nice to have confirmation. He almost asked how many other men Lam had treated to this experience. Conan was themost interesting in a while, but was that of a pool of five, or five hundred?
