He ignored Davy’s skeptical snort at that and pressed on. “What you did to Reynolds, it could hurt him. What if it causes a brain aneurysm or a stroke? I wanted…I wanted justice. I wanted Fraser to make things right. Not for more people to get hurt.”
The tentacle stroked a stray curl out of Hill’s face. It was gentle, the brush of it against his temples soft as velvet. Hill reached up to push it away, but couldn’t quite bring himself to reject the touch.
“I mean, considering who you brought back,” Davy said. “I think we’re doing pretty good. No one’s dead. Well…no one new.”
Hill turned his face into the curve of Davy’s tentacle. The gash from earlier caught his eye, a jagged line thick as his thumb. It wasn’t bleeding, but it hadn’t healed either. The skin was puckered and raw. On a whim, he brushed his mouth over it to kiss it better like he’d imagined earlier.
Davy hitched in a startled breath in reaction and closed his eyes for a moment. He reached for Hill with one hand, fingers cupped for the nape of his neck. A frustrated “fuck” escaped through clenched teeth as his palm swiped through Hill’s throat instead.
“Is this part of what we’re meant to learn?” Hill asked ruefully. “Not to want what we can’t have? To not waste our life wanting the dead?”
“I know I’ve said this before,” Davy said. He braced a tentacle against Hill’s chest and pushed him down onto his back. Another tentacle crawled up his leg and hooked around the waistband of his jeans. The quick tug made Hill gasp and then laugh in confusion. “But they brought the wrong dead man back for that.”
A tentacle grazed over Hill’s stomach and up along the slats of his ribs. The pulled-fine tip of it flicked against a nipple and then wrapped around it. The pinch made Hill gasp and squirm, a quick jab of pleasure zapped straight down to his balls. His cock felt thick and heavy under his jeans.
“How does it…how can we—”
A tentacle covered his mouth. Davy crawled on top of him, weight braced on his arms and knees in the mess of glass and kombucha. They weren’t, Hill supposed, touching, but the proximity and the squirming weight of tentacles made it feel like they were.
“It just works,” Davy said. “Don’t worry about how.”
Hill screwed up his nose. “Why not?” he asked from behind the tentacle gag.
Black-on-black eyes crinkled at the corners. A tentacle cupped Hill’s cock through his jeans and kneaded the bulge. The strange, thirsty pleasure of the dead clutched at Hill’s balls and twisted in his stomach. Davy leaned down until his mouthalmosttouched Hill. Close enough Hill could pretend he could still taste the memory of that first old bone and grave dirt kiss.
“It might stop working.”
Oh well, Hill did not want that. He reached up to graze his fingers along Davy’s jaw and was intercepted by a tentacle. It toyed with his fingers, cool and velvet soft, and then pinned his hand down to the floor.
The restraint made something in Hill’s chest catch. It was part arousal and part nervousness, all tangled together until he wasn’t sure where one started and the other stopped. Davy cupped his chin with a tentacle. It traced the curve of his mouth like it was the only thing they had to do, and then slid up to give his earlobe a tug.
“Is this what you want?” Davy asked.
Hill squirmed on the floor. He arched his hips to press the jut of his erection against the tentacle laid over his hips.
“What do you think?” he said pointedly.
The corner of Davy’s mouth tucked in a smile. That unexpected dimple, the one that was only a suggestion when he smirked, made an appearance again.
“I get your cock is all in,” he said. The tentacle curled tenderly against the nape of Hill’s neck to lift his head up. “What about you?”
Hill huffed out an annoyed breath. “I’m autistic, not an addict,” he said tartly. “I know they start with the same letter, but I don’t have any trouble with ‘no’ if I don’t want this.”
Hewantedto pull Davy down into a kiss to underline that statement. Hewantedhis fingers wrapped around the back of Davy’s neck and his leg hooked over a lean hip. It felt a bit…greedy, maybe…to want more than the heavy, prying caress of Davy’s tentacles, but the frustration at not being able to touch skin and hair and cock still yanked at his gut.
“Yeah, and usually that’d be enough,” Davy said. “But…”
He trailed off and looked nearly as frustrated as Hill felt. Then he pushed himself up and sat back, his hands slack between his knees. Most of his tentacles pulled back with him, laid over his thighs, or slung over his shoulder. Only the ones on Hill’s thigh and curled around the back of his neck stayed where they were.
“You saw how I played Reynolds,” Davy said abruptly. The tease was gone from his voice; it had gone flat and unemotional. It felt like the opposite. Maybe that was just a way for Hill to lie to himself, though. Davy scratched the back of his wrist and frowned. “I could do that to you. Use you, what you can do, to get what I need. It wouldn’t be hard anyhow, but this would make it easier.”
“So why tell me?” Hill asked.
Davy made a sour face. “I don’t know,” he said. “I guess I don’t want to.”
“So don’t.”
“Yeah, easier said than done,” Davy said. “When it comes to the crunch, I’m an expedient sort of asshole. If using you makes sense, I’ll try.”
