“I fucking love how much you want this.” Bo’s rough voice was so close. “Doing perfect, Everil. Don’t use your tongue or try to suck, alright?”
Too generous, too kind, and his fingers rocking deeper, while urgent, pleading noises tore themselves from Everil’s throat. Wrong, to allow himself this. To give in to base urges, take what he didn’t deserve to have.
But Winter take him, he burned for it. And he didn’t know how to stop.
“Just relax your throat and focus on my hands. I’ve got you. I won’t let you fall.”
Don’t think. Focus on Bo’s hands. The gentle grip in his hair. The rock of fingers over his now wet lips. Don’t think, onlywant, like he’d never been permitted to. That buried, unwelcome part of himself, the river’s wild, unchecked desire. And each deeper press into his mouth, two fingers, then three, threatening the dams Everil had built.
“Doing good,” Bo rasped, his fingers pressing deeper, so that Everil couldn’t help but swallow around them. Greedy, too greedy. But he needed this. Heneededit. “Fucking beautiful.”
Everil shook with it. With the attention. With the praise. With the sugar-sweet taste of him. He leaned up, taking all Bo gave him and yearning toward more, only to be held where he was by Bo’s grip on his hair. And that was better. That he couldn’t take. He could only accept what was given.
Bo wouldn’t let him fall. Bo, his bond, who smiled as he held him, as he pushed deeper, his eyes lust-dark and pleased.
No one had ever looked at Everil like that before. Like he was something good. Somethingright.
“It’s fucking hot, you trying to get more.” And now, each deep press lingered while Everil shuddered and swallowed and whined. “I think I got your number, Everil.” Swallow, lean up, feel the pull keeping him where he belonged. Against Bo. “Kind of guy who likes to get fucked after he’s finished,” coarse words, rough touch, eyes Everil couldn’t look away from, “over-sensitive and wrung out,” swallowing, eager, unable to stop himself, “where it’s almost too much but doesn’t hurt. I close?”
Bo’s fingers slid away with the question, and Everil (greedy, ill-behaved kelpie) chased them with his tongue. Only Bo’s words checked him; raw wanting turned to blunt possibilities. Bo’s words and his darkened eyes, watching.
Everil hadn’t the first idea how to answer.
He wanted this. For all that he shouldn’t, mustn’t, he was struggling to do anything but plead. The taste of Bo lingered on his tongue like his fingertips against Everil’s lips. And the man had a magnetism beyond the bond, striking features and a fierce intensity, made all the more alluring by his lack of polish.
Bo’s kiss wouldn’t be a careful, considered thing, gifted to Everil for good behavior. It would be lust wild and honey sweet. It would taste of summer.
Everil thought he might do anything, just for that, just to kiss him, and Bo was offering so much more.
All Everil had to do was answer, to say yes. Surely,yeswas what Bo wanted to hear. But what if it wasn’t? What if Everil got it wrong?
Inevitable, perhaps, that he would ruin this.
“Bo, I–” He had ceded too much control, lost hold of his reins, and it was proving very difficult to keep his voice steady. “I don’t…. I can’t say I’ve ever….” His words kept trailing off to whispers, like maybe if he was quiet enough, he wouldn’t chase Bo away. “It’s been a century, since someone last touched me. And he was not so … confident as you.”
Lawrence had been a man of his time, ashamed of his desires even as he pursued them. That reticence had married well with Everil’s own guilt and confusion, so soon after leaving Nimai.
“Confident’s a word for it.” Bo’s lips quirked slightly at that, concern and amusement both in his smile. His fingers still lingered, and there was comfort in his not, yet, having pulled away. “So, it’s been a while. You’ve got nothing to be embarrassed about.”
“I think I may. I don’t even know how to answer you. I cannot conceive of what I might want, beyond that I wish this to continue.” Everil licked his lips, stealing a fresh taste of Bo’s skin. “I realize that’s a poor answer. That I’m not as you might hope. I apologize for disappointing.”
“You haven’t.” And Bo’s words were so fierce, paired with a gentle tug at Everil’s hair, that it was difficult to doubt him. “I like you. Funny and sharp and quiet and all. I ask, and you don’t know, or it’s been a while? Cool. Doesn’t make me like you less.”
“It feels as if it should.”
“Fuck that. Let me kiss you?” Bo asked the question with a fresh press to the seam of Everil’s lips, which he parted all too readily. “I want to kiss you.”
“Please. I want,” he looked away, as much as he could while held in Bo’s grip, “more of you. As much as you’ll allow me. Only, I fear you might find me … selfish.”
“Really, Everil,” snapped the whip-crack of Nimai’s voice in his mind, “I know you’re a kelpie, but you could at least pretend at some modicum of control.”
“How about you tell me about this selfishness,” Bo murmured, as his thumb played over Everil’s parted lips, close enough to taste but not to take. “Though you’ll have to put up with me being confused if it’s something like, ‘I’m noisy.’ Then I can kiss you, and we can see about getting us more of each other.”
This conversation felt like walking a highwire in stallion form, all while lust-drunk and blindfolded.
“I’m not so quiet as I might wish. But that isn’t what I meant.” There was no right way to answer. Either he explained successfully, and Bo would see him through Nimai’s eyes. Or he failed, and Bo would think this a fit of dramatics, nothing more. “Rivers are hungry. Grasping. You saw a glimpse of that at Brookhaven, before I shifted. And now, again. You asked to brush my hair, and I sought you for my bed. I could hardly think beyond wanting your touch.” He studied Bo’s mouth, lest he see disdain in those eyes. “And my use of the past tense is disingenuous.”
Everil tensed, waiting for Bo’s emotions, heady as a midsummer day, to twist into disdain. And there was a flare of sharp emotion, anger or something like it. There and gone, replaced with a wash of heat and affection.
