Patrick pulled the coins from his pocket and left them in a pile on the nightstand before getting rid of his weapons and most of his clothes in record time. He only hesitated when he was about to take off his T-shirt. Sometimes, when he didn’t want to deal with questions, he kept his shirt on during sex. Patrick knew Jono wouldn’t care either way, which was what finally prompted him to pull it off. He didn’t miss the way Jono’s eyes went wide before narrowing as he stared at the mess of scars on Patrick’s chest.
Jono stepped between Patrick’s spread legs and went to his knees, tracing the scars on Patrick’s body with hands and eyes alike, his touch gentle.
The entrance of the bullet wound he’d taken in the field years ago was low on his hip and to the side, a mere afterthought in the face of other, more prominent scars. The claw-mark scars were old, time and magic having faded the scar tissue from a vivid pink to pale white. They cut diagonally across his chest from the left collarbone down to the middle ribs on his right side. A second set of scars ran vertically over his sternum, the deeper, puckered edges there rough and numb from nerve damage. He couldn’t feel the weight of his dog tags where they lay against the scars in some areas, but he knew they were there.
Patrick waited for the inevitable questions, but none came.
Instead, Jono leaned forward and pressed an openmouthed kiss to the center of the scars, the corner of his lips catching at the edge of the dog tags. Patrick shuddered at the touch, barely feeling it in spots, but he could feel Jono’s hands on him, and he wanted more. Wanted Jono in him and around him, real and warm and not going anywhere, willing to let all the secrets carved into Patrick’s body, in his mind, stay there, at least for tonight.
Patrick cradled Jono’s head with his hands, tilting his head back for a kiss. Jono surged up to meet him halfway, the kiss just as demanding as before. Patrick let himself be manhandled farther onto the bed, the warmth of Jono’s body spreading over him. Patrick arched up against that solid heat, feeling Jono scrape his fingers down his back and over a few more scars he carried there—faded lacerations and the pitted exit hole of the bullet wound.
Jono broke their latest kiss, Patrick’s lips tingling as they parted. He licked his way down Patrick’s throat with careful swipes of his tongue, teeth catching carefully against unmarked skin. “Wanted to fucking kill the bastard for touching you.”
Patrick huffed out a soft laugh as he dragged his hands over Jono’s back, feeling all that strength flex against his touch. “Which one?”
“Both.”
His answer had warmth spreading through Patrick’s body, pooling low in his gut at the possessive tone in Jono’s voice. Being wanted felt nice, even if it was just to get off. That’s what he expected between them. Quick and hard and making him feel it.
Jono had other ideas.
When he pulled Jono’s mouth back to his, the kiss was rough, the taste of Jono on his tongue not too dissimilar to the burst of recognition that skittered through his magic from time to time. Then it slowed, gentled, leaving his lips feeling bruised and raw, every nerve in his body buzzing like a live wire. When Patrick tried to demand more, Jono held him down, held him still, and kissed him soft and slow.
Patrick never did slow when he had sex with the men he’d hunted up in bars or through an app on shore leave while in the Mage Corps and days off between cases with the SOA. He picked up men to get fucked by, and nothing else. Patrick did friendships, not relationships, because both were dangerous to lose, but one more so than the other. Some part of him didn’t want to know what he was missing, but it was difficult to ignore with Jono’s hands on him.
Jono went at his own pace, and there was no hurrying him along. Patrick found he honestly didn’t want to.
That sinfully hot mouth kissed its way down his scarred chest, hot hands running down his ribs. Patrick parted his legs even more, bending them at the knees as his toes curled into the duvet. Jono licked the tip of Patrick’s cock before swallowing him down in one long glide. Patrick threw his head back with a groan, pushing against the bedframe with one hand while tangling his fingers of the other in Jono’s hair.
“Fuck,” he moaned, canting his hips upward, feeling his cock slide deep down Jono’s willing throat. The faint scratch of beard burn on the skin of his inner thighs made him bite his lip.
It’d been so long since he’d gotten off with someone else, but Patrick couldn’t recall a time when it’d been like this. Slow, methodical, guaranteed to drive him out of his fucking mind. Jono swallowed around his cock at a leisurely pace, bobbing his head, working Patrick over with a single-minded intensity that left Patrick a whimpering mess.
The heat low in his belly and the tightness in his balls had him tugging on Jono’s hair a little frantically. “If you don’t stop, I’m gonna come.”
He’d be embarrassed at how little time it had taken for Jono to get him to this point, but the touch of another person was always more intimate than his own hand.
Jono pulled off with a hard drag of his tongue to the underside of Patrick’s cock. He couldn’t stifle the moan, watching as Jono finally lifted his head, a thin strand of saliva stretched between his tongue and the tip of Patrick’s cock.
“That’s the point,” Jono told him.
Patrick drew in a shaky breath. “Yeah, well, it’s been a while outside my own hand. For me.”
“Good.”
Patrick met Jono’s heavy-lidded gaze. His wolf-bright eyes seemed to glow in the dim lamplight, reflecting the light back at the world. Patrick reached for him, cupping his jaw, palm curving around his spit-slick chin. The shadow of a beard Jono sported tickled his skin.
“I want you to fuck me,” Patrick said quietly.
Jono blinked, turning his head into Patrick’s touch to press a kiss to his palm. “I’m taking my time with you.”
“You are the absoluteworstat listening to orders. I want—”
Patrick broke off with a gasp as one long finger, slick with lube, pushed into his hole. Patrick bore down on the intrusion instinctively, lips parting on the exhale. Jono shifted on his knees, one hand pressing down on the bed for balance as he moved to kiss Patrick. His tongue stroked in deep, matching the motion of his finger as he thrust it in and out of Patrick’s body.
Patrick wrapped his arms around Jono’s neck, keeping him there, feeling almost too warm from the heat Jono was putting off and his own arousal that was coursing through his body.
“I’ll get you there,” Jono said against his lips as he pushed a second finger inside.
