“Fuck, I love it when you beg.” The words were little more than a groan.
Thomas’s breath stuttered. “You m-make it so very sweet to beg.”
“Tell me what you want.”
“Anything.” Thomas’s eyes flared hot beneath the shadow of his lashes. “Everything.”
And Micha made another mindless, savage noise. It was ludicrous to feel so powerful, and so utterly undone, at the same time. Once his own frailty would have infuriated him, but now the contradictions of his desires found their own harmonies in Thomas. He slid his hand to the other man’s jaw, turned his head and pressed his mouth to the side of Thomas’s neck, a kiss, a bite, a brand, a promise. Thomas gasped, arching into the touch and, inadvertently, against Micha’s cock. And the pleasure of it rushed over him, as raw and bright and harsh as flame. He had forgotten. The sharpness of it. The purity. Almost unbearable, like staring into the sun, or standing insignificant beneath a cathedral’s vaulted sky. Micha’s control unravelled like yarn, his knees buckled, and he clung to Thomas with trembling hands.
“Micha?” Thomas turned in his arms. Their bodies had long since found familiar patterns, the pressing of thighs and nestling of hips, an instinctive fitting together that felt more natural than standing alone. “What’s the matter?”
He had no idea how to even begin to articulate it. The nakedness of being simply and only Micha. Opium had been both his protector and his master, but now its rust-red chains were broken, and he was alone, with nothing to hide or give except himself. The world crashed against his unprepared heart, his newly vulnerable soul, and the body that, at last, was remembering how to feel. Micha opened his mouth to reply, but all he managed was “I need you.”
Thomas met his eyes. “I’m yours. Have me.”
“Yes,” Micha whispered. “Yes.”
He pushed Thomas back a few steps and Thomas yielded, their bodies moving together effortlessly, as though they were dancing. And to think Thomas had claimed it was not one of his talents. Their mouths met, rough and urgent, the kiss unbroken as Micha tumbled Thomas onto the window seat and began tearing at his clothes. Thomas curled his legs over Micha’s flanks, pulling him close, and Micha, who had wanted this before his body had even remembered how to want, went a little wild. He thrust himself against Thomas, crushing him into the narrow space, tangling his hands in his hair, covering his exposed skin with deep, desperate kisses that left dusty red roses blooming in their wake. And Thomas simply spread his hands across Micha’s shoulder blades and urged him on, soft cries falling from his lips as abundantly as coins from profligate fingers.
“Oh fuck,” gasped Micha, tearing himself away. “I need to get something.”
Thomas’s eyes fluttered comically. “A cup of tea?”
“No . . . I . . . I’ll be back in a moment.”
Micha ran from the room, shedding clothes as he went. His stockinged feet slithered on the tiles in the hall as he threw himself upstairs, seized what he needed from his room, and came rushing back. Thomas was sitting primly on the window seat where Micha had left him, his hands holding his shirt closed across his chest. With his ruffled hair and kiss-dark lips, he looked thoroughly, delightfully debauched.
Putting the flask down, Micha shrugged off the rest of his clothes, and his abrupt nakedness seemed to alleviate some of Thomas’s bewilderment. His attention lingered, instead, on the contours of Micha’s body, and Micha—who had been uncaringly unclad before more men than he now chose to remember—was conscious of a sudden, absurd shyness. There was ugliness here too, stark and undeniable in the cold moonlight, the ravages of illness and opium withdrawal, wasted muscle and the knotted bones of his rib cage. But Thomas was gazing at him as though none of it mattered, and Micha, who was as accustomed to being looked at as he was at being naked, shivered with a new kind of pleasure in it. There was nothing possessing or acquisitive in Thomas’s regard, but it made Micha feel loved, wanted, safe.
“I went to get a preparation,” Micha explained, a trifle awkwardly. “It will ease—I don’t want to hurt you.”
He dropped to his knees at Thomas’s feet and began to tug off his boots, followed by stockings, trousers, and drawers.
Thomas reached down, his fingers moving softly through Micha’s hair. “I want to be with you. I want us to be one.”
“You make everything sound so fucking romantic.” Micha nudged Thomas’s legs apart and pressed between them, turning to drop a light kiss against the inside of one of his thighs. Thomas put his hands behind him for balance, his fingers pressing into the cushion, a tremor of response running all the way down his body, and through the long, lightly muscled legs that wrapped Micha in a tight embrace. He groaned and kissed Thomas again, sweeping his tongue over this secret, silken skin, towards the crease at the top of his thighs. Thomas caught his breath and stuttered out something that sounded like “oh my.” Micha slid his hands up to Thomas’s hips and pulled them against the edge of the window seat, tipping him back in a graceless flail of limbs. But, before Thomas could protest the indignity, Micha pressed his open mouth to the tender diamond of flesh he had exposed, and Thomas did nothing but gasp. The sound, so shocked, so naked, sent a jolt through Micha, like a hand upon his cock.
He parted Thomas like a fig, his breath and his mouth swirling together over the forbidden places of the other man’s body. Thomas made another delirious, frantic noise, his legs falling wide like the fronds of a profane flower, a hand reaching back to thunk against the glass of the window. And Micha worshipped him, pressing soft kisses to the entrance of his body, circling him delicately with the tip of his tongue until every breath Thomas drew was a helpless moan and his hips were jerking uncontrollably beneath Micha’s hands. He tasted simply like Thomas, like his own skin, but stronger, darker somehow, and the power of having him like this, in defiance of everything believed to be right, natural, or sacred, was as sweet and rich as honey. Micha’s cock ached with raw longing. He wanted to claim Thomas, his heart, and their own private paradise.
He pressed his tongue past the tight, quivering ring of muscle, deep into the secret darkness of Thomas’s body, and the man arched desperately, a shameless, untempered cry ringing out through the silent room. Micha’s answer was in the digging of his fingers into Thomas’s skin, the wild beating of his heart, the tender violence of his mouth as it coaxed the most primal of yieldings from Thomas’s flesh. At last, when Thomas was shuddering and close to senseless, Micha withdrew, soothing him with kisses and long caresses.
Thomas trembled, sweat-studded, star-scattered, his body a chiaroscuro of broken shadows and moonlight, his gleaming cock straining towards his stomach. Micha ran his tongue up the length of it and Thomas cried out again, the sound caught somewhere between pleasure and pain, almost a sob.
Micha pushed himself to his feet, and Thomas pulled him down into something that was as close to a struggle as it was an embrace, skin sliding over skin, as they fought against the limits of flesh. Micha, groping blindly, unwilling to draw back from his lover, fumbled with the flask, unstoppered it, slicked his fingers, and thrust them into Thomas, swift and certain. There was a moment of instinctive resistance, and the breath hissed from between Thomas’s teeth, his body suddenly rigid against Micha’s.
Micha leaned over him, kissing the tightly knitted brows, the compressed line of his mouth, crooning nonsense. “Darling, darling, it’s all right. Relax for me. Let me inside you. It won’t hurt for long. Please don’t let me hurt you.”
Thomas’s eyes flicked open, a faint smile curling beneath Micha’s mouth. “Not hurting,” he said, soft as a waking dreamer. “Just strange, passing strange.”
“I’ll make it good, I promise. I’ll make it wonderful.”
Thomas’s hands swept the sweat-damp planes of Micha’s back. “I believe you.” He uttered another small gasp as Micha stretched him with another finger and writhed anxiously against him. “But do get on with it, if you please.”
Micha gave a shaky laugh and pulled himself free. He doused his cock in the unguent, arranged Thomas’s legs around his waist, and eased himself inside, as carefully as he could. Heat and pressure engulfed him, Thomas’s body yielding, inch by inch, moment by moment, the pleasure of it so intense that it left Micha dazed, humbled, and terribly, nakedly in love.
“Oh fuck, Thomas.” He blinked the sudden moisture from his eyes and slid a little further.
They groaned in unison, but Thomas’s voice was tinged with strain, and Micha stilled at once.
