He was nothing but a beast, caged in his own opium-saturated flesh. For the first time he truly saw his prison and felt the weight of the chains he wore. The dream-bright horizon seemed as tawdry now as the painted backdrop of a twopenny circus. Despair rolled through him, thick as smoke. Wanting was nothing but a reminder of everything he couldn’t have. What if he had met Thomas, not Isidore? What then, what then? What if the ghosts of six hundred other men did not stand between them? What if Micha had not already sold his soul?
He pulled Thomas’s hand down his body, the palm skimming senselessly over his chest, leaving nothing in its wake but the memory of a ripple of cold, then forced it beneath the waistband of his trousers and against his half-stirring cock. Thomas’s fingers opened like a flower, curling round Micha, clumsy and eager and kind. Warmth. Pressure. So much. So little. The rain pelted against Micha’s back and slithered through his hair. The wind lashed at him and the cold numbed him. And Thomas stroked him like he was touching something beautiful. A gift, given to a recipient incapable of deserving it.
“Down.” Micha’s voice cracked like the lightning. “Get on your knees.”
He put a hand on Thomas’s shoulder and pressed. After the slightest hesitation, Thomas dropped into the mud.
“Get your hands out of the way.”
One last, barely there caress, and they were gone.
Micha tore his trousers fully open, seized his cock, and dragged it across Thomas’s lips in a smear of rain and pre-come. Thomas looked up at him from where he knelt. There was no alarm or revulsion on his face, just a terrible sort of trust. And, although Micha had told him to keep his hands out of the way, they were suddenly there again, embracing Micha’s hips, holding him close and steady in the centre of the storm.
Micha made a sound that was almost a sob. Then, “Let me in.”
Thomas opened his mouth and Micha shoved inside without kindness or finesse. Heat, slick and soft, engulfed him. A noise, a breath or a groan, caught at the back of Thomas’s throat. Micha stared down at him, shaking heavy hanging hair and wetness from his eyes. Thomas was just a piece of bedraggled darkness, crumpled at Micha’s feet, wavery through a grey veil. His gaze was intent on Micha’s, even as tears pooled in his eyes and slipped from the corners, mingling with the tracks already left by the rain.
Micha looked away and thrust. His hands knotted in Thomas’s hair. Thomas made another sound, pained, wet, and breathless, and Micha ignored him. The storm ran over them. Micha was sure he was cold, but he felt untouched and untouchable. It was like fucking the dark, a hot, deep void. He imagined running a knife across his skin. He would bleed dust and rust-red petals that would blow away in the wind. He had chosen his own god, and his body was its temple. He housed nothing else.
“Stop it. It’s no use.” He jerked himself away, fumbling with the fastenings on his trousers.
Thomas fell forward, catching himself on his elbows before he landed in the mud. He was a mess of rain and tears, spit and mucus. After a spluttering, gasping moment he sat back on his heels.
“I’m sorry—” he began.
“Don’t. Don’t. It’s me, not you, I can’t. I just can’t.”
Thomas came a bit shakily to his feet. His clothes had fared no better than the rest of him. He wiped his swollen mouth on the sleeve of his coat.
“Come.” His voice was raw.
Micha could have stood there until the storm consumed him. Until the wind flayed him. Until he was nothing but water droplets lost in the torrent. Except Thomas took up his hand and led him home.
Ten minutes later, they staggered into the rectory. Thomas had to struggle to close the door in the face of the prevailing wind. Then, apparently unconcerned by the mess he was making and the mud he was tracking everywhere, he hurried into the drawing room and beganbuilding up a fire. As soon as it was lit, he sank to his knees in front of the blaze.
Micha stood in the hall, water streaming from his hair into his eyes and down his face. The rain felt as bitter as tears. His mouth stung with salt and shame. He yanked off his boots and made a dash for the stairs.
Thomas’s voice pulled him back. “Micha.”
“I . . . should . . . I don’t . . .”
“Come here, please.” It was not a command, nor really a plea, but it reeled Micha in like a fish upon a line, and, in truth, he had no wish to resist. He did not know if he could bear to see the disgust, recrimination, or, worse, the hurt in Thomas’s eyes, but he deserved them. That, in itself, was absolution of a kind. Perhaps on the other side lay freedom. From Thomas and wanting and himself. How much easier it would all be now that Thomas hated him.
Micha stepped into the room like a convicted criminal going to his execution. The warmth of the fire curled around him in welcome, and the pleasure of it was both irresistible and incongruous. A long, deep shudder ran through him, his chilled flesh shaking itself awake. He peeled his sodden coat off and let it fall to the floor. “Listen. I’m sorry, all right? I ... I’m sorry.” He huddled down in front of the fire. Steam swirled up immediately from his clothes. And the heat reminded him of Thomas’s mouth.
There was a long silence. The firelight gleamed on the arch of Thomas’s cheekbones. “I have wanted,” he said, finally, “to touch you for a very long time. But not like that.”
Micha closed his eyes. “I ...” he started. But there was nothing to say.
Thomas’s fingers brushed lightly over Micha’s.
“I don’t want to be like this,” Micha muttered. “I was ... I used you ...”
“That I would not mind.”
Micha’s eyes flicked open, startled. Thomas was looking directly at him, and it was now impossible to look away.
“I think,” he went on, “I could have liked it. The act was not without power, not without beauty, and I do not fear to be the supplicant of your passion.”
