“No,” Wren said. Then, as Shrike withdrew, he hastened to add, “I mean—I want whatever you wish to offer me.”
This did nothing to dispel the confused furrow on Shrike’s noble brow. Still, he did lay his rough hand on Wren’s face and stroke his cheek with the pad of his thumb. Wren leaned into the touch with everything he’d withheld for nigh on fifteen years.
“Are you certain?” Shrike murmured.
“I am.”
Yet Shrike made no further move towards him. “If you change your mind—”
“I won’t,” Wren promised.
After a moment’s pause, Shrike continued. “Give me any sign you wish to cease, and I shall do so.”
Despite his own exasperation, Wren could appreciate what Shrike intended. “And you have my word that I will give you such a sign, if I deem it necessary to do so.”
“Very well.” Shrike’s gaze fell to Wren’s lips as he bit his own. “I wish to have you in my mouth.”
Wren’s breath caught. He swallowed hard. “I should like that as well.”
He didn’t need to see Shrike’s smile or feel the deep rumbling of his breathless laugh to know he’d failed to keep his voice steady in reply. Still, Shrike leaned in, and Wren opened his mouth hungrily beneath his kiss. When Shrike broke it off, Wren found himself following him to reclaim it.
But he opened his eyes to behold Shrike sinking to his knees before him.
Antlers already dotted with fallen sprigs of myrtle bracketed Wren’s hips and encircled his waist. His heartbeat stuttered in his chest—and further down, as well.
Shrike met his eye with a gaze which shot true to his very core. Then he lowered his lashes and turned his clever hands to trouser buttons.
Wren’s cock, already at half-mast in his trousers just from hearing what Shrike wished to do to him, quickly pulsed to a full stand as Shrike took it in his firm grip.
And as the head of his prick slipped between soft lips, Wren bit his own to keep from spending at once.
Then Shrike swallowed him down.
The sensation proved beyond anything Wren could have anticipated—hot, slick, soft, enrapturing, all-consuming. Every flick of Shrike’s tongue, every swallow of his throat, every alternate stroke of mouth and hand threatened to send Wren spiralling over the precipice from which he might never return. He choked off an oath as he struggled to master himself. In search of an anchor, his hands fell to Shrike’s broad shoulders. He clenched his fingers hard enough to bruise.
And still, Shrike devoured him.
Wren found his hips rolling to meet Shrike’s ministrations. All the moreso as Shrike’s hand grasped his arse and pulled him forward. The drag of his tongue along the vein on the underside of his cock as it slipped out of his mouth, then back inside, sent shivers up Wren’s spine.
His grip on Shrike’s shoulders proved insufficient. His fingers scrambled for an anchor and tangled in Shrike’s raven locks before flowing through them as through rainfall. He followed them up to stroke Shrike’s jaw, his cheek, his brow.
And the base of his antlers.
Without thinking, he wrapped his hands ‘round them.
Shrike groaned.
Wren snatched his fingers away as if burned. “Sorry, I—”
Shrike glanced up at him. Then, seeing Wren’s distress, he withdrew his prick from his mouth—though he kept it in his palm. “That wasn’t pain.”
“Oh,” said Wren. Then, “Oh.”
The familiar half-smile wound its way up Shrike’s cheek. His fist idly stroked Wren’s cock.
Wren bit back an unseemly sound. He reached out his hand again and gingerly traced the root of Shrike’s antler.
Shrike shivered as his eyes fluttered shut.
