It began as most kisses had between them since Wren’s retrieval from beneath the ice. This time, however, as Wrenopened his mouth beneath Shrike’s, Shrike obliged him by deepening the kiss.
And withdrew all-too-soon.
Wren opened his eyes to find Shrike striding away from the nest and toward the hollow stump. He relaxed somewhat at seeing Shrike only meant to wash up and return rather than leave him wanting forever. It certainly didn’t lessen his growing interest to watch Shrike strip off his tunic, shirt, and hose, and lather and rinse the strapping sinews of his arms. Soon he returned to slip beneath the bedclothes and straddle Wren with another kiss.
Unbecoming sounds escaped Wren’s throat with every caress. He trembled at Shrike’s touch as if it were the first time they’d lain together like this. His cock leapt the moment Shrike’s fist closed ‘round it. He moaned into his beloved’s mouth beneath his kiss.
And then, with a single stroke of Shrike’s hand, a fortnight’s worth of denied desire rose up within him, burst forth, overflowed, and with an arched back and a strangled cry, he shamed himself across Shrike’s brawny chest.
Shrike released him. Wren fell back against the pillows, Shrike’s arm still twined ‘round his shoulders, and the blurred form of his beloved loomed overhead with the noble brow knit in concern.
“Are you all right?” Shrike asked.
Wren nodded, too embarrassed to speak. After all his pleading, all his begging, this was all he had to show for it. Less than a minute gone and a fortnight’s worth of unspent seed now bespoilt Shrike’s chest. A pitiful performance by any standard.
Yet Shrike didn’t look half so disappointed as Wren felt. He bent to kiss him again—a long and languid kiss, drawing Wren out of his confused and humiliated thoughts—and when he withdrew, it was to murmur against Wren’s lips, “Again?”
“Yes,” Wren whispered, a hiss of desperation. “Yes, yes, please, yes—”
Shrike obliged him with another kiss. It lingered on his lips even as Shrike’s mouth moved on, nipping down his jaw towards his ear and bestowing such whispers as made Wren shiver in delight. The bruises that bloomed along his collar and throat in the wake of Shrike’s descent held a delicious ache.
Then, with all the speed and fluidity of quicksilver, he caught Wren by the wrist and brought his knuckles to his lips for a chaste chivalrous kiss. What followed proved far less chaste, as he turned the inside of Wren’s wrist toward his mouth. His kisses teased the soft and sensitive skin therein whilst he traced the icy blue veins with his tongue and nipped along them-ever-so-gently.
His other hand, meanwhile, slipped further down to trail up the inside of Wren’s thigh.
Wren wished to get his hands on Shrike as well. With one wrist deliciously trapped in Shrike’s hold, however, and the rest of him weak as spider’s-skein, he could hardly do more than entangle his free hand in Shrike’s flowing silver-shot locks and drag him down for another proper kiss. This done, he fumbled lower, until at last—more through Shrike’s understanding what he wished and manoeuvring himself to make it possible than by any success of his own feeble efforts—he laid his fingertips upon the familiar curving heft of Shrike’s cock. To hold it again proved as much an aphrodisiac as the ample attentions Shrike paid to his flesh, until, by the time the gentle touch on the inside of his thigh arose to grasp his no longer over-sensitive prick, it fell upon something that had grown almost to half-mast.
Which was more than enough for Shrike to work with.
A few strokes sufficed to send Wren’s hips rolling into Shrike’s hand. Wren served him the same in turn, savouring the heat of the velvet-sheathed rod rigid in his palm.
But then Shrike slipped out of his grasp altogether, withdrawing and descending, kissing his way down Wren’s chest and ghosting over the bandages swathing his waist until, at last, his mouth reached the half-mast cock and let it slip between his lips.
Wren’s head fell back against the pillows. He arched his back with a gasp as Shrike’s tongue paid particular tribute to the slit at his tip, then slipped beneath the fore-skin to encircle the ridge before trailing down the vein on its underside. His prick pulsed in the soft wet heat as Shrike hollowed his cheeks and swallowed him down. Another moment or two of this sufficed to bring him to a full stand. It felt still better than Wren remembered, and yet he wanted something more.
So he let his hand fall from Shrike’s silver-shot locks to graze his jaw and tilt his chin up until his dark gaze met Wren’s own. Shrike appeared curious at the interruption but by no means put off.
Wren swallowed hard, yet his voice remained hoarse as he begged, “Come here.”
Shrike required no further bidding. In an instant, with the same quicksilver grace that marked him out as fae, he crawled up to loom over Wren and bent to bless his lips with another kiss. His hips aligned with Wren’s own. His hand dipped down between them and brought their cocks together in his strong grasp.
Wren moaned into Shrike’s mouth as his shaft slid against his lover’s. Their twin blades crossed, entangled, withdrew, and clashed again, an erotic duel made all the more delightful by the clever manipulation of Shrike’s fingers. His own nails carved furrows into Shrike’s scarred back. To feel his cock alongside the one he loved so well together in the tight sheath of his beloved’s fist sent Wren to the brink of ecstasy. Another thrust of his hips in rhythm with the stroke of Shrike’s arm and the ravenouskiss that devoured both in turn sufficed to thrust him over the precipice. For the second time in a single hour he spilled his seed. At the same moment Shrike’s cock pulsed against his own and his lover’s ragged groan reverberated through his own ribs. The surging torrent, wave after wave, cascaded over Shrike’s fingers, the mingled foam of two storm-tossed seas.
Whatever happened immediately afterward, Wren knew very little of. When he returned to his senses, safe and warm in their shared nest, he lolled his head to behold Shrike lying beside him, caught in the midst of withdrawing his own fingers from his mouth as he sucked the seed from them. If Wren had his full vitality, he thought the sight might have very well set his prick to a third stand.
As matters stood, however, he retained enough strength to catch Shrike’s wrist and bestow a kiss on those very seed-stained fingers to taste himself and Shrike on his own tongue.
Shrike’s low rumbling laugh ended as his mouth met Wren’s, and this, the first of untold soft, languid, undemanding kisses, soothed him down into dreaming bliss.
~
Shrike’s heart brimmed to bursting with joy.
To have his Wren in his embrace again. To hear his gasps and moans of delight and desire. To feel him writhe in pleasure rather than pain. To take him in hand, to taste him, to cross his sword with his own. To draw him up alongside him to the soaring heights of ecstasy—twice, for that matter, which struck a note of pride in his heart despite the extraordinary circumstances.
To lay with his Wren had always brought Shrike joy. But particularly now, when he could feel Wren’s vitality returning, his beloved so frail and fragile yet fighting to regain his strengthwith a tenacity few fae could claim. There was beauty in that beyond the sharp features, dark eyes, and bespeckled lips.
And as Wren returned to a sleep more blissful than many he’d had over the past fortnight, Shrike held him in his arms, safe and sound at last.
