“Like I said,” Took admitted raggedly as lust jolted through him. “Anything.”
Took grabbed the hem of his T-shirt to haul it over his head and then hesitated with it hitched halfway up his stomach. The scars were the least of his problems usually. They’d fade eventually, and sometimes, when the world demanded he buck up, it was oddly reassuring to have the journal of everything bad etched into his skin. This was the first time they’d made him feel self-conscious with the sharp wish that he’d done this before he was broken.
Even if ithadbeen even more of a bad idea when he had something to lose.
“I’ve seen the scars,” Madoc said. “I saw you before the scars. If they bothered me, do you think I’d be here?”
“Pity?” Took joked bitterly as he dragged off his T-shirt. Scars stitched across his torso and arms. They were worse where he had let the sun get to them—thick knots of white tissue that ringed his neck, and tight, divoted skin on his forearms—and had faded to shiny welts across his shoulders and the hard plane of his stomach.
“Maybe you aren’t such a good profiler after all,” Madoc said. He hitched his hips up off the bed and pushed his thick, black cotton trousers down over heavy thighs. His cock jutted up eagerly from his groin, the skin drawn tight over the thick, curved shaft of it and the head dark and shiny with come. He wrapped his fingers around it and dragged his fist from base to head in one slow movement. “Get over here and fuck me. Or did you decide you just wanted to watch and feel sorry for yourself?”
Took laughed with a harsh bark of real humor that caught him off guard.
“I have reason,” he pointed out as he scrambled out of his jeans. Whatever legendary grace the Anakim were meant to embody escaped him as he tripped over his own clothes. His cock bobbed awkwardly as he caught his balance. It was so hard and ready that the warm, still air on it made him ache. There were scars on Took’s thighs too, but the clots of keloid in the back of his knee and the crease of his groin had been the first to fade.
“Who doesn’t?” Madoc said as he kicked his trousers all the way off. “Ask any priest and they’ll tell you we were put here to suffer. You, on the other hand, get to fuck me, and not everyone can say that.”
“So I should just cheer up?”
Madoc shrugged and sprawled back on the bed. “That’s up to you,” he said. His fingers tightened roughly around his cock, and he hissed in air between his teeth. The muscles in his thighs clenched, and it took him a moment to drag words back over his tongue. “You don’t have to cheer up to get it up. On the other hand, you have a limited time to get up me.”
“I didn’t realize we were on a deadline,” Took said dryly as he crawled onto the bed. He ran his hands up Madoc’s thighs, from his knees to his lean hips. The skin was soft under his thumbs as he explored the taut skin. Between the vee of his wrists, Madoc lazily stroked his cock. “Is it a soft or a hard one?”
Madoc’s laugh trembled against Took’s palms.
“You are definitely rusty,” he said as he let go of his cock. Pale and heavy, it tilted up toward his flat stomach as Madoc reached up to cup his fingers around the back of Took’s neck. The smell of sex was ripe on his skin. “Come here.”
He pulled Took down on top of him and into a sharp, hungry kiss. Took groaned helplessly into Madoc’s mouth at the nip of fangs and the rough rub of Madoc’s thigh against his balls.
Pleasure hitched ragged along his nerves, rerouted around the congestion spots where scar tissue was thick, and Took ground his cock against Madoc’s hip. He pulled away from the kiss and explored Madoc’s body with his mouth and hands. The long planes of it were familiar enough from his old fantasies, the breadth of his shoulders and the tight curve of ass estimated from his leathers and the brief, rough clinches when they sparred.
This close, this naked, there was more to find. His nipples were pale but flushed under Took’s lips and between his fingers into tight pink buds that made Madoc groan and dig his fingers into Took’s hair. There was a scatter of silver in his chest hair, bright and distinct against the dark scruff, and it curled and matted under Took’s tongue. When Took slid his hand down to Madoc’s cock, it was heavy and thick around, and Took’s thumb rubbed roughly over the base made Madoc swear between clenched teeth and buck his hips up off the mattress.
His navel was pierced too, with a slim iron ingot laced vertically through the dimpled skin.
Took traced a circle around it with his fingertips. “I didn’t think piercings worked on… us.”
He touched the bar with his fingertip and hissed in surprise at the unexpected sting of it. Madoc caught his hand and pulled it up to his lips to kiss the small hurt away and then scrape his teeth over the pads.
“They don’t,” Madoc said. “It’s different. A gift from the old, dead bastard that fathered me.”
Madoc was a dhampir with no acknowledged kin, a cardinal whose recorded life began the day he swore to the Haza. Took knew he should ask, draw out the nodule of information while Madoc was in the mood to talk. Instead he shivered as Madoc sucked on his fingers and then pushed Took over on his back so he could return the favor. He kissed his way down to Took’s stomach, his tongue and lips attentive to every old knot of scar tissue as though he wanted to map them—until he reached Took’s cock.
“Now I know your parents were religious,” he said as he pressed a kiss to the wet head. The flick of his tongue made Took squirm, and Madoc pushed his hips down to hold him in place. “Does it really decrease sensation?”
Took was used to the question. Even on the West Coast, circumcision wasn’t common. It was practiced by Jews, Muslim, and a very few of the more passionate Christian sects. If your cock was docked, it meant your parents really thought it mattered to the divine. From what Took understood, his Dad had just wanted to sell it to a witch, but he tended to let people believe the religious angle.
He swallowed hard as Madoc worked his tongue under the glans and flicked it over the tight thread of skin there. Pleasure knotted in Took’s balls and pushed at his muscles, and the need to move twitched under his skin.
“Not that I’ve noticed,” Took rasped out. “But maybe you should try a bit harder. Just in case.”
Madoc chuckled—a breath against Took’s cock—and wrapped his mouth around Took’s cock. The cool blades of his fangs grazed the tender skin as he worked his tongue over the underside of the shaft.
Took wanted to groan. The sound was caught roughly in his throat, but he’d forgotten how to breathe as Madoc’s mouth took in the length of him. It was wet and slick, it was Madoc, and the twisted threads of pleasure, pain, and stale fear twisted in his gut until it felt almost sweet. The sharp tip of Madoc’s fang caught the base of his cock with a scratch that flicked a weird, dark pleasure up his spine and finally knocked the ragged moan of need from his throat.
With his tongue, Madoc traced the small injury as though he needed to memorize it, dark hair soft against Took’s thighs, and Took could barely remember his name….
“Sit up,” Madoc told him finally as he lifted his head. He licked a smear of dark blood from his lower lip as he leaned back on one arm, his elbow braced against the mattress, and waited. “On your knees.”
