They both moved at the same time, bridging that last bit of separation between them, and their mouths met. The first glide was soft and slow, their mouths still closed, just lips rubbing together. But then Fergal’s tongue pressed against the seam of Gregor’s lips, and his mouth opened against Fergal’s. The soundFergal made—a low, shuddering exhale that Gregor felt more than heard—pooled like liquid heat at the base of his spine.
Their tongues met, sliding against each other, discovering the rhythm of their dance all over again. Back and forth, from one mouth to the other, lips rubbing and sliding and pressing until Gregor dizzied with the intensity of it.
Fergal pressed closer, his body aligning with Gregor’s under the covers, and the full-length contact detonated something inside Gregor. Chest against chest. Hip against hip. Thigh against thigh. Cock against cock. The heat of Fergal’s body bled through two layers of thin fabric and met Gregor’s own fire, and where they touched, the air itself seemed to vibrate.
Gregor’s cock hardened to something almost unbearable. He should stop. He should end this before things got even further out of hand.
They couldn’t. Nothing could ever come from this. The age gap. The prince and his tutor. The fact that they were both alphas…
“Don’t stop,” Fergal whispered against his mouth. “Whatever you’re about to talk yourself out of, don’t.”
Gregor huffed a wry laugh against Fergal’s lips. The man knew him too well. His mind had already begun its familiar catalog of reasons to pull back—duty, propriety, the secret behind the heaviest door—and Fergal had read the hesitation before Gregor had even finished forming it.
“I’m not stopping,” Gregor said, and the words surprised him with their certainty.
He rolled, shifting his weight until Fergal was beneath him and Gregor was braced above on one forearm, his other hand still cradling the back of Fergal’s neck. Fergal’s dark hair fanned across the pillow, his lips were parted and flushed from the kiss, and his eyes—those sharp, impossible brown eyes—were wideand dark and burning with something that made Gregor’s blood sing.
“Hi,” Fergal breathed, and the mundane absurdity of the greeting in this context surprised a genuine smile out of Gregor—his first real, unguarded smile in weeks.
“Hi,” Gregor said, and kissed him again.
This kiss was different. Deeper. Gregor’s tongue slid against Fergal’s, tasting coffee and something sweeter, and Fergal moaned into his mouth, raw and unfiltered. The sound shot straight through Gregor’s nervous system like an electric current.
Gregor lowered his body until his weight settled against Fergal’s, and they both gasped at the contact. Through the thin layers of cotton between them, Fergal’s hard cock was evident, and it sent a surge of want through Gregor so fierce it momentarily whited out his vision.
“Gregor.” Fergal’s voice was wrecked, his hips shifting restlessly beneath Gregor’s weight. “God, I can feel you.”
“I know.” Gregor’s own voice was rough, scraped raw by the effort of holding himself together when every instinct was screaming at him to move, to grind, to chase the friction that was right there, separated from his cock by nothing but two layers of fabric that suddenly felt like the most offensive barrier in the history of clothing.
He shifted his hips in a slow, deliberate roll that dragged his cock against Fergal’s through the cotton. The friction was maddening, not enough and too much simultaneously, and the choked, desperate gasp from Fergal was the most erotic thing Gregor had ever heard in three and a half centuries of living.
“Again,” Fergal demanded, his hands gripping Gregor’s shoulders, fingers digging into muscle. “Do that again.”
Gregor obeyed. Another slow roll, pressing down harder this time, and the drag of his cock alongside Fergal’s sent sparkscascading up his spine. Fergal’s back arched, pressing up into him, seeking more contact, more pressure, more of everything.
“Look at me,” Gregor said, and the command in his voice made Fergal’s eyes snap open. His pupils were blown wide, the brown swallowed almost entirely by black, and his lips were swollen and slick from their kisses. He looked debauched and beautiful and completely undone, and something primal and possessive surged through Gregor at the sight.
“I want to see you,” Gregor murmured, rolling his hips again, finding a rhythm now—slow, grinding, deliberate, each stroke pressing their cocks together through the cotton in a slide of heat and friction that was rapidly dismantling what remained of his self-control. “I want to see your face when you fall apart.”
“Then don’t stop,” Fergal gasped, his hips rocking up to meet each downward press, finding the rhythm and matching it. “God, Gregor, don’t stop, please…”
The “please” nearly broke him. Fergal, who never begged, who challenged and provoked and demanded but so rarely asked for anything, and never had with that raw, shattered need in his voice. Gregor’s hand tightened in his hair, tilting his head back, and he pressed his mouth to the exposed line of Fergal’s throat, feeling the rapid flutter of his pulse against his lips.
“I’ve got you,” Gregor said against his skin. Three words, weighted now with something new, a promise of a different kind entirely. “I’ve got you.”
He increased the pace, grinding down harder, and Fergal’s legs wrapped around his waist, ankles locking behind his back, pulling him closer, tighter, eliminating every fraction of space between them. The new angle was pure perfection—their cocks aligned fully now, pressed together through the thin fabric, and every thrust sent a bolt of pleasure straight to the base of Gregor’s spine.
The sounds Fergal was making were incoherent—gasps and groans and broken fragments of Gregor’s name interspersed with words that might’ve been curses or prayers or both. His fingers dug into Gregor’s back through his shirt, his nails leaving crescents that Gregor could feel even through the fabric. His hips snapped upward with increasing desperation, chasing the friction, chasing the release that was building between them like a wave gathering power before it would crest and spill over.
Gregor could feel it coming, not just in himself but in Fergal as well, in the way his body was tightening, his breathing fracturing, his movements becoming less rhythmic and more frantic. He pressed his forehead against Fergal’s, their breaths mingling in the charged space between their mouths.
“Let go,” Gregor murmured. “I want to feel it. Let go, Fergal.”
Fergal shattered.
His whole body seized, back arching off the mattress, a cry tearing from his throat that he muffled against Gregor’s shoulder. Gregor felt the pulse and throb of Fergal’s cock against his own, the wet heat blooming between them as he came, soaking through the thin cotton. Fergal’s face was a masterwork of devastation—eyes clenched shut, mouth open, every line of his body drawn taut as a bowstring as the orgasm ripped through him.
The sight of Fergal, undone, stripped of every defense, trembling and gasping in Gregor’s arms, was what pushed Gregor over the edge. His own climax hit him like a wall, pleasure crashing through him in waves so intense his vision went white. He buried his face in Fergal’s neck and groaned, a sound dragged from somewhere primal and deep, his hips stuttering through the aftershocks as his cock pulsed between them, adding to the mess soaking through their clothes.
