Page 32 of The Scent of the Ideal

“Before I am lost?” Rafi was almost shocked, but curiosity was stronger. “You want to?”

Viau scoffed but Rafi was in no mood to start a fight over it. Not that Rafi started fights. Except, apparently, with Viau, which made no sense because Viau smelled so good. He leaned over Rafi for several moments, boxing him in, the ends of his hair brushing Rafi’s chest as he stared down. “And when you are a flopping, loose-limbed, shivering mess with at least one gaping hole, I am going to kneel next to you and guide my cock into your mouth. Not to come.” He didn’t smile at Rafi’s gasp but it felt as though he did, darkly satisfied at that reaction. “To give you a task to focus on until you pull away to beg for it.” He swept Rafi’s hair from his face. “You wanted that before, didn’t you? With your hungry gaze fixed on my lap? Do you truly believe I’m forcing myself to do this?”

Rafi slowly moved his head from side to side. “You thought about it.”

“As did you.” Viau still did not smile. “Did you find someone to fuck you as you wanted?”

Rafi drew in a breath, then shook his head again. “You weren’t here,” he answered crossly, annoyed it was even being brought up now after all Viau’s fist talk.

Viau pressed forward between Rafi’s legs to find Rafi’s hands and pin them down as he leaned in. “I’m here now. And you are going to beg for me. Not someone.”

That was not how aedis was supposed to work. At least, not how Rafi thought it was. It hadn’t last time that he remembered. But Viau said, “Please?” and that wasn’t how begging was supposed to go, either, as far as Rafi knew. Not even bed-begging. But there was much Rafi didn’t know.

He raised his head from the bed to bring their mouths together, lips soft and open, an embarrassingly sweet sound at the back of his throat, “Please."

Viau answered immediately with a kiss.

Everything smelled of grass and sunshine.

Rafi’s first thought was that Cambray was combing his hair for some reason. The second was that only Viau stroked Rafi’s hair like that and seemed invested in the placement of Rafi’s curls. The third was that the slow, careful touch around the shell of his ear that carried on down his shoulder before it began again was nice, nice enough to make him stretch to feel the warm comfort of aer settled over his and stroke it in return.

He blinked his eyes open to the sight of a window and part of the curtains hanging above Viau’s bed.

He pulled in a sharp breath and the petting stopped.

“No?”

Rafi didn’t fully understand the question and so didn’t answer it immediately. He shifted slightly to feel bare skin and chest hair against his back, then sought to make his voice work.

“’S nice.” Almost as good as he’d imagined such touches felt, or even better, but he was simply too tired to contemplate it further.

The petting resumed; a gentle circle at Rafi’s shoulder, which was, Rafi realized, pressed to Viau. Most of Rafi was pressed against Viau, starting with his head under Viau’s chin and his back to his chest. Viau must have been propped up on some pillows to a half-sitting, half-leaning position, with Rafi curled against him, almost on his back.

Rafi didn’t think they’d fallen asleep that way.

“How are you feeling?” There was a rumble in Viau’s question which Rafi felt as much as heard.

“Tired.” His voice was barely more than a rasp.

He was gently pulled onto a mound of pillows before Viau slipped off the bed. He returned in a blink, a cup in his hand. He didn’t even attempt to get Rafi to hold it. He merely said, “Lean back, please. Open your mouth. There you go.” As if Rafi were a recovering patient too weak to do more than swallow.

The water was fresh and cold so Rafi didn’t say anything about that. Anyway, his arms were trembling.

When he’d had enough, Viau put the cup somewhere, then kneeled on the bed at Rafi’s side to begin petting him again.

Rafi tried to ask what he was doing, but now that he’d had something to drink, his eyelids were heavy, and the touches left him warm and happy. He turned to press his face to Viau, inching in as Viau slid down beside him, and then let his breathing slow.

When he opened his eyes again, he was alone on Viau’s bed, blankets and pillows around him, in a shirt that was not his own which covered him to his thighs. The room smelled of mint and clean air from the open windows, and Rafi was immediately aware of pulled muscles in nearly every part of his body.

He twitched, sliding his legs together as he tried to push himself up to sit, and realized he’d been wiped down, possibly even scrubbed clean, and something soothing and soft like the creams the expensive courtesans were said to use had been rubbed into his skin.

Viau was at his desk, in only a shirt once again, but his hair tied back neatly as peered at a potted plant on his desk and then jotted something into a bound book.

Rafi pulled his gaze from Viau’s bare skin, and the parted knees Rafi would fit precisely between, and the length of Viau’s perfect hair, to the darkening bruise at Viau’s throat. A mark from a mouth some might have named it and then looked knowingly at Rafi.

Rafi looked away, then found himself staring at Viau’s hand, fascinated with the way he held the pencil and the shape of his knuckles, and not sure why until he was hit with a burst of memory. He snapped his thighs together, shivering. Coming like that, his entire body flexing around Viau’s hand, had been overwhelming.

He’d begged for it repeatedly anyway, and then, too hot, leaking all over Viau’s bed despite not being fully in aedis yet, had done exactly as Viau had said and mouthed Viau’s cock until they were both….