by Cole McCade
A kiss he’d wanted again and again.
And a kiss he needed so desperately right now, when his heart was hurting and everything felt wrong and hopeless and helpless, and the only thing that made him feel right and calm and safe again was Damon.
The way Damon kissed Rian left him soft and so weak he could barely stand up, clutching at the front of Damon’s shirt to keep himself in one piece as he leaned into the touch of firm, heated lips. Slow—so slow, Damon took his time kissing Rian as if bringing each part of his lips, his mouth to life with his touch; making him aware of the texture of his own lips, the shape of the upper, the lower, each point and curve, each tingling nerve from corner to corner, until his mouth throbbed and centered every point of sensation on the need for the next touch, the next taste, the next wet-hot tease of Damon’s tongue tracing over his mouth and then stealing past to coax Rian open with a lazy intimacy that made him tremble.
As if Damon was saying let me in.
Let me in...and let me have control.
Rian was accustomed to dominance coming with force. With insistence. With pushy aggression that overwhelmed him...but Damon overwhelmed him with gentleness, the slick glide of his tongue not demanding Rian’s surrender—but making him want so deeply to give it that he couldn’t help but melt, parting his lips, giving up everything to those slow strokes and the suggestive, feinting penetration of each sweet thrust past his lips. He tried to kiss Damon back; he tried, but with his mouth so sensitized and his entire body turning into needy prickles, every touch shook through him until he gave in helplessly and let Damon have...
Whatever he wanted.
Rian would give Damon whatever he wanted, right now.
Even if it meant all of him.
And he stole his fingers into Damon’s hair, coiling the slick, cool strands around his fingers as if they were a lifeline, asking with every touch of his fingertips stroking down to Damon’s scalp: Do you feel it?
Do you feel this, too?
This quiet need. This empty loneliness. This sense of being adrift without an anchor...and the only thing keeping them afloat was each other. The way they clung to each other; the way their mouths met again and again in breathless, light-teasing strokes, stealing taste after taste after taste. The way Damon’s hands slid up Rian’s back to pull him into the hard breadth of Damon’s body...and the way Rian couldn’t help yielding to mold himself against Damon, letting that sensitivity spread from his lips out to his fingertips until he could enjoy the sheer sensuous pleasure of feeling Damon with every inch of him.
Kissing Damon shouldn’t feel this good. Shouldn’t fill the empty hollows inside him; shouldn’t sand away the raw edges of everything that hurt. But he didn’t want to think right now. Didn’t want to wonder. Didn’t want to worry. Didn’t want to ache.
Didn’t want anything but to want, and as he nipped at Damon’s lower lip in tentative question, stroked his fingers down his back...
The way Damon groaned “Rian” with whispered, aching desperation said that yes.
Yes, Damon felt it too.
And Rian felt Damon as that hard body tensed and shuddered under his questing fingertips, shoulder blades stark against his palms; as the heat of Damon’s thickly corded musculature nearly burned through both their clothing, imprinting on Rian and letting him feel every shape of him. The tight flex of his pectorals; the hard cut underneath leading down to his rib cage; the ridges of his abdominals.
The heavy, stiff outline of his cock against his jeans, an insistent pressure against Rian’s hips and stomach.
Rian caught his breath, his own cock pulsing almost painfully in response, and he bit harder at Damon’s lower lip as he moved against him—dragging hips to hips, his fingers digging into Damon’s back as the rush of fabric and flesh gliding together nearly turned his bones to air, wisping and insubstantial and refusing to support him. He clutched at Damon as Damon fell back to lean against the kitchen counter as if breaking beneath their combined weight, groaning low and deep and thunderous, digging his fingers into Rian’s waist until the throbbing points pressing into his sides matched the rhythm of his bloodstream surging through his growing erection.
With a rough sound, Damon broke the gasping lock of their lips and dipped his head to press his mouth to Rian’s throat, his arms winding around Rian’s waist until Rian felt deliciously caged, enveloped...sheltered. And much too sensitive, the slightest graze of Damon’s teeth against his neck sending shocks through him until he rose up on his toes, whimpering softly and hiding his face against Damon’s shoulder.
“Tell me,” Damon whispered raggedly, his voice a thing of living fire burning harsh against Rian’s skin, over the vulnerable point of his pulse. “Tell me what you want.”
Rian stilled, his heart thundering as he pressed his mouth against Damon’s shoulder, struggling to think. Struggling to pull himself together enough to ask himself what he wanted—from Damon, from this moment, from the hard grip of Damon’s hands on his body and the inescapable evidence of mutual need captured hard between them, the pressure a constant and dizzying thing that stole his thoughts and his breath.
You, he wanted to cry, and yet he was afraid if he did...
If he did, Damon might let go.
Might say I could give you my body, but someone like you?
I could never give you me.
He turned his face into Damon’s throat, pressing his cheek over the rapid timpani moving so strongly against Damon’s neck.
“I want...” He licked dry lips, and caught a taste of the salt of Damon’s taut, heated skin. “... I want to not be alone right now. I want... I want to not be just me.”
The shudder that went through Damon felt like being at the heart of a seismic rift, shifting raw and powerful against Rian’s body, so much caged-up energy on the verge of releasing in a massive quake. Yes, he thought as he waited, trembling—to be thrust away, to be drawn closer, he never knew when he wasn’t sure if this man despised or desired him. Please...take that energy out on me.
Let me have all your force and your fury.
Let me have all the feelings you can’t let out anywhere else.
Damon drew back, parting them enough that dark brown eyes could fix on Rian; in those depths dwelled a hesitation, an uncertainty Rian would never have expected from a man as stubborn and firm as Damon. As unexpected as the softness of his touch, as Damon let go of his death grip on Rian enough to lift one hand and curl it underneath his chin, gripping gently, his thumb grazing beneath Rian’s lower lip with the rough callus teasing and electrifying his skin.
“You sure?” Damon asked, hoarse as if his voice had been singed to ash. “You want that with me?”
More than Rian could explain. More than he could account for with reason, with sense. Too much—overcoming him with a rush of something desperate and wild, something lonely and needy, something almost frightening in its intensity. He shouldn’t—he couldn’t.
But for right now...he would.
He relaxed his tight handful of the back of Damon’s shirt, slipping his hands down over his shoulders to rest against the rise and fall of Damon’s chest; Rian couldn’t look at him right now, not when every deep-penetrating glance shot through him so hard and left his body tight and trembling.
He couldn’t speak.
So he only nodded slow, biting his lip as he curled his fingers in Damon’s T-shirt again, wrinkling the Albin Academy logo across the tight-stretched heather gray fabric.
He couldn’t explain this pull Damon had on him—gravitational, astronomical.
But right now, he didn’t have the strength to deny the way it yearned.
Nor did he have the strength to deny himself as, with a wordless rumble, Damon swept him in close again; swept him in close and caught Rian’s mouth more swiftly, more fiercely, as if that nod had let loose some tight restraint holding Damon in
check until he kissed Rian hotter, harder, subsuming him in a rush of spark-wild desire and leaving him nearly limp in Damon’s arms. Rian rose up on his toes again, draping his body against Damon’s, pressing his mouth to Damon’s just to feel that pressure, that burn, taking the luscious awareness of his mouth and driving it to new heights until it felt as if Damon was kissing his entire body.
Yet no phantom rush of sensation could match the very real wash of sudden pleasure vibrating through him in high, singing notes as Damon’s hands slipped under his caftan to bring bare skin to bare skin; those rough fingertips marked Rian as if changing him, transforming his flesh everywhere Damon touched as broad hands slid one inch at a time up Rian’s back. Between the deep, deliberate, heady penetration of a teasing tongue and the touch of those hands marking Rian like a brand, Rian barely noticed the pressure of Damon’s body pushing him backward, one tangled step at a time; barely noticed anything other than that Damon tasted like warm nights hovering just on that cusp between summer and fall, full of calm and brightness and a sense of home.
Until his thighs hit the edge of the bed; until abruptly he was weightless as that strong arm around his waist lifted him up, hefting him so that his feet left the ground, until Damon set him down on the edge of that tall-piled bed with its layered quilts and futon padding atop the mattress; so high that Rian’s feet didn’t touch the floor and, sitting like this, he was actually taller than Damon, tilting his head down to meet his mouth as Rian wound his arms around Damon’s neck and held on to that kiss for dearest life. This time it was his turn to taste, to search deep, to explore that captured space between them until he knew Damon’s mouth inside and out; until he knew what could make Damon clutch hard at his waist with the faintest flick of Rian’s tongue, what could make him growl as Rian gathered up handfuls of Damon’s hair, palms cupping his jaw, and drew him in so Rian could nip and nibble and tease at his lower lip.
Nothing else mattered, right now.
Nothing mattered but this closeness, this sense of wondering discovery, this entwined ache that forgot time, forgot trouble, forgot anything but this craving not to be alone.
And when Damon’s hands caught Rian’s caftan and dragged it upward, Rian barely drew back long enough to lift his arms and let Damon throw the sapphire blue garment aside before he was winding his arms around Damon’s neck again, kissing him with a lazy fever even as he knotted his fingers in Damon’s shirt and tugged. Until they were grasping hands and needy pulls everywhere; until Damon’s shirt was a gray puddle on the floor and Rian’s hips lifted off the bed as his linen trousers waterfalled down the side of the stacked mattresses; until Damon’s zipper lowered with a rasp and denim bagged around his sinewy thighs and Rian kicked his sandals off to send them tumbling across the room and there was nothing left between them except for Damon’s clinging, tight-fit gray boxer-briefs and the thin white scrap of fabric the packaging on Rian’s underwear had described as Men’s Bikini Briefs, but that right now just felt like too much in the way of himself and this hunger to be with Damon, to connect with him, until the touch of flesh was only secondary.
So Rian didn’t resist when Damon laid him back against the pillowy, plush layers of the bed; didn’t resist when Damon’s weight sank the mattress down around him, then sank into him, resting atop him until he knew every inch of Damon with every inch of himself, shuddering and sighing out sounds as those hard-edged, perfectly contoured muscles practically cut into him as Damon’s thick bulk covered him and Rian just felt...
Enveloped.
Enveloped, sheltered, safe...and so very content, as he slipped his arms around Damon’s neck again and moved against him skin to skin, leaning up to feather kisses over his mouth. He could do this for hours, melting into each other’s body heat, trading exploratory, tentative touches as Rian let his fingertips follow the dips and ridges and hollows of Damon’s body with a skimming touch, while Damon buried his fingers in Rian’s hair and stroked through it luxuriantly, the backs of his knuckles following the strands down to outline Rian’s shape in brushes that contrasted the heat of Damon’s skin with the coolness of Rian’s hair to leave him shivering.
No one had ever touched him so softly—as if he was glass, spun in fine threads and meant to be handled with care. As if his every nerve ending was wired not just to his senses, but to his heart, and Damon made both tremble with shocks of potently deep sensitivity as he skimmed his fingers over Rian’s stomach, his ribs; as his mouth descended to kiss, velvet-lush and wet, over Rian’s jaw, his throat; as they met in the middle to leave thick fingertips toying with one nipple, the other caught between careful teeth and a lashing tongue, and Rian dragging his fingers down Damon’s back and gasping out sounds that never fully came out when they stuck in a throat that closed each time pleasure shot through him in delicate ribbons, pulling and tangling everywhere inside him.
While the entire time they moved against each other in long, lingering rhythm, letting their bodies speak and touch where words and lips weren’t needed, the deep-grinding friction of flesh to flesh building something unnamed between them to a point of screaming tension, molten desire, jolting rushes of something that felt so pure and intoxicating and good that Rian’s toes curled against the sheets every time his cock dragged against Damon’s through near-intangible layers of fabric. Every thrust burned deeper than the last; every tug of Damon’s teeth and flick of his tongue shot Rian’s nerves into more and more jagged fragments, until he was whimpering as he tangled his legs with Damon’s and lifted himself against him, fighting against that weight atop him just to feel how glorious it was when Damon’s bulk pressed him back down.
And he almost cried out in protest as Damon lifted off him, weight rolling to the side; he opened his eyes, a question on his lips—only to catch Damon leaning over the side of the bed to nudge the nightstand drawer open with his fingertips, stretching them out to reach from the stacked height of the mattresses as he rummaged inside and came up with a little bottle of clear oil.
When he drew back with it, though, propping himself up on one elbow and looking down at Rian, Damon blinked. His brows drew together, concern darkening his eyes as he dropped the bottle of lube on the pillow and ran his fingers along Rian’s cheek. “Hey—hey, what’s wrong? You look like you’re about to cry.”
“I...” Rian’s face burned, and he swallowed, reaching up to toy a lock of Damon’s hair around his fingers. “I thought...you were about to stop.”
“Nah.” Damon’s grin was lopsided and boyishly sweet, almost shy; he bent and brushed his lips to Rian’s brow. “Not unless you tell me to. Just needed a little something to make it easier, if you wanna go that far.”
That was when Rian realized what Damon was asking.
What he was saying.
That he didn’t want to be alone right now, either.
And he—this stubborn, kind, compassionate man who seemed to carry reserves of strength that he gave to others without restraint, without compunction—was afraid of being pushed away, too.
So Rian pushed himself up, capturing Damon’s lips...even as he skated his fingertips down his body, following the graceful, iron-hard taper of his chest down to his waist, then slipping between them until he caught the heavy weight of Damon’s cock in his palm, molding his fingers over Damon’s shape through the thin cotton. God, that flesh felt so hot, burning against Rian’s skin and seeming to swell into his hold, as Damon’s back arched violently and he let out a ragged, hoarse cry, his lips going slack against Rian’s and his eyes closing tightly. Rian couldn’t help the thrill of it, being able to make Damon react that way, hips moving in short, sharp jerks to press into Rian’s palm as Rian worked over him slowly, discovering his shape through the cloth, echoing every stroke and squeeze with a soft-flicking thrust of his tongue against Damon’s lax, gasping lips.
“I,” Rian whispered against Damon’s mouth, “want to go as far as you’ll take me.”
&nb
sp; Damon made a hoarse sound in the back of his throat, his head dropping to rest his brow to Rian’s shoulder, hips thrusting hard into Rian’s palm—and he felt dampness soaking the fabric, warm and slick, the musky, thick scent of pre-come filling the air between them.
“Maybe,” Damon gasped out, “saying ‘take me’ ain’t the best goddamned idea when you’re...mnnh...when you’re doing that to me.”
Rian turned his head, nipping the curve of Damon’s ear, working his fingers in kneading circles against his cock. “What about ‘kiss me?’” he asked softly. “Can I say that?”
Damon groaned, tortured and deep, his mouth moving against Rian’s collarbone. “Fuck, say it again.”
“Kiss me,” Rian breathed.
And God, did Damon oblige.
Searing, claiming, Rian didn’t dare think possessive but God did he feel owned as the pressure of Damon’s lips teased him open and left him vulnerable to the plunder of plying strokes and a tongue that dipped inside him as if to torment him with the suggestion of what his straining body ached for. There was no denying that Damon wanted, too, when his cock surged so hard against Rian’s palm—only for that warm contact to be denied as strong fingers caught him by the wrists. Gently, so gently Damon eased Rian’s arms up over his head, crossing them against the mattress to pin him with a single hand spanning the breadth of his wrists; panting harshly, Damon lifted himself up on his free hand, his kiss-reddened mouth quirking dryly.
“Gonna need you to behave yourself for a minute,” he rumbled. “Or you’re gonna make me lose it, Rian.”
Rian let out a sulky little sound, twisting under Damon—only to gasp as that movement seemed to slip Damon between his legs as if he belonged there, until they were no longer tangled but instead nested together with Damon’s hips cradled between Rian’s thighs...and Rian’s thighs spread to the point of pain, when the thickness of Damon’s body gave him no choice but to open himself wide so Damon could fit.
