Bas’s hands travel down the sides of Kimolijah’s ribs, palms flat and fingers splayed, like he doesn’t want to miss touching anything, thumbs hooked around and sweeping over chest then ribcage then belly, stopping just short and only grazing the dark thatch beneath Kimolijah’s navel, even when Kimolijah rocks his hips up in subdued demand. Kimolijah swears he can feel the whorls on Bas’s fingertips as they slide across the small of his back, dig in just a little bit, just enough to make Kimolijah gasp in a juddering breath, before moving on to sweep his torso, all laggard and leisurely, like Bas has got all the time in the world and Kimolijah isn’t in the process of vibrating right out of his skin. The slow sweeping anticipation of it fizzes through Kimolijah’s chest then screws in and tightens when there’s no reward, only Bas’s hands gripping tight to Kimolijah’s hips for a quick second before traveling down his thighs.
And all the while, Bas’s mouth moves over him, tongue swiping hot stripes over Kimolijah’s collarbones, stopping to investigate the dip between them before taking a teasing bite just above Kimolijah’s left nipple. Kimolijah arches up, he can’t help it, lets a little gasp loose from his throat, and almost snarls when Bas only chuckles a little, then slides his tongue in a wide circle, never touching the nipple, flaring the want in Kimolijah’s belly and chest into something hard and humming.
Hands curving slow and light along the insides of Kimolijah’s thighs, Bas’s mouth dips down lower, pauses at the narrow valley of Kimolijah’s breastbone, drops kisses like a small storm of moths as his fingertips trail and tease at the crease where Kimolijah’s thighs meet his groin. A hot gust of breath billows over Kimolijah’s erection, so close Kimolijah can feel the moisture from Bas’s mouth settling over him, all prickly and sanity-stealing, and Kimolijah sucks in a harsh breath, hips lifting all on their own, but all he gets is a breathy little chuckle from Bas and broad hands over his hipbones, pushing him down. Bas’s touch keeps going from hard and ruthless to soft and teasing, and the disparity of it is snatching at Kimolijah’s sense, making him coil and contort himself, trying to anticipate which touch is coming next and where and when, and why won’t Bas just touch him?
Kimolijah groans frustration, pushes up again, but Bas grips the thick muscles of Kimolijah’s thighs, presses him down, and stops moving. And then he draws away.
Nonononono, don’t go, don’t leave me here like this, Kimolijah can almost hear the warbling half-tones of it, and it’s stupid, it’s bloody absurd, but he only just keeps it locked behind his teeth. To go from near-overwhelming sensation to all this nothing is almost more than he can take, and he clenches his jaw, tries to calm himself before he starts begging Bas to touch him, just touch him, damn it, why won’t Bas touch—
“D’you want to stop?”
Kimolijah’s mind stutters. His eyes snap open and narrow at Bas; Bas only looks back steadily from beneath his tangled fringe, firelight snatching gold from brown and sparking it into honeyed-sienna. Bas is propped up on his arms now, hands flat to the mattress to either side of Kimolijah’s ribs, knees snugged to either side of Kimolijah’s hips.
Kimolijah hadn’t even really thought that he could stop—wasn’t that the whole point of the scarf?—and some part of him wants to snarl and snap at Bas for giving him the option, because what is he supposed to do with it? Yes, I want to stop feeling the amazing things your mouth and your hands can do to me before I even find out how much more amazing it can be, or No, this makes me too raw and powerless and I don’t know how much more I can take before I lose something important.
But here it is, here’s that control he’d thought defines him, and it’s being put back into his hands—his bound hands, his useless hands—and there’s got to be something profound in there somewhere, some weighty metaphor Kimolijah’s just too goddamned muddled right now to suss.
Kimolijah locks his gaze with Bas’s, tries to look deep and right into his heart, and everything goes still again. Kimolijah can feel the sweat sliding down his temples, can feel it sheening his whole body, sticking his shoulders to the soft linen of the pillowcase. He can hear the slow flicker of the fire, smell the sooty-gray scent of it, watch the echoed dance of the flames in the shadows slide-slicking over Bas’s chest. And he’s just so amazingly lovely, that Kimolijah almost can’t believe he’s here, with him, and looking at him with that broad question in his eyes, turning this night into something almost too significant.
This was supposed to be another rollicking shag, a night of growled laughter and tumbling about on sweat-damp sheets after a day of patent innuendo in a place where Bas could do nothing but fume quietly until Kimolijah finally got him home and in bed. And now look what it’s become. Something big and full of implications Kimolijah’s not sure they’re ready to define.
“You’re thinking again,” Bas says softly.
It startles him a little. Kimolijah thinks it’s odd, because Bas should be smiling or smirking when he says that, but he’s not. He’s only looking and waiting.
It’s like a bright-white flare of coherency inside a storm of chaos. Kimolijah hadn’t known ten seconds ago what his answer was going to be, but he knows now. Maybe there are things they can’t speak, but not everything has to be defined, not everything should be defined, and Kimolijah decides this is one of those things.
Bas’s gaze is somber and expectant, but there is no judgment inside it and no hint of what he wants Kimolijah’s answer to be. Kimolijah really does believe that Bas will accept his answer, whatever it is, and that belief is like all of the tumblers in all of the locks inside him turning all at once.
“Kimo?”
Bas’s expression hasn’t changed, and his voice is just as steady and patient.
Kimolijah can’t help noticing how defined Bas’s body looks in the wavering light, how the silky shifts of muscle beneath his skin chisel strength across his chest and down his shoulders and arms. Kimolijah wants to touch them, trace the shadows in their dips and rises, taste the contrast as they flex, tighten and ripple, then relax. For a second or two, the need is high and bright, making his mouth water and heat pool in his belly. If he wasn’t tied to the bed, he thinks he might just wrench himself up and eat Bas alive, rip him apart just to get down to the core of him.
He only shakes his head, says, “Kiss me.”
Bas leans down, his thigh almostalmostalmost brushing against Kimolijah’s erection, and the heat baking off Bas’s skin nearly shakes Kimolijah to the bone. “Say it,” Bas tells him.
Kimolijah almost doesn’t know what Bas wants him to say, but he opens his mouth and, “I don’t want to stop,” comes out of it, and that must have been the right thing, because Bas does kiss him, deep and hard and possessive, and it drags so far down inside him that Kimolijah thinks he might actually die if it stops.
Bas groans, low and needy, and he shifts, wood and ticking whining and squeaking beneath his weight, and somehow the sounds they’re making—low moans and heavy breaths and the sticky susurrus of skin-on-skin—are so bloody full of sex that it’s a brand new assault all by itself, slicking over Kimolijah’s skin and making him twist and writhe. And Bas is barely even touching him.
God, Kimolijah really really wants to sink his fingers into Bas’s hair, hold on and not let him move away, drag him down on top of himself and just keep pushpushpushing, grinding his pelvis into Bas’s hip until this excruciating want buzzing in his chest is finally sated. He wants Bas to keep kissing him like this, sucking his soul out, making him dizzy and euphoric, almost disembodied, and that’s all right, even the vertigo is all right, because Kimolijah doesn’t mind being lost in this, in the heat of Bas’s mouth, the desire coming off him in waves and washing all over Kimolijah, spiking need up through Kimolijah’s chest like he’s breathing it.
But Bas draws back, and Kimolijah almost cries, he really does, he almost lets a few tears squeeze out from the corners of his closed eyes; not only because the loss is close to devastating, but maybe tears will make Bas
take pity on him and let him have some more, just a little more, please—
And then Bas’s hand is between Kimolijah’s legs, slick and warm with oil, and how did Kimolijah not hear Bas opening the drawer, how did he not notice the sharp smell of rosemary, how did he not—?
“Oh, bleeding— gah, Bas!” is all Kimolijah manages as Bas’s hands start working inside him, and Kimolijah arches up off the bed as Bas twists his fingers. It’s like an explosion inside him, crushing through his chest and all up his backbone, spiraling out and out until every inch of him is tingling with it. Effervescent heat sluices all through him, jinks him about until Bas has to grip Kimolijah’s hip and shove him back down.
Kimolijah has some vague notion that he’s leaking obscenities, spilling them out like steam from a kettle, but it’s all garbled and breathless and even he can’t understand it, so he concentrates on more important things. Like how he’s going to shatter and fall apart pretty soon, if Bas doesn’t stop teasing and fuck him. Like how Bas’s hand is making his insides pool all hot and liquid, like lightning is splintering up his spine and melting him from the inside-out. Like how his erection feels tight and heavy, like he just might come any second, and Bas hasn’t even touched him yet, has made it a bloody point not to touch him. Like how Bas’s teeth and tongue, all hot and slick and finally on Kimolijah’s nipple, are making Kimolijah nearly lose his mind, making him wild and near-feral so that Bas has to actually lay a leg across Kimolijah’s knees to keep him from bucking himself right off the bed.
Like how this overwhelming feeling of abandoned lust is exactly what had terrified him so when that silk had slid up against his wrist, and yet the yammering voice of the fear has transmuted into the wandering, mumbled curses falling from Kimolijah’s own mouth.
Because right now, Bas could ask of Kimolijah anything, ask him to stand on his head and quack like a duck, and if it would get Bas to just fuck him, pleasepleaseplease God, fuck him already, Kimolijah would, he’d do it, he’d do it gladly and not care that he was standing on his head and quacking like a duck. Bas could make him beg, and Kimolijah would, he knows he would, and it isn’t like Kimolijah hasn’t begged for it before, but not like this, not when it means something, not when the potential for humiliation is almost a live thing, breath and bone.
But Bas won’t, and maybe that’s why this is all right, maybe that’s why the silk of the scarf isn’t burning and stripping Kimolijah’s skin raw, maybe that’s why Kimolijah feels open and exposed, but not as afraid as he thinks he might. Bas won’t, and they both know that right now, Kimolijah would let him, but Bas won’t, because cursing and writhing and sweating—that’s not all this is.
This is more, this is everything, and Kimolijah almost can’t even remember why he’d been so afraid it might be nothing.
Bas twists his wrist again, judders his hand a little, and the jarring shock of sensation rolls a thick shout from Kimolijah’s throat, shatters all through him in tiny, pinpoint explosions of frothy, blissful agony beneath his skin. This shouldn’t feel so new, but it’s like nothing Bas has ever done to him before, like he’s invented some new torturous maneuver designed specifically to drive Kimolijah out of his mind, fingers curling and twisting in a way that’s driving Kimolijah to a state just short of delirium, and jerking reactions out of him that he didn’t even know he had in him. It’s this spectacular, white… thing, there just aren’t any words, and it blazes all through him, makes him coil and scream, and why has Bas never done this before either?
Some miniscule part of Kimolijah’s mind that still insists on clinging to lucidity marks the manifest unfairness of having lived all these years without even knowing this kind of ecstasy existed, but the rest of him is busy babbling yesyesyes and trying to twist his body into any shape that might get him more. He tries to lift his hips, tries to rock a little, but every time he moves, Bas stops, goes still, and the frustration is like a sentient thing, crouching on Kimolijah’s chest, heavy enough to make him growl and snarl and curse.
He has a sudden and searing sense of just exactly how much power he’s handed over to Bas, how much control, and he could reach for it back, could bark a command and Bas would follow it, Kimolijah knows that. Somehow Kimolijah doesn’t want it, and that would have seemed anathema just an hour ago, but the thought of wresting that control back now almost makes Kimolijah sob, and even that doesn’t embarrass him anymore.
It feels like he’s been hard for hours, tied to this bed and writhing forever, strokes of pleasure burning through him until he thinks he might go insane. And every time he thinks it can’t possibly get better, he can’t possibly feel any more, it does and he does, and Bas takes him a little further into mind-numbing bliss.
Kimolijah’s body and mind coil and warp into new contortions that bend his concepts of reality, stretch the fabric of his Self, but none of it seems important now somehow, because he doesn’t think he’s ever felt so blazingly alive as he does inside this moment. There’s this incredible, ironic freedom in all of this, and he thinks he might be laughing, something a little crazed and euphoric, but his mind won’t fix and latch onto any one thing for more than a fleeting second, so he’s not really sure, and that’s not important either.
He’s somehow managed to push off Bas’s hold on his legs, lifted his knees, and he has no idea when that happened, but there they are, and Kimolijah digs his heels down into the mattress, rocks down onto Bas’s hand.
“Please,” Kimolijah whispers, and his voice sounds strange, hoarse and broken, so he must have been screaming, and Huh, isn’t that funny? but he’s not really surprised and he really doesn’t care. “Please,” he says again, “want you, please.”
And Bas draws in a long breath, leans down. “Soon,” he says against Kimolijah’s lips.
“Bas,” Kimolijah groans—whines, begs—right into Bas’s mouth, and the needy, plaintive tone of it should be pathetic, but it isn’t, because Bas breathes it in, gives a little twist-jerk of his hand, and only slides the fingers of his other hand into Kimolijah’s hair when Kimolijah does it again. “Now, please now,” and it tapers off into breathless, garbled mutters when Bas’s thumb slide-scrapes over him.
“Beautiful,” is all Bas whispers, voice calm and low, and in direct contrast to the filthy things his hands are doing to Kimolijah’s sanity.
This is it, right here, this is what love is: knowing that you’d give anything, do anything, be anything, and you’d regret it later, but being sure that it won’t be asked of you anyway, so it’s all right, it’s all right to want, to take, to give, to know.
Kimolijah’s heart beats behind his ribs like it’s trying to claw its way through. Skittering sensation on him, in him, way down deep inside, and it feels so amazingly good it actually bloody hurts, but not like pain, not like a discord of nerve-endings battering against one another. It’s a burn that could eat him up, could push him right to the end of himself, could send him rocketing to the ends of his own borders, a lunatic laugh caught blunt in his throat while he explodes into nothing. And the scariest part about it is that he just might smash through that end-barrier himself, with his own hands, batter and bloody them, if it means he can go on feeling this blinding rush of almost and ohfuckyes and one more push, help me, take me, keep me, don’t let go.
But he doesn’t have to, because Bas is over him now, drawing his hand away, and Kimolijah would protest because the loss is almost painful, it really is, but Bas is pulling at Kimolijah’s leg, sliding it up and over his shoulder, so Kimolijah just shuts up and goes still, because he doesn’t want to do or say anything that will make Bas stop what he’s doing. He watches with rapt attention as Bas drops more oil into his palm, almost shatters into a million little pieces when Bas’s eyes close and his head falls back and his mouth opens, as he smears a hand over himself, pumps and slides it once, twice, and stutters out a little groan.
Kimolijah realizes the whimpery little noises in his ears are coming from his own mouth, and he
clamps it tight. Bas is gorgeous, just bloody gorgeous, all broad with his pale skin glistening with sweat, biceps flexing and catching at shadows as he moves his hand on himself. Kimolijah wants to touch him, he really wants his hands just for a moment, just so he can touch Bas, his fingers nearly burn with it. For the first time, Kimolijah seriously considers asking Bas to let him loose, just so he can sate the prickling, itchy want in his fingertips, satisfy at least one desire right now, touch everything he’s been denied and fill himself up with it. Instead, he slides his foot over Bas’s calf just to remind him he’s here and waiting, waiting, waiting, please don’t make me wait any more, it’s burning me to look at you and I’m bloody dying here!
Bas peers down, locks his gaze to Kimolijah’s, smiles something soft and lovely at him. Kimolijah wants to bite that smile from off Bas’s lips, wants to gnaw away Bas’s calm, make him feel just as out of control as Kimolijah does, just because it’s so bloody fucking good that he wants Bas to feel it, too. And then Bas is taking hold of himself with one hand, gripping Kimolijah’s hip hard enough to hurt with the other, and guiding himself in. And Kimolijah forgets what control is.
He arches, screams, the leg dangling over Bas’s shoulder locking up so that Kimolijah’s heel is grinding into the thick muscle beneath Bas’s shoulder blade, the other curling up tight to Bas’s ribs, digging in and trying to draw him in deeper, harder. Kimolijah’s hands are splayed, knuckles brushing against the smooth wood of the spindles, and his head is arched back so far he can see the veins in his arms standing out as he strains against the silk holding him down. He doesn’t need to see it; he can feel it, so he closes his eyes, concentrates on sensation.
Bas is hard and hot inside him, grinding in slow at an angle that whites Kimolijah’s mind, scrapes spangling pressure all through him with each minute shift of Bas’s hips. Bas’s hand, fingers hot and palm filmed a little with sweat, drags down Kimolijah’s thigh, almost scalds him, sweeps a stuttering light touch over Kimolijah’s erection, and Kimolijah almost comes out of his skin, frothy spangles of blistering intensity sparking all over him and thumping down deep into his belly. It’s the first time Bas has actually touched him, and it threatens to send Kimolijah over the edge, just that quick.
