The Quality of Mercy

by Ari McKay

  Chuckling, Carlos leaned in to claim a brief kiss. “And then you found your angel had some devil in him. He still does,” he added, a wicked gleam in his eyes. “He is thinking very devilish thoughts about a certain schoolteacher.”

  “If you’ll help me get these jeans off, you may make thought reality.” Jules took Carlos’s hand again and pressed it against his hard cock. “Do you feel what you do to me? I’m aching, Carlos. I need you so much.”

  Carlos slanted an evil smile up at Jules as he squeezed Jules’s cock through the denim of his jeans. “I do feel something,” he teased as he eased Jules’s jeans down, coaxing Jules to lift his hips. “Perhaps I should see it as well as feel it.”

  Jules moaned at the insufficient friction, but he lifted his hips as Carlos stripped his jeans down, then his drawers, leaving him naked to Carlos’s sight.

  “I hope you like what you see,” he said softly.

  “I do.” Carlos trailed his fingertips along Jules’s stomach, making his muscles quiver, and caressed Jules’s thighs with sweeping strokes of his palms before resting his hands on Jules’s hips, squeezing gently. “So familiar a sight and so beloved,” he murmured, bending his head to brush kisses along Jules’s inner thigh.

  Gasping softly at the intimate touch, Jules buried his hands in Carlos’s thick hair, sifting it through his fingers and tugging gently. “I want to see you too,” he said, even though he was enjoying Carlos’s attentions. “It’s been so long for me, and I’ve missed you so much.”

  Carlos met and held Jules’s gaze as he sat down on the edge of the bed and tugged off his boots. His shirt was the next to go, and he didn’t look away from Jules as he took his time with the buttons, a pleased little smirk tugging one corner of his mouth. He tossed his shirt aside and slowly rose to his feet, his fingers hovering over the fly of his jeans.

  “More?” he asked, blinking innocently.

  Jules nodded, feeling breathless with eager anticipation. Carlos’s skin was smooth and brown with a rich sprinkling of crisp black hair on his chest and stomach. A thicker trail led down below the waistband of his jeans, and Jules reached out to brush his fingers over Carlos’s abdomen. “More,” he agreed, before slipping his fingers down over the denim and pressing his palm against Carlos’s arousal.

  That coaxed a sharp hiss out of Carlos, and he rocked his hips against Jules’s hand before finally unfastening his fly. He stripped off his jeans and drawers swiftly and tossed them aside, and then he stood proudly in front of Jules.

  “I hope you like what you see.”

  Carlos had definitely filled out in the last ten years, and Jules gave a shiver of delight at the sight of him.

  “I’ve never seen anyone, man or woman, who is more beautiful than you,” he replied, curling his hand around Carlos’s cock and giving it a gentle caress. “I want to touch you and taste you everywhere. I want to feel you pinning me to the mattress. I want everything you are willing to give me.”

  “I will give you everything you want and more.” Carlos reached out and stroked Jules’s cheek. “Although we need to decide how to work around your cast. I do not want to hurt you.”

  “I can’t wait for this thing to come off.” Jules looked down at his cast, considering. “My leg doesn’t really hurt anymore. I could lie on my side, and you could take me from behind, perhaps? I don’t want to wait to have you in me, no matter what I need to do to make it happen.”

  “We will make do for now,” Carlos replied as he helped Jules lift his cast onto the bed. “But I look forward to the day when you can wrap both of your long legs around me again.”

  Jules stretched out on the bed and held out a hand to Carlos. “I want to wrap them around you, too, but it will give us something to look forward to, won’t it?” He widened his eyes, giving Carlos a look of appeal. “Please, Carlos, won’t you love me now? I need you so much.”

  “Is the oil in here?” Carlos pulled open the top drawer on Jules’s bedside table and peered in it.

  “Under my handkerchiefs,” Jules told him.

  As soon as he retrieved the bottle and a handkerchief, Carlos climbed onto the bed and knelt beside Jules. “Roll onto your side,” he instructed as he unscrewed the cap and tossed it onto the table. “Since it has been such a long time for you, we must make certain you are well prepared.”

  Jules rolled, presenting his back to Carlos but looking over his shoulder. “You don’t have to be gentle, love. I don’t mind you leaving marks on me.”

  “You want to look in the mirror and see evidence of my claim on you?” Carlos asked with a teasing smile. He coated his fingers with oil and circled Jules’s tight pucker with his forefinger before slowly easing it in.

  “Yes!” Jules drew in a shuddering breath, then pressed back with his hips, urging Carlos to go faster. “I want you to mark me as you used to. I want to sit at my desk and think about them, remembering how you put them there. I want people to wonder why I’m smiling.”

  As he thrust his finger slowly in and out, Carlos leaned over and bit down on Jules’s shoulder, sucking hard enough to leave a mark on Jules’s fair skin. “Like that?” he murmured, adding a second finger and pushing deep.

  Jules’s reply was a groan, and he wriggled, wanting more. “Yes, yes, like that,” he said, glancing back at Carlos, unashamed of his need and not bothering to hide it. “More, please, more!”

  Carlos’s answering chuckle was pure evil, and he continued pushing his fingers deep and scissoring them as he drew them out. “Patience,” he murmured, brushing kisses over Jules’s shoulder and down his arm. “You made me wait for months.”

  “I had to wait as well,” Jules pointed out, lifting his hand to caress Carlos’s cheek. “Aren’t you eager to take me, querido? Don’t you want to feel my body tight and hot around you?”

  “More than anything, but I want to make certain you feel nothing but pleasure in the process.” Carlos ducked his head under Jules’s arm and bit down again, growling softly as he left another mark. He added a third finger as well, stretching Jules thoroughly.

  “Oh….” Jules drew in a breath, pressing back again, feeling the pleasurable burn of being stretched, reveling in the sensation. Yet he still ached for more. “I’m ready, Carlos! Take me now, please!”

  Carlos rolled away long enough to coat his cock thoroughly with oil and wipe off his hands with the handkerchief, and then he stretched out behind Jules, snugging up against him.

  “I am ready too, querido,” he said as he nudged Jules’s leg forward a bit and positioned himself, then eased into Jules slowly, shuddering when he was buried deep at last. “How I have missed you!”

  Jules held his breath as Carlos finally gave him what he needed, and he gripped Carlos’s hip tightly, half afraid he would wake to find this was just a dream. His eyes burned, but the tears were of happiness, because after so many years of loneliness, he was where he belonged.

  “I’ve missed you too,” he murmured, pressing back against Carlos, taking him in as deeply as possible. “But now we can heal both our hearts.”

  With a quiet hum, Carlos rocked his hips, claiming Jules anew with slow, deep thrusts, and he draped his arm across Jules’s waist, letting his hand stray lower. “Indeed we can,” he said as he curled his fingers around Jules’s cock and stroked it with a confidence that said he remembered exactly how Jules liked to be touched.

  “Mm….” Jules couldn’t move much, but he too remembered, and he matched Carlos’s rhythm as easily as if it had been but a single day, rather than a decade, since they’d last made love. “So good, feels perfect. You’re perfect, my love.”

  Carlos nuzzled the back of Jules’s neck, seeming content to take it slow as they reconnected and refamiliarized themselves with each other. “As are you. You were made to fit me.”

  It had been so long since he’d felt this way, and Jules rode the mounting wave of pleasure, letting each thrust of Carlos’s hips and every stroke of his hand carry him higher. Moving with Carlos was
as natural as breathing, feeling the warmth become heat and then turn into a flame as hot as the sun. His need grew, and he moaned, wishing he could wrap his legs around Carlos. He turned his head, pressing his lips to Carlos’s cheek, and scraped his nails against Carlos’s hip and thigh, urging him on. Carlos echoed the moan and quickened the pace as if he shared Jules’s mounting need, stroking Jules’s cock harder and faster.

  “Yes!” The wave rose faster, and Jules was caught up in the tide of pleasure, unable to resist it and not even wanting to. He was hurtling toward ecstasy, and then suddenly he was there, arching against Carlos, crying out Carlos’s name as he shattered.

  Carlos stroked him throughout his release, wringing every bit of pleasure out of Jules’s body, and when Jules relaxed at last, Carlos cuddled him close and tight. “So beautiful,” he murmured, nipping gently at Jules’s ear.

  Floating in bliss, Jules smiled. “Your turn,” he murmured, snuggling his hips back against Carlos’s. “I want you to take your pleasure in me.”

  With a low growl, Carlos gripped Jules’s hip hard and began to move, claiming Jules with hard, powerful thrusts. It wasn’t long before he cried out and buried himself deep one last time, his body racked with shudders.

  “Yes!” Jules reached back, burying his hand in Carlos’s hair, moving his hips in small circles to prolong Carlos’s pleasure. “Yes, love…. Oh, querido… so good. You feel so good.”

  “So do you,” Carlos murmured, nuzzling kisses along Jules’s neck and shoulder as he nestled close, seeming in no hurry to move away and break their intimate contact. “This is all I needed to make Bent Oak truly feel like home.”

  Jules had felt contentment over the past ten years, but for the first time in longer than he could remember, happiness—pure, bone-deep happiness—flowed over him. “You are all I need,” he said, snuggling into Carlos’s embrace, feeling too warm and sated to move. “My home is wherever you are.”

  Carlos tightened his arm around Jules and smiled against his skin. “Then we will talk to Gil about having a house together, and we will tell Al about us—but later. I want to be selfish and keep you to myself for a while longer.”

  “I like that idea,” Jules said, giving a happy sigh. “We’ll make a home together, and nothing will separate us again.”

  “Nothing and no one,” Carlos agreed.

  “Good.” Jules sighed, feeling a wonderful lassitude stealing over him. His heart was whole, and he was safely wrapped in his lover’s arms. It had been a difficult and painful journey to get to this point, but everything had finally worked out.

  As he hovered on the edge of sleep, he smiled, knowing his dreams would be happy ones. He and Carlos were together, they’d moved past their mistakes and found forgiveness and absolution in one another, and, best of all, neither of them would ever be lonely again.

  The quality of mercy is not strain’d,

  It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven

  Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:

  It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.

  —William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act 4, Scene 1

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  ARI MCKAY is the professional pseudonym for Arionrhod and McKay, who have been writing together for over a decade. Their collaborations encompass a wide variety of romance genres, including contemporary, fantasy, science fiction, gothic, and action/adventure. Their work includes the Blood Bathory series of paranormal novels, the Herc’s Mercs series, as well as two historical Westerns: Heart of Stone and Finding Forgiveness. When not writing, they can often be found scheming over costume designs or binge watching TV shows together.

  Arionrhod is a systems engineer by day who is eagerly looking forward to (hopefully) becoming a full-time writer in the not-too-distant future. Now that she is an empty nester, she has turned her attentions to finding the perfect piece of land to build a fortress in preparation for the zombie apocalypse, and baking (and eating) far too many cakes.

  McKay is an English teacher who has been writing for one reason or another most of her life. She also enjoys knitting, reading, cooking, and playing video games. She has been known to knit in public. Given she has the survival skills of a gnat, she’s relying on Arionrhod to help her survive the zombie apocalypse.

  Visit Ari on:

  Website: arimckay.com

  Facebook: www.facebook.com/pages/Ari-Mckay/266185570179748

  Twitter: @AriMcKay1