by Amy Lane
Like Aylan, he was weeping in time.
Of course Elly—Torrant eventually shook them off, wiped his face, and pulled himself into order. As though he had merely sat down for a moment, he rose to his feet on his own, and then gave them both hands up out of the dirt. “This isn’t what we came for,” he said roughly.
“Isn’t it?” Aylan asked ironically, and his reward was to be hauled into a tight embrace and then released just as abruptly.
“There’s a swimming hole, down there beyond the barn.” Torrant pointed to where the trees grew smaller to their view and thickened around what was obviously the river. “I say we scope out the buildings, see what wood is salvageable and how many of the workers’ quarters will be able to be rebuilt, and maybe make some plans for putting a main building up on the least-wrecked foundation, and then gather the wagon and the horses and meet back at the swimming hole.”
He was talking too much. They all knew it. There was nothing to do but go along with the plan.
“Torrant, uhm….” Aylan looked at Eljean, turning circles to get the dust off his backside, and Eljean looked back blankly. Aylan rolled his eyes and sighed in frustration. “Brother, about the outbuildings. How hard is it going to be for you to look into them and see…?”
“They were herded into the common room” came the flat reply. Eljean looked in surprise to the larger outbuilding, the one with the fractured windowpanes. “Yes, that’s the one,” Torrant affirmed, and then he hesitated, his eyes locking on Aylan’s.
“Brother, if you don’t mind, I’d rather not look in there,” Torrant rasped, and Aylan nodded his head.
“That’s what I was thinking,” he replied and again gave an oblique look at Eljean. “How about I go check out that building, and you two can go look at the stalls?” He turned and rooted around in the saddlebags slung alongside Torrant’s monstrous, docile stallion. He came out with a scrip of food, a skin of drinking water, and the summer-weight cloak Torrant had worn that morning but had taken off as they’d ridden. He thrust this odd assortment of things into Torrant’s hands, and the lines between his eyes grew deep, and his expression became as cranky and ill-tempered as Eljean was used to seeing.
Torrant took the armload and squinted at Aylan in complete puzzlement. He made one of those shrugging gestures, the kind that good friends or family could interpret as “Wha?” with an expression on his face to match.
Aylan’s scowl became more pronounced, and he threw it Eljean’s way with so much force that Eljean practically ducked. “Go make some better memories, brother,” Aylan growled, and Eljean almost laughed as a slow, burning flush worked its way up from the back of Torrant’s neck to his throat and over his cheeks.
“You. Are. Such. A. Bloody. Wanker.” Torrant spat. Every word was hushed and enunciated, and Aylan’s grin in return almost called the breeze to the windless trees.
“A thing for which you have worshipped me, every day you’ve known me.” Whistling, Aylan took Heartland’s reins and turned toward the outbuildings, mindless of the grisly task before him.
Torrant shook his head, rearranged his burden until the food and waterskin were folded inside the cloak, and sighed. He looked over at Eljean and shook his head, then gestured with his chin.
“Let’s get going. We’ve got the shorter job. He’ll meet us by the river. Come.”
Eljean fell into stride next to Torrant, surprised, as he often was, by how quickly the shorter man moved. There was quiet for a moment, as they swung a wide arc around the barn, and Torrant looked reluctantly at the rotted husk of the house.
“It was big,” Eljean commented, mostly to breach the thick silence of the hot day.
“It was gracious,” Torrant affirmed. “The family was big—my mother and I lived in spare rooms too.”
“Why not with the workers?” Eljean asked, and Torrant shrugged.
“My mother. She was so—I guess competent is the word. Kles needed help with the three boys and helping Moon run the lands, and my mother was just so good at everything. I think we started out using the rooms like guests, but Owen said that within a week, Mom was indispensable. Kles told me once that she didn’t know how they had survived without her.”
Eljean thought the apple didn’t fall far from the tree, but embarrassment kept him silent on that score. “It seems like a nice family,” he said instead, and then was embarrassed by how inane it sounded.
“It was the best.” They were near the stalls now, and Torrant approached one and kicked at the bottom, “hmm”-ing when he found that the wood was still sound. With a sense of purpose, he set his burden down and stood on tiptoe, pulling at the top and knocking at the posts that held the stall in place.
“That’s good, you think?” he asked, and Eljean followed his lead, nodding in the affirmative. One of the boards gave under a pull, but it was simply a matter of rusted nails. “Strong wood—any tree that grows far from the river out here has to have deep roots and a strong trunk.”
Torrant yanked some more and found that the rusted nails gave way easily. He started to pull and kick and push and jerk, furiously ripping the stalls apart, one board at a time. Eljean followed his lead for a couple of moments, and then he heard the muffled swearing, the spitting, incoherent, inchoate, anguished anger.
He turned and watched as Torrant, whirling, working feverishly, bleeding through shredded hands and scrapes on his elbows and knees, singlehandedly tackled the line of stalls, ripping, tearing, pounding on the sound and knotty posts with his fists and his feet. Eljean startled and gasped with every squeal of nails, with every cracked board, and he was afraid to jump in, to intervene, to still that whirling body, exploding with the rage and grief of twelve years.
Finally, he watched as Torrant ripped the side of his hand on a wicked nail, and every time he flung that hand at another obstacle the blood flew in shining arcs, glittering in the late-summer sun.
And he could take no more.
He was taller, he figured with a gulp. He had reach. Tentatively he moved behind the frightful emotional dervish. Torrant swung an elbow back that caught him in the midriff, and although he lost his breath, he realized it didn’t kill him, and he moved in stronger the next time. With a heave, he wrapped his long arms around Torrant’s shoulders, stopping that frantic thrash of movement. He closed his eyes and held tight until the straining muscles stilled against his chest, all that strength coiling in on itself until there were only the two of them, breathing in the dust of the high sun.
An ominous, low growl vibrated from Elly—Torrant’s chest.
“Oh gods, am I about to be dinner?” Eljean wondered out loud, trying not to panic.
“You will be if you don’t move,” Torrant graveled politely, and the intimacy of the position suddenly hit Eljean, and he released Torrant so quickly they both stumbled.
Torrant breathed deeply, wiped his forehead on his shoulder, and looked at the pile of weathered lumber he’d hurled at his feet. “That’s a good start,” he rasped, “but I think the rest of the job will have to wait.” His voice sounded for all the world as though his grip on his self-possession had never splintered like the pile of wood at his feet.
“Right,” Eljean breathed for lack of anything better to say. “Absolutely.”
Torrant strode forward then, picked up the bundle of food and cloak, and kept walking toward the river. Eljean trotted to keep up with him, eventually finding himself wading along a narrow path that wound through blackberry bushes to open up on a sandy beach, where the river had carved a divot in the ribbon of its course and eddied in to take a break under the shade of the broad-leafed trees at the edge.
“The blackberry bushes used to be cut back to there”—Torrant gestured to the ends of the C that made up the little cove—“but I guess after twelve years, they’re going to want to take over.”
Torrant spread the cloak then, up under the trees, where the grasses started to thin with the sand of the beach, and threw the scrip and waterskin on top. Without
a word, he stripped off his sweaty, dusty shirt and swished it in the river to wipe down his face, neck, and chest. Eljean heard him suck air through his teeth when the water shocked his open cuts, but other than that and the sound of the river heaving its way through the weighty yellow of late summer, there wasn’t another sound.
“I’m sorry,” Torrant said clearly into that heavy quiet.
“For what?” Eljean asked. He was filling his eyes with that broad back, the lumps of the vertebrae under the scarred skin looking fragile and sturdy at once. He was pale from all his time in the hall, but not too long ago he’d been tan. The scars stood out against his skin, pink and vicious, and a wave of empathy and desire washed over Eljean, leaving his knees weak and his tongue cleaved to the roof of his mouth.
“I didn’t bring you here to see me disintegrate like some pathetic child,” Torrant snapped, his anger so obviously self-directed that Eljean flinched.
“You’re entitled,” Eljean muttered from a dry mouth. He watched as Torrant used his wet shirt to wipe himself down again, sponging off his neck and, unconsciously, sighing a little as his body cooled.
“Well, I’m still sorry,” Torrant said again, shaking his shirt out and rinsing it. “It’s not why you’re here.” He stood then and turned around, patently looking for a place to hang it up. His lips turned up a little, in a self-deprecating way, when he saw that the best place was a branch right by Eljean’s head.
“Well, why am I here?” Eljean asked, trying hard not to stare at the muscular chest. There was so little of softness left on Torrant’s body anymore, Eljean realized with a hard swallow. But that didn’t mean there wasn’t a terrible beauty to his leanness, to his scars, to his strength.
Again, the self-deprecating sneer curled his lips. Torrant was near enough now, hanging up his shirt, that Eljean could feel the coolness of the water on his skin and the heat of the heart-coursing blood underneath. He smelled like horse, dust, and river. He smelled like strength, and all Eljean knew of desire was roused with that scent. He fought the urge to bury his face against Torrant’s neck and simply inhale. But Torrant wouldn’t look at him, fixing his eyes instead on the bright-gold shirt, then tugging at it until it was hanging perfectly on the branch.
“A gift,” Torrant said into the thickened quiet. He’d turned his head a little. His breath, when he spoke, dusted the fabric at Eljean’s shoulder.
“Angh?” It was as coherent as Eljean was going to get. He was tall enough, and high up enough on the slope of the beach, to see the top of Elly—Torrant’s head. He wanted to stroke the dark-brown hair back from the lean-featured face, and see the lip curl in a shy smile. He wanted—oh, he so simply wanted.
“I wanted to give you…. You tried to give me solace, Eljean. You tried to give me haven. I just wanted to give you something, give you what you wanted to give me. That’s all.”
Oh gods, he was so close. Eljean’s heart bumped painfully in his throat, and he needed to see Torrant’s eyes, to know what was in them, to know for certain if this hot, still afternoon was going to be what he had longed for.
When he spoke, what came out of his mouth was thoroughly unexpected.
“Aylan said you like to lead,” he mumbled.
Ah, that did it—there were those hazel eyes looking up into his face and the devastating half smile, exposing the grooves around Torrant’s lean mouth. “I do,” he answered wickedly. “It’s all I know.”
“I’m….” Torrant moved closer. The space between their bodies was a matter of inches, and that lean chest was Eljean’s for the touching. Eljean swallowed and looked in curiosity as his own hand came up and splayed across the center of the scarred masterpiece that was Torrant’s body. He could feel the heartbeat beneath his palm, and it wasn’t steady.
“I’m afraid of pain,” Eljean admitted rawly, his hand stroking, remembering the electricity of the sleek skin, raised scars and all.
Torrant met Eljean’s eyes deliberately and moved closer, placing his nose delicately in the hollow of Eljean’s neck and breathing in, bumping along the tenderness of Eljean’s throat. “The pain is worth it,” he said honestly. Torrant’s evil little tongue came out and touched the corner of Eljean’s mouth. “The pain makes the rest exquisite.”
Eljean’s breath caught, and Torrant turned those wicked eyes on him fully. Without meaning to, Eljean closed his own eyes and felt that wonderful, battered, strong chest move under his fingers as Torrant leaned forward. He used his breath to trace the narrow line of Eljean’s jaw, leaning into the hollow of neck and hair to place soft lips against Eljean’s throat.
Eljean tilted his head back, allowing Torrant’s sweet mouth to move against his throat some more and groaned.
Torrant took the opportunity to press the line of his body against Eljean’s, and Eljean let the tree support his weight as he realized that Torrant’s lips were the only soft thing about him.
“Once,” Torrant whispered against his ear, the breath making Eljean’s arousal dark and smoky. “Once for you, what you tried to give me. Once where there is only Eljean and Torrant, and no Ellyot and no Zhane—”
“Or Aylan?” Eljean rasped anxiously.
“Or Aylan,” Torrant reassured, a smile in his voice. “Just once. Just today. Will you accept my gift, Eljean?”
All his life, he had been such a coward. Now he groaned and tried to answer and could find no words. Instead, he kissed down Torrant’s neck, traded positions, kissed down Torrant’s scarred, perfect chest, stopping at the brown nipples, so perfect on this brown man, and suckled, feeling the nipple point against his tongue. He groaned, and Torrant groaned, and those poet’s hands clenched in Eljean’s hair, pushing him down and pulling him up for a kiss at the same time. Eljean’s knees were weak, and his position was too awkward to push up, so he kept kissing down, his teeth sinking softly into the hardened abdomen, knotted with muscle.
A harsh breath was ripped from Torrant’s chest, and Eljean fell to his knees and pulled the cotton breeches over the too-lean hips, leaving him naked in flesh as Eljean felt in spirit. Torrant’s cock was swollen, raging against the unblemished, velvet skin, and it was as large and thick as Eljean remembered. He moved to resume his acceptance, to take that tight flesh into his mouth, when he felt strong fingers in his hair, pulling his head back in a way that was both tender and rough.
He looked up to see Torrant’s hazel eyes blazing at him, tense and dark with desire.
“What’s my name, Eljean?” he whispered hoarsely. “Say my name. Say you accept this from me.”
“Torrant,” Eljean murmured against his swollen flesh. “Torrant Shadow. I’ll take any gift you wish to give.”
And then his mouth opened, and Torrant groaned, giving him desire, flesh, and sex and Eljean swallowed it down.
Eljean barely grazed the skin with his teeth before he rubbed it on his palate as it slid down and down to the back of his throat. That poet’s hand cupped the back of Eljean’s head, tangling in the dark curly hair, and Eljean hummed, aroused, tormented, as his mouth filled, his throat filled, with the raw taste of this complex, unpredictable lover who terrified Eljean as much as he aroused him.
With a tearing groan, Torrant pulled Eljean’s head away just as a little bit of saltiness slid down his throat, and then Eljean moaned because he had been denied.
“Breeches off,” Torrant rasped, stepping out of his own as he kicked off his boots, and Eljean complied, sliding them down his hips and struggling with his boots until boots and pants lay crumpled in a tangled mess, and Eljean was panting, crouched on his hands and knees and gazing up at Torrant shyly.
“No…,” he started. No pain. No pain. But Torrant knelt behind him, licking a quick line of fire down his slender back, down his spine, to the cleft of his backside, and then… oh Goddess, what was he doing? His tongue was warm, and moist, and Eljean was gasping, crying, and being stretched by tongue and fingers. There was a pinch, and he whimpered, and it stopped, and he begged, incoherently, please,
please, don’t let that stop, please, and then a rough palm and gripping fingers around his own swollen cock, and he buried his face into the wrinkled cloak below him and bit the cloth, fighting a shout of surprise and pleasure so acute it terrified him.
“Shhhh…,” Torrant murmured against his backside, one hand stroking his manhood, the other one working, stretching. Playfully Torrant bit his lean buttock, and Eljean groaned some more into the cloak. He spurted, a little, a little more, and then Torrant cupped him, catching his reluctant prespend, and the hands switched places.
Eljean almost wept at the feel of his hot spend where Torrant’s wicked tongue had just been.
He had been so afraid of pain. But now he was afraid the pleasure would stop, so afraid that when a strong arm locked around his chest, and he felt the line of Torrant’s chest at his back and that swollen member, greased with prespend, prodding at his entrance, he pleaded shamelessly, more afraid the pleasure would stop than that there would be pain in its completion.
That thick entrance into his narrow passage made him gasp, made him whimper, made him cry out. Torrant’s thumb slid across his lips, and he took it, suckling, grunting, breathing against the pinch of the incursion, trying not to scream at the torrential climax churning in the heaviness of his loins.
Eljean reared up and clutched the trunk of the tree he had leaned on, needing something, anything, to anchor him in the brutal onslaught of the consequences of possession. Torrant followed him, grunting, triumphant, aroused, and pleased and animal with the act that filled them both.
A slick fist came to grasp Eljean’s bobbing member as Torrant slid roughly and wetly inside him. Eljean cut loose a scream into Torrant’s hand, and he came hard, his vision going white, his orgasm exploding through his nerve endings, even as he erupted, spattering seed on the tree in front of him. Eljean would have collapsed if it hadn’t been for that supporting arm, clutching him to the line of Torrant’s body.
Torrant kept moving, kept dragging over Eljean’s pleasure points, and for a moment, Eljean wasn’t sure if he could do it. It flashed through his mind that this fear, this terror of pain and intensity, was the reason Torrant couldn’t love him the way he loved Yarri or the way he loved Aylan, and then his mind was nothing more than the pleasure-scream of nerve endings as Torrant dragged himself over that one swollen place. Eljean shouted and shuddered again, although he was already spent. Torrant gave a shout of glory behind him and clenched Eljean’s back to his chest, shuddering and panting and almost laughing in the joy of the animal act of sex.
