Page 86 of Pansies

“Er. Does it? Is it?”

“Mm-hmm. I’m going to blow your goddamn mind.”

Fen pressed his mouth to a strangely sensitive spot beneath Alfie’s jaw and did that thing with his hips again, his cock sliding against Alfie’s, then sort of beneath it, to all manner of tender places. And Alfie must have responded, or not responded in some sort of odd way, because Fen paused, looking down at him. That alone was unsettling. Usually it was the other way round—Alfie looking down—and it seemed very different right now. And he couldn’t tell if that was because itwasdifferent or because he had the sort of issues an enlightened twenty-first-century homosexual shouldn’t have.

“You don’t?” Fen sounded almost embarrassingly gentle right then.

“It’s not that I don’t,” Alfie muttered. “It’s just I don’t in practice.”

“You haven’t?”

“No, I have.”

“Did you like it?”

It was complicated. “It was all right.”

“It’s okay to have preferences.” Fen ran kisses like a string of beads down Alfie’s chest, and he shuddered under those soft touches. Almost thought he felt them shining. “I don’t mind if you’d rather top.”

That was the way he’d always imagined it going: Fen wrapped around him, all around him, hot and wild and heedless. But if Fen wanted otherwise? Was he really going to say no? Uncertainty and resistance and longing and shame twisted up inside him. And stronger than any of it, wanting to be with Fen, to please him, and not hold anything back.

Fingers swept lightly across his eyelids. He hadn’t even realised he’d closed his eyes. So he made himself open them again. Made himself look at Fen. Lookupat him. His face was all shadows and angles and focus. A hint of roughness beneath his jaw. The gold-framed glitter of his eyes.

It was sexy as hell. But also intimidating. That was a man there. A man he was letting press him down. A man he was trusting with his body.5

“No, it’s…it’s okay.” He swallowed. “This is okay.”

Fen stretched himself out over Alfie. All of him, his full weight. And Alfie felt everything. From the stipple of hair across Fen’s chest and stomach to the sharp places of his pelvis, from the long, long muscles of his thighs to his slightly ragged toenails. It waslavish, somehow, all that closeness, all that skin. It made his heart beat like it was flying.

Or like he was running too fast.

“It’s going to be more than okay, Alfie Bell.”

“Uh. Okay.”

“You’ve no idea how long I’ve wanted this.” Fen’s voice, soft as the evening light, had become its own caress. “And now I get to have my wicked way with every glorious inch of you.”

Alfie’s stomach was flipping like a goldfish out of its bowl. He couldn’t tell if it was terror or something else entirely. And it turned out Fen hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d indicated an intention to get as familiar with Alfie as possible. He wasn’t methodical exactly, but, God, he was thorough. Alfie didn’t think he had ever been quite so…sotouched. It was far too intense for what it was, the brush of Fen’s lips, the quest of his fingers against places—the crook of his elbow and the groove of his hips—that shouldn’t have been even remotely sexy. But somehow lit him up inside and out. Made him kind of…sparkly, his body tight and bright beneath Fen’s touches, like a spider’s web strung with dew.

Fen tattooed him afresh, his mouth moving softly over ink, and Alfie made the sort of sounds no needle in the world could have drawn from him, gasps and half-swallowed groans, and raw, rough-edged whimpers. He should probably have been embarrassed, but he was finding it hard to hold on to anything that wasn’t the pleasure uncurling inside him like a flower opening, sticky-bright and bold.

At least until he became vaguely aware of Fen groping around by the side of the bed. And then much less vaguely aware of him sitting up, tossing hair coltishly away from his face, and holding a bottle of luxury German lube. A really large bottle.

Alfie tried not to look at it.

But the squelch of liquid seemed fart-in-a-cathedral loud. And it was impossible for Alfie to ignore just how…how spread out and undignified and vulnerable he was. And how much he wasn’t entirely okay with it.

Finally came that inquisitive, possessive touch. Cool,lube-slippery fingers pressing against him. Into him. He forced himself to relax. Hissed a bit.

Fen leaned over him, coming down onto an elbow, closing the distance between them, and bringing their bodies together once more. His other hand was jammed awkwardly between them, but Alfie infinitely preferred that to being spread-eagled and exposed like the virgin sacrifice in a Hammer horror. The tips of Fen’s hair brushed a little sharply over his chest.

“This isn’t,” he heard himself say, “revenge, right?”

“Um.” Fen’s eyes widened, his fingers sort of freezing half in and half out of Alfie.

“You think I want to have sex with you out of revenge?”

Okay. That sounded bad. “No, I mean. You know. Me like…and you like…”

---