Page 39 of Golden Eagle

Nikita laughed softly, climbed the rest of the way onto the bed, eased Sasha back down, and kissed him.

~*~

You didn’t live to see adulthood growing up in Soviet Russia without learning the art of repression. You repressed your hunger, on those long, frigid nights packed into concrete apartments with two and three and four other families. You repressed your irritation over the crying babies, and the stink of frying onions, and the hacking cough of a babushka. You repressed your patriotism. Your smiles. Your opinions. Your art.

And if you were a boy who liked to trace the shape of another boy’s smile with your eyes – who wanted to run fingers through soft hair and feel another boy’s breath warm on your neck – you suppressed that most of all.

Dima had been brave, but Nikita had always been the coward. Perfect at repressing. Dodging, ducking, denying, withholding – and then repressing the grief, too, when it came, howling through every anguished, echoing chamber of his damaged heart. He’d bottled up every awful thing, every horror, every slight, every fear.

Every want.

He’d spent decades forcing his gaze away from Sasha, not wanting to frighten him, to force him; to ruin them.

He’d been festering. But last night. Today… Sasha had taken a lance to that awful sore; he felt hurt, and bloody, and tender, but he feltclean. He couldbreathe.

And right now, he put all the things he’d ever repressed into the mental drawers where they belonged, and he settled his weight slowly, carefully over Sasha, and kissed him, and didn’t think about anything but making his sweet, sweet boy feel good.

Nik kissed him slow, and easy. Unhurried and coaxing.

Sasha melted under him, lips soft, parting at the slightest tease of Nik’s tongue. He had no idea what he was doing, was totally artless, but he wanted, and he was welcoming; his hands pushed through Nik’s hair, cupped his head, held him close. When Nik’s tongue slipped into his mouth, he lifted up off the mattress, yielding in an active, desperate way. His legs closed around Nikita’s hips, and he ground up against him.

“Nik,” he panted when the kiss broke for air, his voice half-human. He was already wrecked. Already hard.

He was so eager. He’d go off so quickly, Nik thought.

Then again, so would he.

Nikita wasshaking. He’d never wanted anything in his life as badly as he wanted Sasha.

He rested his weight on one elbow and pulled back far enough to see. Sasha gave a wordless sound of protest, but Nik touched his face; settled his fingertips gently across his cheek and he stilled.

It should have been so simple: Sasha staring up at him, eyes dilated, mouth pink and wet from kissing, a rosy flush high along his cheekbones, platinum hair fanned out across the sheets, a halo, because he was probably, really, truly an angel. His thighs gripped Nikita’s hips like a vise, and all Nik wanted was to grind against him; to rut, and sweat, and tear clothes and feel skin on skin. He wanted to bite a little, too; wanted to drink; wanted to be inside him.

But the thing about waiting. About repressing…it could be hard to let go. And it meant that this moment – this first moment with his Sasha after he’d told him how much he loved him – carried the kind of weight that could crush him.

Sasha tilted his head a fraction, and his hands left Nik’s hair, and instead cupped his face; thumbs sweeping gently beneath his eyes. “You’re thinking too much.” He smiled with heartbreaking softness.

His voice wavered, high and thready. “I want to do it right.”

Sasha’s smile widened. “You will,” he said, with total faith. Then pulled Nik back down and kissed him again.

Once, almost chastely, on the lips. Then kissed his cheek, his jaw. A string of them back to his ear, where his breath came warm and damp. He gave a quiet little growl, and whispered, “Just touch me like you always wanted to.”

Goosebumps broke out all down Nikita’s back. “Baby, that’s a very long list.”

Sasha breathed a laugh right in his ear. “I did sayeverything.”

“Christ.”

Sasha was right: he was thinking entirely too much.

He pressed his face to Sasha’s throat and fastened his lips there. Sucked on the skin. Hard.

Sasha gave a little gasp and surged beneath him, hips rolling in helpless reaction.

Nikita worked on putting a mark on him – not the usual puncture wounds of feeding, but a simple bruise. A mark of a different kind of passion. And he reached down and rucked up the hem of Sasha’s shirt. Pushed it all the way up under his arms, and touched the smooth, warm skin of his chest.

Nikita knew how impossibly strong he was, but his skin felt baby-soft, the padding of muscle in his pectorals only thin. Nik touched him there, deliberate sweeps of his palm, caressing, his fingers shaking with wonder. Circled his nipples with a fingertip and felt them draw to hard points; felt the vibration of his quiet moan through his throat as he kissed a bruise there.

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