Page 206 of The Wild Charge

He lowered Reese down to the mattress and kissed his mouth again; deep, indulgent kisses that left them both panting, long strokes of tongue and gentle little nibbles at lower lips. His cock was filling, rubbing up against Reese’s through both their boxers, but he was content to rest against him, for now, to take things slow.

He sat back on his heels to drink in the view: Reese splayed out before him, legs spread around Tenny, boxers riding up and t-shirt twisted to show a stripe of lean belly and pale treasure trail. Hair a golden halo on the pillow, cheeks pink and lips red and bitten. His pupils were big, black pools in the lamplight, arousal clear in every tensed line of him.

“What?”

“Just enjoying the scenery,” Tenny said, and leaned back down.

He pressed his lips to the strip of visible skin below Reese’s navel, and slipped both hands beneath the hem of his shirt. Skimmed them up over soft, quivering skin, fingertips trailing lightly over the bumps of his ribs, pushing the shirt up and up as he went. He shifted forward on his knees so he could press kisses over the healed-up breaks. The bruises had faded, ghostly flower shapes blooming on his fair skin, but Tenny traced them with his tongue, an apology and a promise in every press of his lips.I’m sorry I wasn’t there to take them for you. I will be next time.

And therewouldbe a next time, wouldn’t there? They weren’t going to stop being a necessary evil for the club. There would be more missions, more ops, more danger – and here Tenny had been, denying himself, denying them both, and pissing away this weeks-long spell of quiet when he should have been reveling.

“Tenny.” Low and pleading, when Tenny reached his chest and drew a nipple into his mouth. Long fingers speared through Tenny’s hair, tugging him up so their faces were level. Reese’s pupils had swallowed his irises whole. “Do you want…” His thighs closed tight on Tenny’s hips, and he ground up against him in eloquent suggestion.

Tenny did want, badly. He pushed up on both arms to look down at Reese again, the perfect arch of his throat, gaze catching on the way he licked unconsciously at his lower lip, seductive without trying. “You feel up to it?” He rested his hand on his ribs, over the barely-there firecracker burst of a faded bruise. He shied away from the thought of hurting him…but he’d never had Reese like that, and after everything, after watching the life drain out of Luis’s eyes tonight, he needed it. He slid his thumb in the groove between two rib bones, edges of his nail black with flakes of dried blood.

“Tenny,” Reese prompted, thighs squeezing again.

Tenny kissed him, deep and thorough, and felt his hips shift against his own, impatient. “Yeah, baby,” he breathed against his lips. “I’ll fuck you.”

“Please. I wanna know” – another abortive hip thrust, cocks sliding against one another through soft cotton – “what it feels like.”

Tenny prayed that statement, paired with Reese’s big-eyed pleading look, didn’t give him a coronary before he actually got down to it.

There was lube in the nightstand drawer, and Tenny resettled them on the bed once he’d retrieved it. He got them on their sides, facing one another, both their boxers and Reese’s shirt stripped off. He pulled Reese’s leg up over his hip and snugged them in close together. He warmed a generous dollop of lube in his fingers, and kept his first touch slow and easy, watching Reese’s face for even the tiniest sign of discomfort.

“How’s that?”

Reese’s nose wrinkled up, but it didn’t look like pain, so Tenny teased a little more, just barely dipping inside. “It’s…weird. But not bad,” he rushed to add, hips twitching back like he was afraid Tenny might stop.

Tenny kissed the little wrinkle on his brow and lingered there, breathing in his skin and shampoo. “It gets better,” he murmured, and pressed in with his first finger.

“Oh,” Reese murmured, surprised, as his body relaxed and allowed him in. “Oh,” he repeated, a few minutes later, low and rough, when Tenny added a second finger, stretched and scissored him. “I’m ready,” he panted against Tenny’s throat, when he was spread on three fingers and grinding against Tenny’s thigh. “I’m good.”

“You’re very good, darling.” Tenny kissed him a long moment, despite the flingers clutching tight at his bicep, despite the frantic way Reese kissed him back. He didn’t know if he could last, and so he tried to wait…but that was folly. “Alright, alright.”

He eased Reese onto his back and settled between his thighs; gave his flushed, weeping cock a few lazy pumps.

“Ten.”

He had to chuckle, a little. He’d thought, in the moments that he’d fantasized about this, that it would be more of a fight than anything; had pictured biting and wrestling and coming out on top, the victor; fighting his own nature and reserves more than anything.

But as in all things, Reese wouldn’t let him fight: not him, and not himself. He pulled Tenny down for another kiss, arms warm and sure around him, and it was the easiest, gentlest thing on earth to take himself in hand and press slow and steady inside his lover. To be rewarded by Reese’s head pressing back into the pillow, mouth open on a silent gasp, blunt nails digging into Tenny’s shoulders.

He bottomed out on one smooth slide, and then had to hold still, every muscle tensed against coming too soon.

Reese scratched at the back of his neck and up into his hair. “You’re so big,” he breathed, awed-sounding.

Tenny hissed a laugh through his teeth. “God, the flattery isnothelping.”

“It’s okay if you come too soon, but can you please just move?”

“Still not helping,” Tenny muttered, shaking his head – but let himself be pulled down for a kiss. Started up a slow, rolling rhythm with his hips, and fucked his boyfriend like the beloved, shining light that he was.

~*~

Fox had given up trying to explain himself a long time ago. It generally proved a waste of time, walking someone through the cold, clinical turnings of his mind. Mercy, that wonderful sick bastard,enjoyedthe violence. The bloodletting fed some part of him that, in anyone else, would have led to serial killing or spousal abuse, but with Mercy, those he loved were never in any danger from him.

Fox, by contrast, didn’t enjoy the red wet smears on his knuckles after a fight. No, rather, he took pleasure in his own skill. In knowing that he was so very good at something that most people found distasteful. He craved talent and efficiency; fed off his own jobs well done in a way that always left him buzzing pleasantly from the inside-out, as rewarding as good sex. He’d never told Eden that, but he sensed she knew, and that was one of the things he loved most about her, in the colorless, unpassionate way that he loved anything. She didn’t need him to be more conventional, and that was why he had allowed himself to take up his side of her bed with something like permanence, and wasn’t even twitchy about it.

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