Page 95 of Changeling
It wasn’t terribly late when Nathan was ready to turn in, but after a few stiff drinks, another dose of meds, and the harsh last couple of days, he was exhausted.
“I think I might stay up and do a little more research on our next lead,” Jim said, not bothering to hide his frustration. They really had been hoping the spriggan would pull through and that the contract holder would show up, especially now that the three of them were alone.
“Your call, man,” Nathan said with a wave of his hand, as he followed Sasha into the larger of the two bedrooms. They’d opted for a suite this time; figured they were due, and Wade had actually slipped them some cash for helping out. “We leaving early? We don’t really have a destination yet.”
“Whenever we get up,” Jim shrugged, settling himself on the couch with Sasha’s laptop propped on his legs. “Hopefully I’ll have a destination for you in the morning. Might be something in Virginia I’m following up on. You guys go ahead.”
Nathan nodded. “Night, Jim.”
“Night, Jim,” Sasha called behind him.
“Night.”
They closed the door once they got inside and Sasha immediately started stripping down to his boxers. This distracted Nathan so that he wasn’t really being as careful as he should have been when he tried to lift his T-shirt over his head. He hissed at his still sore shoulder. More carefully this time, Nathan pulled the shirt the rest of the way off. He looked at his bandages. At least they weren’t bled through, and if he stopped getting into fights, he’d be rid of them soon.
Sasha, perfectly free of injury, had the nerve to chuckle. “Well maybe if you stopped throwing yourself in harm’s way,” he grinned as he kicked off his jeans. He was wearing black boxer briefs. Ones that were almost too small.
Nathan grinned as he stripped off his jeans to leave only his navy shorts. He crumbled on top of the bed and just stared up at the ceiling, enjoying the feeling of lying down. Sasha climbed up next to him and did the same. After a moment, Nathan reached over and smoothed a few red strands from Sasha’s forehead, and the incubus leaned closer so that their noses bumped. He leaned that last bit further until their lips brushed, fleeting at first and then renewed, firm, seeking, until tongues met at last and tangled.
Nathan hummed into the kiss as it lengthened. He was so tired, so worn and beaten down with sore spots all over his body, but kissing Sasha banished most of that into a dull, sleepy ache. He might be recovering again, but only physically. The emotional fallout from what had happened with Pete and his goons was fading behind Nathan. He had Sasha in his arms, and never wanted something like that to hold him back.
He rolled toward Sasha and pulled the redhead’s face closer with a hand on his cheek. Sasha’s skin was so smooth, neverhaving stubble. Nathan figured it would look pretty funny if the incubus ever did have stubble considering it would be bright red. Then again, he never really noticed the hairs on Sasha’s arms and legs. He ran the hand on Sasha’s face down his neck and shoulder and along his arm so that he could feel those tiny hairs.
The bed was big enough so Nathan kept rolling, pushing Sasha onto his back and climbing up on top of his lover as he initiated another deep, slow kiss. “You’re beautiful,” he whispered when he pulled back, his breath dusting the lips he had dampened.
Blue eyes sparkled up at Nathan. “Right back at ya.”
Nathan grinned. He wanted something he hadn’t been able to ask for. Tonight he felt like he finally could. Letting all of his weight press him down into Sasha’s body, he brought his mouth to Sasha’s ear and said, “Would you do something for me?”
“You even have to ask?”
“I want…” Nathan began, enjoying the feeling of Sasha beneath him, warm and solid, “I want you to change for me.”
Sasha jerked away enough that Nathan realized he hadn’t worded that quite right.
“Notchange,” he said quickly, pulling his head back up and looking down at those confused blues. “I don’t want you to change a thing. I mean change into the other you. Wings, horns, and everything else.”
What Nathan was really asking dawned on Sasha slowly, and that realization revealed itself to Nathan with a similarly slow grin. “You really are getting a fetish,” Sasha teased.
Nathan laughed even though he knew his adoration had gone far beyond fetish. “I want to do things to your body that no one has ever had the privilege of. ‘Cept for maybe the other five you grew up with,” he said distastefully, “and I really don’t want to know which of them did what to you when you were locked together going crazy with needing to feed for the first time. Ijust…I want you to know what you do to me…no matter which version I’m looking at.”
The light in Sasha’s eyes grew almost too bright as he stared up at Nathan, his smile wholly loving. Then the light was suddenly no longer blue but that vibrant and glowing red. It always amazed Nathan how Sasha could change so effortlessly, his body melting into its true form like lifting a veil.
Nathan sat up on Sasha’s hips and just looked for a minute. Sasha’s wings were spread out on the bed beneath him, large and glorious. Nathan could see the jagged scar on Sasha’s chest, faint but still visible from Gabriel’s attempt to kill him. He couldn’t help tracing it with his fingertips, the soft lines of it that others, maybe even Sasha himself, might think marred the otherwise perfect form, but for Nathan it just made the picture complete. He realized suddenly that he was sitting on cloth not skin, and when he looked down he saw that the boxers hadn’t faded into the glamour like usual.
“I want you to be able to take them off,” Sasha chuckled.
“I’ll get there,” Nathan promised, already knowing where he wanted his attentions to focus first. The irony was not lost on him that he had a real obsession with Sasha’s wings even though he generally hated flying. They were just so impressive, so truly supernatural and amazing, and Nathan had the privilege of touching them.
Carefully, Nathan attempted to shift Sasha more to the center of the bed, and the incubus helped once he realized what Nathan wanted. The bed was large, but still not big enough to prevent the wings from spilling over the sides. Nathan started at the inside of the wings closest to where they sprouted from Sasha’s back.
His caress was gentle at first but he wanted to feel, really feel, so he massaged deep into the tough skin, eliciting an instant moan from Sasha. Nathan spread his hand out over the entiretyof Sasha’s right wing—as much as he could reach without leaning too far off of Sasha’s hips. The top of the wing was where the back curled up a bit, just a little tougher than the inside skin, surrounding the tendons that gave the wings shape. Nathan pressed his fingers there as well.
He repeated the whole process with the other wing, and it wasn’t long before he noticed something pressing up into him from beneath Sasha’s shorts. Nathan scooted back to give the growing erection a little relief, and Sasha sighed deeply.
Nathan wanted to investigate Sasha’s claws, but he knew they were more dangerous territory. The claws were sharp talons. He couldn’t quite suck on one of them the way he would a finger. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t come close.
Lifting one of Sasha’s hands by the wrist, Nathan marveled at how much larger they were like this. It was just after Sasha’s elbow that the white skin began to fade black. The fade was quick, because at his wrist they were already dark as pitch.
