Page 51 of Rarely Pure and Never Simple
Damien laid his head on Blaze's thigh, pumping his hips, encouraging Blaze with escalating moans. He was plenty revved up already since it only took a couple of minutes. With a sharp cry, his leg muscles shaking, he turned his head and bit down on Blaze's hip while he spurted salty-sweet in Blaze's eager mouth.
Blaze withdrew slowly, kissing the tip, the shaft, the insides of Damien's thighs, before he encouraged his lover to turn around and collapse in his arms. "Don't run off this time, okay?"
"I'm here," Damien murmured sleepily, boneless and relaxed for once. "I'm here."
With his free hand, Blaze reached down and snagged the blankets to cover them both. He didn't think they'd been too loud, but some vindictive, mean-spirited part of him hoped it had been loud enough for Shudder to hear.
They werein wild country now, and Damien watched with interest as Blaze's tracker instincts kicked in. Twice that morning, they'd spotted dust disturbances that indicated small convoys traveling nearby. The first, Blaze had evaded with a snarl and no explanation. The second, though, he observed with keener interest and less tension.
He kept an eye on their movements even as he kept to Damien's path, and when the group of vehicles stopped ahead of them, he called a halt behind a rock formation.
"Are they dangerous?" Damien asked.
Blaze cocked his head. "Depends."
"On what?"
"Everyone's dangerous given the right circumstances."
The evasion was odd for Blaze, but Damien didn't badger him as he checked his weapons and got out of the Raptor. Shudder met him halfway between the vehicles for a short conference. Shudder nodded, and Blaze strode off in the convoy's direction.
Alarms pinged in Damien's head. "Shouldn't one of us go with him?"
"Best not." Shudder adjusted the strap of his high-powered pneumatic rifle. "He's recognized them as jiating lu xing, and he thinks it's one he knows."
Damien had come across lu xing families in his own travels, usually nomadic groups of several generations who crisscrossed the wild lands, unwilling to trust government or anyone outside the family.
"He knows them?"
"Helped them, apparently. Always full of surprises, that one."
"Yes."
"Stubborn as hell, though."
Damien didn't answer that, since it seemed self-evident and an odd thing to say. He didn't understand the human gamesmanship and had no idea what move Shudder was trying to make. He glanced over, but Shudder still had his attention turned toward where Blaze had gone.
"What happened?" Damien blurted out. "Between you?"
Shudder shot him a wicked smile. "You want all the details? He has some natural talents."
"No. Just at the end."
"You sure put the dead in deadpan sometimes." Shudder's smile collapsed into a thin, unhappy line. "I won't ask how you built so much ice around you."
It's safer behind the ice.Except with Blaze. "I gather information. Sorry."
"No. It's all right. I assume you have some version of the drama from him. Truth is, he abandoned me. When I needed him most, he turned his back on me."
Damien had pieced together quite a bit between the lines. "You wanted to campaign against the Registration Acts. A campaign of civil disobedience."
"Smart and pretty. No wonder he's smitten." Shudder's smile was a bitter shadow of its normal glory. "Someone had to. People were moaning and hand-wringing back then, but no one wanted to do anything. They were talking about internment camps, for God's sake!"
"Yes. I recall."
"Blaze said it was stupid. That causing disruptions of services and disturbances at public events would only make things worse for varis. I begged him to come with me. I got down on myknees."
"He refused."
