Page 42 of Soul on Fire
Elliot lifted Ikolo’s hand to his lips. He kissed the backs of his fingers, soft, dry presses on Ikolo’s skin. Fire kissed back, Ikolo’s skin like the sun, like the forest, like Africa’s heat imbued inside of him. He pushed his cheek into Ikolo’s palm and turned, slowly, in Ikolo’s arms.
Both of Ikolo’s hands cradled his face. He couldn’t see, but he could feel, could sense Ikolo’s body. The heat coming off him and his dripping wet skin. Elliot’s hands traced water droplets up his sides, swept to his back and felt the remnants of water droplets lingering on his spine. Ikolo shivered in his hold and took a step forward, pushing their bodies together.
Elliot’s crotch pushed into Ikolo’s. A hardness there answered his own through the layers they still wore. An openmouthed gasp, a soft groan, and he rolled his hips into Ikolo’s.
“This is allowed in America?” Ikolo breathed.
Oh, how did he answer that? Yes but no, yes in some ways and not in others. Yes, legally, but the world was still a shitty place and Elliot hadn’t found the space yet where he felt the answer to his question was safe. What good was answering a question when there wasn’t anything to do with it, when there wasn’t any place in his life he could live with the answer?
He’d been shedding layers of himself for months now, parts of himself breaking off and ripping away. Throwing Schafer into the bulkhead. Fucking up the interdiction and losing the RHIB. Challenging the task force command staff over the NEO. Ordering his men to fire on the rebels.
Leaving with Ikolo.
He’d traded lives back there in that hospital courtyard, and his team had known. They’d seen through him, seen what he couldn’t—wouldn’t—acknowledge. He was trading his life for those children. At least, he was tradingalife of his: Lieutenant Elliot Davis, the careful officer who’d come unraveled these past months.
That man was slipping away, and in the darkness, there was only the center of himself left: the question, and his ache.
He cradled Ikolo’s face in his hands, mirroring Ikolo’s hold on him. Tilted his chin up. Pressed his lips against Ikolo’s, his first careful, tentative kiss with a man.
It wasn’t Ikolo’s, he could tell right away. Ikolo let the kiss linger, lips barely touching, brushing across each other before he pulled Elliot in and kissed him like he meant it. Like he knew what he wanted—like he wanted Elliot—and all of his own questions were answered.
Elliot grabbed him, held on, kissed him back. Ikolo was everywhere, his heat and his touch, surrounding Elliot, consuming him. There was a certainty in Ikolo that was absent in Elliot, and he wanted that, needed that.
He was stripped bare, broken down, chasing a madman into Africa’s broken heart while the world ignored her suffering. He’d traded his life for a group of children and he’d put himself in Ikolo’s hands. Put them both into the darkness of uncertainty.
Somewhere there was a mission, and there was a ticking clock, and the US Navy and the President of the United States waiting on him, but they were far away. Ikolo was in his arms. Ikolo was pressed against him, his warm, dark skin caressing his own.
Hands moved down, grabbed his belt, his fly. His own hands moved to Ikolo’s pants and fumbled, his hands shaking so badly Ikolo had to grab them and squeeze tight. “Are you okay?”
“I’ve never done this before,” Elliot confessed. His words caressed Ikolo’s cheek, and he pressed his forehead against Ikolo’s temple. He moved by feel, drawing Ikolo in, clinging to him as he trembled.
“Do you want to?”
It was the question he needed to answer, the one he kept pushing away and that kept pushing back on him. Did he want to make love to a man?
To Ikolo?
All he had to do was give Ikolo’s pants a nudge. They slid down his muscular ass and hit the ground with a whisper of cloth.
Elliot gripped each cheek in his hands. Ikolo did the same, pushing Elliot’s pants over his hips and running his hands over Elliot’s hips, his ass, and up his back. His erection strained against Elliot’s.
The key turned in the lock inside Elliot’s soul.
He kissed Ikolo slowly and ran one hand over Ikolo’s head, over his short hair trimmed close to his scalp. He wasn’t trembling anymore.
In the darkness they moved as one, hands sliding over skin, thighs pressing between legs, hips rolling together. They kissed everywhere they could reach, over damp skin and down each other’s necks, across shoulders and taut collarbones. Ikolo laid his hand over Elliot’s mouth when Elliot gasped a little too loudly, a little too harshly. “Shhh,” Ikolo breathed. “This is Africa, not America.” He nodded and kissed Ikolo’s fingers.
They broke apart, Elliot grabbing his flashlight and flicking it on as Ikolo went to his pack and pulled out a woven mat. He laid it on the dirt and spread a thin blanket on top. He kneeled and held out his hands.
Elliot took him in his arms, kissed him as he guided him down on his back. They fit together like puzzle pieces, chests and shoulders and thighs and legs interlocking. Ikolo’s arms wrapped around Elliot’s neck, and Elliot kissed his way down Ikolo’s chest, and then all the way down, taking his time as he cherished the discovery of Ikolo’s body.
Ikolo bit his lip to muffle his groan when Elliot took him in his mouth. Elliot didn’t know what he was doing, but he loved doing it, loved the taste and Ikolo’s musky, male scent. He was burning alive, inside and out. There was a conflagration inside of him, a question drumming to the beat of his heart, and he was on the very edge of knowing.
He’d never wanted anything more than this, right this moment.
Kisses mapped up Ikolo’s body and captured his breathless whimpers. Elliot ground his hips against Ikolo’s, lined up their cocks and rocked into Ikolo’s body. Ikolo wrapped his hand around them both, pushed his forehead against Elliot’s, and stroked, twisting at their heads. Elliot shuddered, grabbed Ikolo’s shoulders and buried his face in his neck. Ikolo wrapped a leg around Elliot’s waist, and then he went rigid, arched his back, and grabbed Elliot in a kiss that smothered his soft cry as he shuddered in orgasm. Elliot followed him over the edge, splintering apart as Ikolo came in his arms.
He’d done that. He’d made love to a man, had made a man come apart. He squeezed his eyes closed and pressed his lips to Ikolo’s shoulder, trying to muffle his scream and how his body shook as if an earthquake had shifted his soul.
