Page 27 of Ascendent
Popping off, Sergey climbed his body, crawling between his legs and his arms until he settled on Sasha’s chest. He’d shed his trousers, and their naked skin fused together, fire and ice merging, becoming one, the boundaries between their lives diffuse and obscure. Where did Sergey end and Sasha begin? He didn’t know. He didn’t care.Melt me.
Sergey’s big hands slid into his hair, tipped his head back. His thumbs massaged Sasha’s temples, traced tear stains down the sides of his face. When had he started to cry?
“Let me make love to you like this.” Sergey’s lips chased his whispers, peppering Sasha’s face as gentle as snowflakes. He rolled his hips, his hard cock sliding alongside Sasha’s.
Sasha gasped, every nerve firing, screaming, bursting apart like his jet exploding over Siberia. He whined, keened, groaned. Grabbed Sergey, grabbed his shoulder and his ass cheek, slid his hands over Sergey’s body. Sergey kept thrusting, kept driving their cocks together, into the heat of their bellies. Sweat prickled Sasha’s skin, beaded down his chest, down his arms. Or was it ice melt? Would Sergey love him into nothingness?
Kisses started and never stopped. Sergey breathed for Sasha, his lungs expanding as Sasha’s withdrew. Their bodies moved in counterpoint, in harmony, every movement synchronized as if they were one. Sasha’s leg hitched, clenched Sergey’s hip. Sergey’s hand grasped his thigh, squeezed the rounded curve of his ass. He jumped, arched his back. Was he trying to escape? No, he was pushing harder, asking for more, more of Sergey.Melt me. Burn me alive.
Sergey grabbed his palm, pulled it over his head, and pressed his hand into the mattress as he kissed his neck.
Sasha ripped his hand free. “Nyet,” he whispered. “Not that.” Snow fell on the edges of his mind.
“I didn’t mean––” Darkness crawled into Sergey’s burning gaze.
Dammit, he always ruined everything. Sasha grabbed Sergey behind the neck and pulled him close, kissing him again. He wrapped one leg around Sergey’s waist, pressing him harder against his body, thrusting up with his hips. His other hand gripped Sergey’s waist, guided his rolls, his surges.
“Sasha,” Sergey hissed. His eyes went wide, and his fingers clenched in Sasha’s hair, pulled his blond strands. “Sasha, I’m––”
He smashed their lips together, tried to breathe Sergey in, hold his passion in his soul. Sergey whimpered, and then molten heat flooded his belly, burned his skin in rivulets and bursts.
Sasha tipped over the edge. Fell from the sky, a flaming shard of ice cratering through the atmosphere, brushed by the hands of the sun. Lit from the inside, broken apart at the atomic level by Sergey’s nuclear core, the fusion of his soul. He arched back, breaking their kiss. His hands grasped Sergey, clung to him as his release tore through him, erupted from his cock. He roared Sergey’s name alongside curses and pleas, wilds begs forsomething. What, he didn’t know.
Melt me. Burn me. Free me.
Sergey’s lips found his, and then they were kissing, kissing as Sasha rolled him over, pushed Sergey into the mattress and slid down until he found what he was looking for. He licked Sergey clean, licked the smeared release of their combined fluids from his shivering belly.
His cock twitched. He wanted more.
He crawled back up Sergey and collapsed, turning into him, rolling on his side. Sergey slid his leg between Sasha’s, wrapped his arm around his waist. Pressed their foreheads together. Nuzzled his face and kissed his nose. “You are perfect,” Sergey whispered. “Perfect for me. I love you.”
Ice and fire are perfect together, he thought.Each finds the pinnacle of itself in the other. Each teeters on the edge of destruction with the other. The eternal question. To stay whole, or to come apart?
Who am I without you,Seryozha?
Chapter Six
“I wantyou to tell me about what happened at Andreapol.” Dr. Voronov’s chair creaked when he leaned back. “And I want to talk about your past. About you.”
Sasha swallowed. He licked his lips. Tasted snow. It was the last week of June in Moscow, but still, he wore a long sleeve sweater, long jeans. He couldn’t get warm.
Dr. Voronov wanted to see him every few days, wanted him to sit in his office and spill his soul. Tell him about the coup and about Sergey’s insurgency. About his flight over Madigan’s position in the Arctic, and his desperate search for Sergey afterward.
He hadn’t spoken about leaving Sergey after the Arctic, though, or his self-imposed exile to Shipunovskaya.
Or why he’d returned. What he and Sergey were now.
“You already know about what happened at Andreapol.” He scowled. “Repeating it won’t change the past.”
“That’s not why I ask.”
“Why do you?” Sasha’s voice came out harder than he’d intended. He glowered at the floor.
“I want to know about you. About who you are. The story you tell yourself about your life. I want to know how you view what happened at Andreapol.”
“Betrayal,” Sasha spat. “They were my wing mates. My family.”
“And they didn’t know about you?”
