Page 26 of Ascendent
“It wasn’t that!” Sasha reached for Sergey, for his hand clenching the bedspread.
“What then?” Sergey snatched his hand away. “Just spit it out, Sasha! Just break my heart quickly! Have the tiniest mercy for me, please!”
Ice was crawling up his throat again, shivering over his eyes. He could barely see Sergey anymore, not through the way the world wavered. He grabbed his hair, groaned. “I love you!” he roared through gritted teeth. “But I’m not good enough for you! Not good enough to love you like that!” Panicked breaths burst from him, anguished pants that made him dizzy. “What if I hurt you? What if I fuck it up? What if you end up hating me after? What ifeverythingI do is fucking wrong?” Gasping, Sasha pitched sideways, burying his face in the sheets. He screamed, his mouth sucking in cotton fabric as wetness formed around his eyes.
Hands landed on his back, a delicate, skittering, tender touch. “Sashunya.” Sergey’s voice shook. “I’ll never hate you. Never.”
He could feel himself melting beneath Sergey’s fingers. Sergey’s touch, at least, gifted him back oxygen. The ability to breathe. He rolled his face to the side, finally looked at him. “I’m not good enough.”
“Don’t say that. Of course you are––”
“I’m not. I’ll hurt you.”
“You won’t. You don’t want to, right?”
“Of course not.”
“Then you won’t.”
Sasha groaned. He hid his face again. “You have always had too much blind faith in me,Seryozha. I’m not the good man you think I am.”
“Of course you are. You’re my hero. You’re a hero to Russia, to this nation.”
I’m a zombie made of ice. I don’t even know if I’m alive or dead. What if I kill you, too?
“You are the man I love.” Sergey gently rolled Sasha. One hand slid up his face, his thumb brushing away the hot trails of Sasha’s tears.
Sergey’s touch felt like fire on his skin, like embers landing on him from a roaring bonfire. He whimpered.
“Next time, maybe slower? It will be better for both of us.”
Sasha closed his eyes. He shuddered. “I don’t know how.” He’d never had slow. Never had gentle. Never had shared a bed with a man, never had woken up in someone’s arms, safe and warm and cared for.
Sergey pulled him close. Warmth seared him, and he hissed.
“Am I hurting you?” Sergey whispered. His hand landed on Sasha’s chest, stroked across his muscles, traced patterns between the freckles on his heaving chest.
He wanted more, more of Sergey’s touch. More of his heat. More of his love.Melt me. “Never.”
Sergey’s lips followed his touches, gentle kisses that mapped his skin. That traveled from his neck to his belly, across his collarbones, the planes of his abdomen, the rise of his hip bone jutting from his undone trousers. He shivered, but not from cold. Sergey’s broad hands seemed to sculpt Sasha’s body from air as if he were bringing Sasha to life. He was a magician, a saint, a god of old.
Deep in the mountains to the far south of Sasha’s home, where some still practiced the old ways, there was a god named Kresnik. Flaxen haired, with light eyes and pale skin, he was the god of fire, of summer, of heat. Of rebirth and of life. How had he never seen it before? Sergey was Sasha’s own god, his rebirth by fire.
Sergey tugged Sasha’s trousers down, guided them past his hips and under his ass and pulled them down his legs. His lips followed, dropping kisses to each revealed patch of pale, trembling skin. His thighs, his knees, the inside of his ankle. The rise of his bony foot. And then back up, brushing his cheek against his inner knee and thigh, the barest hint of beard brushing over Sasha’s delicate skin.
His hot breath puffed around Sasha’s limp cock.
“Sergey––” He shot upward. No, Sergey couldn’t, he couldn’t. That wasn’t for Sergey, he shouldn’t debase himself like Sasha debased himself. He couldn’t become what Sasha had become. “Don’t––”
Sergey ignored him. He held Sasha’s stare as his mouth closed around his cock, as his lips formed a seal, as his tongue started stroking. He hollowed his cheeks. Groaned around Sasha’s dick.
Sasha cursed, every swear word he’d ever heard, every dark curse, every bitten off castigation. His hands fisted in his hair, in the sheets, in a pillow he pulled over his face. He dropped the pillow and stared at Sergey again, watched his cock harden between Sergey’s lips. No no no, not Sergey. He’d already infected him!
But, what perfection. Every particle of him shattered, reformed. Sergey was staring at him, staring into him, filling his soul with fire.
Face-first, into oblivion. Hewouldsmile as his atoms stripped away.
He didn’t know his cock could get so hard. He whined, jerked, tried to escape the tyranny of Sergey’s pleasure, his perfect lips and tongue.
