Page 44 of His Elder

He arched into my touch, a silent, desperate plea. My hands slid down his legs, over the rough hair on his calves, the knobs of his ankles. And then I remembered. That first night. The sound he’d made when I’d touched his foot. A small, sharp gasp of surprise that had nothing to do with guilt andeverything to do with pure, unexpected sensation. A crack in the armour.

His feet were cold. I held one in my hands, rubbing warmth into the high arch, the long toes. He watched me, his breath hitched in his throat, his face a conflict of terror and an emotion I couldn't name. It looked like hope.

I bent my head. My lips closed over toes, my tongue lapping gently.

The reaction was instantaneous. A lightning strike. Samuel's back bowed, lifting him clean off the mattress. A sound tore from his throat, a raw, guttural cry that was part pleasure, part pain, part something else entirely. It was the sound of a tightly wound spring snapping. The sound of a dam breaking. It was unholy. And it was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard.

In that single, sharp, involuntary spasm, every ounce of his guilt was erased. Obliterated by a jolt of pure, undeniable pleasure he couldn't reason with, couldn't pray away, couldn't bargain with. It simply was.

A slow smile spread across my face, and I pressed it against the salt-dusted skin of his sole. I had him. Not his mind, not his soul—those were still at war. But I had his body. I had found a secret language it understood, a pressure point that bypassed the frantic, panicked sentries in his head. It was a new kind of power. A new kind of truth. And it was ours.

I stayed there, my mouth against his skin, feeling the aftershocks of his cry tremble through him. It was a fault line tremor, the first sign of a continental shift. He was a landscape remaking itself right under my hands, under my mouth. I lifted my head, my eyes tracing the long, elegant line of his leg, up the taut muscle of his thigh, to where the defined muscle of his lower abdomen carved a sharp V toward his hips. He laid there, pinned by pleasure, his chest rising and falling in ragged,shallow bursts. His eyes were closed, his face a mask of shock and dazed surrender.

I moved slowly, crawling up his body, my knees bracketing his legs. I didn't want to break the spell. I wanted to live in it. I kissed the inside of his knee, the soft skin there, and he flinched, a sharp intake of breath. I moved higher, my mouth tracing a line up the pale skin of his inner thigh. He tasted of salt and clean laundry and a faint, electric tang that was purely him. My own desire, usually a cynical, solitary ache, felt different now. It was tangled up with something else. Something fierce and protective. I wanted to erase every sermon he had ever heard that told him this was dirty. I wanted to burn it all down with the slow, deliberate heat of my mouth.

His hands, which had been clenched in the sheets, uncurled. He brought one up, his fingers hesitant, and brushed them through my hair. It wasn't a push. It wasn't a pull. It was a question. An exploration. I kept kissing his skin, my tongue tracing the faint blue line of a vein, and his fingers tightened, just for a second, in my hair. Permission granted.

I reached his hips and paused. I looked at his face. His eyes were open now, dark and liquid in the gloom. They glistened with unshed tears, but it wasn't sadness I saw. It was awe. He looked like a man seeing the ocean for the first time. Terrified and mesmerized.

"Turn over," I whispered. My voice was a low rasp.

His throat worked, a difficult swallow. He didn't speak, but he obeyed. His movements were stiff, awkward, as he rolled onto his stomach. He buried his face in the pillow, his shoulders hunched, a posture of supplication and defence. The vulnerability of it punched the air from my lungs. The long, elegant curve of his spine, the two dimples at the base of it, the pale, perfect globes of his ass. He was a masterpiece of shame and beauty. A living, breathing pietà of his own making.

I knelt behind him. I reached out, my hands hovering over his skin for a long moment before I finally touched him. I placed my palms flat against the small of his back, feeling the tension there, the fine tremor running just beneath the surface. I slid my hands down, over the swell of his ass, and he tensed, a sharp, full-body clench.

"Shhh," I murmured, my voice close to his ear. "It's just me. Just Eli."

I kept my hands there, just resting on him, letting the simple weight and warmth of my touch be an anchor. I felt the tension in him lessen by a fraction. Then another. I drew my thumbs down, tracing the valley between, and he made a small, muffled sound into the pillow. A whimper of protest or pleasure, I couldn't tell. Maybe they were the same thing for him.

I leaned forward, my mouth replacing my hands. I kissed the base of his spine, tasting the salt of his skin. He shuddered, a violent, helpless motion. I moved lower, my nose brushing against him, inhaling his scent. It was clean from the shower he'd taken before bed, and yet masculine and impossibly alluring. He was so rigid, so controlled in every other aspect of his life, but his body betrayed him with this scent of pure want.

My tongue flicked out, a hesitant exploration against the tight fold of him.

Samuel bucked. A strangled sob tore from his throat, muffled by the down pillow. "Eli," he gasped. A warning. A plea. A prayer.

I didn't stop. I pressed my lips to him, my tongue delving deeper, tasting him fully. He tasted like sin and scripture. Like fear and desperation and a profound, untouched sweetness. His body went rigid, a bowstring pulled to its breaking point. His fists twisted in the sheets, the knuckles white. I held his hips, keeping him steady, my tongue working a slow, insistentrhythm. I was undoing him. Unravelling the tightly-wound spool of guilt he had carried for years.

The tension in him broke. A low groan rumbled from his chest, and his hips gave a tentative push back against my mouth. Once. A small, involuntary movement. Then again, more deliberate this time. He was chasing the feeling. Forgetting to be ashamed. Forgetting to be afraid. He was just a body, a collection of nerves singing a new, forbidden hymn, and his mind had no choice but to listen.

I licked a slow, wet path up his crack, and he moaned, the sound louder this time, less inhibited. I reached between his legs, my fingers finding the hard length of him, slick with his own need. He was so hard. So ready. I wrapped my hand around him, and he cried out, his hips jerking against my mouth.

"Easy," I whispered, my lips moving against his skin. "We have all night."

He was panting, his breaths coming in short, sharp gasps into the pillow. I moved my tongue away, and he made a small, wounded sound of protest. I smiled against his skin. I reached for the lube I kept in my nightstand drawer, a relic of a life before the mission, a hopeful stealthy purchase I never thought I'd use here. The cap came off with a quiet click. I squeezed a generous amount onto my fingers, the gel cool against my skin.

I brought my hand back to him. I touched the tip of one finger to his opening, and he jerked away, his whole body going stiff again. The fear was back. Quick and sharp.

"Samuel. Look at me."

He slowly, reluctantly, turned his head. His face was a mess. Flushed bright red, damp with sweat, his lips swollen from biting them. His eyes were wide pools of panic.

"It's just me," I said again, my voice low and even. I held hisgaze, willing him to trust me. "I won't hurt you. I'm not going to do anything you don't want."

He stared at me for a long, silent moment. I saw the war in his eyes. The years of conditioning fighting against the raw, undeniable truth of his own body. He gave a tiny, almost imperceptible nod.

I turned his head back to face the pillow. "Just breathe," I instructed. "Focus on my hand." I moved my other hand to his cock, stroking him in a slow, steady rhythm. He gasped, his hips twitching. "That's it."

I brought my lubricated finger back to him, pressing gently. He was impossibly tight. A fortress. But I was patient. I applied a steady, gentle pressure, circling the puckered skin until I felt a minute release. My finger slipped inside, just the tip. He hissed, his back arching, his nails digging into the mattress.