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I’m already hard—I think I have been since I started to drink from him—but it becomes a pressing need the more he touches me, and the more I realise I can’t touch him.

I strain against the magical bonds holding me in place, and Maurice lowers his head to trail his lips over my collarbone as though he doesn’t know what I want.

“Maurice,” I say, and when he doesn’t look at me, louder, “Maurice!”

“Yes?” The sweet tone of his voice is at odds with that devilish smirk. He presses his hips forward and I groan—he’s just as hard as I am.

“Let me touch you.”

“Not yet.”

“Please. If this—” I can’t say it, even though we both know it’s true. If this is to be our one and only time together—and it is , isn’t it, because despite our never-ending lifespans, we live our lives so differently, so separately—then I want to touch him.

Maurice smiles at me and kisses the hollow of my throat, and all at once my arms are free.

I sit up, dragging him with me, and kiss him with all that I can.

Maurice groans into it, sounding almost surprised.

He tugs my hair again, digging his fingernails into my shoulders hard enough to leave marks behind.

I want them. I want all of him, I realise, and I won’t be satisfied with just tonight, but I would be even less satisfied with nothing at all.

He nips at my throat as I fumble his shirt open, then off, his buttons far less fiddly than my own.

It’s Maurice, though, who gets our trousers open, who pulls out my cock and strokes me hard.

I tip my head back and moan, uncaring that we might be heard, might be seen .

It is not something I usually want—not something I want at all—but I need his hands on me more than I care about that.

“Do you want me to tell you how I’d take my time?” Maurice murmurs. He takes both our cocks in one hand, pressing them together. I don’t know whose pre-cum he uses to slick us up, only that we are slick now, and he feels perfect next to me, like we were both made for this.

“I—Yes?” My hands are splayed over his back. He has a scar beneath his collarbone, over his left pec. It’s too neat to be anything but intentional and I want to coax its story out of him, but we have no time for that.

Maurice presses his forehead against mine, stroking us both firmly but slowly. He rolls his hips into each thrust, mouth half-open, and I know it’s not the fae blessing that has him looking like the wildest, most sensual creature I’ve ever seen in my life.

“I’d peel you out of one of those ridiculous suits,” he says and cuts off my protests with a fleeting kiss. “No, no. I know you hate them. So I’d have you naked and relaxed…”

I kiss his jaw, let my lips linger just below his ear.

“And I’d bury my face between your legs until you were sobbing, begging me to let you come.”

“You wouldn’t?”

“What?”

“Let me?”

Maurice’s chuckle is dark, and my cock jerks in his grip. “Not at first. I’d taste your pretty hole, too. Spend as much time as I wanted getting you loose and aching for me.”

“Maurice…”

“Have you been fucked before, Njáll? Surely?”

“Yes.”

“You’d never remember a time before me,” he says, just as he squeezes around the heads of our cocks.

I let out a faint cry and bury my face in his throat, and his next words are delivered directly into my ear.

“I can promise you that. You’d be sobbing, begging even before you got my cock.

I might not even fuck you. Might line myself up and let you do all the work… ”

Fuck. I’m panting, holding him so tightly it has to hurt, but Maurice doesn’t seem to care about that at all. He’s moving faster, though—his hand, his hips. I don’t know that he’s as close as I am, but he’s getting there.

“Is that what you want?” Maurice murmurs. “Someone to take care of you? Take all the burdens away?”

It’s not what I want all the time, and we both know that. But the fantasy of it, the idea of occasionally indulging in it, and with someone who would not judge me for it, who could carry the weight of all my responsibilities with ease, is more intoxicating than Maurice’s blood could ever be.

“Yes,” I whisper back, and Maurice bites my throat harder, grazing my skin with his fangs.

I cry out at the sensation—his hand, the closeness of his body, his teeth—and come hard, pleasure riding shockwave after shockwave through me. I don’t look up at Maurice, but I feel his eyes on me, then the way his body stiffens, trembling just slightly before he comes, too.

I don’t let go of him, even once it’s done. Maurice takes his hand from our cocks and rests his cheek against my shoulder, the embrace so gentle that I can hardly reconcile it with all the things he was saying to me before.

But there was gentleness in that too, wasn’t there? In what he wants to take from me. In what he wants to give .

My eyes are closed when I turn my head, but Maurice knows what I want. He kisses me, teasing brushes of our lips, and then lowers me back to the ground again, settling over my body.

“We should go back,” he says, a while later. It is still dark—we still have a few hours—and, recklessly, part of me wants to remain until the sun comes up. Maurice sighs when I don’t move, nuzzling his face against my chest.

“I know,” I reply when I feel he is going to remind me, again. “I know, just…”

“I know.”

It makes little sense that we both should feel this way. Maurice has not been by my side for long, and what we have is something I would hardly dare call a friendship.

Yet, I know what I feel . What I feel is that I do not wish to let him go.

He remains lying on top of me for a few more minutes before he climbs gracefully to his feet.

I push up onto my elbows to watch as he tucks himself back in, then retrieves his shirt, shrugging into it without apparently paying mind to the grass stains all up the back.

I grimace. Mine will not have fared any better; being white, in fact, means I’m sure those stains will last.

Once dressed again, though certainly not presentable, Maurice walks back over to me and holds out a hand to help me get to my feet. He helps me straighten up my clothes, too, always close and never quite getting in the way.

“Come on,” he says once we’re both dressed and takes my hand to lead me back to the clan house.

We don’t talk the entire way, and we enter via the side entrance when we arrive because I do not want anyone to break through this bubble we’ve created.

Of course it cannot last. I need to change, so I lead the way to the hall where both our rooms are located and, once there, Maurice pauses, looking at me.

“Will you be here tomorrow night?” I ask though I am certain I know the answer. “Before you leave, I mean, will you say goodbye?”

The smile he wears is soft and false, and it hurts in a way I can’t quite define. “We both know that’s not the best idea, don’t we?”

“Yes.”

He kisses my cheek, pressing close for just a second before he steps back. “I’ll be here tonight,” he says, “since I have to pack my things anyway. If you need anything…”

I won’t. I am safe here, and anything else… I won’t.

“Goodbye, Maurice,” I say, and he takes a deep breath, stepping back and neatly out of my reach.

“Goodbye, Njáll.”