Fic: In the Interstices [Yuletide - Coldfire - NC-17]
Title: In the Interstices
Author Name: Lferion
Fandom: C.S.Friedman - Coldfire
Characters|Pairing: Damien Vryce/Gerald Tarrant
Genre: Angst, post-series
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 5150
Disclaimer: C.S. Friedman owns them all. No harm, no foul.
Summary: Coming to an understanding of vulnerability.
Warnings: Memories of incest and rape.
Written for: Yuletide
Author Notes: Thanks go to linaerys, beta most wonderful, for encouragement, pompoms, eagle-eyes and idea-bouncing. Not to mention tracking down and killing the feral punctuation.
Further gratitude is due to Torch for writing several Coldfire tales for previous Yuletides, including "Fumarole," and to astolat for writing " Hath No Man."
Thanks also due to CS Friedman, for such a wonderful world and compelling characters who so don't belong to me.
Written as a Yuletide 2007 gift for tigerlady, upload #670.
*** *** *** *** ***
The pelican in her piety wounded herself, to feed her children. What power would be in the eagle's sacrifice, vulned both by his brothers and himself?
-- From The Books of the Prophet: On the Manipulation of the Fae, sometimes called The Book of Heresy, later suppressed and the manuscript retained only in the Archive at the Patriarch's seat in Jagonath.
Yes, he really was that self aware, and that arrogant. Damn him. Jarth and Ivor forgot that.
--Text of a note written in the margin of the autograph manuscript at this point, the hand bearing similar characteristics as that of the main text.
Evening had fallen, blue shadows shading to purple, strands of fae a darkling light, comforting after the clamoring glare and heat of day. His brothers had noticed him today. He could feel their eyes on him, the weight of their attention, the prick and slither against his skin as their unformed thought gained form in the malleable energy of the fae. All day thick laughter had echoed just at the edge of hearing, invisible hands had groped and pinched.
Summertide, First-fruits and the Warding of the Wheat (but it wasn't wheat. It was not, it was only close, looking like wheat, nutritive like wheat, but not actually wheat, because it had changed, to grow on Erna. He could see the difference, the subtle overlay of Other and the stubborn persistence of a plant to grow, to multiply. Could they truly not see? Truly, they could not. Had not changed.) Five long days of sweaty, light-drenched labor and too-short nights of drunken, brutal license. Even the Lords stripped to nothing but breechclouts and straw sandals, as if animal physicality would serve to hold the currents of mindless energy at bay. Last year he had been spared this, but there would be no reprieve this year.
The heat of sunburn tightened across his shoulders and down his back. He welcomed the cool breeze, the cold touch of the dark fae where he stood in the deepening shadow. For a moment he felt/saw the hot gold of solar fae running bright under the reddened skin of his arms, witnessed the moment it turned to silver ash and the briefest sparkle in the faint light of Casca. Earth fae lapped at his feet. Coreset. Domina was rising behind him, Prima on the other side of Erna, each tied and tethered to the others. The patterns made sense, orbits and tides and the mechanism of the solar system. Let his brothers believe the power to renew the wards was magic.
Damien stirred in his sleep, throwing off the blanket, turning in the sheets. A part of him knew this was too simple, too peaceful. Dread seeped up his limbs, congealing in his breast.
The rainbowed vault of the sky arched over him, the fragile shimmer of the tidal fae reflected in his eyes. For the briefest point in time he Knew the fae, earth and tide, fire and darkness all at once and the beauty and wonder of it held him transfixed, every cell and nerve alive, open, and oblivious to anything but the glory that penetrated him, filled him to overflowing, set him trembling on the edge of rapture.
"Hey! Mooncalf!"
The moment shattered. Rough hands grabbed him with bruising force, nails tearing skin. Rank odors overwhelmed him, malevolence stinging his nose, making his eyes water. Eight of them. Surrounded. Quartered and cross quartered. No escape. Breath stopped in his lungs. A foul wad stopped his mouth and he choked on the scream in his throat.
no no. No. Fingers plucked the strings of his breechclout, snatched at the cloth. A hand groped between his legs and found his erect member. That callous touch was enough to finish what the immersion in the fae had started, and orgasm ripped through him even as his mind tried desperately to escape, fight, run.
"Whaddya know? The lily-thing started without us."
They were taking him away from the sky, into a place of light and smoke and stifling blankness. Splintery wood scraped across his knees. Feathers and chaff filled his eyes as the hand in his hair pushed him down. The barn. Warded and faeless. More hands pulled at his buttocks as something hot and slick sluiced between them. Sharp hardness entered him, slipping obscenely into him.
"Tight little thing, all pretty and clean."
Two things wiggled into him, a parody of fae-tendrils, touched something deep and stars shocked through him. His body jerked and shuddered. The things bent wider, forcing him open, straightened to hit that place again, and he shuddered harder, feeling himself begin to stiffen.
"Ooo, like that, do you? Little slot."
No. No. The things … fingers … pulled out, but he knew better than to hope in the brief moment of almost shocking emptiness.
"Won't be clean by sun-up."
Blunt heat split him, fire spiking up his spine. Claws raked at his shoulders. Meaningless sounds roared in his ears, brays and howls and grunts.
His body tore as they plowed him. His throat locked around the scream that could not escape the gag.
Eight of them.
One of him.
Five nights of unbridled license.
Damien clawed himself out the clammy embrace of linen and sat on the edge of the bed, breathing hard.
Not a dream. Or not wholly; more memory than phantasm. Damien could still taste the stifling bite of musty feathers in his nose with edged clarity, feel the rough scrape of sacking against his cheek, the raw, wet burn between his nether-cheeks, the unspeakable ache that vied for horror with the sticky chill on his belly and the memory of shattering ecstasy as his body betrayed him with arousal and release more than once.
The phantom sensations faded as he forced himself to full wakefulness, the arousal did not. Not his memory. Not his experience. Not even, truly, his fear.
But his arousal. That was disturbing, even though it subsided rapidly as he noticed it. Disturbing despite his understanding of the purely physical mechanics that could cause it. He shivered as the sweat dried on his skin. Leakage over the channel between them. Damn him.
"What can you know of the mindset of the weak, whose lives are centered around vulnerability?"
Not the Hunter's usual intricate dream-craft, and rather more intimate than the man would willingly allow, that dream had the same indefinable edge as Damien's dreams of Tarrant in the fire in the Rakhlands. The practiced analytical part of his mind was cataloging and sorting the impressions left from the nightmare-memory. Violation at the most basic level. Pain. Confusion. And threaded through all a sere, unyielding will to endure.
"I think I understand it very well."
Tight-lipped, Damien hoped Tarrant had fed off his horror at least. Even though they were in Jagonath, with other means of sustenance available; it would be a waste if not. Damien didn't want any more understanding of that particular aspect of the Hunter, thank you very much. Just trying to keep a clear head with the pervasive danger of Calesta hanging over them was bad enough.
Damien pushed the dream-fragments out of his mind and reassembled the bedclothes with more force than strictly necessary. He plumped the pillow and lay down again. Sleeping was the only useful thing he could do at this hour.
*** *** ***
In the space between the hell of the Unnamed and the looming term of Tarrant's compact, Damien had even less time to think. But still he dreamed, dreamed of horrors and wonders, of taking and being taken, of embracing the fae and having it embrace him. He dreamed of Karril-female and Karril-male. He dreamed of Tarrant and as Tarrant. He was beginning to suspect that very little of what fueled those nightly excursions was leakage from his link with the Hunter.
Summertide again, but this was a humid, too-wet season, after a cold and rainless spring. The grain was short and pale; scanty heads bowed under the weight of water. Above the clouds, Prima, Domina and Casca spun in their immutable dance, pale in the dazzle of Sun and Core both. True Night reigned over the deeps of the Southern Archipelago. His father roared at the weather and even his brothers cowered. Only seven of them this year, with the eldest making war with the armies of the Young King. He made a point of avoiding them, but could not avoid the miasma of their urges and desires in the fae. He had grown in the last months, swift inches making his joints ache and his movement clumsy. Like theirs. He flinched from the thought. He had grown, but too little yet and thin with it, a spindledore to their behemoths. Sometimes avoidance was not enough. Sometimes they cornered him. But he had learned to recognize them by their shadow in the fae-currents, their stench in the air.
Shivering, he tilted his face to the rain, letting the warm rain wash over him; wash the filth of them from his thoughts, the phantom stink from his skin. In this tiny clearing in a distant copse-thicket he even lay aside the oversize, worn linen tunic-shirt and tight-knotted breechcloth, giving every inch of his skin to the cleansing rain. This was a touch he could embrace, like the touch of the fae, the touch of his friend.
Why dream of Tarrant-the-boy? Was not the one indelible nightmare enough? Where were these dream-visions coming from? Tarrant disclaimed having any part, and Damien believed him. Damien was having trouble putting the two Geralds together. What did that miserable, disheveled, gawky-skinny youth have to do with the tall, elegant menace of the man, perfectly groomed, perfectly controlled?
Damien watched Tarrant poring over Senzei's notes, silver eyes flicking swiftly from one page to another, gold hair shining in the lamplight, the only imperfection the ragged, livid scar marring the otherwise smooth cheek. When Tarrant's mind was fully engaged in the words and symbols before him, one hand would creep to that mark, compelled, and trace the puckered ridges with reluctant fingers. Then his mouth would twist and he would snatch his hand away with a tiny, flinching shiver, instantly stilled. Only in that telling reaction did Damien see the long ago Gerald.
Sometimes he dreamed awake, half-present, half wherever it was the images came from. Never outside, never in public. He would sit to pull off his boots and be swept away for a handful of minutes, a blink of an eye.
Karril coming to him with hands of silk, a mouth of oil and spice, a shape of warmth. Karril, teasing him with a tassle of grain, raindrops, wind, a laughing, slender androgyny. Karril, no shape at all; and he, every breath pain, the very light a blade, sense and self scoured raw, taking comfort, in undemanding company; conversation, learning, playing at illusion and perception as flesh and spirit recovered.
Damien reached for a truth with nothing to fit it into. Karril's perceptions. Karril's dreams. Not Tarrant's. What did that mean?
And yet, after the earliest images, Karril was always and ever male in Tarrant's presence when he was embodied at all. The Iezu shaped himself to the desires of the people he was with. What did that mean? Tarrant desired women. All those women, a grotesque carpet, a sea, ravening, to drown in, each with the fragile, bitter delicacy of an ice-crystal, a shard of coldfire, piercing and freezing both, so very afraid.
And what do you know, Vryce, of the mindset of the vulnerable, with your warrior build and honed reflexes, height and strength and scars to witness to the hazards you've overcome? He gave you the key that night, deep in the caves at the very epicenter of change.
(It came to Damien that one of the earliest accomplishments that had brought young Gerald Tarrant to the attention of Gannon had to be the design and construction of the plumbing and sewage system that still served Jagonath. That fastidious desire - no, call it by its right name, need - for cleanliness had deep roots.)
Flicker-flash images: a face he knew to be Gannon's, beautiful in its way as Tarrant's own, smiling, frowning, flushed with desire, lax with drink. A vessel of Fire so bright as to eclipse the Core, and before it, glittering, the King creating the NeoCount Merentha,, silver flashing white on gold. A be-ringed hand, fingers tangling in his hair, warm breath at his ear; that same hand white-knucked, crumpling a sheaf of close-written pages, sending an ink-dish flying, ink spattering like blood, staining a white and flame-worked surplice. Fragments, impressions, a jumble of reflections, spinning, collecting into an unbearable glare.
When Damien struggled out of that maelstrom it was to meet Karril's clever, knowing eyes. His wide and knowing grin.
"Stop fighting it, Priest. You like learning. You even like sex. You will need this. Trust me!"
And for the long hours of waiting, the last fraught days in the city, Damien dreamed desire, intimacy, ecstasy. Dreams he never remembered with clarity but woke him wet and sated, even while his mind worried ceaselessly at the problem of Calesta and the coming of the end of the too-short month.
Karril was having a joke on him. But even knowing that Damien found himself appreciating unexpected things, and he allowed it in himself. What could it hurt, that he saw more beauty in the world, found the taste of air a pleasure to his senses?
And Tarrant. Contradiction in form and flesh. Personal damnation and public salvation. Appearance as armor and words and will more potent weapons than the Worked steel that could level the city if he so choose. The Hunter who preyed on women, the scholar who sought the challenge of wit and would lose himself in the intricacies of Earth's arcane, Erna's whims. The man who dared the Nameless and still reached for stars. A riddle. A compulsion. Damien's despair.
One night on the difficult road to Shaitan, Damien could no longer avoid the knot rubbing at his thinking. He played the conversation in his mind, knowing he would not speak it aloud. "They were all women, the ones you ... hunted. All that delicate, elegant beauty dissolved into terror, to feed your hunger. And the way you hunted them they remained beautiful, even in extremis. At your mercy, which you offered just often enough for it to engender hope. In your power, powerless themselves. But never men. Not even elegant, delicate, fragile and beautiful men. Why?
The hard bark of the copperwood pressed against his palms, life singing, surging. Hardness held him, filled him, gripped and squeezed and thrust, a ravishment of life, of sensation. Teeth on his neck. Fingers tight on his prick, a hand hot on his breast, over his heart. Warmth on his back. Power and heat and pleasure driving into him, need and fire and closeness and the aching glory of being stretched wide, filled to the brim, his secret places exposed and touched and the building swelling winding higher tighter stars and explosions and then he was shuddering, shattering, flying apart in absolute ecstasy. Coming back together. Held. Filled. Feeling the pulse within and the pleasure of the other's completion. Grounded in soft slickness still moving within him, against him, weight on his back, breath on his neck, brow and cheek and palms pressed to the tree, to life.
Because that would be too close to the truth, wouldn't it?
*** *** ***
And then the world changed. It had taken Damien a year to realize that more than the working of a legend, a mind and will and spirit of such capacity for darkness that one could only call it evil, the Sacrifice Tarrant had accomplished was the work of both the Prophet and the Hunter. That the Hunter was the obverse of the coin whose face was the Prophet, and the whole spent for the same end: the shaping of Erna to the need of humanity.
Without him, Prophet and Hunter, Priest and Scientist, they might still be huddling in wretched squalor, more animal than Human. (Damien remembered the memory-dream, the hot breath that stank no less than a rage-wraith's, the gloating laughter that had sounded precisely like Calesta's.) Without Gerald Tarrant, they would most certainly still be waging a losing war with the fae.
On a purely personal level, without Tarrant, Damien Kilcannon Vryce, sometime Priest of the One Church and Knight of the Flame felt rudderless, adrift, purposeless. Stripped of his calling, he still felt the call, the rightness of the work the Church did -- the comforting hand of the Minister, the blessing of the Reverend, the guidance of the Holy, priests all. But too long proximity to the Prophet's paradox had withered once-blithe confidence in the infallibility of the church as a body, however worthy the individual ordinand, how right the ideals. The church that had condemned all efforts to work with the fae as heresy, and those born Adept as abomination. Heresy and abomination had a face, a face not so different from his own. He should have had more time.... We should have had more time.
So, when that unexpected shot rang in his ear on Black Ridge Pass, and he watched a slender, elegant figure walk away from him, neat black braid and all, Damien was not really surprised that his mixed feelings were mostly positive.
He was surprised, after having understood the terms under which the man who was not Tarrant, and most emphatically not the Hunter, maintained a continuing life, to find a neat black head bent over a notebook in the parlor of the Black Ridge Inn, long fingers wielding a stylus with slow grace. Left handed.
Damien pulled out the other chair at the small table and sat, rather abruptly. "Making notes?" Why are you still here? You had to know I was staying at this inn.
Dark eyes fringed with ridiculously long lashes glanced up at him and a hint of smile quirked the unfamiliar mouth in an all too familiar way. "There is a great deal to learn here. This is an interstice. One of the few places where there is still"-- He paused, one hand moving in an elegant, spare gesture -- "flux." He looked back down to the notebook, and Damien could see an unexpected uncertainty, a vulnerability, in the still and beautiful face.
"Flux?" Damien asked gently. This was important. Suddenly he was back in the river, supporting the Patriarch, mingled blood dying the water, sealing the sacrifice. This had the same sense of being a pivot-point, if on a smaller, more personal scale. And Shaitan was up-current. Perhaps, oh perhaps....
"The new pattern is set, but not yet, entirely, fixed. There are places, times, people that fall between the old and new, chaos and order." His voice became very soft, "Light and dark." He swallowed. "This is one of them. You. And I. We have ..." There was a pause, and Damien could not think of a time when Tarrant had needed to struggle so for the words he wanted. Finally the other man half-sighed and went on. "Wiggle-room. A little. Choices we can make, while things are still, just, malleable. A window of opportunity, if you will."
Damien sat back in the chair. "I see." He did see, somewhat. They had been in the center of things, the agents of change as much or more than the changed. This was the epicenter, the eye, where the very earth had been remade by forces too great for simple results. As it took metal time to cool and harden, and could be shaped by hammer and will while hot, perhaps those closest to the change-fire were still warm enough to move within the matrix, iron not too long from the forge. "I do see. Yes. A few hammer-taps left."
A genuine smile crinkled the corners of his eyes. "Precisely, yes." He took a deep breath and his eyes were deep, distant. "Those who were Adepts can still See. I" -- another pause -- "can still See."
A light tap, setting the metal for the true strike. Damien waited. A whisper from the past echoed --
"To See the present clearly and thoroughly enough to extrapolate the future."
Laying claim to that.
"Adepts tend, tended, to be solitary, isolated, alone even in the midst of crowds. The Hunter was ... very much alone. Too alone, and for too long." The dark eyes seemed to see nothing present, gazing out over the distant railing, and the expression tightening the lines of the young face was hauntingly familiar. Damien's heart twisted. "I would choose otherwise. Tarrant commanded. I, in this, cannot." Now those eyes looked no further than Damien's, a bright, black, immediate look, "I can only ask." Soft, but very clear. "Damien Kilcannon Vryce, will you walk with me, in this new world?"
The double hammer blow, quick and hard and sure, rang silently in the air. Damien's breath caught. A question older than Revival courtesy; reaching all the way back to the tales of the Landing, and Ship-manners. His tongue found words to respond, heart beating hard. "Who is it who asks this of me?"
"I, Ioseth Vale, would walk with you, Damien Vryce, finding a path together beneath this sun, that neither might face the starless dark alone."
Ioseth Vale. Named. A new name with nothing of what had been; even the stresses and sounds different. Another strike, the metal cooled to red from white. But even black, iron bent, burned the careless hand.
Now the fathomless eyes flickered closed, and Ioseth's face was tense with strain, mouth folded tight, as against pain. Waiting for the answer. Terrified of what that answer might be.
For a long, long moment, Damien considered. He was free to answer as he willed. No compulsion urged his choice, no thought of Church or law or stricture. His choice. The voice of his heart, his will, his desire. And he did desire it. This man, the will, the wit, the intelligence unchanged, but so much new, or if not new, undiscovered, unexplored. A true second chance. To be part of that, not a reversal, but a partnership. His hand reached out, touching the others, feather-light. He could feel the faint tremors shaking through Ioseth.
"Yes."
*** *** ***
Damien knew what Ioseth had asked of him. To walk, body to body, flesh to flesh, into the new day they had made between them. To join and make a connection between them like in significance, but utterly unlike in means and intent to the one that had bound two other men, in a different world. They had both agreed. The ineffable sense of rightness lingered, despite Damien's misgivings.
Damien tried to order his thoughts as they separated to bathe and dress, agreeing to meet in Damien's room in the Inn. Whatever else he was, Ioseth's body was virgin, and Damien himself had never been inclined to men. That didn't seem relevant, here, now, because neither were precisely inexperienced, or unacquainted with their own -- or the other's -- responses. The old channel had seen to that. Dreams and portents. And Karril.
Somehow, the Iezu whose aspect was pleasure had known. Known Tarrant's need those long years ago. Known Damien's ignorance, the possibility of Ioseth and the potential confluence of those strands. Known, and because he had also known friendship and love, had grown in more than understanding by those connections deeper than any merely fae-born could know, Karril had made sure that Damien was prepared for this eventuality. Just in case. What could it hurt? Besides it was fun.
Damien chuckled ruefully. So. Time to put those dreams to good use. Whatever the distance down the road they went tonight, they had chosen it together. And he was going to revel in getting that finicky, fastidious, reluctant to be touched man properly acquainted with the wonderful messiness that was making love.
Because, oh god, it was love.
For the Eagle so loved the world that caused there to be God, perfect in form, perfect in love, perfect in knowledge of the rightness that was the world and the place of humanity within it, however far from perfection the present moment might be.
But for light to shine, there must be darkness, and this world requires sacrifice, even unto the last drop of heart's blood and the uttermost desolation of spirit. And the Light must Know the Darkness, and the Darkness, Light, that there be Life, set inviolate between them. And the obverse of Life is Death, as the obverse of Light is Darkness, in perfect balance neither good nor evil. It is apathy, entropy, ignorance and waste that are the true evil; cruelty without reason and the abnegation of responsibility. This world responds to us. How then, shall we respond to the world?
With faith. With hope. And most of all, with love.
For a moment, Damien was overcome with feeling. Grief and elation, desolation and hope, rage and love. In the maelstrom of emotion there was a clear space, candlelit, lapped flames became wings, became the serene balance of linked rings, and in that timeless place he knew to the core of himself what it was they strove for. Not life. Love.
It would seem that he was still a priest, in the most important way. As Tarrant had never ceased being one. As Andrys and the Patriarch, Jenseny and Narilka, even Ioseth were. The ache he had borne these long months finally eased. Love. God.
Damien shook himself. Love then. Love in action. Love in responsibility. He could do that.
He bathed with care, and made up the bed with fresh sheets. (The inn did not yet offer maid service. The beer-taps had taken precedence.) He set out the flask of good oil he used for his kit, not thinking too hard about the use it would be put to. He filled the lamp and lit it as the sun dipped below the shoulder of the mountain and the core filled the sky with silver light.
When Ioseth Vale tapped at the door, Damien was as ready as he could be.
*** *** ***
Layers and layers of clothing, gently, reverently stripped and put aside, until the whole person was laid bare, open to Damien's eyes and hands. Golden skin sculpted over long, fine bones, deceptively muscled; dusky nipples peaked and stiffened under the brush of his hands. Dark lashes shadowed sharp cheekbones beneath drawn brows, and the broad chest rose and fell with short, uneven breaths. A thicket of dark curls cradling an organ of generous proportion, half-hard, slowly thickening under his gaze. Allowing himself to be vulnerable, naked, responsive to Damien's touch.
Beautiful. Growing only more beautiful as arousal flushed his cheeks and heat suffused his groin.
Gently, reverently, Damien traced patterns on Ioseth's exposed skin, mapping lines of energy and desire. The tense lips opened and thighs parted as Damien's hand found and cupped heavy testicles. His head fell back and Damien set his mouth on the long arch of his neck, tonguing the Adams-apple and the veins that pulsed there, drawing a shudder and a moan from the man beneath him. So responsive, so sensitive. Grounded in the moment, and Damien knew, wanting this, needing it, writing every sensation, every touch, deeply into this flesh, letting Damien shape this layer of who he now was. Pleasure, not pain. Sensation, not dominance. Acceptance, not violation. Liquid warmth painted Damien's wrist as he slid his hand up and down the silk and steel of Ioseth's cock, and his own twitched and jumped in response.
Equals. Give and take.
Damien's hand moved down Ioseth's shaft as his mouth moved down his chest. His fingers caressed the tightening balls and burrowed behind them, touching, petting, seeking between the trembling thighs. Warmth and slickness met his fingertips as he reached his goal.
Sure of yourself, were you? Damien thought with surprising affection.
Hope, only seemed to answer him, then splintered as he eased one thick finger into yielding softness and took the weeping head of Ioseth's cock into his mouth. A bitter-strange taste, but not unpleasant, and his tongue explored the smooth curves and ridges so alike and so different from the ones his hands knew.
Ioseth was gasping and his muscles clenched, drawing Damien deeper in. No words now informed the needy sounds he was making. Sounds Damien had never thought to hear or even imagine, that fired through him, setting every nerve alight. His own cock was burning iron, aching for the sheath, and his ass pulsed to the beat of his need. Yes, even that he realized dazedly, and caught himself on the edge of coming at the thought. Not now. Now was Ioseth's.
Oiled fingers touched him, smoothed back the last fold of his foreskin, curled around the base of his shaft. Another hand tugged at his nape, drew his mouth away from its suckling to meet insistent lips. A fumbling moment to position himself, laughing into the other's mouth, and he was sinking into fire. Ioseth's rigid cock was in his hand, Ioseth's fingers twined with his, setting the pace, as their tongues dueled and they stole each other's breath.
How could he have thought the other would be a passive lover?
Buried deep, Damien's hips pounding against Ioseth's heavy thighs, thrusting into that tight, sweet channel, freely offered, freely given. Then Ioseth was crying out, shuddering and jerking against him. The shaft in their hands was pulsing, spilling white seed over joined fingers. There were gold-green sparkles in his eyes, and the abandoned strength of Ioseth's orgasm brought him to his own release.
They lay together in the disarrayed linen, still joined, as the green shadows faded. Harsh gasps eased as their pulses slowed. Damien basked in the afterglow, relishing the delicate touch of Ioseth's lips at cheek and brow. His own hand traced the line of the other's collarbones over and over, and it was only when Ioseth's breath began to go ragged again under him that he rolled them to their sides. He felt Ioseth arch and shudder against him as he slipped free. Long legs tangled with his, pressing their groins wantonly together, slick and sticky and right. The sharp angle of cheek in the hollow of his shoulder, the soft weight of hair across his breast, the arm about his waist anchored him.
"It can't be this easy," Damien heard himself say in the warm, safe darkness, redolent of lust and musk and love.
Breath feathered against his skin. "Yes. It can."
And in that place, that moment, it was.
*** *** *** *** ***
Author Name: Lferion
Fandom: C.S.Friedman - Coldfire
Characters|Pairing: Damien Vryce/Gerald Tarrant
Genre: Angst, post-series
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 5150
Disclaimer: C.S. Friedman owns them all. No harm, no foul.
Summary: Coming to an understanding of vulnerability.
Warnings: Memories of incest and rape.
Written for: Yuletide
Author Notes: Thanks go to linaerys, beta most wonderful, for encouragement, pompoms, eagle-eyes and idea-bouncing. Not to mention tracking down and killing the feral punctuation.
Further gratitude is due to Torch for writing several Coldfire tales for previous Yuletides, including "Fumarole," and to astolat for writing " Hath No Man."
Thanks also due to CS Friedman, for such a wonderful world and compelling characters who so don't belong to me.
Written as a Yuletide 2007 gift for tigerlady, upload #670.
*** *** *** *** ***
The pelican in her piety wounded herself, to feed her children. What power would be in the eagle's sacrifice, vulned both by his brothers and himself?
-- From The Books of the Prophet: On the Manipulation of the Fae, sometimes called The Book of Heresy, later suppressed and the manuscript retained only in the Archive at the Patriarch's seat in Jagonath.
Yes, he really was that self aware, and that arrogant. Damn him. Jarth and Ivor forgot that.
--Text of a note written in the margin of the autograph manuscript at this point, the hand bearing similar characteristics as that of the main text.
Evening had fallen, blue shadows shading to purple, strands of fae a darkling light, comforting after the clamoring glare and heat of day. His brothers had noticed him today. He could feel their eyes on him, the weight of their attention, the prick and slither against his skin as their unformed thought gained form in the malleable energy of the fae. All day thick laughter had echoed just at the edge of hearing, invisible hands had groped and pinched.
Summertide, First-fruits and the Warding of the Wheat (but it wasn't wheat. It was not, it was only close, looking like wheat, nutritive like wheat, but not actually wheat, because it had changed, to grow on Erna. He could see the difference, the subtle overlay of Other and the stubborn persistence of a plant to grow, to multiply. Could they truly not see? Truly, they could not. Had not changed.) Five long days of sweaty, light-drenched labor and too-short nights of drunken, brutal license. Even the Lords stripped to nothing but breechclouts and straw sandals, as if animal physicality would serve to hold the currents of mindless energy at bay. Last year he had been spared this, but there would be no reprieve this year.
The heat of sunburn tightened across his shoulders and down his back. He welcomed the cool breeze, the cold touch of the dark fae where he stood in the deepening shadow. For a moment he felt/saw the hot gold of solar fae running bright under the reddened skin of his arms, witnessed the moment it turned to silver ash and the briefest sparkle in the faint light of Casca. Earth fae lapped at his feet. Coreset. Domina was rising behind him, Prima on the other side of Erna, each tied and tethered to the others. The patterns made sense, orbits and tides and the mechanism of the solar system. Let his brothers believe the power to renew the wards was magic.
Damien stirred in his sleep, throwing off the blanket, turning in the sheets. A part of him knew this was too simple, too peaceful. Dread seeped up his limbs, congealing in his breast.
The rainbowed vault of the sky arched over him, the fragile shimmer of the tidal fae reflected in his eyes. For the briefest point in time he Knew the fae, earth and tide, fire and darkness all at once and the beauty and wonder of it held him transfixed, every cell and nerve alive, open, and oblivious to anything but the glory that penetrated him, filled him to overflowing, set him trembling on the edge of rapture.
"Hey! Mooncalf!"
The moment shattered. Rough hands grabbed him with bruising force, nails tearing skin. Rank odors overwhelmed him, malevolence stinging his nose, making his eyes water. Eight of them. Surrounded. Quartered and cross quartered. No escape. Breath stopped in his lungs. A foul wad stopped his mouth and he choked on the scream in his throat.
no no. No. Fingers plucked the strings of his breechclout, snatched at the cloth. A hand groped between his legs and found his erect member. That callous touch was enough to finish what the immersion in the fae had started, and orgasm ripped through him even as his mind tried desperately to escape, fight, run.
"Whaddya know? The lily-thing started without us."
They were taking him away from the sky, into a place of light and smoke and stifling blankness. Splintery wood scraped across his knees. Feathers and chaff filled his eyes as the hand in his hair pushed him down. The barn. Warded and faeless. More hands pulled at his buttocks as something hot and slick sluiced between them. Sharp hardness entered him, slipping obscenely into him.
"Tight little thing, all pretty and clean."
Two things wiggled into him, a parody of fae-tendrils, touched something deep and stars shocked through him. His body jerked and shuddered. The things bent wider, forcing him open, straightened to hit that place again, and he shuddered harder, feeling himself begin to stiffen.
"Ooo, like that, do you? Little slot."
No. No. The things … fingers … pulled out, but he knew better than to hope in the brief moment of almost shocking emptiness.
"Won't be clean by sun-up."
Blunt heat split him, fire spiking up his spine. Claws raked at his shoulders. Meaningless sounds roared in his ears, brays and howls and grunts.
His body tore as they plowed him. His throat locked around the scream that could not escape the gag.
Eight of them.
One of him.
Five nights of unbridled license.
Damien clawed himself out the clammy embrace of linen and sat on the edge of the bed, breathing hard.
Not a dream. Or not wholly; more memory than phantasm. Damien could still taste the stifling bite of musty feathers in his nose with edged clarity, feel the rough scrape of sacking against his cheek, the raw, wet burn between his nether-cheeks, the unspeakable ache that vied for horror with the sticky chill on his belly and the memory of shattering ecstasy as his body betrayed him with arousal and release more than once.
The phantom sensations faded as he forced himself to full wakefulness, the arousal did not. Not his memory. Not his experience. Not even, truly, his fear.
But his arousal. That was disturbing, even though it subsided rapidly as he noticed it. Disturbing despite his understanding of the purely physical mechanics that could cause it. He shivered as the sweat dried on his skin. Leakage over the channel between them. Damn him.
"What can you know of the mindset of the weak, whose lives are centered around vulnerability?"
Not the Hunter's usual intricate dream-craft, and rather more intimate than the man would willingly allow, that dream had the same indefinable edge as Damien's dreams of Tarrant in the fire in the Rakhlands. The practiced analytical part of his mind was cataloging and sorting the impressions left from the nightmare-memory. Violation at the most basic level. Pain. Confusion. And threaded through all a sere, unyielding will to endure.
"I think I understand it very well."
Tight-lipped, Damien hoped Tarrant had fed off his horror at least. Even though they were in Jagonath, with other means of sustenance available; it would be a waste if not. Damien didn't want any more understanding of that particular aspect of the Hunter, thank you very much. Just trying to keep a clear head with the pervasive danger of Calesta hanging over them was bad enough.
Damien pushed the dream-fragments out of his mind and reassembled the bedclothes with more force than strictly necessary. He plumped the pillow and lay down again. Sleeping was the only useful thing he could do at this hour.
*** *** ***
In the space between the hell of the Unnamed and the looming term of Tarrant's compact, Damien had even less time to think. But still he dreamed, dreamed of horrors and wonders, of taking and being taken, of embracing the fae and having it embrace him. He dreamed of Karril-female and Karril-male. He dreamed of Tarrant and as Tarrant. He was beginning to suspect that very little of what fueled those nightly excursions was leakage from his link with the Hunter.
Summertide again, but this was a humid, too-wet season, after a cold and rainless spring. The grain was short and pale; scanty heads bowed under the weight of water. Above the clouds, Prima, Domina and Casca spun in their immutable dance, pale in the dazzle of Sun and Core both. True Night reigned over the deeps of the Southern Archipelago. His father roared at the weather and even his brothers cowered. Only seven of them this year, with the eldest making war with the armies of the Young King. He made a point of avoiding them, but could not avoid the miasma of their urges and desires in the fae. He had grown in the last months, swift inches making his joints ache and his movement clumsy. Like theirs. He flinched from the thought. He had grown, but too little yet and thin with it, a spindledore to their behemoths. Sometimes avoidance was not enough. Sometimes they cornered him. But he had learned to recognize them by their shadow in the fae-currents, their stench in the air.
Shivering, he tilted his face to the rain, letting the warm rain wash over him; wash the filth of them from his thoughts, the phantom stink from his skin. In this tiny clearing in a distant copse-thicket he even lay aside the oversize, worn linen tunic-shirt and tight-knotted breechcloth, giving every inch of his skin to the cleansing rain. This was a touch he could embrace, like the touch of the fae, the touch of his friend.
Why dream of Tarrant-the-boy? Was not the one indelible nightmare enough? Where were these dream-visions coming from? Tarrant disclaimed having any part, and Damien believed him. Damien was having trouble putting the two Geralds together. What did that miserable, disheveled, gawky-skinny youth have to do with the tall, elegant menace of the man, perfectly groomed, perfectly controlled?
Damien watched Tarrant poring over Senzei's notes, silver eyes flicking swiftly from one page to another, gold hair shining in the lamplight, the only imperfection the ragged, livid scar marring the otherwise smooth cheek. When Tarrant's mind was fully engaged in the words and symbols before him, one hand would creep to that mark, compelled, and trace the puckered ridges with reluctant fingers. Then his mouth would twist and he would snatch his hand away with a tiny, flinching shiver, instantly stilled. Only in that telling reaction did Damien see the long ago Gerald.
Sometimes he dreamed awake, half-present, half wherever it was the images came from. Never outside, never in public. He would sit to pull off his boots and be swept away for a handful of minutes, a blink of an eye.
Karril coming to him with hands of silk, a mouth of oil and spice, a shape of warmth. Karril, teasing him with a tassle of grain, raindrops, wind, a laughing, slender androgyny. Karril, no shape at all; and he, every breath pain, the very light a blade, sense and self scoured raw, taking comfort, in undemanding company; conversation, learning, playing at illusion and perception as flesh and spirit recovered.
Damien reached for a truth with nothing to fit it into. Karril's perceptions. Karril's dreams. Not Tarrant's. What did that mean?
And yet, after the earliest images, Karril was always and ever male in Tarrant's presence when he was embodied at all. The Iezu shaped himself to the desires of the people he was with. What did that mean? Tarrant desired women. All those women, a grotesque carpet, a sea, ravening, to drown in, each with the fragile, bitter delicacy of an ice-crystal, a shard of coldfire, piercing and freezing both, so very afraid.
And what do you know, Vryce, of the mindset of the vulnerable, with your warrior build and honed reflexes, height and strength and scars to witness to the hazards you've overcome? He gave you the key that night, deep in the caves at the very epicenter of change.
(It came to Damien that one of the earliest accomplishments that had brought young Gerald Tarrant to the attention of Gannon had to be the design and construction of the plumbing and sewage system that still served Jagonath. That fastidious desire - no, call it by its right name, need - for cleanliness had deep roots.)
Flicker-flash images: a face he knew to be Gannon's, beautiful in its way as Tarrant's own, smiling, frowning, flushed with desire, lax with drink. A vessel of Fire so bright as to eclipse the Core, and before it, glittering, the King creating the NeoCount Merentha,, silver flashing white on gold. A be-ringed hand, fingers tangling in his hair, warm breath at his ear; that same hand white-knucked, crumpling a sheaf of close-written pages, sending an ink-dish flying, ink spattering like blood, staining a white and flame-worked surplice. Fragments, impressions, a jumble of reflections, spinning, collecting into an unbearable glare.
When Damien struggled out of that maelstrom it was to meet Karril's clever, knowing eyes. His wide and knowing grin.
"Stop fighting it, Priest. You like learning. You even like sex. You will need this. Trust me!"
And for the long hours of waiting, the last fraught days in the city, Damien dreamed desire, intimacy, ecstasy. Dreams he never remembered with clarity but woke him wet and sated, even while his mind worried ceaselessly at the problem of Calesta and the coming of the end of the too-short month.
Karril was having a joke on him. But even knowing that Damien found himself appreciating unexpected things, and he allowed it in himself. What could it hurt, that he saw more beauty in the world, found the taste of air a pleasure to his senses?
And Tarrant. Contradiction in form and flesh. Personal damnation and public salvation. Appearance as armor and words and will more potent weapons than the Worked steel that could level the city if he so choose. The Hunter who preyed on women, the scholar who sought the challenge of wit and would lose himself in the intricacies of Earth's arcane, Erna's whims. The man who dared the Nameless and still reached for stars. A riddle. A compulsion. Damien's despair.
One night on the difficult road to Shaitan, Damien could no longer avoid the knot rubbing at his thinking. He played the conversation in his mind, knowing he would not speak it aloud. "They were all women, the ones you ... hunted. All that delicate, elegant beauty dissolved into terror, to feed your hunger. And the way you hunted them they remained beautiful, even in extremis. At your mercy, which you offered just often enough for it to engender hope. In your power, powerless themselves. But never men. Not even elegant, delicate, fragile and beautiful men. Why?
The hard bark of the copperwood pressed against his palms, life singing, surging. Hardness held him, filled him, gripped and squeezed and thrust, a ravishment of life, of sensation. Teeth on his neck. Fingers tight on his prick, a hand hot on his breast, over his heart. Warmth on his back. Power and heat and pleasure driving into him, need and fire and closeness and the aching glory of being stretched wide, filled to the brim, his secret places exposed and touched and the building swelling winding higher tighter stars and explosions and then he was shuddering, shattering, flying apart in absolute ecstasy. Coming back together. Held. Filled. Feeling the pulse within and the pleasure of the other's completion. Grounded in soft slickness still moving within him, against him, weight on his back, breath on his neck, brow and cheek and palms pressed to the tree, to life.
Because that would be too close to the truth, wouldn't it?
*** *** ***
And then the world changed. It had taken Damien a year to realize that more than the working of a legend, a mind and will and spirit of such capacity for darkness that one could only call it evil, the Sacrifice Tarrant had accomplished was the work of both the Prophet and the Hunter. That the Hunter was the obverse of the coin whose face was the Prophet, and the whole spent for the same end: the shaping of Erna to the need of humanity.
Without him, Prophet and Hunter, Priest and Scientist, they might still be huddling in wretched squalor, more animal than Human. (Damien remembered the memory-dream, the hot breath that stank no less than a rage-wraith's, the gloating laughter that had sounded precisely like Calesta's.) Without Gerald Tarrant, they would most certainly still be waging a losing war with the fae.
On a purely personal level, without Tarrant, Damien Kilcannon Vryce, sometime Priest of the One Church and Knight of the Flame felt rudderless, adrift, purposeless. Stripped of his calling, he still felt the call, the rightness of the work the Church did -- the comforting hand of the Minister, the blessing of the Reverend, the guidance of the Holy, priests all. But too long proximity to the Prophet's paradox had withered once-blithe confidence in the infallibility of the church as a body, however worthy the individual ordinand, how right the ideals. The church that had condemned all efforts to work with the fae as heresy, and those born Adept as abomination. Heresy and abomination had a face, a face not so different from his own. He should have had more time.... We should have had more time.
So, when that unexpected shot rang in his ear on Black Ridge Pass, and he watched a slender, elegant figure walk away from him, neat black braid and all, Damien was not really surprised that his mixed feelings were mostly positive.
He was surprised, after having understood the terms under which the man who was not Tarrant, and most emphatically not the Hunter, maintained a continuing life, to find a neat black head bent over a notebook in the parlor of the Black Ridge Inn, long fingers wielding a stylus with slow grace. Left handed.
Damien pulled out the other chair at the small table and sat, rather abruptly. "Making notes?" Why are you still here? You had to know I was staying at this inn.
Dark eyes fringed with ridiculously long lashes glanced up at him and a hint of smile quirked the unfamiliar mouth in an all too familiar way. "There is a great deal to learn here. This is an interstice. One of the few places where there is still"-- He paused, one hand moving in an elegant, spare gesture -- "flux." He looked back down to the notebook, and Damien could see an unexpected uncertainty, a vulnerability, in the still and beautiful face.
"Flux?" Damien asked gently. This was important. Suddenly he was back in the river, supporting the Patriarch, mingled blood dying the water, sealing the sacrifice. This had the same sense of being a pivot-point, if on a smaller, more personal scale. And Shaitan was up-current. Perhaps, oh perhaps....
"The new pattern is set, but not yet, entirely, fixed. There are places, times, people that fall between the old and new, chaos and order." His voice became very soft, "Light and dark." He swallowed. "This is one of them. You. And I. We have ..." There was a pause, and Damien could not think of a time when Tarrant had needed to struggle so for the words he wanted. Finally the other man half-sighed and went on. "Wiggle-room. A little. Choices we can make, while things are still, just, malleable. A window of opportunity, if you will."
Damien sat back in the chair. "I see." He did see, somewhat. They had been in the center of things, the agents of change as much or more than the changed. This was the epicenter, the eye, where the very earth had been remade by forces too great for simple results. As it took metal time to cool and harden, and could be shaped by hammer and will while hot, perhaps those closest to the change-fire were still warm enough to move within the matrix, iron not too long from the forge. "I do see. Yes. A few hammer-taps left."
A genuine smile crinkled the corners of his eyes. "Precisely, yes." He took a deep breath and his eyes were deep, distant. "Those who were Adepts can still See. I" -- another pause -- "can still See."
A light tap, setting the metal for the true strike. Damien waited. A whisper from the past echoed --
"To See the present clearly and thoroughly enough to extrapolate the future."
Laying claim to that.
"Adepts tend, tended, to be solitary, isolated, alone even in the midst of crowds. The Hunter was ... very much alone. Too alone, and for too long." The dark eyes seemed to see nothing present, gazing out over the distant railing, and the expression tightening the lines of the young face was hauntingly familiar. Damien's heart twisted. "I would choose otherwise. Tarrant commanded. I, in this, cannot." Now those eyes looked no further than Damien's, a bright, black, immediate look, "I can only ask." Soft, but very clear. "Damien Kilcannon Vryce, will you walk with me, in this new world?"
The double hammer blow, quick and hard and sure, rang silently in the air. Damien's breath caught. A question older than Revival courtesy; reaching all the way back to the tales of the Landing, and Ship-manners. His tongue found words to respond, heart beating hard. "Who is it who asks this of me?"
"I, Ioseth Vale, would walk with you, Damien Vryce, finding a path together beneath this sun, that neither might face the starless dark alone."
Ioseth Vale. Named. A new name with nothing of what had been; even the stresses and sounds different. Another strike, the metal cooled to red from white. But even black, iron bent, burned the careless hand.
Now the fathomless eyes flickered closed, and Ioseth's face was tense with strain, mouth folded tight, as against pain. Waiting for the answer. Terrified of what that answer might be.
For a long, long moment, Damien considered. He was free to answer as he willed. No compulsion urged his choice, no thought of Church or law or stricture. His choice. The voice of his heart, his will, his desire. And he did desire it. This man, the will, the wit, the intelligence unchanged, but so much new, or if not new, undiscovered, unexplored. A true second chance. To be part of that, not a reversal, but a partnership. His hand reached out, touching the others, feather-light. He could feel the faint tremors shaking through Ioseth.
"Yes."
*** *** ***
Damien knew what Ioseth had asked of him. To walk, body to body, flesh to flesh, into the new day they had made between them. To join and make a connection between them like in significance, but utterly unlike in means and intent to the one that had bound two other men, in a different world. They had both agreed. The ineffable sense of rightness lingered, despite Damien's misgivings.
Damien tried to order his thoughts as they separated to bathe and dress, agreeing to meet in Damien's room in the Inn. Whatever else he was, Ioseth's body was virgin, and Damien himself had never been inclined to men. That didn't seem relevant, here, now, because neither were precisely inexperienced, or unacquainted with their own -- or the other's -- responses. The old channel had seen to that. Dreams and portents. And Karril.
Somehow, the Iezu whose aspect was pleasure had known. Known Tarrant's need those long years ago. Known Damien's ignorance, the possibility of Ioseth and the potential confluence of those strands. Known, and because he had also known friendship and love, had grown in more than understanding by those connections deeper than any merely fae-born could know, Karril had made sure that Damien was prepared for this eventuality. Just in case. What could it hurt? Besides it was fun.
Damien chuckled ruefully. So. Time to put those dreams to good use. Whatever the distance down the road they went tonight, they had chosen it together. And he was going to revel in getting that finicky, fastidious, reluctant to be touched man properly acquainted with the wonderful messiness that was making love.
Because, oh god, it was love.
For the Eagle so loved the world that caused there to be God, perfect in form, perfect in love, perfect in knowledge of the rightness that was the world and the place of humanity within it, however far from perfection the present moment might be.
But for light to shine, there must be darkness, and this world requires sacrifice, even unto the last drop of heart's blood and the uttermost desolation of spirit. And the Light must Know the Darkness, and the Darkness, Light, that there be Life, set inviolate between them. And the obverse of Life is Death, as the obverse of Light is Darkness, in perfect balance neither good nor evil. It is apathy, entropy, ignorance and waste that are the true evil; cruelty without reason and the abnegation of responsibility. This world responds to us. How then, shall we respond to the world?
With faith. With hope. And most of all, with love.
For a moment, Damien was overcome with feeling. Grief and elation, desolation and hope, rage and love. In the maelstrom of emotion there was a clear space, candlelit, lapped flames became wings, became the serene balance of linked rings, and in that timeless place he knew to the core of himself what it was they strove for. Not life. Love.
It would seem that he was still a priest, in the most important way. As Tarrant had never ceased being one. As Andrys and the Patriarch, Jenseny and Narilka, even Ioseth were. The ache he had borne these long months finally eased. Love. God.
Damien shook himself. Love then. Love in action. Love in responsibility. He could do that.
He bathed with care, and made up the bed with fresh sheets. (The inn did not yet offer maid service. The beer-taps had taken precedence.) He set out the flask of good oil he used for his kit, not thinking too hard about the use it would be put to. He filled the lamp and lit it as the sun dipped below the shoulder of the mountain and the core filled the sky with silver light.
When Ioseth Vale tapped at the door, Damien was as ready as he could be.
*** *** ***
Layers and layers of clothing, gently, reverently stripped and put aside, until the whole person was laid bare, open to Damien's eyes and hands. Golden skin sculpted over long, fine bones, deceptively muscled; dusky nipples peaked and stiffened under the brush of his hands. Dark lashes shadowed sharp cheekbones beneath drawn brows, and the broad chest rose and fell with short, uneven breaths. A thicket of dark curls cradling an organ of generous proportion, half-hard, slowly thickening under his gaze. Allowing himself to be vulnerable, naked, responsive to Damien's touch.
Beautiful. Growing only more beautiful as arousal flushed his cheeks and heat suffused his groin.
Gently, reverently, Damien traced patterns on Ioseth's exposed skin, mapping lines of energy and desire. The tense lips opened and thighs parted as Damien's hand found and cupped heavy testicles. His head fell back and Damien set his mouth on the long arch of his neck, tonguing the Adams-apple and the veins that pulsed there, drawing a shudder and a moan from the man beneath him. So responsive, so sensitive. Grounded in the moment, and Damien knew, wanting this, needing it, writing every sensation, every touch, deeply into this flesh, letting Damien shape this layer of who he now was. Pleasure, not pain. Sensation, not dominance. Acceptance, not violation. Liquid warmth painted Damien's wrist as he slid his hand up and down the silk and steel of Ioseth's cock, and his own twitched and jumped in response.
Equals. Give and take.
Damien's hand moved down Ioseth's shaft as his mouth moved down his chest. His fingers caressed the tightening balls and burrowed behind them, touching, petting, seeking between the trembling thighs. Warmth and slickness met his fingertips as he reached his goal.
Sure of yourself, were you? Damien thought with surprising affection.
Hope, only seemed to answer him, then splintered as he eased one thick finger into yielding softness and took the weeping head of Ioseth's cock into his mouth. A bitter-strange taste, but not unpleasant, and his tongue explored the smooth curves and ridges so alike and so different from the ones his hands knew.
Ioseth was gasping and his muscles clenched, drawing Damien deeper in. No words now informed the needy sounds he was making. Sounds Damien had never thought to hear or even imagine, that fired through him, setting every nerve alight. His own cock was burning iron, aching for the sheath, and his ass pulsed to the beat of his need. Yes, even that he realized dazedly, and caught himself on the edge of coming at the thought. Not now. Now was Ioseth's.
Oiled fingers touched him, smoothed back the last fold of his foreskin, curled around the base of his shaft. Another hand tugged at his nape, drew his mouth away from its suckling to meet insistent lips. A fumbling moment to position himself, laughing into the other's mouth, and he was sinking into fire. Ioseth's rigid cock was in his hand, Ioseth's fingers twined with his, setting the pace, as their tongues dueled and they stole each other's breath.
How could he have thought the other would be a passive lover?
Buried deep, Damien's hips pounding against Ioseth's heavy thighs, thrusting into that tight, sweet channel, freely offered, freely given. Then Ioseth was crying out, shuddering and jerking against him. The shaft in their hands was pulsing, spilling white seed over joined fingers. There were gold-green sparkles in his eyes, and the abandoned strength of Ioseth's orgasm brought him to his own release.
They lay together in the disarrayed linen, still joined, as the green shadows faded. Harsh gasps eased as their pulses slowed. Damien basked in the afterglow, relishing the delicate touch of Ioseth's lips at cheek and brow. His own hand traced the line of the other's collarbones over and over, and it was only when Ioseth's breath began to go ragged again under him that he rolled them to their sides. He felt Ioseth arch and shudder against him as he slipped free. Long legs tangled with his, pressing their groins wantonly together, slick and sticky and right. The sharp angle of cheek in the hollow of his shoulder, the soft weight of hair across his breast, the arm about his waist anchored him.
"It can't be this easy," Damien heard himself say in the warm, safe darkness, redolent of lust and musk and love.
Breath feathered against his skin. "Yes. It can."
And in that place, that moment, it was.
*** *** *** *** ***