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Cassian’s fingertips fluttered over the domed surface of the head in a light, exploratory touch that had Ruari’s fists twisting in the sheets. He swiped his thumb through the bead of precome leaking from the slit, smeared it in a circle, then pushed the shaft flat to Ruari’s stomach and released it.

It bounced back up, slapping hard into his abdomen, and Cassian grinned in delighted mischief.

He did it again. Pressed it down, held it, and let go, only to watch it spring up to attention again.

Ruari sat still and let him play. His jaw ached from clenching, but he didn’t guide Cassian’s movements or speed him up.

Cassian was learning the shape of him, satisfying his own curiosity, so fuck it. If it showed him that things could be different from what he’d been taught by the Family of Light, then he could have a go at Ruari’s body at whatever pace he chose.

Cassian moved beneath him and nudged Ruari’s cock downward until the head pressed into the slick heat of his hole.

Cassian pushed his hips forward an inch, and his rim began to yield around the crown before Cassian’s teeth sank into his bottom lip and his body locked. He pulled away, his breathing climbing fast and shallow, his fingers still around the base of Ruari’s shaft but no longer steering it anywhere.

Ruari kept still. Cassian’s grip loosened, his thumb tracing a distracted half-circle along the thick vein running through the underside of Ruari’s cock.

“Come here.” Ruari pushed himself back against the headboard, hauling Cassian with him, rearranging them so that Cassian’s back was against his chest and he was sitting between Ruari’s thighs. Cassian melted into him.

“Ruari, I can have sex. Charles had it with me a lot.”

“I know you can. And we will,” Ruari said. “Not tonight, though. We’re going to find our own way to do things together.”

His cock was so hard it ached, and every shift of the omega’s weight wound the heat in his gut another turn tighter. He could have fucked Cassian through this mattress and into the bakery kitchen below, and his body was screaming at him to do exactly that.

He took hold of Cassian’s cock instead.

Cassian’s hips stuttered forward into Ruari’s fist, and his head tipped onto Ruari’s shoulder, baring his throat. Every alpha instinct Ruari had told him to sink his teeth into the soft skin beneath Cassian’s jaw and bite down until he tasted blood and solidified their bond. He set his lips there instead, breathing in hard through his nose.

“Good?” Ruari asked.

Cassian nodded in a jerky movement that knocked his skull into Ruari’s jaw. His hips had found a rhythm now, rocking into Ruari’s grip with short thrusts that pushed his arse onto Ruari’s cock on every downstroke, which was both wonderful and absolutely fucking torturous.

Ruari tightened his grip. Cassian’s back arched off his chest, and the sound he made, a high, startled gasp that broke apart halfway through, was the best thing Ruari had ever heard in his life, and he’d once had forty thousand people at Villa Park chanting his name.

Cassian came with his face turned into Ruari’s neck. Ruari stroked him through until the last tremor had worked its way out of his body. His come was warm across Ruari’s knuckles, and the sweet, heady scent of omega slick had soaked into every surface of Ruari’s bedroom.

The omega’s breathing had slowed. His limbs had gone loose, leaving behind a warm, sticky puddle of Cassian that Ruari could not have shifted without more effort than he was willing to spend just then.

Ruari’s cock was still painfully hard, notched along the small of Cassian’s back. He moved his hips, dragging the underside of his shaft through the slick pooling in the cleft of Cassian’s arse.

“This okay?” he managed, his lips pressed to the top of Cassian’s head.

Cassian let out a fuzzy hrm that vibrated through Ruari’s ribcage. He patted Ruari’s thigh twice in drowsy permission.

Ruari let his cock slide through the beautiful mess that Cassian had made of his arse. Slick streamed out, and the heat of it sliding over his length felt obscenely good.

Cassian hummed. His hips rolled to meet Ruari’s on the next stroke, a lazy counter-rhythm. Ruari gathered him tighter, one arm across Cassian’s chest and a hand on his hip to hold him steady while Ruari rocked up onto him.

He wasn’t going to last. The whole evening had been an exercise in restraint that would have killed a lesser man, and the slick friction of Cassian’s skin on his cock was finishing him off with embarrassing quickness. His breath came ragged in Cassian’s hair, his hips losing their rhythm.

He came with his mouth open against Cassian’s shoulder, his cock pulsing between them, painting Cassian’s lower back in hot, thick stripes. He curled tight around Cassian, pulling him close while the last of his orgasm shuddered through him.

“That was good sex, Ruari,” Cassian mumbled. “We’re going to have lots of it.”

Ruari was sticky from chest to thigh. His sheets were ruined. There was slick in places slick had no business being, including, somehow, his elbow. He needed to get up, find tissues, and deal with the situation before it cemented them both to the bedding.

Then Cassian burrowed deeper into the crook of his arm and sighed, so Ruari didn’t move.

Chapter Thirteen