Page 65

He takes a moment to look. The long clean line of Indrie's back narrowing to his waist. The swell of his ass. The bruises standing out dark on his arms and his ribs. The knobs of his spine, every one of them showing because he is so slight, and Eskil wants his mouth on each of them in order, so he does that.

He starts at the back of Indrie's neck, where the hair is cut short now, and presses his face into it and breathes. Indrie smells of the soap from the bath and, under that, of himself, the warm familiar smell Eskil wakes up with his face in every morning. He goes down Indrie's spine one kiss at a time, open-mouthed, teeth scraping. When he gets to the big dark bruise low on Indrie's left side, the worst of them all, he puts his mouth over it and holds there, and Indrie's breath stutters under him.

He keeps going. The dimples at the base of Indrie's spine. The curve of his ass. Eskil's hands slide down and grip and spread him, thumbs digging into the cleft, and Indrie gasps and turns his face into the pillow.

He is pink there. Tight. Clean from the bath, his hole clenching when the air hits it, and Eskil makes a noise that is not civilized in the slightest.

"Eskil," Indrie breathes. "Please."

Eskil leans in and drags his tongue over it.

Indrie jolts. A raw, startled cry goes into the pillow, and his whole body tries to come up off the bed, and Eskil's hands on his ass hold him open and hold him down and he does it again, slower, flattening his tongue and licking a long wet stripe from his balls all the way up over his hole. Indrie makes a sound with no shape in it. Eskil does it again. And again. He gets his mouth on him properly, sucking at the rim, working the tip of his tongue against the tight little muscle until it starts to give, and Indrie is making noises he has never made, high and broken, his hips twitching back against Eskil's face like he cannot help it.

"Fuck," Eskil says against him, the word going into him. "I've been dreaming about this. Thinking about getting my tongue in you."

He spits on him, watches it run down, and follows it with his mouth. He fucks him with his tongue, shallow, wet, his beard scraping the insides of Indrie's thighs, and Indrie's cock is rubbing against the sheets, a dark wet spot spreading under him. Eskil can feel him working around nothing, trying to pull his tongue deeper, and he growls and gives it to him, spreading him wider, eating him like he is starving, which he is.

"Eskil— Eskil, I can't— it's too⁠—"

It is not too much. Eskil knows what too much looks like on this man and this is not it. This is Indrie coming apart because he is embarrassed by how much he wants it, which is Eskil's favorite thing in the world. He keeps going until Indrie is sobbing into the pillow, until his hole is wet and spit-slick and twitching, until Indrie's voice cracks on a please that has no words left in it.

The oil is on the bedside table where he left it. Nobody has touched a thing in this room in three days, and he is stupidly glad of it. He pours some over his fingers and rubs it warm and slides his hand down between Indrie's thighs, over the spit-wet mess of him.

The first touch of an oiled finger drags a gasp out of Indrie that Eskil feels in his own spine. He circles, slow, letting the oil warm on his skin and the pressure build, watching him go slick and shiny, and Indrie's fingers curl into the sheets and his hips push back a little, seeking. Eskil presses one finger into him.

Indrie lets out a long, careful breath and makes himself go loose. Eskil gives him all the time he wants. He works him open with one hand and runs the other up and down the back of Indrie's thigh, and he keeps talking, because now that he has started he does not seem to be able to stop.

"That's it," Eskil says. "Taking my finger like you were made for it. You're perfect. Your hole's so fucking pretty, Indrie. Pink and tight and all mine."

Indrie makes a strangled sound into the pillow.

He adds a second finger and crooks them, and Indrie's entire body jolts. A sound comes out of him that the pillow does nothing to muffle, and his back arches and his hands twist up in the sheets. Eskil knows that angle and exactly what it does, and he does it again, rubbing firm over that swollen spot inside him, and Indrie cries out, and Eskil has to grit his teeth, because he is so hard it hurts and every sound out of that mouth is making it worse. Precome is dripping off him onto the sheets in a thin string.

He scissors his fingers, stretching him, watching his hole cling and go shiny around the knuckles. "Fuck. You're sucking me in. You want it that bad, sweetheart? You want my cock that bad after three days?"

"Yes," Indrie gasps, wrecked. "Yes, I want you, please⁠—"

Eskil adds a third and makes himself go slow, which is the hardest thing he has done all week. He is always slow about this. Indrie is small and Eskil is not, and the first time was on a ship in the middle of the sea with a poisoned fruit burning him alive from the inside and neither of them knowing what they were doing. Eskil swore to himself afterward that he would never once hurt this man. Every time, he has opened him slowly and watched every twitch and listened to every breath and waited until Indrie was gasping and loose and begging before he so much as thought about more.

Indrie is begging now. He is rocking back onto Eskil's fingers in movements he cannot seem to stop, his face turned sideways on the pillow, his mouth open and wet, a string of spit connecting his lip to the linen. His hole is stretched around three of Eskil's thick fingers, shiny with oil, tightening every time Eskil drags over that spot.

"Eskil. Please. I need you in me. Please."

Eskil takes his fingers out and Indrie whimpers at the loss, his hole fluttering open, glistening, empty. Eskil slicks himself and hisses at his own hand, because he has been hard for about a hundred years and the head of his cock is dark and leaking and so sensitive that the oil almost undoes him. He puts one hand on Indrie's hip and guides himself with the other, dragging himself up and down over Indrie's hole, smearing oil and spit, watching it catch and slip.

He presses in.

The head catches. Indrie sucks in a sharp breath and Eskil goes completely still.

"Breathe," Eskil says. His hand moves to the small of Indrie's back and stays there. "Breathe for me. You're doing so good. That's it. Open up. Let me in."

Indrie breathes. Eskil feels him give by degrees, that tight ring of muscle stretching around the head of his cock, and he pushes forward an inch at a time, and the tight wet heat of him is so much that the edges of Eskil's vision go white. His fingers dig into Indrie's hip. He sets his teeth and breathes and waits, watching himself sink into him, watching Indrie's hole stretch obscenely around the thickest part of him.

Eskil sinks in the rest of the way and stops.

He is buried to the root, pressed right up against him, his balls flush to Indrie's ass, and Indrie is fluttering around him in involuntary pulses while his body adjusts, and every one of them goes straight up Eskil's spine. He holds there. He lets Indrie breathe. He tries to breathe himself, which turns out to be much harder than it has any right to be. He can feel his own heartbeat in his cock, throbbing inside that tight heat.

Indrie's hand comes back and finds the hand on his hip, and their fingers lace together against the bruised skin.