by Joey W. Hill
Uthe’s fingers slid across the Fae’s thigh and around, finding Keldwyn’s buttock. It was tight as the iron the Fae preferred to avoid. His own cock was in a similar state, and every muscle was drawn and straining in anticipation. Desire was a sharp pain in his lower belly.
He took in more of Keldwyn’s shaft, tasting the length of it. Now his hand was back alongside his testicles, petting the trim hair over the pubic mound, teasing the tight silken curls over the balls. Keldwyn had arrived at a Council meeting once with a fine down of a beard, like a man who’d not shaved in several days. When Lyssa had remarked upon it, Keldwyn said the Fae did not have to shave. They could choose to have facial hair or not, altering their appearance in various ways, like the tattoo that was on his face today, which might not be there tomorrow. The beard had defined his jaw even more, the short stubble on the upper lip drawing attention to the shape and firmness of his mouth.
Uthe slid down to the root, relishing Kel’s indrawn breath as he took him deep into the tight clasp of his throat and wrapped his lips firmly around his base. He’d remembered how to relax his gag reflex and the Fae reaped the benefits. Keldwyn’s hand flexed on his head, fingers pressing into Uthe’s scalp. He ran his tongue along that pounding vein, the folds of flesh over his balls. A high Fae’s sex organs had no apparent differences from human or vampire. Uthe wasn’t surprised, since the way the male acted around him said sex worked in a similar way for them.
For the most part.
As Keldwyn trailed his fingers from his nape over his shoulders, under the collar of his shirt, Uthe jumped at the crackle of electricity teasing his flesh.
“Don’t stop. Your mouth is skilled in far more than vampire politics.” Keldwyn continued to draw that electric path along his skin, down his shirt collar, along the side of his working throat. A vampire’s throat was sensitive to any type of touch, and so the feral sound Uthe made was almost involuntary. Keldwyn dug in his nails, which suddenly felt longer, sharper. As he descended to Uthe’s nipple, that touch of electricity came again. Uthe shuddered at the feel of it.
“You should see what happens when I wrap this stimulation around your cock, Lord Uthe.”
Uthe held onto that image and everything Keldwyn was giving him. Maybe the Fae Lord thought he’d resist this and had added the extra stimulus to help him get lost in it. That wasn’t the problem for Uthe.
Keldwyn had been a temptation within touching distance for far too long. The difficulty for Uthe was not revealing how good this felt, how much the Fae was making him want even more. He should have put effort into being inept at this to frustrate Keldwyn. Since it had been so long for him, a lack of skill wouldn’t necessarily be artifice. But that kind of calculation didn’t honor the oath he’d taken. Keldwyn understood how seriously Uthe took a promise. However, oath or not, Uthe knew he was using it as an excuse to follow his own desires, tasting, sucking and stroking the other male with enthusiasm. Whether or not any skill was involved, the Fae Lord was responding to his fervor with some of his own, shoving into Uthe’s mouth. It made Uthe’s lips stretch in a primal grin around the male’s cock.
That electrical sensation from Keldwyn’s fingertips turned into a thrumming vibration, a surge of energy that wrapped Uthe up in a cocoon and made everything about giving and feeling pleasure. Keldwyn came, flooding his mouth with a release that tasted of honey, sunshine and smooth stone. Uthe’s fingers curled into the Fae’s quivering thigh, his other hand coiled around his cock and exploring the twitching testicles, the appealing softness of the skin covering the firm roundness of what lay beneath.
Keldwyn drew a deep breath. “Well done, my lord. Very well done.”
He hadn’t expected or required the praise. Though he expected his pride to be abraded by the whole situation, Uthe felt an odd peace at completing the task, doing it well. The only thing that wasn’t peaceful was his own libido. He was painfully rigid, and Mariela was no longer his servant, to attend to him. Any second mark serving in a Council capacity could be called upon for that kind of service, but Uthe found the idea of exposing himself like that unappealing for reasons he didn’t care to examine. He’d simply meditate himself back to a less aroused state once Keldwyn took his leave.
“Stay on your knees.” Keldwyn bade him sit on his heels as he laced the leggings, covering himself. Uthe could tell him that serving his sexual desires was all he’d agreed to do. Sitting at his feet like a pet was not part of the requirements, but before he could make that justifiable argument, Keldwyn dropped to a squat before him and placed his palm on Uthe’s chest. “Stand on your knees, Lord Uthe.”
As he did, Keldwyn went to one knee, shifting closer. “Your hand on my shoulder. You will need the balance.”
Uthe wasn’t sure of his intent, but he complied. Keldwyn slid his hand down Uthe’s front, deftly opened his jeans and pushed beneath his underwear, wrapping his fingers like snug vines around his cock. Then he began to stroke.
Uthe’s grip convulsed on his shoulder and Keldwyn put his other hand around his waist, drawing him closer. “You may lean if you wish,” he murmured, his hair brushing Uthe’s cheek, his jaw. “You are beautifully formed, my lord. Not that I expected any differently. I like you in the jeans. Wear those more often. You too often hide your assets in the smooth lines of your slacks and loose trousers."
For his part, Keldwyn could have given hand jobs for a living. Uthe didn’t often fall into the crudity of soldier talk anymore, even in his mind, but the alternative was letting himself react to the Fae Lord caring for his needs in such a decisive way, no asking for permission. When was the last time someone had touched him without permission? Uthe’s breath caught in his throat as Keldwyn worked him.
I am in a box of steel. Suffocating. You put me there, and yet you are the one suffocating in your life for me. He will free you, and then I will be free.
The intrusion of that sibilant voice should have jarred him, knocked him out of the spiral of want building in his lower belly. But he was used to its interruptions, and the wants of his body were too strong. He ignored it. He kept pushing into Keldwyn’s touch. Plus, if the voice was trying to make Uthe repel Keldwyn, it was a good reason to embrace the opposite course. Unless the serpent voice could predict that. His mind was whirling, his body tensing…
Somehow his hand was on Keldwyn’s shoulder, then around it, fingers digging into the Fae Lord’s back. He was leaning fully into Keldwyn’s body. Uthe was not a massive male, though he was built strong and wide enough, but Keldwyn held him easily. He was speaking to him, a crooning language like music. When he tilted his head, Uthe’s face was against the fall of dark hair, the gold ribbons and braids. He could sense the artery in Keldwyn’s throat, pounding just beyond his reach. Since sexual release would bring forth his fangs, he turned his head away, pressing his jaw against the point of Keldwyn’s shoulder.
Keldwyn adjusted without disrupting him. As his cock jumped in the Fae’s sure grip, Uthe felt the press of cloth and knew the Fae had covered him with the tail of Uthe’s shirt, containing the spray of seed that overflowed, thick and heated. Keldwyn’s other hand dropped, slid into the back of Uthe’s loosened jeans to squeeze his flexing buttocks, urging him on, increasing the intensity of the climax. When it was over, Keldwyn caressed those globes of pale flesh, then found his way up under Uthe’s shirt to explore his back, hold him. He was holding him while Uthe was in his arms, leaning against him.
It wasn’t sex. It was intimacy, succoring, something far too hazardous to him. Up until Mariela’s peculiar request to stroke his head and hum to him, he’d rarely accepted such a thing from someone offering it sincerely, with no hidden motives. Which meant he couldn’t afford it from a mysterious Fae whose intentions were entirely suspect.
He had a high regard for Keldwyn’s intelligence, his abilities as a liaison. He enjoyed the intellectual challenge of him on a day-to-day basis, both in Council meetings and in their discussions and leisure strategy games. However, when it came to t
he personal, to friendship, a Fae was a Fae. They explained themselves to no one, and their motives could be detailed and pre-meditated, or capricious and whim-based. He’d seen all those things in Keldwyn.
He was attracted to Keldwyn, but who wouldn’t be? Being alluring was part of his power, same as it was for vampires. Too many of the old stories suggested a Fae would extend something that looked shiny and appealing, but turned out to be an illusion, the quest for it destroying a person’s whole world. A day in a Fae world could mean the loss of an entire lifetime in the person’s actual one.
Fairy tales could exaggerate, but in the case of the Fae, the perils might well be understated. There was a reason the Fae and vampires had been enemies.
There was a wrongness to his thinking. Uthe knew he was denying his feelings for the male, and that denial could be fueled by his fear of making the wrong steps and jeopardizing the task he had to finish. It didn’t make Uthe’s musings untrue, however. It took him longer than it should have to draw out of the other male’s embrace. But he did. That was all that mattered. He felt the Fae’s gaze on him as he got to his feet, tucking himself back in and refastening his jeans. Stripping off the shirt, he took it to the bell elevator. Once a day, it was drawn up to the main floor, the clothes washed by the servants and then reappearing on the platform clean, ironed and hung on a rack.
"How long have you known you have Ennui, my lord?" Keldwyn asked.
He was in the process of pulling the elevator door back in place. His grip on the cable slipped and the door dropped onto his other hand with a bruising thud. Biting back an oath, he pulled it free.
"Good thing no other dangling appendages were close to that."
It might have been better if one had been, for an aching dick might have lessened some of Keldwyn's effect on him. Though Uthe doubted it. He moved to the kitchenette and ran his hand under a soothing rush of water from the sink faucet. The edge of the bell elevator door had cut into the flesh, but it would heal quickly, gone in minutes, unlike the truth that had just been thrown out into the open between them. He watched the few drops of blood mingle with the swirl of water against the silver sink and disappear down the drain.
He kept his back to the Fae, turning over his words, trying to determine how best to handle them. Uthe had made the mistake he hadn’t made in decades. He’d started spending his free hours with one person rather than keeping himself isolated, secluded, mysterious. To make it worse, the person with whom he’d been keeping company was his mirror image. Both of them skilled advisors, valued for their ability to notice the smallest details. To know every piece on the chess board as thoroughly as possible.
Had his judgment declined so much? He didn’t like to think so, but the alternative was a big leap. Despite his concerns about Fae motives in general, his intuition had led him to one specific Fae whom he might be able to trust enough to let down his guard.
The struggle to find the right answers had turned him into a plank, the tension in his shoulders spreading to his whole body. He’d mastered a poker face long ago, yet there was no way to turn the current moment back to his advantage. On the surface, all he’d done was give oral sex to the Fae Lord. Beneath the surface, far more had happened. He’d left himself too open and had no defense that would be effective.
It didn’t matter. He didn’t want to discuss it, and there was nothing in their relationship that required it. Not yet.
When Keldwyn shifted, his footsteps indicating he was coming closer, Uthe stiffened further. “Please do not approach me right now,” he said.
“I would respect that, except your words do not match what I feel from you. Or for you.” The Fae’s fingertips whispered down Uthe’s back. His nerve endings followed the touch like wheat bending to a calming breeze. When Keldwyn reached the waistband of his jeans, he hooked his fingers there, giving the fabric a tug that Uthe felt against his taut abdomen. The Fae kept his hand there, lightly stroking his lower back, the rise of his ass just below the denim. “I will not betray your trust in this.”
“You compelling me to serve you sexually wasn’t a betrayal?”
“A Fae does not offer assistance freely. An exchange must occur for balance. Sex is something we want from each other, but you would not accept that without compulsion. So it seemed the most reasonable price to put on my assistance, a benefit to us both.”
Keldwyn’s other hand slid down Uthe’s arm, to the hand that he’d caught in the door. He exerted gentle pressure on the bruised area behind the knuckles, and Uthe realized he was ensuring Uthe hadn’t broken anything. It wouldn’t have mattered if he had. His bones could heal, in a way his mind no longer could. He shoved down the thought viciously.
“You have told me many times a Fae does not lie. I don’t disagree with that, but you are excessively clever in how you say things, and what you don’t say. This binding you impose is more than balance.”
“Yes. It may be. But it is the best truth for now.”
“Why?” Uthe turned then, faced him, making Keldwyn remove his touch. “Why can I trust you, my lord?”
That wasn’t the real question. Behind it were far darker things. Do you realize, if I do trust you, how far that trust might have to go? Over the past year, as he’d become sure of what was creeping upon him, he’d vacillated endlessly between denial and desperation, praying and struggling to understand the divine purpose to this. He would have removed himself from the Council the moment he was sure his judgments were becoming unsound, but until the past few days, extra careful diligence and review of all his decisions and advice had assured him that time had not yet come. Now the missive on the postcard had come, at the same time it was clear the disease was starting to accelerate. It meant he had to leave his Council post, as well as address the one task that remained undone. He might have called that divine timing, but the hastening of the Ennui conflicted with that reassurance. He could only proceed, though, and hope he wasn’t too late to do what he’d been charged to do.
That was duty, responsibility, his honor to his oath. Difficult but expected. Yet in the vulnerable and desolate dawn hour, or at the unguarded moment at twilight’s first waking, the personal side of it often took him unaware and swamped him. He’d relied on his own judgment for over a thousand years, trusting only himself, and now…
He’d read all of Lord Brian’s reports thoroughly. Ennui had a variety of symptoms. The milder form of it resulted in disorientation, loss of memory and self-control, a slow decomposition of the mind. Then there was the violent side of it. A total loss of impulse control, coupled to rage and overblown blood lust, manifesting in forms of sadism that even vampires would find horrifying. Each vampire experienced Ennui uniquely, some on the milder end of the spectrum, some on the bloodier side. But it all boiled down to loss of control.
All these centuries, he’d prayed as if he’d given up his will and destiny to the Lord. Yet every day, and in every prayer, it was a choice, and that choice meant everything. Losing that choice, having it taken away, there was nothing that could prepare him for that. Every time he saw evidence of the Ennui’s advancement, he had to fight down the sense of panic clawing at his throat. He’d faced every type of danger imaginable without flinching, and this made him want to curl in his bed, pull his blankets over his head and cower like a child. Which enraged him, but he couldn’t afford to let that rage take over. Control of baser emotions like anger, bloodlust and pride had been the core of the Rule, and he’d used those years of self-discipline to serve him well this past year. He would stake himself before he’d let that darker end of the disease have him.
When he focused on his duty, he could hold the despair at bay. But with Keldwyn offering the illusion of a safety net—for Uthe couldn’t trust that it was more than a mirage in the desert—that desperate feeling threatened to take him over. He couldn’t even reach for prayer right now. The only thing within reach seemed to be the male standing before him.
Keldwyn had remained silent. Or had he? No. Don’t do
that to yourself. He was not so advanced in the disease that he’d forgotten something someone said to him only a minute ago. If he was at that point, he would have excused himself from Council responsibilities months ago.
“Why can I trust you, my lord?” Uthe repeated. “I require an answer.” He needed it, actually, and he needed it to be the right answer.
Keldwyn reclaimed Uthe’s injured hand, inspected and then brushed his mouth over it. Uthe curled his fingers into a fist, fighting the feelings the oddly gentle gesture caused. “My lord, I am going to punch you in the face.”
Keldwyn’s lips quirked, but then his expression sobered and he met Uthe’s gaze with dark eyes that held fires capable of warmth or burning. “Because you are bound to me by oath now, Lord Uthe. That means not only that I am responsible for your actions in the Fae world, but you are under my protection.”
Releasing Uthe’s hand, he moved back to the guest chair and dropped into it, one leg stretched out and one bent, his hand resting on a chair arm and his opposite shoulder hooked over the chair back. The casual pose, so like the one he took during their debates or chess matches, gave the moment a needed sense of normalcy. Uthe fished for another shirt in his closet, but Keldwyn shook his head. “Leave it off. I like the look of you this way.”
Uthe paused. “Does this binding command me beyond my sexual service to you, my lord?”
“No. But it is up to me to determine what falls under that category, does it not?” Keldwyn swept him with an appraising look, unsettling Uthe. Ridiculous, really, but when was the last time he’d given any thought to how a lover looked at his body? He kept himself fit as most vampires did, ready to fight. His musculature was lean and layered versus bulky and thick, but he had a solid, large bone structure that provided a decently broad chest and shoulders. He saw Keldwyn eyeing and unmistakably enjoying all of that. It irritated him, which drove back less manageable feelings. He wondered if that was Keldwyn’s intent, or if it was just a useful side effect.