by Amber Jayne
Urna was glad for it. His other arm came around Rune and he held him, tugged him tighter. Their mouths continued to explore, hungrily, as though seeking nourishment from each other. Their hot breath fought the chilled air around them, even as saliva cooled beyond the edges of their lips. Urna felt the tingling flush of rising excitement moving over his flesh.
There they knelt, facing one another, bodies pressed together. The anticipatory furor incited Urna’s nerves. He felt himself hardening, cock still trapped within his trousers, making tensions and little discomfitures. But it was worth it to feel Rune rising in response, loins swelling. Soon, the two hardnesses were against each other, little movements of hips gently but firmly grinding the bulges one atop the other.
And still the kiss persisted, mouths slurping now, the taste of blood gone from Urna’s tongue. One of Rune’s hands moved up toward Urna’s hair, sliding underneath the silver, coming to the bare nape, clasping, pulling the other even deeper into the kiss, as if he meant to devour. Urna understood the impulse. He wanted every part of Rune. Wanted to consume and consummate.
A hasty hand, Urna’s, hurried and fumbled between them, at waist level. It tugged at catches, yanked at fabric. Busy, impatient movements. It was easier to free Rune from the loose garment, more difficult to undo the fastener on his own pants. He managed, though, and when Rune’s cock, under pressure and wanting this freedom, sprang into his hand, Urna grasped him. It broke the kiss, at last. Rune’s head fell back and his eyelids fluttered.
Urna shifted his hand, took himself as well into this grip, squeezing the two cocks as one. Rune lifted slightly on his knees, so that his balls pressed themselves onto Urna’s sac. With his thumb, Urna followed the line where their rigid shafts met. The ball of that thumb swirled first over his own crown, then, slick with his own pre-come, slipped over onto Rune’s, mingling the fluid with the oily droplets the Shadowflash was already drizzling as well.
Rune pulled open Urna’s coat to get a hand inside, wriggling it up beneath his shirt. Cool fingertips raked a way up his firm abdomen and Urna shivered deliciously. But Rune didn’t pause. He was obviously seeking the stiffened nipples. Reaching the first, Urna let out a sigh as the fingers, warming now, caught the bud of flesh. Rune held him between his thumb and a curled forefinger. He applied pressure. A sweet, slicing not-quite-pain turned Urna’s sigh into a sound that was a mixed growl and grunt.
When Rune moved to his other nipple, leaving the first throbbing, Urna gave both their cocks a cinching squeeze. It was a jolting sensation, not unwelcome. He kept it up, feeling Rune’s underside vein pulsing against him, until the other man groaned. Slackening the twice-full grip slightly, Urna started to slide his hand up and down their shafts. A mutual jerking. Rune liked it. He’d always liked it.
They’d been lovers a long time. So the memories, even those still half-submerged, told him. Their carnal history was lengthy. It ran nearly as deep as their friendship, he suspected. And maybe it wasn’t an accident. Maybe it was a component of deliberate bonding—
But he didn’t have all the facts he needed. Maybe he never would. And, anyway, now wasn’t the time.
With a double-loaded hand, he continued the squeezing and pumping. Rune was dragging at a sleeve of his coat, pulling it off his shoulder, making a vague squeal of frustration—without any knowing, Urna was sure, that as a child (at least in one partially restored memory), he had made similar sounds when an event didn’t advance at desired speed.
Urna released the paired cocks and flexed his shoulders, feeling a ripple of lean muscle, and feeling too those places on his body where bruises were no doubt already darkening. The discomfort wasn’t bad, though. Growing carnal heat was pushing out the pain.
His coat dropped. Rune grappled with his shirt even as Urna pulled at the other’s raiment, knowing how the outfit came apart to reveal the form beneath. How many times had he himself dressed in clothes just like these?
In a hurried moment both men were bare to the waist, with their cocks already loosed. Urna’s hands slid over Rune’s smooth skin, trailing over pronounced ribs here, grazing the aroused point of a nipple there. The Shadowflash quivered. Then he dropped back onto his ass, peeling the black leggings down his thighs, calves. Urna wrestled briefly with his own trousers, kicking off his boots. In a moment he’d flung aside the last of his clothing.
Rune still wore his boots. His body was pale and thin, and as lovely a sight as existed for Urna. He was rolled onto one hip, a hand bracing behind him. Black hair fell around dark-blue eyes that burned with need. Those eyes met Urna’s. The former Weapon’s breath had stalled in his lungs.
“I think,” Rune said, “that you had better fuck me.” It was suggestion. It was command and supplication. It was none of those. Rather, it was the articulated need blazing in those eyes.
The Shadowflash shifted, rolling over, onto his belly. His legs spread, toes pointing away from each other.
Urna went to him, bare soles padding on the gritty surface. They were alone up here. Nothing but the Black Ship overhead. Elyria’s ultimate mystery. To look up was to wonder. To gaze too long was to imagine that everything else was petty, unimportant, trivial.
He didn’t look up. He’d seen the fucking thing, plenty of times. And what was on this roof, here, before him—that was of the greatest importance.
Kneeling between the outspread legs, Urna laid his hands, trembling again, on the sweet, twinned mound that was Rune’s ass. Such a perfect shape. He squeezed the taut flesh, fingers barely indenting the muscled tissue. Tenderly he parted the halves, opening the secret valley, revealing the succulent pucker that awaited him.
A strange sense of ritual overtook him, half practical obligation, half fevered desire. Rune wanted him to fuck him. But there was the pragmatic matter of lubricating him for the penetration. Not a problem. Urna was eager to see to this.
On his knees, with fingers holding the hemispheres of Rune’s ass apart, Urna lowered his mouth, already woken by the thrill and heat of their prolonged kiss earlier. He set his lips fearlessly against the sweet hole. Again Rune quivered, one leg jerking in a single, sharp spasm.
Urna had at him with his tongue.
It was an intimate, delicious rimming. Urna eeled his way around the brim, then probed inside, sliding his tongue tip perhaps half an inch past the cinching pucker. As he worked, leaving the dampness of saliva behind, he felt too the hole’s slackening, a growing readiness. Rune’s ass was squirming beneath him. Urna licked and lapped, even trailing his tongue all the way up the vale, tasting masculine sweat, savoring it.
At last he lifted from this work. Coolness touched his wet chin. He crept forward. Rune didn’t rise onto his knees, nor did Urna want him to. The silver-haired male lay down atop his lover. His stiff, needy cock skimmed briefly in the moistened crevice of Rune’s ass. Urna, without even needing a hand to guide him, slotted his cock into the waiting, spit-slick hole.
Rune bucked beneath him again but made no effort to resist the entry. Urna sank himself deeper and deeper, feeling the warm, familiar clutching. Rune’s head was turned to one side, eyes squeezed shut. Urna set a kiss on his shoulder, reached up to brush dark strands of hair from his cheek.
His cock completed its penetrating when his balls pressed upon the globes of Rune’s ass. The ingress was intense, profound. He was sealed into Rune’s depths. The Shadowflash had opened himself.
A grin cut Urna’s face. He felt it stretch his lips and cheeks. With his bared teeth he nipped the flesh on the point of Rune’s shoulder. And he set about fucking the male.
Rune stayed flat on the ground and Urna worked atop him, plunging his cock into him at a slow but steady rhythm. Pleasure came with every downward lunge. Rune’s hole gripped him fiercely. The dark-haired man’s eyes opened and gazed off into the distance, glazed with bliss. There was no doubt he was enjoying this. Urna licked his earlobe, and it aroused a laugh. Lying flush upon him, Urna could feel the swelling and emptying of Rune’s lungs wit
h every quick breath he took. He imagined Rune could feel the hammering of his heart against his back.
Urna’s thrusts increased in speed and intensity. His hairless balls slapped the tight buttocks. He no longer felt the air’s chill. He was radiating heat.
Rune was making that squealing sound again, and shifting now. Urna moved with him, not uncoupling from where they’d joined. Together they rolled onto their respective left hips. Urna felt sweat on his chest, saw it glisten on Rune’s back.
He reached over the Shadowflash’s right hip to seize the swollen cock.
As he renewed his thrustings, Urna pumped that shaft. He matched their tempos. He stroked into Rune’s ass at the same speed at which he fisted his lover’s cock. It was beautiful, equitable. It raced them together toward some vast and unknowable orgasmic domain, where ecstasy ruled, and they two were the only subjects, a pair of princes, locked forever to one another, inescapably, a pact sealed with semen and blood. Souls fused into one mass for all time.
But at this moment there were just the base, frantic convulsions, and Urna was fine with that. Rune shuddered, crying out, and suddenly Urna’s fingers were slick with warmth. All through Urna’s slim body, hard muscles tightened. A great carnal energy, which had been building and focusing, now tore loose, chaotic, delirious. His cum spurted out of him, each jet a blissful wrench. It went on for an improbable amount of time, until the final feeble issue was done, and the afterglow swept in, drawing contentment and lethargy over both males.
After a time Urna lifted his spattered hand from Rune’s softening member. He brought it toward his mouth, seeing fingers strung with a glistening gray. But Rune caught the hand, drew it toward himself. He smeared the fingers over his own lips then let Urna have his taste. The cum was salty-sweet, bitter honey.
They still lay stomach to back. When Rune turned his head so to kiss Urna over his shoulder, Urna shifted to do so, and his cock, wilting by degrees, finally slipped from the grasping hole.
Semen-damp lips met. The kiss was tender, slow.
When Rune broke it, it was to plant a hand on the roof and sit up. Urna stayed reclined on his side, enjoying the quiet he felt within and without. They could be anywhere right now, the two of them—a grassy field, on a bed, lying on a beach. He smiled at that.
He heard the scrape of a boot heel, then remembered that Rune hadn’t removed his boots. Through eyes halfway lidded, he saw the Shadowflash reach down into one of those boots. Urna blinked, slowly. When his eyes were open again, Rune had a knife in his hand.
The stillness persisted. But the tenor had changed. Once again, the moment was rife with possible outcomes, some quite drastic.
Urna, the onetime Weapon and still possessed of his incredible—magically endowed?—abilities, remained unmoving, naked, helpless.
“I love you,” Rune said. Urna nearly broke his strange paralysis to reciprocate the words, but the Shadowflash hadn’t finished speaking, adding, “And I hate you.”
Shiplight glinted momentarily on the blade of the knife. Not a proper military implement. It looked to be nothing more than a kitchen utensil. But it would probably do the job. Rune moved toward him with it.
* * * * *
He didn’t know what to believe, where to plant his trust. But for that one word—that name—he might’ve dismissed everything. He might have carried out his self-assigned mission, which was to deal with the fugitive Weapon. Bring him back to the Citadel. Or kill him. Either end would have fulfilled the fundamental objective.
But Urna had called him Micah. And some great awful truth was unlocked by the name. A door opened. Well, not opened. Pushed ajar. A thin white crack shining into the darkness of the past.
Rune still felt the liquid warmth of Urna inside him as he reached toward the Weapon with the knife from his boot.
“A lock of that hair,” he said, seeing how still Urna’s face had gone. “I’ll take it back to the Citadel. To the Toplux. I’ll tell him how I tracked you, how I couldn’t rescue you from the Passengers that overwhelmed you and tore you to pieces. Luckily,” he gently took up the hank of silver hair that was already sticky with the blood from his forehead. “I was able to retrieve this.”
With a neat, careful slice, he took the lock off at its roots.
Wonder shone in Urna’s eyes. A tear—yet another tear—spilled down his cheek. He said, “Come with us.”
“No.”
“With the salvagers, they can hide us both, and we—”
“I know who you mean. And no. I’m returning to the Citadel. To bring this back.” He brandished the bloody tress, rather grotesque-looking now that it was severed from the Weapon’s head. “And because I have to go back. I’m still a Shadowflash, Urna.”
“You don’t have to be.”
“You don’t know that. You don’t speak for me.”
“Micah…”
Still the name had power, even after he’d had some time to absorb it. Rune knew he would be repeating the word to himself for a long time to come, in the night’s smallest hours. It would be his secret. None of the officers or trainers or doctors would ever hear it. Aphael Chav would never know the name.
He slid the knife back into his boot. He stood, seeing where his clothing was scattered, glancing at the set of wings. “I’ll fly you down to your…to your companions. Can you make it out of the Unsafe with them?”
Urna remained sitting. “Yeah. Can you get out?” He gave the wings a dubious look.
“Fuel’s low. But I can carry you to street level. And I can get myself back to the Safe. I probably won’t make it too far past the border, though. I’ll get transport from there. Don’t worry about me.”
“I do worry about you.” Urna finally rose to his feet. He palmed his cheek with a single, violent swipe. “Goddamn it, I wish you’d be reasonable.”
Rune let a wry smile touch his lips. “I am the reasonable one. Remember? I’m pragmatic. You’re the romantic.”
It got a returning smile from Urna, which sent an odd, cheering warmth through Rune’s breast. Urna seemed about to say something more then shook his head. For a moment, Rune studied the male’s lovely hairless body, the beauty of his form, and wondered if he would ever see it again in this lifetime.
“Get your clothes on, Laine,” Micah said. “I’ll take you down.”
Chapter Nineteen
The speck of movement drew her eyes reluctantly skyward. Of course, it wasn’t sky up there, and once again, Virge felt a fresh tendril of nausea curl through her gut at the sight of the Ship. How did anybody ever get used to it? But she thought maybe she knew already. You could adjust to anything. That was how people were—the strong ones, anyway. The survivors. She counted herself as one of the latter, considering everything she’d done to stay out of the clutches of the Guard and the Lux.
If she could survive this fucking haircut, she could handle anything.
So she squinted her eyes, gritted her teeth, and choked down the queasiness as she looked up. And there she saw the descending shape. Shapes. Two. Not a Passenger. Passengers, thankfully, didn’t fly.
Virge had slain quite a few of the ugly bastards since taking position on the armory’s rooftop. She’d picked them off one by one, lining up on her targets carefully, gently squeezing the trigger. On the street below, Pelkra and Hervo had continued to take down others with arrows and crossbow bolts.
Sometime during the past half hour or so, Virge had peeled Yola Skott’s prosthetic pieces from her chin and the bridge of her nose. She was Cawd Delfel no longer. First chance she got, she’d also get out of this damned Guard uniform. And after that? Would she stay with Bongo, with this illegal scavenger gang? Would she join the supposedly inevitable armed uprising against the Lux, for which these weapons were being acquired?
She didn’t know. Certainly she couldn’t go back to being a legitimate, authorized chemist. Maybe, though, her talents could be used elsewhere.
Thoughts for later.
The two figures were swee
ping downward. They were descending slowly, gracefully, coming down from the elevated realm of the ruined but still imposing towers. One wore a set of those military wings. He was carrying the second figure. Both were male. Their line of descent looked like it would land them on this very street.
Virge flexed her fingers on the pistol’s grip. Pelkra, from below, had signaled a minute or two ago that the operation was almost done. The others had nearly finished loading up the vehicles. If these two were here to stop them, though—
Then she saw the silver hair on the man being carried. He didn’t appear to be struggling with the other.
A grin bared Virge’s teeth. Urna. And Rune bearing him. It looked as though the thief was returning his plunder.
* * * * *
They had quickly enough worked out an efficient system. Gator moved the debris, and Arvra and Bongo carried out the long plastic crates full of guns.
Arvra felt the quivery strain in her arms and at the sockets of her shoulders, but she voiced no complaint. Neither did the blond mage. They’d borne container after container, loading them into the vehicles waiting outside, filling their holds systematically.
The inside of the police armory was a mess. Parts of the second level had collapsed down onto the ground floor. At first glance it had looked hopeless. Arvra had bitten down on a castigating aside to Bongo, whose map had led them here. Gator, however, had merely strode past them, kicking aside chunks of plaster, reaching down and heaving broken beams out of his way. He pointed to the flattened remains of an interior wall. Beyond it, crates were stacked.
Arvra had hurried to them, read the fading stencils on their sides. D-17 RIOT RIFLES (10) & MUNITIONS (10,000 ROUNDS). She recited this message, and Bongo gave a celebratory whoop that echoed eerily in the moldering, cavernous interior of the building. “Let’s have a look first,” she said, and they struggled with the catches on one of the containers. Opening it, they saw the weapons, all laid out neatly.
“Lucky that upper level fell,” Gator pointed out, indicating the wall that had collapsed. Metal reinforced it, though it hadn’t stood up to the immense weight that had fallen on top of it. Time had burgled this armory for them.