by Cari Z.
The beetle was soon joined by others—first more blue ones and then a smattering of red and turquoise—and Jason wanted to weep with relief. It wasn’t a fluke; he really was close. He would be home in his den and back with Ferran soon, he knew it, he had to be….
The beetles walked on, and Jason walked among them, a paper tiger in their midst. He stopped feeling the pain in his lungs, his throat, his eyes, and his damn ribs; all he could think about was how near he was to success. How glad he was to be alive.
The ground suddenly went from soft to crunchy beneath his feet. Sharp edges cut into the soles of his shoes and Jason stumbled and then fell to one knee. His hands hit the ground and landed on something smooth but piecemeal, like broken pieces of pottery or a shattered shell. Shell….
He tried to move, but not fast enough. He heard a sound like a flag unfurling in a strong breeze followed by a snap, and a second later, Jason was in the air, rising slowly as he writhed against the sharp, dagger-like petals of a scissor mouth. The plant had a hold on his lower back and hips, and the pressure it exerted was immense. Pointed petals sliced through his skin, and all he could do was scream, even though his throat was already killing him.
He rose jerkily, the plant straining to handle his weight. The ground beneath him vanished in the haze of his tears, but gradually, he stopped rising. The scissor mouth wrestled with him, turning him so he was almost in an upright position; but in the end, gravity won, and the plant’s jaws suddenly released.
Jason hit the pile of beetle remains. His legs went out from under him, and from the sound of it, one of them must have broken upon impact. But that no longer mattered. He was perforated—far more so than during his duel. He was bleeding out from dozens of wounds. He couldn’t move, he couldn’t breathe, and now he was going to die, so close to making it back. After all he’d fought through, it seemed inconceivable.
He had expected his mind to go dark, but instead, everything went white. His hearing was fuzzy… everything was fuzzy. But it was a warm feeling, and it clung to him, almost cradling him. He let himself go into that sweet comfort, obscurely glad that at the end, his subconscious had taken pity on him and given him a final moment of tranquility.
At last, the world faded to a welcome black.
JASON WOKE up. One second, there was nothing, no dreams or slow dawning of comprehension. The next, he was conscious of breathing again.
At first, he didn’t understand what was happening to him. Waking up—that wasn’t something he could do. It wasn’t something he should be able to do, not after he was already dead. There was just the final sleep, followed by nothingness, not wakefulness. Yet here he was, opening his eyes, and there was a ceiling above him. It was mottled and gray, and he felt dry and clean and whole. Healthy. He inhaled deeply, experimentally. No pain. His eyelids rose and fell smoothly, with nothing blocking their path.
Jason lifted one tingling hand and ran it down his chest. No broken ribs, no puncture wounds, no bruises, no contusions… nothing but smooth skin beneath a paper-thin robe. He tried to move his other hand, but found that he couldn’t. Turning his head and marveling at how easy it was, he saw Ferran lying next to him. Such a surge of joy went through him that his breath caught in his throat.
Ferran looked thin and utterly exhausted, but his quills were lax with contentment. He was sleeping soundly, with none of the tossing and murmuring that Jason had come to expect lately. His cheek was pressed to the point of Jason’s shoulder, and his arms were wrapped around one of Jason’s, but those were the only places the two of them touched.
It wasn’t enough. It was probably selfish, but Jason needed Ferran awake right now more than his husband needed to sleep.
Jason stretched out his good hand and scritched it slowly into the soft quills at the edge of Ferran’s temple. Ferran purred and moved unconsciously into the caress, still asleep. Jason stroked and stroked, loving the fact that he could do that right now, that Ferran wasn’t pulling away. He was warm, and Jason could feel the blood thrumming through the skin beneath his fingers and see it pulse in the pale violet veins barely visible in Ferran’s eyelids.
Moved by a sudden, consuming tenderness Jason had never quite experienced before, he rolled onto his side, cupped Ferran’s face, and pressed a gentle kiss to each of his eyelids. Jason felt it when Ferran woke up trembling, and as soon as he pulled back, his husband clasped him in a crushing embrace, pressing so hard Jason wound up flat on his back again. His mouth was fused to Ferran’s, he was breathing in the scent of him, and it felt so incredibly good that Jason almost passed out.
“Jasssoonnnn….” Ferran hissed his name against Jason’s mouth and his ear, hot and sweet and possessive. He kissed every inch of Jason’s face and stroked those places where Jason remembered being injured the worst. Ferran’s hands lingered on his chest before worming their way beneath Jason’s back, and Ferran never stopped kissing him.
“Ferran,” Jason breathed as soon as he was able. He cupped his lover’s face and held him a few inches away to look at him for a moment, taking in the reality that was his husband. “How did you find me?”
“I felt you,” Ferran said, and his tone was heavy with meaning that Jason didn’t immediately understand. “I felt you the whole time. I tried to find you, but you were too far away at first, and I couldn’t pinpoint you. Then, when you did get close enough for me to locate you, we went to get you, but by the time I got to you, you were almost gone.” His hands rubbed over Jason’s vanished wounds again, residually fretting over his injuries.
“I didn’t know you could feel me like that,” Jason said.
“I was not sure that I could either. It is one of the secrets of the rhezan, a side effect of the bonding that occurs between spouses. I was not sure we had managed to bond in that way, although I wanted it more than anything.” He paused for a moment, uncertain. “I thought that I might have felt something of the bond, during your duel. It was not… at all pleasant. Afterward, I convinced myself that I hadn’t, and I pulled away from you to try to ensure that I wouldn’t. Once you were in danger again, though, there was no doubt. I felt you.”
Ferran sighed deeply, his eyes flickering over every angle of Jason’s face, devouring him. “Everything here was chaos. I had to take temporary control of the House of Grenn. It was the first time the Council let a son handle such a responsibility—but, then, the Council itself is broken right now.”
“You know about Srell, then?” Jason was relieved when Ferran nodded. It was one less thing for him to have to explain.
“She and her allies made arrangements with the Shamed,” Ferran said somberly. “She wished to make it seem as though the Shamed had invaded the House of Howards and killed my mother and the ambassador. The Shamed would have been given food and medical assistance in return, quietly. I was late getting to your mother’s house, and by the time I arrived….” Ferran swallowed hard. “The attack had already occurred.”
“Are they dead?”
Jason was immeasurably relieved when Ferran shook his head no. “The Shamed took them back to their camp instead, to display them and hurt them and disgrace them. Srell loaned them shuttles to take them there. You were stolen in a shuttle of hers too.”
“I’m surprised they wanted to transport me all the way out there,” Jason confessed. “It would have been a lot easier just to kill me.”
Ferran’s lips drew away from his teeth for a moment, making him look surprisingly feral. “They are fortunate they did not, for then, I would have killed them.” The way he looked right now, Jason was convinced that his husband could have done it too. Ferran nestled in close to Jason again, straddling his body and clamping him tightly with his legs and arms.
Jason felt covered, almost smothered, by his husband, and he never wanted it to stop. He lay there and accepted the attention, the sweetness and love and pain and fear, and they just held each other for a long moment.
“I was on my way to the conference when Seronn called me,” Ferran c
ontinued after a while. “He told me what had happened to you. I had felt something, but the distance was great, and I thought you might have just been… angry with me.” His voice became tentative and unsure. Jason just held him closer. “I wanted to return to search for you, but then I felt something happen to my mother. By the time I arrived, she and the ambassador had been taken, along with your physician.”
“What about Grenn’s entourage?” Jason asked. “What about Penelope?”
“My mother’s guards are all dead. Penelope as well… but Jason—” Ferran lifted his head and stared down at him in wonder. “She was made like a machine! She had flesh mixed with mechanical pieces. I didn’t think humans could do that.”
“We can’t, not anymore,” Jason replied, surprised, but somehow not shocked. He had known something was wrong with Penelope. “Androids are illegal to own except under very special circumstances.”
“There were many dead Shamed there as well, so many. My mother told me that Penelope killed most of them. She was a mighty fighter.”
Manufactured to be a bodyguard. There was a lot more Jason wanted to know about Penelope, but it could wait on more important things. “Grenn is alive, then?”
“We found her, and Ambassador Howards and Dori, after we followed the course in the navigation unit you brought to us. They were the only ones taken in the end, although I think had the fight gone easier for the Shamed, they would have done more.” He stroked his smooth palm across Jason’s forehead like it meant approval for performing so well, and Jason leaned into the touch. “Our mothers were injured, but not so badly as you. Grenn is ruling her house again already, and Dori was well enough to see to you once he was brought back. The ambassador… was not so fortunate. Her hands had been removed.”
“Fuck,” Jason muttered heartfeltedly.
“Dori fitted her with prosthetics. Her new hands are almost done growing.”
Growing a new limb took close to a week with Regen. Moved by morbid curiosity, Jason looked up at Ferran and asked, “How long was I under?”
“Eight days,” his husband replied, too quietly. “You went for one day without Regen while the remaining Council members sent forces to subdue the Shamed and bring back our mothers. Our doctors did their best to treat you. Then Dori took over, but you were very… It was very close.” His hands moved unconsciously over Jason’s body, petting and stroking him, fingers clenching gently around an arm every now and then. “But I knew you would survive. I knew you would not leave me. I have faith in you.” He leaned in and kissed Jason again, his mouth hot and wet and desiring. “I trust you.” He kissed him again. “I need you.” A final kiss, bruisingly intense. Jason felt his husband’s quills sharpen and relax against his hands, but he didn’t get cut this time. “I love you.”
“I’m yours,” Jason told him. “Forever.” That made Ferran smile, but it didn’t stop his roving hands, or the intensity with which he looked at Jason—like Jason was something that might vanish out from under him.
“Jason,” Ferran whispered, “let me have you.”
Oh, yes. He didn’t care that they were in someone else’s den. He didn’t care that he hadn’t seen Giselle yet, talked to Dori, argued with Grenn, or done any of the hundred things that probably needed doing now that he was awake. His husband wanted him, the awkward distance between them was finally gone, and Jason’s cock was so hard at the thought of finally being filled with Ferran that he thought he might come before either of them was ready for it. He didn’t say anything, just pulled Ferran tighter into the vee of his legs and kissed him, hot and heavy and desperate.
Jason’s entire body resonated with Ferran’s guttural purr, and his mouth was consumed with the touch and taste of his husband. They ground against each other, and there was nothing refined or delicate about the way their hips moved. Ferran was aggressive, using his greater strength to hold Jason still against the bed as he rutted against him.
Jason shuddered with the force of the sensations wracking his newly refurbished body. Everything felt so new. Jason had gone deep into a Regen coma once before, and he remembered the aftereffects. His body felt fresh and invigorated, like everything had been overhauled or remade. His brain sparked with the rapid influx of hormones, and after a few minutes, Jason knew he had to come or he’d die, the pleasure swelling too quickly for him to push it down and make himself wait.
“Ferran….” he moaned, but his husband’s hands were already ripping his thin robe apart, and Ferran reached down and grabbed Jason hard, working him roughly. His balls twitched and tightened, and with a blazing rush of pure ecstasy, coupled with so much tension and heat that his abdomen ached, he came all over Ferran’s hand and his own body. He gasped, shoving himself hard up against his lover, milking every quiver of sensation out of his orgasm.
Jason tried to open his eyes, but the world was spinning, and it was easier just to relax into the aftershocks. Ferran was still moving against him, relentless in his own quest for pleasure, and Jason wanted to give it to him. He let his legs fall farther apart and drew his knees back, opening himself in blatant invitation to his husband. He felt Ferran’s nimble fingers dance across his stomach and gather up the slickness that coated him, and then one of those fingers pressed inside of him, followed a moment later by a second.
It hurt a little. Jason couldn’t remember the last time being penetrated had felt like this, so new, those two slender fingers seemingly huge inside of his tight channel. Maybe it was the Regen, or maybe it was just the fact that he hadn’t been fucked in over a month, but the burn of it almost felt rejuvenating. He forced himself to take a deep breath and then relaxed back into the languor that was still washing over him, the wonderful aftereffects of his own orgasm. The burn lessened and pleasure took over again, and then Ferran hitched Jason’s legs up high around his hips and pushed his way inside of him, so big that he seemed to fill Jason’s whole body.
“Jason.” It was the only intelligible word in a flurry of gasps and growls as Ferran thrust into him, hard and deep, his hands clenching so hard on Jason’s hips that Jason knew his brand-new skin would have bruises on it the next day.
The thought felt surprisingly good, actually—more of a turn-on than Jason had expected. He spread his arms wide on the narrow bed and just took it, all of it, harsh grinding thrusts and savage murmurs, every push making his aching cock twitch in response. It shouldn’t have been possible for him to recover so quickly, but apparently the combination of Regen and a hard, possessive fuck made coming again so soon an option. He wrapped his legs higher around Ferran, changing the angle, and as soon as Ferran struck that spot inside him, Jason moaned, quiet and desperate for more.
Ferran leaned down until they were chest to chest, forcing Jason’s legs wider as he shoved his hands beneath his husband’s shoulders, grasping them from behind. Ferran’s mouth fell against his throat, his lips moving constantly over Jason’s sweaty skin as he continued to thrust: short, sharp jabs of his cock inside of Jason, hitting that spot over and over again. Jason felt like he was going to explode. He would; he had to, there was no way he could contain all of this insane energy. It had never been like this, he had never been like this before, claimed with such abandon and responding just as ardently. He felt the slick, sticky drag of their stomachs against each other. His cock hardened further, and as a soft, muffling veil began to settle over his mind, he knew he wasn’t going to last.
He wanted to, though, he wanted to last long enough to come with Ferran this time. He knew his lover was close, so close, purring and groaning and holding him so tight, fucking into him and against him, totally lost. Jason took a deep breath and held it and prayed that Ferran would come now, because as soon as he exhaled, he knew he would have to let everything go. Stars swam across his vision. He closed his eyes, but they were still there, and each one was about to go nova.
Ferran’s grip suddenly tightened, his nails digging furrows into Jason’s shoulders as he pulled himself impossibly far into Jason’s body
. His hips flexed helplessly, and the strangled sounds drawn from his throat as he came sounded tortured. Jason felt the bloom of heat inside of him and the press of hot, quivering flesh against his cock and, with a gusty sigh of relief, exhaled.
The stars exploded and Jason’s vision went white, and his hearing dimmed, like his ears were stuffed with cotton. He barely even felt himself come again, he was so lost in everything else. It was ecstasy; it was life and death; it was a perfect consummation of this choice, this relationship, this love. It was Ferran, with him and in him and for him, first and forever, and Jason knew that was exactly what he needed.
For a second, he wished that he could feel things the way his husband could, so he could know the ins and outs of what Ferran was experiencing at that moment—at every moment. He never would—he was no psychic—but it was enough that his husband got to experience it.
Gradually, Ferran slumped down against him, his body melting into a heap of loose limbs and a trembling core. Jason let his legs fall to the bed, but he wrapped his arms around Ferran instead and just held him there. They both spent a while basking in the afterglow, waiting for their breathing to even out and their heart rates to come back to something resembling their usual.
When Jason opened his eyes again, he could see normally and his hearing was clear. He sighed contentedly. “We have to do this again.”
Ferran chuckled weakly against his neck. “I agree.” He kissed the hollow of Jason’s throat and then pulled out. Jason bit his lip against the not-entirely comfortable sensation, but a moment later Ferran was purring and kissing him, petting his back and shoulders, and folding him into his embrace. It made Jason forget all about the sting. They lay together awhile longer, not speaking and not needing to. Jason could have lain there all day, but then a knock sounded on the door.