Captivated (The Verge Book 2)

by A. C. Thomas

  He captured Theo’s eyes and held them as he pulled at the knotted handkerchief with his teeth, then yanked it off his hand and balled it up. Hauling back like he intended to throw it down, he shoved it into his coat pocket instead.

  Theo was relieved to see that his hand had already started to heal nicely and resolved to locate some regeneration fluid before they took off. There had to be a med kit somewhere aboard the ship, tucked in amongst the maze of metal crates.

  Jun stepped forward, crowding Theo against the wall as he struggled out of his coat. Succeeding, he threw it onto the emergency seat so hard that the slap of leather made the metal ring.

  “I saw what you were doing,” he snarled, continuing to push Theo back with the sheer force of his displeasure without ever lifting a hand to touch him.

  Theo only halted his retreat because the press of steel at his back prevented further movement. He lifted his chin defiantly. “Did you? You saw the shocking way I ordered a drink at a bar and used every available resource to help you achieve your goals? How keenly observant of you.”

  Jun’s upper lip lifted in a sneer that really ought not to have done anything for Theo’s libido but undeniably did.

  Several things, actually.

  “What was your plan? Get down on your knees for some filthy Verge rat so he could help you escape?”

  Theo scoffed. Beginning to feel overheated, he pulled his neck cloth loose and let it slither to the floor. “Don’t be ridiculous. If that had been my plan, I’d have done a much better job of it. I certainly wouldn’t be here with you if I had wanted to go home with someone else.”

  It was never getting someone to take him home that had been Theo’s problem. It was getting them to let him stay until morning.

  Jun’s voice dipped deeper, and he bared his teeth. “You were flirting with him.”

  Theo licked his lips, fighting nerves as he squared his shoulders against the bulkhead. “Yes, I was, with excellent results. Well spotted; your powers of perception never cease to amaze. You really ought to consider applying to the Enforcer Academy Department of Intelligence. I understand they could use a man of your skills.”

  Jun’s answering growl hit Theo right between his legs in a throbbing ache that had him pressing his knees together until they were shaking. “I do find that one catches more flies with honey”—a breathy tone ran through his voice that he was helpless to prevent—“than with threats of violence. Perhaps you should try it yourself, sometime?”

  Jun didn’t appear to be listening, his brow furrowing slightly as he stared at Theo’s mouth like it had done something to offend him. He shook his head minutely as he said, quiet and rough in equal measures, “Try what?”

  Theo shifted, daring a hand at his trouser front to adjust himself, then blushing hard as Jun followed the movement. His own voice came out as a whisper, bridging the short distance between his lips and Jun’s ears.

  “Honey.”

  It was possible Theo had imagined the brush of Jun’s hand against his thigh, barely enough pressure to be felt but so hot he feared singe marks on the velvet.

  Then again, it was possible he hadn’t imagined it at all.

  Theo reached out and hooked his fingers behind Jun’s belt buckle so he could tug his hips closer.

  Jun’s hand slapped flat against the metal wall beside his head, his lips parted over a harsh exhalation, more breath than sound. His throat bobbed inches from Theo’s nose, geometric lines undulating with the movement.

  Theo yanked the belt from the buckle, opening it with a snap of leather that sent Jun into action.

  Jun worked open the buttons of Theo’s trousers, then knocked Theo’s fumbling fingers away to unfasten his own trousers. Theo would have paid closer attention to the reveal if not for the glorious slide of Jun’s hand down his aching cock.

  He dropped his chin to his chest, gasping at the image of tattooed fingers working his flesh, then let out an embarrassing sound at the sight of Jun’s cock. Thick and dark and even better than his highly imaginative dreams.

  Theo’s hand looked small and pale in comparison. It must have felt good, though, judging by the punched-out grunt Jun made at the first stroke.

  Theo wanted to take his time exploring—exploring the heft and texture of him—but Jun set a pace that would end things sooner rather than later. Nerves sang as lightning arced from Jun’s fingers to Theo’s cock, and he bowed his back, throwing his head against the wall.

  Jun let go when the air between them grew thick with Theo’s desperate cries. Watching him with dark eyes, he spat into his palm and increased his pace, thrusting into Theo’s grip with a low sound rumbling in his throat.

  Theo pushed into Jun’s frantic rhythm with his hips, reaching up for a kiss only to be pressed back against the wall with a firm hand against the junction of his collarbones.

  Jun kept him there as his other hand worked steadily, and Theo made every effort to match him with his own blurring fist.

  Jun’s gaze pinned him to the wall as firmly as his palm, dark and beautiful and fierce with wanting. Theo keened as Jun leaned down to rest their foreheads together, his breath hot on Theo’s cheek.

  Theo dropped his mouth open. Jun’s eyes darted down to Theo’s lips, and then he squeezed them shut with a bitten off moan as Theo added a flick to the end of his wrist on every stroke.

  Theo licked his lips fitfully, accidentally drawing the edge of his tongue along the length of Jun’s red-bitten lower lip. At the contact, Jun’s breath hitched in his throat, and his cock jerked in Theo’s fist. His heavy lids shot open, sending a vicious glare that only pushed Theo closer to the edge.

  He returned Jun’s glare even as he repeated the motion, blatantly licking into Jun’s mouth this time. Jun retaliated by turning his head with a sharp bite to Theo’s neck, sending him flying over the edge in hot pulses over his fist.

  Jun let go with a final squeeze, his messy hand covering Theo’s as they worked to finish him together, their wet fingers tangling into a filthy knot. He opened his mouth over Theo’s throat, teeth pressed to the thin skin there as he panted and groaned through his orgasm, adding to the mess of their hands.

  Theo slumped back against the wall; their harsh breaths echoed through the cabin as they stared at each other, flushed and, for once, speechless.

  Jun couldn’t look away from Theo’s lips, his mouth still hanging open as he caught his breath. Something flickered across his face that sent shivers down Theo’s spine as he leaned over him, nudged a thumb between his lips, and hooked behind his teeth insistently with a low grunt.

  “Lick it off,” Jun said in a tone of command as natural as breathing.

  He watched closely, broad chest heaving and jaw tight, as Theo cleaned his thumb with little kitten licks.

  Theo finished with a nip to his thumb pad, breath hitching as Jun swayed closer. He brushed their cheeks together, then pushed away, rucking up his shirt to wipe his hands along the hem.

  Theo struggled to roll his tongue back into his mouth at the sight of black ink climbing up the hard ridges of his abdomen like vines on a brick wall.

  He endeavored to pretend he had not been ogling him as Jun grabbed his wrist and cleaned his hand on his shirt with all of his attention focused narrowly on his task.

  Theo let out a nervous giggle as Jun spread his fingers to get every inch of him clean. “Well. That was certainly something, wasn’t it? I don’t know about you, but I could go for more of that. Preferably three times a day, at regular intervals. Possibly four, provided we make an effort to maintain proper hydration.”

  Jun’s lips tilted up into his almost-smile before a scowl settled back into place. He stepped away and glared at the wall over Theo’s head as he fastened his trousers in quick, angry movements. “It was a mistake. This can’t happen again.”

  Despite his youth, Theo had found himself in similar situations more times than he would care to count, swept up into a passionate embrace only to have his partner pull away an
d express his regret just as Theo was imagining cuddles by the fire.

  There was something about Theo that made men think of him as little more than a bad decision, immediately regretted and forgotten about at the first opportunity.

  It was just as crushing to hear now as it had been when he was seventeen. “Oh. I see.”

  He examined the shiny toes of his spats as he buttoned his trousers, letting his hair swing in front of his face like a curtain. There was a small drop marring the toe of his left shoe that would require some attention in the very near future. Best to focus on that, for the moment.

  It wouldn’t do to dwell on anything else.

  Jun’s breath had finally evened out, the cabin now quiet enough that there was nowhere to hide Theo’s discreet sniff as he attempted to force back the pressing weight of rejection.

  A tentative brush of rough fingers across his forehead only increased the pressure as Jun carefully tucked his hair behind his ears. Theo refused to lift his face, painfully aware that he went all red and blotchy when he was holding back tears.

  It was not exactly his best light in which to be seen.

  Jun’s boots shuffled against the floor grate as he moved closer and then immediately away in an awkward dance of indecision. “It’s not you.”

  That brought Theo’s chin up because, though he had heard his classmates complain of the “it’s not you, it’s me” speech, he had never actually received it. Likely because it was usually him, after all. Theo was the only common denominator in dozens of failed affairs. He knew it, and so did his partners.

  Most often, he had been the recipient of the “I can’t continue on with you because you’re entirely too much…you” speech. Which was fair, if extremely hurtful. No one was more familiar with how difficult it was to remain close to Theo than Theo himself. Except perhaps his unfortunate twin, poor thing.

  Jun’s face was set with determination as he crossed and uncrossed his arms in the next step of his dance. His loaded holster swung with the movement, and the damp hem of his shirt hung out of his pants like a flag of surrender. Theo indulged in a burst of pride over how very undone he appeared after such a brief encounter.

  “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have—” Jun broke off with a low groan, gripping the top of his hair and twisting as he looked away and then back down into Theo’s eyes. “I’ll do better. This won’t happen again.”

  Something in his face told Theo that, as much as Jun might want to believe everything he was saying, he wasn’t any more convinced than Theo was.

  They had broken something open against that wall, and it wasn’t going to be a simple matter of slamming it closed again.

  It was too late for that; it was out in the air between them, sizzling and sharp. Snapping electric in every shared breath.

  Jun watched him like a trapped animal as Theo reached up to push a fall of silky black hair away from Jun’s sweat-slick forehead, letting it run through his fingers in a moment of indulgence.

  “Of course. Whatever you say, Captain.”

  Chapter Eight

  “Do you have much confidence in the dinghy’s ability to cross the Verge?” Theo asked as he surveyed the busted dash with a healthy amount of skepticism. “I’ll admit, upon first viewing the vessel, I had my doubts of how spaceworthy it may be. Now that I have truly experienced the interior construction, however, I am entirely sure that it is not. Spaceworthy, that is. Something of a ramshackle death trap, more like. Probably best suited to completing the collection of a museum of mistakes in aeronautical engineering.”

  Jun didn’t lift his head from his view screen as he entered the new coordinates, mouth set in a hard line of concentration. “I did it before.”

  Theo hid a small smile at the curt response. He had expected to continue his one-sided conversation all the way to the barrier of the Verge. It was a pleasant surprise to be acknowledged. He tried to rein in his delight, aiming for casual instead of jumping at the first real interaction Jun had allowed since they entered the cockpit. “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  Jun huffed, sitting back in his chair as rapid-fire flight projections scrolled across his screen. He rubbed one hand over his head, his shoulders tense. The reflection from his screen emphasized the shadows clinging to the hollows of his face. “‘Confidence’ isn’t the right word. It’s going to work because I have to make it work.”

  Theo swiveled his chair back and forth with his toes on the floor. He played idly with the excess strap of his harness, letting it run through his fingers until he reached the frayed end, looping it around his palm, then releasing it to start all over again. “Well, you certainly do not suffer from a lack of determination; I’ll grant you that. Perhaps you ought to add it to the lovely bit of calligraphy adorning your knuckles. Honor, Valor, and Determination. I say ‘determination’ because single-minded pigheadedness wouldn’t fit in any language I know of.”

  Jun’s head whipped around, his eyes comically wide. The tattooed knuckles in question gripped his armrests as he pressed forward into his harness, and then he jerked to a stop as if he’d forgotten it was there. “You can read Hangul?”

  Theo couldn’t determine whether to be insulted by Jun’s obvious surprise. He decided that, ultimately, if he were to take offense every time a man underestimated him, he would spend his entire life in an unsustainable state of pique. Instead, he tilted his head to the side and pulled out a lock of hair from behind his ear. He began to braid it absently with a shrug. “Well, yes. Of course I can. Why? Can’t you? I did assume you could, based on the amount of personal real estate you have allotted to it.”

  Jun’s lips dropped into a frown, the rest of his face quickly following suit. “Yes. I can.”

  Theo considered for a moment, reading the tension in Jun’s shoulders and the sharp question in his eyes that might have been hope if it weren’t so ruthlessly stifled.

  “Do you speak Korean?” Theo asked, voice lilting musically with the switch in languages.

  Jun flinched, his face flickering from shock to joy to suspicion so quickly that Theo got emotional whiplash just from watching it. Jun leaned in as closely as his harness would allow, straps cutting into the solid wall of his chest as he flung out his words like an accusation.

  “Why do you know it?”

  Theo shifted in his seat as Jun’s voice dipped even lower with the switch, hitting Theo somewhere deep below his navel. There was something about heirloom languages that made every word hit the ear like poetry, unlike the sterile, pragmatic flat tone of Standard.

  “I’m a linguist. I collect languages, especially heirlooms. Thirty-one, so far.” He switched back to Standard, hoping to erase some of the suspicion from Jun’s face. “I’m a hyperpolyglot.”

  The blank-faced rapid blinking was a fairly common, if somewhat disappointing, response to Theo’s revelation. “You’re a what?”

  Theo bit back a sigh, more than accustomed to providing an explanation at this point. Accustomed, and entirely bored with it. “It means I’m multilingual. I understand, speak, read, and write in multiple languages. It’s my only talent, I’m afraid. I’ve never been particularly good for anything else.”

  He wanted to add a cheeky “outside the bedroom,” but Jun didn’t seem receptive to bawdy humor, much less any reference to their previous encounter. He seemed to be making every effort to forget that it had ever happened, in fact.

  Theo stomped down on a tiny twinge of hurt over it.

  Jun nodded, his brow pinched thoughtfully together. “Makes sense.”

  Theo’s chest clenched painfully at Jun’s ready agreement that he wasn’t good for much at all. As true as it was, it always hurt to have it so directly confirmed.

  Though remaining aloof was not among his limited talents by any stretch of the imagination, Theo hoped to keep his tone light. He was afraid that an edge of the sharp band around his chest might creep in. “Why do you say that?”

  Jun’s smile was quick, there and gone in a fla
sh. It left Theo with the impression he’d been stabbed through the heart with something beautiful and rare, yet he was too awed by the sight of it to mind the pain. “You talk too much for one language,” Jun said.

  His tone was teasing instead of disdainful. Just the slightest dash of fondness softening the insult. The combination of that and his toweringly rare smile left Theo reeling.

  Jun’s face was back to the usual mask of careful blankness and vague irritation, as though the smile had never been. But Theo knew the truth.

  The moment was burned into his memory. He would do anything to see it again. Theo was capable of doing many, many things.

  He drew breath to speak, only to choke it back, shocked when Jun started first, speaking without prompting.

  “I haven’t heard Korean spoken in a long time. Not since my parents—” Jun turned abruptly away to face the view screen. “Heirloom languages are rare out here. Everyone just speaks Standard, Patch, or Grunt.”

  Theo had heard of Patch and Grunt, usually spoken of in a derogatory manner in academic circles. They were the languages used by Outliers beyond the Verge. Raiders, in particular, were rumored to speak Grunt. Theo had always been fascinated by the possibility of learning more about them. Resources on both languages had been exceedingly scarce, even in the linguistics department.

  There was no such thing as an uncivilized language, in his opinion. Only fools let their own ignorance and prejudice sway their minds away from new experiences.

  Poetry existed in every language. As did expressions of love.

  And, really, what could be more civilized than that?

  Jun was still observing him cautiously, and Theo rushed to fill the silence. (Ari had always said that no silence was safe from Theo’s interference, and he had always been correct. If slightly condescending.) “Gaelic was my first heirloom. My mother was bilingual; it was her parents’ heirloom language. I only spoke Standard in school, of course. But I sought out other heirlooms, started collecting any I could find. On Britannia, it is still traditional to speak heirloom in the home and Standard in public areas. It was not especially hard to find a variety of languages to learn. Though my family did grow somewhat confounded when I began to speak them all at once.”