PART III | Chapter XXIII
3:23 | Kiss The Rain
Anger.
That was what Baisyl had been feeling—
ought to be feeling—and yet, sometime between catching Kedean’s eyes lingering too long on details that had nothing to do with fighting and the point where his guard’s lips slid down over his, that anger had dwindled. It lurked, still, under the surface, weaving a hot knot in his chest and leaving his fingers to clench, drawing up tight fists in the front of Kedean’s soaked tunic.
But his mouth still opened.
His tongue still sought out Kedean’s to do battle on this entirely different field, and as heat and want pooled low in Baisyl’s gut, overriding logic with something far more primal, it became increasingly difficult to remind himself that his anger
stemmed from the fact that this very man he wanted so blindly was also quite inarguably beyond his reach.
In hours, days at the most, he would be traded off like a bargaining chip, and yet, more still than he detested the thought of playing a pawn in the fairy’s war game, he ached at the concept of never again sharing Kedean’s company. Privately, he hated himself for that, but despite his best efforts could not bring himself to blame Kedean.
Thus, instead, he poured his tangled desires into his kiss, dragged Kedean closer, and relished in the contrast of cool, slick rain on heated lips and skin. Releasing his grip on Kedean’s shirtfront, he curled one hand up, around the man’s neck to bury fingers in the long, dark hair at his nape, and trailed the other down, feeling the shape of his guard’s body through his clothes.
“Baisyl…” The low, throaty rumble of Kedean’s voice was like thunder on the breeze, edging under Baisyl’s skin and making the blood sing in his veins—a promise of a storm to come—and it was unfair, really, how a single word from Kedean’s lips could unerringly stir Baisyl’s body into immediate readiness. But at this moment, Baisyl didn’t have a mind to care.
“I want you,” he breathed in response, making it a demand as much as it was an offer. “Take me.” He savored the rippled vibrations of Kedean’s groan as it sounded between their open mouths, Kedean’s grip at the back of his neck tensing in surprise or possessive desire or both, Baisyl couldn’t tell.
When Kedean leaned back, putting an inch or two between them to meet Baisyl’s eyes, his expression was all questions, uncertainty warring with raw
want, but ‘
Here?’ the unspoken words all but echoed in the silence filled only by rain and heavy, distant thunder, ‘
Now?’
Baisyl tilted his head, leaning up enough to catch the lobe of Kedean’s ear in a not-quite-gentle nip before laving his tongue over it and
feeling the taut, restrained response of Kedean’s strength shifting beneath his skin. Kedean tasted like salt and the sky, and without ever letting his attention falter, Baisyl slid his lower hand down further still, over clinging, wet fabric and past a belt until he found what he was looking for and traced three fingers along the prominent evidence of Kedean’s arousal. His own body tightened in sympathy at Kedean’s shiver, and he pressed his next words against the curve of Kedean’s throat.
“Fuck me…” He made it all but an order this time, “…I cannot truthfully say I care who sees if they see fit to stay and watch…” and when Kedean swallowed, Baisyl braced himself for rejection, anticipating it.
Then, with a brusqueness that surprised even Baisyl, Kedean instructed, “Turn over,” and startled silent, Baisyl complied.
Instead of keeping him on his hands and knees, though, Kedean urged him up as soon as he turned, one curt tug ushering him back until the both of them were sitting upright with their shins in the sopping grass and Baisyl’s back tucked snugly enough against Kedean’s chest that he felt every breath the man took. His arse also conveniently fit neatly into the space between Kedean’s legs, leaving very little to the imagination despite two layers of clothing between them, and Baisyl swallowed around a suddenly parched throat.
“One day,” Kedean promised lowly, his voice a throaty rumble under Baisyl’s ear that somehow translated directly into a throbbing ache at Baisyl’s groin, “…I will fuck you so
slowly…” Baisyl’s fingers might have dug into Kedean’s thighs at that point, “…that you forget how to breathe before I am done with you…”
“Nn…hn,” was a meek, nonsensical sound that Baisyl most likely would have felt embarrassment for, had he had any attention to spare for anything other than the hand edging its way up along the inside of his leg.
“Unfortunately…” Kedean’s lips were hot torture on Baisyl’s neck and a quick jerk tugged the laces of his trousers open, a metallic clink marking the end of his belt, “…thanks to your…classy choice of location…” Baisyl ground back against Kedean, rocking his hips to press his ass into the hard ridge of Kedean’s trapped arousal, and it immediately wrought results—albeit in the form of a sharp groan and a retaliatory nip to his exposed throat, “…we will have to make this quick…”
When nudged, Baisyl tilted his head obligingly, and then promptly shuddered, eyes falling shut and head dropping back into the nook of Kedean’s neck and shoulder as Kedean’s hand looped down, dipping into his open clothes and sheathing his cock in a tight, rain-slicked grip. Baisyl’s lips parted, but no words came, only a tremulous hybrid between a pant and groan, and his hips twitched up to meet the touch, his hands looping around to catch and bury themselves back in the hair behind Kedean’s neck.
“Kedean-”
“Shh…” came the subsequent, quiet ushering to silence him, and a cluster of fingers arrived at his lips, grazing them and begging entrance. It took him only a moment to realize what for. After which, cheeks blooming involuntarily, Baisyl parted his lips, and his eyes dipped back shut as Kedean guided the digits into his mouth.
A soft, muted groan swelled up as Kedean rewardingly provided a quicker, more immediately satisfying rhythm, and Baisyl silently opted not to dwell on why his body took such carnal pleasure from such an otherwise thoroughly demeaning pose: knees knocked apart, face hot, and body writhing to fuck into the warm grip on his cock at the same time his tongue eagerly licked, curled and sucked around his mouthful. It oughtn’t to have made his pulse race and the air catch fire in his lungs, but it did, and he didn’t have the strength of will in that moment to fight it.
Then, Kedean withdrew his hand, and Baisyl’s mouth felt cool and empty as scattered raindrops splattered wetly across his bared lips. He willed himself not to tense as Kedean reached down, made himself relax as saliva-slicked fingers slipped low along the cleft of his ass, and drew a nearly steady breath when they finally reached their destination. There, they stilled.
“Baisyl…”
“Hn?” His response came out faster and breathier than he intended, and Kedean’s sigh was a ripple of air against his wet skin.
“Relax…” Lips brushed the corner of his jaw, his neck, his shoulder, and though Baisyl
knew to do just that—having given the instruction to countless others himself—it was soothing to hear the word in Kedean’s voice, soft and patient by his ear, and slowly, unthinkingly, he found himself complying.
When Kedean pressed, carefully, into him, he gave a constrained jerk and a low, broken groan, and he felt every inch as the first finger slid inside, progressing until it had buried itself knuckle-deep. When it stilled, his throat convulsed, not out of pain, but because
no one had touched him like this. And yet he trusted Kedean with this first.
“You might have warned me,” Kedean murmured, and Baisyl’s every muscle seemed to quiver as the invading digit pivoted and drew halfway out.
“About…what, pre—ahh…” Baisyl’s teeth grit, his back arching as Kedean pressed back in, and he swallowed hard when he regained his breath, “…what, precisely?” A snort followed.
“You’re going to tell me you’ve done this before?”
Was it
that obvious?
Baisyl’s lips pursed. “I-” Oh, fuck. His sentence deteriorated to a feeble groan in light of a second finger joining the first, as carefully as before but this time scissoring and
curling inside of him as it stretched him, and why
hadn’t he tried this before, honestly?
“You are not invincible, Baisyl, no matter how you might like to think so,” Kedean asserted, “…and the last thing I want is to hurt you…”
Baisyl’s huff wavered, temperamental as a summer gust. “That is…exactly why I didn’t see fit to…mention it. I do not need you to treat me like some…breakable…posable…doll, I-” Then, Kedean brushed upon something very, very
right, and Baisyl’s world dissolved in a heartbeat, his every nerve ending seeming to alight and promptly melt into a twitching puddle of unending sensitivity. “Nnnh…”
“There?” Kedean asked, and somehow, Baisyl managed a weak nod.
“Gods, yes…” he choked out the words.
Toes curling and uncurling in his sopping boots as his body trembled with the aftershock, Baisyl rocked onto Kedean’s fingers,
seeking that stimulation again, and after some tantalizing amount of time spent just moving and further testing his body’s resistance, Kedean finally obliged. If Baisyl’s life had ended in his next breath, he was convinced it would have been a worthwhile way to die.
By the time a third finger entered him, Baisyl barely grit his teeth, lost in a tumultuous sea of sensations. Between the rock hard body at his back, cradling him, the hot, slick sheath of Kedean’s hand on him, and the careful but relentless drive of Kedean’s fingers sliding wetly into and out of his clinging, needy body, it was an embarrassingly short amount of time before he felt it. The hot, coiling swell of approaching orgasm, like a tidal wave in the distance.
Every part of him wound up for it, his pulse growing into a heavy, throbbing thing high in his throat, his breath going choppy as a storm tossed sea, and his hands clutching to Kedean’s support as if he might be pulled under and drowned otherwise. Then Kedean leaned in, drawing a soft, wet line along his lower lip, inviting a kiss, and Baisyl gratefully buried his moan between their tangled mouths when he toppled over the edge.
He only vaguely registered Kedean’s hand at work after that, gathering the slick liquid in his palm after milking him through his release, but he cooperatively sank forward when urged, too weak and satiated to provide any commentary as his elbows slumped into the wet grass. There was a quick rustle of cloth behind him, Kedean’s clothes he assumed, and he summoned the energy to venture a glance just in time to glimpse Kedean’s eyes flit shut, his hand making a quick sweep of his own cock to coat it with Baisyl’s release, and his soft, pleasured groan was a spark under Baisyl’s skin, enough to make his arousal stir anew. He shut his eyes.
When Kedean caught his hip, Baisyl drew a breath, positive that his heart did not need to beat so fast as it was to function. He didn’t realize that he had yet to release that breath until a large, calloused hand drew a slow line down his back and Kedean advised quietly, “This will be easier if you breathe…”
At which point the air rushed from Baisyl’s lungs, and he meant to send a glower over his shoulder, but the look he ended up with wasn’t nearly so hard as that. Kedean met it, waiting, and only when Baisyl gave a small, disgruntled nod, did he align himself, and push.
Suffice to say, Kedean was significantly more substantial than his three fingers.
In moments, Baisyl developed a newfound respect for petite women with not-so-petite husbands, and with each advancing inch, his fingers gouging into the soft soil at his fingertips, head buzzing with the dizzying activity level of a wasps’ nest, and body fighting not to quiver like the last autumn leaf on an oak, he counted it a victory that he
did manage to breathe. Somewhat. More or less.
It helped, of course, that Kedean took mercy on him: stilling each time his teeth grit and waiting out each sharp hiss of an inhale until Baisyl’s body adjusted. Despite his comment about making things quick, he progressed with painstaking care, aware of every inch and on occasion pressing kneading circles into the available skin of Baisyl’s back until his muscles relaxed again. And then, blessedly, Kedean halted on his own, skin to Baisyl’s skin and body buried to its fullest extent within him, and it startled Baisyl to find his pulse taking an odd thrill in the notion, tripping on its own beat.
Because, as much as this stretched his body’s limits, Kedean
fit—with nothing but the salt of their own sweat and the rain to separate them—and his body felt
right against Baisyl’s, all raw strength and naked muscle. And there was a subtler, buried possessiveness there, too, found not in any words passed between them, but in the sheltering curve of his body and the way his hand continued to draw gentler, circling motions over Baisyl’s skin even after his tension eased. It wriggled its way into Baisyl’s heart when lips brushed the curve of his throat, planting a warmth in his chest and a tightness in his lungs that he wasn’t sure he was ready for.
Then, “Alright?” was a murmur against his skin in the dip between his neck and shoulder where Kedean had nudged away wet hair for access, and Baisyl shoved his thoughts away, gave a curt nod and rocked his body away and back in answer, just enough to drag a tangled groan out of one or the other of them. It was answer enough, and Kedean moved.
Deliberate, torturously careful strokes at first, though ones that still managed to send strokes of heat skittering up through seemingly every other nerve ending in his body. Then, as his body’s rejection of the invasion lessened and his muscles loosened, deeper, harsher thrusts followed, of the variety that made outcries tangle and bunch in his throat before crumbling on the next hit and spilling out in the form of ragged moans. The most of which he pressed into the back of his hand.
Kedean caught said hand, his own fingers sliding into place over it and tugging it away from Baisyl’s mouth. Protest of that move died on Baisyl’s lips with the arrival of Kedean’s other hand on him again, circling his renewed arousal and simultaneously bringing Kedean closer still so that his chest all but pressed along Baisyl’s back with each advance. His knees sank an inch further apart.
A tiny, sequestered away portion of his mind berated him for his weakness: barely a week after stepping out of his carriage in Ire and into Kedean’s protection and here he was, legs spread, soaked to the bone and panting like a wanton working girl with his knees in the mud. Yet, he
wanted this. However much he loved control, it thrilled him on an entirely separate level to give it up to
this man, and if he had only one day to work with than damn fate to all the hells, he’d take it and make the most of it.
Fingers laced through his. Without thinking, Baisyl returned the grip, and the next moment all coherent thought abandoned him, fleeing to the farthest corners of existence in wake of Kedean finding that spot that flipped the world on its end in a single instant.
“Gods…” The word came out choked with need, “…Kedean…” Pride and patience be damned, “…again.”
The following second, Baisyl privately withdrew everything he’d ever said about Kedean not being sufficiently obedient.
Unfortunately, it took frustratingly little time after that. With Baisyl’s body sufficiently adjusted, Kedean made good of his earlier promise, sparing him no mercy and hitting with such unfaltering accuracy that Baisyl couldn’t tell whether he wanted more to scream or melt or simply disintegrate on the spot, and in a matter of minutes, he was burying his teeth into his own palm, muffling a sound that undoubtedly would have attracted unwanted attention otherwise as climax wracked his body. With the tail end of it, he sank gratefully into wet carpet of grass below, leaving himself open and only dimly registering Kedean’s concurring release as he spent himself inside him.
There came a long, comfortably silent calm after that where they lay exactly as they were, neither of them quite willing to move, with only cool, fat raindrops trickling and sliding down their conjoined bodies, as if washing them down and cleansing them of the evidence of their activities. Then, a distant clap of thunder sounded, followed by nearer pulsing drum roll, and Kedean stirred, drawing carefully back so as to remove himself without causing any extra, undue pain. Baisyl merely shivered, and stamped down the twinge of regret at the loss. Silliness.
With so little clothing disturbed, the process of putting themselves back together was uncomplicated, and Baisyl rolled onto his back for it, rinsing some of himself off with the rain before tugging his pants and belt up with a mental note to wash properly later. By the time he finished, Kedean was through as well, but Baisyl found himself loathe to get up.
His guard noticed.
“Comfortable?” Kedean asked, his smile small but there, and Baisyl found it a pleasure to look at, in and of itself.
“Mm…” Baisyl drew his hands lazily above his head, matching Kedean’s smile without realizing it and locking his wrists together for a stretch, “…if you exclude, feeling as though I’ve been rear ended in intimate areas of my body by the bow of a ship going full sail…” He nodded, “…yes, fantastically comfortable, thank you for asking.”
Kedean quirked his eyebrows upwards, and Baisyl spared him a glance, and then a chuckle.
“Because, you know,” he continued, “…that aside, I feel better than I have in…” He paused to consider, “…months.”
“Months.”
“Did you know,” Baisyl pushed up onto his elbows, “I haven’t done that properly for…
over six months now. Since before I was cursed.”
“Properly?” Kedean repeated, and glanced about them. “This was your idea of…proper? Mele forbid you reveal your definition of indecent…”
Baisyl waved him off. “There was ass and cock involved simultaneously,” he clarified. “Proper enough.”
Kedean gave a noncommittal grunt. “So…I was the…unwitting victim of several months worth of unresolved sexual tension, is that it?”
“Mm.” Baisyl gave a confirmatory nod. “Something to that effect.” His eyes flit to his guard’s pursed lips. “I hope you don’t mind?”
Kedean sighed, his expression flattening out to something neutral and entirely unhelpful. “Not at all,” he answered. “Why would I mind?”
Baisyl opened his mouth.
“Tell me this though,” Kedean continued before he got a word in. “Why is it that
you’re the one who gets…”
“…drilled into the dirt?”
“Ah…yes, that,” Kedean said, “…and yet
I’m the one left feeling…”
“…used? Tricked? Taken advantage of for your body?” Baisyl provided, and Kedean’s expression deteriorated back into a half-glower. “Because, my darling,” Baisyl answered without waiting for a reply, “…
you are-” He blinked, words cutting off as his attention landed on something else entirely, “-bleeding. You’re bleeding. Why are you bleeding?”
Kedean frowned, distracted. “What?”
“Your lip,” Baisyl insisted, pushing himself up fully and moving forward. “Did I bite you again?”
“Oh,” Kedean muttered and ran his tongue over the mentioned split with a puzzled frown, “…I’d thought that would have stopped by now. It’s really nothing, really…but yes, it was you. You’d think I’d have learned better after the last time…” he mused, and Baisyl winced apologetically.
Shifting to get a better angle, Baisyl leaned up, caught Kedean’s chin loosely in his fingers to tilt it his way and, to Kedean’s visible surprise, drew the abused lip into a notably gentler kiss of repentance. The subtle, answering swell of magic that followed with it—a tingling ripple of white energy—was wholly unintentional, and as much of a surprise to Baisyl as Kedean.
It did, however, leave a fully healed lip in its wake when he drew back.
“Ahh…that…” Baisyl blinked, cheeks oddly warm, “…it…mm…oops?”
Kedean lifted a curious hand to his mouth, tracing the area which now bared no sign of damage. “Hn. Interesting trick,” he remarked after a moment.
“That’s the first time that’s happened,” Baisyl admitted, openly perplexed. “When it’s my own body, certainly, but…never with anyone else…”
“Mm,” Kedean spared him a glance, “…speaking of first times…”
Cheeks darkening, Baisyl narrowed his eyes warningly. “Not a word.”
“Baisyl-”
“It’s a matter of little importance. I am not a virgin—
was not a virgin—and do not wish to be treated as such-”
“I was surprised,” Kedean insisted, “is all…” A pause. “You’ve truly never even once let a man have you?”
“Surprised,” Baisyl repeated. “Naturally, since…given my sweet, innocent, and unassuming disposition, who ever would have imagined that I might tend to prefer taking the reins in bed?”
“It wasn’t an insult.” Kedean waited, and then, after a decent hiatus added, “But you are, of course, entirely right. That is exactly why I was surprised-” Baisyl rolled his eyes, “-and you still have…” Kedean reached out, pinching a soaked strand of Baisyl’s hair between two fingers and folding it back from his face, “…mud…in your hair.”
“…I thought I looked good in it?”
Kedean’s hand didn’t pull back from his face quite so quickly as it might have. “You look…good in nearly everything, Baisyl.” A second after speaking it, his eyes dipped, darting away. “We should get back in-”
“Kedean-”
“-side. I need to speak again with Jerith,” Kedean pushed to stand, “…find out if Moreah is even here and ask if-”
“
Kedean.” When Kedean finally consented to glance down, Baisyl held out a hand expectantly, and after only a moment more, Kedean took it, pulling him up. Baisyl kept the hand after he stood, though, holding it until Kedean’s skittishness sank into a defeated sigh.
“What is it?” he asked at, softer.
Baisyl considered his words before speaking. “I have no…childish delusions,” he started, releasing Kedean’s hand, “…about how much time we are likely to have together…and I am not so foolish as to pretend I have any right to dictate how you spend that time or who with. That said…I could not honestly say I have ever been particularly good at sharing, either.”
Kedean waited, attentive, but said nothing.
“What I mean to say is…” Baisyl drew a breath, “…if you wish to share someone else’s bed, that is your choice and I will not hold it against you…but I hope you’ll understand that should you make that choice…mine would no longer be open to you afterwards. I only thought that perhaps that needed saying, for…clarification.”
After a significant pause, Kedean opened his mouth. “If…” Frowning, he shut it again. It took another moment before he spoke. “I have no intention, or desire, to sleep with anyone else at this time, Baisyl…and I apologize if I gave off the impression that I did.”
Baisyl blinked, startled by the quiet sincerity though perhaps he shouldn’t have been. “Good,” he answered finally. “No, I didn’t mean to assume that you did, I simply-”
“We should go in.”
Baisyl frowned. “Kedean…”
“Yes?”
“I…” Unfortunately, the suddenly knotted uncertainty in his gut refused to condense itself into a literate, cohesive sentence that wouldn’t immediately betray insecurity along with a stockpile of convoluted and unnecessary emotions. Thus, Baisyl swallowed it down and shook his head. “Nothing,” he murmured. “It’s hardly important.”
Regrettably, ignoring the issue did not make it go away, and as they stepped inside, Baisyl passively wondered to himself how long on average it took a person to fall
out of love with another. Because clearly, he needed practice.
A/N: It's been too long, I'm sorrryyyyyy.....D: And there are still things I'd love to fix about this but, guhh...can't seem to find the incentive. Hopefully you enjoyed it anyway, aaaand...hopefully I can work myself back out of writer's block soon. Pretty, pretty please tell me what you think? ^^ Feedback always cheers me up and I seriously need to get back on track with this story. x.x
