Page 46 of Beneath the Indigo Sky

His smile is tender and loving as he stands in front of me. His pale-green eyes sparkle in the flickering firelight, drawing me in and holding my gaze. They glow blazing and bright and all-consuming in the best of ways, and the love that wraps around me feels like a supernova exploding inside my chest.

“I don’t care how different you are.”

His voice rolls down my spine, warm breath passing over my neck as he steps closer, and his fingertips find the tender skin of my belly under my sweater. I’m trembling and struggling to remember to breathe as flames leap across my skin where he’s touching me.

“Can I?” His fingers curl around the bottom of the fabric that separates us.

I can only nod.

He steps back, pulling the shirt over my head and dropping it to the floor.

I shift my fingertips to his waist. I want to know what he feels when he sees me.

He reaches out to trace the patterns that I know are dancing across my skin in ways they never have before. I’ve watched them in the mirror as I’ve thought about him. I’ve seen the way the black is nearly overtaken by the bright swirls of color when I remember what it’s like to touch him and the way he smiles at me, colors that look like those I’ve only ever seen in the winter sky. The tender brush of his fingers leaves my skin tingling in their wake, and the sensation drifts across my skin, sinking its way into my bones and my heart and my soul.

“What is it?”

He’s not filled with fear or confusion or anxiety over the fact that he’s never seen something like this before, over the fact that it doesn’t seem…human. His voice is filled with wonder and awe and reverence, and the love that burns so bright and gold between us radiates out from his skin until it encompasses me completely.

“I don’t know. The hospital assumed it was an elaborate tattoo.”

For years after I was found, the intricate patterning that covers the skin of my chest and stomach and back in a way that looks almost like smoke was pure black. The tendrils reach and twist, covering the majority of my skin while still leaving patternless, organic sections pale and untouched. The first time I saw it shift was the first time I experienced the emotion of another so strongly that I’d been unable to hold it at bay. I’d sat in the shower and cried as I attempted to wash away the grief I felt that wasn’t my own, and when I’d stepped in front of the mirror, the black seemed to shift, darkening in some areas, blinking brightly in others as if tiny stars glowed behind my skin.

“It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

He’s looking at me as if I matter, as if he can’t get enough.

His words swirl and embrace me, and then his lips are on mine. They’re dry and cracked and so gentle as they play against mine. His palm is pressed to my chest, and I know he can feel the rushing raggedness of my heartbeat as his tongue brushes the seam of my lips and asks for entry.

He is everywhere. His hand slides down my skin until it’s resting on my belly. Fingers trace along my chest as lips move across my jaw, and his chin is pressing my head back, exposing my throat to the tip of his tongue. It lingers there, licking and tasting and trailing downward. His mouth pauses against my collarbone, and he’s sucking, pulling the blood to the surface of my skin until it burns before moving lower, down the center of my chest, tracing along the edges where black markings meet white skin.

My fingers tangle in his hair as I arch into his touch. I’m clutching him against me as his lips burn across my skin, and then he’s on his knees with my hips in his hands and his tongue dipping into my navel. I’m panting and dizzy and hard, so hard, as he drags the back of his knuckles across the denim covering my cock as it strains toward his touch. His lips lift from my skin, and his head tilts back, and he’s staring up at me as his tongue flicks into my belly button once more. The breath punches out of my lungs as my body trembles, and I clutch at his hair as if it might anchor me to the world.

“Is this okay?”

“Please.”

It’s all I want. He is all I want.

His fingers fly over the buttons on my jeans, and then I’m naked in front of him, and his tongue finds its way back to my skin. I want to watch him. I want to watch this beautiful man kneeling in front of me, touching me and tasting me as if he’ll never get enough, but my head falls back, and my fingers tangle in his hair as he sucks his way across my hip and down my thigh and into the bend where my leg meets my torso and there is nothing else. Nothing but Jayce.

I’m trembling when he finally stands and settles his lips tenderly against mine. I want more. More of his touch and his taste and more and more and more. My hands drag his shirt off, and I’m pawing at his belt as we stumble toward my bed. My knees hit the mattress, and I fall back, my legs spreading around him as if he belongs between them with his body pressed against mine.

My arms wrap around his ribs as I pull him closer. His cock grinds against mine, hot and solid as my hips thrust against his, needing to feel him, needing him to feel me. He’s luminous and brilliant, and I don’t know which feelings are mine and which are his because they’re so strong and so identical and so blindingly bright.

His face is buried against my throat, and he’s whispering as I arch and whimper and shudder against him. He’s whispering curses and praise and my name, and I’m panting and gasping for air that smells like cinnamon and sweat. His jaw is rough against my own, his beard scratching and burning the tender flesh of my neck.

Then he’s moving.

He’s moving, and his body is sliding along mine. He’s strong and muscled and so much bigger than me, and the fur on his chest and stomach glides across my skin, somehow rough and silken at the same time.

My head falls back, and my fingertips clutch at his shoulders, nails digging into his skin. His name falls from my lips again and again, and he’s making love to me, and it feels like nothing I’ve ever known. My heel digs into the back of his thigh as our cocks slide together, slick and tight between our bellies. His panted breaths against my shoulder are hot and loud, and he’s the only thing I can hear. He’s the only thing that exists.

He shifts his weight onto one forearm so that he can clutch at my thigh, his fingers rough and strong and bruising as he pulls me closer while we rock together. My body curls around him, and he’s clinging to me as if he’s afraid I might disappear, and there is only this. Only him. Only the feel of his skin and the scratch of his beard and his cock thrusting slick and hot against mine until I’m on fire and shuddering and crying his name into the darkness.

His teeth catch on the side of my neck with a gasp, and he’s trembling in my arms as heat spreads between our bellies.

I’m falling.

---