Page 53 of Refrain
His body sure liked it.
His groan came from his toes. No, deeper than that, from the soil beneath them, from the depths of the tree roots. Xane knew he ought to rip them apart, but he was rendered helpless by the wet silk of Spook’s invading tongue. The man knew how to kiss. There was no denying that. There was a lingering taste of chilli on his tongue from the crackers they’d shared earlier, combined with the bitterness of the dark chocolate.
People always accused him of being sex obsessed, and while there was no denying the truth of that, kissing got a raw deal. Xane loved it. Especially when it was as fraught and wild as it currently was. That leant it extra charge, so that the sensations weren’t confined to his lips and tongue, but ensnared all his senses as if a high-hat cymbal were being tickled inside his skull. He recalled that he was more than disembodied mouth and tongue, that he had hands…hands that could grasp and squeeze. He planted them both on Spook’s tight arse, prompting his band mate to loosen his grip on Xane’s T-shirt and slide his grip up towards the base of Xane’s throat. He squeezed, causing the tendons either side to jump. Xane groaned around the growing pressure, all too willing to be taken and had. The rush of it thumped inside his temples and built around the base of his cock. “Fuck, yeah.”
As abruptly as it had begun, it was done. Spook sprang away from him and staggered towards the support of a nearby tree. There he stood, bowed, and violently cursed in two languages. Xane watched him dazed. His heart still in his throat, arousal burning through his sensibilities. His lips tingled from the pressure of the kiss, and his throat felt thick. “Spook,” he managed to gasp.
It took a moment to get a response. When Spook finally looked back at him, his pupils were shot so wide the blue of them was reduced to a mere halo effect.
“Can’t,” he barked. Then, “Go! Go, but don’t run. Do. Not. Fucking. Run.”
Likely enough that command would have made little sense to anyone else, but Xane, burning alive with a fever Spook had ignited, interpreted it with utter clarity. He knew exactly what would happen if he did run, and holy fuck, he was almost turned on enough to say ‘to hell with everything’ and make a dash for it. Not that he’d get far. In his mind’s eye, he watched them collide. Pinpointed the place they would fall—hardly a dozen paces from their current position—where the soil would be bared of pine needles by the violent clash of their bodies. He felt the ghost of possession, Spook thrusting into him with only the bare minimum of spit to lube the assault. Afterwards, he’d bare the bruises, and struggle to sit comfortably for days.
“Xane!”
Spook’s bark snapped him free of his imaginings. He recalled in a rush all he had to lose. All that they’d both lose. There’d been a point, way back when, when things between them could have forked in a different direction, but it wasn’t now.
“Will you find your way back?” Xane asked. They weren’t far from the bothy, but only minutes had passed since Spook had been clinging to him as if the sky might crush him flat. “Maybe you’d better go first.”
Trembling, Spook nodded. Then he ambled forward, back bent, his gait unsteady but purposeful. He did not look back. Nor did Xane immediately follow. He watched until his friend hit the forest edge, then slumped to the earth, and beat his head against the tree trunk. He couldn’t return to the cottage until his emotions were back on an even keel. Instead, he sat for several minutes with his hands covering his face, willing his pulse to slow. Eventually, he pulled his phone from his pocket. Thank God for speed dial because one button was about all he was capable of pressing. Luthor picked up right away.
“You need to get here now.” Xane barked into the receiver. “Right fucking now.”
“Xane?” His lover’s voice bled into his ear, a soothing mix of calm and concern. “What’s going on? Did something happen? Is Spook okay? Are you okay?”
“I’m a fucking mess. He’s a fucking mess.”
“Xane, are you hurt? Jesus! Are either of you hurt?”
He was still too emotionally knotted to properly express it all. Words were suddenly as elusive as butterflies in a snowstorm. “Not in the way you’re imagining,” he eventually rasped. “No one’s injured, we’re just… It got tense… raw…” He willed his lover to understand. Maybe he would. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t seen him break down and screw up before. Hell, on at least one of those occasions he’d pleaded with Luthor to fuck the living daylights out of him.
A sigh echoed in his ear. “Have you just fucked him again?”
Go Luthor and his acute perceptive powers.
“No.” Xane coughed around the emotions still clogging his throat. “It was just a kiss, but…”
“Your mind went there and now you’re gagging for it?”
Oh, yeah, Luthor knew him all right. Fact was, part of him was still calculating how quickly he could make it back to the building, and where he might put his hands on some condoms.
“So, this isn’t so much a confession as a booty call.”
“What? No.”
“You don’t want me to come and shag you?”
“Well, yes.”
“Pretty sure that’s the definition of a booty call, lover boy.”
He snorted at the same time the rumble of Luthor’s laugh caused the phone speaker to vibrate against his ear. Thank God his boyfriend had a quirky sense of humour, or in fact any sense of humour, about this. There weren’t many partners out there who would digest this conversation with remotely as much understanding.
“You know it’s not funny,” he hacked around the clog in his throat. “I feel like I’m about to have a goddamned heart attack.” His continuing agitation set him off kicking about the dirt at his feet.
“Well, I’ve never heard that erections are a leading cause of heart failure.”
There was always a first. “I don’t think it’s the sort of thing anyone would want to advertise.
