Page 8 of Weave the Dark, Weave the Light
Somany reasons. The most obvious being simple lust for a stunningly beautiful person. The need to tame someone powerful. However, neither of those hit the core of the truth. “Because I want to understand what you are.” Ari set down their fork. “Will you answer my original question?”
He sobered into a seriousness that twisted Ari’s bones and set every part of them alight. “What I want with you isyou. Because you hunt answers, Ari Zydik. Beyond the need to control, aside from the myriad ways our bodies could come together. You seek more from me alongside those, and that’s rare. That’s a tasteIwant.”
"Others have had you.”
A shrug. “Iamold.” The grin returned. “Youare not anyone else, though. I want you, in whatever way you wish to have me.”
“Good.” Very good. That gave them something to focus on other than the zing of awareness and yearning in their marrow. Lust was knowable, something they could temper and work.
Jonathan chuckled. “Would you like to hear about my rather normal life?”
Ari wanted to take Jonathan home, stretch him out, and see how much he could endure of Ari’s flogger. But to know Jonathan was a desire that lay deep in Ari, more than sex or pain or pleasure. “Sure.”
True to what Jonathan said, his life was mostly normal. His store carried a variety of books, and also specialized in antiquarian volumes he had a knack for finding. “I have good luck.”
“Like finding me?”
Jonathan shook his head. “That was your doing, my sweet witch.”
“Like managing reservations on a Friday night at a place that’s usually booked out weeks in advance?”
That impish grin returned, and he sipped his water.
“The things I want to do to you,” Ari murmured. The questions they needed to ask, the answers they wanted to find.
“Yes. Please.”
Weave me a spell. Those words from last night hung like a challenge in their mind, sounded like the crack of a whip and the murmur of candleflame. Ari flagged down the waiter to ask for the check. Once their dishes had been cleared and Jonathan had paid, they strolled into the night. The air was sharp and crisp, and the moonlight turned Jonathan’s hair silver.
Something in Ari’s chest unwound. They’d called this man, this being to them. Jonathan was a sudden calm in the middle of the storm that had been Ari’s life. “Does it bother you that I want to tie you up?”
“No.” He peered at the sky as they walked, arm in arm, to Ari’s bus stop. “Not at all. And you want to do far more than tie me up, Ari.”
Much more. They pulled Jonathan to a halt. “May I kiss you?”
“Of course.” Need lay in that confirmation.
Ari took the lapels of Jonathan’s peacoat and pulled him to them. His lips were cool, but everything else burned when they deepened that kiss into something wanton and painful. A moan escaped Jonathan, and Ari drank the sound down. When they pulled back, Jonathan’s expression was equal parts ravaged and wanting.
He licked his lips. “You should definitely take me home, tie me up, and fuck me.”
This time, it was Ari who laughed, dark joy ringing into the night. He pulled Jonathan back into a walk, one quicker than before. If they were lucky, they’d catch the next bus. If not, Ari would spend the next half hour kissing Jonathan’s lovely mouth.
Either option was acceptable.
* * *
They madeit into Ari’s apartment and to their room in a blur of touches, tastes, and motion, the pull between them finally overwhelming them both. Jonathan’s energy exploded in Ari’s mind and magic. They consumed Jonathan’s mouth the same way they sucked down his element, folding both into their soul.
Jonathan tasted of the night and darkness and joy. Of a light Ari didn’t understand and an energy they couldn’t get enough of. Jonathan was wonder and danger. He felt likehome.
They pushed Jonathan against the wall by their bedroom door, kicking the latter closed with their foot. “I need you naked. Now.”
Beneath Jonathan’s bronze skin lay a blush that darkened everything, from the look in those starlit eyes to the word that tumbled from his kiss-bruised lips. “Yes.”
He made short work of undressing, peeling off clothing to reveal silken flesh stretched over muscle. The hair that dotted his chest and curled around his cock was the same pale gray Ari had caught under moonlight at the skating rink, beneath a furiously simple black cap.
He was magnificent and unworldly. Godlike. “Get on your knees.”
