Chapter Eleven

 

 

 

“Sit down,” Lars said. “I need to make you soup.”

“I don’t think now is the time for soup,” Seth said, but he did sit down, sinking onto the scratchy sofa cushions.

He hopped back up as though goosed. The fabric on the cushions was usually a little itchy, but the stimulation of the texture on his too-sensitive skin was agonizing. It was like he’d been flayed and there was no barrier between his nerves and the world around him. He pulled a towel out of the wardrobe storage and put it over the cushions. The terrycloth felt better. He liked terrycloth, which meant that he really liked the terrycloth right now.

Seth’s cock bobbed, tight against his stomach. The brush of his abdomen alone was as though his cock kept pressing against a tongue. He was afraid to touch it to relieve the pressure. But he was also afraid not to.

And more than that, he was afraid to ask, even though the exclamation point of his cock was also an emphatic question mark in and of itself. In everything that he and Lars had done, they’d never directly asked. It either happened on its own or they just did it. Asking just sounded too much like acceptance.

But if there was one thing Seth was sure of at the moment, it was that now was not the time for soup.

“Yes, it is,” Lars insisted, pulling a can of chicken noodle from the cupboard then retrieving the can opener.

“Does it look like it’s time for soup?” Seth asked.

Lars was slow in getting the significance of all this, but Seth hadn’t thought he was this willingly delusional.

Lars switched on the single-burner stove and poured the contents of the soup can into the pot. Then he turned back to Seth.

“Right now I’m less concerned about your erection, even though I can see how painful it is for you. I’m more concerned about the fact you almost died out there, and you look it,” Lars said.

Seth blinked.

“Your pale ass was already pasty, but now you’re practically gray, you’re sweating with a fever and your lips are a little blue,” Lars said. “The erection isn’t dangerous until it’s been like that for four hours, if you believe the prescription commercials, so yeah, not my top priority right now. I want you to eat a bowl of soup before we even think about taking care of the other stuff. Okay?”

Seth nodded, too startled to do anything but agree and accept the bowl when Lars gave it to him. Lars got him another towel to protect his legs and cock from any falling drops of soup from his shaking hand. Seth didn’t let Lars feed him, though. He took the spoon and did it himself.

He was surprised by the full weakness of his body. He didn’t have access to a mirror, but he trusted Lars’ assessment. Lars himself was the only mirror he needed. Instead of the self-consciousness that usually accompanied one or both of them being hard and needing a hand, Lars regarded him with all the anxious intensity of a loved one waiting for someone to croak.

When Seth finished with the bowl, he handed it to Lars. He had to admit he felt three hundred percent better than before he’d eaten. The relieved sigh Lars gave when he put the pot and the bowl in the sink confirmed that he’d already improved.

Lars bowed his head and closed his eyes, gripping the edge of the counter.

Seth squeezed the hand that connected them. “What’s wrong?”

“You don’t get it,” Lars said through clenched teeth, but not out of anger. “I was right there.”

Seth’s full, warm stomach tightened and roiled.

“I didn’t feel his magic as strongly as you did. He was touching you and focusing it all on you, I know,” Lars said.

Ironically, that made Seth relax again—as much as he could, anyway. Lars still believed—or was pretending to believe—that it had all been because of demon magic and not genuine desire making the magic work.

“I still felt it, though,” Lars continued. “But it was worse than watching that damn magic torturing you when I tried to escape. I could see and I could feel the life draining out of you tonight, Seth. Where I was holding your hand, I felt Lord Mikhail’s magic pulling at me too. I yelled at you, but you couldn’t hear me. I was helpless again, thinking that I’d have to watch you die.”

He crouched in front of Seth, his dark eyes warm and open. The way they’d sometimes been on those nights that Seth or Lars had crashed in the other’s dorm room and talked about the things that mattered, things too deep for the sunlight or to share with a group of their friends.

It was Lars as the best friend at his feet now, but Seth couldn’t dismiss the way Lars was mere inches from his towel-covered erection at the same time. And Lars had to realize that too. But he wasn’t moving away.

“I was scared, all right?” Lars said. “Fucking terrified. You look like you’re going to make it now. I can’t tell you how glad I am that you’re going to be all right, because even after Bell made him stop, I still wasn’t sure.”

Lars pulled off the towel covering Seth’s lower body and tossed it onto the cushion beside him.

“I want to be separate from you, I really do. But I never want to see you hurting for it, and I definitely never want to see you dying. Pine boxes aren’t the exit I was hoping we’d make. If tonight—all of tonight—taught me anything, it was to make the most of what we have, no matter what it is, because that’s all we got.”

That was when Lars took the head of Seth’s cock in his mouth.

Seth was so many colors of speechless, he could only manage helpless ah moans. His hips were barely held in place by Lars’ strong hands. Finally, Seth just took Lars’ head in his hands and threw his own head back, awash in the sensation of Lars’ mouth around him. His arousal reached all the way to his fingers and toes, making them curl and tensing the muscles of his limbs, but it was good tension.

Lars mouthed down the underside to the folds of skin connecting the base of Seth’s cock to his balls. Lars pulled and sucked at that flesh as he continued to stroke near the cockhead.

This was sex with the lights on, sex enthusiastically initiated and not unspoken. Seth couldn’t hold back for long. Lars knew he wouldn’t be able to. As soon as Lars had licked his way back up and sucked him into that amazing, perfect mouth, Seth bucked, shouting at the ceiling. He erupted, sending wave after wave of semen down Lars’ throat. Lars continued to lick and suck, jerking the base of Seth’s cock until his climax had ended.

But after such prolonged exposure to an incubus’ touch, there was no way Seth was actually finished. His erection stayed high and hard against his stomach when Lars pulled off him.

Seth was still wide-eyed and speechless as he panted through the aftermath. It only got more wonderfully surreal when Lars tugged him to his feet and against Lars’ body, Lars’ erection brushing his.

Then Lars slammed him against the counter, running his hands over the blades of Seth’s shoulders.

“Have I mentioned I’m really glad you’re not dead or dying?” Lars asked, before kissing him with a groan.

The groan sank deeper when Seth smoothed his hand over the dome of Lars’ head and angled his head to meet his tongue. Seth grabbed Lars’ ass with the other hand, pushing their hips even closer to slide their cocks together. Lars sounded like he was having trouble breathing when he broke away to kiss Seth’s neck under the subtle curl of his hair behind his ear. Seth’s mouth dropped open as Lars tasted his sweat and skin. Seth was still fevered with lust, but the sweat was now from its heat rather than from its poison.

Seth tried to imagine what they looked like together, what someone might see if they looked in through the door window—Lars’ dark body grinding against him, Seth clinging to him as though to keep from melting to the floor, Seth groaning as Lars kissed, bit and sucked at his neck like some kind of vampire, invigorating instead of enervating like the incubus.

“I should get you in bed,” Lars murmured. “I promised. You need lights out and sleep.”

“I don’t foresee a lot of sleeping involved in getting me into bed,” Seth said.

“Maybe,” Lars said. “But I promise you’ll sleep well after.”

God, Seth was beginning to think Lars was just glad Lord Mikhail hadn’t killed him because Lars wanted that honor instead.

“What’s gotten into you?” Seth blurted it out before he could stop himself. The first rule of having good sex with your best friend was that denial was sexy. He kept forgetting that.

“I told you,” Lars said, leading him to the ladder, “we don’t have much, and we need to take advantage of what we have, not take it for granted. We were captured with each other. Now we’re stuck with each other, and no one knows where we are or what happened to us. I’m not crazy about it. I know I’ve made that pretty clear. But there are worse people to get stuck with and worse circumstances. Regardless of how I feel about what’s causing these feelings, it feels good and there’s nothing we can do to stop it. So we have the twins, but we also have…this.”

He indicated that Seth should go first, even though Lars’ spot on the bed was the far side. When Seth got shaky going up, he understood why Lars had waited underneath him. As soon as he reached the mattress, Lars turned off the lights, followed him up then crawled over him when Seth reclined back. The Christmas lights around the caravan outside the RV allowed him to still see Lars just fine.

“And this isn’t so bad, is it?” Lars said.

Seth shook his head, rendered speechless once again. He had made many of these arguments before, and it seemed Lars had finally reached the same conclusions.

It was with a sense of wonder that Seth traced the line of Lars’ muscles up his abdomen to his chest. He brushed his thumbs over Lars’ nipples before pinching. Lars shouted then laughed.

“Damn, man, that hurts,” Lars said. He did the same thing to Seth, pinching then twisting.

Seth shouted and almost unseated Lars from over him. However, Seth laughed too. It did hurt. But his body responded well anyway. His cock dripped more pre-cum near his navel, renewed arousal leaving him breathless.

“You like that, then?” Lars asked with a wicked grin. He straddled Seth, with his knees on either side of Seth’s hips. He couldn’t sit up entirely—the ceiling was too low—but he loomed over Seth, grabbed both nipples, and twisted and tweaked and pinched until Seth wasn’t laughing anymore. All that came out were mindless groans. He writhed as needful as either of the twins from earlier that night.

Then Lars decided to scrap all that shit he’d said about being glad Seth was alive by bending down over him and taking one of those small, hardened nipples in his mouth. Seth shouted, arching up into his mouth and rubbing their cocks against each other again, feeling like he was going to die any second from how good it felt. He wrapped his arms around Lars’ back and pulled him down, holding on.

He never told women how sensitive his nipples were. If they discovered how much he liked it, it was by accident, and usually by then he could trust them with the knowledge.

He didn’t know why it was something he kept to himself, except he liked women’s breasts and giving women pleasure through their breasts so much that asking for the same from them always felt like a woman thing to do.

But Lars had no such hang-up. He didn’t mock Seth for his sensitivity, unless rendering Seth into a writhing mass of aroused nerves was mockery. If so, Seth embraced being mocked by Lars.

He and Lars traveled their hands over each other’s muscled bodies as though they’d never traversed those plains before. They ground against each other while Lars continued taking advantage of Seth’s weakness.

“You close?” Lars asked against Seth’s chest.

Seth nodded.

Lars pushed himself up to look at Seth.

“Did you just nod, you fruitcake?” Lars asked.

“Yes,” Seth replied, laughing a little. “Sorry. Not thinking too well. Tired. And so freaking ready to come.”

Lars licked one of his hands and brought it between them, closing his warm, wet hand around both of them. Lars kept his eyes on Seth, reminding Seth that Lars knew exactly who he was touching—this wasn’t one of the times they closed their eyes and thought of women. Lars wasn’t thinking about anyone other than him, and he seemed…okay with it now. Not a hundred percent at peace, but enough that he was speaking freely, joking and enjoying it without shame in his expression.

“You like your nipples so much… I want to see you pinch ’em,” Lars said. “Come on. Show me.”

Seth pinched Lars’ first, which made Lars lose his rhythm over their cocks for a moment, offset by the tightening of his hand around them. That made them both moan.

Then Seth brought his fingers to his own nipples and did what he liked when he was alone—which felt like forever ago. He traced around them, rolled them between his fingertips, pulled them away from his chest until he was gasping again.

Lars grinned as he lowered himself back over Seth and brought their mouths together.

It wasn’t quite a kiss. More like they were trying to breathe each other in instead of air. They were beyond kissing. Now it was about their hot, leaking cocks sliding side by side and their magic-inspired need to come. But the magic seemed secondary to this frisson of acceptance and even affection between them. It was a rough, harsh, powerful, galloping fuck now, but affection nonetheless.

“Lars,” Seth hissed. He let go of his nipples to hold onto Lars’ shoulders as he came again, releasing the last of the tension in a flood of hot spunk.

Lars wasn’t long in joining Seth. He grunted with each pull of his hand over them, his cum mingling with the mess that Seth had left.

Lars didn’t roll to the side. He opened his hand from around them and just lay there—heavy over Seth.

“I should have brought one of the towels up with us,” Lars muttered against Seth’s neck. “It’s so far away.”

“Pillowcase,” Seth offered.

Lars reached for his pillow and took it off. He raised himself up to clean them off as best as he could with a pillowcase before throwing the pillowcase over the side of the bed. It fluttered down to join the towels on the couch.

Then, to Seth’s surprise, Lars rested back down over him instead of rolling to the side.

“So, yeah, glad you’re alive,” Lars said.

“So am I,” Seth replied.

“We’re not going to tell anyone about this. What we do in here,” Lars added. Clarifying. Asking.

Seth didn’t miss a beat.

“Why would we?” he said.

An equally relevant question might have been ‘why wouldn’t we?’ Seth didn’t think anyone in the circus would be shocked or disgusted. Lord Mikhail, for instance, hadn’t played the shame card against Seth—although it would have been an effective one.

But at the same time, it was no one’s business what they did when they were alone.

“Not even the twins,” Lars said. “Love ’em, but I don’t want—”

“Not even them.”

“Not yet,” Lars murmured. “Not yet.”

Seth closed his eyes, exhausted, more himself, every part of him completely relaxed. He couldn’t help the ridiculous grin on his face, though.

It was like Lars had said. They had to take what they could get. And what they could get was good. The twins—Joanne, mostly, for Seth. And Lars—in private, at least. Seth didn’t need more. Not right now.

Even though they were cursed to never part and sometimes even the little bit of connection was too much contact, that wasn’t the case tonight. Lars settled to the side of him to get more comfortable, but they still lay entwined. Seth held him, maximizing instead of minimizing the contact.

One day, they would have to separate. Right now, though, they didn’t want to let each other go.