Escape (17 page)

Every touch, every kiss, Luka yielded to with panting breaths, with barely voiced sighs. But when Tarik drew back to see, Luka looked shell-shocked. Pale, frozen stiff and still.

Tarik backed away a few more inches. “Do you want to stop?”

Luka shook his head.

“Then come here.” Tarik reached out, and when Luka gave him his hand, he pulled him in, getting him to straddle his thighs. Now Luka was blushing again; even if it was too dark to see the pink blossoming in his cheeks, Tarik felt the heat under his hands. And Luka's body. God. So lithe. Lean. Wiry, finely muscled. Such a startling, provoking difference from the women he'd been with. Feral want beyond anything he'd expected before last night ripped through him as he pulled Luka against him.

Torture, kissing. Dick and balls in agony. A torment he'd gladly suffer without relief all night. Hell, all week, if Luka would let him. Was that what Luka wanted? This excruciating safety? Because Luka was hard, too, the stiff ridge of him pressing against Tarik's belly through their clothes, torqueing up Tarik's pain, his want. Or did Luka want to be touched again? Undressed again? Mounted and gotten off again?

Tarik let out the reins, just a slight slackening, and slid one hand up under Luka's shirt, stroking his sleek, hot skin. In his arms, Luka's body went taut, and he sighed softly into their deep kiss. Tarik brushed his lips across Luka's cheek and whispered, “Is this good?”

A faint motion, as if Luka had nodded. But Tarik wasn't sure.

“Tell me, Luka.”

“Yes.”

Clinging to Tarik as he touched, Luka sighed and almost imperceptibly writhed, and when Tarik sought his mouth again, he found his lips already parted. Slow wet kisses of discovery. Cautious caresses.

Luka whimpered.

“Should I stop?”

An urgent, “No.” It sounded like he was begging.

“Tell me what you want, Luka.”

Luka stilled and stiffened in his arms.

“Don't be afraid. You can say it. Whatever it is.”

“I... please, Tarik.”

“Do you want to stay like this? Just kissing and holding each other? Or do you want more?”

A long, still silence. Then the hot, hard press of Luka's forehead against Tarik's chest. Hiding again, even though it was already too dark to see his face. “More.”

“Like last night?”

Almost a gasp, Luka's breath shuddered between them. “More.”

Tarik groaned, surprised again by the force of the need taking him over. “I want to strip you bare.”

Luka shuddered against him. “Yes.” His voice faltered.

“If I ask something of you, and you don't want it, promise you'll say no.”

Luka was quiet.

“Luka?”

“It's okay. I'll do anything you want. You can do anything you want to me. Anything.”

A hot electric surge arced through Tarik's belly. “I still want you to promise.”

“I promise.”

He stripped Luka out of his jacket, sweater, and shirt. “Tell me if you get cold. We can get into the sleeping bags.”

“I'm not cold.”

Breathing in the scent of Luka's skin, groaning with the brutal surge of need, Tarik held himself back, kissing softly along Luka's jaw, then seeking his mouth. When he drew back, he could just make out Luka's face in the wan moonlight slipping between the clouds and the forest canopy, eyes closed, lips open. Fraught suspension between surrender and resistance.

Chaste caresses. To give Luka time. To twist his own pleasurable torment a little tighter with the delay, Tarik trailed his fingertips down the length of Luka's arm, along his ribs, past his navel. Took him in another wet, melding kiss.

He watched Luka's night-veiled face as he brushed his touch over a nipple. Furrow between his brows, a shadow of pleasure. Lips kissed. Tongue tasted. Sweet, shuddering sigh swallowed as he touched again, teasing Luka's nipple to stiffness, kissing his way down, then touching the erect bud with his tongue.

Luka went rigid in his arms.

“Does it feel good?”

A shuddering breath.

He slid his tongue across Luka's chest and licked his other nipple, just wetting it, teasing it, coaxing it to crinkle and peak before sucking it between his lips. Luka let out a startled grunt, then went dead silent, stiff and still as a corpse.

When he gave Luka a soft kiss on his lips, Tarik realized Luka was holding his breath. “You okay?”

A tight, choked little, “Yes.”

Tarik laughed. “Even though you're not breathing?”

Luka's strained laugh. Then panting.

“Don't want you passing out on me.” Tarik rubbed one erect nipple with the tip of his tongue, then kissed his way up Luka's neck, lips and tongue, thrilling at how Luka trembled and arched in his arms. At another stifled grunt. But the next second, as if his body was seizing, Luka was rigid and breathless. “You're holding your breath again.”

“I just—” Luka sucked in a rushed breath. “It feels... so good.”

Tarik laughed. “Good.”

“It's hard to be quiet.”

“Then don't be quiet.”

In the dark he couldn't see, but Tarik imagined Luka blushing in those quiet seconds.

“It's...”

“What?”

“I'm embarrassed.”

A noise, arousal, frustration, affection mingled together in Tarik's throat. “I love those sounds. They excite me.”

Tarik could almost hear Luka's blush and shy smile in his quiet, incredulous, “Really?”

“Yes. Really.” Tarik took Luka in a demanding, deep kiss, then attacked his throat, then lapped at his nipple again until Luka was squirming under him, grunting against the gag of his bitten lips.

“No more holding back, Luka.”

Salty skin warm under Tarik's lips and tongue. Luka's lithe body writhing in his arms. Then his strangled gasp, a muffled groan.

That sound drove a rush of pulsing heat straight to Tarik's cock. “God, Luka, yes.”

Tarik kept at him until Luka was huffing shallow staccato breaths, cut silent in irregular gaps when he worked Luka up to a pitch of frenzy, soft sucking slurps at a stiff nipple, or nibbling and licking the tender place where the delicate flesh of his earlobe met his jaw and Luka gulped back a sigh or a moan. Then he slid his hand down, over Luka's flat, quivering belly, and slid his fingertips over the smooth, soft skin along the waist of his jeans. Then just underneath, until he touched the elastic of his briefs, riding the high of his quick panting, then the jolting thrill, feeling Luka's hard length fill his hand. Luka squirmed and groaned as Tarik slid his hand slowly over the snug fabric, following the firm ridge of his cock to the soft mound below.

“Take these off.” Tarik tugged Luka's jeans and underwear down a couple inches, then coaxed him to lift his ass so he could strip him.

Tarik settled him back in the crook of his left leg, pulling him in close against his chest, and lifted Luka's ankles up and over his right thigh. Touching Luka's chin, Tarik kissed his lips, gently sucked, worked his tongue into the moist crease, sliding his hand up the length of Luka's naked thigh. Not smooth bare skin like his belly, but faintly hairy. Lean. Finely muscled. Stroking upward, over the soft warmth of his balls, Luka catching and holding his breath again, up, encircling the girth of his erect cock as it lurched in his loose grip, until his hand came up against the flared ridge at the base of the crown. With the pad of his thumb Tarik circled the engorged head, smearing the drop of wetness at the tip over that swollen flesh.

Luka grabbed Tarik's wrist.

Tarik's boiling arousal cooled. “Too much?”

“Sorry.”

“Don't be sorry. It's okay, Luka.”

“I don't know why I did that.” But he was still clutching Tarik's wrist.

“Yes you do. Tell me.”

“I don't know. That...You feel so good, Tarik.”

“But?”

“I'm...I feel...”

“Afraid?”

“Guilty.”

When Luka let go of Tarik's wrist, Tarik put his arms around him. “Guilty? Why?”

Luka's stillness. Luka's silence.

“What's there to feel guilty about? We're not hurting anyone.”

“I know. I mean, my brain knows. I don't know why I always get this bad feeling.”

“Always? I thought you hadn't been with anyone before?”

“I haven't.”

“You mean, when you touch yourself? Why would you feel shame getting yourself off?”

“I just...”

Tarik waited, then finally asked, “What, Luka?”

“It's not so much that I feel guilty, touching myself. It's more...” There was another long silence, but Luka finally said it. “I feel bad, thinking those things.”

“Fantasizing?”

“Yes.”

Tarik held Luka a little closer. “Why?”

“I feel like I shouldn't be thinking those things.”

“What things?”

Tarik felt Luka's invisible shrug, like sign language. “You know.”

“No.”

“Like this. Like last night.” Luka shifted a little in his arms, and Tarik wondered if he was squirming in embarrassment, confessing. “And other things.”

Tarik kissed the crown of Luka's head. “And what's bad about that?”

“It's not...normal.”

“Sure it is. It's just a little rare. And probably not as rare as everyone thinks. But just because something's a little less usual doesn't make it abnormal or bad. You can't listen to the obscene idiocy Kadryov and
Zivković and their sycophants in the media are constantly spewing.
”

“I know. I mean, I tell myself that, all the time. But I still get this sick, heavy feeling.”

“Then we won't. I wasn't trying to push you to do something you're not ready for.”

Luka was silent for a long time. Still, except for the rhythmic swelling and shrinking of his ribs as he breathed. “I didn't mean to.”

“What?”

“Ruin it.”

“You didn't ruin anything.”

“I wanted to. I...” Tarik could hear Luka taking three slow, deep breaths. “It felt so good, how you were touching me.”

Tarik nuzzled into Luka's hair, breathing in the scent of him, faintly animal, musky, underneath the sharper chemical scent of the cheap army soap they'd both been using. “To me, too.”

“I still want us to.” Luka was whispering so softly, Tarik could barely hear him.

Tarik thought these fraught encounters were behind him, that he was well past the age of fooling around with virgins tortured by the dilemma of shedding or clinging to the mantel of their imaginary virtue. And all the times he'd imagined being with another man, he'd always assumed he'd be the nervous one, the less experienced one.

“Please, Tarik. I'm sure.”

God, Luka's quiet, faltering plea filled Tarik up with sudden, tender warmth, chased down hard by a violent surge of hot want. “Are you?” He'd meant it sincerely, but it came out like a taunt.

“Yes. I promise.”

Promise
. Such a sense of youth in that earnest vow.

Want? Or affection pushing Tarik to that sweet, soft press of lips. “Take my hand.”

In the blinding dark, Tarik felt Luka shift against him, felt him tentatively seeking, fingers brushing over Tarik's arm, until Luka slid his own hand into Tarik's.

“Put it where you want me to touch you.”

For a few seconds Luka was still and silent and breathless again. But then, a slow stirring. For a second, Tarik thought Luka was going to press his hand over his cock again, just where it had been when he caught Tarik's wrist, but at the last moment Luka altered course and settled Tarik's palm against the hot flesh of his inner thigh. An invitation, shy but provoking.

Tarik teased his fingers over that warm flesh, lightly, toward Luka's knee. “Like this?”

“Please, Tarik.”

Doubling back. “Like this?”

“Yes. But....”

“But what?”

“What you were doing before.”

Tarik feathered a caress up the underside of Luka's cock until he found the velvety, bulbous head with his fingertips, surprised Luka was still hard, or already hard again. “You want me to touch you here?”

“Yes.” Barely more than a breath.

A kiss. Soft, but deep. When Tarik backed away, he tried to read Luka's face in the dark, but couldn't. Almost cradling him in his arms, Tarik went on touching him as he kissed, exalting already in caught breath recovered in a startled gasp, in the trembling of that pale, lithe body against his own, in his clinging, shy or shamelessly needful. Just a few strokes, teasing, feathering contact, and Luka's cock was lurching in the cage of Tarik's hand, Luka trembling, wiggling.

“Tarik.” Urgency in his quiet plea.

Tarik stilled his hand. “Hmmm?”

“Can I...”

After a few moments, Tarik asked, “What?”

“...touch you?”

Just the question, wavering out on Luka's timid voice, drove a sudden jolt of want through Tarik's groin. “After.” Circling the plump, engorged head of Luka's cock with the pad of his thumb, the steady ache pulsing in his own cock and balls intensifying by the second. “After I make you come, you can touch me.”