Escape (24 page)

“God, it's so beautiful.” Maybe it was ridiculous, praising a penis in tones of awe, the way people speak when they're looking at a wonder of nature or a work of art, but he couldn't help it.

And maybe it was selfish, not taking it in his mouth right away, savoring the ache of want, just brushing his cheek lightly against it—God, that dusky skin was so, so soft!—breathing in the lush musk of it. But as long as Tarik's breath kept shuddering like that, as long as he was hard as a wooden brush handle, as long as that tear of fluid kept slinking down from the delicate slit, Luka let himself indulge. Longer, a little thicker than his own, woven around with engorged veins, Tarik's cock looked so... manly—not smooth and delicate, like his own—it made Luka dizzy. Brushing his lips lightly along his shaft, Luka savored the incredible texture of it.

Each time he glanced up, Luka found Tarik gazing down at him, not reclined back, but holding himself suspended in anticipation, chest and belly taut with the strain as he watched. Heart hammering, cock and balls aching even though he'd already come twice in the last couple hours, Luka held Tarik's gaze, and brought the tip of his tongue to the crown of Tarik's cock, straining past its delicate collar of foreskin. Watched Tarik's lips part in a rasping gasp, tasted the salty musk of that trickling tear. From that small point of delicate contact, a warm rush of need surged through him.

Tasting. Licking. Sinking down and sucking. Tip of tongue circling, teasing between cock and fine sheath of soft skin. God, finally. Ripe roundness cradled on his tongue, tongue sliding and curving around those luscious contours. Greedily pulling him deep into his mouth. That fullness a comfort, somehow soothing even as it had him frantic with need.

“My god, Luka. God, you feel so good.” Tarik feathered a caress over Luka's shoulders, up the nape of his neck, through his hair. “Fair warning, I'm not going to last long.”

Reluctantly, Luka let Tarik's cock slip free of his mouth. “If you deprive me, now, you're just going to have to make up for it later.”

A strained laugh leaked from Tarik's throat. “I can live with that.”

Unbearably, unbelievably good, listening to Tarik's soft sighs, his quiet groans, feeling the rise and dip of his belly as Luka kissed and sucked, as he rubbed his tongue against his rigid flesh. A comfort and a thrill, Tarik raking his nails over Luka's scalp, tingles scattering over his head and across his shoulders. And then, god, yes, the sudden tensing of Tarik's body, his panting gasps.

“Luka, Luka, I'm so close. I'm going to...”

Tarik took his hands from Luka's head and shifted, maybe trying to pull away, but Luka grasped his hips and sank down, greedy for as much of his stiff cock as he could hold in his mouth.

“Oh, god. God, Luka.” Grunting, arching, Tarik grasped Luka's hand, and flooded his mouth.

Elation. Luka swirled his tongue around and around the fat, firm head of Tarik's gushing cock and drank his pleasure. So, so good, his mouth full of Tarik, tasting him, swallowing him. Caught off guard by how he had to fight past his throat's resistance to that acrid, viscous mouthful. Then, licking the lingering wetness from Tarik's engorged, inflamed cock, from his own lips. Like eating joy.

Luka kept him in his mouth, but slowed and softened his tongue's stroking, barely sucking. Under his hands, Tarik's belly and thighs kept quivering. Every breath, every sigh of Tarik's felt like a caress.

Had he ever felt so content? Luka would have happily lied there for another hour, all night, slowly sliding his tongue over Tarik's softening thickness. Nuzzling down into his fragrant fluff.

Tarik combed his fingers into Luka's hair. “Hey. Come here.”

Without letting him go, Luka looked up and met Tarik's eyes. When Tarik smiled, Luka's heart swelled up huge and thumped hard.

Tarik laughed. “I don't know how to feel about this.”

A thin thread of anxiety sawed into Luka's bliss. He lifted his head, gently releasing Tarik from between his lips. “What?”

“I think I'm getting jealous of my own cock. Think you could squeeze me in for a kiss sometime later tonight?”

Luka laughed. Holding Tarik's gaze, he brought his lips against his cock again and whispered, “Don't go anywhere. I'll be right back.”

“We'll see about that.” Tarik caught Luka under his arms and pulled him up with impressive gentle strength, until Luka was lying astride him, their eyes level. As they lied there looking at each other, the mirth faded from Tarik's eyes. Then he gave Luka a tender, lingering kiss that slowly deepened and went on and on.

Tarik ended the kiss, nuzzling into Luka's neck, kissing him softly there, under his ear, then looking at him with a sweet smile. But there was a shadow in his gaze. “How is it possible, that...”

“What?”

“That no one's loved you?”

Luka's face went hot, and he bowed and pressed his face to Tarik's chest.

Tarik stroked his back. Kissed the crown of his head. “I didn't say it to be cruel.”

“I know.”

“It's just, I feel like I found this...” Tarik's soft laugh reverberated through his chest, against Luka's cheek. “If you'll forgive the bad poetry, I feel like I found a treasure in that cave, a treasure that was out there in the light of day for nineteen years, and I don't know how it's possible no one before me realized its value.”

For the first time in his life, Luka wallowed in the pleasure of a scorching blush.

“Hey. How long are you going to hide down there?”

“Until you stop making me blush.”

Tarik touched Luka's chin and coaxed him to meet his eyes. “I like seeing you blush. It's mean of you to deprive me.” A soft kiss on the lips.

Kisses. Caresses and whispers and laughter and more caresses until they both came again, lying there looking into each other’s eyes, learning each other’s sighs and tremors. Then Tarik was hungry, and went naked to the stove for a second, and then a third serving of stew before coming back to bed, wrapping Luka in his arms.

“Luka?” Tarik whispered his name so quietly, Luka wondered if he'd been afraid he was already asleep.

Luka shifted and pressed himself a little closer against Tarik's strong, warm body. Just a little bit, hoping Tarik wouldn't notice, wondering if Tarik could really want him again already, he arched back to see if he'd feel Tarik stiff against his ass. “Hmmm?”

“Mind if I ask you something?”

For some reason, that gentle deference made Luka blush. “Ask me anything.” Normally he hated being asked things. Like land mines, questions usually hid something dangerous under their surface and could leave you mortally wounded. But even if he was nervous, maybe even a little afraid, he wanted Tarik to ask. He wanted Tarik to strip his soul bare, the way he'd stripped his body naked—with gentle, patient hunger.

“I know a lot of people have been unkind to you.” Tarik cleared his throat. “People have been sickeningly cruel to you. So it's not surprising, you being nervous with me.”

The sweet warmth Tarik's question had planted in him flared up, almost to the point of pain. “I'm sorry I'm so weird about everything.”

Tarik squeezed him tighter in his arms and pressed a kiss to his forehead. “Sssh. Don't be sorry for anything. I just thought maybe...”

In the dense dark silence, Luka waited.

Tarik let out a soft sigh. “Maybe you're a little afraid of me. Me, in particular.”

“Of you?” In his whole life, no one had taken care of him the way Tarik had. No one had been so kind. So protective and generous and tender.

“Sometimes, I remember putting my knife against your throat, and I feel...”

When the silence got too heavy, Luka said, “You were scared. You're allowed to be scared too, sometimes, you know.”

Tarik's laugh was hardly more than a gust of hot breath on the back of Luka's neck. “Do I seem like the kind of guy who pretends to never be afraid?”

Luka shrugged.

This time, Tarik laughed out loud, low and soft as usual. “I heard that,” he ribbed Luka about his habit. Then his soft voice took on a tone somewhere between stilted and playful. “None but a coward dares to boast that he has never known fear.” Resuming his now familiar, intimate cadence, “I'm plenty scared of plenty of things. If I try to hide it, sometimes, it's only because showing it can dangerous. Like with Armin and Begović. Guys like that smell fear on someone...”

“It's okay, Tarik. You can say it.”

“I didn't mean...”

“They smell fear on someone, and they turn predator.” Luka had already thought it a hundred times. If he'd looked them in the eye and stood up to them the way Tarik had, maybe they never would have...

“What they did to you wasn't your fault.”

“I know that.”

“For guys like that, life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.” Tarik nuzzled into Luka's hair, his warm breath releasing a swarm of chills over his scalp. “There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter.”

“It wasn't your fault, either, Tarik.”

Silence. Then Tarik's heavy sigh. After a silence so long and profound, Luka expected to hear him snoring any second, Tarik said, “The first moment you were aware of me, I was attacking you, threatening to slit your throat. And then, you saw what I did to them. That must scare you. That I'm capable of those things.”

Luka's first impulse was to deny it, to reassure Tarik that everything about him attracted and comforted. But Luka swallowed back the words flying up his throat. Instead, he asked the question that had been worming through his brain since that bloody, foul-tasting night. “Was that the first time?”

“Yes.” The word was hardly more than a breath. “Before that night, I'd never even hit anyone, except in Aikido practice and matches.”

“That's how you learned to use a knife like that?”

“We always used wooden facsimiles. But yeah.”

“Are you...” It was a dumb question, but he had to ask it, now. “...okay?”

Tarik nuzzled into his hair again, then pressed one soft kiss to his neck, just under his ear. “I'm okay.”

“I hate that you have to live with that now, because of me.”

“I thought you knew it wasn't your fault.”

“I do. But I'm still sorry.”

“Don't be sorry.” Tarik sighed. “Before the war, I never would have guessed I'd have to do something like that. And...” Luka waited and wondered through a long silence. “...I wasn't really
there
, when I did it. Or, I don't know, some part of me I've never met before was there, but I wasn't...in control. Making choices. But I wouldn't take it back, even if I could. Not just out of revenge, to punish them. Not just because of you and how they hurt you. People who take that much pleasure in hurting make the world more dangerous. And it's dangerous enough, already. If the responsibility for what I did is a burden, it's one I'm more than willing to carry. But I wish you'd never seen me like that. I wish you'd never seen what I did to them. It was horrific, and I wish that horror wasn't part of this.”

Luka squirmed and turned over in Tarik's encircling embrace until he was facing him in the dark, chests pressed together, legs interwoven. Weird, how he had the awareness of fighting himself, wanting to kiss Tarik, but some part of him dragging him back, filling him with trepidation and embarrassment, and another contrary impulse trying to claw down his fear with whispers of reason. Tarik wasn't like Pero, wasn't like Ibro, wasn't like those soldiers at the camp. He'd proven it with a hundred kisses of his own.

A slow drift forward until their lips just touched. One soft kiss. “I'm not afraid of you, Tarik. You're the only person who's ever made me feel safe.”

*

Luka dozed, then woke, as full of anxiety as he'd been full of joyful contentment as he'd drifted off. For days he'd been dreading the crossing, sure they'd be caught and that he'd be executed or thrown in an Eršban prison. But he'd been sustaining his frail courage with the idea that maybe, just maybe there was a chance he'd make it over the border and through to Alkbana, earn some money, and then be able to go wherever he wanted. Maybe someday he could study art in Amsterdam, or in Berlin.

But now? All crossing the border meant was being separated from Tarik. Win or lose, jail or death or freedom, this bliss, this impossible, contented sense of safety and warmth and connection and lust would fall to pieces, and he'd be alone again. Maybe for another nineteen years. Maybe for the rest of his life.

The only thing that made him feel better was imagining Tarik seeing his baby for the first time, imagining Tarik smiling down into his son's face, his son smiling back at him. Tarik holding his tiny child in his powerful arms, rocking him to sleep. Murmuring stories to him in his deep, gentle voice.

When Luka woke again, there still wasn't any daylight coming down the stairwell, so it was still night. But Tarik wasn't next to him anymore. He peered into the dark. By the faint glow of the wood-burning stove, he could just barely make out Tarik's profile. When Luka sat up, the bed creaked and Tarik shifted and turned, and the fire illuminated his face.