Under the Skin (8 page)

“Is fortunate I am wearing one, then,” Alexei answered dryly, running his hands up his lover’s torso, thumbs finding and lingering over the tightened nipples. “Perhaps you prefer I leave it on?”

“Maybe some other time,” Patrick decided after a moment’s consideration. Lying naked beneath Alexei’s fully clothed body had its appeal, but tonight he wanted more. Tonight, for once, they truly had time to explore each other, and he wanted to make the most of it. “As much as I enjoy the feeling of silk against my skin, I’d ruin your suit by coming all over it, and I’d miss touching you.”

“That presumes I let you come,” Alexei retorted, tracing the chain of the cross Patrick always wore, which glittered in the near-darkness. He reached down to cup Patrick’s denim-covered cock in a possessive grip, mitigating the threat with a trail of kisses down his lover’s throat and across his smooth chest, pausing to drag his teeth over each nipple in turn, leaving them wet and throbbing before dipping lower. Mouthing the faint line of hair that led to his prize, Alexei squeezed the hardened shaft as his other hand worked at the fastenings of Patrick’s jeans, the hunger he had denied himself the last time they were together demanding to be sated now.

Patrick arched into the unexpected touch, caught completely off-guard by Alexei’s actions. Were it any other man in bed with him, he would be anticipating a blow job to blow his mind, but he knew Alexei better than that. The Russian was too proud to bend, too proud to…. “Oh fuck!” he exhaled sharply as his lover pulled him free of the entrapment of his jeans and licked a long, slow line up his cock from base to tip.

The taste of the hard, hot shaft beneath Alexei’s mouth was intoxicating. He hummed in quiet appreciation, his hands moving to each side of his lover’s groin, parting the heavy fabric and holding down his hips. Fingers spread over soft flesh while his thumbs found their way under the fragile sac, pressing upward to tease at the hardened balls. His own cock tightened inside his trousers, but he ignored the ache, his mouth roving over the satiny head of Patrick’s cock with unhurried deliberation.

Patrick’s fingers scrabbled in the sheets as he struggled to assimilate Alexei’s actions with his image of the man. His head tossed back and forth as Alexei pleasured him in ways he had never hoped to feel from this particular lover. The setting, the lack of pretense between them, the sense of intimacy brought on by the unprecedented sensation of Alexei’s tongue on his cock gave him the courage to press his own demands. Sitting up slightly, he reached for his lover, urging the Russian to shift his hips in Patrick’s direction, intent on returning a modicum of the pleasure he was receiving. “Let me taste you too.”

In answer, Alexei closed his lips around the glistening head, letting it slide into his mouth and savoring the tang of the fluid that seeped from its tip. The heels of his hands pressed against winged hipbones as Patrick tried to move beneath him, not hard enough to coerce but firmly enough to convey the message to keep still. This was a weakness too dangerous for Alexei to indulge—he fully intended to relish the one opportunity he would allow himself.

Patrick subsided temporarily, understanding instinctively that Alexei had already taken a huge step tonight and was leery of taking another. He intended to change his lover’s mind, but he could do that without forcing the issue. “Feels so good,” he husked, threading his fingers into the older man’s dark hair. “Your mouth on me, all hot and wet and eager. You make me feel like a horny teenager again, ready to come at the slightest touch.

“Can you imagine what it would feel like if I did the same to you?” he went on, hoping to break the restraint that held his lover back. “Can you imagine what it would feel like to have my mouth on your cock, sucking the head, teasing the slit?” He lifted his head and looked down his body into glittering eyes. “To fuck my mouth and throat?”

Alexei couldn’t hold back a groan at Patrick’s debauched description. He could imagine it all too clearly, his cock slamming against the placket of his trousers as it reacted to the deliberate provocation. Rolling to his side, he worked his hands beneath Patrick’s jeans and pushed them downward, then slid his palms up the back of his lover’s firm thighs to cup his buttocks, pulling Patrick closer and driving his cock deep into his mouth. Sucking strongly, he pressed his tongue against the vein throbbing along the underside of the heavy shaft, offering his lover all the salacious pleasures his words promised.

Whether or not the sudden movement was permission, Patrick took it as such and turned beneath Alexei as much as the forceful pressure of his mouth would allow, until his head faced Alexei’s feet and he could reach the waistband of his lover’s trousers. It would have been so easy to simply let himself be pleasured, but he was determined to share equally in both the giving and the receiving tonight.

Working open the leather belt and lowering the zipper, he urged Alexei to lift his hips so he could push the trousers down to the tops of his thighs, leaving his groin bare to Patrick’s hands and mouth. He knew the feeling of the thick shaft inside him, but this was the first time he had the freedom to do more than touch, to taste as he’d longed to do. Taking his time, trying to ignore the increasing demands of his body to thrust mindlessly into Alexei’s mouth until he reached an undoubtedly mind-blowing climax, he lingered over the other man’s cock, stroking gently before his tongue darted out to fulfill the promises of his earlier provocation.

Patrick’s lips and tongue were delivering on every one of his sinful promises, and Alexei fought the compulsion to snap his hips forward and fuck Patrick’s mouth as his lover had taunted him to do. Focusing all his attention on the cock stretching his own lips, he swallowed around the satiny head, sliding two fingers inside his mouth at the same moment. Working his throat muscles as he sucked, he probed Patrick’s crease with the moistened digits, adding the press of his fingertips to the assault on his lover’s defenses.

Patrick’s senses shattered, unable to stand the dual assault on his body. With little more than a muffled shout around Alexei’s cock as warning, he climaxed down the other man’s throat, his body convulsing as it expelled the evidence of his desire. The aftershocks rocked him as Alexei continued to tease him with lips and fingers.

When he could breathe again, Patrick bestowed a last, lingering lick on the hard shaft still in his mouth before releasing it and looking up at his lover. “We can stay like this if you want,” he offered, “but I really want to feel you inside me.”

Swallowing the creamy proof of his lover’s pleasure, Alexei drew the younger man back beside him, divesting him of the last of his clothes before stretching across the narrow cabin to reach for his overcoat. At the same moment, Patrick sat up and retrieved his jeans from the floor, their heads nearly colliding in the cramped space. Sitting back on his heels, Alexei gave a short grunt of laughter as they each held out small silver packets of condom and lube. “For once we are both thinking same,” he commented, his hand closing over Patrick’s, the gesture as intimate as the contact they’d just shared.

“Not just this once,” Patrick contradicted, turning his hand into Alexei’s to twine their fingers together for a moment. Lifting their hands to his lips, he kissed them once before releasing their clasp and reaching for the jacket still covering his lover’s chest. As much as he enjoyed the feeling of silk against his skin, it was flesh he craved now. Pulling the jacket free, he tossed it toward the bench seat and started work on the buttons of the white shirt, running his hands over smooth skin as it came into sight. With only the light from the moon reflecting dimly through the window, he relied mostly on touch as he bared skin for his enjoyment, his eyes straining for a glimpse of the ornate cross decorating Alexei’s chest. He could barely make it out as he peeled the shirt away, realizing as he leaned forward to press his lips to it that a new design—he could not make out what—now rested in the hollow of the other man’s shoulder. Pushing aside such thoughts for later, he shoved Alexei’s pants the rest of the way down. An ankle sheath caught his eye as he pushed down Alexei’s socks. Carefully he removed it, setting it aside with no comment. They both knew what Alexei was. Discussing it would change nothing. Lying back, he opened his arms. “Make love to me.”

That was an offer Alexei had never hoped to hear, and one impossible for him to refuse. Closing his eyes when Patrick’s lips touched his chest, he drew back slightly, settling between the welcoming arch of his lover’s thighs and tearing open a pouch to slick his fingers. His mouth returned to explore the planes of Patrick’s torso as he prepared the younger man, less slowly but no less thoroughly than the last time they had been together. As anxious as he was to take everything Patrick offered, he would not mar the moment with pain.

Patrick spread his legs further, knees bent to his chest to give Alexei unfettered access to his most sensitive flesh, knowing instinctively that tonight, anyway, his lover would do nothing that might hurt him. Writhing beneath the preparatory caresses that teased his prostate and left him breathless with desire, he dropped all the defensive barriers he kept in place, giving free rein to his emotions, though he refrained, barely, from speaking them aloud. Here, on Daphne’s boat, they were not cop and mobster, American and Russian, two men kept apart by the complications presented by the rest of their lives. For these few stolen hours, Patrick let himself believe they were simply two men in love. Unable to say those words aloud, he said the one thing he was allowed to say.

His lover’s name.

“Lyosha,” he murmured, the word becoming a chant as Alexei continued to tease and tantalize him.

Alexei stroked and stretched until he could feel the trembling beneath his fingers and his mouth. His own blood pounding in time with the pleading repetition of the intimacy he allowed no one else, he rolled a condom over his leaking cock and smeared it with lube. Lifting Patrick’s body reverently, he slid into the hot embrace of their flesh, his lover’s name escaping as a long, low moan. “Patya,” he murmured, leaning forward as long legs wrapped around his hips, pulling him deeper still. His mouth closed over Patrick’s hungrily, smothering the words that tried to escape him, knowing how reckless it would be to utter them even if they would not be understood.

The diminutive thrilled Patrick as it had the first time he had heard it, another tantalizing hint of the lover beneath the hardened mask Alexei presented to the world. The word itself and the tone of voice sent an additional thrill through Patrick as Alexei claimed his mouth. He offered that as willingly as he offered his body, wanting everything his lover had to give and more. His back arched as the stimulation to his prostate grew more intense, every thrust of Alexei’s cock pushing him closer to release. He trembled on the cusp, wanting to draw out the moment and yet needing the release that beckoned. Tearing his mouth free, he felt the contractions beginning. “With me,” he pleaded hoarsely. “Come with me.”

“
Da
,” Alexei panted, dropping his head to Patrick’s shoulder as the tremors of his climax overwhelmed him, needing only the sound of his lover’s voice to set them free. His hands clenched the quivering muscles of Patrick’s buttocks, crushing their bodies together as the younger man’s release spread between them, each twitch of his untouched cock sending another ripple tightening around Alexei’s spasming shaft, forging another link in the chain that imprisoned his heart.

Patrick collapsed back onto the bunk, sated as he had not been in longer than he could remember, the powerful sense of togetherness strong enough for him to pull Alexei down onto the bed beside him and into an embrace that had nothing to do with their bodies and everything to do with his heart. He waited for the inevitable tension to return to his lover’s frame, but Alexei remained relaxed against him, giving him the courage to turn his head toward his lover’s chest again and examine the marks there more closely. Idly stroking the design he could still barely see, he commented softly, “I don’t think I’ve ever told you how erotic your tattoos are. Maybe I should get one too.”

Unable to repress a shudder of revulsion at the thought of Patrick’s perfect flesh being defaced by the marks he bore, Alexei stilled the touch, wrapping the hand within his own and bringing them to the center of his chest. “I prefer you as you are,” he responded, knowing he had no right to dictate to the younger man. “You do not need such marks for me to find you erotic.”

“And yet you must get something out of having them,” Patrick countered curiously, not trying to touch them since it was clear Alexei didn’t want him to, “because you have two new ones since I last saw you. They’re still inflamed, even.”

Alexei had known from the moment Patrick had removed his shirt that he would not be able to avoid this moment. Inhaling deeply, he pulled the younger man down to rest against his chest, the dark waves of hair obscuring the elaborate cross. “In Russia, tattoos define you,” he began, suspecting his lover knew nothing about the true significance of the prison code. “Each must be earned, and each has a meaning for those who can read them.” Knowing what would come next, he tried to forestall the inevitable questions, certain what the policeman’s reaction would be if he knew the truth behind each of the elaborate designs. “There is proverb in Russian—‘
Slovo serebro, molchaniye zoloto
’
.
In English, I think you would say, ‘Word is silver, silence is gold’. Do not ask for answers you will not wish to hear.”

Intrigued despite himself, Patrick nodded. He knew what Alexei was, knew none of the stories would be pretty, but a part of him needed to hear what Alexei would say anyway. “Tell me about one of them.” His hand settled again on the cross that adorned Alexei’s chest. “What about this one?”

Recognizing that Patrick’s persistence was one of the traits that had likely led to his rising to detective as quickly as he had, Alexei had not really expected the policeman to let the issue drop. Exhaling slowly, he tucked a hand under his head, staring at the low ceiling. “It means thief,” he conceded, keeping the other, darker meaning to himself. “Master thief.”