A Matter of Taste - Chapter 14

We returned home half an hour after departing with enough food between us to feast on for a week. Bansi had charmed the cafe's chef, wheedled and smiled and talked them into sending us home with our dishes. Bansi slipped him a bill I didn't dare look to see the value of, to speed the bargaining along. And thus we came to be walking down the street, back to Bansi's new home, with baskets of food set on the cafe's own tableware and kept warm under heavy silver cloches. The aroma of the food wafted between us, and if it tasted half as good as it smelled, then Bansi's recommendation had been justly deserved.

We sat on the floor in the middle of his sitting room, surrounded by boxes and draped furniture. We balanced our plates on our knees and laughed that we ate like paupers from plates fit for royalty.

The food was divine, even better than I could have hoped for. You never found food this good, cooked to perfection and flavored so delicately, in the lower city. I sighed and leaned my back against a trunk and didn't let myself think about how nice it would be to be able to eat like this all the time. That way lay madness, or at least resentment and bitterness, and I was enjoying the meal too well to want to spoil it with such things.

Besides, there were other, more pressing things to spoil the mood with.

I set my silverware carefully on the edge of the plate and watched Bansi in silence for a moment as he ate with a single-minded determination. "You know," I said quietly, lightly, "eventually there will be no food left to eat, and then you shall have to talk to me."

He glanced up, fork poised in mid-air. Guilt washed across his face, but I wasn't sure if it was because he'd been doing it on purpose and I'd found him out, or he hadn't realized what he'd been doing until it had been pointed out to him.

I set my plate aside, drew my thighs up to my chest, and leaned my chin on my knees. "Just tell me," I murmured. "I know you've had your disagreements with your family, but it can't be so bad as you're making it seem. You've never been so determined to avoid talking about them, before."

"You used to seem more interested in them," he said softly, staring down at his plate. "It's easier to talk about things you actually care to hear about."

"Ban." I waited until he glanced at me once more. "Do I seem uninterested now?"

"No. Of course not." He drew a long breath. "Honestly, there's nothing to tell. Nothing new. They want the same things from me they always have. Deference. Obedience." He snorted. "An heir. I got less pressure from them to wed before I took Riksa for my wife than I am now, I swear."

Of course, I thought. You showed them you can be moved, if they push you hard enough. I said nothing, though, merely waited and tried to look encouraging.

"This house is just the latest proof that I've no intention to do as they command all my life. They want me to go home and marry, but this house will keep me here the whole year round. What woman back home will want me when I so obviously mean to move her halfway around the world as soon as the vows are spoken? They see it as defiance. That's the trouble."

My lips curved, pulled lopsided into a wry smile. "You've never balked at being defiant before."

He stiffened, frowning down at his lap. His fingers tightened on the edge of the plate until they turned bloodless and pale. "It's not the defiance I struggle with," he said, stiff and stilted. I had only meant to jest, but I'd angered him. "It's the endurance. It's no difficulty to buy a house they do not wish me to possess, but keeping my resolve in the face of their constant disapproval... They are like the ocean's waves. I try to be like stone, but in the end, I always crumble."

I sopped up sauce from my plate with a piece of crusty bread, then chewed it thoughtfully. Bansi's gaze was still on his knees, the hunch of his shoulders still miserably unhappy. "You bought the house anyway," I said at last. I washed the bread down with a mouthful of wine. "That's quite a sum to spend on something that you're already convinced you'll be talked into giving up."

"I'm not! I-- Devils take it." He sucked air through his nose and set his plate beside him on the floor, though he still had almost half a piece of chicken left upon it. "I haven't conceded defeat already, if that's what you're suggesting. I just..." He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, head hanging low between his shoulders. "It always happens." He said it like it was a secret, low and hushed. "I try to avoid it, and it happens all the same."

"Ban," I said, surprised. "Gods above. You've worn me down, haven't you? All this time, that's what you've been doing. Wearing me down. Getting me to crumble. You're the most obstinate man I've ever met, and you drive me half mad with it most times. I have a hard time believing your family's determination can even hold a candle to your own."

He shook his head, but didn't lift it, so I still couldn't see his face or read his expression. His laughter, when it came, was choked and bitter. "You haven't met them, Renad. You don't know."

I shifted forward, up onto my knees. I slid my fingers through his hair, cupping the back of his head. "Look at me," I said, and though I kept the words soft, I put a hard edge of insistence in my voice. 

He raised his head just enough to glance up at me through his lashes. I twisted my fingers in his hair and tugged him up further, until he had lifted it all the way.

"They can't make you do anything, Ban. They can only convince you. Remember that."

He smiled again, still lopsided, but this time tinged with bitter sadness. "I know you're trying very hard," he said. "Thank you."

He was humoring me. That was a polite way of saying thanks for trying, but you don't know anything if I'd ever heard one. I blew out a sharp sigh, tightened my fingers in his hair, and pressed my mouth hard against his.

He yielded immediately, parted his lips and met my seeking tongue with his, but it still felt as though he were humoring me, holding some part of himself back. I drew away slowly, easing the kiss back one degree at a time, to just lips, and then just the brush of skin, and then breath. I held his face between my hands and drew back, opened my eyes.

"Bansi. They're not here."

He gave a short laugh, but at least it sounded nearly genuine this time. "No. I know." 

I tightened my hold on his face, brushed a thumb over his cheekbone and followed it down. He parted his lips when my thumb pressed against the corner of his mouth, kissed the pad of my finger and laved his tongue over it. I gasped, then frowned, annoyed at myself for being taken by surprise by so simple a gesture. This time, his laughter was soft, hushed, but entirely real.

"I'm here," I said. Bansi sucked on my finger and scraped his teeth over it. "Just be here with me. Don't invite them in where they're not welcome."

He smiled. He cupped my hand in his and pulled my thumb out of his mouth, slow and filthy. The heat from his kisses cut straight to my core, but I thought now, at least, perhaps I could gather up the wits that he had scrambled so effortlessly and figure out where I had meant this conversation to go. But Bansi didn't release me, didn't give me any space to recall myself. He only pressed a kiss to center of my palm and murmured against my skin, "You always make things sound so simple, Ren. Sometimes I wish I could see the world the way you do."

It took me a moment to find my voice. His lips and breath and tongue on the skin of my palm were even more exquisite than they had been on the pad of my thumb. "Only sometimes?"

His mouth stretched and pulled into something that was neither smile nor frown, but caught somewhere between the two. "Sometimes," he said, "it seems a very limiting way to live."

I huffed out a sharp breath. "I do so love it when you insult me. Go on, do it again."

Absurdly, that, at last, was what made Bansi's face break into a true, broad grin. It was blinding, exhilarating. I couldn't help the way my heart tripped and sped at the sight of it. 

Bansi slid an arm around the small of my back and drew me in until our bodies were pressed flush together. He kissed me lightly, little more than a tease. "You do love it, I think," he murmured. His lips curved on mine. "It drives you wild faster than just about anything else I've found."

I frowned and smoothed my hands over his cheeks. "Stop," I said against his mouth, into his kiss. "Just stop."

He gentled under my touch. His sharp grin softened. His chest shuddered when I lapped my tongue over his lower lip. He sighed against my mouth like a man releasing the weight of the world from his shoulders. When he clasped a hand on the back of my neck, I shivered at the strength in his grip, the easy surety of it. I leaned my forehead against his, gasping into the space between us that was still warm and intimate from our breath. "Ban."

His lips curved a moment before he opened his eyes. "Hmm?"

"You'd think, if you were going to pay such an exorbitant sum for a house, it would at least come with floors that didn't feel like you were sitting on a slab of rock. Aren't you rich folk all about your comforts and luxuries?"

He laughed and tightened his arm around my back, pulling me closer. He nuzzled against my throat, lips warm on my skin, breath warmer. "You want comfort and luxury, is that what you're saying?" He kept his grip on the back of my neck, brushed his thumb up and down the side of my throat with long, lazy sweeps. "You? Here I thought you were the very model of austerity."

"Insults and mockery? Better and better." I shut my eyes and leaned against the pressure of his hand at the back of my neck. "It's a wonder I was ever able to resist you in the first place."

He chuckled, hot, sharp gusts of breath against my skin. "I don't recall resistance." His hand at the small of my back slipped beneath the hem of my shirt. His fingers traced hot tracks across my skin, meandering patterns that cascaded over the knobs of my spine. "I recall you being stupid in love with me from the moment we met."

"There you go with the insults again." I opened my eyes. He was so close he filled my vision, and I had to work to keep him in focus. "I thought you were rich and spoiled and too full of nonsense for your own good."

His lips curved. "Oh, Ren, don't flatter me so. It'll go to my head." He nuzzled against my throat again. "And now what do you think of me?"

"About the same, to tell the truth."

Bansi laughed like he was delighted. He tightened his arm around my back and pulled me into his lap. His lips pulled at my skin, drawing blood to the surface and sending ribbons of heat curling down into my stomach. His hands slipped to my hips, bracketed them and drew me in firmly. He kissed the side of my throat, the hollow beneath my jaw, the soft spot behind my ear. "You say the nicest things, Renad."

"Yes, well, it's just my nature."

His lips curved on my skin. I felt the press of his teeth, followed shortly by a slight flare of pain as he nipped at my earlobe. "Come to bed with me, Ren," he murmured, close and earnest there against my ear. "You will, won't you?"

His gentle teasing was kindling to the heat his kisses and touches sent through me. It had caught and smoldered as we bantered, and now it felt poised on the edge of danger, ready to flare back to life even higher and hotter.

It wouldn't do to tell him that, though. I shrugged and feigned indifference, an insouciant expression. "I suppose I could be persuaded."

Bansi barked a sharp laugh. His grip on my hips tightened, lifting me with him as he rose to his feet. "Ah, there's that ego-stroking again. You do know how to sweet-talk a man."

I grinned and closed my hands on his shoulders, tightened my legs around his hips and hooked my ankles at his back. I kissed him, fierce, firm presses of my lips to his, then drew back between each to laugh or grin or whisper more teasing words into his ear.

He carried me down the hall, shouldered open a door, then swore when it led us into a barren room filled with only a few scattered trunks. I muffled my laughter against his shoulder, then, since I was there, dug my teeth into the solid curve of muscle. "Bansi. Did you lose your bed?"

"Hush," he muttered. I drew back, and grinned at the sight of him scowling, his brow twisted with consternation.

"You did, didn't you?"

"It's a new house," he said. "I was sure I told them to put the bed in this room."

"Mmhmm." I loosened my legs around his waist and twisted against his grip. "Let me down, I'll help you find your way."

"You're a cruel man, Renad," he said, but loosened his hold on me anyway. I slid down and out of his hands, but let my fingers trail down his arm until his hand was in mine. I threaded our fingers together and led him out of the empty room, back into the corridor. 

He tolerated it with an indulgent smile and a roll of his eyes, timed for when he knew I was looking at him, lest I fail to recognize his feelings on the matter. 

We found the bedroom eventually, mostly through luck and persistence. "You know, this wouldn't happen if you didn't insist on a home with a dozen rooms," I teased, shooting him a sharp grin.

"I think I'll survive," he said, dry and droll. And before I could voice a retort, he lifted me up, ignoring my shouts of surprise and insincere protest. He carried me the four long strides to the bed -- "We'd be in bed already if you'd bought a house with proper sized rooms," I said, or started to say, until he silenced me with a kiss -- then dropped me down upon it.

I had my hands curled on fistfuls of his clothes and pulled him down with me. The weight of him landing across me knocked the breath from my lungs, and the way he twisted on top of me until we were lined up and he could get his mouth to mine and claim it in a kiss -- that kept them parched of it.

His shirt was made of the finest linen, prized for its softness and supple hand, and still it irritated me when I dragged my touch down from his neck and my fingertips met fabric instead of heated skin. The finest linen it may have been, but it felt coarse as tree bark compared to the smooth curves of muscles that I wanted under my hands.

I rolled him over, a luxury only possible because of the vastness of his bed. He fought like he didn't want it, but when I had him spread on his back, straddling his hips and pinning his shoulders to the bed with a hand spread in the middle of his chest, he grinned up at me like it was he who'd won the prize.

The urge to touch him was a compulsion, and I was far too weak to resist. I wrestled his shirt up and off, tossed it aside without a care for tidiness because he was bared from the waist up and the sight of all that skin drew me in like a moth to candle's flame. I had to touch, to kiss, to taste. I curved my hands over his shoulders, then drew both down over his chest, along his ribs, across his stomach.

Bansi hissed air through his teeth and arched as my touch moved lower. I took advantage of it to curve my hands around the narrowest part of his waist. I pulled him up, into an even sharper curve, and held him at the perfect angle so that when I rocked forward, my hips dragged against his.

The smile vanished from Bansi's face as he threw his head back and gasped. I laughed, delighted to have found myself wielding such power, and did it again. He shuddered beneath me, a hard, tight tremor with a groan on his lips.

I grinned down at him. I could have done this all night and counted myself satisfied. But to someone who knew him as well as I, the slack lines of his jaw and the way he flung an arm over his eyes were obvious signs that I'd already herded him too close to the precipice. If I pushed him too hard or too fast, I'd only defeat the purpose in seeking this out in the first place.

But oh, how I wanted to. I wanted to push him over and watch him fall. I wanted that ingrained upon my memory forever.

I eased back, loosened my hands on his waist and let him sink down onto the bed again. I stroked his stomach while he shuddered and twitched, soothing him, humming lightly for the sheer pleasure of being here with him like this.

"You are a cruel man," he said at length, sliding his arm off of his eyes and gazing up at me. His brows wrinkled. "What are you thinking about up there, Ren?"

"You." I grazed my thumb over the edge of his navel. His skin shivered beneath my touch.

A brilliant smile broke across his face. "Oh, are you."

"Don't be smug, Ban." I shifted back so I could lean down and press kisses to the flat planes of his stomach. "It doesn't suit you." 

"Of course it does." His fingers slid through my hair. His fingers pressed firmly into my scalp, a delicious pressure that made my lips curve on his skin. "It's my natural state."

I laughed, sharp and amused, and scraped my teeth across his abdomen. "That is certainly true." I grazed my lips down, beyond his navel. His trousers were low-slung, clinging to the sharp edges of his hip bones. The skin there was soft and smooth, covered in a fine dusting of hairs that poured together into a narrow line that led me down farther, until it disappeared behind the waistband of his trousers. 

I bit and lipped at the line where cloth met skin, until Bansi was writhing beneath me making sharp, eager noises in the back of his throat. I grasped him by the hips and held him flat to the bed, teased him for just a moment longer until he gasped, "Gods and devils, Renad, have mercy."

I grinned and bit at him once more, then pulled at the ties at the front of his trousers. The knot slid free slowly. When the last loop popped free, Bansi growled a hungry, incomprehensible noise and pushed his hips off the bed and into my hands.

"Greedy." I clicked my tongue at him as I slid my thumbs under the waist of his trousers and eased them down, slow enough to torment. I kissed his skin as I revealed it, left it flushed and warm before I moved on to the next stretch.

"Eager," he corrected, and bit off a groan when I dragged my tongue down that trickle of hair. "And tormented, you bastard."

I looked up at him, up the long line of his body to the glorious sight of his head tossed back upon the pillow, face turned to the side, hair disheveled and cheeks flushed, worrying his lip between his teeth. I kept my gaze on him as I bent and licked his skin again, watched his tongue slide out to wet his lips. "Should I stop?"

"Don't you dare. Gods."

I hummed against his skin and slid his trousers down even further, over the curves of his hips. The head of his cock lay against his stomach, flushed with blood and beading moisture at its tip.

My desire to tease -- and yes, to torment -- vanished. I wanted only one thing. I wanted him. I touched the tip of my tongue to the drop of moisture. Bitter salt burst across my tongue, and my groan mingled with Bansi's in the hot, close air between us.

"Renad. Are you--" His voice was urgent, strained. I bent over him and took the head of his cock in my mouth. I circled my tongue around his flesh for the way I knew it would make him shudder, make his breath catch and his voice break. "Gods. You're a wicked man, Ren."

I lapped the ridge of flesh that joined head to shaft and pulled his trousers the rest of the way off of his hips, freeing his cock from their restraint. He tasted like salt and sweat and man. I traced his veins with my tongue and moaned around him. Gods. It had been so long. I'd forgotten how heady this was, how intimate.

The smell of skin and sweat in my lungs, the weight of him on my tongue, the tremble of his thigh beneath my palm. I swallowed him to the root, fighting for breath and loving the burn in my lungs.

Bansi moaned and gasped at my attentions. His hands shifted restlessly across the bed, grasped fistfuls of the new linens and wrenched at them, just to release and seek purchase again. When I dragged my tongue up the underside of his cock, from base to tip in one long, wet glide, his hands spasmed, springing open only to close on empty air. He lost the breath from his lungs all at once, a sharp exhale like he'd been punched.

I grinned and focused my attentions on the flared head, dark and hot with blood, while my fingers stroked over his shaft.

He trembled beneath me, his back arcing off the covers like a bow. His moans filled my ears like music, heady and sweet. I wet my lips with my tongue, then slid them across the head of his cock, slick and deliberately designed to make him gasp. When he shuddered, I parted my lips and took him into my mouth, and made him shudder again.

He released his grip on the blankets and reached for me instead. His hands cupped the back of my head, fingers spearing into my hair to press warm and strong against my scalp. His thumbs moved restlessly, brushing along my hairline, skimming my temples, tracing the angle of my cheekbones. He brushed them over the corners of my eyes and let out a little, trembling breath. He stared at me like a man who'd found his god, and I had to turn my gaze away. I had to pull back and press my face against his thigh, with its coarse hair and firm muscles and just breathe, shuddering and overwhelmed.

I didn't know what I'd ever done to make him look at me like that. I didn't know if I wanted it, and I seriously doubted whether I deserved it.

"Ren," he breathed. His hands slipped down to the back of my neck. He tucked his thumbs beneath my jaw and tried to tip my face up to his. "Come here. Come up here."

I came, drawn like a moth to the inferno that would be his brilliant, inevitable doom. He urged me all the way up, guided me into a kiss that bypassed teasing and went straight for deep, slick, stripped-to-the-bone intimacy. It only made me feel even more unsteadied, even more like the ground was quaking apart beneath my feet and the only thing around to hold on to was Bansi, strong and solid and terrifying.

When he wrapped an arm around my shoulders and dragged me down, I half expected him to roll and put me beneath him. My heart pounded in anticipation of it, and I waited for the moment, the brief disorientation followed by the weight of him above me, bearing me down and centering me. 

He didn't. He wrapped me in his arms and hooked his leg over mine, but he stayed on his back beneath me and all he did was kiss me, kiss me like he wanted to drown in it, like it was the only thing worthwhile. I trembled in his arms and wished he would. 

It was always easier that way. It was so much simpler, when I was on hands and knees or my stomach or bent over the nearest flat surface and he was above me, behind me, pressing the air out of my lungs as he filled me up and took me apart. I could press my face into the blankets, or the counter or table or whatever I had found myself pressed against this time, and shut my eyes and breathe and stay centered.

That was impossible, like this. He dominated every sense, skimming his hands over my skin and filling my lungs with the scent of him and just lying there before me, filling my vision until I felt like I'd been unraveled at the seams. I didn't feel bound and centered and whole, I felt expansive, too big for my own skin, nebulous and impossible to constrain.

It was disarming, and I wasn't entirely sure that I enjoyed the sensation. I wished he would have done as I'd expected of him, and rolled me over, and made this easy.

But he'd never been one for that, had he? It had always been me, pushing him away so I could flip onto my stomach and urge him to fuck me. He had always been the one wanting it like this, face-to-face, and it had been I who denied him. It was too intimate, too close, too much like what we'd used to have, like what we'd lost.

I should have done it now. I should have pulled back and put myself on my stomach and urged him to fill me up, as hard and as fast as he was able. It had been so simple, all those other times. A reflex as natural as breathing. But now, he held me close and kissed me and it made something in my chest hurt so keenly that I couldn't do it. I couldn't break this connection that we'd forged between us, a thread binding us together and pulling us closer.

I ended the kiss, but didn't draw away. I slid my lips across his cheek, up the line of his jaw to the soft bit of skin behind his ear, and murmured there, "Ban. Do you want me to fuck you?"

I knew his answer already, knew it in the way he shuddered beneath me and his hands tightened, pressing bruises into my skin. His breath hitched as he dropped his head back, baring the column of his throat to me. "Yes. Yes. Gods, Ren. I've wanted--"

I returned my mouth to his and cut him off. His kiss was ravenous now, sharp and eager. I smoothed one hand down his side. His hip was sharp beneath my palm. I wanted this as much as he did. I wanted to feel him beneath me, wanted to open him up and fill him, wanted the feel of him surrounding me. I wanted to grasp his hips in my hands and drive into him until neither of us could breathe any longer. I wanted everything, with a renewed ferocity that scared me a little.

"Ban," I breathed against his mouth, and drew back until our lips were just grazing. It took an effort to open my eyes and look down on him. When he blinked his eyes open and returned my gaze, he looked drugged. His lips were parted, begging me to return for another kiss. "Please tell me you remember where you packed the oil."

His gaze went unfocused and blank for a moment, vaguely panicked.

I groaned and dropped my head against his shoulder. "Really? Bansi, I may just kill you." I kissed the skin my face was pressed against. "Fair warning."

"No, no. It's here." He scrambled out from underneath me, left me sitting alone in the middle of the bed feeling the ache of the distance between us. He fumbled with the drawer to his bedside table, cursed violently beneath his breath in his native language, then made a sound of victory as he drew out a little stoppered bottle.

"See?" He smiled brilliantly as he climbed back into bed. "I knew I'd packed it somewhere clever."

I hummed my appreciation as he handed the bottle over to me, smiling a little. As soon as his hands were free, he hooked them around the back of my neck and pulled me to him. "Come back here," he said, sinking down onto his back and drawing me with him. "I liked what we were doing."

I let him push and prod me until we were positioned as near to how we'd been before as it was possible to be. But then I pulled my hand out from under his guiding touch and hooked it beneath his thigh instead. "Are you sure about that?" I asked him as I drew his leg up over my hip, making room for me to settle in against him. My cock slid against his stomach, and when I tightened my grip beneath his knee and adjusted the angle of his hips beneath mine, it slipped back and glided through the cleft of his ass, the head grazing against Bansi's entrance.

He dropped back against the pillow, gaping at the ceiling above us. "I suppose I could be persuaded," he gasped.

I rocked against him once more and he dropped the pretense of teasing, shut his eyes and breathed, "Gods, Ren, please," like an oath, or a prayer.

I slid back, kneeling between his thighs, and thumbed the stopper out of the bottle with one hand. Bansi watched me from where he lay sprawled, his gaze hooded and burning where it touched me. I had to look away as I dripped a puddle of oil into my palm and wet my fingers in it, lest my hands turn unsteady from the intensity of his attention.

He spread his knees apart without a word from me, planting his heels in the bed to bring his hips to a better angle. I laid the back of my oil-filled hand against the inside of his thigh, trying to calm him as I pressed the tip of one slick finger against his entrance. This was never going to work if he was too excited to relax for me.

We had long practice with this, though, he and I. At the first touch, he filled his lungs with a deep breath, then let it out slowly. Some of the tension in him went with it, and I was able to press and work the end of my finger into him.

I could hear his breaths, each one coming heavy and rapid, and the way their rhythm hitched and changed as I touched him. His hands moved across the blankets, slowly curling shut and then unfurling again. I watched his face closely as I made small movements inside him, pressing against the ring of muscle and trying to ease it open.

"What's this?" He was trying to tease, I could tell, but he was too tense for that, too. His voice just ended up coming out strangled. "Are you being gentle with me, Renad? I never thought I'd live to see the day."

His jibe made me flush. "I'm being careful," I said quietly. "And you shouldn't mock me if you want me to stay that way."

He gave a short, breathless laugh. "Maybe I don't." He shifted, pushing his hips up toward me as though he could drive the pace that way. His toes curled in the sheets. "Gods. I've waited so long. Don't make me wait any longer."

I clicked my tongue at him in feigned scorn. "I've barely started. If you're this impatient already--"

"I don't mean now," he said, sudden and sharp. "You know I don't mean tonight."

I did, but I'd have liked it if he'd allowed the pretense. I sighed and worked my finger in deeper, past the first knuckle. "You never did learn the meaning of patience. It would do you a world of good."

Bansi's tongue worked over his lips. His mouth moved in silence for a moment before he was able to form words. "Some day," he said, gasping between words, "I shall teach you the joy of possessing the things you most desire. But for now--" He groaned and clenched around me. "Gods. Move."

I smiled a little and did as he asked, because that was the closest he and I had ever come to talking about that subject without fighting over it, and it put me in a mood to rejoice.

Slower than Bansi would have liked, but faster than I preferred, I worked my finger in up to the next knuckle, and then the third, pressed so deep I had to curl my other fingers against my palm and I could feel the wave-like contractions of his muscles around me.

I slid my finger out, then, and ignored his cries of protest. He always did this, always wanted to have everything the minute he desired it, and had no concept of delaying gratification now for a greater return later. I uncurled a second finger to press against my first, and pushed them into him, and tried to show him.

I didn't know how it was possible that I'd forgotten how impatient he could be, but somehow I had. I found myself surprised anew by the way he twisted and growled beneath me, how he pushed down against me when I didn't move fast enough for his liking. It made me dizzy, made the breath come thick and slow in my lungs.

It had been so long since we'd been together like this. Since I'd been willing to give in this way, instead of just taking. Years. He liked to ask me to fuck him, but I hadn't relented, not once since he'd returned. And before... that had been a different world, and we different people in it. It seemed like magic, the way this transported me back there, and it felt just the same.

I stretched out onto my stomach and leaned my cheek against Bansi's thigh, watching where his flesh met mine, where I disappeared within him. He stretched to accommodate my two fingers, and stretched even tighter when I slid a third in beside them.

"Ban," I said suddenly, surprised by my revelation. "How long?"

"How long what?" He caught his lower lip with his teeth and dragged it between them. "How long have you been tormenting me like this? An eternity, I'm sure. How long has--"

I turned my head and bit at his thigh. "How long has it been?" I twisted my fingers inside him. "Since you've done this?"

He slid his elbows beneath him and pushed his back up off the mattress enough to stare down at me. "I've lost count," he said after too long a silence. "But you should know as well as I do. You were there."

The meaning of it, as it settled on me, stole the breath from my lungs. I stared up at him, too shocked to speak for a long moment. "No one?" I said. "No one, since--"

"No," he said, and shut his eyes, as though that were the end of it. As though the truth of it hadn't hit me like a stone lobbed into a pond, sending ripples out far and wide.

I had been celibate after Bansi had left because I had been too busy to be otherwise, because there had been Leisl to take care of, and then Elodie, and the shop to run, and there was no time left to squeeze out of the day. But Bansi had been the one who left. He had gone, and he had married, and it had never occurred to me that he wouldn't have sought this out for himself, in the intervening years. "Why--"

"Gods above. We can talk about this later, if you like." He squeezed his eyes shut and twisted against me. "You may pepper me with questions until your every curiosity has been satisfied. But devils, Ren, not now."

I nodded dumbly, then felt foolish for it, for he couldn't see me with his eyes squeezed shut as they were. So I kissed him behind his knee, to reassure him, and let the pressure of his muscles constricting around me push my fingers out of him.

He didn't even protest this time, just opened his eyes and watched me as I got up onto my knees and poured oil into my palm again. He took an audible breath when I closed my hand around my cock and slicked the oil over it.

"Renad," he murmured, his voice low and warm and rumbling. "Gods, you're a sight."

I crawled over him, letting my body slide against his. I trailed my oiled hand across his chest, leaving a gleaming trail in its wake. And when I lowered myself to him, it was with his hips tipped up to mine and the head of my cock pressing against his entrance. No more teasing this time, no torment. The heat of him licked over me and a shiver ran down my spine.

He framed my face in his hands and held my gaze as I pushed into him. I couldn't have looked away even if I'd wanted to, but I was shaken to realize that it was the last thing I desired. There was something miraculous about the way that every movement I made reflected in his face. I flexed my hips, pushing against him and bearing him open, and his breath caught, his lips parted, his eyelids fluttered before he forced them open again.

I lowered myself slowly, leaning in by degrees until we were breathing in the same warm air. I pressed my mouth to his as the head of my cock slipped into him, and was uncertain whether it was his lips or mine that trembled. 

This close to one another, it hardly seemed to matter. Everything was shared.

Bansi hooked his leg over mine and tried to pull me in closer, deeper. "More," he breathed as he shuddered beneath my hands. "Gods, Renad, I need you in me."

Need. Just the sentiment of it was almost enough to undo me. I pushed in deeper, and had to groan at the hot clench of his muscles around me. He felt as though he'd burn me up, just from this. Just from the connection between us.

I pushed in again, driven by that heat and by the strangled sounds Bansi was making beneath me. His brow was already beaded with sweat. I brushed drops of it away with the backs of my fingers, then leaned down and kissed him, open-mouthed and deep.

He moaned against my mouth. I swallowed the sound of it and felt the way it shuddered between us, reaching down into the very heart of me. I buried my fingers in his hair and pulled his mouth against mine, and when he grabbed at my hips, I rocked into him again, and again, and didn't stop until he'd taken me to the hilt, and we were joined as thoroughly as it was possible for two people to be.

"Move," he breathed against my lips, a low, urgent sound. "Move. Please. I need--"

I moved, watching the pleasure and frustration flicker across his face as I rocked back and slid out of him. He swept his tongue restlessly over his lips, caught them between his teeth and bit them until they were flushed and swollen. And then I paused, with only the head of my cock still inside him, and tipped his chin up and waited until he blinked his eyes open again, looking vaguely surprised, like he hadn't even realized he'd closed them. And only then, with our gazes locked on each other's, did I shift my weight forward and slide back inside him.

He made a broken sound like a sob and grabbed at me, fingers biting into my shoulders. I turned my head and kissed his wrist and the inside of his forearm as I set a lazy pace, working in and out of him slowly, so I could watch him with every move that I made.

The air grew hot and thick around us as we moved together. Need pulled the muscles in my stomach tight and some deep, primal instinct urged me to go faster, to fuck him harder. Perhaps it was simply that same part of me that had always pushed Bansi away and coaxed him to fuck me from behind, so I could take my pleasure in him but give no more than my body in return.

I resisted it, and kissed Bansi until pleasure hummed through my veins so loud that it drowned that voice out. This was slow, and intense, and more than a little terrifying, but the thrill of riding that edge was exhilarating, and the connection filled some secret space inside me that I hadn't even known had been left empty and wanting.

When I came, it was with a low moan and my lips pressed to the side of Bansi's throat and a trembling that ran through the whole length of my body until every muscle in me was shuddering and warm and suffused with pleasure. I sank down into Ban's arms, shivering from more than just the sweat cooling on my skin.

He held me close and breathed quietly against my ear, and when I had recovered myself enough to move, I worked a hand between us and grasped his cock, and pulled him off with strokes that were just as long and lazy as the rest of our lovemaking had been. 

He came easily, with just half a dozen strokes of my hand. His back arched off the bed and his breath gusted out of his lungs, hard and sharp. I stroked him through it, smearing his seed across my fingers and the flat of his stomach. And when at last he sank back down onto the bed with an unsteady sigh, I leaned my cheek against his chest and listened to his heartbeat pound against my ear, slowly calming its frantic race.

He grazed a light touch up my back and across my shoulder, making me shiver against him. When he shifted beneath me, I thought he would make me dislodge so he could go find a rag and clean himself up. But all he did was catch the corner of the blanket and pull it over me, over us. 

I shut my eyes as the warmth sank into my bones. "Stay," Bansi murmured, his lips tickling across my temple as he wrapped his arms around me. "Please, just stay."

I couldn't, not as long as he wanted, but warmth and replete exhaustion overtook me before I could tell him so, and I drifted to sleep in the circle of his arms.