Threadbound, p.30
Threadbound, page 30
The pants were loose enough that Bran easily pushed them off Jamie’s hips, leaving him completely exposed.
Jamie had been naked in front of a lover before, but it somehow felt different this time, more raw, more real. Bran made a soft humming sound, then dropped to his knees, his hands on the bare skin of Jamie’s outer thighs.
Jamie gasped as Bran rubbed a cheek against the inside of his thigh, one hand coming down to grasp the fae’s feathery hair.
“Shit, sorry.” Jamie loosened his fingers.
“Dinna apologize,” Bran murmured, his breath teasing at the hypersensitive skin of Jamie’s half-hard cock.
“I don’t—” Jamie was having a hard time focusing. “Don’t want to hurt you.”
Bran chuckled, the sound surprisingly husky and rich. “You willna hurt me by doing that.”
Something about the way he said it sent tingles running through Jamie’s veins, and he let his fingers rest on Bran’s hair again. Bran hummed once more, one hand sliding around Jamie’s hip to guide his cock so that Bran could run his tongue over it.
Jamie’s fingers tightened involuntarily in Bran’s hair, and the fae hummed again, then took Jamie’s erection into the heat and wet of his mouth.
“Bran,” Jamie groaned.
Another hum, this one sending shivers through Jamie’s whole body. And then Jamie stopped being able to think as Bran rolled a tongue that didn’t feel quite human in the best possible way around Jamie’s length, tugging and swirling, with the slightest hint of teeth making Jamie’s hands tighten involuntarily in Bran’s hair.
Bran’s fingers tightened on Jamie’s hips, pulling his body closer, carefully buffed talons digging into Jamie’s skin, but not breaking it, sending little electric currents of almost-but-not-quite-pain straight to Jamie’s balls.
Bran sucked him harder, and Jamie pushed his hips forward, pulling Bran’s skull closer, chasing the heat and pressure of his mouth. Bran’s hands gripped tighter, something that might have been a groan or a growl thrumming from the back of his throat and nearly sending Jamie over the edge.
“Bran, I can’t—”
But it seemed that Bran wasn’t particularly interested in stopping him, instead gripping Jamie’s ass in his hands and then scraping his talons around from buttocks to hips.
Jamie cried out, his fingers forming fists in Bran’s hair as he pumped himself forward, releasing in a rush down Bran’s throat.
He almost apologized again, but then Bran rolled him around his tongue one more time, as though trying to make sure he caught every drop, and Jamie’s knees nearly buckled. Only his hands on Bran’s head kept him upright.
Unsteady, Jamie sagged back against the window ledge, blue eyes wide as he looked down at Bran, still on his knees.
Still dressed, Jamie noticed, although it was abundantly clear from the front of his trousers that he had enjoyed what he’d just done to Jamie.
That sinful pink tongue flickered over his lips, and Jamie’s breath caught in his chest. He released Bran’s hair and held out his hands.
It took Bran a moment before he realized that Jamie wanted to help him stand, and he slid his fingers into Jamie’s offered palms, allowing the half-breed to pull him to his feet, although his legs trembled a little, and Jamie’s hands slid to his elbows, tightening.
“Are you okay?” he asked, a frown once more marring his features.
“Aye,” Bran answered, although he was a little breathless.
Dahud-Ahes help him, he wasn’t exactly inexperienced, but Jamie did something to him that he didn’t understand.
Jamie’s big, warm hands pulled him closer, and Bran tilted his head back to allow Jamie to bend and bring their lips together. And then he groaned as Jamie once again took possession of his mouth, his tongue probing as his hands moved to the small of Bran’s back, pulling their bodies tightly together.
Impatient and needing to feel Jamie’s skin against his own, Bran flicked the fingers of one hand, easily dispensing with the irritation that was his clothing, and Jamie pulled back sharply with a laugh.
“If it was that easy, why bother with all the buttons?”
“I dinna want to scare you,” he murmured, dropping his eyes.
“For future reference,” Jamie told him, using one hand to capture Bran’s chin to tilt his head back up. “You can do that any time you like.” And then his lips were on Bran’s again, one hand still holding his jaw, the other pulling them together with pressure on the small of Bran’s back.
The feel of Jamie’s skin, soft and warm, against his own, the feel of Jamie’s muscled thigh pressing against his hot and rigid arousal, the heat of Jamie’s mouth, the pressure of his hand against Bran’s spine…
He moaned into their kiss, needing more of all of it.
When Jamie broke away from their kiss, Bran felt weak—not with sickness, but need.
“Jamie—” His name was half-breath, half-prayer.
Jamie’s hands, both of them, grasped the back of Bran’s thighs, lifting him up and holding him tightly.
Two steps, and Bran found himself on his back on Jamie’s bed, Jamie’s body covering him, his mouth once again captured by Jamie’s kiss.
He tangled his fingers in Jamie’s blond hair, scraping talons against Jamie’s scalp and swallowing the groan that slipped from Jamie’s lips to his own.
Bran sucked air into his lungs as Jamie began to trail kisses down the side of his neck, then over his shoulder as Jamie took one of Bran’s hands and lifted it, following a line—one kiss at a time—past his elbow, down his forearm, and out to his palm. Bran could feel his eyes widen as he watched Jamie cup his hand, then place a kiss on each inhuman finger.
There was no hesitation, no hint in Jamie’s body language or expression that he found Bran at all disturbing or repulsive.
Jamie noticed him staring. “Is—is this okay?”
Bran nodded, his voice gone. Instead, he reached out with his other hand to run the backs of his fingers down Jamie’s fair sun-kissed cheek, and Jamie turned his attention to that hand, capturing it and repeating the same pattern, except in reverse, beginning with Bran’s fingers and slowly trailing kisses up his arm until his lips were once again on Bran’s throat.
And then he began to work his way downward, over Bran’s sternum, his fingertips sliding over ribs and hips as he pressed kiss after kiss across Bran’s chest and stomach, the muscles clenching as lips and tongue found the hollows of his hipbones, first one, then the other.
Bran could hear his own breath rasping as he watched Jamie press his legs wider, hands skimming down Bran’s thighs, to his knees, then calves, then over the thicker knuckles and digits of his taloned toes.
The foot Jamie was caressing flexed of its own accord, Bran’s toes wrapping around Jamie’s fingers and drawing a half-smile. Bran’s heart skipped a beat as he watched Jamie’s face, the curve of his lips as he ran his fingers over Bran’s taloned foot and calf.
For all his terror the first time Jamie had seen Bran shift forms, it was obvious that Jamie harbored no disgust or fear of Bran now, even in his fae form, talons, feathers, and all.
Lugh damn it all, I’m in trouble. The irony of a prayer to the god of tricksters was not lost on him, even as Bran recognized that this was the one thing he’d so desperately wanted and against which he’d fought so very hard.
But then Jamie’s hands were working their way back up his legs, and Bran stopped thinking as Jamie’s fingers started exploring somewhere much more sensitive than his feet.
His toes curled again, this time in the bedclothes, as Jamie bent, pushing Bran’s thighs wider, to run his tongue from the base of Bran’s erection to its tip, the dark mottled grey of his cock a stark contrast to Jamie’s fair skin. And then Jamie closed his lips around Bran’s arousal, and Bran let his head fall back, fingers and toes both fisting in the fabric beneath him, his hips pressing upward, seeking more of Jamie’s mouth.
Jamie couldn’t get enough of him, couldn’t pull Bran deep enough into his throat, couldn’t run his hands over enough skin, couldn’t breathe in enough of the earthy stone-and-sea-spray scent of Bran’s body. Beneath him, Bran’s back arched, pushing higher, and Jamie opened the back of his throat, drawing in as much as he could take, his lips against Bran’s body and his nose pressed into Bran’s smooth lower stomach.
He heard Bran’s breath catch as he sucked in sharply, and Jamie increased the motion of his head, wanting—no, needing to feel Bran lose control.
When he did let go, it was Jamie who moaned around the pulsing throb of Bran’s orgasm, swallowing convulsively and tasting a hint of sea salt on the very back of his tongue. As he let Bran slip from his mouth, the fae shuddered, and his hands slid into Jamie’s hair, gently stroking as Jamie crawled back up his body.
When he could look into Bran’s burning green eyes, Jamie paused, leaning on one elbow so that he could brush a feathered lock of black hair from Bran’s forehead. Bran pulled him down for a kiss that lingered, lazy and slow, a kiss in which he could taste the bitter salt of himself on the back of Bran’s tongue and knew from the sound Bran made that the fae could also taste himself on Jamie’s.
Jamie had no intention of stopping the kiss, or stopping what his hands were doing as they slid down Bran’s sides, the warmth of his skin, still cooler than Jamie’s, and its odd, slightly pebbled texture. There was no hair on him, Jamie realized as his hands wandered, stroking and smoothing. Except for the feathery dark strands on his head. Instead, his skin itself shifted hues, dark in some places, greyish and mottled in others, and a creamy ivory in still other places—his throat, his stomach, his face. The texture of his skin shifted, too—rougher in the darker places, smoother in the lighter ones.
And Jamie wanted to touch all of them.
Beneath him, he felt Bran shift, spreading his legs wider to give Jamie space to settle between them. Space Jamie was more than happy to take, the feel of Bran’s slightly-cooler skin drawing him in as he carefully leaned his weight into Bran’s body.
“I—”
“You willna hurt me this way, either,” the fae interrupted him. Jamie felt his lips curving in a lopsided smile as he leaned in close enough that Bran’s fingers could thread into his hair and pull him into another searing kiss.
All the times he’d fantasized about Bran—both before he knew Bran’s name and after—he’d only managed to think of the human body Bran wore in the human world. Of course, Jamie couldn’t have imagined anything else, but the things that were the most intoxicating about Bran were the things that weren’t quite human—the texture of his skin and hair, the slightly cool temperature of his body against Jamie’s, the way his totally inhuman toes curled in the blankets. The way he tasted just a little bit of sea-salt brine and stone.
The way the talons on his fingers sent electric shivers through Jamie’s whole body.
“Sorry,” the fae breathed, flatting out the hand that had just traced thin talon-lines down Jamie’s back.
“Don’t be,” Jamie replied. “You can do that anytime you like.”
Bran made a small sound of amusement, then did it again. Even knowing it was coming, Jamie couldn’t stop the delicious shiver that rippled through his frame.
His body had decided that it wanted Bran’s, and even though he just came, his cock was more than half-hard again. And so was Bran’s.
Jamie took advantage of the opportunity to explore the feeling of Bran’s cock in his hand, the rippled texture of his skin and the different shape of him. Bran let out a soft hiss, his eyes closing as Jamie stroked him back to full hardness, his own erection responding the same.
“Jamie,” the fae murmured.
“Yeah?”
Bran sucked in a breath as Jamie pumped his fist around Bran’s arousal. “Ach. The flowers.”
“The… flowers?” He kept stroking Bran, although his rhythm faltered a little, worried Bran wasn’t as interested as his body seemed to be.
“Aye,” Bran half-groaned. “Pull one of them off.”
It was a weird request, but Jamie leaned away from Bran and did as he asked, his longer arms easily able to reach one of the heavy crimson blooms. Bran took it from him, turning the flower so that the curved base of the blossom rested against his palm. Then he squeezed it gently with his other hand, and a thick, gelatinous substance oozed out onto Bran’s hand.
Oh.
Bran offered his palm to Jamie. “I’d like to feel you inside me,” the fae murmured, and Jamie’s throat went dry, his heart pounding in his throat even as his cock twitched.
“Okay,” was all he managed to actually say, running two fingers through the jelly so that he could prepare Bran’s body.
Bran was warmer inside than out, the ring of muscle tight against Jamie’s finger as he gently pressed his way in. Bran’s head was thrown back, his hands spread across the bed-covers, green eyes closed as Jamie gently pressed deeper, then drew back, then pressed inward again, stretching, teasing.
“Jamie.”
“Yeah?”
“More.”
Jamie added a second finger, the tightness of Bran’s muscle making his breath catch as he contemplated what it might feel—
“More,” the fae repeated, his voice breathy.
“I don—”
“You willna hurt me,” Bran told him, opening those vibrant emerald eyes.
It was Bran who reached out, more of the flower-gel on his hands, and stroked Jamie’s erection, slicking him.
Breathing out slowly, Jamie pushed Bran’s legs back, tilting his hips to create the right angle, lining himself up and then carefully, gently beginning to push.
“More,” Bran rasped.
Jamie pushed deeper, gasping at the feel of Bran’s raw strength around him. Somehow this—his body joined with Bran’s, the tightness of him enveloping Jamie’s awareness—drove home Bran’s utterly inhuman strength in a way nothing else had. Not when, injured and bleeding, Bran had crushed a man’s—no, a fae’s—windpipe. Not his ability to fight his way free from Jamie’s arms while bleeding. Not when he’d forced himself to shift forms while dying.
Simply the feel of his body around Jamie’s highly sensitive cock—the fact that Bran could easily, if he ever so chose, simply snap Jamie’s neck or spine was so absolutely crystal clear…
It should have scared him.
It did something else entirely.
Buried deep in Bran’s powerful yet slender body, Jamie bent forward, leaning his weight against Bran’s legs until he could touch his forehead to Bran’s.
Taloned hands slid up his arms and around his shoulders.
“More,” Bran breathed against his lips, and Jamie obeyed, slowly pulsing his hips, rocking his body against Bran’s, moving only a few inches at a time at most.
Jamie felt oddly disconnected from himself while at the same time being so very grounded in the feeling of Bran’s skin, the pressure of his body, the lines traced on his skin by Bran’s smooth talons. His own head felt funny, like the gasping breaths he was using weren’t getting him enough air, like he was feverish or drunk or both, but on the scent of Bran’s skin and the lingering taste of salt on the back of his tongue.
Bran’s breaths, too, were coming faster, rasping a little each time Jamie pushed all the way into him, pressure building in his balls as he slowly rocked against Bran’s hips.
It wasn’t quite enough.
Jamie leaned to one side, sliding his other hand under Bran’s hip and easing one leg over his shoulder, pushing his palm against Bran’s lower spine to tilt him just a little more.
Bran let out a deep, resonant groan, muscles clenching around Jamie in a way that took all his breath away.
This time, Jamie drew himself almost all the way out before thrusting back in, and the hand on his shoulder clenched as Bran gasped, the erection on his belly shiny with precum. The sight was enough to push Jamie further, and he withdrew and thrust again, and again, and again, sweat beginning to dampen his skin.
“Ach. Please,” Bran gasped as Jamie pushed in deep once more.
“Please what?” Jamie managed, the words thick and almost fuzzy in his mouth.
“More.”
Jamie took him at his word, driving into him once, twice, three more times before he thought he might break in half from the pressure. Jamie couldn’t hold back any more, gasping as he slammed himself home one final time, his orgasm already unfurling before he registered Bran’s shuddering moan and the pulsing throb of his body as he spilled his own across his stomach.
Jamie’s arm shook, so he let himself ease down onto his side, carefully moving Bran’s leg so he wouldn’t crush it. Not that he could, really, but he didn’t imagine having his six-four body lying on it would be terribly comfortable.
Bran made a small noise in the back of his throat, rolling onto his side so he was still facing Jamie.
It was a raw moment, vulnerable, and Jamie didn’t know if he was ready for that. If he was ready for any of this—threadbond, whatever relationship change this marked between himself and Bran, being a part of the fairy world his momma had so desperately wanted to believe in.
So he broke it with bad humor. “Now what would you do, if I were fae?”
But the joke was clearly lost on Bran. “Probably leave,” the fae answered, a frown marring his brow. “Do you wish me to go?”
“No.” Jamie felt like he’d answered too quickly, but the furrow had smoothed out of Bran’s forehead. “I don’t want you to go. Not yet.”
But it made him wonder what this was—not only the threadbond, but what they were… or weren’t. Jamie got the impression that casual sex was common among fae, at least if all the sex in dark and not-so-dark corners at the reception thing were any indication. He was pretty sure he’d seen the same person involved in more than one of those couplings, too.
Maybe to Bran this was just sex. Jamie wasn’t like that, not usually anyway, and he didn’t really want to start being into casual sex now, but he hadn’t made that at all clear. They hadn’t had any of the normal conversations about STI testing or exclusivity or what they thought this relationship was going to be.
