Another excerpt, as we get closer to release day! This one is dedicated to Ashley E, who likes excerpts. <3 (It’s also NC-17, so let’s throw it behind a cut for propriety’s sake.)
Here there be dicks.
CHAPTER ONE
There were few things in the world as perfect as Evander’s prick.
It was neither misshapen nor too small, nor curved oddly to the side. When it rose with his arousal, jutting hard and red-tipped from the cloud of golden curls at the base, it was as magnificent a creation as the Tower of Pisa all the way over in far-distant Italy.
If Stephen were to write odes and sonnets—on pricks in general or Evander’s in particular—they would not focus on the look of it, but the feel. On the heavy weight that filled Stephen up and broke him open, in arse or mouth alike; on the heat of his skin, so soft when so much else about him was rough; on the salt-slick slide as he thrust in over Stephen’s tongue and held there, gasping.
Evander’s prick was the epitome of all things that were erotic and beautiful in the world.
Loving the man would be easier if Evander didn’t think so as well.
The thought veered too close to blasphemy. Better to focus on the task at hand.
The noise of the busy London street carried on outside the shuttered windows of their lodgings. Inside, all was quiet but for their panting breaths and the wet slide of spit and skin.
The uneven floorboards pressed ridges into his knees, his lips stretched around the prick in his mouth. The taste of Evander’s arousal mixed with the remnants of the wine they’d shared, passing the same bottle back and forth until there was nothing left but dregs.
There was little hope of a breeze on the best of days, and this sultry summer afternoon was not one of those. Evander had persisted in wandering around in only his linen shirt and drawers, the light garments clinging to his lithe frame and his blond hair sticking, damp, to the back of his neck. Accompanied by the utterly obscene way he lifted the bottle to his lips, it had made their current position inevitable.
Stephen’s fingers clenched on Evander’s thighs, dug into the solid dips and curves of his muscles, stroked across the smattering of fair hair. His own prick ached, hard and damp, his trousers too tight and harsh where they rubbed. He dropped a hand to palm himself. The pressure was the barest edge of relief, muted by the wool and linen of his clothing. He groaned aloud, the sound muffled around the thick cock in his mouth.
Evander thrust in reaction to the vibrations, his fingers clenching in the bedclothes. Gasps spilled from his lips as he arched, threw his head back and came.
“Come up here,” Evander ordered, the command softened by the drowsy satiation in his voice.
Stephen swallowed around Evander’s prick one last time before he pulled away. It fell from his lips with a wet and obscene pop, to lie, gleaming, against Evander’s muscled thigh. Stephen let Evander draw him up onto the bed and he crawled to his usual place, nipping lightly at Evander’s flank as he moved. Salt tingled on his lips, both of their bodies damp with the sweat of exertion in the midsummer heat.
Evander seized Stephen’s face in his hands and kissed him, tongue delving into Stephen’s mouth. He licked in and Stephen opened for him, passed back the taste of Evander’s own release from tongue to tongue. His prick throbbed in further urgency at the heat of it, the taste and feel of him. Evander consumed him, fire and molten steel.
Evander’s fingers slipped down inside Stephen’s fall front, wrapped around his aching prick, and words were no longer possible. They vanished from his mind as soon as he tried to focus on any particular one. He wasn’t good with them at the best of times, preferring always to let music speak for him, in the rhythm of the notes and the scrape of the bow across the strings.
Evander hummed a discontented note. His mouth closed over Stephen’s again, tasting like him, salt-sour and familiar. His oiled hand gripped and glided along the length of Stephen’s prick.
“What are you smiling about?” Evander asked, pressing firm, cool kisses along his throat.
Stephen tipped his head back and Evander ran his tongue down the length of Stephen’s throat. “I was thinking of you,” he reassured him. Life was always easier when Evander was pleased. “How much like Michelangelo’s David you are, stretched out for me in the sunlight.” Stephen paused, then, and grinned. “Except for certain things, of course, in which you far surpass the original.”
Evander soaked up the compliments, as he had embraced the sunshine before, lounging across the narrow bed. “The Greeks had a strange position on male beauty.” Evander laughed, his pride repaired.
Stephen couldn’t form coherent thoughts against the pressure of Evander’s hand on his prick, on the strength of the fingers wrapped around him. Evander pressed his thumb firmly beneath the head, dug in just a little with his nail so that the shock of pain and pleasure mingled and combined inexorably.
“Come for me, my muse,” Evander murmured in his ear. He wrapped his hand up and over the crown of Stephen’s prick, then scraped his teeth across Stephen’s swollen earlobe and bit down. The momentary pain shot down through his body like lightning, met the coiled and heavy arousal in his gut. He released, hot and sticky, into Evander’s palm, the ache in his body fading in time with the pulse of pleasure wrung from him.
Evander rolled away and rose to his feet the moment Stephen’s body stopped trembling. He crossed the room and took up a kerchief to clean himself with water from the jug on the nightstand.
Stephen stretched, reaching his fingers above his head until his shoulders popped in agreement. The mugginess of the midsummer air made his skin clammy as the sweat dried in prickling pools behind his knees and in the crooks of his elbows. It would be so much nicer to have Evander back beside him, to curl against his body and lie there, languid and warm. But such things did not please Evander’s sense of aesthetics, and so Stephen sprawled inelegantly and alone across the bed, linens damp beneath him from sweat, oil and come. The bedclothes would stick to his skin once everything began to dry. He would have to peel himself from them, the creases red across his back and lingering longer than the memories of the pleasure itself.
The pillow had ended up on the floor; reaching for it was too much effort. He would stay here, drowsy in the summer afternoon, listen to the clatter of the carts over the cobblestones and the laughter of the children running in the street below.