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“You will not seduce me, Ash.”
Blanca had said the words not as a challenge, but as a boundary. He had hoped that the steel in his tone invoked images of concrete walls, of guard towers and razor wire fences coursing with electricity.
Ash’s thin lips curved in a way that made Blanca think of a sledgehammer, of a femme fatale with lipstick as her chisel.
“Oh, but I will. There’s not a man in the world who can resist me, Blanca.”
The words were scripted. Ash’s tone was a purr too perfect not to have been taught, but that didn’t stop an instinctive flare of heat from lapping at Blanca’s groin.
“I beg to differ.”
“You’ll beg, all right.”
Soft, tinkling laughter that invited the listener to join in; not for the first time, Blanca wondered how on earth the willowy youth sitting before him had learned to beguile. Green eyes locked on his unerringly, as though daring him to look away, to blink and ignore the simmering heat gnawing at his viscera.
Don’t do this, Sergei. Don’t let him get to you.
“ I’ve faced men far more intelligent than you who couldn’t break me. Don’t overestimate yourself; sex appeal does not work on me."
“So you say. Don’t think I haven’t noticed how you look at me.”
“Enlighten me.”
Ash dropped to the ground, crawling towards Blanca with a feline grace that cast his delicate frame and small shoulders in sharp relief, sunlight coloring his hair in dazzling shades of gold; Blanca willed himself not to gulp as Ash’s lean body and sensuous movements reminded him of rose-scented bed sheets and the curve of Natasha’s back, of sleek blond locks and full lips disappearing between his legs . He cursed himself for the way his heart began to race from the memory, from the way his cock seemed to twitch in remembrance of her warm, wet heat engulfing him.
She was just about this size, wasn’t she?
Shame wracked through him like lightning, a quicksilver burst of revulsion that tasted like foul bile in the back of his throat.
Ash rose, settling gingerly into his lap as he settled into a shameless straddle. Blanca did not stop him, but did not enable him, his posture rigid as he watched Ash adjust himself.
“What was her name?”
An icy weight descended into his stomach, dragging his breaths along with it. He hoped that the knowing smirk on Ash’s face wasn’t because he realized he’d caught Blanca by surprise.
“Who?”
“Don’t play dumb, Blanca,” Ash sighed, shifting in a way intended to seem accidental. Ash’s perk buttocks dipped, and Ash let out a soft laugh of surprise as he felt the fruit of his labor, hard and irrefutable, nestled within the cleft.
It was a terrible sound, Ash’s laughter — seductive and utterly avoid of humor, lust drenched in pitch. It beckoned to Blanca’s darkest impulses even while he felt his heart recoil in horror, even while he felt his insides churn with dread.
“This… has nothing to do with you,” Blanca said cautiously. The words were technically true, but the strange expression on Ash’s face — almost pitying — told him that nothing would convince him that Ash’s overt eroticism hadn’t played a part.
“So what reminded you of her? Will any old blond do the trick? Or is there something more to it that you’re not telling me?”
“This has nothing to do with you,” Blanca repeated. He brought his hands to Ash’s sides, gently trying to push Ash off of him—
Ash ground against him, and before he could stop himself Blanca gasped from the contact.
“Go ahead,” Ash whispered, wrapping his arms around Blanca’s neck. “Feels good, doesn’t it?”
It was heavenly, if he was honest, heat and friction and a lithe body seemingly determined to coax the devil out of him.
“We. Are. Not. Doing. This.”
Blanca bit off each word, teeth grit and eyes clenched shut as he willed himself not to give in. It was horribly easy to pretend that the warmth against his cock was from an eager body rather than one trained to respond to another man’s desire. Ash’s lids fluttered shut as he nibbled on his lower lip, allowing a small squeak into his tone as he rutted against Blanca and moaned in response. Blanca tried to ignore the firm pressure against his stomach with every rock of Ash’s hips. Heat churned within him, violent waves of unwanted arousal and nausea that choked him.
Ash peeked at him beneath blond lashes; his expression was terribly erotic, but his eyes sapped the warmth from Blanca’s veins.
Ash’s soul had retreated. Blanca would have preferred to have made eye contact with a corpse.
The utter surrender in Ash’s expression drove icicles into his sternum, extinguishing any desire that half-crazed recollections of his wife had stirred.
This creature writhing in his lap was not the sullen boy with jade daggers for eyes and poisoned rose petals for lips. This was not the “rotten egg” Golzine had accused him of being, but rather every bit the vessel he’d been molded into, unfathomably empty and begging to be filled the only way he knew how.
“Do not make me say it twice,” Blanca growled, hands closing around Ash’s wrists before pinning them behind his back. Ash’s body, which had been undulating in crude imitation, stilled, a blood-warm mannequin suddenly feeling very small beneath his hands and above his waist. His facade shattered, the affected softness in his gaze replaced by something equally unfamiliar.
Fear.
“I—”
“I know what you’re trying to do. You have no concept of boundaries; rightly so, as your own have been prodded and breached too often for you to have much confidence in them. But know this: my boundaries end where yours begin. “
Ash frowned.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“I’m a murderer, but I do not enjoy violence for its own sake. When given the choice, I do not take what others are unwilling to give.”
Thin lips curved into a sneer.
“So if I sincerely wanted to?”
“Then I would not object. But you don’t, and you’re not at a point where I would consider you capable of making those decisions yet.”
“I’m not a fucking child,” Ash snarled, cheeks pink but eyes wide with a strange mixture of outrage and relief.
Pity dragged at the corners of Blanca’s lips.
“You’re right, you’re not. I suspect you never had a chance to be. If you’ll forgive my sentimentality, I’d like to be one less person to take that from you.”
Ash said nothing as he left, wrapping himself in a coat that seemed too heavy for someone so young, his own blood and dignity seemingly woven into the fibers.
Five years had been enough to transform the chime-like tones of youth into a self-assured tenor, to take a chisel to round cheeks and full lips
Five years ago, he could have mistaken the petite frame and slim hips that had attempted to entice him for a woman’s.
The figure that sat atop his waist now was unquestionably male — lean muscle, sparse dusting of blond hair, and greedy lust that streaked precum across his stomach with every rock of his hips.
“Do I still remind you of her?” Ash asked, words dissolving into a throaty groan as Blanca thrust mercilessly, grazing a sweet spot that sent sparks along his spine.
“Not even a little bit.”
Blanca’s fingernails dug into pliant flesh that bloomed red beneath his grasp. Rough fingers, calloused from years memorizing the shape of a gun, wrapped around Ash’s cock, stroking it firmly enough to earn a low growl of pleasure. He ran his thumb along the slit, capturing some of the precum that had gathered before bringing it to his lips and allowing himself a taste. He couldn’t hide a smirk as Ash watched, expression ravenous as his mouth hung halfway between shock and a lewd moan.
“Coulda fooled me, didn’t take long for you to — god, yes, there — get hard,” Ash whispered, voice strained as Blanca drove deeper into him, filling and stretching him in a way that made his eyes water and cock ache.
“Boundaries.”
“Wha?”
“You wanted it this time.”
Blanca could feel the pressure building between his legs, a rising tide of pleasure focused on the impossibly tight heat surrounding him like a vice. He tried not to think too long about how many other men had enjoyed it, at how easily Ash had accepted him. A small, noxious tendril of doubt plucked at his core.
“What makes you so sure?” Ash asked quietly, the hands resting against Blanca’s shoulders traveling dangerously close to his throat.
It was a cruel seed to plant. Ash’s body was soil eager to nurture something so poisonous. Blanca thought of how readily Ash had brought their lips together, had licked at his tongue and teeth with a sigh of surrender — one that he had thought reciprocal, if the urgent mewling and throbbing heat between Ash’s legs was any indication.
Ash’s lips had grazed his neck, had pressed open kisses against the shell of Blanca’s ear. In the midst of the hesitant waltz where caution became carnality, he’d heard it.
“You said his name.”
Ash’s hips stilled, the delirious arousal writ across his features almost immediately replaced by paling skin and unquestionable guilt.
“B-Blanca, I—”
“Don’t. I’m under no delusions about why you want this or who you’re imagining. If this is what you want, then I’m happy to give it to you.”
Ash’s lips twisted, eyes wide and bright with unshed tears. Blanca could feel Ash tremble above him as a veritable dam threatened to crumble.
“I’m so sorry, I—”
“Ash, please. Let yourself go. Take whatever you need from me,” he murmured, fingers running across the gentle slope of Ash’s cheekbone.
Ash curled against him, chest flush with Blanca’s as he laced their fingers together. He rocked his hips once, wringing a strangled gasp from them both.
He remembered this tension. Well over a decade had passed, yet his body vividly remembered the thrill of his wife rocking slowly beneath him, legs wrapped around his waist as their bodies seemed to melt against one another.
Natasha was long gone, however, and the heat that surrounded him was wicked where Natasha was sweet, feverish where she had been languid and patient. The voice that cried out in pleasure was a cello rather than a harp. His wife would have grimaced if her hair was pulled; Blanca tugged lightly at Ash’s hair — just firmly enough to be tangible, but too weak to cause pain — and was rewarded by Ash bucking his hips wildly with a moan that would be forever engraved in his memory.
Ash was incomparable.
“Please, please, please,” Ash panted, voice overflowing with desperation. “I need—”
I need to forget him. I need to remember him.
Blanca was silent, content to allow Ash to pretend that the hand he held was soft and calloused from a pole vault rather than knives, that the warm breaths and sweat-slicked skin beneath him belonged to someone thousands of miles away mourning a phantom, a coward.
Ash’s body seemed to draw him deeper, as though desperate to consume him, to take within himself the one person forever out of his reach. Blanca had never quite understood the poetry of ‘becoming one flesh,’ but the euphoric expression on Ash’s face stripped away the mystery.
Somewhere between Ash’s delusion and his own indulgence, he swore that he could feel something lingering in the space that separated them, in the razor-thin canyon between Ash’s flesh and spirit. Eiji danced along the boundary between the corporeal and the untouchable, tiptoeing between the borders; the sly grin on his face suggested that he knew he was the only one who ever would.
Ash’s body spasmed around him without warning, his hole tightening almost painfully as his climax seized him. Ash’s hand covered his mouth with an audible slap as he cried out — considerate but unnecessary. Blanca knew immediately from the weak sigh and content smile on his face whose name he’d yearned to cry out when pleasure — genuine and all-consuming — had seized him.
“When are you going to finally seek him out?” Blanca asked after several quiet minutes, running his fingers gently along the slope of Ash’s spine. He felt Ash’s body slacken against him, cool cheek resting against his chest.
“I won’t.”
“And why not?”
“Boundaries,” Ash said, lips curling in a joyless smile.