[ He opens his mouth to protest — there is no such thing as enough flattery — but finds himself being seduced instead. Cardan’s retort is swallowed up by the impatient, needy noise that escapes him, by the way his heart jumps in his chest at the touch of Liem’s elegant hands on his face.
He likes his lover a little off-balance, delights in mussing his carefully put-together polish — but none of that is half as dangerous as Liem’s deliberate hunger. The world slides out of focus when Liem kisses him; there is only his husband and his bright-eyed regard and his considered, determined assault on Cardan’s ability to retain coherent thought. It takes pitifully little of this for his simmering desire to become desperate, surging fever-hot in his veins. He has to close his eyes against it. He’s breathless, gasping between kisses; his stomach is taut with tension; his fingers fist in the sheets, a little tortured. Still, he is not breathless, nor tense, nor tortured enough to stop. No yet, and probably not ever.
He cannot conceive of anyone having the fullness of Liem’s regard and being able to turn away. ]
[Liem so rarely indulges his wants like this… and for what? In this moment, with Cardan just where he wants him, kissing him like he never wants to stop, he cannot fathom anything more important than this. He may as well indulge, because he doesn’t know when next he’ll have the chance, and he cannot stand the thought of letting the opportunity slip by altogether—not when the wanton sound of his husband’s impatience makes craving pang so fiercely through him.
His goal is not exactly to drive Cardan mad—but if he is, then at least Liem isn’t the only one overcome by his longing.]
Cardan.
[Liem sighs against his mouth, then catches his lip between his teeth, arching insistently against his lover. If Cardan’s want truly has no end, then he may as well use it to blunt the keen edge of his own. After all, it is Cardan’s fault he is so tormented by desire. Pulling back, he stares up into his lover’s black gaze, still cradling his face between his hands.]
I love that you’re so hungry. It’s so beguiling on you.
[ Cardan isn’t paying much attention when Liem breathes his name. He’s too busy being driven a little insane; lust pierces through him when he feels the threat of those fangs against his skin. He feels pinned by it, even though he’s the one pressing Liem into the sheets, still sheathed snugly inside him, and oh— Even though Liem is his, even though he knows his husband would let him do just as he pleases…
The compliment surprises him; he blinks, a little caught off guard. Liem is right; he is hungry. It’s just that he cannot remember the last time anyone had called him on it. But is this not the way in which they are the same? Liem has equated his craving for blood to sex. Even so, to Cardan, it has looked more and more like the craving borne of loneliness: an aching, inescapable greed for companionship, for affection, for being someone's first choice.
For such a long time, he'd told himself he did not care about any of that. ]
I am starving, [ he admits, and the look he gives Liem is a little too serious to be flirtation. His fingers detach from the sheets, closing around his lover’s wrist instead, so that Cardan can press his mouth to his cool palm. ]
[Liem never expects it when Cardan responds to his flirtation in this way; with that earnest, sober look, and the tender press of his mouth against Liem’s hand. He is caught off guard by it, unprepared for confession when he’d anticipated, if anything, smug pleasure.
It is only another sign of Liem’s infatuation that he finds the former just as devastatingly irresistible as he would have found the latter. But then, Cardan could tell him anything at all, accompanied by those warm kisses, and he would still be helpless to resist him.
Cardan must know it, but perhaps it bears repeating.]
Well, I am ever greedy for both your desire and your affection.
[One cool thumb strokes Cardan’s cheek, reverently tender in spite of the aforementioned greed scorching its way through him. Every shift of his lover, against him, inside him, makes him ache with impatience—but it’s a good ache. The kind he could hold onto forever, as long as Cardan stays entwined with him like this.]
[ Here, at least, his arrogance returns. Cardan’s brow quirks with his amusement. ]
Oh, I should hope so.
[ He wants to indulge them both. He wants to— splay his hand over Liem’s ribs, his stomach, sliding fever-hot fingers between them to wrap around his husband’s erection.
He wants to, and does. His first stroke is languid, deceptively leisurely. He moves in him not at all. It takes every ounce of self-control he has. Instead, he dips down — puts his mouth to Liem’s ear, even though it will make the ragged way he’s breathing all too apparent. But he’s more concerned about menacing Liem than he is about seeming unaffected. ]
It would have been strange for you to court them, otherwise.
[ He purrs it like an accusation, like it will hide the impatience in his breath, in his heartbeat, in the tail coiling restlessly over the sheets. For just a moment longer, he will balance on the knife’s edge between pleasure and anticipation, drawing it out until his desire feels sharp enough to cut.
And then— when he moves, when he finally fucks into his lover, that same breath stutters in his throat altogether; he has to close his eyes and whisper Liem’s name, a little desperate, already coming a little undone himself. ]
[Cardan’s menacing so easily undoes Liem’s composure. Desire chases those warm, unhurried fingers as they slide down his body to find his erection, and his breath catches in his throat at that first, languid stroke. Somehow, the lazy pace of his lover’s touch only inflames his impatience, making him shift and press restlessly back against the sheets as Cardan’s lips brush his ear, swallowing him up instantly in his own wanting.
It is cruel that his husband’s hastened breath and eager heartbeat should press so readily against his senses while Cardan still refuses to fuck him. He must know that Liem can think of nothing else with his husband still inside him, still atop him, caging him against the sheets.
But just as he always has, Liem continues to find Cardan’s cruelties irresistible.]
I am not that strange, [he murmurs—and then gasps, sliding his arm eagerly around his lover as Cardan fucks into him. It’s not strange at all to be greedy for this, surely; for the low sound of Cardan’s voice in his ear, the urgency gripping the taut body beneath his hands. His touch drags down over flank and hip to slide round Cardan’s thigh, just below the lean curve of his ass, his grip covetous and insistent.
He wants Cardan to fuck him again, and he wants to hear his name on Cardan’s lips again, and he wants Cardan to claim him, as many times as it takes, until he forgets that he has ever belonged to anyone but him. The one thing he can never have, he wants with a desperation that chokes the words from him, so all that escapes is a frustrated whimper that he buries against Cardan’s shoulder.]
[ He has never known anything more fulfilling than the urgency of that gasp and the demanding clutch of Liem’s hands on his body. He feels feral with his longing to have this and only this, only the pleasure of Liem’s desperation, of his unending, insistent desire. Never had Cardan wanted someone so incessantly. Never has he been wanted so in return. ]
What you do to me—
[ His accusation breaks off, too breathless and too caught up in his desire. He had meant to be more measured, had meant to control himself — but he can’t. Animal need surges through him, claws at his throat, throbs through his cock, fever-hot and impossible to deny. When he ruts into his husband, it is with a savage desperation of his own. He has no room for patience nor finesse — only the urgent stroke of his fingers and the heavy, insistent thrusts pinning his Liem against the fine sheets.
It’s maddening — the friction, the silken tightness of him, the whimper muffled against his shoulder. He doesn’t know the spell by which Liem turns him into this creature; he can only be grateful that his husband is equally desperate, equally wanting, that he has glimpsed the yawning abyss of Cardan’s avarice and not flinched even once. ]
[When Liem first met his new groom, he never could have imagined that his husband would become so insatiable for him, or that Liem would find his hunger so addictive. Obviously the haughty, temperamental man he married would never be more than a stranger briefly living in his house. His allure did not change that truth.
But Liem was wrong. Cardan is not a stranger; he is his, became his frighteningly quickly, and he enmeshed himself so totally in Liem’s life that if he were to disappear from it now, only an unrecognizable ruin would be left behind. The power Cardan has over him frightens him to contemplate.
But the obsession Liem demands from his lover thrills him as nothing else has.
He cannot help but chase the lure of it. His hard, desperate grip urges Cardan on, would deny his patience even if his lover had any to lean on, even as his own hips roll to meet each greedy thrust. Need throbs through him, blooming insatiably in his chest and surging in hungry waves down to his belly, his cock, to every inch of him that aches so keenly for Cardan’s touch. Given their ruthless pace, the ragged cadence of his lover’s breaths is almost enough by itself to push him over the edge. Liem clutches at him more fiercely, nails biting into the meat of his thigh as he smears kisses over the fevered curve of his neck.]
[ The delicious sting of Liem’s nails drags a startled moan from his throat; it’s as if he feels each half-moon sear into his skin, the sting of it a wild thrill. He shudders with it, overwhelmed with the hungry mouth at his throat, with the dizzying pleasure of Liem moving against him.
It’s unbearable. He can’t breathe with it. He wants it to never end. In a strange twist, it seems that he has come to enjoy the torment of wanting -- Liem's fault, surely. All those times he had teased his husband ruthlessly only to leave him teetering on the edge; every instance he’d had to hold himself back, to watch need crash over Liem as he weathered the storm of his own wanting. And still, and still, his own pleasure builds, ever-sharper and more overwhelming. How could he resist it, when he's already so taken with him, when he's so desperate to have this, having almost lost it?
Stopping feels like the cruelest thing he's ever done. And yet: his hips bottom out on one last, maddening stroke, and then he stills-- caging Liem against the sheets with his weight and his stubborn, terrible want, trapping them both. His own heartbeat is deafening in his ears; every muscle in his body feels tight with the effort to do this unnatural thing.
But he wants it. He wants to see it, wants to hold Liem close and see desperation capturing those elegant features. He wants it more than he needs his own satisfaction, even if waiting is going to drive him mad just as well. ]
Not yet.
[ He breathes it like a prayer against impermanence. ]
[He had not thought that Cardan would stop—he had not thought that he could. The sudden stillness only seems to multiply the wanting ache thundering through him, dragging a frustrated moan from his throat as the swell of sensation threatening to bear him away stops teasingly short of actually doing so.
Liem had thought his lover too caught up in his lust to rein himself in just before the finish line. For a moment his world is a confusion of need bracketed by Cardan’s stubborn weight atop him and the bed sandwiching him from below; he shudders against Cardan, helpless against his own wanting and yet equally unable to satisfy it, feeling at once both wrung dry and still drowning in his own desire.
He wants Cardan so terribly, especially when he is like this.]
Oh…
[His lungs won’t cooperate when he tells them to calm the urgent breaths he drags in, panted against his husband’s skin. The body pressing him into the sheets is too taut and alive with need; the man who has made him his captive is too dear and too lovely in the throes of his ruthless, unyielding greed. Liem’s palms drag over his back, desperately eager to touch.
His mouth quirks into a breathless, knowing little smile.]
[ That shudder nearly tears down his resolve; he gasps with it, teeth biting into his own lip. Instinctively, he presses down, pinning his lover more insistently. It’s the only way he could possibly weather the caress of Liem’s desperate breathing, the greedy hands traveling down his body.
Liem’s smile pangs through his chest with painful urgency.
Forever, he thinks, but that’s stupid — of course he can’t have Liem forever. Not like this, anyway: at some point his heart would surely give out, and he suspects Liem would not find this end satisfying. It’s just difficult to be clever when he’s so consumed with want for him.
He buys himself time by burying his face against Liem’s hair, breathing in his scent — except that’s worse, spiking his pulse with more feverish need. ]
…Longer than either of us can afford.
[ Evening always comes too soon. Evening, and the damage control, and the tedious papers that ever take his husband from him. He sighs, and then pushes himself up enough to frame Liem’s face in his hands, biting back a groan at the tantalizing way it shifts them against each other. ]
You are so good at stoking my desire, husband.
[ Already his patience is so badly frayed; as much as he wants to, he knows he can’t drag this out much longer. ]
[Liem already knew, when he asked his question, what the answer would be. His husband has ever been intemperate with his desires; it would be unlike him to want only that which is achievable. It is why Liem was already smiling when he spoke, and why his knowing expression turns soft with fondness when Cardan presses his nose into Liem’s hair.
If Liem had his way, he too would keep Cardan here like this for far too long: long after the setting of the sun and the transit of the moon across the starry sky. He has not nearly had his fill of his husband when he is like this, too urgent with desire and tenderness both. But Liem has long since become accustomed to not getting what he wants.
Still, he does not bother to swallow the soft, hungry sound that wells up from him when Cardan moves back to cup his face. He is hungry, and his husband should know it. Besides, his hunger should be clear enough from the longing on his face and the covetous way his hands roam slowly, possessively down Cardan’s body.]
Then why, [he murmurs, gently accusing,] are you still not kissing me?
Ah... [ He was running dreadfully low on patience already. Now, with Liem's touch on his skin, with the hunger in his lover's face, his ability to wait is dissolving like salt in seawater.
Still, he can't help his own little smile — an echo of the one Liem had worn just a moment ago. His tone is equal parts fond and thoroughly smug. ]
I am a villain.
[ But not the kind who would be accused of neglecting his husband. The kiss he presses up on Liem holds all of his breathless, hungry impatience — all of his jubilant relief at being here, still, alive and with the man whom he has come to trust most, somehow, in the few months they've known each other. He can nary imagine an evening without Liem's presence in it, or a morning without his husband's comforting weight nestled against him.
And when Cardan moves in him again, picking up his unforgiving rhythm, it is because he does not mean to stop again. He can't, regardless-- he is far too sensitized, too mad with urgency, shivering with his own heated need and the irresistible pleasure of claiming Liem for his own. Even if his kisses falter, even as they turn to little more than gasps, and the world narrows to nothing but heat and desire—
Cardan will not let him go. Not ever, not ever — not matter how stupid he might be, to wish for forever. ]
[At moments like this, when Liem is so horny he can scarcely think straight, it’s a miracle he finds any patience at all for his husband’s cruel impulses. He is sensitized enough, eager enough that if Cardan were to deny him again, he might be tempted to beg. Already the press of his lover’s mouth against his makes Liem want to whimper with impatience.
But he is hungrier for Cardan’s heated kisses and greedy touch than he is for his own release. It is this weakness that leads him into the trap of Cardan’s hands and mouth again and again, even when it nets him only frustration—and the lure of it has only grown stronger over time. Because he loves being Cardan’s more than anything else in the world, and he has become completely addicted to the pleasure of being at his mercy.
He drowns his hunger in Cardan’s kisses, meeting them ardently between his own uneven, impatient breaths, his hands greedy on his husband’s lean, scarred back. When Cardan moves in him again, when his kisses falter amidst the growing urgency of his pace, Liem can only gasp as sensation swamps him, filling him up until all that’s left is the urgent need for more. But even though he feels ragged with it already, even when his need colours his breaths with the soft edge of a whine, sensation holds him captive: Cardan’s body fitted perfectly against his, Cardan’s green scent surrounding him with each gasp, Cardan’s rough breaths and thundering heart accompanying him in his urgency.
If he stayed caught in his frantic moment forever he would surely go mad, but it would be the sweetest, most perfect madness he could imagine. Of course he doesn’t wish it to end.]
[ Nothing lasts, not even the madness of wanting. And still, in those moments when pleasure seizes him most fervently, when he cannot do anything but close his eyes and give himself to Liem’s greedy hands and the perfect fit of their bodies, he finds a kind of urgent, desperate peace. It feels right — it feels fated, like perhaps he was meant for this all along.
How his husband — this quiet, serious, disciplined man, so terribly different from anyone Cardan has ever known — has done this thing to him, he does not know. Perhaps it is the way Liem responds to his touch, the way he grows demanding; perhaps it is the earnest need in his voice and the breaths he doesn’t need to take. Maybe it’s only that Cardan has never before felt needed, by anyone.
He cannot take it. It’s dizzying and addictive and frightening, the certainty with which he’s ready to give Liem all he has. Even with his heart thundering frantically in his chest, every part of him wound tight with need, he wants it to last. Just a little longer, just one breathless second more—
But it — he — cannot last. He comes after all, shuddering through his release and the embarrassingly desperate noise it pulls from his throat. He has to keep his eyes closed, for fear of giving too much away — as if Liem could not see him unless Cardan looks back. ]
[As his own pleasure mounts irresistibly, teasing him taut and trembling, welling up from his lungs to spill eagerly from his throat, Liem’s greed seems to have no end. He did not imagine that any hunger could be so endless, that the bottomless thirst that is his birthright could be matched by any other desire, no matter how desperate. He did not imagine any pleasure could feel as necessary, like he was made just to claim it. It defies all logic, how completely Cardan undoes him.
And yet, he is undone, blissfully and utterly. He comes apart for Cardan yet again, unable to do anything else but clutch him close and gasp his name as the weight of his love and his pleasure and his need and the feverish ache inspired by Cardan’s desperation crash down upon him all at once. This time and every time, he cannot resist him.
He wants nothing but this, nothing but this rare and irreplaceable man tangled up in his embrace, and his greed for that intimacy can never possibly be sated. He will always want more, no matter how many mornings he spends in Cardan’s bed and no matter how many evenings he spends in his company. Even in the aftermath, boneless and wrung dry and nuzzling into Cardan’s hair, he still feels greedy with it, stubbornly resentful of the unseen future creeping closer to roust them from their bed and their intimacy.
There is a certain person conspiring to rob Cardan from him, too, he will eventually admit to himself, with a feeling like ice sliding down his spine. A person Liem has steadfastly avoided thinking about, because he has been so busy thinking about how they will outmaneuver him instead. But that man has tried twice now to end Cardan’s life, and it goes against everything Liem knows to let this pass unrewarded. He cannot possibly sleep soundly as long as this man, who he knows seeks his husband’s death, still exists.
And Dain has tried to take what is Liem’s. Much as he might like to pretend for his husband that he is better than this, his heart demands he balance the scales. And he cannot deny his heart any longer.]
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He likes his lover a little off-balance, delights in mussing his carefully put-together polish — but none of that is half as dangerous as Liem’s deliberate hunger. The world slides out of focus when Liem kisses him; there is only his husband and his bright-eyed regard and his considered, determined assault on Cardan’s ability to retain coherent thought. It takes pitifully little of this for his simmering desire to become desperate, surging fever-hot in his veins. He has to close his eyes against it. He’s breathless, gasping between kisses; his stomach is taut with tension; his fingers fist in the sheets, a little tortured. Still, he is not breathless, nor tense, nor tortured enough to stop. No yet, and probably not ever.
He cannot conceive of anyone having the fullness of Liem’s regard and being able to turn away. ]
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His goal is not exactly to drive Cardan mad—but if he is, then at least Liem isn’t the only one overcome by his longing.]
Cardan.
[Liem sighs against his mouth, then catches his lip between his teeth, arching insistently against his lover. If Cardan’s want truly has no end, then he may as well use it to blunt the keen edge of his own. After all, it is Cardan’s fault he is so tormented by desire. Pulling back, he stares up into his lover’s black gaze, still cradling his face between his hands.]
I love that you’re so hungry. It’s so beguiling on you.
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The compliment surprises him; he blinks, a little caught off guard. Liem is right; he is hungry. It’s just that he cannot remember the last time anyone had called him on it. But is this not the way in which they are the same? Liem has equated his craving for blood to sex. Even so, to Cardan, it has looked more and more like the craving borne of loneliness: an aching, inescapable greed for companionship, for affection, for being someone's first choice.
For such a long time, he'd told himself he did not care about any of that. ]
I am starving, [ he admits, and the look he gives Liem is a little too serious to be flirtation. His fingers detach from the sheets, closing around his lover’s wrist instead, so that Cardan can press his mouth to his cool palm. ]
I always have been.
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It is only another sign of Liem’s infatuation that he finds the former just as devastatingly irresistible as he would have found the latter. But then, Cardan could tell him anything at all, accompanied by those warm kisses, and he would still be helpless to resist him.
Cardan must know it, but perhaps it bears repeating.]
Well, I am ever greedy for both your desire and your affection.
[One cool thumb strokes Cardan’s cheek, reverently tender in spite of the aforementioned greed scorching its way through him. Every shift of his lover, against him, inside him, makes him ache with impatience—but it’s a good ache. The kind he could hold onto forever, as long as Cardan stays entwined with him like this.]
So indulge your hunger with me.
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Oh, I should hope so.
[ He wants to indulge them both. He wants to— splay his hand over Liem’s ribs, his stomach, sliding fever-hot fingers between them to wrap around his husband’s erection.
He wants to, and does. His first stroke is languid, deceptively leisurely. He moves in him not at all. It takes every ounce of self-control he has. Instead, he dips down — puts his mouth to Liem’s ear, even though it will make the ragged way he’s breathing all too apparent. But he’s more concerned about menacing Liem than he is about seeming unaffected. ]
It would have been strange for you to court them, otherwise.
[ He purrs it like an accusation, like it will hide the impatience in his breath, in his heartbeat, in the tail coiling restlessly over the sheets. For just a moment longer, he will balance on the knife’s edge between pleasure and anticipation, drawing it out until his desire feels sharp enough to cut.
And then— when he moves, when he finally fucks into his lover, that same breath stutters in his throat altogether; he has to close his eyes and whisper Liem’s name, a little desperate, already coming a little undone himself. ]
no subject
It is cruel that his husband’s hastened breath and eager heartbeat should press so readily against his senses while Cardan still refuses to fuck him. He must know that Liem can think of nothing else with his husband still inside him, still atop him, caging him against the sheets.
But just as he always has, Liem continues to find Cardan’s cruelties irresistible.]
I am not that strange, [he murmurs—and then gasps, sliding his arm eagerly around his lover as Cardan fucks into him. It’s not strange at all to be greedy for this, surely; for the low sound of Cardan’s voice in his ear, the urgency gripping the taut body beneath his hands. His touch drags down over flank and hip to slide round Cardan’s thigh, just below the lean curve of his ass, his grip covetous and insistent.
He wants Cardan to fuck him again, and he wants to hear his name on Cardan’s lips again, and he wants Cardan to claim him, as many times as it takes, until he forgets that he has ever belonged to anyone but him. The one thing he can never have, he wants with a desperation that chokes the words from him, so all that escapes is a frustrated whimper that he buries against Cardan’s shoulder.]
no subject
What you do to me—
[ His accusation breaks off, too breathless and too caught up in his desire. He had meant to be more measured, had meant to control himself — but he can’t. Animal need surges through him, claws at his throat, throbs through his cock, fever-hot and impossible to deny. When he ruts into his husband, it is with a savage desperation of his own. He has no room for patience nor finesse — only the urgent stroke of his fingers and the heavy, insistent thrusts pinning his Liem against the fine sheets.
It’s maddening — the friction, the silken tightness of him, the whimper muffled against his shoulder. He doesn’t know the spell by which Liem turns him into this creature; he can only be grateful that his husband is equally desperate, equally wanting, that he has glimpsed the yawning abyss of Cardan’s avarice and not flinched even once. ]
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But Liem was wrong. Cardan is not a stranger; he is his, became his frighteningly quickly, and he enmeshed himself so totally in Liem’s life that if he were to disappear from it now, only an unrecognizable ruin would be left behind. The power Cardan has over him frightens him to contemplate.
But the obsession Liem demands from his lover thrills him as nothing else has.
He cannot help but chase the lure of it. His hard, desperate grip urges Cardan on, would deny his patience even if his lover had any to lean on, even as his own hips roll to meet each greedy thrust. Need throbs through him, blooming insatiably in his chest and surging in hungry waves down to his belly, his cock, to every inch of him that aches so keenly for Cardan’s touch. Given their ruthless pace, the ragged cadence of his lover’s breaths is almost enough by itself to push him over the edge. Liem clutches at him more fiercely, nails biting into the meat of his thigh as he smears kisses over the fevered curve of his neck.]
Ah, Cardan—
no subject
It’s unbearable. He can’t breathe with it. He wants it to never end. In a strange twist, it seems that he has come to enjoy the torment of wanting -- Liem's fault, surely. All those times he had teased his husband ruthlessly only to leave him teetering on the edge; every instance he’d had to hold himself back, to watch need crash over Liem as he weathered the storm of his own wanting. And still, and still, his own pleasure builds, ever-sharper and more overwhelming. How could he resist it, when he's already so taken with him, when he's so desperate to have this, having almost lost it?
Stopping feels like the cruelest thing he's ever done. And yet: his hips bottom out on one last, maddening stroke, and then he stills-- caging Liem against the sheets with his weight and his stubborn, terrible want, trapping them both. His own heartbeat is deafening in his ears; every muscle in his body feels tight with the effort to do this unnatural thing.
But he wants it. He wants to see it, wants to hold Liem close and see desperation capturing those elegant features. He wants it more than he needs his own satisfaction, even if waiting is going to drive him mad just as well. ]
Not yet.
[ He breathes it like a prayer against impermanence. ]
I want to have you for longer than this.
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Liem had thought his lover too caught up in his lust to rein himself in just before the finish line. For a moment his world is a confusion of need bracketed by Cardan’s stubborn weight atop him and the bed sandwiching him from below; he shudders against Cardan, helpless against his own wanting and yet equally unable to satisfy it, feeling at once both wrung dry and still drowning in his own desire.
He wants Cardan so terribly, especially when he is like this.]
Oh…
[His lungs won’t cooperate when he tells them to calm the urgent breaths he drags in, panted against his husband’s skin. The body pressing him into the sheets is too taut and alive with need; the man who has made him his captive is too dear and too lovely in the throes of his ruthless, unyielding greed. Liem’s palms drag over his back, desperately eager to touch.
His mouth quirks into a breathless, knowing little smile.]
For how long?
[For how long does Cardan wish to have him?]
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Liem’s smile pangs through his chest with painful urgency.
Forever, he thinks, but that’s stupid — of course he can’t have Liem forever. Not like this, anyway: at some point his heart would surely give out, and he suspects Liem would not find this end satisfying. It’s just difficult to be clever when he’s so consumed with want for him.
He buys himself time by burying his face against Liem’s hair, breathing in his scent — except that’s worse, spiking his pulse with more feverish need. ]
…Longer than either of us can afford.
[ Evening always comes too soon. Evening, and the damage control, and the tedious papers that ever take his husband from him. He sighs, and then pushes himself up enough to frame Liem’s face in his hands, biting back a groan at the tantalizing way it shifts them against each other. ]
You are so good at stoking my desire, husband.
[ Already his patience is so badly frayed; as much as he wants to, he knows he can’t drag this out much longer. ]
no subject
If Liem had his way, he too would keep Cardan here like this for far too long: long after the setting of the sun and the transit of the moon across the starry sky. He has not nearly had his fill of his husband when he is like this, too urgent with desire and tenderness both. But Liem has long since become accustomed to not getting what he wants.
Still, he does not bother to swallow the soft, hungry sound that wells up from him when Cardan moves back to cup his face. He is hungry, and his husband should know it. Besides, his hunger should be clear enough from the longing on his face and the covetous way his hands roam slowly, possessively down Cardan’s body.]
Then why, [he murmurs, gently accusing,] are you still not kissing me?
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Still, he can't help his own little smile — an echo of the one Liem had worn just a moment ago. His tone is equal parts fond and thoroughly smug. ]
I am a villain.
[ But not the kind who would be accused of neglecting his husband. The kiss he presses up on Liem holds all of his breathless, hungry impatience — all of his jubilant relief at being here, still, alive and with the man whom he has come to trust most, somehow, in the few months they've known each other. He can nary imagine an evening without Liem's presence in it, or a morning without his husband's comforting weight nestled against him.
And when Cardan moves in him again, picking up his unforgiving rhythm, it is because he does not mean to stop again. He can't, regardless-- he is far too sensitized, too mad with urgency, shivering with his own heated need and the irresistible pleasure of claiming Liem for his own. Even if his kisses falter, even as they turn to little more than gasps, and the world narrows to nothing but heat and desire—
Cardan will not let him go. Not ever, not ever — not matter how stupid he might be, to wish for forever. ]
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But he is hungrier for Cardan’s heated kisses and greedy touch than he is for his own release. It is this weakness that leads him into the trap of Cardan’s hands and mouth again and again, even when it nets him only frustration—and the lure of it has only grown stronger over time. Because he loves being Cardan’s more than anything else in the world, and he has become completely addicted to the pleasure of being at his mercy.
He drowns his hunger in Cardan’s kisses, meeting them ardently between his own uneven, impatient breaths, his hands greedy on his husband’s lean, scarred back. When Cardan moves in him again, when his kisses falter amidst the growing urgency of his pace, Liem can only gasp as sensation swamps him, filling him up until all that’s left is the urgent need for more. But even though he feels ragged with it already, even when his need colours his breaths with the soft edge of a whine, sensation holds him captive: Cardan’s body fitted perfectly against his, Cardan’s green scent surrounding him with each gasp, Cardan’s rough breaths and thundering heart accompanying him in his urgency.
If he stayed caught in his frantic moment forever he would surely go mad, but it would be the sweetest, most perfect madness he could imagine. Of course he doesn’t wish it to end.]
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How his husband — this quiet, serious, disciplined man, so terribly different from anyone Cardan has ever known — has done this thing to him, he does not know. Perhaps it is the way Liem responds to his touch, the way he grows demanding; perhaps it is the earnest need in his voice and the breaths he doesn’t need to take. Maybe it’s only that Cardan has never before felt needed, by anyone.
He cannot take it. It’s dizzying and addictive and frightening, the certainty with which he’s ready to give Liem all he has. Even with his heart thundering frantically in his chest, every part of him wound tight with need, he wants it to last. Just a little longer, just one breathless second more—
But it — he — cannot last. He comes after all, shuddering through his release and the embarrassingly desperate noise it pulls from his throat. He has to keep his eyes closed, for fear of giving too much away — as if Liem could not see him unless Cardan looks back. ]
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And yet, he is undone, blissfully and utterly. He comes apart for Cardan yet again, unable to do anything else but clutch him close and gasp his name as the weight of his love and his pleasure and his need and the feverish ache inspired by Cardan’s desperation crash down upon him all at once. This time and every time, he cannot resist him.
He wants nothing but this, nothing but this rare and irreplaceable man tangled up in his embrace, and his greed for that intimacy can never possibly be sated. He will always want more, no matter how many mornings he spends in Cardan’s bed and no matter how many evenings he spends in his company. Even in the aftermath, boneless and wrung dry and nuzzling into Cardan’s hair, he still feels greedy with it, stubbornly resentful of the unseen future creeping closer to roust them from their bed and their intimacy.
There is a certain person conspiring to rob Cardan from him, too, he will eventually admit to himself, with a feeling like ice sliding down his spine. A person Liem has steadfastly avoided thinking about, because he has been so busy thinking about how they will outmaneuver him instead. But that man has tried twice now to end Cardan’s life, and it goes against everything Liem knows to let this pass unrewarded. He cannot possibly sleep soundly as long as this man, who he knows seeks his husband’s death, still exists.
And Dain has tried to take what is Liem’s. Much as he might like to pretend for his husband that he is better than this, his heart demands he balance the scales. And he cannot deny his heart any longer.]