Escape (23 page)

“Really?” Whenever he'd read or heard of people crying from joy, Luka had thought it was a ridiculous romantic invention of sappy singers and people who make up fairy tales for children, but now he was trying not to let the tears blurring his vision slip down his cheeks.

“Yes. Really.” Tarik smiled down at him a few seconds, then kissed his lips. So soft. So warm. “I would stay in this bed with you for a month, if we could.” Slow, gentle parting of lips and a deeper kiss. Wet, reddened lips spreading in another smile. “I only told you that, about not doing this before now, because I'm nervous, and I wanted you to know why.”

“We don't have to do anything that sounds... bad to you.”

Tarik laughed. “Nothing that involves you and me naked in bed together sounds bad to me. I can picture how you'd be blushing right now if I told you the things I've been imagining doing with you.” Luka's face went hot and Tarik laughed again. “God, you're easy.” Wet, teasing kisses, keeping Luka hard, aching. “I just... I'm nervous because if we have sex...Just, I've never done it with anyone that way before. I'm worried I'll hurt you.”

Would it hurt? He'd heard boys talking about girls and virginity and blood and pain, but that was because of the hymen. None of that had anything to do with what he and Tarik might do together. Even though just thinking the words made his face burn, he made himself say it. “I want you so badly, I don't care if it hurts.”

Tarik's smile melted under something like sadness in his hazel eyes. “I care.” For a few seconds, Tarik nuzzled into Luka's neck, then brushed his lips against his cheek in a brief kiss. “You've had so little pleasure, and so much pain. I hate the idea of your first time having sex being anything but perfect.”

“If I'm with you, it will be perfect.”

Now it was Tarik's eyes glistening, even though he was smiling. “I want to. So much. Can you be patient with me?”

“If you need me to be patient, I'll be patient. I'll be whatever you need, Tarik.”

Sinking writhing into the heat and tangle of an urgent kiss, Luka felt wonderfully, terribly full, all of him thrumming, throbbing, aching, chest swollen to bursting with joy, cock and balls pumped up with need. But he wanted, was driven by some demanding force, to touch Tarik, to make him moan, to make him writhe and cry and come. But when he slid down and tried to kiss Tarik's cock, Tarik pulled away.

“Let me, first.” Maybe he saw the confusion in Luka's eyes. Holding his gaze, Tarik caressed Luka's cheek. “Please. I've been dying to, and I was just about to...” Tarik nuzzled into Luka's neck, then kissed his way down until Luka arched and gasped under the kisses trailing across his chest, lingering over his nipples. “You smell so fucking good. And your skin is so soft against my lips, I can't believe it.”

The touch and flutter of Tarik's tongue made Luka arch off the bed, straining for those shockwaves of ecstasy too intense to bear in stillness or silence. And when that wet-sliding tongue slipped over his belly, Luka squirmed and huffed through an eruption of pleasure close to agony. Panting, whole body taut and twitching, Luka mewled and clawed at the bedding when Tarik's warm, wet tongue touched the crown of his cock.

Wanting to see, Luka looked. The sight of Tarik's lips parting as he felt his warm breath on the cooling gleam of spit wrung a gasp from him, just as the wild thrill of an enveloping, sucking kiss swallowed him whole. But watching Tarik's lips move over his cock plunged Luka into embarrassment, and he closed his eyes. Unbearable bliss twisting and squeezing him.

“Wait.” Tarik's tonguing and sucking softened and slowed, but he didn't stop until Luka squirmed back and covered himself with his hand, panting, quivering. “Wait.”

“Are you okay?” A shadow of concern in Tarik's eyes.

“I just... I'm going to... I didn't want to while you're...”

Tarik's incredible smile, warming as an embrace. “Because you think I don't want you to?”

Luka shrugged.

Tarik caught Luka's wrists and pulled his hands aside. “I was anxious I might not like it, even though I've fantasized it a thousand times. But fuck, Luka, if you had any idea how good you taste, how incredible it feels, holding you in my mouth, rubbing my tongue against you... Don't be afraid. I want you to come. I want to taste you.”

Face scorching, Luka let Tarik kiss the root of his cock, then work his way up until he was licking around the dome, touching the tip of his tongue to his seeping slit, until he was enveloped in the juicy suction of Tarik's mouth and he was gasping, collapsing in that soul-fucking, mind-erasing eruption.

Unreal, convulsing in ecstasy, half-lost, half-found in Tarik's hungry kiss all those long, pulsing, gushing, seconds. After, fragile and happy and breathless, Tarik sucking softly, now, holding him safe and warm in the perfect wet embrace of his mouth. When he did finally release Luka from between his lips, Tarik slid up, wrapped him in the heat of his arms, holding his gaze while Luka drifted little by little back to himself, then gave him a soft, almost chaste kiss on the lips. Then one brow. Then the other.

All his life, Luka had yearned to love, to be loved, never daring to hope it would feel that good. Even just lying there, Tarik's hazel eyes gazing into his.

Not that Tarik loved him.

“Well, I guess I can stop worrying about being terrible at it.” Tarik's low laugh was barely more than a sigh.

Luka's face went hot. “I didn't last long, did I?”

“Best compliment in the world.”

“It was... I don't even know how to tell you how good it felt.”

Tarik's smile morphed into an amused grin.

“Of course, I guess you already know.”

“I don't know how amazing it will be with you, though.”

Giddy eagerness prickled over Luka. “So, let me show you.”

Playful grin clashing with somber eyes, Tarik trapped Luka against him. “Just lie here with me a little longer.”

“Don't you want me to? You're still hard. I can feel it.”

Strained laugh lightening the shadow in Tarik's eyes. “Me too.” He rubbed his hardness up and down against Luka's thigh.

“So, let me fix it.” Luka tried to squirm free and sink down, but Tarik had him pinned. “What's wrong?”

“I just...”

Luka waited until he couldn't stand it anymore. “What?”

Tarik sighed and the last traces of his smile vanished. “After what they did to you...”

The vast warm cloud of joy filling Luka's chest shrank to a hard little ball of ice.

“Luka, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to remind you of it. I just, when we're physical together, I sometimes worry...”

Luka writhed against Tarik's warm embrace, but only managed to bury his face in the pillow. Finally Tarik let him go, but his hand lingered on Luka's back, circling slowly, gently caressing.

“Luka?” Tarik kept stroking him tenderly through the long silence. “Please look at me.”

Terrifying, leaving that safe, warm dark where he'd buried his face, where he didn't have to see the ugliness of what had happened in Tarik's hazel eyes. But if Tarik wanted him to, he'd brave it. Even when he forced himself to turn, to meet Tarik's eyes, Tarik's touch never left him.

“I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you.”

“You didn't.”

Voice low and soft as a caress. “I did. You were happy and eager, and now...”

Luka shrugged. “I don't blame you for not wanting to... after Armin...”

The wan smile curving Tarik's lips confused Luka. “You think I don't want to—”

“It's okay. I get it. It's... gross, now. After what you saw.”

Tarik put out his hand, palm up, and when Luka laid his hand on top of it, Tarik drew him up to sitting. So fucking hard, staying still, meeting Tarik's eyes, letting Tarik look at his naked shame.

“That's not what I meant. That never even crossed my mind.”

“But you don't want me to...”

Tarik let out a melancholy laugh. “Oh, I want you to.” He lifted his hand and almost touched Luka's face, but he pulled his hand back just before his fingertips would have brushed his lips. “I've had about fifty obscene daydreams about you going down on me. I only stopped you because... you've been hurt. A lot. Not just Armin and Begović.” The hand that hadn't dared to caress Luka's face encircled Luka's wrist, and Tarik stroked the pink weal with the pad of his thumb. “I don't want to hurt you. Even accidentally. I want you to feel safe with me.”

The pressure in Luka's chest was a pain more beautiful than any happiness he'd ever felt. “I do feel safe with you, Tarik.”

Tarik smiled, and the sweet pain in Luka's chest ached a little more sharply. “Good. That means a lot more to me, than...getting off. And I don't want to do anything to mess it up.”

“Why would it mess it up if you let me...” Luka was too embarrassed to say it.

His smile faded, and for a moment Tarik broke eye contact. Finally he squeezed Luka's hand and met his gaze again. “I guess I'm scared, if we do that, you'll be thinking about what Armin did to you. And that'll make it ugly for you. And I don't want anything we do together to be ugly.”

Luka made himself say it. “I've been fantasizing about doing that to someone since... I don't know, since I was ten years old, probably. I've fantasized about doing that, more than anything else. More than having someone do it to me. I've...” The words scalded his face before he even said them, but Tarik's steady gaze and the warm press of his hand made Luka feel safe. Brave. “I've fantasized how it would smell. How it would taste. What it would feel like, touching it with my tongue. I've fantasized hearing the sounds of pleasure a man would make, while I was doing that to him, and how excited I would be, to feel...” God, he didn't know how to talk about these things. His voice was shaking apart.

“Luka...” Tarik's voice wavered, too, and when he swallowed and his Adam's apple rose and fell, and his lips parted again and Luka saw how quick and shallow his breaths were, a little of his anxiety melted.

“...to feel those warm wet jets against my lips, my tongue.”

Something between a sigh and a laugh came from Tarik's parted lips. “Fuck, Luka.” Tarik's hand slid over the nape of Luka's neck and gently squeezed, releasing a flood of warmth down Luka's back.

“I never really believed I'd get to. I thought no one would ever want that. Not with me. And I never let myself think about you like that, because I was scared you'd know, somehow, and then you'd hate me, too.”

A shallow crease appeared between Tarik's eyebrows.

“But after the other night, in the sleeping bag together with you, I guess I've pictured it about a hundred times.” He couldn't handle the weight of Tarik's gaze, once he'd confessed that, and he looked down. But the sight of Tarik's cock, modestly hidden under the sheet, but obviously hard, gave him a little courage. “And when I thought about it, about doing that with you, I got so excited—washing up at camp this morning, trekking along the river this afternoon—I was afraid you'd look and see I was hard.” His hand shook as he took Tarik's hand and brought it to his crotch. “Like this.”

“God, Luka. You make me so fucking...”

“Hard?”

Tarik laughed. “Yeah. Agonizingly hard. Guess that's obvious. And a dozen other things you can't see, and I don't know how to say.”

“Then kiss me.”

Tarik's smile flashed bigger, then faded away as he leaned in, holding Luka's gaze until their lips touched. Then his lids veiled his hazel eyes as he gently drew Luka's bottom lip between his, soft press, slow caress, wet stroke of tongue teasing, then parting, coaxing Luka to open to his kiss. God, what glorious, terrible euphoria, the way Tarik's hands were holding Luka so forcefully against him, Tarik's body trembling. Luka's body so filled up with want and joy, there was hardly room for air in his lungs. And that incredible feeling of Tarik's big stiff dick pushing against his belly. Luka was dying of happiness. Dying of want.

Luka pulled out of that world-ending kiss and searched Tarik's dizzy gaze. “Trust me?”

With a faint, nervous grin, Tarik nodded.

“Then lie back. Get nice and comfortable. My dream's about to come true, and I'd like to take my time and really enjoy it.”

Tarik's tentative grin morphed into a huge smile. “God, you're unbelievable.”

Too beautiful to bear, Tarik reclined before him, watchful, broad chest rising and falling in quick, shallow breaths. Tawny, velvet skin warm under Luka's lips. Prominent nipples, the shade of dates, hardened almost instantly under his lips, delightfully peaked under his tongue, Tarik sighing, belly quivering, sinking his fingers into Luka's hair, weightless caress. Dark hair between his pecks, leading Luka down, down, tickling Luka's lips, soft against his cheek. Shallow navel that provoked a sudden surge of tender feeling in Luka, and the startled gasp as Luka's kisses made him tense and curl in.

“Sorry. Ticklish?”

“No.” Strained laughter. “A little, maybe. I'm just so wound up. You're driving me crazy, Luka.”

Tarik looked so happy and nervous it made Luka's chest ache. And the sight of Tarik's erection lifting the sheet from his pelvis had Luka trembling with nervous want. When he took the edge of the sheet between his fingers, Tarik met his gaze and smiled. Little by little, Luka pulled the sheet back, deliberately letting the fabric drag over the tip of Tarik's cock, thrilling at the rasp of his breath, the quiver of his belly. Every inch of the line of dark hair Luka bared aggravated his mounting want, and the moment the head of Tarik's cock emerged from under the sheet, Luka groaned out loud, and a second later he felt the heat rush to his face and knew it had turned as dark as Tarik's velvety cock head.