“Maybe I loved him,” Rey said. “But I didn’t love him enough to stay. I’m a coward.”
Eli looked up into Rey’s flushed face. “So now you’re running from me.”
“I don’t know. Yes.” He tried to look away, but Eli held his chin in place. “I’m sorry.”
“What will happen if you don’t run?”
Rey closed his eyes. “You’ll fight the King of the Hunt, and you’ll die.”
“You don’t know that.” Eli tugged at Rey’s hips, and Rey sank to his knees on the tile. “You don’t want to lose me.”
“I don’t,” Rey said, and Eli leaned down to kiss him. He kissed Eli back, desperately, reaching for him as though to hold him in Duciel, far from the wilds where King Tristan roamed. Eli tugged at his hair, and a low hum of pleasure ran through Rey’s body.
“That isn’t the same as wanting me, though.” Eli tipped Rey’s head back, and Rey saw something dark in his eyes, an old pain rising to the surface. “Do you want me?”
“I do,” Rey said. “That’s why I can’t let you?—”
Eli interrupted him by dragging him into a rough kiss. Rey leaned back and lost his balance on the slick tile, and they both ended up tangled in a mess of limbs and hair and gasping mouths on the bathroom floor. It wasn’t dignified. Rey was pretty sure he jabbed Eli in the stomach with his knee at one point. But it didn’t matter, because Eli was warm and alive and still brimming with that strange otherness that had taken hold when Rey had told his story to the charmed audience that evening.
It was easier, when Eli was moaning into his mouth and biting his lower lip, to pretend that they were part of one of Rey’s happier tales, a story Starians told around the fire when they wanted to pretend that the world was full of good people who would never betray each other out of cowardice or love, where knights were just, and a kiss could break a curse. In those stories, no children went to the gallows. No knights died in muddy fields. Someone like Eli could fall in love with a spirit, and maybe the spirit could love them back, and that would be it. Maybe it could be simple for once.
He was pulled out of his thoughts by Eli tugging at his hair. Rey was flat on his back with Eli straddling his chest, smiling wryly.
“You overthink things sometimes,” Eli said. “So do I.” He tugged his belt free, and his smile widened when a tremor ran over Rey’s body. “Oh, I saw that.” He snapped the belt, and laughed when Rey made a strangled sound and covered his face with both hands. “What?”
“It’s undignified,” Rey said, and heard Eli try and fail to hide a snicker.
“I am completely unsurprised to know that a trickster spirit wants a good spanking,” Eli said. “Is that why you really tear down people’s laundry? Because you want the belt?”
“Excuse me, no one wants to spank a fox,” Rey said through his hands.
“I wouldn’t mind spanking you in this form,” Eli said. “Particularly right now, with this little guy at attention.”
Rey drew his hands away as Eli reached behind him to run his fingers along Rey’s cock. “Little guy?”
Eli stood. “Had to get you to take your hands off your face somehow. Bend over the sink, I want to see what this belt does to you.”
What it did to Rey was make him squeak at the first strike and bite his wrist. Eli made a thoughtful sound behind him and trailed the leather belt over Rey’s back, making his body hum with need.
“Take your wrist out of your mouth,” he said, and though his voice was calm and measured, his dominance flooded Rey’s senses. “I want to hear you.”
“It will be deeply mortifying,” Rey warned him.
“Good,” Eli said, and Rey gripped the sink with both hands and cried out as the belt struck his ass again. It already burned like fire, but Rey’s cock was impossibly hard, and he strained not to reach down and stroke himself off as Eli struck him again. “I like how your thighs clench. Do you do that every time?”
Rey tried to answer, but it came out incomprehensible as Eli spanked him with the belt three more times, quickly enough that Rey couldn’t swallow his embarrassing groan. His hips jerked against the air, desperate for friction, and he nearly sobbed with relief when Eli moved closer and wrapped a hand around Rey’s cock.
“You should come for me,” Eli said, casually, as though they were having polite tea in a drawing room and Rey wasn’t panting and red-faced with his hands braced on the bathroom sink. “You can do that, yes?”
“Probably,” Rey choked out, and gasped as Eli started to move his hand. Rey fucked helplessly into Eli’s fist as Eli murmured praise in his ear, and when he came, it was with a low cry and a shudder that ran through his body like a wave. He felt wrung out and dazed, and he let Eli draw him away from the sink. Eli kissed him softly, then stepped back as Rey’s eyes went wide.
“What is it?” Eli asked, concern in his voice.
“The bath!” Rey cried. “The water’s probably cold by now.”
“We’ll run it again,” Eli said. “And maybe I’ll join you, this time. How does that sound?”
Rey grinned at him. ”I suspect you’ll just distract me again.”
