Although if Corin didn’tdosomething, he’d be sexually frustrated for a long damned time.
He rolled his hips more purposefully. “You made me a promise a few minutes ago.”
“I did,” Corin said, voice and eyes both darkening. He pushed up again and reached a hand between them, stroking the backs of his knuckles over the straining ridge of Aster’s erection, eliciting a gasp, making his legs twitch and his fists clench. The corner of Corin’s mouth curled in a way Aster was starting to learn meant mischief. “If you really want me to pin you down and suck your pretty cock until you’re sobbing, that is. I wouldn’t want to force anything on a helpless captive.”
Aster’s chest fluttered, a strange sensation he couldn’t really define. Had Belinda felt this way when Corin teased and flirted with her? No. She couldn’t have. If she’d felt like this she never would have let him go.
But that feeling buoyed him up and gave him a burst of confidence he’d never had before.
“Oh, no,” he said in an exaggeratedly high-pitched voice. “Help! The dragon’s sucking my cock!”
Corin stared wide-eyed. For a long, excruciating moment, Aster thought he was about to be more embarrassed than he’d ever been in his life. And then Corin’s lips twitched, and his chest rumbled, and he burst out into a helpless guffaw of laughter, head dropping down and shoulders shaking.
“Fuck, Aster,” he choked between paroxysms. “For fuck’s—you should’ve screamed that out the window,” and then he was off again, howling.
Fredmund’s face, if he had…
And then Aster lost it himself, cackling until his eyes watered, wrapping his arms around Corin’s back and shaking with laughter along with him.
“Maybe he’d have tried to offer himself as tribute too,” he gasped, and that was the end for both of them. Corin collapsed on top of him, finally lifting his head enough to press his lips to Aster’s on and off, and then they were rolling to the side with Corin’s arms around him, kissing and laughing and tangled together, Aster with his eyes only half-open and the world outside of the bed, including anything happening at court, blurred and inconsequential, and his body and heart both singing with joy.
He couldn’t have defined the moment when they went from half-embracing and half-laughing to moving with more and different intent. But Corin’s hand had found its way under the waist of his trousers and drawers, cupping his ass, fingers teasing between the cheeks. And Corin’s breath came faster now, heating Aster’s neck where he’d nuzzled in, kissing and nipping below his ear. One of his muscular thighs pressed up between Aster’s legs.
“I thought—mmm, oh—I thought you were going to suck me, not fuck me, fuck, Corin—”
“They’re not mutually exclusive,” Corin murmured against his collarbone. “Which one do you want me to force on you first?”
“How will I ever survive such brutality?” Aster squeaked as Corin pinched his ass, and added, “You monster!”
Too late, the words already flown, he remembered the way his sister had screamed that word at Corin after he’d fought her lover. His heart stuttered, a jolt of horror going down his spine.
Corin went still.
But only for an instant. His lips moved first, pressing a kiss to the little hollow at the base of Aster’s throat. And then his hands moved, one squeezing his ass and the other wrapped around his knee, pushing his legs open.
“It’s all right,” Corin whispered, and squeezed again, harder. “I know what you meant.”
Fuck, he’d been such an ass, and Corin had forgiven him just like that. How had Belinda not held on to him with every scrap of strength she had? Corin had loved her so very much. Adored her. The way he’d gazed at her, with longing and desire shining in his eyes…Aster would give anything to have Corin look at him that way. Even for an instant. He’d die happy.
And he’d had Corin laughing with him and enjoying him for more than simple release, and of course Aster had said the wrong thing. Yes, he was still kissing his way across Aster’s chest and inching closer to putting a finger inside him, but that wasn’t the same.
He had to fix this.
“I meant that you’ve imprisoned me here in your dread lair, and so on, haven’t you? Which makes you so very…” Damn it, damn it, he couldn’t use another close synonym. Obviously not monstrous, but not beastly, either. Or even brutish or inhuman. Although Aster didn’t see what was so wrong with any of those—Corin could monstrously brutalize him as much as he wanted, honestly. “So very rude,” he finally said.
Corin’s head popped up and his hands stopped moving. “Are you fucking—rude? I’m beingrude?”
There, Aster almost had him. He squirmed underneath him and grinned. “So incredibly rude to kidnap someone and put your hand down the back of his trousers, Corin. Downright improper.”
“I didn’t kidnap you, you little—you showed up uninvited!”
“Ha! You’re stuck with me now!” Aster hadn’t thought those words through in the slightest, and they hung in the air, echoing. He could feel his smile fading as it sank in how they’d sounded.
Why,whycouldn’t he go more than three seconds without ruining everything with his stupid mouth?
But Corin simply gazed down at him, looking a little sad, if anything, rather than angry.
“For now,” he said, and bent his head again, kissing along Aster’s jaw to that tender spot on his throat behind the hinge of it that he seemed to enjoy rubbing his face against so much.
