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It’s like a bud primed to blossom--the tell of an orgasm’s tension stirring warmly under your skin. You sweat and stretch and writhe against the sensation. Whimper, pant, and keen. Needy, desperate noises that choke you and ring foreign in your own ears. The irony that he is the only man who's ever gotten these kinds of sounds out of you is not lost. But it is bittersweet.
Though, what isn't in Ergastulum?
Bittersweetness is a way of life here, a state of being...the steady beat that sets the condemned city's pulse. Once a familiar song, it doesn't reach you here—at least not as easy now that you've found a measure of happiness in Nicolas. The two of you have managed to drum up a rhythm of your own in this place you only know. It’s a place that feels like home. Where you meet again and again, swelling with bright chords of surrender and something sweeter still in all its vibrancy.
“ Nic, I’m —!”
Of course, you know he can’t hear you, but you cry out all the same. Reason finds little footing in your mind when he’s inside you like this. You can’t think past his heat nor the heaviness of his body moving over you. The fullness he brings and the way it squeezes your heart. Your skin still stings where, earlier, kisses had given way to flowering bruises under his teeth—an answer to the red welts your nails had raked down his broad back and shoulders.
You’d reveled in it.
You revel in the realization that there is only Nicolas and that he is all-consuming. In the hand beside your head, tangled up in your hair where he fists the pillow under you—the other at your back, holding you close so that his every thrust finds its mark. In his face pressed into the crook of your neck, breath heavy, mouth open and hot against your throat to drink in the moans reverberating there. The delicious feeling of him in your ribs, the yawn of your soft cunt taking him deeper.
When he bottoms out your entire body jerks like a plucked string releasing a note. You fear you’ll fly away on its wings, left to fall into an endless sky without him.
Without warning, you grab a fistful of Nicolas’ hair in both hands and pull him up. The suddenness of it catches, and his hips skip over yours for a beat. Your heart jumps into your throat— not now, I’m so close —and you squeeze your legs around his waist, imploring him to keep his driving pace. The light spilling from the bedside table is dim, but there’s no mistaking first the annoyance, and then the question that shadows his features. His dark gaze falls upon your mouth.
“I’m close!” You don’t trust yourself to anything more with your coherence slipping. You’re already arching, taunt, vibrating. Soon to be wordless.
His eyes narrow and he pins you with a haughty, lopsided grin. I know.
Your grip tightens in his hair when you feel the hand at your back shift, when it finds its place between your moving bodies and the calloused pad of its thumb sweeps over your clit. It’s sensitive and wet, readily conducting the electricity hemming his touch. It spreads all over you, wild and relentless and burning with every breath you share. His name is like lightning on your lips; your orgasm follows it like a clap of thunder.
You cry out with its release. If its anticipation was like a bud quivering at the brink of spring, then its realization leaves you awash with verdant color and birdsong. You're reminded that there is only Nicolas when you twist away and find his arms caging you in. No one but Nicolas when he shows no sign of letting you go, of letting up. He’s going to fuck you through this orgasm—wild and relentless and burning.
You feel you could drown in this moment, in him, his eyes, black and darker still with need. Already you feel you can’t breathe and turn your face into your pillow as though your breath lies wherever his gaze cannot strip it away.
“No,” he rasps. He grabs your chin and forces you to face him. No . Don’t hide, he wants to watch, enraptured, as you shatter to pieces under him. As you tumble headfirst someplace endless in its expanse and all too bright. He’s long since expressed how much personal pleasure he gets from watching you come, how lovely he finds you with an orgasm’s sweet brand of anguish twisting your features. So you meet his gaze in full bloom. You blur at the edges until there is only the two of you and your bodies moving together. And somewhere beyond the haze of it all, your hand finds his and squeezes.
“You’re so good to me, Nic,” you all but weep.
His breathing goes shakey as his lips, kissed swollen and red, part. You trace their soft shape with a forefinger and pull him close to smooch them over and over and over again.
“So, so good. I love you.”
Nicholas shudders with a low noise, his teeth catching on your full bottom lip as he licks you up in a kiss proper. And when his hips skip over yours this time, he slows, pressing his weeping cockhead deep into your heart with heavy strokes.
He leans in close, til your foreheads meet—closer, till he’s bodily pressing you into the bed under him. Closest when spills in you with a ragged moan.
The heat of him is delicious; you tip your head back and lick your lips, savoring it. You feel his hand close around the back of your neck to cradle you as he noses his way through the curtain of your hair. You feel his breath on your temple and turn to kiss him again. Sweetly. Lips whispering against the shell of his ear and dripping with adoration. You thank him again and again for his rawness, his vulnerability and every soft thing between. No one sees him like this except for you, a display of unwavering trust that you love him for all the more.
You find just as much beauty in his undoing as he does in yours, in his willingness to lose himself to intimacy at your hands. He doesn’t pull away, instead, he releases a slow breath and relaxes over you, his height belying just how heavy it really is. The weight of him is delicious though, drags you down somewhere sweet and sleepy with him.
At length, his breathing steadies, and he moves above you to pull out with care as if to not hurt you. He never does, nor has he ever. But the tenderness of his movements still your heart all the same. You watch, enamored, as he dumps his body next to yours and lies there without moving. He’s still holding your hand, you note, pleased. But now he’s watching your face with a kind of quiet reverence that, after all this time, warms you through and through.
“I love you, Nicolas,” you say again, uncertain if he’d caught it on your lips the first time.
He blinks slowly and grins. “A mistake, really,” he signs back with his free hand.
Unmoved by his cheekiness you grin back and tap your lips with a finger; Nicolas takes the cue and pulls you in for a sleepy kiss. It’s only when you part that he finally unlaces his fingers from yours. Their tips, now free to do so, trace careful shapes into the palm of your hand. Characters.
I love you too.
The words settle with meaning between your ribs and they remain there, beating slow and steady in time with the rhythm you share.