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“I can see you staring.”
Nicky doesn’t bother looking at Nile. Frankly, as charming as Nile’s face is, he doesn’t want to look at her, not when he has the best view in the whole of Creation right in front of him.
“I am not exactly hiding it,” he says blithely. He still has his book (which he actually has been enjoying immensely) open in front of him in a pretence of reading, but he hasn’t turned the page for the last hour or so. It’s merely a prop, a façade, a sham.
He lazes idly on the lounger beneath the umbrella, feet crossed at the ankles, and stares without a shred of shame. A man has a right to stare at his husband when he looks so utterly delectable.
Joe under the sun is a vision, always — especially when he’s wearing nothing but a pair of swimming trunks Nicky vaguely remembers buying in the 70s when men were less afraid of showing leg — purely for his own benefit, of course. And show leg they do, the gorgeous, sinewy length of them on full display from ankle (well-turned, of course) to hairy calf to lithe thigh. But that isn’t what attracts Nicky’s gaze the most, spectacular though they are. Nor is it his delicious biceps that Nicky would greatly enjoy sinking his teeth into.
No, it is Joe’s chest that has bewitched him in particular, today.
Joe has been working out in their downtime. However, Nicky’s food is also working its usual magic as well (Nicky isn’t really a man who favours sculpted abs, he likes Joe with peacetime softness around the middle), and his pecs look stunning, soft and well-formed, the absolute ideal ratio of muscle to fat, a sublime blend Nicky has had the joy and privilege of perfecting the formula for. His necklace rests in the valley between them oh-so-perfectly, drawing just the proper attention to them, and thank God he hasn’t gotten it into his head to start waxing again, for Nicky so loves the soft dark hair that dusts them.
As Joe plays some inane beach ball game with Andy, Nicky watches Joe’s pecs bounce and ripple deliciously, and he has to breathe in deeply through his nose.
He shifts minutely on his lounger at the heady thought of circling his tongue around one of those dusky nipples, tugging it between his teeth until Joe bucks and moans and begs for more, which of course, he will not give, because tormenting Joe until he is a writhing, pleading mess is such an exquisite endeavour. He bites his lip, hoping it will pass more for thoughtful than aroused.
“I mean, I get it.”
Nile’s voice drags him mercilessly back from his hot, dripping fantasy.
“Hm?”
“Aesthetically, anyway. Joe’s hot.”
‘Hot’ seems like such a limiting, paltry descriptor. Joe is radiant. Joe is mouth-watering. Joe is captivating. Joe is magnificent. If Nicky were even slightly inclined to tear his gaze away from the man before him, he knows he would see other eyes on Joe, other longing, hungry gazes, and Nicky feels a decadent surge of uncharacteristic, possessive Schadenfreude. His. All his, only his. He is truly the luckiest man alive and has been for the last nine hundred and twenty-nine years.
“Oh, he is,” Nicky agrees amiably.
He lowers his sunglasses to enjoy the richness of the sun on sweat-slick copper skin, the sheen of it. Summer is truly bountifully kind to Joe. He stands with the ball under one arm, the other hand on his hip, and he laughs at something Andy says. Nicky feels another wave of emotion, but this time it’s not arousal, but pure affection. Joe’s smile is the sun, it’s the incarnation of joy itself. He glows, and Nicky allows himself the most pathetic of lovesick sighs.
“Sap,” Nile says fondly, and he chuckles, pushing his glasses up again.
Joe abandons the ball just out of the water’s reach and heads into the sea after Andy. Nicky is certain that, due to her sheer age, Andy is still much closer evolutionarily to a Tiktaalik than most other humans, so she’ll be in there for a while. Joe won’t.
Sure enough, he swims a while, racing Andy for a bit until he tires of it (because he loses), and emerges like some divine vision from the ocean. Nicky really does bite his lip then, tense with trying to keep himself in check. Joe’s growing hair falling damp around his ears, seawater trailing over all that glorious bare skin… Nicky wonders if placing his book open, pages down, over his crotch would be too obvious.
Joe picks up the ball and heads up the beach towards them, running a hand through his hair in a way that is solely for Nicky’s benefit, because he is grinning like a Cheshire cat.
He abandons the ball in the shade and sits on Nicky’s lounger, long legs stretched out into the sun and feet half buried in the sand, keeping his eyes on Nicky. They simmer, pinning Nicky down, and Nicky’s lips curl upward, lazily, under their gaze.
“Having fun?” Joe asks.
“Nicky sure is,” Nile teases, and Nicky scoffs even as Joe laughs, the loveliest sound in the world. Nile gets to her feet, stretches somewhat. “Swim time!”
And she’s off, jogging to the water’s edge, and though Nicky is very grateful for her prompt departure (no one can read a room quite like Nile Freeman), he doesn’t watch her go. How could he, when Joe is in front of him, still dripping from the sea, sun-kissed and salt-drenched? Nicky feels ravenous, presented with such a feast.
“Having fun without me?” Joe asks, sultry and faux-reproachful, feigning a pout.
“Not quite,” Nicky says. “I was looking my fill.” He finally discards his book, slipping the bookmark in between its pages. He shivers when Joe trails a finger from his ankle to his knee and then, teasingly, up his thigh, to the bottom hem of his trunks, the same vintage as Joe’s because, after this long, he has internalised Joe’s unrepentant worship of his ass and thighs and knows exactly what gets him going.
“Wouldn’t you rather touch?” Joe purrs.
If they were at the little private cove by their home in Malta, Nicky would ravish him then and there, have him on the sand without a care. Alas, they are on a very public beach, and he cannot. He can only lick his lips and draw one of his legs up to hide his burgeoning problem. Truly a thing of wonder, how attuned his body is to this man, the sight of him, his mere presence. He wants Joe’s hands on him, he wants his hands on Joe, he wants bites and moans and rough kisses, and he can’t have them yet. He is famed for his patience, but today it is truly being tried to its limits.
“Oh, you know I do,” he growls. “And you know perfectly well now is not the time.”
Joe laughs in utter delight, tilting forward easily when Nicky hooks a finger in his necklace and drags him closer. His lips taste of salt while his tongue tastes of him, and Nicky’s heart flutters like it always has, at every kiss, for centuries. Joe hums into it, parting only to rub their noses together, deceptively chaste even when the air around them sizzles.
Nicky has to fight with everything he has to keep his hands to himself. He shudders in anticipation for later, back at the villa they’ve rented, where they very wisely took the bedroom with the en-suite furthest from the others. Nicky knows precisely what he wants tonight, and he knows Joe will be more than happy to indulge him.
He plays distractedly with Joe’s necklace, warm from the sun and Joe’s skin, and enjoys the breadth of Joe’s palm on his thigh, rubbing with his thumb. The interplay of lust and softness is one he’s always loved, could never tire of. He traces, almost coyly, the cleft between Joe’s pecs, following the shape of one of them, his attention fixed. He comes dangerously close to a nipple, wandering below it, and he can feel Joe’s low hum beneath his fingertip, spreading, tingling, up his arm, straight to the banked fire in the pit of his stomach.
“My eyes are up here,” he says dryly. Nicky snorts softly.
“As lovely as they are, cuor mio, I am, unfortunately, distracted.”
“Oh, how cruel, he only wants me for my body!” Joe laments, pressing the back of his hand to his forehead dramatically. That earns him a roll of Nicky’s eyes over his sunglasses, and another kiss, this one light and mirthful, more smile than heat.
He then flops down beside Nicky, on the plastic lounger that was very much not meant for two tall grown men who fight for a living. It quakes dangerously, and Nicky makes an embarrassingly alarmed noise.
“Do you think Andy has found an octopus yet?” Joe asks, snaking a still-damp arm beneath him, making him shiver. Under the umbrella, Joe’s skin feels clammy against his own, but he would never say no to touch.
“Here?” Nicky says, uncertain, but sure enough, Andy resurfaces, triumphant, with a wriggling tentacled thing in her hands. Nile shrieks and runs away, back up the beach.
“Throw it back!” she yells as Andy cackles and immediately attracts the attention of several children and teenagers. A live octopus is quite a sight, after all.
Joe’s hand settles on Nicky’s side, tracing almost-ticklish circles into his skin, chuckling in between unthinking kisses to Nicky’s shoulder.
“Ugh, it was so squishy,” Nile announces, picking up her beach towel and wrapping it around her shoulders before sitting down. She doesn’t even raise an eyebrow at how close they are.
“Watch out, that’s dinner tonight,” Joe says, his grin white and sharp. She stares at him in horror, and they both laugh.
The sun is low and heavy by the time they decide to walk back, and the simmer of anticipation hasn’t left Nicky since earlier. His mind has drifted all afternoon to later and its heated promise, and his eyes have continued to wander without remorse to Joe’s chest. Privately, he thinks he’s been remarkably well-behaved for not giving in to the urge to grope unrepentantly. He tries to tamp down on the bitter disappointment when Joe is forced to cover them with a shirt as they make their way through the town, freshly but perfunctorily washed at the beach’s outdoor shower.
The octopus does not come with them, safely returned to its little nook in the rocks, much to Nile’s relief.
On the way back, Nicky manages to tear himself away from thoughts of Joe to preoccupy himself with dinner. Something light that he doesn’t need to cook, they have plenty back at the villa. Joe’s hand finds his, lacing their fingers together as they walk, and Nicky sighs. Oh, what a relief to live in a time and be in a place where he can hold Joe’s hand and not have to worry at all. Loving Joe is his greatest privilege, but to be able to love Joe in public? A gift.
Back at the villa, Joe disappears, leaving Nicky slightly miffed as he pulls out the Tupperware of rice salad and the varied cheeses and cured meats they’ve stuffed the fridge with. He sets to making an actual salad, something light and easy, acquiescing to Andy’s demand for olives. Joe does not reappear until dinner is actually ready, and when Nicky sees him, he thinks he might be trying to kill him.
He has showered and donned a fresh shirt, some thin, pale linen that contrasts beautifully with his skin. But that isn’t the cruel part. No, that is the fact that he has decided that dinner decorum is beneath him, and has only done the buttons up halfway. There is far too much chest on display, a perfect Bermuda Triangle of décolletage that Nicky will absolutely get lost in. Not for the first time, Nicky envies Joe’s necklace in the most irrational of ways.
Nile, retrieving a bottle of iced tea from the fridge, rolls her eyes at Joe leaning seductively on the doorframe. His arms are folded in just the right way to emphasise that ludicrous chest of his.
“Need a hand?” he asks, grinning mischievously.
Nicky clenches his fists on the worksurface and tries to think of a saint to pray to to simply get through dinner without making a fool of himself, but his mind is full of delicious sin and wants to melt out of his ears. He can no more think of a saint than his own name.
“You are a wicked man,” he huffs, glaring at him. Joe merely sniggers, kisses him on the cheek, and whisks the plates away to the table.
Dinner is both a joy and a torment. Bare beneath the table, Joe’s foot continues to slide up his calf, teasing behind his knee, which he knows is sensitive and makes Nicky twitch, and his grin is wolfish even as he argues with Nile about something inane — Nicky doesn’t bother to pay attention like he usually would. He finds it hard to swallow, and goes a little heavier on the Ichnusa than he would normally find wise.
As if Joe wouldn’t know, with the experience of centuries, all the myriad ways to drive Nicky utterly insane with lust. He knows exactly what he is doing.
He leans forward, arms folded on the table, squeezing on purpose to create a deep cleavage that engulfs his necklace and draws Nicky’s eyes to it, inexorably, hypnotically, like a stoat’s dance to a rabbit. He wants to plunge his face there, suffocate in it, a glorious, worthy death pagan warlords would demand odes to.
The basic fact of the matter is that every part of Joe’s body is beloved and desired. Every inch has been worshipped as it deserves, and Nicky can easily, joyfully find the erotic in the most mundane parts of him: his earlobes, his knees, his delightful freckles, his crooked tooth, the pores of his skin, the blood vessels of his eyes. His magnificent chest is, when one stops to think, quite banal an object of desire.
Nicky still loves it and is going to lavish it with the affection and devotion it so rightly deserves. The air between them is thick with promise.
Andy watches them, smirking around her beer bottle, knowing exactly what game they’re playing.
Normally after dinner would lead to good conversation, maybe card games, and plenty of Nile’s incessant questions they would happily answer. Not tonight. Plates cleared, abandoned on the side in the kitchen for tomorrow’s fools to worry about, Nicky hauls Joe off by the collar of that sinfully unbuttoned shirt.
“Night!” Joe calls back as Andy’s laughter follows them down the corridor.
The buzz from cold beer and hot desire carries Nicky all the way to the bedroom — almost all the way. He has to stop, nearly overwhelmed, and push Joe up against the wall of the corridor, ferociously claiming his mouth. Joe melts into it, humming, rolling his hips into Nicky’s with unbridled eagerness.
It is agony to pull back and make it the rest of the way, but when he finally hips the door closed and gets Joe back in his arms, it’s a sweet relief. He finally raises his hands and gets them firmly on Joe’s chest where he’s wanted them all day, his tongue plundering Joe’s mouth with shameless abandon. He almost forgets to be disappointed in the layer of thin linen between his palms and Joe’s hot skin. Joe grabs himself two handfuls of Nicky’s ass, slipping a welcome thigh between Nicky’s legs.
“Have you — ah — showered yet?” Joe asks, trying for casual and failing due to Nicky’s mouth on his throat. Nicky stills and takes a deep, frustrated breath.
“Cruel,” he mutters. Joe smirks at him and only succeeds in earning himself a nipple twisted through fabric. He yelps, rubbing at it as Nicky huffs off into the bathroom.
He does need a shower. Without Joe as a fiery distraction, he can feel the itch of salt and sand not entirely washed away, and Joe knows him well enough to correctly predict that if he doesn’t wash, he will end up miserable. He turns on the water with a sigh.
He makes it quick, though, scrubbing himself down as hastily as possible, his half-hard cock barely subsiding even under the cool water (it is, of course, far too hot to consider anything but a trickle of the hot tap). He rubs himself vigorously with the same towel Joe used earlier, supremely unbothered, and re-emerges to a sight that makes his knees weaken and his blood sing.
Joe is spread out, right in the middle of their bed, like some hedonistic god of antiquity, his skin honeyed by the sun, his smile lazy and inviting. He idly strokes his already hard cock, slow and almost methodical — mouth-watering, but not the flavour Nicky is after, at least not yet. There will be time enough to suck Joe’s brain out through his cock, and Nicky wants to be selfish right now.
His eyes drift upwards, from Joe’s languid strokes to his magnificent chest. He is a banquet laid out in all its glory, and despite their decent dinner, Nicky hungers, raw and savage. He remembers, vividly, the first time he saw Joe naked, the first time he was allowed — gave himself permission — to stare his fill and then touch and taste and take for his own.
Now fully erect, Nicky crosses himself. “Benedic, Domine, nos et haec tua dona quae de tua largitate sumus sumpturi—”
Joe bursts out laughing, rolling over and curling in on himself. Nicky grins. He is of the firm belief that making Joe laugh is one of the most delightful enterprises possible, and during sex is even better. Once Joe is finished wiping away his tears, Nicky crawls up the bed, claiming his mouth again, tasting the mirth that lingers there. Joe reaches for him, and Nicky rears back, now straddling Joe’s waist.
He tucks another pillow behind Joe’s head, propping him up just enough that he can see everything comfortably.
It is not the first time they’ve done this — at this point, Nicky doesn’t think there’s anything they haven’t tried — although the actual memory of it is lost to time. It has never been high on their list of favoured acts, probably due to all the lean times they’ve had not contributing to enough substance to fuck. Their first must have been during a rare moment of plenty… Cordoba? Baghdad? Isfahan? In the end, it matters little. They know the steps.
He spreads his palms over Joe’s pecs, squeezes with relish, enjoying the warmth and the plushness beneath his hands, and bends down. He kisses first, taking his time to travel from the hollow of Joe’s throat down over his sternum, an interplay of lips and tongue and the fresh, clean scent of him. Then he bites, first the right and then the left, a sizeable amount of flesh between his teeth, and he enjoys the hiss he gets as a reward. He lets go, soothes with a kiss, and then bites again, letting the flesh recede and admiring the ripple of it.
Nicky then peppers the entirety of Joe’s chest with nibble-sucked bruises that woefully disappear as soon as he makes them. Joe’s fingers sift into his still-damp hair, holding him close as he begins to arch into him, gasping, his breath quickening. He feels Joe’s hips jerk, stiff cock leaving a wet trail over one of his buttocks, and he grins against Joe’s chest.
And without even touching his nipples, which, Nicky admits to himself, he has been cruelly neglecting.
He shifts his touch, bringing his hands lower, and thumbs both of Joe’s nipples at the same time just to feel him jump.
“I am going to suckle on them like a starving lamb,” he says, trying very hard not to laugh. Joe stares at him in utter, wide-eyed disbelief.
“Nicolò, habibi, that is one of the worst things you’ve ever said,” he replies, and doesn’t even try not to laugh, a hand pressed to his forehead, which is another triumph all on its own. Nicky kisses his amusement, quick, with a tug on Joe’s bottom lip, before devoting his mouth to Joe’s left nipple. He sucks, swirling his tongue around it, tugging it between his teeth, and he gets his first throaty moan for it. He twists the right between thumb and forefinger, feeling Joe wriggle impatiently.
He contemplates being slightly cruel, and then decides against it. He switches, devoting the same care to the right as to the left, sucking as he said he would. Nicky teases his nipples to hard, sensitive points, switching sides once, twice, until Joe undulates against him, almost whining with it, his hands jittery in the sheets.
Nicky’s cock is hot and so agonisingly hard. His hips have started twitching, seeking friction in a way even his steady temperament cannot control. He has no intention of simply frotting himself to completion on Joe’s stomach — lovely as that would be — and, with one last tug of Joe’s nipple, he sits back up. He admires his handiwork: the darkening flush across Joe’s chest and cheeks, the puffiness of his lips and nipples, the half-lidded, blown-pupil look in his eyes. Truly an ecstatic vision. Nicky wishes he could draw half as well as Joe can (he could take a photo, of course, but that simply isn’t the same), for he would make an icon of him like this.
He shifts up, closer, straddling Joe’s chest now, and Joe gets his hands on his thighs, squeezing appreciatively. He gazes up at Nicky with something like breathless wonder on his face, and Nicky flushes. There is still a heady rush of love-struck delight whenever he realises how desired he is, how adored. It has been a comfortable near-millennium, but on occasion he remembers being that lonely, unwanted wretch who somehow gained the love of the most beautiful man in the world.
It is empowering. It is humbling.
A shame they are in no position to kiss, and Nicky has no intention of moving, because he would most certainly kiss him senseless.
Instead, he reaches over to the bedside table, pumping lube into his hand (he remembers, vividly, Joe’s cheeky grin as he picked up the huge bottle in the local pharmacy, and Nile’s embarrassed squawk) and slowly, teasingly, spreading it over his cock. Joe groans, almost cross-eyed at the sight.
“Can’t I just suck you off?” he whines, chewing on his lip.
“Later,” Nicky promises, slightly breathless, bending forward to kiss Joe’s warm forehead. He then plucks the necklace, holds it to Joe’s lips.
“Bite,” he orders. Joe obeys, the ancient silver a beautiful contrast with the inkiness of his beard, the pink of his lip, the white of his teeth.
Another pump of lube, not as generous, which Nicky spreads over Joe’s sternum, through soft hair, across hot skin. He hums and slides forward, a punched-out groan leaving his lips.
His cock now nestles perfectly in the valley of Joe’s chest, unhindered, and, not for the first time, Nicky thinks they were perfectly made for each other. Joe hunches his shoulders forward, tightening the channel, engulfing the sides of Nicky’s cock in sweet, hot flesh.
He cups Joe’s face with a tenderness that some might find at odds with the act at hand, his thumb brushing Joe’s bottom lip, bumping the pendant. Joe nuzzles his hand, unbearably fond, and Nicky thinks his heart might burst from his chest and go soaring over the sea, uncontainable.
“Move?” Joe murmurs around the necklace. Nicky shudders at the roughness in his voice and sighs in relief at the first draw back and push forward of his hips. He starts slow, savouring the drag of Joe’s skin on his cock, rolling back and plunging forward.
He’s wanted this all day, focused on it with a sniper’s single-mindedness, and now he gets it. It’s everything he’s wanted and more, and he worries, as worked up as he is, that he won’t last long. But, then again, it isn’t as if he has anything to prove, not to Joe, who watches him, spellbound.
“Fuck,” Joe groans through gritted teeth and silver. “Look at you…”
Shoulders still hunched, he reaches forward, gets his hands on Nicky’s waist, guides his thrusts. The noise is obscene, loud and slick, the movement even more so. Nicky takes his fill, using Joe’s body in the most indecent way possible, letting sharp, quick gasps fall from his lips as his thrusts quicken. Joe urges him on, hands travelling instead to his ass, digging into the flesh.
“Lost in pleasure, divine… No lovelier vision.” Even having to speak through his necklace, Joe simply cannot resist poetics. Nicky groans at that, head tipping forward as his cock jerks, precome dripping from him, mingling with the filthy spread of lube, making Joe’s skin glisten with it. The bedroom is hot, from the day and from their fucking, and Nicky’s thrusts grow more forceful.
He grips the headboard for leverage as his hips pump wildly, pleasure pooling, molten, in the pit of his stomach, his balls, the squelch of his cock between Joe’s pecs. Sweat drips off him and off Joe, mingling with the mess on his chest and collarbone. Joe’s fingers wander, prying Nicky’s buttocks apart, rubbing tantalisingly behind his balls and sending a jolt of electric desire skittering up his spine.
His cock drifts tantalisingly close to Joe’s mouth, now, and the necklace is simply in the way. Joe spits it out, letting it drop to the side, and sticks out his tongue, lapping at the head of Nicky’s cock whenever he gets the chance. Nicky chokes on a groan, and his thrusts lose rhythm, turn erratic, shallow and too fast, his thighs burning with the effort of keeping the pace.
His world narrows to a pin-point, a single bright spot that chants Yusuf Yusuf Yusuf even as his desperate voice does, and then it bursts in ecstasy, shuddering through him as he sloppily fucks his way through it, cock jerking in its cradle between Joe’s pecs. He comes, thick and hot, all over Joe; over his collarbone, his beard, his lips, his cheeks. His legs tremble, unable to hold his weight any longer, and he falls to the side, gasping in the aftershocks as Joe licks his lips.
Nicky’s eyes rake down Joe’s torso, taking in the delicious mess he’s made of him, utterly filthy. From his chest up he is sticky with a sordid mix of lube, sweat and Nicky’s come, and while Nicky would like to simply bask, boneless, he is nothing if not practical. On shaking legs he rolls from the bed and staggers to the bathroom, wetting a cloth. He hisses as he wipes himself down, then rinses the cloth and returns to the bedroom. His eyes wander further now, hungrily alighting on Joe’s cock, still hard and ruddy with need. Joe notices and rolls his hips, smirking.
“One moment, love,” Nicky mutters, practically falling back onto the bed. He licks his spend from Joe’s throat and face, earning himself a delightful rumbling groan, and wipes down his collarbone and chest before kissing him, deep and languid, all tongue.
“Happy with that?” Joe asks.
“How could I not be?” Nicky replies, before he starts to lazily mouth his way down Joe’s body. Precome drips, sticky, down the length of Joe’s cock, smeared all over his stomach, and Nicky takes him in hand, licks his lips. Then, without any other warning but a deep breath, he swallows him whole.
“Nico, fuck!”
Joe arches off the bed even as Nicky resolutely holds his hips down, tossing his head back, one hand flying to Nicky’s head and the other gripping the sheets for dear life. Nicky has had nine hundred years to suppress his gag reflex; it comes second nature by now, and he settles around Joe’s cock, nose buried in the trimmed curls at the base, the musk of him dizzying. He hums around his stiff, hot mouthful, lost in the taste and scent and feel. He looks up Joe’s body, meets his eyes, and tightens his throat.
Joe moans, trembling with the need to move. That is when Nicky pulls back, tongue working up the underside as he goes, Joe a panting mess, and tongues around the tip, the ridge, the slit.
And then he stills, lips just around the head. He loosens his hold on Joe’s hips, quirks his eyebrows, just once, and Joe whimpers.
‘Use me’ does not need to be said out loud, not anymore. Not for a long time.
Joe rolls his hips up, almost tentative, at first, as if they haven’t done this more times than they can count. Nicky huffs, rolling his eyes, and Joe snorts.
“You are unusually impatient, tonight,” he says, and though his words might be more coherent than Nicky would like them to be with his mouth around his cock, Joe’s voice is breathless and tremulous enough to tell him he is most definitely having the desired effect. Joe gives in and gives Nicky what he wants – again.
He sets a ruthless pace into Nicky’s slack mouth, wound too tight, too far gone to even build up to it. There is no finesse, just a rough thrusting upwards, Nicky urging him on with soft moans as nonsense tumbles from Joe’s lips.
“Yes, yes, ah, Nicolò, perfect, ya rouhi, ah—”
They should indulge in this more, Nicky thinks, lightheaded, floating, and yet gloriously grounded in the worldliness of it. He cups Joe’s balls, cradles, tugs, causing Joe’s hips to stutter as he moans. When the head of Joe’s cock finds the back of his throat, he swallows, breathes through his nose in those brief moments of respite, and revels in tears in the corners of his eyes, the rough points of Joe’s fingers tight in his hair, the ache of his stretched jaw. To give Joe pleasure is pleasure in and of itself, and always has been.
“Ah, Nicoló, I—” Joe sounds broken, fraught, trembling.
Nicky braces himself for that final, driving thrust, feels the pulse of Joe’s cock in his mouth, hums at the plentiful spurts of hot come over his tongue, down his throat, and he swallows through it, an old hand at not letting any go to waste, bitter and salty. Joe quivers through the final throes of orgasm and then slumps back to the mattress, panting, muttering sweet nothings with half-closed eyes, his fingers going soft, caressing Nicky’s hair.
Nicky lets Joe’s cock fall from his swollen lips and rubs his throat, his pleased hum more of a rasp than anything else. He wipes his chin on the back of his hand and crawls back up the bed to collapse at Joe’s side, watching his chest heave, his body settle into languor.
“Happy with that?” Nicky asks, voice hoarse, firing Joe’s question back at him. Joe tilts his head to the side and grins.
“How could I not be?” he replies. He reaches out to run a lazy knuckle over Nicky’s waist, right along the line where lighter skin meets dark. “I must admit, you are tanning very nicely.”
Nicky snorts. “Hush, you, I know when you are fishing for compliments.” He leans over and silences any protest with his lips and tongue and Joe’s own taste. Joe is easily, or perhaps happily, distracted, arms winding round him in lax possession. Nicky shifts in his embrace and settles his head on Joe’s chest with a soft sigh. He finds and plays lazily with Joe’s necklace, relishing the gentle purr of Joe’s soft laugh as it courses through him. With his ear pressed there, he can hear, clear and serene, Joe’s heartbeat, most treasured of sounds from the loveliest of organs.
Joe’s hand goes back to his hair, his fingers gently carding through it, soothing. Nicky hooks a leg over one of Joe’s, ankle against calf. Here, safe and relaxed, he feels no need to have Joe at his back, to be a living shield. These four walls and the sound of Joe’s beloved heart are enough.
