Very carefully, like unwrapping a gift, I removed your underwear, taking a moment to inhale deeply from the fabric.
“You’re lovely,” I said as my fingertips drifted across your skin, soft as rose petals and just as fragrant. I fondled you for a few moments and stroked your erection with a slight pressure. It wouldn’t take much.
“Kiss me,” you said, and with your hands in my hair, tugged me toward you.
I rose up on my knees while you lay back against the pillows. Your lips parted like ripe fruit to a paring knife, so warm and succulent. There was no need to rush this, so I savored the gentle slide of our tongues, your soft murmurings of pleasure, your hand on my back—nails digging into my skin as our passions became more fervent.
I gripped your silver hair in one hand and angled your head so that your neck was pulled taut as a bowstring. A gasp escaped your lips and another tremor rolled through you. I traced the path of your throbbing vein with my tongue, from your collar bone to the underside of your jaw.
“This was where you bled me,” you said and it took me a moment to realize you’d meant your past life, the very last time I’d touched you, when I cut you open with my teeth and drained the life from your veins. I froze, immobilized by my own remorse.
“You were gentle,” you said.
I sagged against you. “I tried to be. It wasn’t… pleasurable… for me.” I’d been choking on your blood by the end. Sobbing.
“I know,” you said, a small mercy. Your thigh slid against my raw length, urging me on. Touching you was both my sin and absolution.
Instead of biting, I bruised your neck with suction as my palm skated along the smooth contours of your chest, over your gently ridged abdomen, and swept along the inside of your thigh, to that delicious cleft where leg met with groin. Warm and sticky with my slick where I’d been gently nudging, I touched you there, passing briefly over your cock to cup you in one hand.
“Do you enjoy having my hands on you?” I squeezed, applying just enough pressure to cause your shoulders to tense and your chest to swell, presenting like a ship’s prow.
“Yes,” you said, shaken by sensation.
“And you trust me?” The hand that had been tugging at your hair migrated to your neck. I gripped the slender column of your throat so that I could feel your pulse throbbing in the palm of my hand. Your face flushed, either from my hold or your heated arousal.
“I do.” Your head turned slightly to stare at me with shining eyes. You swallowed, and I felt the pressure of your prominence against my palm. “I always have.”
“I never want to hurt you.”
You smiled. “You can hurt me a little bit.” Your hands were on my biceps, kneading my muscles as though priming them for a feed.
“Let me see you touch yourself.”
I withdrew my own hand. Your knees fell open as you reached between your legs, one hand fisting the base of your erection while the other massaged your balls. Your cockhead was tinged the same violet hue as your lips and nipples, drawing my eye as I reveled in the luscious feast laid out before me. Where to begin? I kissed your inner thighs, and you shivered so deliciously under my lips, a spider’s filament caught in the breeze.
“Henri,” you moaned, hips rising off the bed to thrust into your hand.
“Patientia, Vincent.”
“Don’t quote Latin proverbs to me right now,” you growled. I took your hands by the wrists and forced them against the pillows, then, with my tongue, slowly licked you clean. I nibbled at your nipples—another sweet cry—then ministered the cuts carefully with my tongue. You twisted, attempting to make contact between our groins, but I kept out of your reach.
“You’ve been tormenting me for so long,” I said.
“The feeling is mutual. I had to drop a lot of hints.”
“I didn’t want you to run from me.”
“You’re the one who runs.”
“Not anymore.”
I placed your palms underneath your bent knees and instructed you to hold them. “Let me,” I said. You nodded, lithe muscles straining as I ran my hands along your soft flanks. My eyes centered on that small violet pucker. I retrieved a bottle of massage oil from the drawer of the bedside table and poured some of it into my hands.