as they stood amidst winding serpentine coils of aromatic smoke and breathed and didn’t say a word...
Their fingertips tangled, and held.
They stayed that way, wordless and yet Summer leaping inside, at once calm and ready to burst with fluttering warmth, until the incense burned down to a little dense pile of soft gray ash. Until the smoke stopped, and that cherry-red ember that was the only light between them burned out. Still they remained for long moments...until Iseya pulled away, and reached up to close the cabinet, settling the doors into place with a soft thump and a quiet sense of finality.
He rested there with his palms against the wood, looking up at it, before he turned a look over his shoulder, watching Summer over one upraised bicep, its curve pulled taut.
“I suppose,” he said dryly, “since it’s after midnight, you’ll be wanting your kiss now. For being brave enough to intervene with the boys.”
Summer pulled from his quiet trance, blinking at Iseya while his breaths swirled into a storm in his chest. Something about the way the man looked at him promised...
He didn’t know.
He didn’t know what to think of the way those heady, compelling gray eyes lingered on him, or the way they seemed to burn in the shadows.
Especially when he couldn’t forget that ache that made a third presence in the room, either.
After a moment, he just smiled, shaking his head, stepped closer.
And leaned in to press his lips to Iseya’s cheek, nosing lightly past a messy skein of his hair to press a lingering kiss to the crest of his cheekbone.
Iseya’s skin was subtly weathered, just a hint of roughness and texture that came with age and daily shaving, something Summer wanted to savor against his skin, to absorb...but he made himself pull back, rather than invading further, holding on to his smile even though some part of him felt like breaking as he met Iseya’s wide, startled eyes, that strange lost look Summer almost never saw, lips parted, cheeks flushed.
“That’ll do,” Summer murmured, then lifted his gaze to the shrine, their dim and reddened reflections. “Thank you for letting me be a part of this.”
Then he stepped back, offering another small smile.
“Goodnight,” he said, and walked away.
He’d made it to the door, pulling it open, ignoring the strange needy feeling trying to pull him back toward Iseya, trying to tell him not to walk away, whispering of some unanswered craving...when Iseya’s voice drifted after him.
“Summer.”
His name, in that silk-sin voice, low, compelling. He felt it like rough fingertips down his spine, and turned back.
To find Fox Iseya standing almost right behind him, towering over him and looking at him with his mouth set tight, his eyes narrowed and dark.
Summer recoiled a step, one heel edging out into the hall. “Professor Iseya...?”
Iseya braced his hand to the doorframe above Summer’s head, leaned down...and captured his mouth, stealing him for a kiss unlike any other Summer had ever tasted.
Where every other kiss had been hard, dominating, passionate, deep...
This one touched his lips gently, wonderingly, as if asking for the smallest taste of him; as if asking to know him through the softest of touches, to learn what could make him tremble with the slightest brush and what could make him sigh. As if this moment wasn’t about the kiss, the act of it, the stimulation, the pleasure...
But about him.
Iseya was kissing him, as if he was worth kissing slowly just to savor it.
And God, did he savor it—the way Iseya stroked his mouth gently against Summer’s, the way each touch made his mouth pulse so sweetly and coaxed his lips to part further and further until he breathed Iseya in and shivered as he felt every light tracery of friction, of taunting softness, ripple over his entire body as if he’d been swathed in silk and covered in its caress. Summer closed his eyes, leaning into it, unable to stop his moan, his wordless begging.
Begging for more.
Just the lightest tease of Iseya’s tongue-tip, following the line of Summer’s lips, delving inside...
And then it was over, as quietly as it began.
A soft graze of Iseya’s teeth against his lower lip, before their mouths parted, the last touch Summer felt Iseya’s whisper, breaths cooling the dampness on his lips and proximity turning every word into the ghosts of other kisses.
“You’re now forfeit for any kisses for the next forty-eight hours,” Iseya breathed, sultry and deep-rumbling. “Goodnight.”
Summer snapped his eyes open, heart nearly pounding out of his chest.
And only got