Page 23 of Deathless
I needed his weight on my tongue.
I pushed Diego onto his back. He went, unresisting, and I worked his belt open with fingers that fumbled and shook. This was not about reciprocation. This was not about getting him off. This was about my nervous system reaching for something to regulate itself, the same way I reached for a cigarette or the hilt of a sword.
"Jasper," Diego said, his voice rough. "You don't have to—"
"Need to," I managed. "Need this. Just... let me."
Something in my voice must have told him what this was, because the want in his expression shifted into something quieter. He lifted his hips, helping me pull his pants down and off. I took him into my mouth, soft, and the weight of him on my tongue settled something that had been pulling tight in my chest.
The world contracted. The buzzing in my skull faded. The too-bright, too-sharp edges of every sensation softened into something I could tolerate. There was only this: the weight resting against my tongue, the salt-skin taste, the fullness pressing warm against my palate.
I closed my eyes and stayed there.
I wasn’t really sucking. My mouth was slack around him, jaw loose, lips barely closed. I was just holding him the way you hold something fragile in your palm. Every few breaths, my throat would work in a slow, half-conscious swallow, and my tongue would shift against the underside of him, but that was reflex, involuntary, the same absent rhythm as breathing.
Diego understood. I don’t know how, but he did. He rested his hand on my head, fingers threading into my hair, and stroked.
"That's it," he murmured. "I've got you, guapo. You're perfect. Just like that."
I breathed through my nose, slow and deep, and let the rhythm of it pull me down. The stroking in my hair, the weight inmy mouth, the warmth of his thigh under my palm. Three points of contact. Three inputs I could track without drowning.
Time went somewhere else. I don’t know how long I stayed like that: his cock resting heavy on my tongue, my cheek pressed against his hip, his hand moving through my hair in that same slow pass. Long enough that my jaw settled into a dull ache that became just another sensation to register and file away. Long enough that my shoulders finally dropped. Long enough that Diego's breathing changed from shallow restraint into something deeper, more even, like he'd found his own version of calm in the giving of this.
He kept talking, not constantly, but in waves. Sometimes a full sentence, sometimes a single word. Sometimes Spanish that blurred at the edges until I couldn’t tell where one language ended and the other began.
"There you go. Just rest. I'm not going anywhere." A long pause, his thumb tracing the shell of my ear. "You're beautiful like this, you know that? All that armor off. Just you." Another pause. "Eso es, cariño. Eso es."
I was half gone, drifting in the space between awake and asleep, my mind quiet for the first time in months. Maybe years. Diego's voice threaded through the quiet like smoke, curling around me without demanding anything back.
"I could stay like this all night," he murmured. "Just you and me. Nothing else. You're so fucking perfect, Jasper. I wish you could see yourself."
That word hit me in the sternum. Perfect. Nobody had ever called me that. Effective, yes. Dangerous, competent, useful. But never perfect.
His cock started to thicken in my mouth.
"Easy," he said, more to himself than to me. "Easy. You're fine. We're fine."
I pressed closer against his hip and tightened my grip on his thigh. My whole body leaned into him like gravity had shifted and he was the new down.
Minutes passed, maybe longer. The thickening continued, gradual, his body filling my mouth by degrees while the rest of him stayed still. His breathing grew shallow again, like he was concentrating on keeping himself in check. He trembled once against my scalp and then steadied.
"Jasper." His voice was strained now, that low roughness pulled tight. "I need to tell you something."
I opened my eyes and looked up at him without pulling off.
He swallowed, his throat working. "I need to finish. You don’t have to be part of that if you don’t want, but…"
I held his gaze. Then I closed my eyes, settled deeper against his hip, and gave a slow, deliberate pull with my mouth. The first real one since I'd started.
Diego's breath shuddered out of him. "Fuck. Okay." He tightened his grip in my hair. "Okay. God, you feel good. You feel so good, guapo."
I kept the pace barely there. A slow pull, a release, another pull. Less like sucking and more like breathing with my mouth full of him, a rhythm that belonged to sleep and tide pools and things that moved without thinking. I curled my hand around his thigh, thumb tracing the muscle, and let the weight of him on my tongue do most of the work.
"That's it," Diego murmured, thrusting gently against my tongue. "Just like that. You're perfect. You're so—fuck, Jasper." His breathing went ragged. "I'm—Jasper, I'm gonna—"
Then a low groan pressed through his teeth, and my mouth flooded with the salty, bitter taste of his cum. I swallowed around him, unhurried, and kept him in my mouth as he pulsed and softened.
And then I stayed.
