Page 93 of 'Til All the Seas Run Dry

He reached over and pulled the door shut, and then there were no waves, no night noises. There was only the sound of her rapid breathing, her pounding heart in her ears. And there was no bright overhead light, only the dimness offered by the moon. But she didn’t need either. She was a demigod herself. She could see in the darkest cave on the darkest night.

She dropped her hands to the floor and crawled closer, finding his feet with her fingers, never pulling her eyes from his. She’d always liked his feet. The high arches. How all of his toes were straight except for the one he’d broken that had mended slightly crooked. It had ached when the weather got truly bitter. She wondered if those aches followed him into immortality. She touched it.

“Does it hurt?”

“Does what hurt?”

“Your broken toe.”

“Nae. Not anymore. I’d forgotten all about that.”

A twinge of feeling. Not sadness. Just… grief. Grateful that he didn’t hurt anymore. Sad that hecouldn’thurt anymore. Unsure where the distinction lay.

“So nothing hurts anymore,” she said, her long fingers wrapping around his ankles, feeling the bones against her palms and the shifting muscle beneath her thumbs.

“I didnae say that.”

“What hurts?” Jory asked, pressing her thumbs into the long, tense line of muscle that ran down from his knee. She’d massaged his legs for him once upon a time, starting at the ankles because he was too ticklish to start at his feet. She wondered about that too, if ticklishness was a mortal affliction. She’d never been ticklish after all. She pressed harder with her thumbs, dragging them up the tense line. He groaned.

“Does this hurt, Callum?” Her voice sounded louder in the enclosed space of the car. He felt bigger. Everything felt… more.

“Everything hurts,” he said.

She paused. “Everything?”

“Not like that. I just… Holding back hurts.”

“Holding back?”

“Aye,” he said in a choked voice as she moved her hands up his shins, cupping the taut muscles of his calves and pressing her fingertips into the knots.

“Are you holding back?”

“If I werenae holding back, this would all be over by now.”

She smiled, hearing the knuckles of his hands crack as he clenched his fists, knowing that her smiles drove him wild. They always had. It was good to see that some things didn’t change.

“Well, then,” she said, leaning forward and pressing her nose to the inside of his knee, rubbing it into the indent. “We can’t have you hurting. Can we?”

“Jory,” he said, but whatever he’d been about to say next died in his throat as she skimmed her nose up the length of his inner thigh, smelling the salt water. She darted her tongue out to lick, following the trail of soft skin, far more sparsely haired than his lower leg.

“Jory,” he said again, an agonized sound.

She smiled against his leg and continued the trek of her tongue until she reached the pinnacle. His cock was erect, arcing back towards his belly while his balls hung between his spread thighs. She leaned closer still, licking the slight divot between the twin weights, relishing his sharp hiss of pleasure. Her tongue continued on, gliding up his shaft, circling the tip. He was uncut, and she remembered how fascinated she’d been the first time by the easy slide of his foreskin beneath her hand, the way his body changed with nothing more than arousal as its guide.

Her palm circled to draw back his foreskin, and she circled the head with her tongue before spitting on it, watching the saliva trail down the rosy skin before she engulfed him with her mouth, sliding easily down his length until he pressed against the back of her throat. And then, relaxing those muscles, she took him deeper, feeling him filling her, blocking her air, swallowing against the invasion that she had invited.

He began to curse, long streams of muttered Gaelic. Love words. Praise. Gratitude. More love words. They tumbled from his lips in a semiconscious stream, as if he was unable to stop them even as he knew exactly what he was saying.

She slid off of his cock with a pop of her lips. She needed to breathe, even if he didn’t, and gripped him in a loose fist, lazily sliding her hand up and down the straining, throbbing length of his sex. She stared up at him. His head was pressed back against the headrest, teeth clenched, and knees gripped in stressed fingers. Without breaking pace, she reached down with her other hand and stroked it along the arch of his foot. He jerked.

“Dinnae do that. You ken it tickles.”

She smiled. Everything was different, and yet so much was the same. She hadn’t expected to feel so crushed by the relief of that one small truth. It was still him. She practically dove onto him then, sliding down until her lips met her fist and began to work him, up and down in tandem, until he was writhing beneath her.

“Jory,” he panted. “Jory, Jory, Jory.”

He was unable to hold himself still, his hands still gripping his knees so tightly that the knuckles were white because she knew,she knew, that he wanted to thrust his fingers into her hair.