He flopped back on the bed, gasping.
‘Are you all right?’ Osian looked gods damn wrecked. His hair was mussed by Meilyr’s grip, his lips red and raw, eyes aflame.
‘Come here,’ Meilyr exhaled, pulling him close.
The prince clambered up the bed unsteadily. Meilyr kissed him before he could doubt a thing and wrapped his shaky legs around him, feeling how tightly wound he still was. ‘Come here…’
‘Are you all right?’ Osian asked between kissing. ‘If you want to stop—’
‘Not unless you do.’ Meilyr huffed a laugh at the look in his eyes. ‘Then do not stop.’
Osian pressed their foreheads together as Meilyr moved back into the friction. There was a delicious static inside the bliss, a build in the currents at how much Osian still needed.
The prince’s fingers were vices. His hands shook. ‘I do not want to hurt you.’
More static, his voice so close to unravelled.
Meilyr said it against his lips, giddy from existence. ‘What if I tell you I want you anyway? What if I tell you I want more of you? Please?’
Osian jolted with the force it took to hold himself back. ‘Meilyr.’
It was a warning: a hungry, dismayed warning. It had Meilyr ravenous again, how much he wanted Osian to damn his walls. ‘Please,’ he said, and tapped Osian’s bare shoulder three times with his finger.
Understanding crested, and Osian sank into the kiss, damning himself. Meilyr found and traced the small scar beneath the prince’s lowest ribs before tugging his breeches from his hips, and they got rid of them too.
Heat and full contact – bright and dizzying, as sunlight off the sea. Osian strained at the very last fibres of his fetters. Everything was slow, deliberate. Gods, he trembled.
Meilyr kissed him. Kissed his jaw, his throat, his mouth. Pressed his own desire into every touch, so Osian had to know even without the words. Finally, Meilyr guided his hand between them.
As he touched him, Osian froze. Knuckles white, brow tight.
‘Osian,’ Meilyr said. ‘Are you all right? Do you want to stop—’
‘I would rather die.’
Meilyr’s heart thundered, even as he laughed. Noble, dramatic fool. Agood, noble, dramatic fool. ‘I would rather you did something else.’
Osian exhaled a strained, airless laugh. His eyes were dazzling. ‘Meilyr…’
Meilyr kissed him softly. Coaxed him – no, assured him. Assured his hand. Assured his hips – until assurances melted. Into gripping. Into desire. Into breathless, heady pressure and presence. Until Meilyr had no choice but to throw his head back to the cushions and grasp at Osian as though their lives depended upon it.
Osian was careful. Careful until Meilyr moaned as everything hit pleasure. Then he came alive, allowed himself tobealive, in a way Meilyr could never have imagined. In a way that held him gasping jagged, clipped breaths of need beneath him.
Osian bit and sucked at his throat as they moved, devastating him with hot, perfect sharpness that pulsed so perfectly with the rest of him. It was better than Meilyr had ever thought possible. So good he pushed away from the edge of it, greedily craving the drawing out of this. This perfect heat. This perfect, obliterating fullness.
‘Meilyr—’
There was no stopping it after that. They tumbled out of it together, clutched in rolling, heady bliss. Bliss that spilled in waves, devastating and thorough.
In the aftermath, Osian buried his face in Meilyr’s neck as Meilyr pulled him into a liquid embrace. They lay together for a long time, catching their breath.
Osian pressed their faces closer, chasing more pleasure through Meilyr’s brilliantly burned-out body. ‘Are you all right?’
He nodded bonelessly. ‘Yes. Gods, yes. Are you… are you all right?’
Osian pressed another kiss to his skin. ‘Yes… yes.’ He sounded ruinously spent, sparking another little thrill of pleased desire.
It came back to them both.