Learning Curve 4

Strangling a fellow slave for snoring or putting a hand wrong at night earned you a beating. Denting his windpipe, so he could work but not talk, didn't bother the bosses as much. Left the worker with a grudge, though. He'd been trapped and ridden against his will by one, a long, long, time ago.
Tyr came to, warm and weighted down. Instead of curling away, Dylan had collapsed across him, head under his breast. Asleep and quietly snoring; not something he'd noticed before, and he would have. He didn't rest well next to Dylan. He'd slept with others to keep warm or dry, or in cramped slave quarters, more easily.

The mines. He'd been dreaming of them again, of little things. Carrying his bowl in the mess line. Hunting for a stolen blanket.

The snoring stopped on a snort, and with it the wash of breath across his skin. Tyr touched the back of Dylan's neck, and Dylan began to breathe again, silently. He wondered if he had sleep habits someone could learn. If anyone ever would. He moved his hand to cup the back of Dylan's head, sliding his fingers through the fine hair to stroke skin. There were a few scars underneath, a place that he knew covered a healed fracture. He liked the feel, the heavy curve of the head against his palm and fingers. Mine.

The mines; that worker in the mines. Tyr shifted. He ached in a few key places. His back bore scratches, a bite on his shoulder itched; running the last act over in his mind, he wondered. He'd tried to control himself, but Dylan was insistent, rough, careless of pain. It was strange, how the man had no regard for his own discomfort -- What Tyr had done must have hurt, and not only tonight. What was wrong with him? It wasn't that pain seemed to give him pleasure, or that he sought it out. He took it and carried through, as he fought or played that idiotic ball game. Like a fighter. Like a fool. Bed was a stupid place for pain.

The way Dylan moved in bed, he was damned lucky there hadn't been an earlier accident with Tyr's blades, or another embarrassing bloodletting. Again, he found himself wondering if the man was completely right. He'd heard of half-breed perversions, of blade-bound prostitutes, of submissives and worse in barracks tales...but of purely normal practices of men with men his knowledge was rather narrow. Maybe a reference... His lip curled.

Dylan began to snore again. He pinched his ear.

"Hnh?"

"You're drooling on my stomach. Wake up and do something or shove over." The while, he cradled that agreeable-feeling head and savored the heavy thigh across his leg.

A hand curled around his cock and squeezed. "Sleep. Gimme ten." Dylan wrapped tighter against his side.

Tyr was tired of thinking in the dark. "Wake up."

"Shhh. You're worse than a woman."

"I don't doubt it in the least. Come up here, I want to talk to you."

"No." A sharp nip over his rib made Tyr flinch. Dylan sucked the point of pain away. Awake, it seemed.

Tyr kept his hand curved around Dylan's head, stroking through the sliding hair, as Dylan's mouth spread hot and wet against his skin. Licking. Lower. A pinch at the rim of his navel, a pointed tongue circling, dipping in to probe and stretch the little wrinkled pit. This was different from their usual rough and tumble. This was not so bad at all, if Tyr could keep from squirming like a hormone-ridden boy.

Dylan sighed, the stubble of his chin a tickle on Tyr's belly. "Damn, you're solid." He pinched Tyr's hip and ducked his head again.

The wicked tongue slipped lower. Dylan gave Tyr's thickening cock another squeeze and shifted it to one side; Tyr's fingers tightened as Dylan licked the inner crease of his thigh.

What fortune has the Angel of Death lapping at my balls?

More than lapping. Dylan's mouth was wet and open wide, sucking on his sac, his tongue snaking around each slippery egg. He rolled across Tyr's legs, shouldering his thighs apart until Tyr was spread open, knees wide, framing the broad gleam of Dylan's body against the sheets. The hand around his cock began to grip and slide, as Dylan nosed lower, kissing, licking, getting him sloppy...

"Hey." ...and more than a little unsettled. He prodded Dylan's hip with his heel. "Enough. Come up here." They didn't do this, they didn't do anything like this, and he wasn't sure about Dylan's mouth where it was, doing what he was doing.

What he was doing now was chuckling, a buzz against sensitive flesh. "Trust me, you'll like it." And pushed his tongue flat along the seam behind Tyr's balls, setting a new series of shocks up Tyr's spine. The hand released him to push a fold of coverlet underneath, lifting his hips; and Dylan's thumb nudged his anus, pulled at it gently, as his tongue licked around its edge. Slowly, thoroughly, smackingly, Dylan mapped the circle, licked and stretched the yielding, crinkled ring. Tyr squirmed, and Dylan thrust his tongue, and then his thumb, into the hot and shivery inside.

Uncertain, aroused, disassembled, Tyr tried to control the tremors that traveled from that busy center to his cock, swelling and pressing eagerly into Dylan's hair. Animal, he thought, animal devouring me. Dylan held him open with a shoulder hard into one thigh and a hand clamped on the other, and between them Tyr could see his body curve, his hips work, riding the silky bedclothes like a snake.

Tyr groped for his cock, groaning when he connected, trapping locks of Dylan's hair against his flesh. He closed his eyes and he could see it, could smell it, that fine honey-colored mane that caught the light, now mopping between his thighs, crushed and twisted in his grip, a rope, wound around and under and tight against him as he clenched, and gasped, and rocked between his fist and Dylan's tongue.

***

[I anoint myself for sex, for tactical gain.... It was a short corridor, a quick walk to Dylan's cabin. He didn't recall opening the door, just entering, targeting Dylan standing, as he'd pictured him, at the table, drinking wine -- he dropped his gauntlets to the floor, spread open his shirt, stripped off his belt, now chest to chest with Dylan, who stumbled backward, laughing, spilling wine from the dropped glass as he reached out and was drawn in, into a fierce embrace that jarred their teeth together as they fell.]

***

"Easy," he heard. "Easy; we're not done yet."

***

[A rope around his throat, rock under his bleeding knees. It hurt.]

"Hey."

[It hurts.]

"Hey." A shake of his arm. "Easy, there. Let go."

Dylan, Dylan talking. Dylan stretching up and kneeling. Rubbing a hand through his hair and staggering off the bed.

Control yourself. His eyes were closed, his body still thrumming with desire. With flashing memories. He opened his eyes on Dylan coming back, holding a glass filled with something dark. Dylan sat on the edge of the bed, too far away. Tyr wanted to get his hands on him, wanted him close again, body to body; mouth to mouth. He rolled over and sat up on his knees. Dylan took a sip and handed him the glass.

"You didn't give me a chance to share. Try it."

The wine. The smell curled into his nose, even from here. His senses were heightened, his lips felt flushed with blood. He sucked a mouthful in and the heady flavors coursed along the edges of his tongue. He swallowed, then drank again, deeper, thirsty for stimulus and taste. "Extraordinary." Full-bodied, fruit over a sigh of winter grass and ash. His voice was unreliable. He wanted more, more sensation, more of any touch Dylan could give; he ran the glass's rim along Dylan's cheek.

"Tastes better, now. Think it's the sex?" Dylan asked. He took the glass away and drained it. His lips were wet and dark with wine. He laughed; he leaned across and pulled Tyr to a kiss. The wine in Dylan's mouth tasted of musk. Of Tyr, intimately, of the bitter trace of scented oil.

Dylan crawled up on the bed, hot against him, body long and hard against his body, cock pressed against his cock in the joining of their thighs. Tyr loosed the reins of his senses to revel in the taste, the smell, the heat, the feel of this other one. The solid weight of a man nearly his size against him. For once, Dylan was there, right where he wanted him.

And pushing him away. He growled, and Dylan thumped him on the chest. "Good things come to those who wait. I've been thinking about this for weeks." Rummaging in the bedstand drawer. "You used up the slick." He pulled out a wide-mouth jar. Tyr heard the lid bounce on the table, caught a sharp herbed scent. "This is messy, but it lasts." Tyr reached out, but Dylan was already scooping his fingers through the cream. To Tyr's surprise, he began to spread it on himself, a glistening swath up his cock. "How do you want it?" Dylan asked.

Rare enough, that he had to ask. "Not as rough as you do."

"Damn. You are a woman, after all."

Make up sex. Dylan slapped his thigh; the blow stung, then heat bloomed under the greasy smears. Dylan bit him on the lip, and shoved him down.

***

Exhaustion to the edge of sleep, at last. A clean blanket dragged over him. Dylan curled away, in on himself.

"Is it the dreams?" A muffled question.

Tyr wasn't sure he heard right. "What?"

"You wanted to talk. About your nightmares?"

"No." He didn't have bad dreams, Dylan did.

"Oh." Dylan curled tighter around his arm, clutching his sex, no doubt. "Tomorrow. We need to settle something, tomorrow."

No nightmares. Tyr sank into black. Hair slid between his fingers. A rope tightened around his cock, around his throat.

***