Escape (18 page)

“I'm...”

Stroking. Sucking at Luka's lower lip. “What?”

“It's going to happen soon.” Gasping, arching. “Soon.”

Just a few more feathering caresses, and Luka groaned and seized, clinging to Tarik. As Tarik slowly slid his grip up the length of Luka's cock, he felt a warm rivulet slink across his knuckles. Fuck, that hit him hard with need. And behind that aching drive, a deeper, tender yearning. Slow, sweet, deep kiss, heart hammering his arousal. Fuck, if Luka really started touching him, he wouldn't last a minute.

Before he'd caught his breath, Luka said, “I want to make you feel that.” But he didn't move.

Tarik leaned back so he could get his belt and fly undone, shucked his pants down his hips and released his cock. In the dark, he sensed Luka shifting around, but he was still keeping his hands to himself.

“You want to touch me?”

“Yes.”

Tarik found Luka's shoulder and caressed down his arm until he had his hand, and brought it to the base of his cock. When he let go, Luka's hand rested there, light and still. After a few moments, though, Luka brought his other hand to Tarik's cock, and slowly drew his fingertips up the length of his rigid shaft, touching Tarik so lightly, it was as if he were reading the topography of his flesh, rather than giving him a caress.

Tarik sighed. “Mmmmm. Your touch feels so nice, Luka.”

Luka was already panting again, either too aroused or too nervous to breathe normally. Gentle, cautious exploration, lingering over every inch of Tarik's erection, eventually making his way down to his balls and memorizing the heft and contours there with the same patient concentration.

“I can't believe...you feel so good,” Luka whispered. “I want to...”

“Hmmm?” Tarik sighed against his neck when he doubted Luka would finish on his own.

“Give you an orgasm.”

Tarik repressed a laugh. Adorable, Luka's shy formality. “I'm already close, just being with you has me so damned wound up.”

“I don't know how to do it right.”

Again, Tarik choked back the urge to laugh. “Touch me the way you touch yourself.”

“I don't really...”

Was it possible? Guilt-ridden or not, how could anyone make it through adolescence without jerking off a few hundred or a few thousand times? “You're not telling me you've never...”

“I have. Of course. A few times. Just, I'm not an expert.”

Trying to tease him gently. “Well, time to start practicing, then.” Three soft kisses along Luka's jaw. Then a real kiss that lasted and lasted and left them both panting. When Luka still didn't dare to start really caressing him, Tarik laid his hand over Luka's and guided his touch. Even though Luka was so shy, so hesitant, Tarik's whole body was thrumming with a desperate arousal he'd only felt a handful of times in his life before the previous night with Luka in the sleeping bag. “You already have me so close,” he murmured, leading Luka's hand down, coaxing him to fondle his balls before drawing him up again, squeezing his hand a little to get more friction. “There, like that. God, Luka, you're making me crazy.”

Tarik let go of Luka's hand, flexing his hips, threading his cock through his warm grip as he pulled him to him and kissed him hungrily, even desperately and Luka started to really stroke him, the thrum of pleasure pulsing through his body instantly condensing at that point of tormenting contact. “Luka. Luka, I'm going to... I'm coming, I'm coming.” His climax hurtled through him, swallowing him in a moment of blind, deaf, excruciating pleasure. After, he clung to Luka, folding him into a close, sticky embrace. Kisses, less desperate and demanding, now that they were both sated.

“Sorry I was so nervous.”

Tarik grinned, but of course, Luka probably couldn't see in the dark. “Don't be sorry. I was nervous too.”

“You were?”

Soft laugh. “If you couldn't tell, it's just because you're irresistible. The way you squirm and pant while I touch you makes me crazy. Fuck, you had me hard ten seconds after we started kissing.” He didn't usually talk like that, but he wanted to reassure Luka. “Come on. Get the sleeping bags arranged, and I'll throw a little dinner together.”

Shame they wouldn't be able to have a fire, with the rain, but they'd be warm enough, huddled together for the night. Luckily they didn't need the fire to eat their leftover provisions. When Tarik had loaded up his tin with enough for both of them. Luka was still crawling around under the tarp, the sleeping bags rustling. It took Tarik a minute to realize what was taking Luka so long, first thinking maybe Luka was struggling to get them zipped together, in the dark, but finally he saw that Luka, so faintly lit by the moon he was hardly more than an apparition, had gone still, the corner of one bag in each hand, hesitating.

“No dinner until your chores are done,” Tarik teased, hoping playfulness would ease Luka past his nervousness.

“I wasn't sure if I should zip them together, or leave them separate.”

Tarik balanced the plate on his pack, and went to Luka, kneeling down behind him, wrapping his arms around his waist, giving his neck a quick, playful nip. “Zip them together, unless you'd rather sleep alone in your own bag.”

They ate and washed up quickly, both eager to crawl into bed.

When Luka started to climb in, having shucked off his shoes, socks and jacket, but still in his jeans and T-shirt, Tarik grinned, even if there was a tinge of melancholy darkening his amusement at Luka's sweet shyness. “Take off your clothes.” Maybe that was all Luka needed—to know that was what Tarik wanted.

Luka shot a glance at Tarik, saw that he was stripping himself bare, and followed suit, but hunching down and turning away so that as he got out of his jeans and briefs, Tarik barely caught a glimpse of pale ass before Luka submerged in the bag. Luka even seemed to turn away as Tarik came close then got in beside him, as if he was still afraid, after everything, to see Tarik's naked body. But when Tarik slid his hand over Luka's waist, he turned toward him, and when Tarik kissed, Luka kissed back with such sweet urgency, Tarik started up all over again, even though he knew they should get to sleep so they'd get an early start in the morning.

God, the feel of Luka's body. So slender and supple, but surprisingly hard, utterly masculine, the flex of his lean muscles, the sleek, firm planes of his back, his chest, his belly. Touching, Tarik's resurging need clawed at him, demanding to be fed. No matter how long, how often he'd fantasized being with another man, he'd never expected this primal urgency, like nothing he'd felt since the desperate horniness of adolescence.

Despite succumbing to another bout of play, in the morning they rose with the sun, and after a hasty breakfast, were on their way. Luka was quiet, pensive, but there was a light in his gaze Tarik had never noticed before. Because Luka was different now? Or because Tarik was looking differently?

Other things he should be thinking about. Had Richard and his parents gotten his last two letters? Was Daris healthy? Would he be able to take care of him—find a job, so he could keep him fed and clothed, pay doctors’ bills—once he made it to Alkbana?
Would
he even make it to Alkbana? Would they get lucky and have an easy crossing? Or would they be stopped? Forced to show their papers, interrogated? Would they be able to pull off their deceit, be able to pass for those Kracinian brothers whose identities he'd bought?

And the safe house. The thing he most needed and least wanted to think about. All he could picture was another Armin and another Begović waiting for them like a couple of vultures circling over a sickly sheep, strayed from the herd, collapsed from thirst or hunger.

Much nicer to think about Luka, beside him, walking at an effortful, brisk clip, conditioned by days of Tarik's own merciless pace. Sad, maddening that the world had heaped such a heavy load of shame onto those angular shoulders. Would he ever learn to set it down? Or always struggle to find the strength to carry it with him? Again, the dread of what and who they'd find at the safe house crept into Tarik's reverie, the memory of what he'd glimpsed when he returned to the house pumping him up with such sudden, violent rage he had the fleeting thought he might stab to death the next person who gave Luka a dirty look or unkind word.

Luminous alien. Fretful, eager lover. In snippets of seconds, Luka's cautious admissions echoed in Tarik's memory, ephemeral images taking shape, a thirteen year-old boy alone in a strange town, cut off from his family, severed from his childhood. Luka as he was now, nervous and hopeful in the thrill of his first kiss, that fretful elation crushed and torn as he was dragged from it with brutal hands and condemning voices. Then the sickeningly solid memory of what he'd seen through the window of that little house he'd dragged Luka to, bound and terrified. How had so much neglect and cruelty wrought such a sweet soul? Who but Luka would have tended to the man holding him hostage with such gentle care? Not just treating his wounds from the shrapnel. Not just a begrudging concession to some compulsion of decency. Luka had soothed Tarik's fear as carefully as he'd doctored his injuries. He'd
cared
, he'd
comforted
his abductor with tears of worry in his eyes.

And the drawing. Such a rich, dense tapestry wrought on that modest rectangle of ordinary paper. Embedded in the ink soaking through that once-white rectangle were dozens of playful and grotesque tropes and symbols, keys to thoughts and fears and hopes Luka kept hidden in his shy silence.

Twice—when Tarik straightened up after crouching to retie a shoelace, and again when he'd stopped to consult the GPS—he caught Luka furtively looking at him, then dodging away as he got caught. That second time, something about that awkward attempt to steal a shy look provoked a subtle pull. Tarik turned off the GPS device, tucked it away, and took a step toward Luka, who thought they were getting back to their march and charged ahead.

“Hey.” When Luka stopped, bold enough to meet his gaze because, calling for his attention, Tarik had given him permission, Tarik moved in, the force of Luka's magnetic pull intensifying, the nearer he got. “Take off your pack.”

Tarik shrugged off his own and lowered it to the ground. Luka stared at him for a second, then did it, watchful and uncertain. When Tarik took another step toward him, Luka scuffed one foot backward in the dirt, as if he was resisting an instinct to back away from an approaching predator, but Tarik swallowed his impulse to halt, to ask for the hundredth time if Luka was afraid. It would take more than a couple nights of making out and heavy petting to get Luka past his skittishness. God, he looked nervous, but lit up, as Tarik bent and kissed, starting slow, touching down softly, pressing Luka's succulent bottom lip between his own, gently sucking at it, tasting the faint saltiness of him after the morning's hike when he teased along Luka's lips with the tip of his tongue before pressing inside and really kissing him.

The little spark of want that had ignited from a few shy glances flared up into real heat, climbing up his thighs, radiating through his groin before settling in his balls, heavy, pulsing, as he drove Luka back two small, unsteady steps and trapped him against the decapitated trunk of a tree so he could press himself against him as he went in for another deep kiss.

That was all he meant to take, a few still, quiet moments before they trudged on, a little taste of the thrill of their nights wrapped up together, writhing and groaning. But now that he was pressed up against him, sensing his trembling anticipation even through layers of sweaters and jackets, breathing him in, tasting him, Tarik yielded to another rising urge. And fuck, when he slid his hand between them to touch Luka over his jeans, and got a handful of ramrod stiff dick, his own cock twitched to attention and instantly flooded with thrumming need.

“It's hot as hell that you get so hard for me, so fucking fast.”

Eyes still closed from their kiss, Luka blushed.

“Look at me.”

Luka raised his eyes to meet Tarik's, pulling everything in Tarik to him. After two nights of blind kissing, blind touching, blind coming, Tarik ached to see. To see the aroused, nervous anticipation in Luka's eyes. To see as he lifted his gear and bared a few inches of silky, fair skin above the waist of his jeans. See the flex of his abdomen as Tarik touched him there, caressing his sleek flesh. And the shadow darkening in the furrow between his brows when Tarik slipped his hand down Luka's jeans, tracing the contours of him through his briefs. Such startled wonder in Luka's eyes. And fuck, Tarik wanted to see Luka's cock.

A soft grunt leaked from Luka as Tarik undid his fly, then, holding Luka's gaze, worked his briefs down his hips. When Luka closed his eyes and ducked his head against Tarik's chest, a pang of affection hit Tarik right at that point of contact.

“When you hide like that, I can't kiss you.” With one hand, he coaxed Luka's chin upward, and with the other he worked his fly open as he bent for another kiss, touching and teasing Luka's tongue with his. When he had Luka's cock out, he broke the kiss to look. A jolt of need ripped through him at the sight of it, straining upward, hard and flushed, the plump, dusky head boldly swelling past the delicate collar of paler foreskin. “Fuck, that's gorgeous, Luka.”

Luka, blushing again, but meeting his eyes.

A little tickle of surprise. “Aren't you...?” Tarik was sure he was grinning, that he must look happy and aroused, because he was, but a shadow of worry crept into Luka's eyes. “Just, you're not circumcised. I assumed you were...”