Free Wolf's-own: Koan by Carole Cummings Page B

below the line of Jacin's jaw. “Or would you like to be reminded that you're not one?"
    Jacin could have answered, he knew exactly which he wanted, but somehow it all clotted in the back of his throat, and his mouth couldn't form the right shapes to make the right words. Please , it wanted to spew, and, take it away from me, just this once , and, I don't know how to do this, I've been faking it and not very well, I'm clinging to this shattered life and I don't know how to let go, pleasepleaseplease show me how to be something other than desperate and directionless and useless. It's so fucking lonely in here.
    "Malick,” was all he said, weak and small, because it was all he could say.
    His vision blurred and his focus wobbled. All he could see was Malick's tea-colored eyes, and the peculiar depth down inside them that Jacin couldn't read. It was almost like something breaking, something hard going soft, but it wasn't pity— not pity—so it didn't make Jacin gag.
    Malick's face twisted, and he shut his eyes, laid his brow to Jacin's, breathed, “Oh, hell, Fen,” and he very gently slid his fingertips through the tears Jacin hadn't known were leaking down his temples and into his hair. “It doesn't have to be like this,” Malick whispered and laid a long, warm kiss to Jacin's mouth, squeezing the hand he still had pinned to the mattress so tight Jacin had to squeeze back, tell him without words, Then show me how it can be , because nothing would come out his mouth but, “Malick.” Pleading against Malick's mouth. Desperation voiced in the arch of his body and the tears that wouldn't stop coming. “ Malick ."
    "Shh,” said Malick, “just let me,” gentling, comforting, controlling— controlling , fuck, could this really be what Jacin wanted? needed ?—as he cupped Jacin's face in his hand, and he took it all away with breath and touch and the mute command implicit in one long, driving kiss.
    Pleading and imperative, like it had been that first night, when Jacin had both blooded and bled and finally bent his neck to this same need that had crouched in his corners then and clawed at his walls now. By no means slow, and by no means gentle. Malick's hands were fierce on him— grippingtakingholding —and his kiss was pure power and dominance, sinking into Jacin's soul as Jacin sank into the mattress.
    Malick didn't ask Jacin to move, neither with words nor without, he simply did it himself. His hands forced reaction from Jacin's body, forced moans from Jacin's throat, and Malick swallowed them up and demanded more. Jacin rocked his body with Malick's because he had no choice, and when Malick pulled his mouth away for a shaky breath, Jacin spent his own on begging, “Please... Malick, please,” until Malick shut him up again.
    Fuck , yes, the need for this was too strong in Jacin, and he couldn't find shame right now, because Malick wouldn't let him. Jacin was existing only inside this single moment, living for the next touch, dying for the next kiss, and Malick just kept it all coming, he wouldn't let up, wouldn't give Jacin time to think or even breathe, so Jacin didn't bother trying.
    He was stripped of his shirt roughly, but with a strange reverence he couldn't credit. Each scar was touched and stroked as it was revealed, a hard press of fingertips that dug down deep for sensation and didn't relent until Jacin was forced to feel it. He couldn't protest, Malick was drowning him in kisses, and every time Jacin gathered enough fury to shove through the outrage of dead flesh brought back to life, Malick drove it away with a press of his thigh to Jacin's groin. Jacin was being played, manipulated, and there was an appalling erotic relief in knowing that it was out of his hands, not his choice, it was all on Malick, but somehow it failed to shame him.
    He had just enough wits to try to help when Malick went for Jacin's trousers, but Jacin's “help” was more like disconcerted flailing, and more begging every time