Hammer & Air (13 page)

“I’m not that smart, Eirn,” he said, perplexed, and we were bored enough for my fear of making him angry or changing our balance to be swamped by my irritation at hearing this horseshit from him one more time.

“That’s
bollix
!” I snapped, irritated. “
Bollix and shite!
You are as smart as I am, as smart as any man in our worm-speck town, and if you hadn’t started planning our home together, I would be stark raving daft-mad right now! You throw that out if you think you don’t have an answer you should have, and the only reason I’m asking is because
it’s an answer I don’t know
!”

Hammer blinked slowly, a grin spreading like a glacier crossed his face. “Well, aye, Eirn. I wouldn’t assume you were asking me a question to an answer you
did
know.”

I couldn’t help it. My lips twitched, and then I grinned back at him, and then we were chuckling heartily as we put that cottage to more rights than the place could possibly be without magic. I like to think that even if it didn’t need it, the little dwelling could feel that we cared about it, with all of our tinkering. It had been good to us, and in the end, our goodbye were less than long.

It were these moments and a million like them that the bear watched, and every time we had one, every time the enormity of what we were to each other came closer to the surface, closer to words scratched painfully on the parchment Hammer used to plan our future, closer to the stories I read (and read and read) from the books (and books and books) that the cottage gave us, the bear would strive to take me mightily in the darkness of the night.

A young man could get mighty sore being soundly buggered every night, and I did.

One such night, (the night I told Hammer to stop calling himself stupid, actually) I told the bear to either snuggle up against me or piss-off. I were not in the mood for fucking.

The bear prince tried it anyway, slicking up his fingers and then invading my softened backside, and I twitched away from him hard enough to wake Hammer.

“I said no!” I snapped, and Hammer looked over my shoulder (where he were always nestled when we slept now) and scowled.

“We don’t need doing it every night,” he said crossly. “Some nights, it’s good to just touch.”

And it were true. Some nights, simply rubbing the other’s skin before we slept were better than fucking. Some nights, the fucking were better with the rubbing of the other’s skin.

The bear prince didn’t believe either of us, I guess, because he went back to doing what he were doing, and I sucked in a breath through my teeth and pushed back with my elbows.

“That hurts! Now leave me alone!”

There were an insistent, arrogant grunt, and he were going to try to bugger me after all, when Hammer whispered, “Take him in your mouth, Eirn, but be ready to gerrout of the bed.”

He were using the old words again—and his temper were high. I did what he said—turned my body and scooted down in the bed, taking that engorged, oddly cut cock into my mouth—but reluctantly. I weren’t in the mood for any of it, but I suspected Hammer had something in mind.

Sure enough, as the bear prince grunted appreciation and began to lose himself in the act of fucking my mouth, Hammer slid from my back softly, and the prince didn’t notice a thing.

Of course, when Hammer caught his hair in one hand, and breached him with a couple of spit slickened fingers on the other, he noticed right quick.

I were looking up at his expression when his eyes shot open and his hips shot forward, and it were good I had some warning because I scrambled out of the way and off the bed and Hammer held him to the bed in a wrestler’s hold, his shoulders pushed down and Hammer’s hand fumbling about the prince’s arse.

“Do
you
want it tonight, pretty man?” Hammer demanded. “Are
you
in the mood for it? Because if you are just spread your legs and open to me, and if you’re not, maybe you’ll remember your manners!”

The bear bucked at Hammer, but not in panic—more like play. With a mighty heave of thick shoulders, the bear rolled, taking Hammer with him, and for a moment, Hammer were pinned, and the bear’s grunt of triumph made Hammer’s ill-temper curdle further.

“
I’m
not the one who tried to violate a friend!” Hammer snapped, and the bear looked surprised at that—perhaps he hadn’t thought of it as violation—and Hammer took his puzzlement and used it to his advantage.

He hauled the bear down for a kiss, which surprised us all, I think, because after that one moment, when the bear prince’s form took over, he hadn’t tried to kiss me again, and it were the first time either of us had been as close to the man as the simple intimacy of a kiss. The bear responded with anger and passion and an aggressive desire, and Hammer rolled him over again, until the prince’s legs were spread and wrapped around Hammer’s waist and he were frotting against Hammer’s middle with a terrible urgency. Both their cocks were rampant, purple, and erect, and Hammer pulled back from the furious kiss, pulling the prince’s lip between his teeth as he did so.

“You want to come, you bugger, then you’d better open your arse for me!” Hammer ground, and the prince whimpered and spread his legs wide, capitulating and begging for Hammer’s invasion. Hammer slicked up his fingers with more spit and I ran to the cupboards for olive oil and reached over Hammer’s shoulder to trickle some onto Hammer’s hand.

Watching his fingers penetrate, stretch, widen, that tight, puckered hole were enough to make my cock grow harder again.

Hammer turned his head and caught my mouth in a kiss of our own, this one tainted with tenderness, and when he pulled back he murmured, “Grind up against my backside, if you want, Eirn. Or take yourself in hand. This lesson aren’t for you to learn.”

I did grind up against his backside for a few moments, while he kept stretching the prince’s body, and the prince arched his back and groaned, thrashing against the sheets. When Hammer took his cock in hand and pushed up against the prince’s arse, I moved to their side, for a better view. I confess it; I were mesmerized, aroused painfully, when I could have sworn I wouldn’t get stiff again for days.

Seeing Hammer possess that arrogant prick would have turned on a grandam and mother of twelve, or a withered old man who’d had nobbut his wife his entire life.

It weren’t soft nor tender. There weren’t want nor yearning nor need nor gentleness nor any of the things I’d come to know with our fucking. In fact, it were so much the essence of
fucking,
that I came to despise the word. What Hammer and I did in bed, when our bodies were naked and alone, that were better than this, and far greater an act, for all it were the same press of flesh on flesh.

Hammer drove savagely into the prince’s arsehole, and the prince’s guttural cries simply drove him further, harder, taking pleasure, taking power, and giving nothing back.

For once, the prince were the one giving. He cried out, wailing like a bear, and moved his hand to his thickened prick. Hammer ripped it away and snarled, “You want to come, you bugger? Well you’d better hope Eirn takes mercy on you!”

I weren’t inclined for mercy. I stood over the man, his beautiful face drawn back in a grimace, his brown eyes closed, and his frosted sable hair amassed on the pillow, and used that savage beauty as a spur as I stroked my own cock over his face. He opened his eyes as he begged us without words, and I stroked myself again, and he came off the bed to try to take me in his mouth. I didn’t let him. Hammer pulled back and he arched, his mouth open, his tongue extended helplessly, and I kept my cock just out of reach and stroked it hard and leaking.

He whimpered and begged me some more with his eyes and I took pity on him then. It were rough, because Hammer were being rough, using the prince’s body without mercy, but he managed to close his lips over me and pull, and I groaned. Since one hand were free, I showed more kindness and wrapped my hand around his cock as he sucked on mine. He groaned in bliss around me, and my hips started to jerk as my come swept over me suddenly and without warning.

“Don’t give it to him,” Hammer growled. “You’re stroking his prick—don’t give him your come.”

I did what Hammer said, because he were Hammer, and this had all started because Hammer wouldn’t let me be used beyond my limits.

I pulled out of the prince’s mouth and beat my fist on my cock until it made little sucking, slurping sounds all on its own. Hammer’s hand came and took over on the prince’s body, and my eyes closed, and my hips jerked, and I came, splattering over the prince’s face, his chest, and his open, begging mouth.

Hammer slammed into him particularly savagely and gave him a tough, tight pull on his prick, and the bear prince threw his head back, his face dripping white and clear with my spend, and howled, spattering his own climax over his stomach and chest.

Hammer kept one hand on the prince’s thigh and then reached out his slick, sticky hand to me, and I moved into him, leaning over the prince’s splayed legs and allowing myself to be pulled roughly into Hammer’s triumphant, primal kiss.

The prince kept gasping, his come prolonged by Hammer’s skilful fucking of the little bundle of nerves in his body, and Hammer had to pull back as that clenching arse finally pulled Hammer over the edge of the cliff and into his own climax. He roared and howled, his barrel chest and blunt face beautiful in his triumph, and I reached out and clasped his shoulder and let him feel my hands as he poured himself into the antagonist in our bed.

He would have fallen forward then, into the prince’s waiting arms, but I caught him, and he pulled backward instead, his cock flopping limply and his spend dribbling from the prince’s arsehole. I pulled at him some more, pulling him from that magnificent, haughty body, splayed and dripping come, and took him into the washroom.

I ran some water into the tub and stood Hammer on the rug then, leaving the door open for the prince to see as he may. I fell to my knees before him, and planted a kiss then, on his flaccid cock, wanting to take it in my mouth, but knowing Hammer wouldn’t allow it. He moved his hand restively, and I pulled back and stroked his upper thigh, and smiled sweetly into his blue eyes. My Hammer. The defender of my honor. There weren’t much I wouldn’t do for a man who would stand between me and a man who would take my dignity and my right to choose.

Taking a cloth and some of the fragrant, cedar scented soap the cupboard gave us (after I wished fervently for something that didn’t smell of flowers) I ran the cloth up and down Hammer’s thighs, around his genitals, over his come-sticky cock. I bathed his stomach, over his chest, and, standing a little, I moved around to his backside, and washed that too.

He shuddered then, and twitched, especially as I parted the cleft of his buttocks and ran the cloth over his hole. I didn’t linger—he weren’t comfortable—but I did rinse out the cloth and bathe his back in the clean water, spending time on his sweat-salty shoulders, his neck, and the sopping tangle of his hair at his nape. I ran the water over his hair, taking away the sweat on his scalp until it were clean and flat and combed back from his square, blunt, handsome face.

And then, standing before him and no longer kneeling, I took his face between my hands and pulled him to me for a sweet, tender kiss. He kissed back, no anger, no savagery, naught between us but what had always been between us. Naught between us but Hammer and Eirn. Him the steel, and me the breeze that caressed it as it rang home.

We heard a shifting then, and I looked behind my shoulder in time to see morning’s light peek through the curtained window, and the prince, lying bereft and deserted, sated and used and covered in spend, gave a groan and became a bear again.

He banished himself to the kitchen, licking fitfully at his fur like a cat.

That day it snowed and snowed hard. There were no playing in the front yard, no sweeping the snow from the roof, and the mill room were too far away from the fire to work any repairs.

The bear ventured out after we fed it fish from the cupboard (it disdained the honey with a wounded look) and I wondered if it were sulking in its cave. There weren’t much I could do about it, though, and the bear’s tender feelings would have to repair themselves. I’d said “no” and I’d said it clear. I had the feeling that what Hammer had done to the bear prince in punishment were more mercy than Hammer thought he deserved.

After a brief bout of house cleaning, we spent the day reading. I made Hammer read for once, and I refused to listen to protests about fumbling the words.

“You don’t practice,” I said shortly. “And I’ve had more than enough practice for the moment. Here, you adore this one. I don’t doubt you have it memorized in full.”

Hammer did, and I took his feet in my lap and rubbed them firmly, simply because I knew he would like the feeling. Together we lost ourselves in the story of a princess making shirts for her brothers, in spite of an insistent prince who wanted her before her task were done.

“He kissed her hands and her arms, making love to her shoulders and neck, until she blushed and pulled away and gave her consent.”

Hammer stopped, and repeated the words as though he’d never heard them before.

“What?” I asked, wondering at the workings of his peasant’s mind.

“The words, I like them.”

“Which ones?”

He looked me square in the eye. “’Making love,’” he said with meaning, and I flushed, and then I found my eyes grow hot and my throat grow thick.

“It’s a sight better than ‘fucking’ isn’t it?”

He nodded. “Fucking’s what
he
does in our bed. It’s nice. Sometimes it’s even fun. But it’s not…” he trailed off and blushed, apparently embarrassed by the words now that he’d found them and claimed them for ours.

“It’s not making love,” I said for him, and he smiled shyly at me and nodded.

“No. No it’s not.”

I smiled back at him, as shy as he were, and there were several heartbeats between us before he started to read again.

Part VIII
Fish in the Stream