The Etsey Series 1: The Seventh Veil (47 page)

Timothy let go of his hands and placed them on the stony ledge, nudging his attention up to the sky. It was clear and crisp and filled with bright, shining stars, much like in his dream.

“You do not have astrology in Etsey, but it is lifeblood to us in Catal. The patterns of the stars and planets reveal the patterns of our lives; they show us the fixed points which cannot be undone. But the night skies do not limit us, Charles. The heavens are there to help us understand what we are and lead us toward what we might be, but the dark space between them is the unknown, the space for us to choose and become the selves we wish to strive for. We can only move so far within the spaces, but we can move. And the only way someone can force us to move or keep us from moving is if we let them convince us they have that power.” He stroked the side of Charles’s face. “Those who engineered the circumstances of your birth may have intended a certain life for you, and it cannot be argued that there will be stars which they have fixed in your sky. And yet, even though they may have done all in their power to force you into the life they chose, it is still your mind, your heart, and your soul, Charles Elliott-Perry. You author the space within the darkness. It is there in the dark and the pain that we grow, and it is that vastness alone which defines the meaning and value of the light within.”

“What if I’m not smart enough to move in that space, or good enough?” Charles whispered. “How am I to do that all alone?”

“You are wise enough for what you need to do.” Timothy stroked the back of his hair. “And you are not alone. None of us are alone. But sometimes we must feel that we are. And those are always difficult times.”

Charles wished he dared to sink into Timothy and drown his sorrows in his gentle embrace. “
You
are wise enough. And I can’t imagine you ever feel alone.”

Timothy’s expression was sad and loving at once. “Oh, quiera, I always feel alone.” He stroked Charles’s hairline, his gaze following the path of his fingers. “The happiness I knew in the pleasure gardens is my anchor, but sometimes that anchor weighs me down.”

“Tell me about it,” Charles said. “Tell me what it was like. Please.”

Timothy continued to stroke Charles’s face, his eyes unfocusing as his vision fixed on the past. “Beautiful—the pleasure gardens were beautiful. They were like a fairyland, lush and rich and sensual everywhere you went. The grass was like a carpet, softer than velvet beneath your feet. The trees were full of fruit and flowers. There were gardens arranged for every type of scent. There were fountains that could ease your heart just by walking through the arch of their spray. And it was never cold there—cool at best, but never cold. In high summer, we would sleep for most of the day and come out at night to watch the jasmine bloom, to go to the Secret Garden and watch the stars dance our destinies across the sky.” He shut his eyes. “And everywhere you went, there were people. Men, women—everyone. So often they were making love. Healing. There was so much healing there. Our clients were so sad, so lost when they came, but when they left us, they were happy.” He sighed and leaned forward, resting his cheek against Charles’s forehead. “That is what I miss more than anything.”

Charles felt the heat rising within him again. He slid his hand down Timothy’s arm and smiled a little shyly. “You are still a healer, Timothy. You heal me.”

Timothy smiled back, not shy at all. “I would like to heal you more.”

Charles’s thumb caught on the edge of that silken sarong. Then he stopped, and he waited.

Timothy reached up and wordlessly began to undo the last buttons of Charles’s shirt. He slid the garment slowly over his shoulders and down his arms, letting it drift to the floor.

Charles gripped the edge of the window, holding tight as Timothy’s oil-slick hands moved to the fastenings of his trousers. He watched those hands push the linen down over his hips, his knees, his half boots. He felt his cock twitch, then hum and swell as Timothy removed his footwear, stepped him out of his trousers, and came back to his cotton pants, where Charles’s sex was now bulging proudly beneath the plain beige drawers. Timothy treated it to a passing, tender caress, but his hands drifted upward past his cock, sliding over Charles’s now naked chest and up over his shoulders before returning to his hips again. He undid the ties deftly, then let the cotton pool at Charles’s feet. Taking Charles’s hand, he led him silently back to the pile of blankets and pillows in the center of the room.

Charles’s head had barely fallen to the pillow again when he felt Timothy’s mouth, wet and hot as it closed over his left breast. He hissed in a breath and looked down, then felt the heat slam into him as he saw Timothy looking up at him, dark eyes burning as he teased Charles’s nipple with teeth and tongue. Charles shuddered and groaned, his arms rising to clutch Timothy’s slick, naked back. Timothy drew the nipple taut inside his mouth as one of his hands reached down between Charles’s legs and took his now throbbing cock firmly in his hand.

He lifted his mouth and looked up at Charles, his face glowing golden in the candlelight.

“I do not know what force brought us together,” Timothy said, his hand still moving rhythmically against Charles’s sex. “I do not know if it was fate or deity or a spell or simply luck. I do not know. I do not care. I do not care if you were born of a king or a gutter drunk. I do not care if you were engineered by dark magicians or by a god.” He kissed Charles’s chest, over his heart, then trailed more kisses down his midsection between sentences as he spoke again, his eyes still fixed on Charles’s face. “I do not care how you have sinned, by what you have done or by what you have failed to do. What I care is that you are here now, with me.” He ducked his head to take Charles in his mouth, first the tip, then the length of him, swirling his tongue over the sensitive skin before lifting his head again. “What I know is that somehow, I looked at you, and my heart knew you. That is all I need to know, quiera. That is all I will ever need to know.”

He ducked his head and took Charles into his mouth again.

Charles arched his back and dug his fingers into Timothy’s hair, moving his hips to the rhythm Timothy set for him. He groaned when he felt Timothy’s finger push lightly against him before slowly entering. Charles came quickly and ferociously into his lover’s mouth, and yet the release was like the breaking of a wave. As the peace of release overtook him, he wept, silent tears sliding out of the corner of each eye and down the sides of his head and into his ears.

Timothy released his sex with a soft
pop
, then dragged his tongue slowly down each thigh, over his sac and down the line to his entrance. His finger trailed after his tongue, kissing, dipping softly, tenderly. Timothy applied the sponge too, cleansing him in slow, gentle circles before moving the sponge aside and repeating the same action with his tongue. Charles lay still, spent, feeling the cool water of the sponge touch him, then push inside, then lave around him again. Then Timothy’s mouth. Then the sponge. Then Timothy’s tongue, pushing deeply inside, making Charles moan as heat rushed to his sex again.

He lost himself on a sea of sensation: he could no longer tell sponges and oils from fingers and tongues. For what seemed like hours, Timothy bathed his anus and his cock and his stomach and his thighs. When he was done, he applied the same treatment down his legs and to his feet; he suckled and nipped at each one of Charles’s toes, and Charles basked in the sensations. When Timothy returned to his cock, Charles was hard again.

Timothy gave the organ another deep-throated greeting, but then he moved back to Charles’s abdomen. He was using only oils now, a new scent filled with warmth and a soft tingling that made Charles want to purr.

“We wash the dark feelings away from your life center,” Timothy said, sliding the oil over Charles’s body. “You have walked in pain, but now the pain will leave you. Tonight you will dance in the darkness, the darkness that lifts and frees you, which changes you.” The oil slicked up to Charles’s chest, his shoulders, his arms, his wrists, his neck. Charles was breathing faster now. There was something in the oil that made him feel thick and fiery and hard all over, as if his entire body were one great erection. He felt good, not just in body but in his heart. He felt wildly erotic and very strong. And he wanted Timothy as he had never wanted any other person on the earth.

He caught Timothy’s mouth in a quick, hard kiss as Timothy passed by, and he delighted at the way Timothy fumbled, then doubled back and kissed him again before continuing. The oil was prickling hot against him now, but as he tasted Timothy’s mouth, the smell of it and the taste of his lover merged. He opened his eyes and looked up at his Timothy, realizing he had been slick with this stuff since before Charles had even come awake.

Timothy touched Charles’s mouth, dragging his thumb across his lip, staring at it as if it were the ripest, most succulent fruit of all. Then he smiled, looking momentarily dazed. “A moment, quiera. We are nearly there.”

Timothy rose and stood beside him, and Charles felt his erection pound as he watched Timothy stand in the candlelight, glistening as he reached down and tugged on the tie of his sarong. It fluttered as it fell away, but Charles did not watch where it landed. He feasted on the sight of Timothy revealed completely before him, proud and dark and full. Charles wanted him in his mouth. He wanted Timothy inside him everywhere.

Timothy stepped over Charles, dark and powerful and smiling. He squatted down, moving gracefully to his knees. He reached behind himself, removed something he tossed into the darkness, and then he turned back to Charles, his eyes on him as he lowered himself. In a move like nothing Charles had ever seen before, Timothy took Charles’s cock inside his body. He took him quickly, deeply, pausing only once to shut his eyes and gasp in pleasure as Charles’s sex entered him completely. Then he opened his eyes, now hot and wet with lust as he reached back and held tight to Charles’s hips.

“Give me your darkness, Charles,” he whispered in a voice so slick and tight that it alone nearly made Charles come. “Give me your darkness, Charles, and we will transform it into light.”

Timothy began to move, urging Charles along with him, rolling Charles’s hips with his hands. When Charles swelled harder, larger, Timothy let his head fall back with a moan.

The fire, already hot and liquid inside Charles, burned brighter still. As Timothy opened his mouth and made a soft, sweet sound, the fire went white inside his mind, and he was gone.

He closed his hands over Timothy’s and took charge of the rhythm, moving deeper, rolling the thrusts, gasping and moaning and thrilling when he felt Timothy begin to shudder and go soft above him, his legs trembling as the pleasure sapped him of his strength. But the fire was raging inside Charles now; he withdrew from Timothy, pulled his mouth down to his own, and thrust into him again as he rolled them over, pinning Timothy to the pillows. Then he slid down his body, tonguing his navel before drawing deep and hard on his oil-slick sex, pushing his fingers inside him, one, two, then three. He suckled and stroked him until his lover was murmuring incoherently in his own tongue. Then Charles rose, spread Timothy, and replaced himself inside before bending down to reclaim his lover’s mouth.

“Quiera,” Timothy cried, clutching at him, his head rolling back as Charles impaled him again.

“I love you,” Charles breathed, then suckled on his lip. “I love you, Timothy. I love you.”

“
Donna mati, etu quiera
,” Timothy whispered back. He was practically sobbing. “
Qu’erah, quiera
. Qu’erah, qu’erah.” He took Charles’s face in his hands, kissing him so hard that Charles stumbled forward to his elbows. Timothy laughed and kissed him again. Then he lifted his knees and wrapped his feet around Charles’s back.

“Ride me, love. Take me to your stars.”

Charles took his mouth and thrust hard, letting the fire drive him, giving Timothy everything he had, every bit of darkness, but every crack of light as well. His orgasm erupted like a volcano inside him, moving through his whole body, streaming, flowing, driving. He thrust once more and felt it leave him: his fluid, yes, but his dark thoughts as well, flowing on and on, into Timothy, then out again, sliding over their bodies and off into the night. Charles sighed and fell against him, shutting his eyes as he felt himself spin away, safe in Timothy’s arms as they soared together into heaven.

* * *

As the first fingers of dawn streamed sideways through the east window of the tower bedroom, Jonathan woke and rubbed his eyes. When he lowered his hand, it came down on the tousled locks of Madeline’s hair, which was spread out across his chest and over his abdomen. Her head itself was pillowed over his heart, and she was deeply asleep.

He wished her hair were over his
naked
chest and abdomen, but this was not the case. It annoyed him less now than it had last night as he’d heard both the parties above and below him enjoying each other in a very primal fashion; this morning, his greater discomfort was the fact that while his clothes had largely dried, there was an uncomfortable stickiness to them that was beginning to make him itch. Also he was hungry and thirsty and, conversely, increasingly desperate to piss.

He didn’t attempt to rise, though, because the feeling of Madeline splayed like this atop him was still more desirable than filling any of these other needs. His eyes stung, and he rubbed them again before resuming his stroking of her hair. Despite the pond water, it was still soft under his fingers, and nothing could dull the Madeline scent that he had clung to through all the years of war. But as he reached up to rub his eyes again, he realized that he was, in fact, smelling something else. Smoke.
Fire
. He was extricating himself from the bed even as he heard the soft but insistent knocking at the door, a rap he knew was Timothy’s even before he fished for the key and admitted him.

“The fire’s not here,” Timothy said, reading Jonathan’s face. Timothy looked grave, and he jerked his head toward the rising stair. “Come. You won’t be able to see it properly from this level.”