Chapter 404: When No One’s Looking.

Chapter 404: Chapter 404: When No One’s Looking.

During his months spent in this castle, Khobi had had the misfortune of finding out first hand just why Loac Trent had such a salicious reputation.

He’d quickly lost count of the number of men and women he’d walked in on him with or caught him crowding up against a wall in a secluded corridor.

The thought had never even crossed his mind that the day would come when he was one of those people.

​Yet here they are; Khobi with his back pressed flush against stone and Loac breathing his air and not getting hit for it, arms bracketing either side of his head.

​"Hey there Khobi," Loac murmurs, his voice little more than a purr as it rolls across his skin, grazing his lips.

How does that voice still make him shudder like this? How come even after all the times Khobi’s taken him into his body, whenever they get close like this, he wants him just as badly as he did that first night?

​"Hey yourself," he whispers back huskily, the words taking form against the salty edge of Loac’s mouth.

The corner they’re concealed behind offers little cover so it’s probably a mistake to look up into his face but this close the gravity between them is inescapable.

Khobi has no idea how he fought it for so long. It’s there in all they do; tension tightening with every interaction, every brush –still there, still strong, still urging him closer, drawing him inch by inch to the edge.

And when the storming crimson of his eyes lock with the expanse of Loac’s turbulent blue, how can he help but fall?

​Unable to bear it even a moment more, he seizes Loac by the shirt and drags him in to seal their mouths together.

Loac immediately melts against him, pressing their bodies together and groaning as he brings his tongue to Khobi’s lips like he’s been waiting a lifetime for this.

​(Which is weird because Khobi distinctly remembers sucking him off last night.)

​Khobi’s spent all of winter hating how cold the stone here is to the touch, but on a day like today he’d welcome it. If only it hadn’t spent all day soaking in the heat in the air.

Today the walls warm right to his skin like how the stone floors of the baths at Scargga are always hot against his bare feet, and as Loac works a thigh between his legs for him to grind against; hands on his ass to drag him flush, Khobi quickly finds himself wrestling with the urge to tear the confines of his shirt open and off.

There’s too much heat here, and something has to give.

​Loac’s hair’s gotten longer. There’s more to grab like this –easier to yank –so he does, pulling Loac clean off his lips in favour of descending on his throat.

His skin tastes salty, and hot, and when Khobi sucks firmly at his racing pulse as he grinds up against him Loac lets out that delicious low keen that he can’t get enough of. It resonates down the halls; terribly obvious, and giving away not just their position but what they’re up to, but suddenly Khobi has a bit of difficulty caring who might hear.

But enthusiasm can only get them so far, and eventually something does give.

Because even in the shade of the castle it’s still suffocatingly hot, and the hours spent out in the sun have taken it’s toll.

As good at Loac’s body feels, and how kind of tempting it is to see what they can get away with in the corridor before someone comes along, Khobi has been running on goddamned fumes for like two hours.

​Letting out a huff of laughter, Khobi’s body gives in and sags back against the wall.

Loac’s weight topples into him only a moment later, knocking free the small amount of wind still left there.

​Ugh, he’s so fucking exhausted .

​" Shit ," he complains breathlessly, wiping a fresh line of sweat off his brow and wiping it on the back of Loac’s shirt.

He’d been looking so forward to a good tumble in the sheets tonight but he’s honestly not sure he’s got the strength for it. Fuck, he really overdid it today, didn’t he? Again. "I feel so gross." Loac obligingly licks a bead of sweat away from his jaw, then nips him playfully.

​"You are gross," he quips back easily, and Khobi can’t quite stop another bark of laughter from escaping him as he slips his fingers through the short strands at the base of his neck.

It makes Loac snicker into his throat as he drags his hands away from Khobi’s ass up his aching sides instead. It tickles, but he doesn’t stop him.

He doesn’t stop Loac from kissing him again, either. This one is lazy and slow, like it hardly matters that there’s no energy left in their bones for tonight when they’ve got all the time in the world.

​(It’s moments like these –kisses like this –that makes Khobi think that for someone who’s such a pain in the ass, things sure seem easy.)

​"We should catch up to the others," Khobi tries to tell him, but no sooner does he try to speak than Loac’s lips are swallowing the words like they never existed; more teasing than anything else but no less pleasurable.

"Hey," he snickers without heat, setting a hand between them.

There’s no distance he could possibly create that he’d be completely safe from the lure that is well, Loac’s entire being, but it’s the principle of the thing.

​"Yeah, yeah," Loac grouses, but as he pushes off the wall, Khobi catches a telltale sliver of white as his mouth curls up at the corners.

​(For not the first time it strikes him that Loac looks kinda goofy when he smiles for real.)

​The smile isn’t the only thing he sees.

Because in that moment of stillness; so fleeting that he could’ve sworn he imagined it, Khobi sees something else.

Something strange. A glimpse of something he knows; something he recognises –something that never even crossed his mind could be in Loac’s eyes when he looks at him.

Something that for all the times he’s found himself drowning in Loac’s eyes, he never would’ve expected to find staring out at him.

​He knows that look .

​He’d know it anywhere.

​But why –

​The grating, impatient timbre of Montrel’s voice abruptly rings out down the corridor.

" Khobi? Loac! I thought we were getting dinner!"

​" –We’re coming," Loac hollers back, just as irritably, reluctantly extricating himself from their tangle of limbs and hopefully attributing Khobi’s limpness to the muscle fatigue setting in.

​But as frozen as Khobi’s body is, his heart couldn’t be racing any faster.

​" I hope you don’t mean that literally. "

​– Why are you looking at me like that ?

​But maybe he’s mistaken –maybe the heat and the exhaustion has finally gotten to him –because when Loac looks back at him, clearly annoyed that he’s still lingering in the corridor when he was the one who had said they should go, the waters of his eyes are still and clear once more and that unspoken thing has vanished from its depths like it was never even there.