“I’ve... I’ve never used the back before.”
Was Rihen’s statement really the truth? Or was it nothing more than a fabrication he’d thrown out in a hurry to escape this situation? If it was that, unable to bear the thought of being with someone he’d practically raised, he’d put another lie on his lips... Theo felt he wouldn’t be able to stand it.
He gripped Rihen’s waist hard so he couldn’t run. It was the first time he’d gripped bare skin with force. The flesh under his palm was smooth, and hot. If Rihen pushes me away, what am I supposed to do? When he pictured a despair that hadn’t even happened yet, his head felt like it might burst.
But Rihen didn’t run. He stretched out both arms and hugged Theo around the neck. On the face right up close was that lovely, distinctive smile of his that folded the eyes closed. He whispered as gently as always, in a voice that trembled just a little.
“So... be gentle with me.”
Theo put more strength into the arm around Rihen’s waist. In the space of a short crossed breath, their positions flipped. Rihen’s back met the bed, and Theo covered him. Ash-gray hair scattered across the white sheet.
Bracing himself with a hand on either side of Rihen’s face, Theo met the red eyes head-on. The face that had always been so at ease, always smiling, was stiff with a startled look. It was an expression Rihen had never once shown before. Unfamiliar, and for that reason all the more to Theo’s liking. He wanted him to show every one of those hidden expressions in front of him. Even his crying face.
“Rihen, but... this is all a first time for me. I don’t know what being gentle even means.”
Theo’s thigh pushed into the space between Rihen’s legs. His trouser-clad thigh rubbed against the fully bare underside. When he ground his knee in insistently, a response quickly followed. Rihen, unable to either push Theo away or pull him closer, only gripped the bedsheet in his fist. Theo gently took hold of that wrist and had Rihen’s arms around his neck again.
“So... tell me right away if it hurts.”
“You said it was all a first, right? Do you even know how to do it?”
Rihen asked, narrowing his eyes. The question felt so absurd that Theo let out a short laugh. Was he still going to see him as a child?
“Rihen, I’m twenty.”
The fact that he’d heard too much at the tavern was probably something he didn’t need to say out loud.
He wanted, at heart, to push all the way into Rihen’s deepest place in one thrust. To fill that flat belly to the brim with cum, and stop him from letting a drop out with anything he could use... surely he would be glad.
But Theo didn’t. He couldn’t ruin Rihen’s “first” with his own selfishness. As Rihen had asked, he was going to be gentle when he held him.
He traced the skin he’d wanted to touch, one careful line at a time. Fingertips that had rubbed down along the neck met the chest, where minute movements of tension ran, then passed the belly to the waist, and down to the thighs. That body had looked so firm, and yet the flesh on the insides of the thighs was more tender than he’d expected.
When he caressed the skin there in slow circles, Rihen’s legs jerked in small twitches. Since he hadn’t hardened yet, it wasn’t from arousal. He seemed simply ticklish. It was a relief that Rihen didn’t have a body sensitive enough to leak just from a light caress. If he’d had a body that easy, Theo would have been endlessly tormented picturing how many customers had passed through him, what awful things those customers might have done to him. And then hunting down, one by one, every one of those men who’d handled Rihen roughly... No. No, stop. Enough of that.
“Rihen...”
Mumbling his name out of habit, Theo suddenly realized. Perhaps “Rihen” wasn’t his real name at all. There was no proof anywhere that it was.
There was so much he didn’t know about Rihen. Which was exactly why he had to know more. As far as he could reach.
And already, right now, Theo had learned a great deal. How hot his skin was, how lovely the cheeks flushed with shyness were. That his body hair was faint and sparse, that there were two moles side by side on his left thigh, he had known long ago.
The feel of his lips, the taste of his breath and saliva, what expression he wore when he was aroused and what kind of moans he made... those were things he could learn one step at a time from now on.
Theo lowered his head and kissed Rihen on the lips. When he licked lightly at his lips with the tip of his tongue, Rihen let out a low breath and slowly parted his mouth. Theo pushed his tongue into that narrow, damp cavern. Rihen’s eyes went wide. Did he even know how to kiss?, the expression seemed to say.
Theo moved his tongue carefully. He wanted to melt Rihen down softly from head to toe, but compared to how boldly he’d pressed their mouths together, the kiss was clumsy. Unlike Rihen, Theo was a beginner even at kissing, so it stood to reason. Rihen’s eyes, having gone round in surprise, soon curved into a smile that seemed to say he’d expected as much. Wearing that at-ease expression, as always.
I want to see that lovely face twist with fluster. And beyond that, I want to make him sob. Wanting to peek at the weak places of the person you liked was human nature, wasn’t it?
Rihen received Theo’s tongue skillfully. Rubbing at the roof of Theo’s mouth, stickily brushing the inside of his cheek. Without any sign of being winded, the way he pressed their lips together and wound his tongue around Theo’s made it plain how experienced he was. Nothing like the fumbling Theo.
Rihen pulled his lips away and gave a sly smile.
“If I’d known... I should have taught you kissing along with swordsmanship.”
“Would you really teach me?”
Theo asked seriously, even though he knew of course it was a joke. Rihen looked caught off guard. Theo didn’t miss that brief flicker of a moment.
“Teach me everything.”
Theo’s hand went downward. He took hold of Rihen’s cock, which was still slack. For someone who sold his body, the color of the shaft was pale, and Theo wrapped both hands around it and worked it. This was easier than kissing. He’d felt himself up and pressed on his own glans plenty of times on his own.
...While thinking of Rihen.
“How you kiss, where you like to be touched... teach me all of it, Rihen.”
Long, thick fingers stroked at the cock that was slowly getting wet with pre-cum. A swordsman’s hand, dense with callus. A firm hand that had been gripping a sword hilt only hours ago, was holding the cock of the man who had raised him like family. Under his palm was hot, sticky weight. At some point Rihen’s swollen shaft was pulsing in Theo’s hand.
“Ngh, ah...”
Rihen’s smile gradually broke. He covered his mouth with the back of his hand and held the moans down. Without so much as blinking, Theo looked down at him as if bewitched. A scene that had only been permitted in dreams was now a reality he could reach out and touch. Without meaning to, more force went into his hand.
When he squeezed hard at the concentrated, sensitive spot, Rihen let out a whimpering ngh. At the same time, cum burst out in spurts. His face flushed, Theo licked a little of the mess of Rihen’s cum from his palm. Salty and metallic, but knowing it had come out of Rihen, it seemed strangely sweet.
“Wh-Why would you eat that...”
Rihen looked at Theo like he had a great deal to say, then seemed to reach his own conclusion and quickly regained his composure. Right, he’s at the age of maximum curiosity. Rihen mumbled something like that under his breath, though it was too quiet for Theo to make out.
He spread the leftover cum evenly on his fingers. He was going to use it in place of lube. Theo lifted one of Rihen’s legs. He set the ankle over his shoulder, reached down, and felt between the cheeks of his ass. His fingertip touched the closed hole. The dense folds were dry. That his body wasn’t prepared for a man in the slightest was very much to Theo’s liking. So it really was my first, huh.
Fingers wet with cum pushed inside. Starting with the index, slowly, so as not to draw blood. While one hand worked below, his eyes were tracking Rihen’s expression sharply. Rihen had turned his face to the side and had his eyes squeezed shut. A face that was already fair looked paler still, all color leached away.
“Rihen, are you okay?”
Theo asked carefully. Rihen answered with his eyes still closed.
“Mm... This isn’t even painful. I’ve been through worse.”
The words sounded less like an answer to Theo than a whisper he was repeating to himself so he wouldn’t waver.
What could ‘worse’ have been? Theo was curious, but he didn’t ask. In this small bed with only him and Rihen on it, he couldn’t bring up talk of another client.
Rihen’s only ever avoided the back, that’s all. It seems he’s done everything else. He must have shared his body with people of all sorts of tastes, and among them there were surely some who fed on others’ pain to feel pleasure. Like the man who had left those countless bite marks on Rihen’s skin, or the one who had marked his neck so clearly and then turned around as if nothing had happened.
And some of them, undoubtedly, wanted to hold Rihen and pump him like a dog. If one day someone offered a great deal of money and asked to hold him that way... Rihen might not be able to refuse. Because he was easy, and kind, and couldn’t even refuse a request of mine, so he was spreading his legs like this...
When did I get this awful habit of assuming the worst first? Theo emptied his head and fixed his eyes on Rihen. As Rihen’s scent brushed the tip of his nose, his thoughts finally quieted and reality sharpened again.
Theo took Rihen’s cock in hand again, worked it, and with patience slowly loosened the back. He rubbed his lips along the line of Rihen’s neck and increased his fingers one at a time. Rihen covered his face with both arms and panted quietly. His ears, which he couldn’t hide in time, were dyed red.
