Chapter 21

Chapter Twenty-One

"There will be time later to establish a more permanent solution." Sazahk pulled his hands out of Garin's clothes and gently pushed him away. "And a better venue, too." He caught his wrist and tugged him back out of the alley.

Garin hastily rearranged his pants as they walked down the street, making a good faith effort to hide the evidence of their groping.

A permanent solution. Sazahk wanted a permanent solution.

Garin would be on cloud nine if he wasn't so sure the only solution he could offer the man was far inferior to what he deserved. Sazahk deserved so much more than one stupid night every other month, or however often Garin could spare one.

He'd worked with the Turner family for a long time. He knew how rarely Alistair Turner stayed in one place for more than a night, and he knew what a demanding boss he was, even if he compensated his employees generously.

But Sazahk didn't appear to be thinking about any of that and Garin didn't want to shortchange this one night if it was all they'd get for a long time. He'd have plenty of opportunities for self-flagellation later.

"Are you sure you're going the right way?" Garin frowned as they left the military district behind, and didn't return to the diplomatic or living quarters, but instead headed toward infrastructure, maintenance, and the hangars.

Sazahk shot him a look. "I can access the entire station's schematics with barely a conscious thought." He tapped the back of his neck. "Of course we're going in the right direction."

"Right, right, I'm sorry." Garin raised his free hand apologetically. "I can't even imagine what that's like."

Sazahk grinned at him with an almost childlike enthusiasm. "Amazing. Better than I remember, which is to be expected, considering I had taken it for granted before." Sazahk looked down at their linked hands. "But admittedly, not everything I'd hoped it would be."

Garin cocked his head. "No?"

"No." Sazahk surprised Garin by lifting their hands to his lips and kissing Garin's knuckles. "Possibly because by the time I regained my implant, there was something else—someone else—I had grown to require."

Garin's lower belly tightened. "Damn it, Sazahk, are we almost there? Because I think I might jump you right here and now if we're not."

Sazahk laughed. "We're almost there, and I believe you'll be gratified by the results of your patience."

They arrived at the hangar bay reserved for diplomats and politicians and people of means.

"Wait, are we going somewhere?" Garin stopped abruptly, suddenly afraid they'd have to discuss the limitations of his availability sooner rather than later.

"No." Sazahk tugged him forward. "Nowhere any farther than two hundred and seventy-five yards."

Garin snorted and stumbled along in surprise, fears assuaged and forgotten. "Where did that number come from?"

Sazahk lead him around a gaudy Klah'Eel ship to reveal a smaller, tidier, Qeshian one, its gangway already dropping to meet them. "That is precisely how far away we are from my bed."

Garin's half-hard length throbbed at Sazahk's confident tone and the faintest, hoarse gravel of desire rumbling below it. "Do we need to make it that far?"

Sazahk sent him a mischievous look. "No."

With matching grins, they ran up the ramp and into the polished interior of the ship. The decor of the entryway and the paneling along the walls spoke of expensive taste, but the only thing Garin registered about the wall was his back slamming into it as Sazahk pushed him up against it.

Sazahk caught his mouth and plunged his tongue into him, kissing him deeply without a moment of preamble. Garin moaned and melted into him, tilting his chin up for Sazahk to ravish him. He was almost certainly stronger than the qesh, but he was shorter than him and barely outweighed him, and when Sazahk turned his focus on Garin like he did, he completely and exquisitely overwhelmed him.

Garin couldn't even track Sazahk's hands. They were everywhere. As Sazahk's tongue thrust into Garin's mouth, Sazahk pushed Garin's suit jacket from his shoulders, undid the buttons down his shirt, unbuckled his belt, and pulled down his zipper. How?—

Garin jerked back as he realized the appendages disrobing him with dizzying rapidity weren't Sazahk's hands at all, but a swarm of flex metal tentacles extending from the baseboards. "Holy shit."

"I told you this would be worth your patience." Sazahk smirked and twisted a tiny tendril delicately in the air between their noses. "Even my level of clearance is insufficient to access the security apparatus within the station's military district. And even if it was, there are few instances there of flex metal with the dexterity and sensitivity needed for what I have in mind."

"You've already got plans, have you?" Garin matched Sazahk's smirk as he let Sazahk's tentacles strip him. He shivered as the cool air hit his boiling skin. How his desire hadn't set him ablaze inside his sweltering suit, he didn't know.

"I've been developing a course of action for far longer than I should have been." Sazahk's eyes roamed down Garin's naked body. His hands touched Garin's hips and skated up his sides.

"Yeah, I've got a few courses of action in mind, too." Garin wrapped one arm around Sazahk's waist, palmed the back of his head, and reversed their positions, pushing the qesh against the dark wood paneling. He buried his face in Sazahk's neck, inhaling him, before nipping at his tendon. "If I can take a turn?"

Sazahk gasped when Garin's teeth caught his skin. "Of—of course. Your pleasure is my primary motivation."

"And what about yours?" Garin kissed down Sazahk's neck to his sharp collarbones and licked into the hollow of his throat, which had called to him since they'd roamed the Dead Zone and it had peeked out at him, slick with sweat.

"I—" Sazahk's breath caught again at the touch of Garin's tongue. He dropped his shoulders to let Garin push his robes from them, and trembling metal tentacles helped Garin tug at the rest of the ties and fastenings on the overly complicated Qeshian formal wear. "I am still discovering the exact mechanisms of my pleasure, but it has an undeniable tie to yours."

"Well, let's see if we can get a little more specific." Garin sank to his knees as Sazahk's clothes fell away, kissing a line down the center of Sazahk's chest and lower belly. Despite his cocky words and despite the fact that Garin wasn't inexperienced with blowjobs, nerves still fluttered in his stomach. He didn't want to embarrass them both by doing something Sazahk didn't like.

But he really, really wanted to do something Sazahk did like. And this had as good a shot at success as anything.

"I—" Sazahk swallowed, staring down at Garin with wide eyes, dark green and brown swirling over his skin. "Yes, I am interested as well in?—"

Garin followed a curl of forest green wrapping around the head of Sazahk's cock with his tongue.

"Oh, goddess, Garin." Sazahk's thighs tensed under Garin's palms and flex metal slithered over Garin's ankles and calves and tightened, as though grasping him for steadiness. "That—that felt good."

Garin grinned, and licked broad stripes along Sazahk's shaft, following the cascading colors. Having such a communicative partner was going to have its benefits. Once he'd tasted every inch of Sazahk's length, he opened his mouth wide and sank down onto it. They both groaned as Sazahk's cock filled Garin's mouth and nudged at the back of his throat.

Sazahk.

Garin's eyes fluttered closed as he sucked. Brilliant, insane, gorgeous Sazahk with so many better things to do than Garin but who looked at him and touched him like he couldn't get enough of him, shuddered against the wall and whimpered and rolled his hips in desperate little twitches, begging wordlessly for more of what Garin gave him.

Garin bobbed his head, sucking hard as he pulled off and laving his tongue over every sensitive spot he could reach as he swallowed Sazahk down again.

"That—that's amazing." Sazahk drew shaky fingers through Garin's hair. "Goddess, that feels good, Garin, too, too—" Sazahk yelped and spurted pre-cum onto the pad of Garin's tongue. "Too good, too good."

Garin eased up but didn't stop suckling on his mouthful, having craved it for too long and too hard from it now to give it up so quickly.

"Better." Sazahk let out a relieved sigh and brushed his fingers over Garin's cheeks. "Better. I need more time to execute on my plans."

Garin's eyes stayed closed as he hummed with the gentle touch of Sazahk's fingers on his cheek. His jaw ached, but he loved the fuzzy feeling around the edges of his senses that the soreness put there, and the slow overtaking of his entire reality by the salty tang in his mouth and the heavy musk in his nose.

On base instinct, he followed the heady scent of that musk. With a worshipful slowness, he released Sazahk's cock. He licked his head one last time to coax out another drop of pre-cum, then kissed down his shaft, opening his eyes to look up into Sazahk's face. "Tell me if you want me to stop."

"I won't." Sazahk shook his head, his dark eyes riveted to Garin's. "That is, I won't want you to stop. But I will tell you if I do. But I don't."

Garin reached Sazahk's balls and stopped to give them the attention they deserved, licking, nuzzling, and sucking them until they were wet with his saliva and pulsing against his tongue. Then he wrapped a palm around the back of Sazahk's thigh and hooked the man's long leg over his shoulder.

Sazahk's breath hitched as Garin pulled his hips away from the wall, tilting them to give himself a better angle. A tentacle snapped out and wrapped around Sazahk's forearms, supporting him. Garin caught Sazahk's gaze past his rosy-red erection and held it as he slowly buried his face between Sazahk's thighs and touched the tip of his tongue to his hole.

"Oh goddess, Garin." Sazahk's hand shot down between his legs and tangled in Garin's hair.

Garin groaned as his cock twitched. He couldn't have asked for a sweeter reaction. Filling his hands with the firm muscle of Sazahk's ass, Garin flicked tiny, insistent licks against that tight furl. Sazahk gasped and whined above him, his hole twitching at every touch.

"Garin, please, more." Sazahk canted his hips to give Garin better access, and Garin rewarded them both with a hard, broad lick over his entrance. "Oh yes, yes, like that."

Garin closed his eyes as a bead of pre-cum welled up on his own tip. God, he loved the man's shamelessness. He loved that he asked for what he wanted. He loved that what he wanted was Garin's tongue up his ass.

He hauled Sazahk's narrow hips up against his mouth and ate him out like a starving man. He licked and sucked until Sazahk's crack dripped and his hole was loose and quivering. The scent and taste of him filled Garin's senses, and he committed it to memory. This taste would appear on his tongue every time he touched himself alone and wished he were with this man.

When the last trace of resistance faded, Garin pointed his tongue and speared it into Sazahk's body.

"Garin!" Sazahk's thighs clenched around him and his balls pulled up tight, but Garin didn't give him a chance to adjust, stabbing his tongue past the clenching ring of muscle as Sazahk howled above him.

Garin shuffled closer and took more of Sazahk's weight on his shoulders, the man writhing and slipping as Garin wrecked his hole with his tongue. He thrust and twisted and licked, sucking on his rim. He wanted Sazahk sobbing with pleasure, Garin realized hazily. He wanted Sazahk too lost to it to even use his brilliant mind.

Garin was so consumed by his labor, he didn't notice the cold metal sliding up his own inner thighs until something hard and slippery prodded at his hole. He went rigid, the sensation at his entrance slamming him back into his own body. His eyes snapped open, and he looked up Sazahk's trembling belly to meet his dark gaze.

Sazahk panted and licked his lips. The metal tentacle already coated with something slick pressed against Garin's ring but didn't breach him. "Can I?"

Garin closed his eyes and groaned against Sazahk's spit-slicked taint. He nodded and rolled his hips to push himself onto the tentacle. "Yes."

"Oh goddess, thank you." Sazahk dropped his head back with a drawn-out groan as he ground against Garin's mouth and fed his tentacle into Garin's ass.

Garin cried out as the metal stretched his rim, bliss blurring his vision as he found himself trapped between the two overwhelming sensations of his face buried in Sazahk's ass and Sazahk's tentacle buried in his. He licked deliriously and whimpered when Sazahk's tentacles followed his lead, stroking against his rim the way he stroked Sazahk's with his tongue.

All thinking fled Garin's brain. All rationality withered. All complexity collapsed. All that existed was Sazahk's hole fluttering around his tongue, Sazahk's thighs clenching around his body, and the invading, teasing assault on his own entrance.

"Garin." Sazahk tugged on Garin's hair, making Garin moan. He dug his fingertips into Sazahk's hips, dragging him just a little bit closer, trying to get his tongue just a little bit deeper. "Garin."

Garin blinked in confusion as Sazahk dragged him back by his hair and the tentacle slipped from his ass. "Are you—" he barely recognized his own hoarse voice. "Are you okay?"

"Bed." Sazahk slid his thigh off Garin's shoulder, and tentacles swarmed up Garin's body and hauled him to his feet. But as soon as they reached eye level, Sazahk grabbed Garin's jaw and kissed him, licking into his mouth. Garin leaked as he thought of Sazahk tasting himself off Garin's tongue. He leaned in for more, but Sazahk broke the kiss. "Bed. Bed, now."

Garin nodded, the wisdom of that order breaking through his lust-hazed delirium. "I don't know where…"

But Sazahk grabbed his wrist and dragged him down the hall. Garin stumbled along after him, buoyed by the writhing mass of tentacles accompanying them. The pure manifestation of Sazahk's thoughts and desires grabbed at him, touched him, dragged him after the whirlwind that was this qesh that had completely captivated Garin's body and soul.

They reached the end of the hall, and the last door flew open to reveal a luxurious room dominated by a four-poster bed.

Garin caught Sazahk with an arm around his narrow waist before they reached it and swung him around to bring them chest to chest. "I love you."

A beautiful light sparked in Sazahk's gorgeous dark eyes. "I love you, too."

Not a moment of hesitation in his voice, not a trace of doubt in his gaze… Garin couldn't believe his insane luck, his magnificent fortune, that the galaxy had given him this. Three weeks ago, when the love had first taken hold in Garin's chest and he'd tried to kiss Sazahk, the man had pulled away.

But he didn't pull away now.

Garin dove in for another kiss and Sazahk met him, hooking a hand around the back of his neck and holding him close as their tongues dueled. Sazahk walked backwards as they kissed, pulling Garin along with him until they fell onto the bed. Garin gasped and caught himself at the last moment, palms pressing into the mattress to hover himself above Sazahk.

"I'm sorry." Garin's mind cleared enough to pitch himself sideways. Don't hold him down. Sazahk didn't like to be held down.

"Stay." Sazahk lifted his legs to bracket Garin between his thighs, holding him in place atop him. "I want you close." He wrapped one arm around Garin's neck and reached the other between their bodies. "I like having you close."

Garin groaned as Sazahk grasped his length with a slick hand and a warm, wet tentacle breached his ass again. "How did…where…" He spied a tentacle receding to the bedside, holding a bottle. "Is that cooking oil?"

"It was all I had." Sazahk stroked Garin's cock in time with the tentacle thrusting into Garin's ass.

"But when did you even—" Garin gave up the question with a deep moan when Sazahk rubbed his palm over his tip. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered but what Sazahk was doing to him. He rocked himself between the sensations. Each thrust into Sazahk's fist was surpassed only by the fullness of rocking himself back onto the flex metal stretching his rim.

"Garin." Sazahk strained up and nipped his lower lip. "Garin, I—I find I want all of you, I want more, I want—I want to consume you and it doesn't make any sense, but my skin is too tight and I'm empty and I want—" Sazahk face crumpled when words failed him, and a thin metal tentacle wrapped around Garin's wrist and yanked his hand down.

Garin yelped as he fell off balance, catching himself on his forearm as Sazahk's tentacle dragged his hand down between Sazahk's thighs. He needed no more prompting than that and he reached for Sazahk's hole.

His cock kicked at what he found there.

Sazahk's slippery rim stretched tight around a flex metal rod as Sazahk fucked himself with a tentacle.

Oh god, that was hot. Garin covered Sazahk's lips and swallowed his panting gasps as he pressed his finger into Sazahk's hole beside the pumping flex metal. Sazahk made a strangled sound and his hand around Garin's cock seized when Garin fucked him with it, off tempo with the tentacle, forcing Sazahk's hole into a ceaseless rhythm of clenching and stretching.

Sazahk fisted Garin's hair and lifted his hips, meeting his and Garin's thrusts with whimpers and cries. A tentacle as wide as Garin's arm wrapped around Garin's waist, stilling his hips and Garin's wrist working his finger into Sazahk's ass stuttered to a stall at the show of force.

The tentacle in Garin's ass slipped out and the blunt head of a much larger one touched his loose hole. Garin's mouth fell open, and he dropped his head to Sazahk's chest as the massive thing pushed.

Sazahk nuzzled his ear with a whisper. "Do you want it?"

"Yes." Garin bore down as the metal forced him open. "Yes, I want it, Sazahk."

Sazahk kissed the shell of his ear and pet his hair as the thick appendage pressed into him inch by inch, filling him up until he rode the edge of breaking. Tears leaked from the corner of Garin's eyes, and he panted into Sazahk's neck, but his cock was hard as rock in Sazahk's hand.

"Sazahk." Garin scratched down Sazahk's chest, every nerve ending on fire, his body a boneless sheath for Sazahk's flex metal. "I…it's…oh god." His hips twitched and tensed to savor the metal splitting him in two.

"Garin, goddess, you're perfect." Sazahk's voice shook as he pet him. His thighs quivered around him as he hiked them up over Garin's hips. He angled Garin's cock down. "Garin, will you—will you penetrate me?"

Garin couldn't form words. He couldn't think. He could only nod against Sazahk's chest and anchor himself with a tight grip on Sazahk's shoulder. He didn't need to think to know the answer to that question, though. His body knew the answer to that question.

Driven by the commanding tentacle in his ass, Garin's hips pressed forward, and his cockhead caught on Sazahk's hole.

"Sazahk, Sazahk, Sazahk." Garin whimpered as the tentacles wrapping and writhing around him pushed him onward until he sank into Sazahk's body.

Sazahk moaned long and low into Garin's ear. He wrapped both arms around his shoulders and pulled him down until Garin's full weight rested on him. They pinned Sazahk's straining cock between their bellies, and Sazahk gasped and thrust up into the slick space between them.

The motion drove Garin deeper into him, and his hips pumped reflexively. A high-caliber bullet's worth of ecstasy ricochetted through him as he buried himself into Sazahk's unfathomable heat, his insides so much hotter than his cool skin, then pulled out and impaled himself on Sazahk's massive tentacle.

His body spasmed with the overwhelming sensations and the flex metal system took him over. The tentacle in his ass fucked him hard, driving him into Sazahk with every thrust. He couldn't move, he couldn't fight it, he didn't want to.

It was unbearable, and it was perfect, trapped and overcome by the man in his arms who took him and everything he was and reveled in it.

"Look at me." Sazahk dragged his hands to Garin's jaw and tilted his face up until their gazes met. They rocked and writhed together, climbing and climbing, and Garin didn't tear his eyes from Sazahk, his panting lips parted, his cheeks swirling with the darkest green, his eyes profound and complex beyond knowing.

"Sazahk." Garin forced his eyes to stay open as he rode the sensations Sazahk inflicted on him, clinging on for dear life.

"Are you close?" Sazahk's eyes darted to Garin's lips.

"Yes, so close, I won't?—"

Sazahk crushed their lips together and a thin tentacle forced past Garin's straining rim and raked across his prostate.

Garin crashed over his peak, a breathless, strangled yell ripping from his throat. Sazahk swallowed it down, consuming Garin as pleasure wrecked him. His cock pulsed into Sazahk's rippling insides, and his ass clenched down around the unforgiving metal, stunning him with how impossibly full he was.

His orgasm dragged on and on and he writhed on the metal impaling him as the thin tentacle pushed again and again against his prostate. His balls ached, his muscles cramped, he shuddered and shivered, and still the white-hot euphoria blazed behind his eyes.

Finally, the blaze banked, Sazahk's arms wrapped around Garin's waist, and the huge tentacle slid from his ass. Garin groaned as his abused hole relaxed. He realized distantly that Sazahk was murmuring into his hair.

"Shh, shh, you're alright, you're alright." Sazahk brushed Garin's sweaty hair from his forehead and smoothed the heel of his palm over the tight muscles of Garin's back. "I love you. I love you so much, beyond what I understood the mind to be capable of."

He spoke so quietly Garin didn't think the words were entirely meant for him to hear, but they trickled into his soul and warmed him until he thought he might cry from the pure, unsullied joy of it. He hadn't cried since he was eleven years old, but Sazahk whispering earnest, heartfelt declarations of love into his hair almost brought him to tears.

He sniffled and wiped his face to make sure none had appeared and spent all his restoring strength to push himself up onto his arms. "Did you come?"

Sazahk laughed softly and glanced down at their filthy bellies. "I think you might be able to figure that out for yourself."

Garin blushed, which at least pulled some of his blood supply back toward his brain. "Right." He slipped off Sazahk to lie at his side and traced a finger up Sazahk's flat belly and through his still warm spend. "God, you're gorgeous."

Dark green with streaks of yellow and a touch of orange followed Garin's finger. "Arousal, satisfaction, and fulfillment at the sight of a partner covered in sexual release is well documented, but I admit I didn't understand it before."

"And now?" Garin had experienced said arousal, though he'd never questioned it, but it had never felt like this. Nothing with Sazahk felt like anything he'd ever felt with anyone else. To see the evidence of Sazahk's pleasure went beyond tawdry self-satisfaction.

"Now, I admit, I am beginning to recognize the appeal." Sazahk tangled a finger in the hair below Garin's belly button, where Sazahk's own cum dried. Garin's lower belly lurched despite his exhaustion. "But also why the theory is perhaps more enjoyable than the actuality."

Garin chuckled as a congealing drop of semen slipped from Garin and onto Sazahk. "It's a short-lived treat." Then he yelped when something warm and wet landed on his hip. He twisted around to see a tentacle swaying over the washcloth it had just dropped on him.

"Indeed." Sazahk smirked as he plucked a washcloth from a second tentacle and wiped off his stomach while a third cleaned off his hole.

"Someone's gotten used to their—" Garin's snarky comment about Sazahk's flex metal system gave way to a gasp when cold metal parted his cheeks and a fourth washcloth swiped over his entrance. "Oh, shit." Garin curled into Sazahk's body as his rim twitched and sent lazy curls of arousal up his spine.

"Someone merely has no desire to get out of bed." Sazahk wrapped his arms around Garin once the flex metal receded. "And no compelling reason to."

"Do you have a compelling reason to stay in bed?" Garin nestled into Sazahk's side, his eyes slipping closed.

"Oh, yes. Very." Sazahk pressed a kiss to the top of Garin's head and a smile curled Garin's lips. As their bodies turned heavy with sleep, Garin realized he was happy.

Truly, simply happy.

And that made him excruciatingly sad. He was sad to be leaving in the morning, sad to hurt Sazahk, and sad to hurt himself. He had done so many things in his life that he'd known weren't right for him: the military academy, the Vanguard, the long years away from his family. And they had all hurt, but none of them like this.

Maybe because nothing he had ever given up had felt as good as Sazahk's arms.