I reached for the buttons on his shirt. Asher grabbed my hands. "Slowly, ma cherie."
I raised eyebrows at him. "We don't have time for slow."
He rolled his head back so he could see Jean-Claude. "Is she always this impatient?"
"She begins like an American man, but she does foreplay like she's French."
"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked.
"Let us help you undress, mon ami,and you will not need to ask questions, for you will know."
Asher's hands dropped away from mine, and I unbuttoned his shirt. I did do it quickly, because time was not on our side. I did not want to be in the bed with them when they died at dawn. I was still unnerved when Jean-Claude did it with me, I did not want to see it done in stereo.
Jean-Claude raised Asher up, and between the two of us we peeled the long-sleeved shirt off of his upper body. "I would love to linger on every piece of your body, Asher, but I want to see you nude before dawn. Next time, if we start earlier, we can take our time."
He smiled. "Next time, you have not seen all there is to see, do not promise until you have seen, as they say, the whole show."
I leaned into him, our faces only inches apart. "I don't believe there is anything you could show me that would make me not want you."
"I almost believe that, ma cherie,almost."
I leaned back enough on my knees to cradle his face between my hands. The difference in texture wasn't jarring, it was just part of touching Asher. I kissed him, long, slow, exploring him, softly with my lips. I drew back enough to see his face.
"Believe it." I drew my fingers down the edge of his jaw on either side, tickling nails across the smooth line of his neck, one hand mirroring the other, until I came to his chest. It wasn't hands I wanted to use there.
I kissed along the scarred edge of his collarbone, but the scars made the skin too thick, I had to move to the other side to nibble along his collarbone, to give him that safe edge of teeth.
He shuddered for me.
I moved back to the right side and kissed down until I found his nipple, stranded in all that hardness. I wasn't sure if his nipple had the sensitivity it had had before. There was only one way to find out. I licked his nipple, a quick flick of tongue and felt the skin move, contract. I used my hands to help mound that side of his chest so that I could find a mouthful of him. The scars were harsh to my mouth, but his nipple drew tight under my tongue, my mouth, and lightly, teeth. Only when I'd thoroughly explored the right, did I turn to the left. His left nipple was easier to take into my mouth, easier to tease. I used more teeth, and he groaned as I marked him, lightly, nothing that wouldn't fade within moments.
I licked down the left side of his chest, his stomach, then moved back to the right and explored the scarred flesh as I had the other, because I knew now, that scarred or not, it worked. He could feel my mouth on his skin, my fingers trailing lower. If he could feel then I wanted to give him everything I could.
My mouth came to his waist, the belt, the top of his pants. I licked from one side of his waist to the other, then came back to the right side and licked along the front of his flat stomach, so the tip of my tongue eased inside the very top of his pants, even with the belt.
Asher's voice came breathy, harsh, "You have taught her well."
"I can take little credit for it, mon ami,she enjoys her work."
I rolled eyes up at them. "Please, stop talking about me like I can't understand you."
"Our most sincere apologies," Jean-Claude said.
"Oui," Asher said, "it was not an insult."
"No, but you assume that if I'm any good it has to be because a man taught me. That's so sexist."
"We can only apologize again, ma petite."
I undid the buckle on Asher's belt, and he didn't stop me this time. I got the top fastener undone, but I've never been good at unzipping a man when he's sitting down. I think I'm always a little afraid I'll get him caught in the zipper.
"Some help here," I said.
Jean-Claude lifted, Asher helped, and the zipper came down, revealing that he was wearing royal blue bikinis in silk, what else? There is no way to get real pants off of anyone gracefully. I peeled the pants down Asher's long legs, slipped off the shoes that he was still wearing, there were no socks to bother with. He lay back, cradled against Jean-Claude, wearing nothing but the tiny blue silk undies. I wanted to snatch them away from him. I wanted to see him completely nude, it seemed more important than anything else. To finally see if the scars went all the way across.
I crawled forward and licked the edge of his stomach, so that my tongue dipped just below the waistband of the silk, an echo of what I'd done to his pants. I could feel him pressed against the thin cloth, the hardness of him brushing against my chin as I moved around his waist.
I went back to the right side and the scars that dribbled down to mid-thigh. I licked, kissed, and bit along them until he cried out. Then I did the same to his other thigh, going lower until I licked the back of his knee, and he whimpered.
Jean-Claude's voice came almost strangled, "Ma petite,please."
I looked up, the tip of my tongue still playing lightly on the very edge of the bend of Asher's knee. Asher's eyes were rolled almost back into his head. I knew things through Jean-Claude's memories that only a lover would know, such as the fact that he loved having the backs of his knees licked.
"Please, what?" I asked.
"Please, finish it."
I knew what he meant. I crawled back up until I was kneeling between their legs again. The blue silk was stretched tight, and this time it was very erotic.
I slid my fingers in the top of the silk, and it was Asher's hands that spilled eager, helping slide the silk down his hips. I pulled the silk down his thighs, but was only half paying attention, because I was staring at what had been revealed.
Scars dribbled from his thigh towards the groin like white worms frozen under the skin, but they stopped a few inches short of the groin, and he lay thick, and long, and straight, and perfect.
I had a confused image of him with the scars fresh, and he was misshapen, unable to become fully erect, twisted to one side, unable to perform.
I had to shake my head to clear the memory. I met Jean-Claude's gaze. I'd never seen him look so utterly lost, shocked, amazed. I had never seen so many different emotions flow across his face. He was finally caught between laughter and tears. "Mon ami,what . . ."
"There was a doctor only a few years ago, who thought that most of the scarring was in the foreskin, and it was."
Jean-Claude laid his head on Asher's shoulder, lost in that golden hair, and he wept, and cried. "All this time . . . all this time, and I thought it was my fault, you were ruined, and it was my fault."
Asher reached back and stroked Jean-Claude's hair. "It was never your fault, mon ami.If you had been with us when we were taken, they would have done to you what they did to me, and that I could not have borne. If you had not been free to save me, I would be dead now, along with our Julianna."
They held each other and cried, and laughed, and healed, and I was suddenly superfluous, kneeling on the bed in my lingerie. And for once, I didn't mind in the least.
13
Jean-Claude released the ardeurwith less than an hour to go, before they would die. I did not want to be trapped underneath anyone when that happened. But the ardeurhad been denied longer than I'd ever denied it, and it was like a force of nature, a storm that broke over us, washed away Jean-Claude's clothes and what was left of mine.
I took Asher into my mouth and explored the perfection of him, found the one thin scar that trailed down his scrotum. I sucked the ridge of scar tissue into my mouth and made him cry out above me.
It was chance more than planning that put Jean-Claude underneath me, inside me, with Asher at my back, his weight beating into both of us, but without an opening to claim. Or without an opening I was willing to share. I could feel the length of Asher pressed along my back. Every time Jean-Claude pushed himself up inside me, Asher pushed himself against my back, wedged between the cheeks of my bu**ocks. They echoed each other perfectly. When one moved, the other moved. Until somewhere in the middle of it all, I begged, Asher to enter me, take me.
Jean-Claude's voice came as if from a great distance, "Non, mon chardonneret,we have done no preparation. She has never had it done before."
Dimly I realized what I'd asked and was happy someone could think well enough to stop me from letting others hurt me. But part of me was angry, the ardeurwanted Asher inside, wanted to drink him in.