Emyr's Smile (7 page)

“You know the way.”
Emyr pressed a soft kiss to his shoulder and another to the side of
his neck before he stepped back, his hand lingering on Heilyn’s
hip. “Go on, before I convince myself that the table is warm
enough.”

“Oh,” Heilyn said
happily, “we can do that later.” Then he made for the stairs. He’d
gone three steps before Emyr’s hands were curving across his ass
and he was stopped for another lingering kiss.

Emyr’s shirt fell in
the kitchen doorway, and Heilyn’s belt hit the floor halfway down
the hall. His trousers went sliding between the banisters halfway
up the stairs, and he had to cling to the rail and gulp when Emyr
kissed his way down his chest, teasing his nipples to peaks with
slow licks and nibbles and then sliding to his knees on the stairs.
He rubbed his cheek against the soft cloth of Heilyn’s braies, and
Heilyn’s cock leapt at the touch. He was so hard, his balls tight
and his breath coming faster and faster with every press of Emyr’s
hands (hands which were inside his braies now, kneading his ass and
sliding tentatively down his crack).

“Heilyn,” Emyr sighed,
kissing him softly through his braies.

“Uh-uh.” He was
trembling, shaking in anticipation from his lips to his toes. He’d
never trembled for a man before.

“If you want to do this
in a bed…”

“Uh.”

“..run,” Emyr finished
softly, sliding apart the knot that closed Heilyn’s braies.

He ran, the last of his
clothes falling off him as he moved. By the time he made it across
the threshold of Emyr’s room, he was naked, and Emyr’s arm was
closing around his waist, and he was being tossed down onto Emyr’s
crumpled sheets. Emyr’s mouth descended on his, and Emyr’s body
pressed him down, and Heilyn simply wound his arms around Emyr’s
neck and groaned into his mouth. He needed this, needed so much to
be touched–touched by Emyr, beautiful, sad Emyr with his lonely
eyes and, oh, wicked hands. He rocked his hips up hard, rubbing his
cock against Emyr’s lean thigh in relief that he could finally let
the pleasure build and build towards a hot—

“Oh, no,” Emyr gasped,
and rolled off him. “Not so fast.”

Heilyn let out a
wordless protest and lunged after him, but Emyr pressed him back
against the pillows, his hands firm on Heilyn’s shoulders.

“Emyr!”

Emyr kissed him, slow
and hungry, his hand stroking down Heilyn’s body, tweaking his
nipples and caressing his cock. The kiss made Heilyn forget what he
had been complaining about, and he just sank back against the
pillows, rocking up into Emyr’s hand.

“That’s better,” Emyr
murmured and moved, pulling his hand away. Heilyn let out a grunt
of protest, and then opened his eyes as Emyr kissed down his body
again. Emyr had moved round, and his hips were close enough to
Heilyn’s face that he could see Emyr’s cock straining out hard. It
was as long and lean as Emyr himself, pink-tipped and damp, and
Heilyn had to touch, wrapping his fingers around that beautiful
hard heat with a happy sigh.

Emyr’s mouth shook
against Heilyn’s thigh, his tongue suddenly clumsy. “Oh. Please,
Heilyn!”

“Move your leg,” Heilyn
managed, tugging at Emyr’s thigh. “Over me. Yes, there.” He pulled
Emyr’s hips down, and opened his mouth to suck in the tip of Emyr’s
cock.

“H-heilyn!” It was a
real whimper, and Heilyn smiled triumphantly around his lovely
mouthful and sucked him in further. He loved doing this. It was so
good to feel a man shake and fall apart under his mouth, and when
that man was Emyr, his lovely Emyr, it was better still. He let his
eyes fall closed, savoring the weight on his tongue and the hint of
salt.

He wasn’t ready to feel
wet heat wrapped around his own cock, and cried out around Emyr,
his hips jerking. Suddenly, he couldn’t think properly. He could
only rock into Emyr’s mouth and suck hard around his lovely stiff
mouthful. There was heat gathering under his skin, and light
blossoming under his eyelids, and all he could do was gasp roughly
around Emyr and sob a little when Emyr’s tongue slid up his
shaft.

When Emyr pulled out of
his mouth, the loss almost hurt, and when Emyr gave his cock a last
sly kiss and pulled off there as well, he shouted in protest.

“Soon,” Emyr gasped,
and his fingers were between Heilyn’s legs now, teasing slickly at
his hole. “May I?”

Heilyn spread his legs
so fast he almost strained something. He couldn’t manage words, but
he could put a note of begging into his whimper and push himself
down onto Emyr’s fingers.

“Look at you,” Emyr
breathed. His fingers were busy now, first one and then another
slipping in to stretch Heilyn open. It felt so good, and his cock
throbbed in response. He was going to come, before Emyr had even
gotten inside him, and he wanted to, but he wanted this to last
forever too, and the conflicting needs made him writhe his hips and
groan.

“Not yet, lover,” Emyr
said and clamped his fingers around the base of Heilyn’s cock.
“Hold it back for me, yes?”

“Yes!” Heilyn managed,
and tried to think of anything other than this man and this bed:
the smell of congealed paint; the evil glint in Pumpkin’s eye; the
rush and rage of the storm tearing in (and, oh, that one didn’t
help at all, because his body felt just as torn and helpless now, a
different type of storm sweeping over him, threatening him with
destruction and glory).

Emyr’s fingers were
sliding out, and there was the warm nudge of his cock pressing in,
slow and gentle even as Heilyn opened his eyes to see Emyr’s hands
fisting the sheets beside his head. He turned enough to kiss Emyr’s
wrist, lifting his hips to meet that first thrust. It felt as if
the world was being scraped clean, like an old canvas, and would be
transformed into something a thousand times more bold and bright
and beautiful. Everything was so sharp and clear right now, with
the storm suddenly blossoming into sunlight inside him, and he
could see the sweat on Emyr’s brow, the graze on his own knee,
pushed up this high, and the flush over Emyr’s cheekbones, all with
the same lucid wonder.

Then Emyr moved within
him, and everything shattered into light and beauty. His eyes
closed, and he managed to raise one hand to Emyr’s sweat-slicked
back, while the other slid down to cup his own cock, not even
touching himself, just the last pressure he needed to move against.
Emyr rocked into him, a pillar of heat that filled Heilyn,
overwhelming his vision with images of clay, dark as Emyr’s hair,
and molten glass, as bright and clear as Emyr’s eyes.

Emyr shifted slightly,
and now he was pounding straight into Heilyn’s sweet spot, and all
he could see was color, swirling like the sea, as his body gathered
and clenched, his cock spurting as he came and came, wailing Emyr’s
name.

He knew that Emyr was
still moving in him, but all he could do was cling and sigh until
Emyr tensed and shuddered against him. They sank down against each
other, untangling their legs until Emyr’s face was buried against
Heilyn’s shoulder and their knees were brushing together. After a
moment, Emyr’s arms went around Heilyn’s waist, so tightly it
almost hurt, and Heilyn hugged him in return, unwilling to let him
go.

For a while, they just
lay together, the sweat cooling on their skin. Heilyn could only
tell that Emyr was even awake by the way he was slowly stroking
Heilyn’s back.

Just as Heilyn was
starting to get cold and remember that it was almost winter, Emyr
stirred a little and said, his voice bewildered, “I think I left
your lunch in the shrine.”

For some reason that
struck Heilyn as being hilarious, and he muffled his laughter
against Emyr’s hair, until Emyr wriggled up enough to demand
indignantly, “Are you laughing at me?”

“You laugh at me all
the time,” Heilyn pointed out and kissed Emyr’s pouting mouth.
“You’re amazing, in case you didn’t know.”

He felt Emyr’s smile
blossom under his lips again before he pulled back to say, “You
too. Heilyn…” He stopped there, looking frustrated. “I can’t think
of anything good enough to say.”

“Say it with kisses,
then.” Heilyn grabbed the blankets and pulled them up around their
shoulders, before he cuddled in and lifted his face. “Go on.”

“Ridiculous,” Emyr said
fondly and kissed him lightly, which led to more touches and many
more kisses, and the sky was dimming before the growling of
Heilyn’s stomach finally forced them out of bed.

He got to the inn in
time to do the breakfast washing up the next morning, and sang over
the dishes despite all Elin’s teasing. He couldn’t ever remember
being quite so happy.

He spent the afternoon
back at the shrine, helping varnish over the paintings, and refused
to take any further payment for it. Arianell and the other girls
laughed at him even more than Elin did, but it was kind laughter,
and they all seemed almost as pleased as he was to see Emyr happy.
He went home through the village that night. Emyr smiled at him as
he came in the office door and so Heilyn stole kisses from him all
the way down the coast road.

After that, once the
work at the shrine was finally finished, he went back to collecting
sketches of the island. There was a quiet subdued elegance to the
morning mists and brown lines of the winter fields. The short days
limited what he could see, but he drew from memory as he sat at
Emyr’s table each evening, and went to bed early.

There was a little part
of him, though, that felt restless. Every time he saw a ship coming
in, he paused to watch the sails bellying before the winter wind,
and that restless part of him made him wonder what was on the next
island. It frightened him to think how hard it would be to leave
now. It was going to break his heart to kiss Emyr goodbye.

Or, of course, he could
stay.

That was almost more
frightening. He had left his home and family without a care in the
world. Why should a man he had only known for a few months make him
want to curl his toes into the dirt? There were islands yet unseen,
and a whole world beyond. There was nothing special about Sirig
either: it wasn’t the loveliest island he had ever seen, nor was
there much work for a artist here, though the skyscape was
unmatched, of course, and he liked the people, friendly and
easygoing as they were.

Emyr was here.

It nagged at him,
except when he was curled into Emyr’s arms, and the worry lifted
away when Emyr smiled at him with that little hint of wonder.

He could do portraits,
though they weren’t as fun as painting the land and the sky full of
islands. Sirig was on major trade routes, too, so there were plenty
of visitors, merchants and pilgrims. He could hire a little display
space near the dock and sell his pictures there.

Or he could fly on, to
Gwydr and Enfys, and paint new places and new faces.

He wouldn’t decide
until spring, he concluded. He could wait that long to choose. He
had no desire to sail through a winter storm, and spring was a
better season for new journeys. Until then, he would stay here and
be Emyr’s.

He had forgotten, in
all his scheming, that other people gossiped, particularly on small
islands. It was Elin who pushed the point, in the end. She came and
found him where he was perched on the quayside, huddled up in his
warmest clothes and trying to capture the way the wind pulled at
the market awnings with smudgy charcoal and scrap paper. Coming up
behind him, she dropped a small bag of coin into his lap. “Your
wages, lad.”

“I thought I was
working for a bed.”

“Aye, but you’ve not
slept in my attic for three weeks. We’re honest folk here, and you
get paid for the work you do.”

“Thank you,” Heilyn
said, blushing a little. He hadn’t meant to run out on her, but
Emyr’s bed was so much more warm and tempting than the drafty
attic, even when Emyr wasn’t in it.

“I’ve been thinking,”
Elin continued. “If you’re considering staying permanently, there’s
a proper job going. Not much more than you do now, mind, but it
would pay regularly, and it’s not like you need to worry about
paying rent, is it?”

“Stay?” Heilyn said,
panicking. He hadn’t thought he’d have to make the decision this
fast, and Elin wasn’t the first person he needed to discuss it
with, either. No, he needed to talk to Emyr first. He needed to
tell Emyr that he loved…

Oh. Oh.

“Heilyn? You interested
or not?”

He decided to laugh it
off. “Who says I’m staying? The world’s still waiting for me,
didn’t you hear?”

Elin pursed her lips at
him disapprovingly, and behind them there was a sudden clatter and
crash. Heilyn spun round to see Emyr standing there, one of Dilys’
good cake plates shattered at his feet and the cakes it had held
rolling across the cobbles.

He wasn’t smiling.

“EMYR!” Oh, shit, shit,
shit!

Before Heilyn could say
anything else, Emyr turned, almost running across the square.
Heilyn swore and shoved his sketches into Elin’s arms before he
took after him.

He wasn’t fast enough,
and the office door slammed before he got to it. He heard the bolts
snap across, and swore again, banging his fists against the
weathered wood. “Emyr! Emyr, come out! I didn’t mean it!”

But Emyr didn’t emerge,
and eventually Elin and one of her boys pulled him away from the
door.

“You’ll hurt your
hands,” Elin said. “Come away now. You just scared him, you daft
brat. He’ll come round.” She marched him back into her kitchen,
shaking her head a little. “And we let you play with the poor boy’s
heart.”

“I wasn’t playing,”
Heilyn said. The world had suddenly gone wrong around him, as if he
hadn’t been concentrating on keeping his hand steady, and he needed
to put it right. “I thought I was, but I never… I need to talk to
him. Let me go!”