Chapter 330: Careful.

Chapter 330: Chapter 330: Careful.

Mouth dry, he sets to work, dragging water along his shoulders then up his neck and back down; fingertips catching on the light, short locks they find at its base and resisting the urge to yank.

​(He’d look so good like that.)

​Distracted, a couple of rivulets go astray, but Khobi lets them so that he can watch them go.

Almost idly they fall; rolling down the thick grooves of his back like they were carved for them and pooling in the dips at the base of his spine.

Khobi’s eyes are less idle, raking and roving and lingering where they catch; finding so many perfect handholds and spots to grip tight or sink his teeth into.

​"...You done back there?" Loac inquires dryly, and with a start Khobi hurriedly gives his hand a well deserved and much needed dunk in the bucket of icy water.

He kind of wishes he could throw his whole body in it.

​Maybe a cold bath wouldn’t have been such a bad thing, after all.

​"Uh, yeah," he mumbles belatedly, and Loac obligingly circles back to face him.

​It’s...confronting, to say the least. Because in a way this is new territory.

​(If anything, he’s wearing less than he was that night.)

​He looks so good. But Khobi’s starting to think that Loac could be wearing fucking anything or fucking nothing and he’d probably think he’d look good.

But like this he’s certainly something; dusky and dark and smooth all over but for the scars scattered here and there; testament to a life spent holding a sword.

Some of them are old. Some of them aren’t.

Some of them Khobi put there himself.

But rather than detracting from the thick cut of his form, they just make him look more rugged.

​(More human, and yet in a way, also not.)

​Feeling Loac’s eyes on him, gauging him, Khobi shifts to press the cloth to the space just to the left of his sternum and is rewarded by a soft hiss as a fresh chill hits him.

​If he thought washing his back was a fresh form of torture, this is a hundred times worse. Maybe a thousand.

Because while there’s a feeble, too-small piece of fabric keeping his fingertips from Loac’s skin, with every sweep across the dark planes of his chest and down over the ridges of his belly, Khobi finds himself wishing just a little more fervently that there wasn’t.

That is was just his hand, running unhindered across each dip and curve.

Both hands, even. Sweeping up his body, across his skin; fingertips dusting up his sides and then down his chest, coursing up over his collarbones and to the back of his neck.

He imagines Loac’s hands on him, too, cutting the same paths and making the same shapes; across his hips, up his back, into his hair.

​Unwittingly, Khobi’s breath hitches, and an ache strikes up in his belly, all too familiar and still just as hungry.

​He needs to look away.

As he does so, however, his gaze catches on the back of his knuckles; the skin raw and broken from where he clocked Rogard’s dad.

​"...That looks like it hurts," he says blankly, just for something to say. Because he feels like he needs to do that too.

Brow pinching, Loac’s gaze follows his; drifting down to his hand, and he scrunches his nose as he realises what Khobi’s referring to.

​"I’ve had worse," Loac assures him dryly.

"And you’re one to talk," he snorts, reaching up to poke the dark bruise just under Khobi’s eye and making him flinch.

"Look at you. They sure got you good."

Absent-mindedly, Khobi reaches up to trace the swelling of his cheek. It smarts pretty bad, and if it looks as bad as it feels it’s gonna look a whole lot worse tomorrow.

Loac’s eyes track the movement and then descending just that little bit further down to the split in Khobi’s lip.

Then he pokes that, too, snickering.

​It makes Khobi’s eyes twitch.

​His lip, too.

Expression growing oddly contemplative, Loac does it again.

This time with his thumb; slowly dragging it along the edge of his lower lip, ghosting so feather-light it’s barely even there yet Khobi somehow feels it with every fibre of his being, and can’t quite repress a shiver.

​Gentle.

​And just like that he can’t breathe.

Loac’s staring at him now; blue eyes dipped low as they wander across his face, taking in the damage.

Finally they settle on his lips, in the space just above his thumb, and in that moment it’s hard to know whether it’s the air that grows heavy or Khobi that grows weightless.

Still on Loac’s chest in the last place he left it, Khobi’s hand clenches more tightly into the cloth; nails lightly skimming his skin.

Thin rivulets of water course down his chest, but he pays them no mind; gaze trained entirely on Khobi.

​Khobi sees it. Feels it in the air; in the way Loac’s head starts to dip and the way one of his fingers catches on the underside of his jaw.

He feels it in his own body, straining to lean up into his space; the current oddly soft in the way it lifts his chin and invites him in.

Behind his eyelashes, that quiet intensity in Loac’s expression is back; the one where the blue in his eyes is unfathomably deep –the one that sucks in everything it touches like it wants to swallow the world.

​Or perhaps it’s the world that wants to be swallowed by him.

​Loac’s going to kiss him.

​Don’t . That’s all he needs to whisper. It’s an easy little word to say, and for some reason he gets the feeling that it would be enough.

For as handsy as he can be, and for all the times the air between them has felt like this and for all the tension between them pulling taut, Loac’s never pushed too far.

But the word hangs on his lips, hesitating. Because suddenly, that little voice in the back of his head; the one that’s spent all these weeks reminding him of why he should stop him, why this would be a mistake, has suddenly gone very, very quiet.

​Instead, there’s another voice, whispering something else.

​Would it be so bad if he did ?

​(It sounds like his own.)

Khobi swallows, helpless to stop the way his gaze sinks to Loac’s lips.

For all the hazy memories from that night at the tavern, the moment that Loac’s lips had met his for the first time has always been exquisitely clear .

​Don’t .

​The word continues to stick in his throat. And when he peers up into Loac’s eyes, their blue has been entirely eclipsed by black.

​"... Careful, Khobi ..." Comes the whisper; as low and hungry as the way it had been that night, and brimming with anticipation, Khobi’s body ignites .

​Or I might start thinking you want me to kiss you.

​(Again.)