Hammer & Air Read online

  I groaned again and thrust my cock against the bear prince’s stomach (he’d shifted by now) and there were a growl—possessiveness, challenge, it didn’t matter. There were sharp nips on the tender skin of my ribcage, of my stomach, on the jutting bone of my hip, and then…

  “Auuuugghhhh… gods!” His mouth on my cock were heavenly and wet, his lips were hard around my shaft, his tongue were clever around my crown, and my whole body started to tremble.

  Hammer’s fingers, wet from my mouth and from his dripping spend fumbled at my backside. I had been used, and used well, in past months—it took very little to stretch me, to take me past the burn and the pleasurable ache, and to thrust himself inside.

  And it were that night all over again—a mouth at my cock and a cock in my arse—and I were half-blind and all crazy, my entire body tingling with desire. My hands flailed to the cover in front of me, and I remembered the way Hammer had come up to me the night before, soothed me with a kiss when I were done coming, and I yearned for it.

  Then the bear prince turned his body—keeping his mouth busy with my tender flesh all the while—and I had a whole other worry.

  There were his cock, long and thick and veiny, but not, thank the gods, as thick (ahhh….) or as long (gods, Hammer, don’t stop) as the one moving teasingly in my arse. He pushed it against my face, and I grasped it in my fist and started stroking. There were a growl from the throat swallowing my own prick, and I figured fair is fair, and began to lick the crown. I tasted it curiously; it were earthy, like Hammer, but not salty, and the crown were missing the soft flap of foreskin that I could use to stroke the crown.

  The growl turned into a whimper, and I took it into my mouth, bold and tight, the way Hammer liked it.

  The pressure on my own cock increased to the point of pain, and the sound that I made around the prick in my mouth defied description, but it were a wanting, needing, begging sound, and Hammer, who had always given me what I needed deepened his thrusts until my head fell back to his shoulder and the cock in my mouth fell out, becoming the cock in my fist once more.

  I didn’t stop stroking, though, and the bear prince’s thigh moved, and his foot planted squarely on the other side of Hammer’s head, opening up his body and inviting me. It were awkward, especially with Hammer fucking me like a steam-driven piston, but I moved my other hand, the one not squeezing, stroking, tormenting, and fluttered my fingers through the spit-slick mess at the base of his prick and then behind the prince’s balls.

  I found his arsehole all on my own, and used two fingers to thrust roughly inside, and the throat around my cock rumbled in surprise. The suction became brutal and painful, and the prick in my hand spat white come on my face and my chest, coating my eyes and my hair. It probably spattered Hammer, even as he grasped my hips and thrust inside me again and again and again.

  Hammer bit my shoulder, heedless of the spume on my skin, and his heat, coursing through my body, crude and sticky and wet, were enough to set me off.

  I came, flooding spend into the bear prince’s mouth, and he swallowed until he gagged on it, and then pulled back and let it coat his face.

  Well then, we were even.

  For many minutes there were only the sound of our breathing, roughly sanding the smooth darkness of the morning. There were a change in the light, a fractional brightening of the black sky in the window above the bed, and the bear prince sighed and rolled off the edge of the bed and onto his knees. He stood and looked lazily from a face glistening with spend and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He moved to me with purpose, arrogance and satisfaction written in every line of his powerful body, and bent toward me with intent. Just when his knees hit the ground and his face neared mine, the light changed again, and so did he.

  There were no mistaking the unhappiness and sheer frustration in his human expression as his skin shook out with the thick rug of fur, and his features lengthened into the bear’s.

  He stared balefully for a moment, and if a creature could feel regret, then that is what he were feeling. The bear’s sigh were almost sad as he shook his great head and turned, plodding out of the bedroom and into the kitchen, where he flopped on his stomach with his muzzle on his paws. He didn’t show any urgency to get out, just a resigned sort of thoughtfulness as his long tongue licked fitfully to clean the short fur around his mouth and nose.

  Once he were gone, Hammer’s arms wrapped around me tighter, and I shuddered in his arms, shaken, once again, by the terrifying arousal and freefall that were climax between the two great men in my bed.

  “Should we…?” I panted at last, and Hammer took a deep breath before answering.

  “No,” he gasped. “No. He don’t want out in the snow. He just don’t want to be in here to watch us.” He pulled his free hand from my chest and wiped it on the sheet in front of him, then pulled the shaggy hair back from my face. I closed my eyes and leaned into his touch, a tender reprieve from the violent passions that had torn orgasm from my body.

  I didn’t even need to ask him what it were the bear didn’t want to see.

  Winter progressed slowly. Long nights, short days, a desperate scramble to find things to do that wouldn’t make us crazy with the stillness of our bodies.

  We were used to living in town, to working physically demanding jobs, even when snow covered the ground. With enough people to tramp through it and shovel it out, it never stopped the world the way it did in our frozen little mesa of time and season.

  Hammer and I took the bear outside for the days. We tossed a ball around, skirmished, wrestled, climbed trees like boys. In desperation, we wished up a hatchet and started cutting up dead trees for firewood. Before two fortnights were over, we had stacked it up against the back wall of the cottage—the side with the least amount of snow.

  That brought us to the mill. Hammer knew iron works; I knew machinery. We spent a fortnight at the very least making sure that the small stream nearby could grind grain or mash grapes and apples, or power the pump that kept the water flowing. We primed and repaired the boiler that kept that water hot.

  After the first fortnight of finding these things, I started wondering why they had all seemed to work just peachy before we’d come about, and I asked Hammer if he’d been wishing for things to break so we’d have something to do. He raised his eyebrows in question, while using a wrench on the plumbing to the boiler, to make sure it wouldn’t leak.

  “I’m not that smart, Eirn,” he said, perplexed, and we were bored enough for my fear of making him angry or changing our balance to be swamped by my irritation at hearing this horseshit from him one more time.

  “That’s bollix!” I snapped, irritated. “Bollix and shite! You are as smart as I am, as smart as any man in our worm-speck town, and if you hadn’t started planning our home together, I would be stark raving daft-mad right now! You throw that out if you think you don’t have an answer you should have, and the only reason I’m asking is because it’s an answer I don’t know!”

  Hammer blinked slowly, a grin spreading like a glacier crossed his face. “Well, aye, Eirn. I wouldn’t assume you were asking me a question to an answer you did know.”

  I couldn’t help it. My lips twitched, and then I grinned back at him, and then we were chuckling heartily as we put that cottage to more rights than the place could possibly be without magic. I like to think that even if it didn’t need it, the little dwelling could feel that we cared about it, with all of our tinkering. It had been good to us, and in the end, our goodbye were less than long.

  It were these moments and a million like them that the bear watched, and every time we had one, every time the enormity of what we were to each other came closer to the surface, closer to words scratched painfully on the parchment Hammer used to plan our future, closer to the stories I read (and read and read) from the books (and books and books) that the cottage gave us, the bear would strive to take me mightily in the darkness of the night.

  A young man could get mighty sore being soun
dly buggered every night, and I did.

  One such night, (the night I told Hammer to stop calling himself stupid, actually) I told the bear to either snuggle up against me or piss-off. I were not in the mood for fucking.

  The bear prince tried it anyway, slicking up his fingers and then invading my softened backside, and I twitched away from him hard enough to wake Hammer.

  “I said no!” I snapped, and Hammer looked over my shoulder (where he were always nestled when we slept now) and scowled.

  “We don’t need doing it every night,” he said crossly. “Some nights, it’s good to just touch.”

  And it were true. Some nights, simply rubbing the other’s skin before we slept were better than fucking. Some nights, the fucking were better with the rubbing of the other’s skin.

  The bear prince didn’t believe either of us, I guess, because he went back to doing what he were doing, and I sucked in a breath through my teeth and pushed back with my elbows.

  “That hurts! Now leave me alone!”

  There were an insistent, arrogant grunt, and he were going to try to bugger me after all, when Hammer whispered, “Take him in your mouth, Eirn, but be ready to gerrout of the bed.”

  He were using the old words again—and his temper were high. I did what he said—turned my body and scooted down in the bed, taking that engorged, oddly cut cock into my mouth—but reluctantly. I weren’t in the mood for any of it, but I suspected Hammer had something in mind.

  Sure enough, as the bear prince grunted appreciation and began to lose himself in the act of fucking my mouth, Hammer slid from my back softly, and the prince didn’t notice a thing.

  Of course, when Hammer caught his hair in one hand, and breached him with a couple of spit slickened fingers on the other, he noticed right quick.

  I were looking up at his expression when his eyes shot open and his hips shot forward, and it were good I had some warning because I scrambled out of the way and off the bed and Hammer held him to the bed in a wrestler’s hold, his shoulders pushed down and Hammer’s hand fumbling about the prince’s arse.

  “Do you want it tonight, pretty man?” Hammer demanded. “Are you in the mood for it? Because if you are just spread your legs and open to me, and if you’re not, maybe you’ll remember your manners!”

  The bear bucked at Hammer, but not in panic—more like play. With a mighty heave of thick shoulders, the bear rolled, taking Hammer with him, and for a moment, Hammer were pinned, and the bear’s grunt of triumph made Hammer’s ill-temper curdle further.

  “I’m not the one who tried to violate a friend!” Hammer snapped, and the bear looked surprised at that—perhaps he hadn’t thought of it as violation—and Hammer took his puzzlement and used it to his advantage.

  He hauled the bear down for a kiss, which surprised us all, I think, because after that one moment, when the bear prince’s form took over, he hadn’t tried to kiss me again, and it were the first time either of us had been as close to the man as the simple intimacy of a kiss. The bear responded with anger and passion and an aggressive desire, and Hammer rolled him over again, until the prince’s legs were spread and wrapped around Hammer’s waist and he were frotting against Hammer’s middle with a terrible urgency. Both their cocks were rampant, purple, and erect, and Hammer pulled back from the furious kiss, pulling the prince’s lip between his teeth as he did so.

  “You want to come, you bugger, then you’d better open your arse for me!” Hammer ground, and the prince whimpered and spread his legs wide, capitulating and begging for Hammer’s invasion. Hammer slicked up his fingers with more spit and I ran to the cupboards for olive oil and reached over Hammer’s shoulder to trickle some onto Hammer’s hand.

  Watching his fingers penetrate, stretch, widen, that tight, puckered hole were enough to make my cock grow harder again.

  Hammer turned his head and caught my mouth in a kiss of our own, this one tainted with tenderness, and when he pulled back he murmured, “Grind up against my backside, if you want, Eirn. Or take yourself in hand. This lesson aren’t for you to learn.”

  I did grind up against his backside for a few moments, while he kept stretching the prince’s body, and the prince arched his back and groaned, thrashing against the sheets. When Hammer took his cock in hand and pushed up against the prince’s arse, I moved to their side, for a better view. I confess it; I were mesmerized, aroused painfully, when I could have sworn I wouldn’t get stiff again for days.

  Seeing Hammer possess that arrogant prick would have turned on a grandam and mother of twelve, or a withered old man who’d had nobbut his wife his entire life.

  It weren’t soft nor tender. There weren’t want nor yearning nor need nor gentleness nor any of the things I’d come to know with our fucking. In fact, it were so much the essence of fucking, that I came to despise the word. What Hammer and I did in bed, when our bodies were naked and alone, that were better than this, and far greater an act, for all it were the same press of flesh on flesh.

  Hammer drove savagely into the prince’s arsehole, and the prince’s guttural cries simply drove him further, harder, taking pleasure, taking power, and giving nothing back.

  For once, the prince were the one giving. He cried out, wailing like a bear, and moved his hand to his thickened prick. Hammer ripped it away and snarled, “You want to come, you bugger? Well you’d better hope Eirn takes mercy on you!”

  I weren’t inclined for mercy. I stood over the man, his beautiful face drawn back in a grimace, his brown eyes closed, and his frosted sable hair amassed on the pillow, and used that savage beauty as a spur as I stroked my own cock over his face. He opened his eyes as he begged us without words, and I stroked myself again, and he came off the bed to try to take me in his mouth. I didn’t let him. Hammer pulled back and he arched, his mouth open, his tongue extended helplessly, and I kept my cock just out of reach and stroked it hard and leaking.

  He whimpered and begged me some more with his eyes and I took pity on him then. It were rough, because Hammer were being rough, using the prince’s body without mercy, but he managed to close his lips over me and pull, and I groaned. Since one hand were free, I showed more kindness and wrapped my hand around his cock as he sucked on mine. He groaned in bliss around me, and my hips started to jerk as my come swept over me suddenly and without warning.

  “Don’t give it to him,” Hammer growled. “You’re stroking his prick—don’t give him your come.”

  I did what Hammer said, because he were Hammer, and this had all started because Hammer wouldn’t let me be used beyond my limits.

  I pulled out of the prince’s mouth and beat my fist on my cock until it made little sucking, slurping sounds all on its own. Hammer’s hand came and took over on the prince’s body, and my eyes closed, and my hips jerked, and I came, splattering over the prince’s face, his chest, and his open, begging mouth.

  Hammer slammed into him particularly savagely and gave him a tough, tight pull on his prick, and the bear prince threw his head back, his face dripping white and clear with my spend, and howled, spattering his own climax over his stomach and chest.

  Hammer kept one hand on the prince’s thigh and then reached out his slick, sticky hand to me, and I moved into him, leaning over the prince’s splayed legs and allowing myself to be pulled roughly into Hammer’s triumphant, primal kiss.

  The prince kept gasping, his come prolonged by Hammer’s skilful fucking of the little bundle of nerves in his body, and Hammer had to pull back as that clenching arse finally pulled Hammer over the edge of the cliff and into his own climax. He roared and howled, his barrel chest and blunt face beautiful in his triumph, and I reached out and clasped his shoulder and let him feel my hands as he poured himself into the antagonist in our bed.

  He would have fallen forward then, into the prince’s waiting arms, but I caught him, and he pulled backward instead, his cock flopping limply and his spend dribbling from the prince’s arsehole. I pulled at him some more, pulling him from that magnificent, haug
hty body, splayed and dripping come, and took him into the washroom.

  I ran some water into the tub and stood Hammer on the rug then, leaving the door open for the prince to see as he may. I fell to my knees before him, and planted a kiss then, on his flaccid cock, wanting to take it in my mouth, but knowing Hammer wouldn’t allow it. He moved his hand restively, and I pulled back and stroked his upper thigh, and smiled sweetly into his blue eyes. My Hammer. The defender of my honor. There weren’t much I wouldn’t do for a man who would stand between me and a man who would take my dignity and my right to choose.

  Taking a cloth and some of the fragrant, cedar scented soap the cupboard gave us (after I wished fervently for something that didn’t smell of flowers) I ran the cloth up and down Hammer’s thighs, around his genitals, over his come-sticky cock. I bathed his stomach, over his chest, and, standing a little, I moved around to his backside, and washed that too.

  He shuddered then, and twitched, especially as I parted the cleft of his buttocks and ran the cloth over his hole. I didn’t linger—he weren’t comfortable—but I did rinse out the cloth and bathe his back in the clean water, spending time on his sweat-salty shoulders, his neck, and the sopping tangle of his hair at his nape. I ran the water over his hair, taking away the sweat on his scalp until it were clean and flat and combed back from his square, blunt, handsome face.

  And then, standing before him and no longer kneeling, I took his face between my hands and pulled him to me for a sweet, tender kiss. He kissed back, no anger, no savagery, naught between us but what had always been between us. Naught between us but Hammer and Eirn. Him the steel, and me the breeze that caressed it as it rang home.