A King Awakened

by Cooper Davis

  Jules returned his kiss, his mouth so ravenously eager and searching. Whenever Arend broke the kiss, only briefly, Jules’s mouth chased after his. “Arend,” he murmured softly, his voice lilting into a lovely, graceful timbre.

  Arend cupped his prince’s cheek, pressing their foreheads together intimately. “Yes, my love. Something to confess?”

  “Only that I’ve a bit of linen in my drawers as well.” Julian drew Arend’s bottom lip between his teeth, then let it pop free.

  “Uh, why is that significant?”

  “It’s a front bit, one that unfolds so I may . . . may . . . ” Jules groaned softly, his voice ratcheted just a bit higher. “That I may take my king without fully undressing, in case swift, unimpeded access is desired,” he said, his voice delicate as porcelain. “The modiste discussed her intention—and our needs—when she met privately with me. I went back, you see, on my own. To surprise you, with some of my instructions.”

  “Oh, save me.” Arend trembled so hard that Jules had to take Arend’s champagne and set it aside.

  “We shall go slow,” Jules murmured, cupping his cheek. “I won’t rush, as I always promised.”

  “That’s not it, man,” Arend said, the trembling now in his voice, not just his body. “How can you tell me a thing like that, about your front flap, without bending me over posthaste.” He glanced toward his desk on the far side of the room. “There’s my desk. It’s solid enough. Large.”

  “Arend,” Jules said with just a note of correction.

  “Why does the desk not suffice?” Arend asked mildly, but his voice still trembled. “You told me about those delicious smallclothes, but to what purpose, if not to claim me now?”

  “To tease you,” Julian told him frankly. “To titillate you, as you wait and drink champagne, and hold me upon your lap.”

  “Titillate me? You bastard. You never meant to unfasten that flap at all.”

  “I did not, my king. No, this prince wishes to take his husband to the marital bed, to the silken sheets and plumped up pillows. And then lay him down upon his back.”

  “This king wants that.” Arend panted, flicking open the next button of Julian’s waistcoat. Maybe he wouldn’t notice the small rebellion.

  Julian covered Arend’s fingertips as they moved to the third button, stilling them. “I intend to take my time with you, and apply scented oils, and then—” Jules hesitated, smiling almost to himself. A warm flush infused his golden cheeks, though.

  “Tell me,” Arend growled. “Command me.”

  Julian moved slightly on his lap, facing him more. “Will you take my cock in hand, darling? Will you slick me up just so, cover me in hand-warmed oil, and ready me? And then . . . then you will get upon your knees, and down upon your chest?”

  “I’d rather hoped you’d put me upon my back. As you just said.”

  Julian stood, and extended a hand to Arend. “That, too. I shall do everything you wish, once I have you down upon your bed.”

  Tentatively, filled with terror and lust and wonder, Arend took his husband’s hand. “Lead me down, love. Take me all the way down tonight—and then take me.”

  Arend lay upon his back, completely naked—their clothes discarded in a frantic trail across the room. Jules knelt between Arend’s parted legs. “Raise your knees about me.”

  Arend complied, never wavering his gaze from Julian nor his position above him. You’ll take these same knees and hitch them back in a few moments. Give him the fullest possible access to you.

  Trembling harder than before, Arend watched Jules un-stopper the bottle of oil, the one they always used when Arend made love to him. The silver container had been warming lightly over open flame, heating it just enough to ensure that it would be particularly arousing, Julian explained. That was the other thing Mallon had done: set the buggering oil over a special flame. Arend had never imagined such a thing, but Julian’s expertise was clearly at play.

  “It’s deliciously warm,” Julian murmured, gazing down at Arend. Then suddenly Julian’s fingers were between his buttocks, slicked with oil—that warm, scented oil. The oil sluiced between Arend’s arse cheeks, and then Jules splashed yet more into his palm, and it slid between Arend’s thighs, warm and easy.

  But then, with a daring glance and a nod, Julian’s elegant fingers slid farther back, parting Arend’s arse with a gentle pressure. Arend’s back arched at the first intimate touch, the fingering of his sensitive band of muscle.

  Jules had only ever touched him there a few times, knowing Arend’s hesitation, and later, his anticipation. This time, however, was wholly different. It felt as if all Arend’s nerves had been lit by flame, as if a jolt of lightning had been sent to his bollocks. Julian did it again, that slippery caress that was unlike anything he’d ever delivered Arend before, and its effect equally provocative.

  Arend had waited his whole adult life for this moment, had spent the past months craving it to the point of madness. Yet as Julian rubbed his ring of muscle, thumbing it, stretching it, Arend trembled as if he faced an executioner. What would come next? Would he be able to bear it? It would hurt, that much was common knowledge among most men of their inclination. At least at the very outset.

  “Y-you needn’t take so long,” Arend blurted breathlessly. So terrified, so awakened. So . . . fucking eager. He squirmed beneath Julian’s unrelenting attention, shifting his hips when Julian only caressed his entry more determinedly.

  “I am preparing you. You need this, Arend. You know that you do.”

  He nodded, swallowing as he palmed Julian’s bare midriff, loving the play of blond-dusted muscles beneath that caress.

  Jules’s lovely eyes drifted shut, as he worked his strokes into greater intimacy. He urged Arend’s hips into a lift, while pushing a single fingertip inside Arend’s opening.

  “Jules!” he barked, and half believed his lover had just inserted a second finger, pushing it in with greater pressure. “J-Jules, oh . . . darling!” He tensed against the invasion, unable to help himself.

  Jules paused, the fingers gone just that fast. “Why do your teeth chatter so?”

  “Don’t you dare stop, not now—was that two fingers? Or three?” Arend managed to blurt, rolling partially onto his side. Jules would need unhindered access, full freedom to touch and pleasure.

  “Arend. That was only one of my fingers. You’re . . . tight.” Julian widened his eyes significantly. “More than I imagined you’d be.”

  “Yes? And you’re meant to deflower me in earnest tonight.” Arend rolled partially onto his side, unsure what to do, only knowing how hungry he was for Jules to set about doing it.

  Jules smiled down at him, the up-tilt of his graceful eyes becoming more pronounced. “No other male will ever touch you or have what you’re going to give me tonight. I . . . I’m overwhelmed. I may—we must be smart, lest I spill my seed before I’ve taken you.”

  “Take me now, then!” Arend roared, rolling all the way onto his belly, nearly begging the man to take him. “Jules, don’t tarry. Claim me.”

  Jules’s lips met his lower back with a tender, branding kiss. “Not this way, love.”

  “Then how? How?” He groaned, grinding his hips and turgid cock into their satin sheets. “How, damn it?” It was as if he couldn’t rein himself or his needs in, not tonight; he thrust his hips, thrashed them almost, even as Jules pinned him down against the mattress.

  “Shh, darling. Ease up. Calm for me, all right?”

  Only once Jules pinioned him solidly, the man’s own hips atop Arend’s, pushing him into the mattress, did Arend relinquish some of his desperation. “How?” he repeated, all but whimpering the word. “It is too much, the pressure, of even just your fingers. Too much.” Arend couldn’t keep the despair and tortured longing from his voice. What if he was the sort of gentleman who could not release himself to penetration? What if, after a lifetime as king, he simply could not let go, not like was needed for Julian to make love to him.

  “It w
ill become much easier once I’ve slicked you up more. Once you’ve accustomed yourself to my fingers and their width. Then, I shall take you.” Julian bussed a dear kiss against Arend’s fevered brow. “Not until I’ve readied you.”

  Arend sighed, facedown into the pillow, turning his cheek against the satin in the hope it would cool his agitated heat. Slowly, very tenderly, he felt Jules gain entry again; this time he was certain his lover was pressuring him with at least two fingers. Jules thrust that caress deep, causing Arend’s hips to buck off the mattress in reaction, a motion that Jules answered by tightening one hand about the swell of the king’s firm ass. He squeezed and fondled, even as he surged fingers in, driving them what, surely, was as deep as they’d go.

  “There, love. You’ve taken three. Three of my fingers.” Then Jules spread that other palm tight across Arend’s buttock, pulling him broad. “Now, let them in deeper.”

  “You . . . can’t . . . ”

  “You can take more. It’s the only way you’ll manage my cock.”

  Arend swallowed and, riding up off the mattress again, used the pressure to take Jules’s delicate fingers much deeper. Those fingertips brushed over something, unexpectedly, and an eruption of pain and pleasure spiraled through Arend. Instantly, he ejaculated with surging, galloping thrusts of his constrained hips.

  Jules kept him pinioned, with his fingers deep—daring to flex fingertips deep inside Arend’s tight ass. “Yes,” he murmured, covering Arend from behind. “Yes, all your seed. Yes.”

  Arend thrashed beneath his husband, dousing the royal sheets with his slick, creamy ejaculate. It took many, many moments for him to settle down, to collapse beneath Jules in a sweat-slicked heap of exhaustion. “I’m . . . I’m spent.” And then, “Why the blazes did you milk me dry when you’ve not even made love to me yet?” And then, heavily on a sigh, “I am spent.”

  “I’m not.” Julian’s fingertips flexed inside his arse.

  “God save me. You’re too young for me.”

  “I’ve readied you now. And you’ll not be so over-eager, and that means you won’t tense up. I can take my time with you, sire, and have my full and tender way.”

  Arend might have been in his middle years, but he felt his cock stir again all the same. It surged with just enough heat and arousal, that it stiffened against the mattress beneath him.

  “Julian. There’s life in my loins yet. You are . . . masterful, my love.” He gasped, agitated the moment Jules’s fingers slid out of him. But he hardened just a bit more. “You’ve unleashed a stallion’s worth of heat in me,”

  “Actually,” Julian told him, “roll over for me. Now.”

  Arend did precisely as bidden. Jules reached for a satin covered pillow, one of the plumper and more indulgent ones. “Here, Arend. Lift for me.” With a tender nudge, he urged Arend’s hips off the mattress and positioned the pillow squarely beneath his upraised hips.

  “What is that for?” Arend blinked up at him, his blue eyes bright, drowsy, sated—even as they were filled with a fire of new lust.

  “When I take you, the pillow will elevate your hips a bit. When you’re truly ready for me, I’ll add another, as well.”

  “To what purpose?” The question was so shyly tentative, it touched Jules more deeply than he could have imagined. His lover was such an innocent, still, in many conjugal ways—and so very, very eager to learn. As he’d written in that temple missive more than a month previous.

  Jules patted the edge of the pillow, giving it a tug to even it out beneath Arend’s fine hips. “Your comfort, your pleasure.” He bent down and kissed Arend on the belly button, laving it with his tongue. “Your sensualizing, my king.”

  Arend caught Julian by the jaw, urging him to look up and into Arend’s eyes. “But I never did this for you.” A flash of uncertainty moved in those blue-gray eyes.

  Jules studied him, then gave a loving smile. “You didn’t know.”

  “You were to tutor me! I should have plumped you up on several pillows this way—it would have made your experience more pleasurable, no? Would you have reveled in me more, every time I made love to you?”

  Julian kissed him square between the eyebrows. “It’s not always done, or even necessary. But I want it for you. Tonight. I want you to know sublime, heavenly pleasure with me.”

  “I crave to know all that you’ll show me. There is more; things we’ve not dared try?” Arend lifted a hand, stroking a loose lock of Jules hair behind his ear. “Beyond this, I mean. Beyond your”—Arend’s voice deepened, whiskey-rough—“taking me.”

  “Oh, yes,” Julian purred, settling between Arend’s parted thighs, solidly. Weightily. “More than you can likely fathom just yet.”

  Arend gave him an endearingly uncertain smile. That shy streak of his king’s was always so unexpected, appearing at the most charming moments. “You’ll pledge to tutor me for another season? I-I ache to learn by your hand.” Arend laughed, staring at the ceiling. “Quite literally, it would seem.”

  “And that’s perhaps what endears you to me most of all.” Jules seized his lover’s mouth in a sweet, succulent kiss, then paused. Their lips brushing together, he added, “You’re so humble and eager and delighted by absolutely every sensual discovery.”

  “I wasn’t always this way,” Arend said, blinking up at him vulnerably. “I acquitted myself with astounding shame on my first wedding night. But I’ve told you about that . . . ”

  “Those are all just bad memories, Arend. I am your present; we are your future, together.”

  Arend reached up and sank his fingers into Jules’s long waves, steadying his husband’s face until their gazes locked. “I only know that I love you,” Arend told him. “Everything about you, from the way you speak my name like a kitten, to these gorgeous blond wisps of curl, to that very wicked smile upon your plump lips. You are the most sensual man I could have aspired to bring into the royal bed.” Arend lifted off the mattress, capturing Julian’s mouth, suckling, then rumbled, “Damnation, how I wish my father could see you in the ancestral chamber now. My lovely husband, seizing his marital rights.”

  Julian kissed him, and murmured against his lips, “This wedding night, sire, is as it should have been long ago, when you married your wife.”

  “You were but a lad then, my love.”

  “And yet, far away in a distant land, I read books and dreamed that one day, my king would make me a prince. As other lads stole kisses from maidens and schemed for turns about the dance floor with them, or even with the blokes they fancied. I wished—as you long did—for something I was taught I should not. The arms of a good, fine man about me, and to spill my seed between the strong clefts of his arse.”

  “You dreamed of a king?”

  “Of the love you’ve given me in far greater abundance than my own paltry imagination could possibly have dreamed up.”

  “I love you. Please, love me in return now. Truly claim me.”

  With a nod, Jules reached for another plush pillow, and pressing his lips to Arend’s belly, slid that cushion sweetly atop the other. When he’d propped his king with attentive care, Arend’s hips were raised as if he’d been made a royal spectacle upon his wedding bed.

  “And you think I’m beautiful.” Julian pressed a kiss to Arend’s inner thigh, stroking it with his tongue, then sighed, resting his cheek there. “You have the most delicious thighs, Arend Tollemach.” Jules sighed dreamily.

  Arend wended his hands through Jules’s hair. “From the moment I met you—that bungled, flirtatious, adorable interchange between us—I found you the most handsome man I’d ever glimpsed. It’s truer than ever now that you are my husband.”

  Jules uncorked the bottle again, pouring the aromatic oil into his palm, coating his fingers until they were slick with it. “You’ll really like this bit,” he said, then rising onto his knees, slathered his bobbing, heavy erection until it gleamed in the flickering candlelight.

  Arend gasped, his legs drawing upward invitingly, an alm
ost primitive reaction to the image of Jules, glistening, turgid and ready to claim him.

  Jules clasped his raised hips, stilling Arend. “Shh, let me guide,” his lover whispered, glancing down at him from beneath lowered, velvet lashes. But Arend’s legs, his buttocks, all of him responded on a most masculine, demanding level.

  “Jules.” He groaned, shifting upon his plumped pillows, rocking upward as his legs parted eagerly. “Too many years already. Now. Please, don’t wait.”

  His prince settled heavily right between Arend’s flexing thighs, a weight that pushed Arend’s up-tilted hips down, restraining him. How could Arend produce the right angle, or give his lover the thoroughly needed approach? He struggled, heaving upward unsuccessfully. As ever, Jules was no small male, his big body—broad of chest, so solid and lean—weighed Arend down like an anchor.

  Arend cried out in dismay, briefly recalling that horrifying wedding distress from long ago. “I . . . I’m wanting to . . . you require access, to enter me.”

  Jules grew utterly still, propping up on his elbows until Arend’s hips finally stilled, his buttocks sighing into the pillows. “Arend. I am still your tutor, am I not? Even now, though I bear the title of your prince consort?”

  Arend swallowed, humbled. “I hired you for that express purpose.”

  “Stop fighting me, then,” Jules told him archly, and at once Arend felt hot, slick pressure; Jules slid between his tensed buttocks like a demanding whisper. He’d not even expected the sensation, not then, and something about the way Jules’s gorgeous cat-eyes held his own gaze, the certainty and assurance in that steady look, caused Arend’s lower body to relax. He even sighed, although he likewise set to trembling, and hard.

  “Afraid.”

  “Of what? Me?” Jules adjusted gently, clasped Arend behind the right knee, and began lifting, urging. Arend’s body obeyed, both his legs opening wide; then he did as Jules had so often done, and locked both his calves about his husband’s lower back. His heels dug into Jules’s own strong, shapely buttocks and that was the precise moment when firm, white-hot pressure seized him.