by Kasia Bacon
I studied my palette. Eyeing raw umber and ultramarine, I pondered whether the mix of the two pigments would allow me to create the cool shade of black that glistened in my sergeant’s dark irises.
Inoru Bri’ghail
LÁZHIEN
“Come in,” a clipped voice called from the other side of the door in response to my knocking.
My gullet constricted as I turned the handle. Thanks to the gods the creaking of the old hinges muffled a loud gulp that escaped me.
The room proved to be a well-lit suite, larger and fancier than I’d expected. I assessed my surroundings within a quick couple of glances. Vases of fresh flowers and bowls of fruit here and there introduced splashes of colour throughout the space, which was filled with sparse but fine furnishings. A healthy-sized blaze crackled in the tiled fireplace. The vibrant wall-to-wall rug reminded me of the exotic hand-woven textiles I’d encountered during my deployment in the South Isles.
There he stood by the vast four-poster bed—the object of my lecherous thoughts. My tormentor, who’d inspired dozens of ferocious wank sessions over the previous week. A true miracle I hadn’t chafed myself raw.
He was barefoot again. I wondered if he had an aversion to footwear. His glossy, vibrant hair—fashioned into a tousled plait and tied with a dark ribbon—splayed down his chest on one side, reaching his waist. I couldn’t fault the manner in which his white unbuttoned shirt and snug breeches revealed more than they covered.
My heart fluttered in my chest, frantic like a trapped bird.
He snapped shut a silk painted fan he’d held in his hand and cast it aside, eyeing me in silence as he crossed his arms over his chest and propped one hip against the pillar.
I wouldn’t have called his demeanour friendly. For whatever reason, he’d agreed to the engagement, but his body language couldn’t have screamed fuck off any louder.
His puzzling attitude agitated me on the spot, just as much as his looks enthralled me.
“Good evening,” I said, rougher than I’d intended, addressing him in Common Elven. Not that I counted on dazzling him with my linguistic ability, mind you. Or proving myself less of an uncultured ignoramus than he’d likely taken me for. Nothing like that. At all. “I’m Sergeant Jhagán.”
After a small pause, which he devoted to giving me an appraising squint, he granted me a regal head tilt in the way of a greeting.
Heavenly gods almighty.
The clench of my jaw brought on a feeling of fullness in my ears. Who the fuck did he think he was? The Emperor receiving homage? I couldn’t believe the snooty Elfling arse. And speaking of arse, didn’t it make me a bigger one since I’d financed this sorry venture with recent card winnings, a pawned family heirloom and an advance against my next three wages? Less than two minutes in, I already found myself spinning in the same cycle of intermittent fury and desire I’d experienced around him on the previous occasion. Because yes, I wanted to kick him in the groin with my reinforced leather boot. And then kiss him senseless.
Not knowing what to do or say felt foreign to me. Irritated by my sudden diffidence, I stepped farther inside—uninvited—and threw a pouch stuffed with coins onto his dresser. It turned out a thousand-worth of silvers made one hell of a clank landing in a pottery dish.
His eyes slitted. “How predictably vulgar,” he said in the most cut-glass accent I’d ever heard.
Out of nowhere, I appeared to have developed a severe teeth-grinding habit. Did he try and test my patience on purpose? I wasn’t savvy on brothel etiquette, but his behaviour hardly struck me as customer-centred. Why the hell were his services held in such high regard if he treated all his patrons like dirt? Or was it what kept them so keen? Either way, I shouldn’t have thought him adorable when he glared at me in distaste, his perfect, slightly upturned nose wrinkling and his lashes throwing long shadows over his cheekbones. Desire zigzagged down my spine. Unable to speak for the next few moments, I focused on calming my quickened breathing.
He continued standing perfectly still, ever-so-mocking and enragingly self-possessed, never averting his eyes from mine. “What would you have of me, sergeant?”
I didn’t like the way he emphasised my rank. Neither did I appreciate the blasé note to his tone. My nerves strummed with tension. Stupid disappointment knotted my stomach at the reminder that he saw me as just another patron. And one who made his skin crawl more than others, at that. After rubbing shoulders—and more—with the nobles, being saddled with a grubby soldier like me must’ve felt like a demotion to him. Yet clearly, my coin didn’t smell offensive to him.
Since I didn’t answer, he appeared to have grown impatient and broke the silence. “Let’s get right to it,” he said with a pointed look, indicating the evident hard-on that stretched the seam of my crotch rather obscenely. “You seem roaring to start.”
Heat rose to the nape of my neck, but my uneasiness hadn’t affected my nether regions. I didn’t go on wasting time fretting over my performance. Oh fuck, no. I couldn’t wait to lay my hands on the cheeky bastard. To dig my fingers into his hips. To force him down, face-first into the…
I wasn’t quick to anger, but he seemed to excel at exasperating me. I sucked in a deep breath. Before we got to the meat of the matter, the situation required a slight redefinition.
It took two strides for me to face him up close. A childish pissing contest or not, the way I towered over him pleased me. “What I’d have of you, Red,” I said, pronouncing the last word in Imperial Common instead of using his Elven name, “is to stay quiet. And wiggle out of those togs in a flash.”
An ironic smile tugged at his lips, and he nodded as if in agreement with himself. “A savage, naturally. As befits a soldier.”
I tried to rein in my frustration along with my arousal. My endeavours to do so had yielded no success. I reinforced my earlier instructions with a quirk of an eyebrow and a jerky gesture that never failed to work back in the barracks.
That got His Royal Arseness’s attention.
Without looking away, he proceeded to peel the shirt off his shoulders, every deliberate move uncovering more and more of his pale, flawless flesh to my hungry gaze.
By then, my own skin had flushed with warmth and tingled all over. I caught myself shivering in anticipation. I didn’t bother to hide my reaction.
Unhurried, he yanked at the drawstrings of his trousers. The fitted fabric put up only brief resistance.
“That’s enough,” I barked before he could pull his trousers past his mid-thighs. To my satisfaction, my well-practised sergeant’s tone made him blanch. The way the garment restricted his movements appealed to me. All of him appealed to me. Including his bared cock—a slender, veiny perfection. Which was the opposite of flaccid.
Well, fuck me sideways. How about that?
The ice prince turned out to be quite rigid indeed. In all the right places, too. I could’ve made an effort to conceal my knowing smirk. I didn’t.
“The oil’s by the bed stand,” he said in a dry tone, no doubt irritated at the evidence of his own interest poking into the air. He shifted and made to position himself face down on the bed, providing me with a good view of his exquisite, round globes.
I clenched my teeth again. This time, to prevent my load from blowing.
So he expected me to fuck him from behind with no further ado. Did that hurt my feelings? Not really. Honest to the gods, I wanted nothing more than to cover his lean frame and crush him flat into the mattress while pushing inside him raw. To hold him beneath me and ram into him, taking my week-old frustration out on his arse. I would’ve been within my right, as I’d paid damn well for the privilege. But doing the very thing he anticipated from a savage rubbed me the wrong way.
“No,” I snapped. “Turn back around.”
He didn’t resist when I gave his shoulder a little nudge, trapping him in an awkward position between me and the bedpost at his back.
I steadied him when he stumbled a little by placing my hands on the sid
es of his arms.
My palms didn’t stay there for long. They slipped down and up his shoulders almost of their own volition. Once I started touching him, I didn’t want to stop. So I kept my big paws on him, enjoying the cool, satiny feel of his skin and the lightly defined muscles beneath. Grunting my appreciation, I caressed his neck and chest.
I didn’t reckon his eyebrows could travel any higher up his forehead. They did, however, the minute I sank to my knees in front of him. “Don’t move,” I ordered, dragging his trousers a little lower still.
Deciding who felt more stunned by the turn the events had taken would’ve been a toss of a silver. Wide-eyed, Red looked down at me. The colour of his irises, which had escaped my notice before, revealed itself: dark chestnut, flecked with sparks of rose gold. Rich and earthy. Sweet and sticky. Like treacle. Or buckwheat honey.
Slowly, I lowered my stare until it met the ruddy head of his shaft, erect and shiny at the tip, a hair’s breadth away from my face. I inhaled, and his scent—warm notes of spicy sweetness and musk—filled my nostrils. Saliva pooled in the floor of my mouth, and I swallowed to avoid drooling. A primal impulse to taste overruled all my other responses. I trained my eyes back on him, licked my mouth for a bit of slick and closed it over his swollen hardness.
We moaned in unison.
What the fuck was I doing, falling to my knees for an arrogant whore who despised me? That hadn’t been the plan. If anything, it was the exact opposite. But right then, rattled by his closeness and dazzled by his flavour, I couldn’t bring myself to care. I shut down the panic. A new aim arose in my head—I wanted to shatter him. To chip away at the cold mask of his professional indifference one wet tongue glide at a time. I’d have traded my epaulettes to watch his eyes veiled with raw need. I wanted to hear him beg.
So I sucked, lapped and licked as if my life were at stake. And without keeping quiet about it.
Red himself didn’t do a bad job of announcing his pleasure, either.
One thing, however, made little sense. I tended to suck cock—reluctantly—only when I wanted mine sucked in return. It’d never been about more than a fair trade, and the principle of fairness had always meant a great deal to me. But his cock? I wanted to suck. I revelled in sucking it. Perfect, like the rest of him, it pulsed hot in my mouth, stretching my jaw just right. The sensation of wet firmness and smoothness overloaded my senses.
Red held stock-still for a while—much like an alabaster statue.
I refused to allow him to remain a passive participant in the goings-on. Him standing there, simply enduring what was being done to him, wouldn’t do one bit.
Hell, no. Let go. Engage. Use me.
I squeezed his hips and gave a few encouraging grunts to convey the message. The violent shudder I sensed going through him told me how much he appreciated my little hums around his shaft.
He placed his hands on both sides of my shoulders and started thrusting into me. Tentatively at first, but shifting from careful to merciless in no time.
Finally.
Describing how much I liked it would have been impossible. Never mind embarrassing. Since suffocating wasn’t the way to go, I chose to loosen my mouth and relax my muscles.
He tasted of something dark and forbidden. Something addictive that there would be no substitute for. Something mine.
It could’ve lasted for a minute or an hour—I lost all notion of time. Even though snatching gasps of air cost effort and my abused throat hurt, the instant he spilt at the back of it, I came in my trousers without even applying a damn hand to myself.
That’d never happened to me before. My mind reeled. I lingered on my knees, the burn in my upper thighs be damned, determined to quit wheezing in ragged, shallow pants. My stamina—good enough for running several thousand paces in full combat kit—failed when confronted with a mouthful of demonic cock. I took some comfort in the observation that its owner’s breathing didn’t fare any better.
The peculiar sensation I remembered from the other night, which I could only describe as prickly ghost fingers skimming my flesh, made a repeated appearance. I jerked up my head.
Red’s angular eyes were focused on me, studying me with a glint.
I admired their exotic shape and rare colour without much reflection, enjoying the view. When he reached for my cheek, brushing his knuckles across my jaw, I blinked. He allowed his fingertips to wander before running his thumb along my lower lip.
Startled by this simple gesture, I thawed inside. The slow tenderness of his touch stirred to life an uneasy yearning deep within my soul. My thoughts descended into chaos.
What is happening? Should he be doing that? Does he do that to all the others, too?
As I reckoned he couldn’t astonish me any further, he did away with that assumption by murmuring in a voice much softer than he’d addressed me earlier, “Why don’t you get up now, sergeant?”
I rose to stand without stepping back and continued to crowd him in the tight corner by the bed.
Red didn’t seem to mind, still cupping my face. “Come here,” he said, tilting my chin downwards.
Holding my breath, I allowed him to manoeuvre me, uncertain about his purpose but curious to find out.
His cheek slid against mine.
I froze at the sound of him inhaling. Was he scenting me? A soft puff of air warmed a spot on my neck, just below my ear.
He leant into me in an unhurried, fluid motion, dragging his lips across my jawline.
I didn’t notice he’d slithered his arms up my neck till I felt his hands cradle the back of my head. The hair on my nape rose and a trail of goose bumps erupted along my bicep. A slight tremor started in my hands, not unlike before a battle when the anticipation of action set my nerves on edge.
Only we weren’t fighting. No, sir. The next moment, we were kissing.
Deeply and messily.
Had my hands been free, I would’ve pinched myself to ensure I hadn’t lost my damn marbles and gone on imagining this. But as it happened, my fingers were busy grabbing at Red and pulling him towards me. Threading through the heavy silk of his hair, I ended up undoing his braid one-handed, never ceasing to explore his sinful mouth with my tongue.
Based on the fierceness of his response, I’d say his fervour equalled mine. His skill, however, surpassed mine tenfold.
Spiralling from shock and pleasure, I had little clue as to what the fuck we were doing. It didn’t stop me from cherishing every second of that insanity. Never in my life had I kissed anyone—or been kissed back—in such a manner. It felt so unrepressed. Freeing. Rapacious. If the whole building had been ripped to burning pieces in front of me, I wouldn’t have given a single toss over its fate, provided I could have continued to hold him and delve into him for a while longer.
It niggled at me, the ease with which he had disarmed me. What had it taken? One caress, one brush of his lips, one stroke of his tongue? And I fell apart, reduced to an incoherent muddle, yearning for what could never be.
My mind rebelled, egging me on, demanding I put up a fight. All in vain. Not only had my body waved the white flag—it had already signed the capitulation treaty, keen to bow down to his allure, his Magic or whatever powers he employed to render me defenceless.
We pulled away from each other what seemed like ages later, our combined panting fractured and noisy.
A prickling sensation started at the base of my neck and raced down my spine. My heart stuttered. At the risk of sounding barmy, I could swear time had stopped. Something tangible changed around us. Between us. It surged like a snapping current—a rift in the air. I felt my mouth go slack.
“I’ll be damned,” I rasped in wonder.
“What is it?” His chestnut gaze never wavered, holding mine with an attentiveness that kept my back rod-straight.
“Your markings. They’re glowing.” As gently as I could compel my fingers into moving, I feathered the outline of his tattoos. The motifs arranged in stylish swirls on his temples and tops of
his high cheekbones had me enthralled to begin with, but right then I couldn’t glance away from the golden gleam they emanated for anything. Although I’d half-expected Red’s skin to give off heat and burn me, it remained pleasantly cool—slightly cooler than that of a human—the same as the rest of him.
The flickering lasted for another moment and then petered out, fading to black again.
“So it’s done,” he said, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment. “Inoru Bri’ghail.”
His words exuded both dread and relief. I picked up on that despite not knowing the meaning of the phrase or language he spoke. It seemed imprudent to ask. One thing took precedence, casting all else aside, my confusion included. He was there, in front of me, letting me pet him. More: arching into my touch as a lover would. Everything narrowed down to how breathtaking he looked and how much I wanted him.
“You’re so beautiful,” I whispered, unable to contain my reverie any longer. “Exquisite.”
Without another thought, keeping my movements careful but firm, I guided Red backwards until he stretched out on the bed. His breeches, abandoned mid-thigh, made me frown. I relieved him of them in two purposeful pulls.
Stripping him naked and then looming over him still clothed, if not for the laces hanging undone from my waist, gratified me more than I thought reasonable. The blood pooled rapidly in my groin and my balls tightened. Black spots swayed in front of my eyes.
When my vision cleared, I took in the delicious sight before me. Side-lit by the rosy glow of the fire, the creamy planes of his lean, well-shaped body teased me into demonstrating my appreciation of its every ridge and hollow. His hair, sprawled over the pillow in a glossy mess, taunted me into grabbing a handful and bringing it to my nostrils.
I held myself back, for a whole three or four heartbeats, at least. Nonsensical, greedy noises spilt from my mouth, and spurred into action, I skimmed my palms over his stomach, hips and legs in possessive strokes.