by Xenia Melzer
Sammy made a sound in the back of his throat that was equal parts arousal, appreciation and fear. He had read enough gay romance to know the human anus was capable of astounding feats, though when he looked at what Dre had to offer, he wondered if it would be enough. At the same time, he felt his inner muscles clench in anticipation. It was confusing enough for Sammy to hesitate. Dre stroked his shoulders.
“Everything okay?”
He sounded a bit worried and very turned on. Sammy shook his head.
“Yes. No. I mean…you’re huge!” He hadn’t meant to sound quite so…woozy, but Dre’s sheer presence did strange things to his head and ability to think clearly.
Dre chuckled. “That’s why we’re taking things slow, mo grah thu. And thank you, by the way.”
Sammy looked up in time to see Dre wink at him. He felt immediately at ease, winking back with a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. Dre helped him get the jeans down to his ankles. He stepped out of them before he got rid of his socks as well. Then Dre looked expectantly at Sammy, who suddenly felt very shy. Dre was such a fine man with muscular thighs and toenails that were pointed like claws. For a brief moment, Sammy wondered why Dre’s socks didn’t have holes in them, but when Dre started working his zipper down after he had opened the button without Sammy noticing it, he could only gasp and hold on to Dre’s lower arms for support. Once his pants were gone as well, Dre lifted him up and placed him on the bed. They lay there, stretched out next to each other, and Sammy didn’t know what to do. He was curious about Dre’s body, wanted to touch him everywhere, follow the swirls of his tattoos, that maybe, hopefully, would someday show on his skin as well, but he didn’t know where to begin. Dre’s very erect, very large cock seemed like an obvious place, though Sammy didn’t want to appear shallow.
“I’m nervous.” Dre’s warm voice so close to his ear was like Viagra to Sammy’s own erection that had grown so hard that it started to hurt.
“Me too. You’re so gorgeous. I want to touch you all over but don’t know where to start.”
Dre grinned and rolled onto his back. “How about you straddle me, which would give my hands a nice place to rest and my eyes the chance to take you fully in while you can start…exploring.” He waggled his eyebrows. Sammy started to laugh, which drained his nervousness. Carefully, because he didn’t want to appear more awkward than he already felt, Sammy climbed onto Dre. The heat coming from Dre felt great on the skin of his thighs and under his palms. The cock poking at his lower back had Sammy’s imagination plunging to the gutter. No mindless sex today, he reminded himself sternly. You want to explore. He leaned down to give Dre a deep kiss. It took quite a while, and when Dre finally let Sammy up again, he felt a bit dizzy. Drunk on the kiss, Sammy started caressing the tip of a tattooed swirl that started right under Dre’s left ear. He followed the complicated pattern, lost it twice, once around the right nipple, the second time at Dre’s ribcage, before he tracked it down to his navel.
“They’re beautiful. Do they mean anything?” Sammy felt heat rising in his cheeks. What a stupid question! But Dre chuckled, seemingly not offended in the least.
“Actually, they do. The fact that they’re silver means I’m royalty. Ordinary demons have black tattoos and warriors’ are bronze. Only my father’s are golden, because he’s the king. We’re born with them, which makes choosing a career a lot easier.”
Sammy laughed. “Seems like it. And what kind of career is being royalty? Are you exceptionally good at waving?”
Dre tickled Sammy in retaliation until he was out of breath.
“Mercy! I’m sure you have a lot of grave responsibilities.”
“I have. And just for the record, demons and waving don’t go well together. When you do it with your claws, it’s seen as a threat.”
As if to heighten his words, Dre let the claws on his right hand grow out. Very carefully he dragged them across Sammy’s chest, making him whimper. Sammy knew he probably should be frightened. Dre’s claws were long and sharp enough to slice him open like a ripe melon. But all he felt was lust.
“Is that all? Or are the patterns some secret language? Like Elvish?” He moaned when the needle-sharp tips dug into the flesh below his ribcage, not deep enough to draw blood, but hard enough to make him feel them.
Dre’s eyes were a deep, blazing red, and he was looking at Sammy as if he wanted to swallow him whole. “Yes, they are a kind of language, but more like the pictographs of the Aztecs than Elvish.” He pointed at his right nipple, around which the pattern looked a bit like a nest of coiling snakes. “This here is my name. Well, not really my name, more like what it represents in the demon tongue.” Before Sammy could open his mouth to ask, Dre talked on. “Chaos and the ability to navigate it. I can’t bring order, but I don’t have to, since I own the chaos. This”—he pointed at his navel—“represents my family, which has ruled over the demon world since the beginning of time.”
Sammy listened, completely fascinated. “So the places where it looks as if there’s a nest of tattoos are actual words. What about the long lines between? Are they there just to connect the different words?”
Dre smiled, obviously pleased by Sammy’s interest. “Yes and no. Some of them are words themselves, others are mere links. The demon tongue is complicated because it uses pictures as well as words to convey meaning. Have you ever seen one of those graffiti paintings where you realized it was actually a word, but you could only read it after somebody told you what it was supposed to mean?”
Sammy nodded. He’d always admired that kind of art.
“It’s a bit like that with my tattoos. If you know what they’re supposed to mean, it’s clear as the day. You’ll understand once I’ve taught you.”
Sammy started following another swirl with the tip of his index finger. “Are you sure I’ll be able to learn it? It looks awfully complicated.”
Dre grabbed his other hand to press a kiss on his palm. “You’re a very smart man, mo grah thu. You’ll figure it out in no time.”
Sammy smiled. “Thank you.” He shifted a bit on Dre’s stomach. The movement had the tip of Dre’s cock gliding along his spine. The sudden coldness when the air hit the wet trail Dre’s cockhead had left made Sammy shudder.
“Oh God, Dre. I’m not sure I can stick to just exploring. You’re so hot.”
Dre’s answer was a whimpering sound deep in his throat. “Don’t tempt me, Sammy. We’re supposed to take it slow.” He jerked his hips upward, lifting Sammy’s knees off the mattress. A feverish gleam made his eyes appear almost fluorescent. Sammy groaned.
“Do you think jerking each other off counts as taking it slow?”
“It does now!” Dre growled. He tightened his grip on Sammy’s hips before he rolled them sideways. Then he pulled Sammy as close to himself as possible, trapping both their hard cocks between their stomachs. Sammy instinctively slung his arm around Dre’s body to help him. Dre maneuvered one of his hands between them, engulfing their shafts. If Sammy hadn’t been so turned on, he might have felt embarrassed by the difference in size, but at the moment, all he cared about was that his cock was almost completely swallowed by Dre’s big hand and that the heat and texture of Dre’s cock—slightly raspy where the scales were elevated by the thick veins underneath while wonderfully smooth where the skin spanned the flesh—had him close to exploding.
“So good, Dre. It feels so good.”
“Yes, mo grah thu. You’re perfect.” Dre panted heavily in Sammy’s ear, while he started stroking their shafts. Sammy followed the movement with his hips, chasing the friction that soon would have him exploding against Dre’s chest.
“Close, Dre. So close. Need you… Harder.”
“Sammy!”
The moment Dre’s hand closed like a vise around their cocks, Sammy felt the pulsing start in his balls, race along his shaft, then his seed shot out at the same time Dre coated his stomach with his release. The warm stickiness from their combined essence felt so good on Sammy’s s
kin that his cock twitched with interest, even though he felt like he just spent everything he had. The touch of Dre’s hand on his cock was both soothing and painful, making his nerve endings scream from overstimulation. Dre murmured in a language Sammy assumed was his mother tongue, because all he could make out in the musical lilt was his own name. He shifted a bit, to re-establish skin contact in the places where they had parted during their orgasms and a sharp pain in his back told him Dre’s claws must have come out. The realization that being with him had made Dre lose his composure quickly morphed the pain into a warm tingling of pleasure. All of a sudden, the pressure in his back vanished.
“Sorry.” Dre winced. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“Shh, it’s fine. It feels good to be able to make you go crazy.”
“Always, mo grah thu. Always.”
They started kissing while the cum dried on their bodies. Sammy found he didn’t care one bit. After they had both come down from their high and their skin had started to itch, they went into the bathroom to have a shower. It felt natural to do that together with Dre, even though it was a challenge to fit them both into the shower stall. Sammy had always meant to get a new, huge shower, but had postponed the project until now. As it seemed, a bigger one had just become a necessity. When they were both clean, they changed the sheets on the bed, fetched a bottle of water from the kitchen then snuggled under the covers.
“This was nice. I like being with you, Dre. A lot.”
“I like being with you, too. We should do this more often, to make sure it’s always that great.”
Sammy yawned and chuckled at the same time, which led to a coughing fit. When he was able to talk again, he said: “Yeah. I’d be disappointed if this were a one-time thing.”
“You’re tired, mo grah thu.”
Sammy yawned even louder. “Yes. ’Twas a long day.”
Dre kissed Sammy on the forehead before he pressed him flush against his strong body. “Sleep, mo grah thu. We can talk later.”
* * * *
Sammy was jostled awake by the sound of his alarm going off. It took him a moment to realize that the warm presence behind him wasn’t a hot water bottle but Dre, who had kept him nice and cozy throughout the night. Blindly, he fumbled for the button to shut the blaring sound off. Why on earth had he chosen such an ear-piercing ring to wake up in the morning? Oh, yeah, he slept through anything else. He finally found the right button and hit it with more force than was strictly necessary. When he tried to cuddle back into Dre’s warm embrace, he found his demon lover crouching on the bed, claws out, eyes a deep red, lips pulled back to show his impressive fangs and at least two feet taller than he had been when they’d gone to sleep. Sammy suddenly realized that he hadn’t seen Dre in his demon form yet, though being confronted with it first thing in the morning wasn’t how he had wanted to start his day.
“What was that?”
Even Dre’s voice had changed to a deeper cadence close to a growl, which sent shivers down Sammy’s spine and had his morning wood twitching in interest.
“Uhm, my alarm. You see…getting up in the morning is hard for me—”
“So you’d rather let yourself go deaf? I mean, I’ve heard my fair share of battle cries, but this? I have no words.”
The fangs started receding. Before Sammy knew what he was doing, he leaned forward to touch them. Dre made a strangled noise, a bit like a kitten mewling for its mother. Sammy was fascinated. Dre’s canines were almost as long as his hand, the tips pointed like needles and razor-sharp as he found out when the skin of his right index finger was sliced open. A thin smear of blood coating the fang gave Sammy a shiver. He wanted to withdraw his hand, but Dre grabbed his wrist. His eyes were still a deep red, though darker now and filled with lust.
“Let me kiss it better.”
Sammy watched Dre’s tongue snaking out to lick over the small tear in his skin. Again, he knew he should be afraid. Again, all he felt was arousal and a bone-deep knowledge that he was safe.
“Is this the real you?” With his free hand, Sammy indicated Dre’s huge body. Dre finished licking the blood before he leaned back a bit with an amused glint in his eyes.
“I’m always my real self.”
“Don’t you start quoting Esme Weatherwax on me. You know what I mean.”
Dre chuckled. “I do. You have to admit, though that this was too good an opportunity to pass up.”
Sammy just furrowed his forehead.
“Fine. No, I’m just partially shifted. I have wings and my hair turns into scales. But this is as big as I get.”
“Which is impressive.” Sammy let his eyes wander over Dre’s gorgeous body. He was even more muscular in his shifted form and farther down… Sammy gulped and hurried to look back into Dre’s eyes. He wasn’t ready for what appeared to be a third leg between the demon’s thighs. Dre smirked. Gradually, he shrank back to the huge form Sammy was used to. “Better?”
“I honestly don’t know. You’re beautiful in both forms. I just didn’t expect you to go all demon on me first thing in the morning.”
“Sorry about that. I thought we were being attacked. Is this how you wake up every morning?”
Sammy shrugged. “I’m a sound sleeper.”
“Mm-m, and a cuddler, not that I mind.”
The suggestive gleam in Dre’s eyes had Sammy’s thoughts going in a direction that would do neither of them any good at the moment. Breakfast. They needed breakfast.
“Are you hungry? I think I have the ingredients for scrambled eggs with toast in the fridge.”
Dre reached for Sammy’s waist to pull him flush against his deliciously warm, firm body. “Sounds great. If you don’t want to cook, though, we can always go to Paris. I know this nice little café…”
Sammy slung his arms around Dre as far as they would go and pressed a kiss between his pecs. “That’s so sweet of you. But I think I want to make breakfast for you. Show off my cooking skills—the few I have.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve already fallen for you. There’s no need to impress me anymore.”
The words were spoken in a light tone, but they reminded Sammy of all the baggage that had been dumped in his lap the day before. Dre must have picked up on his change of mood, because he crushed Sammy even tighter to his body.
“Let’s go have breakfast and talk. Okay? Or would you rather have me leave, give you some space?”
Dre was so considerate that it almost made Sammy cry. “No. We’re in this together. What good would me freaking out over it on my own do? Come on. Let’s get going.”
Sammy used the bathroom first and started working on the eggs and toast while Dre took his turn. Once he had their breakfast scooped onto two plates, they sat down with two glasses of milk, only to stare at their food without eating it. Finally, Dre cleared his throat.
“Let’s try to eat before we talk. It would be a shame to let the food go to waste.”
Sammy nodded in agreement. He started shoveling the eggs into his mouth, not really tasting anything. His heart was heavy, and his stomach felt as if he were swallowing lead weights instead of pieces of buttered toast while his thoughts swirled through his head like a flock of disoriented doves. When he had eaten half of his plateful, he put the fork and knife down and simply started talking, letting it all flow out of his mouth without bothering to make it sound plausible, since he figured he’d never be able to do that.
“I like you, Dre. No, I’m sure I love you. I know that we’ve only been on four dates so far and it’s very early, but the things I feel for you and when you’re around, even when you’re not around— What I’m trying to say is, if this isn’t love, then I don’t know what is. To think I might be your mate is both wonderful and terrifying. Last night was—wow, just wow. I feel so in tune with you, I’m not afraid, I just sense being with you is the safest place I can be. And I’m terrified of what will happen to all that once we… Once we find out I’m not it, not your mate. And what if I am?
There are just so many ‘what ifs’ and you’re the first good thing happening to me love-wise since my parents died. I can’t lose you, but I also can’t imagine living in limbo for a prolonged time. I want to know, and I don’t want to know. Gosh, I don’t make any sense at all.”
Sammy buried his face in his hands. When he felt Dre’s hand on his shoulder, he slowly looked up. The passion he saw in Dre’s eyes had tears streaming down Sammy’s cheeks.
“It’s fine, mo grah thu. You make perfect sense. It’s essentially what I feel, as well. I’ve been waiting for my mate for so long. The thought of you being it makes my heart beat faster in anticipation, yet, at the same time, I fear what will be if you aren’t. We’re so good together and I don’t want to wait even a second longer. I wish we could just stay like this forever and never have to find out.”
They looked at each other, each lost in the gaze of the other. Sammy found himself in the depths of Dre’s soul, felt a piece of the demon inside his own. It was as if they were already one, and the thought of it just being the rush of the moment was like a spike right through Sammy’s heart. It was Dre who finally broke the silence.
“Let’s wait two more weeks, mo grah thu. Let’s enjoy those weeks as if I were a mortal, just as you are, and as if you didn’t know about true mates. Let’s be just two guys, getting to know each other, having fun. When those two weeks are up, we face reality.”
“A dream. Just for the two of us.” Sammy’s voice was barely above a whisper. He couldn’t manage anything louder. “A dream to remember.”
“Yes. Our dream. Our patch of perfection.”
They kissed—slowly, sensually, full of love and with all the gentleness they had for each other. Sammy slung his arms around Dre’s neck, never wanting to let go, but the need for oxygen grew quite strong after some time and he had to lean back a bit to breathe. Dre smiled at him, still with a hint of sadness, though he was obviously determined to let deeds follow his words.