“Ah, fuck,” Nyx muttered, and leaned down to kiss him. His mouth was warm and tasted of mint and the remnants of the strong tea they liked here, and Azaiah reached for him, seeking his weight. But Nyx pulled back, quickly shedding his clothing with the ease of a man long practiced in changing one uniform for another. He stood to push his trousers off his hips, then paused. “I don’t know if you’ll… find me as pleasing. I’m a soldier. My body tells war stories better than I do.”
The rush that went through Azaiah as he looked up at Nyx in the candlelit chamber wasn’t desire—or not only that. It was affection, a sweet thing that took root like a flower beneath the soil, the tendrils beginning to anchor themselves, seeking time to grow. “A man who has waded into my domain and come out stronger for it—you think I would find you anything but beautiful? Come, Nyx. My soldier. My prince. Let me see you.”
Nyx lowered his gaze as he finished stripping. Azaiah was right to consider him beautiful, he thought, reaching down to palm his cock. Nyx’s body was firm, nothing but sinew and muscle, broad shoulders and tanned skin belying the idea of a prince who spent his days lounging on silk, far away from the wars fought in his emperor’s name. Scars marked his chest, his arms, and there was a particularly brutal tangle of them on his lower left side. Azaiah reached out to touch the skin there, which was hard and knotted like rope.
“A mace took me off my horse. I survived. The horse didn’t. I refused to ride with the cavalry after that.”
Of course. Nyx had compassion for the animals, conscripted into a fight they could neither understand nor escape. He knew that Nyx had cried for the beast—which had been slaughtered for meat for the troops, as was customary—that night while others caroused and sang around a fire.
The next was a small, puckered wound above his heart. An arrow, certainly. Azaiah ran his fingers over it, watched Nyx shiver, and gave him a questioning look.
“I— An arrow. It was a few months before Tyr… You won’t want to hear about all of these, will you?”
“Why wouldn’t I? But it does not have to be now.” Azaiah lay back as Nyx went to his knees again, reaching out a careful hand to Azaiah’s chest. Not quite on it, though, as if he didn’t know if he could, or should. Azaiah took Nyx’s hand and dragged it up, pressing the palm over his heart. “It beats. If that is what worried you. I am sustained by the river.”
Nyx colored. “I wasn’t— It would be fine. If you didn’t have one.” He touched Azaiah with rough, callused fingers, almost reverent, as if he were an acolyte in truth. He didn’t seem to mind that Azaiah’s snow-pale skin was cool to the touch, or that he was smooth as marble. “I’ve never been with someone as beautiful as you.”
Azaiah said, “I’ve never been with someone who thought I was beautiful.”
Nyx kissed him then, and when Azaiah reached for him, he climbed onto the couch and on top of Azaiah, pressing him into the cushions. Nyx’s cock was growing hard, but he seemed content to kiss Azaiah, hands sliding over his cool skin and up into the fall of his pale hair.
When he tipped Azaiah’s head back, Azaiah let him, giving a soft little sound as Nyx kissed the scar on his neck. His tongue traced it, languid and slow, and Azaiah grabbed his shoulders and arched up, overwhelmed by the simple caress in a way he could not have expected. “Nyx, ah—”
“It’s not a collar. It’s a battle scar. Like mine. You survived, too.” Nyx kissed him before Azaiah could explain that wasn’t quite right, and he let the thought go, content to relax and let Nyx learn his body.
Nyx kissed his scar, his mouth, even inhaled the scent of Azaiah’s hair before moving down. He was far gentler now than he had been in the tent, taking his time to kiss Azaiah’s shoulders, his chest, suck on his nipples.
“Do you know if you like… pain? Can I even hurt you?”
Azaiah was growing breathless, eager and so very willing to be taken by the soldier who kissed and touched him so reverently, not because he was Death but because he was Azaiah. “It is… a strange sensation, pain, but not unpleasant to me. If you wish to hurt me, I won’t mind.”
“I don’t,” Nyx said unsurprisingly. “Only if it’s what you liked.” He raised his head, and his smile made him look like the young man he was, beneath the weight of command and expectations of his rank. “I do enough of that in battle.”
Azaiah ran his fingers through Nyx’s hair, dislodging the clip that kept it pinned back and scratching his fingers over Nyx’s scalp. Nyx must have liked that, as he gave a soft gasp against Azaiah’s stomach and shivered on top of him.
“Even your cock is pretty,” Nyx whispered, and Azaiah stretched out like a cat in the sun and laughed quietly.
Until Nyx took it in his mouth, glancing up at Azaiah while he took him deep. Azaiah arched up, the pleasure a startling, vibrant, unfamiliar rush of heat washing through him, prickling his skin and curling his toes. Empires had risen and fallen since Azaiah last felt someone’s mouth on his cock, and he’d almost forgotten what it felt like. Nyx was talented, bobbing his head and rubbing the shaft with his tongue, and Azaiah briefly closed his eyes and saw colors in the darkness there.
Around them, the candles flared and dimmed as if they were tied to Azaiah’s pleasure. “My lovely soldier,” he whispered, as their shadows moved together on the wall, “you are relentless in this as you are in battle.”
Nyx made a choked sound, then used his hand on Azaiah’s cock while he slowly pulled off. “No battle talk during sex, Azaiah.”
Azaiah reached down to trace his fingers over Nyx’s swollen mouth and nodded. “I only meant that your skills are impressive, Nyx.”
“Then just say I’m good at cocksucking, and let’s get on with it.” Nyx flashed a quick smile before lowering his head, and Azaiah grabbed at Nyx’s hair and let his legs fall open, wanton in his pleasure, writhing beneath the delicious suction of Nyx’s mouth, the slick tongue teasing at the head of his cock, the hard, warm body on top of his.
Azaiah’s body was taut as a bowstring when Nyx stopped, hands firm on Azaiah’s hips as he shifted up to kiss him again. Azaiah made a desperate sound into his mouth, trying to rub his wet cock on—anything—and felt Nyx’s smile.
“I want to be inside you, watch you when you come for me,” Nyx said, and Azaiah grabbed him and kissed him back, nodding as best he could to show that’s what he wanted, too.
Azaiah had done this before, with mortal lovers of all genders, but that had been when he was new to being Death and growing accustomed to what it meant to be immortal. As his tenure under the cloak and scythe grew longer and longer, so, too, did the years between his lovers, until he could no longer remember how long it had been.
He did not think that he had ever wanted it quite this badly.
Azaiah wanted to touch Nyx, to kiss him, but for now he was content to let Nyx take the lead. He kissed where he could and ran his hands down Nyx’s chest, his firm stomach, strong thighs, the muscular curves of his ass. Soon, Nyx was on top of him with Azaiah’s long, slender legs wrapped around his hips, the two of them kissing as they rutted together.
What would he say,Azaiah thought hazily,if I asked him now? To be my companion. To have the time to learn each other. To travel away from here, together. Forever.
