He didn’t look at the statues.
He looked only at me.
And I had never felt more seen.
I watched the motions of his hand, watched as he lifted it, drops of oil falling back into the chalice. He pressed his other hand against my flat stomach, eyes locked onto mine, and brought his slick hand between my legs.
His fingers touched the taint between my balls and my rear, rubbing its hardness gently and making my cock pulse. Auren lowered his hand, and I swallowed loudly, a shivering breath drawing into my lungs.
When he found it, the one place I still feared him touching, it was the warmth of his flesh and the softness of the oil that seeped deep into my flesh long before he applied pressure.
“Relax, Callis,” Auren said, his voice soft like wisps of mist still lingering over the glassy fields at dawn. “It will be much better for you if you relax.”
Though the words could have made a threat, it wasn’t one. A kinship formed between us, and I held onto it. He was guiding me, rather than commanding me.
I tried. I really did. Relaxing seemed crucial, yet as unattainable as sitting down with gods to feast at their long tables in their moonlit halls.
The pressure of Auren’s finger was far from grand, yet its persistent motion didn’t move me to relax. Every slight change in where he touched me sent ripples through my body like pebbles in a lake, my cock tensing, leaping off my body with tension. My body felt like sailors’ rope, twisted so tightly that it was bound to snap—yet it never did.
Leaving his hand between my legs and his fingers pressed against my hole, Auren leaned down and found my mouth with his. He exhaled over my lips, giving me his breath freely, and with it, a strength I hadn’t been able to find on my own.
I flowered like a ripe bud in early summer, opening to him just as my soul found that distant place he’d asked me to go to. I relaxed.
I was grateful for the oil. The warmth of our bodies thinned it, and it seeped into me moments before Auren’s finger penetrated my flesh.
Air drained from me just as Auren inhaled. My eyes widened, my chest tightened, and warmth spilled through my body as Auren pushed his finger deeper inside me. The momentary slip of attention made my cock throb and my hole tighten around his knuckle, forcing him to halt at once.
The kiss he pressed on my lips was fiercer now, taking away my reservations.
Auren continued his careful work as my body relaxed again, my flesh accepting him inside as if hebelonged. He inserted himself deeper, making my eyes roll back, gaze sweeping over the upside-down statues of the gods. Had their eyes always been directed here?
As the sensation strengthened, my limbs grew restless, toes twisting and fingers digging into Auren’s flesh.
Auren’s lips dragged over to my neck, kissing me as his finger fell in and pulled out of my body, the feeling never growing more familiar, never failing to startle me. That breath between one direction and the other, that glimmer of anticipation, led me always to be surprised.
“Do you think you can take more, Callis?” Auren asked in that voice, like tendrils of smoke, as his other finger pressed against the stretched flesh of my rim.
I was his by the laws of the gods. I was his by the customs of the men. “Yes.”
My voice broke into a strangled moan as Auren pushed a second finger into my body, oil making it far too easy for him, yet the doubled size stretching me wider than I had anticipated.
I felt myself tearing through the middle of my torso. I felt it searing the space between my eyes.
And then, it was gone. Not even a lingering echo of that pain remained. It was simply warmth and such intense pleasure that it bordered on shameful. In this, I could belong to him, I told myself. In this, I could be his bonded companion even if I couldn’t say the same for all our waking hours in the days to come.
Yet as he loosened me for the next step, Aurendidn’t exhibit the cruelty I expected of him, cruelty I had earned on our first encounter.
His fingers slid out of me, rubbing circles around my tender hole, soothing it while he kissed me.
Auren’s torso straightened, and he dipped his hand in oil once again. This time, he didn’t bring his fingers back to me. Instead, he folded them around his cock, and I let myself watch.
I lowered my gaze over the sculpted muscles of his torso to the gleaming spear he held in his right hand, stroking it with oil. Its thickness terrified me, and its length put me to the thankless job of not comparing myself to him. And yet, as he leaned toward me again, he didn’t hesitate with distaste for what he saw waiting for him.
The scents of pine cones and needles burning in the brazier wafted closer to us, mixing with the oils and our own bodies. Auren settled himself higher between my legs, lowering his hips until the girthy head of his cock was pressed against my hole.
He couldn’t do it. Not really. He simply couldn’t, could he?
I was too small, too tight, too inexperienced for a man like him. It would tear me, wouldn’t it?
