by Kim Dare
If Ori wanted to step forward, he’d have to do it unaided. If he wanted to run away, he’d have to make that decision on his own too. The whole world hung in the balance, and he didn’t even have his own physical need to help him along.
Ori lifted his eyes and met Raynard’s gaze. If he went to his master’s bed, it would be because he wanted to please his master and not because he wanted, or expected, to get any pleasure for himself. In that moment, Ori realised that the timing of the invitation was no accident, neither was his having been given permission to come while they were in the library.
Something settled inside Ori with the realisations. He stepped into the bedroom and closed the door softly behind him. Turning to face Raynard, he took up the post he’d been taught in the nest, standing neatly to one side of the door, out of the way, but ready to obey when called upon.
“Come here.”
Ori moved forward, his bare feet silent on the thick carpet. Raynard stood perfectly still as he waited for Ori to reach both him and the bed.
Swallowing rapidly, Ori stopped, less than a foot away from his master.
Raynard slid his hand into Ori’s hair, making him tilt his head back and expose his throat. Raynard’s eyes had travelled over his naked skin hundreds of times before. Ori had never felt as naked as he did then.
Taking half a step forward, Raynard brought their bodies together. His erection rubbed against Ori’s skin, pulling a gasp from him. With his head still held tilted back, he found his gaze caught by Raynard’s eyes. He couldn’t look away.
“Please.” The word left Ori’s lips without his permission. He wasn’t even sure what he was asking for. Anything. Everything.
Raynard’s lips covered his.
They’d only shared one kiss before, a brief touch of their lips that took place a lifetime ago. This was nothing like that chaste little salute.
Raynard took instant possession of Ori’s mouth. There was no pretty request for Ori to invite him in. Raynard’s tongue thrust past his lips as if he already had all the permission he needed to do whatever he wanted with him, and he was no longer interested in pretending otherwise.
He tightened his grip on Ori’s hair even further, tugging his head back, demanding that he somehow make his body adapt to Raynard’s demands, and adopt the position he wanted.
In that moment, the only thing that was important, the only thing that really existed, was what his master wanted. Ori whimpered into the kiss as he felt Raynard’s dominance wrap around him more securely than ever.
Raynard moved his body against Ori’s smaller frame, teasing his senses and overpowering his mind. Ori’s cock tried to rise to the occasion, but it was too soon. The attempt produced more pain than pleasure, but even that rushed through his blood, feeding instincts deeper than Ori had ever been aware of possessing.
His hands scrabbled at Raynard’s skin, trying to hold on to him and steady himself as he lost sight of all familiar landmarks. His brain refused to care that his master’s touch felt different from other men’s careless caresses. All it wanted to do was follow wherever he led.
As Raynard’s hands travelled over Ori’s body, rough and demanding, it was impossible for Ori to fight the confusion that filled his mind. Raynard was all strength and certainty. Ori simply gave himself up to Raynard’s control and moaned his pleasure into the kiss.
When Raynard broke the kiss, his grip on Ori’s hair stayed strong. He pulled Ori forward, placing Ori’s ear just an inch from his lips. “In the future, when I return to the window, you’ll be there waiting for me. You don’t leave that room until I return. No excuses will be tolerated.”
“Yes, sir,” Ori managed to whisper. His grip on Raynard’s arms tightened as he tried to balance himself on his tiptoes.
Raynard ran his hands down Ori’s back and settled them on his arse. The taps he’d laid against Ori’s skin downstairs had turned his buttocks into a mass of sensitised nerve endings. Ori squirmed under the caress, helplessly pushing his arse back against Raynard’s hands.
Raynard chuckled. “Do you like being played with that way, fledgling?”
Ori nodded.
“Speak up properly when I ask you a question.”
Ori glanced up and met Raynard’s eyes. “I guess the men in the nest were right about that too, sir.”
Raynard tensed.
Ori pushed on. “Ducks are pain sluts as well as the regular type of…” He managed a smile, but it quickly faded when Raynard failed to return it.
“You’re not at the nest any more. You belong to me—no one else.” His expression damn near dared Ori to try to disagree with him on the point.
Ori managed to speak on his second attempt. “Yes, sir.”
Raynard hooked his fingers into Ori’s collar and tugged at the leather as if he thought Ori needed to be reminded of its presence. “What other men think is irrelevant.”
“Yes, sir,” Ori repeated quickly.
Raynard slid his other hand down Ori’s arm and wrapped his fingers tightly around Ori’s wrist. “Mine.”
The word was little more than a growled whisper. It still sent shockwaves through Ori’s spine, rushing to his cock, which remained rather less than ready to receive all the adrenaline that flooded through him.
Raynard stepped forward. Ori stepped away in clumsy retreat. The back of his knees hit the edge of the bed. At the same moment, Raynard’s support disappeared. Ori toppled onto the neatly made sheets, his hands slipping against them as he tried to steady himself.
Raynard stared down at him.
Ori pulled his feet up onto the bed and pushed himself back a little farther onto the mattress, but he made no effort to entice his master to join him. Any attempt at seduction would have been ludicrous. He belonged to Raynard. Raynard either wanted him or he didn’t. All Ori could do was hope.
Raynard set his knee on the bed between Ori’s feet. Ori quickly shuffled his legs farther apart.
Raynard leaned forward, his hands found Ori’s wrists and pinned them to the blanket on either side of Ori’s head as his body covered Ori’s smaller frame.
His cock rubbed against Ori’s limp shaft, teasing him with his inability to respond as the weight of Raynard’s torso pinned him down. Ori whimpered his pleasure, but as suddenly as Raynard had pushed him back onto the bed, Raynard pulled away.
They remained apart just long enough for Raynard to unceremoniously roll Ori over onto his stomach. Before the room had stopped spinning, Raynard’s knee was back between Ori’s legs. Ori spread his thighs wide apart as he sensed his master lean away from him.
Again, their parting was brief. Raynard soon slid his hand between Ori’s buttocks, his fingers slicked with lube. For all the strength Ori felt in his master’s fingers, the first contact was gentle—a test, to see what Ori could take.
Ori pushed back against Raynard’s fingers, consciously relaxing his body so he’d be ready to accept Raynard as soon as possible. Raynard obviously sensed his willingness. He soon had three fingers inside him, stretching him open and preparing him to take his master.
Scrabbling at the sheet beneath him, Ori did his best to trust Raynard’s judgment. His master would decide what happened between them—including when Ori was permitted to consider himself ready. It wasn’t Ori’s place to scream that he’d been ready forever, any more than it would have been his place to complain if Raynard wanted to rush him.
Ori’s cheek slid against the blankets as he squirmed. A whimper escaped. He closed his eyes and fought for control. Raynard’s hands left him.
Opening his eyes, Ori looked over his shoulder. He was more than willing to apologise, to beg, to do whatever it took to regain Raynard’s touch. There was no need. Raynard’s body moved over his. For just one second, their eyes met. Ori quickly dropped his gaze, suddenly afraid how much his expression might reveal.
Raynard’s torso slid against Ori’s, layer upon layer of muscle pinning him to the bed. He c
aught Ori’s wrists again, holding them down against the sheet.
Ori murmured his pleasure. He turned his face into the mattress and tried to silence himself as his forehead rubbed against the bed. Raynard’s cock nudged against his hole, and Ori froze, held in place as much by his own instincts as by his master’s grip upon him.
Raynard pushed steadily forward, slowly stretching Ori open as he slid into him. Ori gasped. His eyes fell closed. He’d taken Raynard into his mouth often enough to know how large he was, but he still found himself biting his bottom lip as his master stilled inside him, seeming to fill him more completely than any man at the nest ever could have.
With glacial speed, the painful stretch morphed into a pleasure-filled ache that made Ori desperate to feel Raynard move inside him. Still frozen in place, there was nothing Ori could do.
Raynard made the decision for him. After slowly pulling back, he thrust forward again. Trapped beneath him, Ori had no chance of gaining enough purchase on the mattress to move in a way that might complement Raynard’s rhythm. All he could do was take him.
Robbed of his ability to do anything but accept, every detail of what Raynard offered him was magnified a hundredfold. Ori felt the pleasure rushing through Raynard’s body; he sensed the barely controlled strength in his every movement.
Adrenaline and endorphins pounded through Ori’s veins. His brain scrambled to process everything, to memorise every detail.
Arching his back as much as he could, Ori gave everything up to his master. Raynard’s breaths came faster, his heart raced almost as rapidly as Ori’s. His shaft seemed to swell inside Ori. Each thrust hit against his prostate, sending shockwaves to his cock and pre-cum leaking onto the sheet below him as he finally started to stiffen.
Another thrust—harder now. Raynard’s grip tightened around Ori’s wrists until Ori was sure there would be marks there when he woke the next morning. Raynard’s body pressed him more harshly into the mattress.
A yell split the air as his master pounded into Ori with a series of sharp thrusts and spilled inside him. The room fell perfectly still then, perfectly silent—perfectly perfect.
Ori let his eyes drift closed as Raynard moved just far enough away to collapse onto the sheet next to him. The whole world seemed to shimmer with a glorious rightness that Ori had never known existed.
He had to get up and go back down to the servants’ quarters, Ori knew that. But still… Just a few seconds, Ori thought to himself. He’d just rest for a few seconds…
* * * * *
Ori blinked open his eyes. Sunlight streamed into the room. For a minute, he didn’t fully register what that meant. The warmth from the morning rays caressed his skin as they fell across the bed. Arching his back, he felt the soreness in his muscles, and all his memories from the previous night came rushing back to the forefront of his mind.
His master’s hands on his skin, Raynard’s body pinning his down against the bed. Ori squirmed against the softness of the sheet as he remembered every single sensation and relished every moment that he’d locked into his memories.
Ori looked at his wrists. Just as he expected, there were faint marks there. He blinked again and peered at the sheet his arms rested on. His sheets were blue. This one was white. He opened his eyes wider. Details of the room he lay in flooded his mind. Tension poured into him.
He turned his head. His master lay stretched out on the other side of the bed, his eyes closed, his face turned away from the morning sun’s invasion of the room. He was glorious, more relaxed than Ori had ever seen him—his hair falling across his temple and his lips slightly parted.
Curse after curse scrolled through Ori’s mind. Gritting his teeth, he tried to extract himself silently from the tangle of sheets. The mattress wobbled underneath him. Raynard’s eyes sprang open. No trace of sleepiness lingered in his gaze. He immediately fixed in on Ori.
“I’m sorry, sir.”
Raynard raised an eyebrow.
“It won’t happen again…” Ori offered.
Raynard frowned, obviously far from impressed.
Ori let out a few more mental curses.
“What are you talking about?”
“I know I shouldn’t have fallen asleep here, sir.” Ori wasn’t sure if admitting that he was well aware of that fact would make his behaviour better or worse in a hawk’s eyes, but he couldn’t have lied either way—not to his master.
Raynard’s expression remained blank for a moment. Then a slight smile touched his lips before disappearing again. “You were asleep long before me. If I’d had a problem with you being here, I’d have woken you up and ordered you back to your room.”
Ori met his master’s eyes.
Even without a smile to soften his expression, Raynard looked more than a little amused. “As and when I choose to bring you to my bed, you may assume you have permission to stay here until I tell you otherwise.”
Ori hesitated for a moment, before shyly smiling his understanding.
Raynard ruffled his fingers through Ori’s hair, in that teasing way Ori was quickly falling in love with. “Go on.”
“Yes, sir.” Ori slipped from the bed and made his way down the stairs, but even when he reached the kitchen, he wasn’t quite able to wipe the glowing smile off his face.
As and when… The words swirled around and around inside his head. He was going to be invited back to his master’s bed again. Even another broken saucer having to be added to the increasingly long list of casualties to his clumsiness couldn’t dent his joy that day or for several days after.
Chapter Six
Ori hadn’t set himself a task that required him to lurk in the hallway so he could greet Raynard the moment he walked through the front door, the way he so often had over the previous weeks.
Raynard was sure that merely remembering those welcomes shouldn’t have been enough to make him smile, especially after a long day filled with more badly organised paperwork than should ever be allowed to exist in the world. If his uncle hadn’t already died a very natural, peaceful death at a ripe, old age, Raynard would have been inclined to think up some cruel and unusual way to kill off the cantankerous old sod—if only because he harboured a vague suspicion that the murderer wouldn’t inherit the victim’s bloody paperwork.
Leaving his briefcase and coat in the hallway, Raynard pushed all thoughts of his uncle aside and went to find out what task his fledgling had found so engrossing that he’d failed to notice the hours pass.
The library was the obvious place to start. The duckling’s pet project, cataloguing all the books in there, seemed to be coming along well. Raynard took care and made no sound when he nudged the door open. He fully expected to catch Ori with his head buried in an ancient volume he’d unearthed from one of the crammed shelves.
No such luck. The room lay deserted. The fire wasn’t even lit.
The study proved to be equally cold and empty.
Raynard stopped in the middle of the hallway, wondering if his next course of action should be to go up the stairs to those rooms that still harboured dustsheets or down to the servants’ quarters.
The bell pull called to him. Ori would hurry quickly to his master’s side when summoned. But then Raynard would miss the startled look and all the blushing that would ensue when he caught Ori doing whatever it was that he’d become so distracted by. A door on the other side of the hallway led, if Raynard remembered correctly, to a formal dining room that hadn’t yet received Ori’s attention. The door was slightly ajar.
Raynard strode across the hall. The last time he’d set foot in the room it had still been shrouded in dustsheets, but a day’s hard work from Ori would have transformed it. The yards of moth-eaten fabric would be gone and the dust cleared away. The furniture would be shining, the scent of furniture polish hanging in the air. And Ori would be standing in the middle of it all, dirt clinging to his skin, his body exhausted, but his eyes shining with achievement.
Raynard had seen Ori look that way so many times now, but he doubted he’d ever get tired of seeing Ori turn toward him, tentatively hoping for some hint of approval or praise.
Raynard pushed the door leading into the dining room. It swung open on beautifully well-oiled hinges.
Blood.
The thick, metallic smell hit Raynard, even before the scene before him registered in his mind. He stopped short, his breath catching in his throat. A mahogany table filled the centre of the space. A matching cabinet stood beyond it, set between the windows on the far side of the room.
The cabinet doors hung open. The glass in one was cracked.
The floor at the cabinet’s base was hidden from Raynard’s line of sight by the oversized table.
Raynard’s hand convulsed around the door handle. He couldn’t release it, couldn’t take a step forward. His whole body remained locked in place as eons passed and horrors rushed through his imagination. Finally, his lungs kicked into action. He managed to both breathe and release the door handle. He stepped forward, circling around the table.
Shards of glass led his eye to a broken footstool. A chair lay toppled over next to it. Then blood. So much blood—it pooled on the expensive carpet, so dark it looked almost black. As Raynard stared at it, the blood became his only solid point of reference.
Eventually, he managed to take another step forward. With glacial speed, the part of the floor that had been blocked from his view came into sight. The side of the blood pool was smeared, but there was no broken body laying at the edge of it, still bleeding—or worse, no longer able to bleed.
Ori was gone.
Raynard backed toward the door. A drop of blood on the richly patterned carpet caught his eye. Raynard spun around. His eyes scanned the carpet. Another drop of blood. Then another. He raced out of the room. Droplets of deep red led toward a larger smudge of blood on the door leading down to the kitchen. Raynard raced down the stairs, almost tripping in the darkness—far too frantic to think about the light switch until the door at the top of the stairs had swung closed behind him.
