Ashes And Grave

by Aiden Bates

  “It is a pleasant sensation,” he admitted. “Is it especially sensitive?”

  I nodded.

  He pursed his lips, and clenched experimentally. I gave a weak groan, my fingers digging into his back as I thrust and leaked. “Yes,” I agreed. “It is... very sensitive.”

  He twisted his hips, his eyes rolling, his eyelids drooping as he rubbed the swollen lumps against his prostate, and I let my head fall back as I lost myself briefly to the overwhelming sensation of his body pulling and squeezing at my tender organ.

  One of Mikhail’s hands left my neck, trailed down my shoulder and tugged at my arm. When I loosened it from his waist, he gathered my hand and spit in my palm, then lowered it to his freshly hardening cock. “Since we are here,” he said, “and have little else to do...”

  I grinned as I spread his spit around, and then added some of mine to it, until he was fully hard and in my grip, our mixed saliva enough for my hand to glide along his length. He replaced his hand on my neck, and his eyes drifted closed as he moaned softly, his hips moving slowly as I watched his face move through the various degrees of pleasure.

  We moved as if trapped in thickening amber, rocking with the easy, inevitable rise and fall of tides inside us both. The mating bond sparked between us, electric and insistent, calling to us with silent words that whispered at the base of our skulls. I endured the torturous stimulation of my knot, and the sensitive head of my cock, trembling and sighing as I marveled at the beauty of his face. And his youth.

  He wasn’t much younger than me, I imagined, but there was a certain innocence in his face like this. The way his lips twitched, his eyebrows knit. The way his plump lips disappeared and reappeared between his teeth, how his soft, pink tongue flickered out to lick them. The flush of pink in his pale skin. The strands of black hair that fell across his forehead as his neck arched and twisted, until he was digging his fingers into my flesh, and his nostrils flared, and he gasped quietly, and his body stiffened, and then shook.

  “That’s good,” I breathed. “Give it up for me, beautiful. Don’t fight it.”

  He opened his mouth, began to pant. Each pant came with an almost pained whine, barely escaping his throat.

  “You can do it,” I urged, but relaxed my grip on his cock, ghosting it over him with more and more gentleness as I felt the ring of his entrance contracting slowly around the root of me. “It’s good, baby. Let it take you over. Let it fill you. Let it go slow.”

  I could almost feel it inside him, the burning, tingling pleasure that only gradually gathered, spreading out from his hips and catching fire along his nerves. It was a distant memory of sensation for me, but I could follow it, could urge it along carefully, tending those flames to keep them burning but not consuming. I slowed my stroke, barely touching him, until it was practically just the heat from my palm that balanced him on that exquisite edge.

  Tears began to flow down his cheeks. “Please,” he gasped. “Please make me...”

  “Almost,” I promised, and kissed his next. “I promise, Mikhail, you’re almost there... I’ve got you... just let go.”

  He let out a cry, sucked in a breath that made his stomach vibrate as it stuttered into his lungs. My own eyes burned along with his as I saw maybe the most beautiful thing in my life. The look of pained, ecstatic desperation on his face mesmerized me as I slowed my manipulation of him to the slightest movement of my palm across the back of his cock head, feather-light and patient.

  “That’s it,” I whispered when I saw it coming over him. “That’s good, mate. You can come. Come for me, Mikhail. Come for me, mate. I love you. I love you, and I’ll take such care of you.”

  His eyes opened and met mine. “I... I love you, too.” He looked like he was falling from a cliff, his expression shocked and almost terrified. His eyes began to close.

  “Don’t close your eyes,” I urged, “look at me, love. Almost... almost...”

  He held my gaze, his mouth wide, and then let out an agonized howl as cum fountained from him against my hand. I closed my fist around him, slick with his seed, and pumped hard and slow, wringing the rest out of him as he bucked, his eyes locked on mine, his pupils so wide they almost consumed the green of his eyes to black. The contractions of his body milked another three shots from me, and I began to moan with him, in time with his voice, until we were reduced to groaning, quivering beasts covered in sweat and cum, barely able to stay upright.

  So we didn’t.

  18

  Mikhail

  I did not want to face the world. I did not wish to leave the warmth of Nix’s embrace, or to feel the emptiness that would be left when he was no longer inside me. It was as though we were suspended in time and space. As long as we stayed there in that comforting place, then time would not march on. The world would not come to make demands of us. It would all remain pristinely frozen, giving us all the time in the cosmos. The patience of the universe would prevail.

  But that was a fantasy, of course.

  Nix’s knot had only just begun to flag, and he had only just managed to extract it from me, when there was an insistent knock at the door to his house.

  “Fuck,” he muttered. “I swear to Bahamut in the depths... stay here. It’s probably a council member. Or worse.”

  He rushed to the closet when he got off the bed, and tossed me a towel, a smirk, and then an apologetic smile, and left me to clean myself at least as much as possible without a shower, while he snatched a robe from the door and quickly threw it around himself and pulled the bedroom door closed.

  Most of what there was to clean had long since dried. I could feel his seed inside me, and somewhat enjoyed the sensation, though I did not think it would long stay there. My ass was weak from being stretched for so long, and it was a great and somewhat painful effort to clench tight enough to avoid making a further mess on his bed.

  I sat up, wrapping the towel around my waist, and listened as an unfamiliar voice spoke from outside the bedroom.

  “Kur’s scaly nuts,” a man remarked, laughing, “you stink like sex, what the hell? I take it he’s awake.”

  “He woke up a few hours ago,” Nix grumbled. “Now’s not a great time, Rez—”

  “I don’t get to meet him?” ‘Rez’ asked. Rezzek, I realized—Nix’s best friend, the one he’d told me about.

  “You will,” Nix said carefully, “just... well, we just...”

  If Gabby had been with me, she’d have been out there, watching the exchange so she could come back and tell me, giggling the whole time. Thinking about her made the void in my chest begin to open again. I didn’t want to be alone with it. And I was having a hard time keeping what Nix had left behind in my behind.

  I opened the door, cautiously poking my head out. “Nix?”

  He turned with a panicked look on his face to see me, and froze with his mouth open.

  There was a big fellow in front of him, leaning inside the doorframe. His frame was bulkier than Nix’s, his skin a bit darker, but his eyes were a light blue that gleamed with interest and amusement when he saw me. Then his brows pinched, and he stepped inside quickly while Nix was distracted to close the door.

  “Fuck me,” Rezzek muttered, “everyone in town is going to be able to smell that, what did you two do, exactly? No, never mind. Uh, hi—you must be Mikhail. Thanks for the work you’ve done here, I’m Rezzek Barr, Nix’s best friend. We cuddled.”

  I emerged from the bedroom, clutching the towel, somewhat confused. “You... and Nix?”

  Nix’s face turned an interesting shade of red.

  Rezzek’s eyes crinkled as he smiled. “No. You and me. While you were out, to give Nix a rest. Don’t worry, it was totally professional and platonic. Just thought I should...”

  The new dragon’s eyes settled on my left shoulder and widened slowly. “Oh. Well... okay.”

  I put a hand self-consciously to the place where no doubt the fresh claiming mark was highly visible.

  Rezzek looked from me to Nix. �
�Uh... mazel tov?”

  Now it was my turn to gain a bit of color. I took a step toward the bathroom. “I should... wash.”

  “You both should,” Rezzek said, but Nix did not follow me into the bathroom. I did not hear what words they exchanged as I showered and... emptied myself... but when I was done, and dried, I emerged to find them sitting on Nix’s couch, their expressions dire.

  I quickly changed into what I could find—a tee shirt too large for me, and a pair of track pants that I had to cinch tight to keep from falling off my hips. I did not know where my jeans were, and in our urgency, my other clothing had been destroyed.

  When I finally joined them, Rezzek seemed unable to prevent a small grin from coming to his lips. I decided that perhaps he was okay with what had happened, whether he would have recommended it or not. He looked sideways at Nix. “He’s wearing your clothes.”

  Nix sighed. “Yes, Rez, I can see that.”

  “That,” Rezzek said, “is fucking adorable.”

  Nix met my gaze, and smiled blithely. “Don’t mind him,” he said. “He has a condition.”

  I snorted, smiling, and then laughed as I moved to the chair at Nix’s end of the couch and curled into it. “So,” I asked, “is there news that I should know?”

  “Well,” Rezzek said, counting off fingers, “holidays are going to be really awkward, Nix snores if he sleeps on his back, he can never—and I mean never—be allowed to drink rum, it makes him obnoxious like you won’t believe, he has wet dreams about Justin—”

  “He means about the weyr,” Nix groaned, and gave his friend an elbow in the arm.

  Rezzek chuckled as he rubbed the spot, and sat back with a sigh. “Vilar is ready to make up some kind of community award for you,” he said, “for saving his kids. He’s really going to bat. I was just telling Nix that his father has officially left the house. He met with the council in the new temporary chamber while the other one is under repairs, and was not happy to find out there’s been a necromancer working in the weyr. But Vilar seems to have talked him down. At least for the moment. I don’t think he’s going to haul you out of our territory by your heels. At least not for that. For mating his son? Who knows.”

  “We’ll keep that to ourselves for now,” Nix said. “No new ghost attacks, though?”

  Rezzek shook his head. “Nope. Whatever Mikhail did is holding, it seems like.”

  “But he is still out there,” I said. “And...”

  I glanced at them nervously, unsure whether I should say it in front of Rezzek. I wasn’t even sure I could say it to Nix.

  Nix waved a hand in Rezzek’s direction. “You can say anything in front of Rez,” he assured me. “We can trust him. With all of this.”

  I rubbed my arm, growing chilly though it was warm in Nix’s house. “What Rav did there,” I said, “opening a breach to the underworld—this is not small magic. It requires an astounding amount of power to do something like that. You saw what was coming through?”

  Nix’s eyes grew briefly haunted. “Yeah. I saw it.”

  “This is because Rav pushed some of the underworld into this world. Like... a terrarium, you could say.” I unfolded my knees and rested my elbows on them as I leaned forward, holding an imaginary ball between my hands. “A spirit even as complex and powerful as the hungry ghost—”

  “Huh?” Rezzek asked.

  I glanced up at him. “A spirit of hunger, which roams an area seeking to sate an appetite which can no longer be eased,” I said. “Very dangerous. They will begin to consume the souls of people when they are strong enough and starved enough. Rare that they grow to the point that they can do true harm, but this one was many such spirits grafted together.”

  “Frankenstein’s monster,” Nix muttered.

  “Precisely,” I agreed. “For something of this strength to exist in this world, much less be seen, it is necessary to open a hole in the boundary between life and death, and extrude a bubble of native environment through it. This is so that the ghost is not weakened by manifestation. But to do that requires power that is not at my disposal. Perhaps a source of some kind, or the cooperation of many mages, or... I am sure there are other potential ways but I do not know them.”

  “So what are you saying?” Rezzek asked. “Rav is too powerful to take on?”

  “No,” I said, but backtracked quickly. “Well, perhaps too powerful for me alone. I require assistance. Other necromancers. My master, Thomas Laryn, would be first among them.”

  Rezzek whistled a low, long note. “Yeah... you’ve been a great ally, but...”

  Nix’s lips hardened, and he shook his head slowly. “He’s right. The last time a group of mages showed up in Emberwood... well, you know.”

  I did, and I was afraid this would be their reaction. “This situation has progressed to something well beyond what any one mage can manage,” I told them. “And with the loss of my friend and familiar spirit... I am less than I was when I arrived here. Even if it was a one-mage job, I would not be capable.”

  “So, what, you’re giving up?” Rezzek asked, sitting forward. “You can’t just—”

  “I am not giving up,” I said, raising a hand. “But we must convince the rest of the weyr that more mages are needed. I am not even sure that my defenses will hold long, if Rav loses patience and decides to make an end to all of this, he is certainly more than powerful enough to break the wards I established. And if he does, he will act decisively to take advantage of the opening. Any weakness he discovers, he will be prepared to exploit, so that he can act before I can.”

  “You’ve defeated his attacks twice now,” Nix said. “And locked him out of the weyr. How do you know he hasn’t used up his tricks?”

  I wanted, badly, to tell him that Ivan always had at least three more tricks prepared that his opponent would never have predicted. This had been true when he arrested Pendrig’s soul, it had been true when we were children, and when we were students together. Always, he was ahead of his prey. Ivan had never truly been a villain who relied on force. The force he applied was only ever to drive his quarry into a panic, to corner them. When the trap snapped shut, it was always from a direction that was not expected.

  “It is better to assume that your enemy is cleverer than you,” I said, which was true—I had learned that early on from Master Laryn. “If it was me, I would have planned around a possible intervention. We must take the proper precautions. And in any case, Rav himself has not been dealt with. Even if it takes him weeks, or months, to gather his resources and make another assault, he will do so. These attacks are personal. He has not accomplished his objective, so he will not simply turn away because it is too difficult.”

  Rezzek and Nix both gave solemn nods at that. They could see the truth in it, even without knowing the details of who Rav was and how well I knew him. Rezzek stood slowly, and slipped his hands into the pockets of his track shorts. “All right. I’ll go talk to Vilar, see if I can get him up to speed. He’s probably the best bet. He’ll definitely want to talk to you, Nix. About a lot of things, I think. But maybe he can get the council behind it before you get there.”

  Nix didn’t seem like he relished the prospect. He stood, shook Rezzek’s hand, and pulled him into a tight hug. “Thanks, brother.”

  “Of course,” Rezzek said. “I’ve got your back. And because I’ve got your back—you two might want to shower a few times. Just a heads-up. And get your mate a turtleneck or something.”

  I winced, somewhat embarrassed to imagine that Rezzek could literally smell the sex that Nix and I had engaged in. Could he tell whose scent was whose? I imagined he probably could. Dragons could smell the subtlest differences between scents. I had a hard time looking at him, until he approached me and waved his hands for me to stand.

  To my surprise, he pulled me into a hug as well, just as tight as the one he’d given Nix. “Whatever happens,” he said, “welcome to the family.” He let me go and held me at arm’s length by the shoulders. “You’re Nix’s mate.
He’s my closest friend, my brother, the dragon I’d die for. So, you get the same treatment. You need anything, ever, just speak up. All right?”

  I was somewhat stunned by the proclamation, and caught Nix smiling at us. “I... don’t know how to respond to that,” I admitted. “I hope that ‘thank you’ is enough for the moment.”

  “Plenty,” he said, grinning as he patted my shoulders and then turned to leave. “I’ll try to get you a couple of hours of delay at least. Make calls, think up a plan, let me know if you need anything. Then be prepared to whip the council into line, is my guess.”

  “Thanks, Rez,” Nix told him, and held the door as he left. He closed it behind his friend, and leaned against it before finally taking a breath and turning to me. “Okay. Look... Mikhail...”

  I raised my hands. “I told you, I am at peace with our decision, even it was in—”

  “No,” he said, “not that.”

  He came toward me, an uncomfortable question on his face that I did not want him to ask. He did anyway. “I know I asked before, and I know that you gave me an answer, sort of,” he started, “but... you talk about Rav like it’s personal. Like you know him. Like you can predict what he’s thinking, what he’ll do. And I know that just because you might have met him or known him well even, doesn’t mean that you’re anything like him, or that you would betray us in favor of him, or anything like that. But I just... I have to know, Mikhail. Do you? And if you do, how? Was he Custodes Lunae, or—”

  “He’s my brother,” I rasped. It came out before I could stop it. The weight of it bore down on me as he spoke, and when the pressure was too great, the words simply tumbled from my lips as if I had grown too weary to hold them back. “Rav is my brother. Ivan Baranov. I’m so sorry.”

  19

  Nix