by Aiden Bates
The warmth that I felt didn’t stop at my skin. It permeated me. Something was different. I couldn’t have defined it, couldn’t have put a name to it or even pointed to where I felt it, but I was… bigger, somehow. And at the same time, lighter. A weight that I didn’t remember picking up was off of me after years and years of carrying it around. I didn’t recall putting it down, or having it lifted. And I couldn’t identify the feeling inside me right away.
So for a time, I breathed with my mate, and felt around the emotion until I thought that I had a name for it. And when I did… I felt like a dumbass.
Happiness. Or contentment. That’s what it was. Not the fleeting kind that came and went in a moment of enjoyment, but the staying sort. The kind that, when I finally looked straight at it, felt like it had always been there but was only recently revealed. The kind that looked back at me and promised wordlessly that it had always been there and always would be, and that I would never lose sight of it again.
I must have lain there, basking in the glow of it for an hour, or more, before Rez finally stirred. His breathing changed. His heart beat a little faster. He gave a soft, weary groan.
His hips moved against me. His cock twitched, swelled, began to grow against my hip. I grinned, and moved with him. He was still mostly asleep, but his body was waking up ahead of his mind, and when I reached back to find his cock, it was rock hard. I rolled a bit, positioned it between my ass cheeks, and for a little while just enjoyed his unconscious grinding until a growing need built up inside me that I couldn’t resist.
I twisted in his arms, and lay on my side facing him, my head resting on his arm, and idly tugged at his cock and mine between us as I watched his slack face in repose. Had I seen him sleep before? I didn’t think so. He had always been awake, or woken up before me. There was something different about his face. Not just that it was a mask of peaceful bliss at the moment, but almost… like looking in a mirror. The sort that was distorted, the way they did in a funhouse at a carnival. I knew that I was looking at myself. Another dimension of this mating bond, maybe.
That he could sleep through my tugging and stroking made me think that he must have been beyond exhausted. We were somewhere soft. Not the hard-packed desert earth, and not a motel. The bed was nice, made of stuff that hugged us close, cradling us together. The ceiling was slats of hardwood fitted together. The room itself was dim, with a window that had thick curtains drawn. It smelled like Rez, though. The way he smelled after a day or two, but magnified and built up over time. It had to be his room, his home—which meant that we had to be at his weyr, though I had no idea how we could have gotten to Virginia from where we were. We would had to have driven for days.
A bit of precum leaked from the tip of his cock. I milked out more, and spread it around him, and then me, and then snuggled closer to grip us both together. His eyebrows twitched as I stroked us, the corner of his lip tugging into a sleepy kind of smile. His hips moved, thrusting into my fist and against my cock. I bit my lip, breathed a little harder.
A low groan rumbled up from the depths of him. “Daniel…”
Maybe he was dreaming of me. I smiled, and brushed my lips against his. “I’m here, Rez,” I whispered.
He groaned again, and thrust as I stroked down. And his eyes barely opened at first. His nostrils flared as he inhaled. He leaned toward me and sniffed again before his eyes finally opened the rest of the way. I looked into his eyes, and saw myself in them. He searched my face, wordless as his hand came up and ran along my arm, and my hip. The arm under my head moved and pulled me closer to him.
His left eye was pale blue and white. Blind. I swallowed, reached up to touch his face, my brows pinched painfully tight. “Rez… what happened?”
“Doesn’t matter,” he said quietly, and smiled. “It was worth it.”
I started to apologize—it was because of me that he’d lost the eye, I knew. But before I could, his lips crushed to mine, and his tongue followed. I opened my lips to take it in, and tangled it with mine while we breathed together, my hand pumping between us.
“More,” he murmured against my mouth. “Inside you.”
“Any way you want it,” I breathed back.
He let out a long, hungry growl, and pawed at my hip until I rolled and lay on my belly. His weight pressed down on my as he lay on top of me. His mouth found my ear and husked hot breath over it before he nibbled my earlobe. His tongue slid along the ridges and even briefly dipped inside, exciting nerves that usually just went forgotten into a tingling frenzy that spread down my neck, where he went next as if he could tell and was chasing the current of electric pleasure down. His teeth grazed my skin, and a moment later sank in gently to gnaw at some other hidden place as I writhed under him, pressing my ass back against the cock he teased me with as he rutted between my cheeks.
There were questions in my head, for sure. How we got here, what happened, whether we were safe, if he’d killed the djinn, what I was feeling—but all of them were drowned out by a deeper, stronger need. And maybe I wouldn’t like the answers. So I let myself disappear instead into the feeling of his teeth on my skin, of his scorching breath on me, of the smell of our two unshowered bodies mixing together into a kind of heady stink that somehow filled me and flipped all my switches. Like it was raw, and real, and primal.
He moved down my back, spreading kisses and bites that were sometimes gentle, sometimes almost feral, until he found my ass and parted my cheeks. His tongue slipped against my hole, and I clawed at the bed as I pressed my ass against his mouth and whined into the pillow. He plunged into me with growing urgency, growls and chuffs of animal hunger escaping him as his fingers dug into the soft inside of my hips to pull me against him.
That thick muscle seemed intent on getting inside me, and as he devoured me I loosened, eased, and let him in. The sweet, thunderous song of my nerves there echoed through me, crushed my thoughts and questions, and filled my body with a thick fog of pleasure that obscured everything except the feeling of his tongue and lips, and when he paused, his teeth as they bit down on my ass hard enough to inject brief interruptions of delicious pain that sublimated instantly into unbearable pleasure the moment his tongue found my hole again.
He went at it for long minutes before one hand left my hips and reached between my legs to find my cock. His fingers pulled and milked until I gave up enough precum that he spread it around the tender crown of my dick to tease me with a tight grip and short, agonizing strokes that stirred up a fresh storm to join the quakes that he sent through me with his tongue. I gasped, mewling as I tried to pull away from his hand and only managed to press myself harder against his face. Stubble burned against the crack of my ass, adding one too many sensations to the pile. Sanity fled, and I became a blubbering mess with no control over my own body as it jerked and danced at his insistence.
By the time he pulled away from me and spit on my hole, and then tapped his cock against it, I panted into the pillow and looked back to see him biting one lip while he tugged as his own dick. Thick precum oozed over my entrance, and he spread it around, stroked himself a few times, and then smiled down at me and pushed in as he lowered himself to press down on me again.
My eyes rolled as he filled me. I stretched wide for him, and should have felt some pain, but it was like my body and his were communicating without our need to intervene or explain things. One moment I was empty, the next I was filled, and he was pulling at my shoulder, rolling us to the side.
His body tucked against mine, and his arms wrapped around me like bars of iron that held me fast. His breath warmed my ear. “I thought I would lose you,” he breathed.
I groaned as he slid out of me, then pushed back in, every muscle in his body rippling against mine as he moved. “Never,” I breathed. “Never lose me. Oh, gods, go deeper…”
He gave an approving rumble, and one arm let me go to reach for my knee. He hitched my leg up and pushed harder against me, until I felt his balls against mine. He stayed here, ro
cking his hips to massage something too far inside to have remembered what it was like to feel that pressure. It made my body shake to feel him there, in that hidden place no one was supposed to know about.
I clawed at his other arm, and reached back to pull at his ass, as if I could somehow get him even deeper into me. “More,” I begged.
He chuckled deep in his chest and bit down on my neck, gnawing and licking as his hips sped up. Each thrust made the bed groan as if it got some enjoyment out of us. His mouth left my neck only to press against my ear. “Want my knot, sweet boy?”
“Mm,” I moaned, and struggled to make words. “Yes. Please. Knot me, daddy. Fill me up. Tie me, make me yours again.”
“Close,” he growled as his knot began to swell inside me. “Feel that? Feel what you do to me, beautiful? You get me so hot, so hungry. Squeeze me, baby. Show that knot who it belongs to.”
I grinned as I clenched around him as tight as I could. “Mine,” I moaned. “My knot. Give it to me.”
“Fuck,” he gasped, his arm tightening around me as his hand gripped the back of my knee tighter. “Take it, baby boy. Take my fucking knot. It’s all yours, beautiful, I’m all yours, forever—don’t ever let me go.”
I grasped at him. His knot grew bigger, firmer, started to grind against my prostate. The delicate gland quivered, sending bolts of pleasure out to the tip of my dick and up my spine, triggering the muscles along my back. I squirmed against Rez’s chest and stomach, and his arm tightened to keep control of me. “That’s it, sweet boy,” he husked, bare desperation in his throat. “That’s what daddy wants. I’m so close, beautiful. Make me yours, make me hurt for you, make me fill you up. Take everything from me. That ass feels so good, baby, I… fuck… you want me? Want it all?”
“Please,” I gasped, barely able to breathe as his knot worked inside me. He was swollen all the way now. I pulled against it, squeezed, felt his body respond by tensing. I reached for my cock, but his hand left my knee and caught my wrist, and pinned it against my chest.
“Let me do it,” he growled against my neck. “Let me fuck it out of you just like you like it. I got you, sweet boy, just sing for me.”
I did. I pressed the back of my head against him and howled as he rocked against me, his knot pushing me further and further toward that inevitable, terrifying kind of orgasm that promised to ruin me forever.
Before I made it, Rez let out a long, strained kind of groan. His knot swelled harder, larger, his cock stiffening inside me.
“Gonna go,” he gasped. “Fuck… gonna…”
“Give it,” I urged him. “Give me everything. Fill me up. It’s mine, daddy. It’s all mine, fill me up!”
He crushed me against him, and his hips gave a final, bone-shaking thrust. A tense growl escaped him and grew louder as it turned to a roar laced with saurian notes as his dragon joined him, both of them overcome as a gush of heat burst into me. The feel of it, the heat of his body, the tensing of his muscles, and the final excruciating swell of his knot inside me all worked together to destroy me completely.
Trapped in his arms, my ass finally gave out and gave up. A swell of liquid fire swept through me, and I gave a sob of release before it turned to a howl and my cock jerked as it began to dribble. My prostate seemed to have become a racing heart as it pulsed and sent waved after wave of panicky pleasure through me until my nerves were raw with it, and it was too much to bear. “No, no, no, no,” I panted, over and over again as it wracked me and broke me into pieces. “Too much, too much, Rez, please—”
His mouth devoured mine as he craned over me and pulled my face to his. He pushed one leg against the bed, breathing hard into my mouth as we cried together, his hips relentless as he pounded me, emptying himself into my body as mine continued to shatter under the assault.
When he finally slowed, we were both ruined. He sagged, and practically fell down behind me, his sweaty arm draped over my waist. I gave a shudder, some cruel aftershock as his knot twisted inside me with his movement.
“I didn’t… burn,” I breathed.
“Not this time,” he agreed.
“What happened?” I asked, struggling to form the words. “We’re home?”
“We’re home,” he confirmed. “Long… long story. Had to save you.”
I twisted a little so I could look at him. “How?”
His lips pressed tight together. He searched my eyes, kissed me, and pressed his forehead to mine. “We… I had to make a choice.” His voice was hesitant, promising bad news. That I’d lost another piece of my soul, or that the pieces couldn’t be grafted back on, or that I was dying or… “I chose. Because I couldn’t lose you. Those pieces you lost? A friend—Mikhail, the one on the phone, I told you about him—he used them to connect us. Or… not connect, exactly. More like we… we share a soul, now.”
I should have been alarmed by that. It should have been a shock. But the moment he said it, it was like a light had been turned on in a room I knew intimately well. Like I had already known where everything was, what it looked like, what it felt like, and turning the light on only revealed what was inevitable.
“I’m sorry,” he breathed. “I had to do something and—”
I quieted him with a gentle kiss. “Don’t. It’s okay. I would have done the same thing.”
He smiled. “It’s strange, isn’t it? Like looking—”
“In a mirror,” I finished, grinning with the wonder of it. “What does it even mean?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “It’s new. It’s been done before, I guess, but rarely, and… it’s new territory, mostly. We’ll just have to figure it out.”
I sighed, and twisted back around to let him spoon close until his knot was comfortable again. “What now?”
“I don’t know,” he said again, but not with any lingering worry that I could hear. He almost sounded excited instead. “But I’ve got you, Daniel. Always. And you’ve got me. Everything else is just details.”
Those details seemed important. But he wasn’t wrong, and I liked it. “I’m happy,” I said quietly.
Rez pressed his lips to the back of my neck. When he spoke, I thought his voice sounded tight. “Good. That’s all I wanted.”
“Thank you, Rez,” I told him. “Thank you for saving me. For claiming me.”
“I love you, Daniel,” he said, like it was a prayer and a promise. “I love you, and you’ll always be loved from now on.”
And when he said it, for the first time I really believed it, deep down, where my soul—our soul—seemed to burn quietly like the heart of the cosmos.
Whatever happened next, one thing would always be true:
We would face it together.
28
Daniel
“You didn’t have to do all this,” I said breathlessly a couple of weeks later as I looked over the work that had been done on Rez’s house.
Vance and Mikhail had been in his place for days on end while we stayed at Nix’s house. They wouldn’t tell me why, and Rez had insisted it was a surprise. Now I knew, and I just couldn’t understand how these two cabal mages who barely knew me could possibly exert this much effort just to help me have a life as close to normal as it was possible for me to have.
“So, you have to watch for the copper around the property,” Vance said as he pointed to a curved band about as wide as my hand near our feet. It was embedded into the ground. “It’s pure copper, so it’s a little soft. We just need to keep an eye on it, make sure it doesn’t get messed up. That keeps any fire that gets out from escaping the property. But… come see the inside.”
Rez grinned at me as he held my hand and tugged me along after the two mages. They ascended the three stairs—now concrete where they had been wooden before, and set with shiny metal inlays. Those were everywhere, some technique for anchoring magic into materials.
“The entire house is fireproofed,” Mikhail explained as he tapped the inlays around the door. “There are many redundancies. You must not ever
remove these, yes? Anywhere that you see them. If they begin to come loose, alert us immediately and I will see to it they are replaced with care.”
Inside, every wall was marked either with metal or shiny metal paint. Corners, edges, the floor. The magic inside could have been plucked like a guitar string. I marveled at the work. “So this is what they teach you at the cabals?”
Vance shrugged. “If they don’t teach it, they’ve got books on it.”
I blinked away tears. “I… I don’t know what to say. Why would you do this for me?”
Rez slipped his arms around me from behind. “Because you’re family, beautiful.”
Mikhail gave a nod, and Vance smiled wide. “You’re part of the Emberwood Weyr. And Emberwood is quickly become a sister weyr to Blackstone. Call us in-laws, I guess. We look out for one another. No matter what.”
I sagged a little against Rez, overwhelmed. “I don’t know how to thank you for this. I don’t think that I can.”
“Of course you can,” Mikhail said. “Just be good to Rezzek. That is thanks enough. That… and of course it may be that you are a key to avoiding whatever apocalypse my brother was betting on. I think that if you will help save the world, we can call it roughly even, yes?”
“I… guess,” I said. “Honestly, the book hasn’t called to me since I woke up. Maybe it moved on.”
“If so,” Vance said, “then it’s enough to just keep it out of the wrong hands while we figure the rest out. One less thing to worry about. Welcome home. Both of you. Daniel—we really are happy to have you.”
I bit my lip, and reached up to wipe my eyes. “Thanks. For this and for… for letting me stay. I barely remember the last time I had…” I waved a hand. This wasn’t going to turn into some kind of pity party. They knew my history. I smiled instead, and let them both give me a hug before they moved to the door.
