Not Auden.
Still safe.
I know these woods better than I have any right to, and so I can easily pick paths and tracks through them, even in the shadows, even over the tiny brooks and streams, through thickets and around random falls of wood and boulders bigger than my car. I’m agile, I’m fast, but still I can feel the work and burn of my muscles as I run, the drip and sheen of sweat. Each jump, each stride, each pound of a foot—they echo the crash of my heart, which echoes the drum still reverberating through the trees. The drum, which seems to grow louder and louder, seems to come from every direction, not just from the ruins, and are there more of them now? More than just one? As if the entire forest has come alive with drums and they’re pounding me on to my fate.
Run, they say, their voices thudding and relentless.
Run because he’s coming. The wild god is coming.
Sir James barks behind me again, and I cast a glance over my shoulder, the antlers moving with me as I do. And then I see him, standing at the edge of the dell I’ve just run through, his loyal dog prancing eagerly around him like a hound on a hunt.
I see him, but he’s not Auden, not now.
He is the wild god.
The Horned One.
The Thorn King.
Like me, he’s naked to the waist, and also like me, he’s gleaming with sweat, every muscle taut and tensed. Antlers twine out of his thick hair as if they’ve grown there naturally, as if he’s part stag for real, and I believe it now, with how proud and strong he looks as he pauses and surveys the small dell below him. The dell that belongs to him, because the whole forest belongs to him. Me included.
The drums pound as the Thorn King’s eyes meet mine, and he’s far enough away that I can only make out the barest sketch of his face. The powerful jaw and the high forehead and the long nose. The mouth that sometimes still seems too pretty, like a boy’s, although it’s not like a boy’s now. There’s nothing boyish about him—the wide shoulders and the muscular legs and those big hands, the hungry mouth and the erection stretching to his hip inside his jeans—they belong to a man. A god.
For a moment, we don’t move. Predator and prey, locked together in a single moment, sides heaving, blood hot, muscles tense. He lifts his chin ever so slightly, as if to scent the air.
Run, the drums urge. Run before your king. Run for the wild god.
I run.
The drums are everywhere now, they are in the trees and in the earth, they are in my chest and in my blood, and as I crash through the trees, I have the strangest sensation that Auden and I aren’t alone right now. That there are others, just out of sight, waiting and watching.
The air will grow thin and the veil between the worlds will flutter . . .
Down a steep slope I scramble and nearly fall, catching myself on my hands just before I hit the ground and launching myself back up, my feet digging into the soft, mossy earth as I tear out of there, aware with each beat of the ancient drums that the wild god wants me and that he’s close.
So close.
Sunlight strobes as we sprint through the trees, gold-dark-gold-dark, and each breath scissors in and out of me with bright, cutting blades. The antlers change how I run, how I hold my neck and head, the drums change my pulse, and the god behind me demands my heart, and I’m his and the forest’s and he’s so close now that I can hear his feet on the forest floor and I can hear his breathing over the drums.
Between the trees, the river flashes and glints, the same as it did when we were boys just learning each other, and I make for it with all the strength I have left. The drums urge me on, urge me to the elemental safety of the water, and for a minute I think I’ve lost him. I hear nothing as I skid down the bank, and there’s a chance I’ll survive this after all.
The god will return to his grove without my heart in his hands; I won’t be consumed by his no-longer-boyish mouth.
But it’s in the last few feet that I’m snared. As I’m about to leap into the shallow water, I’m caught from the side and thrown to the soft ground. I’m dimly aware of bluebells pressing against my back as the powerful form of my hunter crawls over me.
“Got you,” the god says, and he crushes his mouth to mine.
The drums are beating, beating, as if the hunt isn’t over, and it can’t be, I realize distantly, because the god isn’t finished with me just yet. Not at all.
The Thorn King lifts his head just enough to look at me. His pulse pounds at the hollow of his throat, and every tight line of his shoulders and arms and chest are a study in pure virility—the same when I look down his etched stomach to where his thick erection grinds against mine.
I catch his gaze once more, the gaze of this virile stag, and can barely breathe. I’ve always known his eyes are the color of the forest, but now’s when I recognize his eyes are the forest, they are the forest looking out at me. He is the forest and the god and Auden all at once, and I have to offer him everything, it’s a compulsion that cries out from the very pit of my soul, and I arch my throat. I lift my hips underneath his.
“Take me,” I plead. Above us, clouds scud across the sky. Around us the drums beat. “Take me,” I say again.
The god studies me, cocking his head as if I’m a puzzle.
“You owe me one more thing,” the god says. “Before I can take you. Do you know what it is?”
I shake my head; the antlers scratch into the grass and moss. “I don’t know,” I moan. My heart is still throwing itself against the walls of my chest, and my cock aches and aches, and having this fertile, vigorous stag king above me is stirring every sense past reason. “Fuck me,” I whisper. “Please.”
“You have a debt to pay me,” the god says. “A debt of courage.”
My heart throws itself around even harder and a fresh burst of adrenaline washes through me.
He means the graveyard.
A debt of courage has to mean the graveyard.
“Please,” I say, and I’m crying, the tears are brimming hot against my eyelashes. “Please, don’t hate me anymore for it. I hate myself for both of us.”
The god over me freezes, his eyes searching mine. “What are you talking about?” he asks.
“The graveyard,” I sputter tearfully. “Those six steps.”
Warm fingertips touch my temple, catching the tears there. “What six steps?” asks the god carefully.
“The six steps I ran away from you. I realized you were still there, I realized you were getting hurt, and I—it took me six steps—” The agonizing shame of it rips through me and I roll away from his forest eyes, but the god keeps me pinned as he stares down at me without expression.
“It’s why you hated me. Why I hated myself,” I whisper. “I left you to be beaten and I didn’t come back quick enough. Not quick enough to save you.”
The god drops his head between his shoulders, closing his eyes as our antlers click together. “All this time,” he murmurs. “All this time you thought I hated you because you ran?”
Of course. “Yes.”
“Fuck,” the god says. He looks like I’ve stabbed him in the heart. Like he’s the one who’s been slain on the hunt. “I wanted you to run that day. I stayed so that you could run. I never hated you for that.”
“But then,” I ask, “why did you hate me at all?”
“Because you never came back.”
I blink through the tears. “You mean—”
“You went to America without even a goodbye—without a fucking email or letter or anything. Do you know how much that fucking hurt? How much I wanted to curl up and die, because I thought I’d lived through the worst, I thought that I’d faced down the biggest dragon there was in order to be with you, but then I discovered that the real terror was losing you, was falling in love and then having my heart ripped out with no warning. Not because the world didn’t want us to be together, but because you didn’t want to be with me.”
The drums echo my heart, my thoughts. Wrong? Wrong? I was wrong?
> “Oh,” I say, faintly.
“Yes, oh,” the Thorn King says with a rueful look. He ducks his head again, but this time it’s to kiss the tears off my temples and eyelashes. “All I wanted was to love you and maybe one day Poe. And then you left.”
“You really didn’t hate me for the graveyard?”
His eyes are sad when he lifts his head to look down at me. “Never. Not for a single moment.”
“But . . . the debt—?”
He uses a thumb to tug at my piercing. “Do you not remember what I said to you in your room? That when you’re brave enough to guess why I want to see and know everything about you . . .?”
Oh God. That.
Not the graveyard at all. A strange lightness pricks me all over, like I might actually float off the ground without the Thorn King trapping me here. All the shame I’ve carried over it, all the pain and misery and certainty that I was poison to the people I loved—
I look at the beautiful god above me. I am finally brave enough to guess. “You love me. That’s why you want to see me.”
“I do love you. And I already see you.” A smile tugs at the sharp corners of his lips. “I think we covered that point right here at this spot, actually. A very long time ago.”
“Yes,” I breathe.
The smile fades as the god looks down at me, his expression growing greedy and wild. A wide hand rubs along my ribs and then wedges between our stomachs to search out my cock and squeeze. My back bows under him and I gasp. “Please,” I say.
“You’re mine.”
“Yes.”
“Anything I want from you is mine.”
“Say it and it’s yours,” I tell the god, and I say it as fervently as any prayer. The drums are still going and smoke is in the air, and as the god bends down to taste my mouth, I can almost feel the presence of Poe and the others back in the clearing. I can feel their singing and their dancing. I can feel their feet pounding in a rhythm around the fire, I can feel their lust building like a fire in the blood.
The mouth of the god is warm and silky, and I catch hints of mint and scotch as he runs his tongue along my lips and seeks the inside of my mouth. The kiss is deep, so deep and hard and hot that I almost don’t notice as he works open my jeans and then works open his. But I do notice when he presses our erections together in a grind of searing need.
“I’ve caught you,” he says, a little wildly, as if he can’t quite believe it. “I’ve caught you and now I can do whatever I want.”
I thrust my organ against his, and he groans, the groan turning into a noise of raw impatience as he moves and flips me over onto my hands and knees, my jeans and briefs and trainers torn off somewhere in the process. Before I can properly orient myself, there’s a rustling behind me and then his hands are on my arse cheeks and thighs and hips, kneading and grabbing. Ready to plunder. With each knead and plump, I can feel my entrance exposed. Examined.
I shiver; I know exactly how this god will claim his prize.
Something cool and slick brushes against the tight button of my arse, and I have a moment to register that Auden prepared for this moment, that he must have stashed supplies in this very spot. That he must have known and planned to take me down just here, right here where we swam as teenagers, and that the entire run through the forest was because he allowed it. He wasn’t chasing me, but stalking me, herding me, driving me right to where he wanted me to go.
And then there’s the hard press of his finger and all thought leaves my mind. He wastes no time adding a second finger, and discomfort skitters up my spine even as my crown swells and drips clear drops of seed onto the ground below me.
“You’re mine,” the wild god repeats as he fucks me with his hand. It’s still in that feral, uncaged voice, but when he says it again, his tone has changed. It’s arrogant and implacable. Possessive beyond belief. I won’t survive that tone. “You’re mine.”
“Unconditionally,” I gasp as he pulls his fingers free. I hear a foil tear. “Forever.”
Something big and blunt wedges against my opening, and I’m very aware that I’ve never done this, not with a person, not even with a toy the size of the thing now demanding entrance.
He hasn’t done this either.
I shudder and close my eyes as he unhurriedly shoves the slick head inside, and once he’s in, he impales me slowly, so slowly that there can be no mistake, no missing the moment he is no longer a virgin.
“That’s it,” he grunts once he bottoms out inside me and my bare toes are curling. “That’s fucking it.”
I groan in response, the fullness nigh unbearable; I’m crammed up to my throat with my Thorn King, and I can’t breathe, all the breath has gone right out of me. There’s only him, there’s only his big hands curled around my hips and his desire splitting me open as his antlered shadow falls over my own. And then he’s using me as he needs me, using me hard and fast, with such brutal strokes that I’m crying out with each and every one, but not out of pain. Or not only out of pain, because he’s so big, he’s huge, and he’s taking me like the wild god really would—in an urgent, victorious frenzy.
Between my legs, my bollocks swing and my heavy cock throbs, and his shaft is stroking right where I like my toys to hit, right there, and he’s muttering, “Mine mine mine.” The only sounds leaving my mouth are soft, pleading cries.
But each of my own cries sounds like one two three four in my mind, to the thrum of the drumbeats around us, and it fades from counting the seconds to simply yours yours yours yours. And each silent yours is a prayer. A prayer to him or the forest or to the god of the Catholics, I don’t even know, but it’s a recitation, an invocation, it’s a plea. Give me more moments like this, more hours and days and years.
Let me belong to the wild god forever.
The tension low in my belly feels like a clenched fist and it’s right at the base of my spine, it’s searing at the root of my cock, and everything is tight and hot—my nipples are pulled into points, goosebumps pebble my skin everywhere, my throat is aching with joy and surrender. I’m crying, I think, and then I think he might be crying too, and then I know for sure when he pulls out and flips me over so my back is on the cool, mossy bank once more.
He enters me again with a gentle glide that sends electricity everywhere, from my toes to my scalp, and then he bends over to kiss me again. Tears and sweat mingle as he lifts his head and stares down at me with unmitigated awe, as if I were the god and he the mere mortal. “You’re so beautiful,” he whispers. “You’re so perfect and precious to me. I’m never letting you go again.”
And I say what I should have said eight years ago. “I love you.”
With an impatient growl, he yanks off his antlers and tosses them to the side, and then he bends down and bites me—hard—right over the heart. “Mine,” he grunts, and then he swells inside me. He stays like that, rigid and still, with his lips hovering over the new mouth-shaped bruise on my chest. Then he lets loose with another growl, pumping his condom full of his seed. I can feel the throb and heat of it deep inside me, and I moan and arch against him as he finishes in my body, as the wild god finds his pleasure at long last.
Thud thud thud go the drums.
As his pumps slow and finally abate altogether, he reaches down and gives me one of his big hands to fuck up into, which I do eagerly, his cock still hard and wedged inside me as I rock into his grip. Once, twice, three times—three times is all it takes before my vision grays out at the edges and he is all there is, him and the drums. His pleasure, his privileges as the wild god of this place.
My Thorn King.
With a low sob and series of jerking pulses so hard I can’t bear it, I erupt all over the Thorn King’s fist and my stomach, my belly muscles seizing and my body trying to curl in on itself to save itself from the pleasure. Over and over again, I throb, spending all my love, all my shame, everything I have to give out of my body.
I end up spilling so much seed that I hear laughter. Cool, arrogant laught
er.
I drop my head back, exhausted and sore, and open my eyes to see not the wild god, but Auden, looking at me with that same superior amusement that used to infuriate me so much as a boy.
It still infuriates me a little.
“S’not funny,” I mumble, feeling like I’ve been hit by a lorry. “I think you killed me.”
“Well, then, we’re still in the spirit of the old ways, eh?” He gives me one of those stupidly pretty smiles, and I realize the drums have stopped, as if they’re sated for now.
The hunt is over.
Auden pulls out of me with care, and then looks over my body. “That bite mark will bruise,” he says, and he doesn’t seem sorry at all.
I lift my head to look down at it and sigh. “Sadist.”
“Only sometimes. I think your arse will be sore, but as you also know, I’m a novice when it comes to these things.”
“No longer a novice,” I tell him with a smile. “I got to be your first.”
Another pretty smile. He has a streak of dirt along one cheek and sweat glistening everywhere. His hair is falling in front of his forehead, his jeans are filthy and torn, and he has a spatter of my drying cum on his stomach.
He’s more beautiful than I’ve ever seen him.
“I’m glad,” he says softly. “I couldn’t be more glad.”
While I’m hunting for my clothes, he ties off the condom and then ducks behind a clutch of trees, emerging with a small basket of towels, soap, two glass bottles of water, and a small bin liner for the condom. More preparation. More planning.
“Where did Sir James go?” I ask as he sets his things down.
“He fucked off as soon as we got to the kissing. He knew we were done with the fun chase-y bits. Here, drink this.”
He hands me a bottle of water and refuses to let me move until I’ve drunk at least half. While I’m drinking, he fishes out a bar of soap and sets the towels on a flat, sun-drenched stone to warm.
Feast of Sparks Page 32
