Clan and Conscience

by Tracy St. John

  Better still, Rivek was rough and demanding, grabbing Jol, stroking him through his trousers with exacting strength. Being handled in such a manner excited the Nobek. It was a challenge to battle, with the winner taking all he wanted from his opponent.

  Before he could assemble his own sensual assault, somebody pressed against his back. He jerked and started to turn from Rivek, readying to take on both him and Ospar.

  Rivek’s grip on his groin strengthened, stopping him short. It grew hurtful enough to jolt the Nobek’s undivided attention to him. Rivek smiled, but his voice possessed no compromise. “No.”

  Jol’s gaze narrowed at the priest. He growled a warning.

  Instead of relenting, Rivek tightened his hold, sending painful pressure through his eager cocks. At the same instant, Ospar spoke in Jol’s ear. “No, my Nobek. Be still.”

  Ospar rarely played the Dramok card on Jol. He tended to fight fair, to the point of being easygoing as far as having sex was concerned. He seemed to recognize when Jol needed to be on top and either let him have his way, or played him in such a manner that Jol only later realized Ospar had been managing the entire encounter. That ability to meet Jol’s varied urges was one of the things the Nobek adored about his clan leader.

  On this occasion, however, the command in Ospar’s tone was unmistakable. Delivered quietly, it nonetheless sliced through Jol’s will like a taming whip. He froze in place, his eyes wide and startled.

  The other two took quick advantage of his confused and aroused state. Their hands were all over him, tugging his clothes off, baring him to fingers, lips, tongues, teeth. Attuned with every nerve ending, each touch felt as if it landed on his avid shafts. Hot, swollen, they jerked in Rivek’s insistent grip as he fondled them with harsh assertion.

  Eagerness overcame the Nobek from time to time. The urge to struggle for dominance rose as Ospar and Rivek’s attentions stung and enthralled, pained and delighted him. Ospar’s continued demands he accept their control held Jol in place.

  Fear of what he was capable of also held him in check. Neither of his lovers were trained to fight. They were no match for a Nobek of his abilities, not even together. He could have knocked Ospar down and fucked him while fending Rivek off.

  He could hurt them though. Too easily. The terror of doing so kept him from battling for the supremacy they were bent on claiming. They were for him to protect, not harm. Remembering the first night he’d had sex with Ospar, coming close to doing damage because his primal instincts had been set off, drove him to obey their dictates.

  I will not harm them. Not these men. Never again.

  While Jol tried to command his reeling senses, Rivek pulled on his sexes, as if to drag him to the floor. “Hands and knees. Get down there.”

  When Jol hesitated, Ospar used the tone that demanded obedience. “Now, Nobek.”

  Obey and keep them safe. Nothing else matters.

  Jol crouched on all fours, his protective nature winning out—for the moment. Ospar knelt behind him, his erections slipping along the crack of his ass. Readying to mount him. Claim him. Top him. Jol’s alpha instincts decided they hadn’t made up their mind to surrender in the least. He growled and started to turn to confront the Dramok.

  Rivek was down beside him in a flash, his strong hands on Jol’s cocks once more. He squeezed a warning. “No.”

  One little word, wielded with almost the same power as Ospar. Enough power with the potential damage Rivek could deliver using that unmerciful grip. Jol looked into the Imdiko’s eyes and saw the resolve there. He shuddered. He relented. Beaten fairly, the last vestige of Jol’s readiness to wrestle retreated.

  He was theirs, without a single twinge of regret.

  Ospar entered him, his primary shoving in with a claiming thrust. Jol’s breath caught at the sudden taking, but it whooshed out as the exquisitely angled invasion caught his hotspot just right. Blasting heat filled Jol’s shafts. Nothing at that point could have convinced him to care that he’d been bested by a politician and a priest. Not when the possession felt so damned amazing, even when Rivek released his hold.

  Jolt after jolt filled his lengths with rapturous pressure as Ospar rode his ass. The Nobek swayed back and forth, driving his clanmate deeper inside with each thrust. Their bodies thwacked together, a loud, relentless tattoo as they surrendered to passion.

  Jol’s head hung down, letting him look down the length of his torso, towards his avid arousal lifting against his own belly. His primary exuded drops of passion, shaken loose to patter to the carpeted floor with each crash of their meeting flesh. Ospar’s toned legs were wedged between his. The Dramok’s secondary rubbed beneath Jol’s, setting off more delightful sensations, adding to the crescendo of rapture pulsing through his loins. The sight of being fucked was exciting to Jol. Mesmerizing.

  A sweetish-sharp-spicy smell intrigued Jol. It brought his awareness to something besides the gorgeous molten heat inside his loins and the view of his Dramok fucking him. Only an aroma so enticing could have tempted Jol into looking away from that amazing sight. He lifted his head.

  Thick thighs greeted his gaze, legs verging on heavy musculature. Jol’s rising scrutiny found the source of the lovely smell that had offered a small distraction from the fucking he took from his Dramok. Rivek’s thick, swollen cocks glistened with desire. For an instant, Jol thought about drawing one into his mouth. He ached to fill himself back and front with the men he’d kill or die for.

  Ah, but the rest of the view was worth delaying that pleasure for.

  He looked up, lingering over the ridged abdomen above those perfect shafts. The curved chest. The strong-jawed, handsome features of the Imdiko he hoped would be his in clanship someday. All of it framed in a curtain of long, ebony hair that draped about Rivek.

  Jol groaned at the other man’s magnificence. Rivek might have been a priest, but he was worth worship himself. The Nobek knew the adulation he could offer, the reverence Rivek invited him to present.

  Jol parted his lips. The Imdiko stepped closer, closing his hand around his primary and lifting it out of the way. The tip of his smaller length zeroed in on the Nobek’s waiting mouth. Jol closed his eyes in reverence as it slid over his tongue, towards his throat. He closed his lips over his lover’s arousal, drawing on the warm, pulsing flesh. Sucking on it, swallowing the elixir of the Imdiko’s flavor, making Rivek groan. When the priest rocked his hips, face-fucking him, the Nobek accepted it as grace.

  Silly warrior. You’ve fallen in love again.

  It was with that understanding that Jol succumbed to the cravings of his lovers, giving himself over. They fucked him, using him for their cravings, allowing him to fulfill them in a sense that had nothing to do with protection. A part of Jol found it curious that he would delight in surrendering, that he’d exalt to have a man’s desire stimulating his ass and another’s sliding down his throat. Yet he did, and it had more to do with a greater joining, beyond fucking and sucking. It was a completion, somehow. Of fitting together with the parts that added to his existence. A whole he could reverence.

  He delighted in the epiphany for almost a full minute before lust consumed higher thoughts in a rush of passion. Ospar drummed harder against his ass, reaching to capture Jol’s primary. He masturbated the Nobek as he took him, sending thunderbolts of demand through Jol’s groin. The Nobek’s cocks hung heavy, straining. Ancestors, he needed to come.

  Rivek drew out, replacing the smaller shaft with his primary. The Nobek gripped the secondary pressing under his chin, working it in his fist to make the priest cry out. When Rivek shoved deep down Jol’s throat, the bodyguard used the opportunity to concentrate on not choking. It helped divert his attention from what Ospar was doing to him. His Dramok’s hand on his arousal, whipping up and down, along with the insane friction against his cumspot, had Jol on the edge of climax.

  He couldn’t give in. Jol was no Imdiko, but he couldn’t deny an overwhelming desire to see to Ospar and Rivek’s pleasure, to take care of t
heir desires before his own. They had to climax first.

  They had to do it soon, however. His restraint threatened to unravel. It wasn’t just the physical ecstasy undoing him, monumental as it was. It was the feeling that he’d discovered perfection, that he was with who he was destined to be with. It made him ache all over with a strange sense of agonized joy. The moment turned poignant, and he responded to the emotion with heightened arousal.

  They had to orgasm before he crumbled before all the sensations overcame him, before his strength failed. With that driving him, Jol convulsed around Ospar’s pounding length. He rubbed his tongue along the pulsing vein on the underside of Rivek’s shaft. The Nobek dominated them from below, demanding they surrender to him.

  Gasps sounded from overhead. Both lovers’ rhythms stuttered, faltering as they lost control. Jol growled in triumph as the sex in his ass jerked, heralded by Ospar’s choked cry. Then Rivek let go with a shout, his seed a flood over Jol’s tongue.

  Victory never tasted so sweet.

  After they fell away, Jol ached still. His cocks were engorged, hurtfully heavy. Nonetheless, satisfaction permeated his soul when he looked at the relaxed, glowing faces of Ospar and Rivek. When he saw the adoration in their eyes as they gazed at him, their lids drooping sleepily in the aftermath of love.

  “On your back, Nobek,” Ospar said, his voice thick. Jol didn’t know whether the emotion in his tone was from gratification or love.

  It didn’t matter. Jol rolled over on the mat as ordered. It was his turn to wheeze as the other two converged on him, their mouths hot against his flesh. Held in place by their commands, he writhed as they licked and sucked him. Unable to attack or retreat, agonizing desire built higher and higher, until his shafts trembled under the assault. Pride crumbled before outrageous hunger, his groin screaming for relief.

  “Please, my Dramok,” Jol groaned, his lengths like towers on fire. “Please, Rivek. You’re killing me.”

  It was the priest who granted him mercy. “We can’t have that,” he purred, climbing on top of Jol.

  Ospar crawled up to kiss Jol with tender sweetness. It was in opposition to the raging ache of the Nobek’s cocks, especially as Rivek enclosed the primary in his hot, tight embrace. His body, desperate to spill, left his conscious control. His hips surged up, pushing deeper into the priest’s delicious ass.

  “Lie still.” Rivek’s quiet command burned in Jol’s brain, making him freeze.

  Jol emitted a strangled scream. Every cell demanded he drive into the Imdiko on top of him, that he fuck him until the dammed-up pressure sprang loose, until he was emptied. He could not.

  Ospar kissed him, as if to swallow the tormented cries spilling from Jol. The tender lips, the slow movements of Rivek rising and falling over him, his snug confines drawing on Jol’s livid flesh—a soft but madness-inciting counterpoint to the violent ecstasy raging through him, billowing greater than the he could contain.

  He’d told them that they were killing him. Mother of All, he was beginning to believe he’d spoken the truth. His heart thundered. He panted, unable to get enough breath. He was sure when he came, his sexes would literally explode.

  Again, it was Rivek who offered benevolence. He kept the same, leisurely pace, releasing and claiming Jol—but he freed him with a quiet demand.

  “Come for me, Jol.”

  That compassionate trigger was all it took. A fiery ball blasted from deep in the Nobek’s groin, from the base of his spine, barreling into his secondary shaft. It rebounded from the tip, shooting into the base and firing into his primary.

  Then at last, out, out, a steady torrent pouring from him and into Rivek, an endless flood of excruciating rapture that pained as much as it enthralled. It was fire, it was electricity, it was the cutting blade, it was liberating release that drained all the excitement and agony in a deluge that refused to end.

  It did end at last, after an eternity of outpouring. It left Jol weak, gasping, destroyed. So beautifully destroyed.

  As his smiling lovers nestled close, stroking his lax body, whispering teases and kissing him, Jol believed he’d never been more content. Danger might be lurking behind every corner, his Dramok and the Imdiko he wanted as a clanmate might be under threat. But for those few, precious seconds, all was right with the world. Jol sighed. Despite the moments of bullshit, life was very good.

  * * * *

  Ospar filled with warmth, enjoying the immense pleasure on his Nobek’s face. It was at that instant, as they all fell silent and basked in their united bliss, that he noticed the outer office beyond the closed door had gone quiet. Though the door muted a lot of the usual noise, the sounds of the numerous buzzing coms always managed to slip through.

  He checked the hour. It was indeed evening. Everyone would have left for the day. Ospar stretched with a feeling of contentment.

  It’s just me and the two men I—

  The Dramok stopped the thought. He examined its implications, watching Rivek as he whispered in Jol’s ear.

  Do I love Rivek? Was the notion true? It had occurred naturally as he’d savored the moment.

  He’d been infatuated with the priest for several weeks. As of late, Ospar had considered him a candidate for a clanmate, based on how they got along and worked together. He’d decided to pursue the potential as soon as the election was done. The steps were all laid out in his mind: consult with Jol, examine the pros and cons of such a union. And if all continued to look positive on the clanship front, he’d pursue it with all the charm at his disposal.

  Had affection and desire grown into the actual thing? Not just fondness, not just passion, not just fascination—but love? The kind of devotion he’d discovered for Jol?

  It shouldn’t be such a surprise. Rivek is like no one else I’ve ever known.

  Ospar had often supposed that a temple master couldn’t be a fit for a pair such as himself and Jol. Yet over and over, Rivek had clicked with them. He didn’t simply match up—he challenged Ospar, though not the same ways Jol did.

  The Imdiko kept him honest. He inspired Ospar to examine his motives and test his beliefs. The Dramok realized he couldn’t imagine not seeking Rivek’s counsel.

  So try imagining the opposite. Imagine spending the next few years with him. A lifetime.

  Ospar enjoyed how the idea made him feel. Rivek. Jol. Two different personalities, but a perfect fit against his own jagged edges. Fulfilling all that Ospar lacked.

  He’d found the Nobek meant for him. Had he discovered the Imdiko for the two of them as well? A clan to which, if they were the luckiest devils in the Empire, they might hope to someday add a Matara.

  It was an overwhelming consideration. It excited and terrified him all at once.

  But first, he had to discover if the other two were on the same page. It was jumping the gun to speak of it so soon, but a formal exploration seemed warranted now that Ospar was sure of how he felt. Why not plant the idea in Rivek and Jol’s minds?

  Ospar grimaced. He should talk about the idea with Jol before saying too much to Rivek. However, the inspiration to have Rivek as his Imdiko left him giddy. Impulsive. Besides, Jol had no problem telling Ospar off in front of Rivek. He could do so now if he didn’t agree that the priest should be their clanmate. He’d probably enjoy giving Ospar hell about it—except the Dramok had the suspicion his Nobek might agree with him when it came to Rivek.

  Even a fool could read the signs that Jol cares for Rivek. But is he ready to commit to another clanmate so soon? He and I haven’t been together long, after all.

  One way to find out. Ospar drew a deep breath. “Rivek?”

  “Mm-hmm?”

  Despite the sudden case of nerves that made his mouth dry and heart hammer, Ospar smiled at the satisfied, lazy sound of the Imdiko’s voice. Thank the ancestors he was going to spring this on Rivek while he was in a tranquil mood. “Would you be open to considering Jol and me as clanmates?”

  Jol jerked. He darted a glance at Ospar, his eyes wide. Ah,
Ospar loved shocking him. It happened far too seldom.

  Rivek was gazing at him with a startled look of his own. A crease appeared between his brows. Uh-oh.

  Ospar hurried to clarify his intentions. “Not immediately. This isn’t an actual offer. It’s more a—well, a matter to deliberate over.”

  The line over Rivek’s nose smoothed. “Was the sex that good?” he asked in a too-casual tone.

  Ospar laughed. The Imdiko hadn’t turned him down outright. That had to count for something.

  Jol cracked up at Rivek’s sally too. “If clanships were based on sex alone, you’d be my pick too.”

  “Not the basis for a lasting union,” Rivek pointed out.

  “No, it’s not,” Ospar agreed. “Nevertheless, there are many things about you that I enjoy. Your company—”

  He stopped. The words were coming out stilted, awkward, insincere. Ospar didn’t need to be told he was doing it wrong.

  Stop being a politician. I’m not running for office here. I’m asking this man I’ve fallen for to consider spending his life with me.

  Ospar tried again. “Fuck, I’m not expressing how I feel at all. I care about you. I’ve been captivated by you from the instant we met. What we have could turn into a lifelong commitment.”

  Jol rolled his eyes. “You’re not a Nobek, for pity’s sake. You can tell him you’re in love with him.”

  “I believe I am in love.” If his Nobek had any reluctance to what he suggested, he would have said so. Jol wanted Rivek too. At least that hurdle was out of the way. Now to tackle the rest. “My biggest concern is our different backgrounds. Rivek, you’re calm and centered, and I’m so—so—”

  “So Ospar,” Jol broke in. He snickered, but he spoke with unguarded affection. “You are a category unto yourself, my Dramok.”

  “Thanks. I think.”

  Rivek gazed at Ospar for a beat. He glanced at Jol too. His mouth twisted in a wry smile. “I confess, I’ve considered the possibility. Our time together has been wonderful. My feelings are also strong, and I believe I’m falling in love with you both. But yes, you are very Ospar. The most Dramok of all the Dramoks.”