Page 31

Harok chuckles. He presses the finger inside Tobi deeper, finding a spot inside that makes Tobi moan with need. He truly cannot take much more without spilling seed.

“Please,” Tobi sobs again. “Esich.”

Harok laughs, “Dekush.”

“Really?” Tobi smirks. “Dek,” he wraps a hand around Harok’s cock. “Kush,” he clenches his hole around Harok’s finger. “Dekush?”

“Dekush,” Harok says plainly.

Tobi sighs, “Dekush,” he says. “Please.”

Harok makes another soft sound of amusement. “Please,” he echoes. Tobi wonders if he thinks ‘please’ is some lewd expression in Artemian. Perhaps it is, the way Tobi is using it. Harok withdraws his finger, making Tobi whine then gasp with desperate pleasure as Harok takes him. That thick cock thrusting in so hard that Tobi is forced up the bed. He puts an arm up to steady himself against the carved wooden bedhead.

Harok growls, fucking into Tobi again and again. Tobi’s hands move on Harok’s back. There is a strange texture there, a series of ridges, but noticing that is only a moment’s distraction from the waves of pleasure Tobi feels rolling through him, building and building until with a desperate cry he spends, seed erupting from him, warm and sticky between Harok’s body and his own. This seems to delight Harok, who growls and dips his head to kiss Tobi’s neck, thrusting even harder into Tobi’s over-sensitised body, as Tobi cries out with an overwhelming mixture of pain and pleasure.

“Suskara,” Harok gasps, before roaring out as he thrusts even deeper, even harder than before, taking Tobi so wildly as he spends, that Tobi almost feels as if he is reaching a second peak of his own.

Harok pulls Tobi close as he rolls off Tobi’s body to lie beside him. He holds Tobi and murmurs, “Suskara, ga, garan, garasiana. Suskara, elisia.”

Tobi looks again at the glyph on Harok’s chest. It looks old. He reaches out to touch it again, but Harok takes hold of Tobi’s wrist. He brings Tobi’s hand up to his mouth and kisses Tobi’s fingers.

“Priss,” says Tobi dreamily. “Unela priss.”

“Ga, Suskara,” Harok says.

Tobi lets himself feel the sweet ache in his muscles, his soft shaved skin tingling with the memories of pleasure. Harok’s body beside him is so firm and warm. It’s all so delicious. Tobi presses close to Harok, touching his body. His fingers find the strange texture on Harok’s back. Beside Tobi, Harok is dropping into sleep. Tobi wriggles free of Harok’s big arms and shifts to sitting up so he can look at Harok’s back.

He almost gasps to see it. Harok’s back is covered with scars. Not the scars on the rest of his body from battle, these are older, long healed marks of a lashing. Of many lashings. He touches them with a finger, the silvery lines are slightly raised. This happened a long time ago. When Harok was young. But Harok is a king and the son of a king? Who would flog an Irgo this way?

Tobi wakes to see Harok has already climbed from the bed. His entire body still aches with memories of the night before. He sits up. The furs and blankets slip down his body, revealing his bare chest.

“Good morrow, Irgorye,” Tobi says, stretching his arms above his head. Harok is wearing his short breeches, but Tobi looks hungrily at his crotch imagining Harok’s magnificent cock just beneath that leather. “Perhaps you have the time to come back to this bed?”

“Suskara,” Harok says, sounding quite formal. His voice like frozen iron.

Tobi frowns. Is Harok angry with him? Did he do something wrong the previous night? He is sure Harok enjoyed it just as much as he did.

“Irgorye?” Tobi says.

But Harok simply walks out of the room.

12

ELRIC

Kai and Markus come to see them off at the docks.

Damon asks Markus one more time to come with them. He seems to have grown close to his disgraced uncle in the three nights they have spent on Luxoria.

But Markus shakes his head. “I have long turned my back on Azuria,” he says. “But when you find all you want there, perhaps you would consider returning here. I have oft thought that with more who were willing, this place could be a paradise.”

Elric cannot blame Markus for wanting to stay. He would much rather remain on Luxoria himself with its sticky heat and easy way of life. And lack of respect for the laws of Zai. Elric has no great desire to return to Attar. Despite the scarcity of peach wine and silk shirts on Luxoria. But he does not think his opinion would count for much. And he knows well that Lukas will not rest until he gets the chance to assassinate Emperor Selim. Although, Elric notices, assassinating Emperor Selim has not been mentioned in any of their planning for the next stage of their journey.

The previous day, Elric had spent some time talking to people. Finding things out. Using his old skills working taverns and pot shops, batting his eyelashes, asking questions. It was almost too easy. There are a lot of sly men on Luxoria. And Elric’s greatest skill is getting sly men to talk to him, perhaps revealing a secret or two for a bitten lip or a flirtatious wink.

The task was made slightly more difficult because Lukas insisted on sitting on a nearby table, staring broodily at him. But Elric knew exactly where the line was and was well practised in dancing right up to the edge of it. And Lukas’s jealous scowling had paid off in their cabin on the White Watch later that night, when Lukas had roped Elric’s wrists behind his back, had him kneel and made him suck the hook like it was an elegant silver cock. When Lukas was satisfied with that, he’d had Elric beg to be fucked, making him tell Lukas over and over that no one else could give him what Lukas could, before Lukas finally slid his cock into Elric’s desperate hole, with the point of the hook at Elric’s throat.

And Elric’s day’s work had been fruitful in its own right too. Damon had remembered Vindar telling him that Tobi worked as a Beast Tamer with some travelling players called Copperhead Circus. Elric had found some traders from Northern Azuria who had seen Copperhead Circus performing near Ceruleum and had confirmed that they did have a Beast Tamer who claimed to be one of Prince Rafus’s bastards.