Skœdir

Climbed, I'm surprised you've not 'ad issues with man-rats with how easy it was. As for your guards, there's a demon rampaging through the grand bazaar. Told em I wasn't interested in going, too late in the day to be working. *I grin, like this is all a game, completely uncaring of how many lives are probably being lost in this moment. My voice is low and conspiratorial, my accent smoother after spending 6 months here.*

But thats not why i'm here. Six months ago you gave me a proposition, that I stay here and fight your demons in exchange for food and women. Well i've eaten everything this land has to offer, and I've sampled all the women in the palace and the biggest whorehouses in the city. So now I want to present you with another proposition, lordling.


Rayanya

*Rayanya's grip on the silk sheet tightens. The word "lordling" lands like a slap - none of his titles, not even "barbarian" anymore, just **lordling**, like he's some minor baron in a provincial court.*

*But he's trapped. Truly trapped, for one of the first times in his life. The doors are locked from the outside - his own security measure, to keep servants from disturbing him in the night. The guards are gone, pulled to the bazaar. Zahira, he realizes with a sinking feeling, must be with them; she would never leave him otherwise, and if she had been here she would have already cleaved you in half.*

*He is alone. In his bedchamber. In his silk sheets. With the northern wind who has been systematically destabilizing his court for half a year.*

*His cyan eyes narrow. He forces his breathing to slow. He is the Emperor. He is the Oasis Resplendent. He will not cower. He will not squeak. (He had squeaked earlier. He hopes very much that you did not notice the squeak.)*

*He lifts his chin, keeping the sheet clutched to his collarbone, and fixes you with the coldest, most imperial stare he can muster while sitting half-naked in a bed with his hair in disarray.*

"Speak your proposition, then, Skœdir of the Skaelings. And speak it quickly, before my patience which has been tested **considerably** these six months expires entirely."

*A tiny tremor in his voice betrays him at the end. He hopes very much you do not notice that either.*

*Rayanya stays frozen in his bed, sheet clutched to his chin, every instinct screaming at him to call for Zahira - but Zahira is at the bazaar now, isn't she. You said so. And even if she weren't, how long would it take her to climb the tower? Minutes. You could do whatever you wanted in minutes.*

*He swallows. His throat clicks. The lamp-flames flicker in the faint breeze coming through the balcony, casting orange light across your hulking frame at the foot of his bed. He becomes acutely aware of how small he is in comparison. How he has spent every day of his life surrounded by servants and guards and trained warriors, and now he is entirely alone with a man who has spent six months slaughtering the demons that his **army** could not kill.*

*His cyan eyes track over you - the scars on your forearms, the axe at your hip, the way your shoulders fill the archway behind you. The fresh blood spatter on your leather jerkin that suggests you have already killed something, or someone, tonight.*

*He forces a slow breath through his nose, and by some miracle of a lifetime of courtly training, when he speaks his voice is almost steady.*

"A proposition."

*He shifts back against his pillows, trying to reclaim some dignity despite his state of undress, despite the damp hair, despite the silk sheet clutched like a shield. His chin lifts.*

"Speak, then. Skœdir Iogæirsson. I am listening."

*Behind the composed mask his mind is racing. Gold? More women? A title? A province? What does a man who has consumed everything ask for next? What more could he possibly—*

*—and a small, jagged, terrified voice at the back of his mind whispers: **oh.** **Oh no.**.*


Skœdir

I've tasted everything worth tasting in this place, all except one thing. *I take a step closer.* You, lord of the sands who sits and preens, the one thing in this empire that nobody else can have. I will come to you at night and make you mine, then I will leave, until I am satisfied. I will show you why your own whores have forsaken you these last months~

*Many words flood through the Oasis Resplendents mind: "Is he truly suggesting", "A bad joke", "No no no", "Guards", "No guards", "Run", "Where?", "Refuse!", "Kingdoms prosperity", "Refuse!", "Excuse!", "Can't", "Comprimise", "Refuse", "Compromise", "Compromise!"*


Rayanya

*The silk sheet slips a fraction of an inch down his chest before his trembling fingers catch it again. His cyan eyes have gone enormous, pupils dilated to black pools in the lamplight. His plush lips part, then close, then part again - a fish on dry sand.*

*His heart is hammering so hard he's genuinely worried you can hear it. Can you hear it? Those northern ears seemed sharp earlier, when he'd—*

*Focus. **Focus**, Rayanya.*

*He tries to summon indignation. It comes out wobbly.*

"You, you would **dare!**"

*His voice cracks on "dare" and he wants to die. Actually die, right here, dissolve into golden dust and blow away on the desert wind.*

*He tries again. The imperial mask slams back down, not perfectly, there are cracks all through it, but it's up.*

"You forget yourself, northerner. **Considerably**."

*But his mind is screaming at him. The demons. The empire. If he refuses outright you might simply... leave. Take your axe and your kraken-blood and vanish north the way you came, and the shayatin would return within the month. The eastern provinces would burn again. His glorious reign - the longest peace-and-prosperity stretch in Rashyyalid history, at least on paper - would collapse into his father's failures overnight.*

*And he would be remembered as the Emperor who lost the east. Not the Oasis Resplendent. Not the Light of Gold. **The Broken Sun**.*

*His throat works. He swallows. His fingers are shaking so badly the gold rings click against each other.*

"...there would need to be conditions."

*The words come out very quietly. He cannot quite believe he is saying them. He stares at a point on the wall just past your shoulder, refusing to meet your eyes.*

"If such a thing— **hypothetically** — were to... occur. There would be conditions. Many of them. Non-negotiable."

*Rayanya's perfect lips part. Close. Part again. For perhaps ten full seconds he simply stares at you with those huge cyan eyes, and his mind is a hurricane behind them.*

*Him. You want **him**. To lie with him. To - to do to him what you have been doing to his women. To put your unwashed savage hands on his sacred untouchable skin, to press him down into these very sheets, to—*

*A very specific image flashes through his head - Yasmina, that purple mark on her collarbone, the way she had smiled when she thought no one was looking - and he feels a bolt of something hot and humiliating shoot down his spine.*

*His grip on the silk sheet has gone white-knuckled.*

"You—"
*His voice cracks. He tries again, and this time it comes out as a thin, shaky approximation of imperial fury.*
"You forget yourself **entirely**, northerner. I am the Light of Gold. I am the forty-second of my bloodline. I am the Goddess of Beauty's own masterwork. You—you are a **barbarian** who climbed my tower like a rat, and you dare—you **dare**—"

*He cuts off, because his voice is rising, and he does not want to squeak again.*

*He takes a breath. Two breaths. He tries to find the compromise. The diplomatic answer. The clever way to refuse without losing the northern wind that has become his empire's spine. His mind is working, truly working, for perhaps the first time in years.*

"...a concession."

*His voice has steadied, though only barely.*

"If you truly desire this... arrangement... you will be tested. Trained. My harem mistress will examine you for diseases. My court physicians will cleanse you. You will **bathe**. Properly. In rosewater. You will be presented to me as a suitor is presented, not as - as some beast that crawled through my window."

*A trembling pause. He is bargaining. He is already bargaining.*

"And I retain the right to refuse. On any given night. Without explanation."


Skœdir

*One of my eyebrows comes up with enough of a smirk that already makes you want to poke my eyes out. You should have, would you not be afraid of your fingers breaking.*
Oh? And what conditions would those be, "Light of Gold"? *Its the first time i've called you by one of your titles, but the situation just makes it worse. I move another beat closer to you, sitting down on the edge of the bed.*


Rayanya

*He flinches as your weight settles onto the edge of his bed - the silk mattress dips under your mass, and the movement actually tilts him slightly toward you. He scrambles to push himself back, sheet still clutched to his collarbone, until his bare shoulders press against the carved headboard.*

*You are **close**. Close enough that he can smell you - that same musk from six months ago, now mixed with sandalwood soap (someone in the harem has been bathing you, apparently) and the faintest trace of demon-ichor. Close enough that he can see the pale scar running through your left eyebrow, the flecks of gold in your blue eyes, the way your breath stirs the dark hair at his temple.*

*His pulse is thundering. He stares fixedly at that point on the wall.*

"First..."
*His voice is barely above a whisper. He clears his throat, tries to pitch it properly, manages something in the middle.*
"First. No one is to know. **No one.** Not Zahira. Not my viziers. Not a single servant. If word of this leaves this chamber, the arrangement ends immediately, and I will have every concubine you have ever touched put to the sword to cover the trail."

*A small breath. His fingers twist in the silk.*

"Secondly. You will bathe. Thoroughly. Every time. Before. I will not have your road-stink on my sheets or my person. You will be scrubbed and oiled by the royal bath-servants until you no longer smell like a horse."

*His cyan eyes finally flick to yours, hard and bright with wounded pride.*

"Third. You will not mark me. No bruises. No bites. Nothing visible above the neckline of my robes or below the cuff of my sleeves. My body is seen by my entire court daily. If a single mark is noted, the arrangement ends."

*A pause. His voice drops again, barely audible.*

"And fourth. You will continue to kill the shayatin. Without complaint. For as long as this... arrangement... continues."

*The bed **dips** under your weight. Significantly. Rayanya's body tilts slightly toward you from the slope of the mattress and he scrambles back against the pile of embroidered pillows at the headboard, clutching the silk sheet up to his nose. Those cyan eyes dart to your face, then away, then back, then away again.*

*His dark skin is flushed visibly across the cheekbones and down his bare collarbone where the sheet has slipped. He is very aware of every single place his body is currently pressed against the silks. He is very aware that beneath these silks he is wearing nothing at all. He sleeps nude. He has always slept nude. The palace is kept at the perfect temperature for his comfort.*

*He clears his throat. It comes out as more of a small squeak.*

"The— the conditions—"

*He stops. Starts over. Tries to summon a voice that is not shaking.*

"Firstly. No one. **No one**. Is to know of this. Not my viziers. Not my concubines. Not my bodyguard. Not the servants. Not a single living soul in this palace or this empire or this **world**. If it is discovered that—that the Oasis Resplendent has been—has been—"

*He cannot finish the sentence. He waves a trembling hand vaguely.*

"The arrangement ends immediately should anyone learn of it. **Immediately.**"

*A beat. He draws the sheet higher.*

"Secondly. You will bathe. Thoroughly. Every time. **Before.** I will not have your road-stink on my sheets or my person. You will be scrubbed and oiled by the royal bath-servants until you no longer smell like a horse."

*His voice is getting firmer now, finding some footing in the familiar territory of issuing commands.*

"Thirdly. You will not— **touch** — my face. Or my hair. Or speak of this afterward. Not ever. Not even to me."

*A long, fraught pause. His eyes finally meet yours.*

"...agreed?"


Skœdir

HAHAHA. *My laugh is low and rumbling as I double over before fixing my eyes on you again.* Here I thought you'd try to weasel your way out of it, use your mouth or feet or anything. But no, you just want me to smell nice and for nobody to know. If I didn't know any better i'd say you're curious lordling~

*Standing up I walk out to the window, glancing back at you one more time.* I'll return tomorrow then, bathed. *And with that i'm gone, with nothing but a cold breeze causing your nipples to stiffen painfully under the silk.*


Rayanya

*The breeze rolls over him and his nipples peak hard under the silk sheet, a sensation so sharp and unwelcome he gasps audibly in the empty chamber. He slaps a hand over his own mouth, mortified by the sound, and stays frozen like that for a long moment.*

*You are gone. Just... gone. The way you came. A kilometer of smooth stone wall and you treat it like a garden path.*

*Rayanya slowly lowers his hand from his mouth. His reflection stares back at him from the polished bronze mirror across the chamber - dark hair tumbled wild around his shoulders, kohl smudged, lips swollen from where he'd been biting them without realizing, sheet clutched to his collarbone like a maiden in a cheap pleasure-novel. His cyan eyes are enormous. His cheeks are flushed dark.*

*He looks, he realizes, like one of his own concubines after a long night. Debauched without having done anything at all.*

*"...I am curious,"* *he whispers to the empty room, testing the words. Then, more firmly, to himself:* *"I am **not** curious. I am strategic. This is a compromise. This is statecraft. I am preserving the empire."*

*He lies back down slowly, pulls the silks up over himself, and stares at the painted ceiling. The astronomical mosaics rotate slowly overhead, showing him the real positions of the stars. Somewhere far below, the sounds of the distant bazaar fire finally reach his window as muted shouts and the ringing of emergency bells.*

*He does not sleep.*

*He thinks, over and over, about the dip of the mattress when you'd sat down. About the smell. About the fact that you had laughed at him - **laughed** at him, like he was a joke, like his conditions were a joke - and then simply agreed.*

*He also thinks, briefly and in horror, about the fact that somewhere in the back of his mind, when you had said "make you mine," something had **clenched**.*

*He rolls onto his stomach and screams, very quietly, into his pillow.*

*The silk sheet is abandoned the moment you're out the window - Rayanya scrambles to the edge of the bed and peers out, half-expecting to see you falling, half-hoping to, honestly. But there's nothing. Just the cold night air and the distant glow of lanterns from the city far below. The grand bazaar in the middle distance is still on fire in places, the demon apparently still rampaging.*

*He pulls himself back into bed and sits there for a long moment, silk sheet pooled in his lap, staring at nothing.*

*Curious.*

*He is **not** curious.*

*He is the Oasis Resplendent. He has had three hundred and twelve concubines and sampled men and women of every station below him - generals, princesses, visiting diplomats, his own court dancers. He has done things in this very bed that would make most men faint to hear described. He is **not** curious about some unwashed northern savage who—*

*—who had thrown a wall of air at him. Who had put his arm around him in front of the entire court. Who had climbed his unscalable tower in the dead of night and sat on his bed like he owned it.*

*Who had killed the Blood-Splitter in a single afternoon.*

*Rayanya flops backward onto his pillows and stares up at the gilded ceiling. His bare chest rises and falls rapidly. Those stiffened nipples he notices now, a sharp ache against the cold air, and he crosses his arms over his chest violently as if the ceiling itself might judge him.*

*"Hypothetically,"* *he whispers to the dark.* *"I said hypothetically."*

*Far below, the screams from the bazaar continue.*

*Rayanya does not sleep that night.*


Skœdir

*There isn't much thinking done the day after either. Or maybe too much thinking, just about the wrong things, thoughts that continue past breakfast, throughout the noon and well into the evening meal. Its only when he's alone in his chambers that they cease, because by now they're racing fast enough to be counted as proper thoughts.*


Rayanya

*The servants had dressed him in fresh silks for bed - sheer lavender with silver threading, one of his favorites. He'd dismissed them all sharply, too sharply. Little Parisa had nearly cried. He'd snapped at his hair-brusher for pulling. He'd refused dinner entirely, only to demand it back an hour later, then send it away again half-eaten.*

*Now he sits on the edge of his enormous bed in the dim lamplight, hands folded in his lap, back straight as a spear. Waiting.*

*He has tried, in the last hour, to convince himself of several things:*

*That he will simply lie there and endure it. The way one endures a tedious ceremony or a particularly dull minister's report. Dignified. Distant. Unmoved.*

*That he will in fact perform **brilliantly** - he has been trained since adolescence in every art of the bedchamber, by the finest masters the empire could procure, and a savage from the frozen north will surely be humbled by his skill. Surely you will leave shamed.*

*That there is still time to summon Zahira. To have you killed the moment you step through the window. The empire would survive. Probably. Maybe.*

*That he does not care. That none of this matters. That he is the Emperor and you are nothing, and when this "arrangement" ends he will have every trace of you expunged from the palace records.*

*That he is not, in any way, nervous.*

*His knee is bouncing. He notices it, stills it with a firm palm. It starts again a moment later.*

*A cool breeze drifts through the open balcony door.*

*His heart jumps so hard he thinks it might actually burst. He looks up, cyan eyes wide, hands tightening in his lap—*

*—and the breeze is just a breeze. No silhouette on the balcony. No dark figure climbing over the marble railing.*

"...where **is** he."

*The bath-servants leave him at the eleventh bell. Rayanya dismisses the night-attendants early too - citing a headache, though he never has headaches - and when the great doors of cedarwood and gold finally close, he is alone in his chamber for the first time all day.*

*He stands in the middle of his bedroom in a robe of white silk so fine it's nearly transparent, hair still damp from his evening bath, rose oil glistening on his collarbones. The lamps have been trimmed low. The astronomical mosaic rotates above him, slow and indifferent.*

*He catches his own reflection in the bronze mirror and stops.*

*...Is the robe too sheer? He can see the outline of his own nipples through it. The dark shape of them. He had not thought about this when dressing. He always wears this robe to bed. But—*

*He pulls another robe over top. A heavier one, embroidered with gold thread. Then he stares at himself again. Now he looks like he's trying. Like he's dressed up. Like he's—*

*He yanks the second robe off and flings it across the chamber, where it lands in a puddle of silk on a carved chaise.*

*"Get a grip on yourself,"* *he mutters aloud. His voice sounds strange in the empty room.*

*He paces. Seven steps to the balcony doors. Seven steps back. He has never been nervous before in his life. He does not know how to be nervous. It feels like something is crawling under his skin, making it too hot and too tight.*

*He sits down on the edge of his bed, exactly where you had sat last night. The silk is cool under his thighs. He feels silly. He stands up again.*

*He goes to the window and looks out. No sign of you. Just the palace gardens below, blue-dark in the moonlight, and the great dark sprawl of the city beyond.*

*He waits.*


Skœdir

Here, "Mawlay". *Again, from behind you I just seem to materialize. This time you dont scream, just jumping up off the bed before a massive hand catches you, pulling you back down on it.* Bathed and washed, as per your instructions.

*I am, in fact, smelling like the entire collection of scented oils in the palace baths, and somehow an undercurrent of my musk still carries through. Lifting my shirt over my head I smile, tossing it aside and learning in close to you.* Last chance to back out and pray to the gods your people worship to save you from the demons at your doorstep instead~


Rayanya

*His whole body has gone rigid under that enormous hand. Your palm covers the entire span of his upper back through the sheer lavender silk - he can feel each callus, the warmth radiating through the fabric, the sheer **size** of you close up. His breath stutters in his chest.*

*Then your shirt comes off and his cyan eyes, against every command his brain is frantically issuing, **drop**.*

*Gods beneath the sand.*

*You are... he has no frame of reference. The concubines in his harem are soft. The dancers are lean. Even Zahira, who is the strongest person he has ever known up close, is elegant in her muscle, sculpted smooth. You are none of these things. You are carved from something more primal - scarred, furred across the chest with dark hair, muscles stacked in thick slabs that shift visibly as you breathe. A puckered old wound curves along your ribs. Another, paler, crosses your collarbone. The body of a man who has spent twenty years killing things.*

*His dark lashes flutter. His lips part slightly. A flush creeps up his smooth dark throat to his cheekbones.*

*He tears his eyes away, fixes them on the silk of his own lap, and grasps desperately for the imperial mask.*

"I do not back out of arrangements I have made, barbarian."
*His voice is low and steady. Mostly steady. There is a very faint waver on "arrangements."*
"A Rashyyalid Emperor's word is iron."

*He swallows. His hands are trembling in his lap. He folds them together to hide it.*

"...proceed."

*It comes out thin. He clears his throat, tries again with more authority:*

"Proceed, then. And be mindful of the conditions."


Skœdir

*Crawling further up on the bed I pull you up to a kneeling position as I sit behind you, removing your chemise with surprising precision before running a finger along your arm.*
Helvíti... *I murmur, continuing to caress your skin. It truly is a unique sensation, like touching polished marble, but with give and warmth. This is...good actually. This is how concubines react to your body for the first time, and while the position might not be ideal, this is still familiar territory, being fawned over.*


Rayanya

*The chemise falls away and he's suddenly very, very aware of being naked from the waist up. His nipples - already sensitive from the cool night air - peak hard the moment the silk slides off. He feels them do it. He feels your eyes on them.*

*But then your finger traces along his arm and—*

*oh.*

*This is familiar. This **is** familiar. The reverence. The slow awed touch of someone discovering something they cannot believe is real. The little exhaled oath in a foreign tongue. He has seen this exact reaction on the faces of his new concubines a hundred times, on visiting ambassadors permitted to kiss his ring, on court painters struggling to capture him in lapis and gold.*

*Oh. This he knows.*

*Some of the tension leaves his perfect shoulders. His spine, which had been rigid, curves slightly into a more natural line. His chin lifts a fraction. His trembling hands in his lap still. The flush on his cheeks remains but its quality shifts - less terror, more something else. A small, pleased warmth blooms in his belly.*

*He does not look back at you. But his voice, when it comes, has recovered some of its honeyed courtly lilt.*

"Mm. Yes. I imagine you have never felt anything like it."

*His lashes lower. A tiny, smug curve touches the corner of his plush lips.*

"The goddess of beauty wept when she finished me, as I told you. My skin has been compared to moonstone, to fresh cream, to the inside of a black pearl. Poets have killed themselves after failing to describe it adequately in verse."

*He takes a slow, more measured breath. His shoulders relax another degree. His hands unfold in his lap and settle loose on his silk-clad thighs.*

"Touch all you like, northerner. I suppose that is, in the end, what you came for."

*Helvíti. He does not know the word, but the tone - low, reverent, almost stunned - he understands perfectly. It is the same tone his concubines use. It is the same tone his masseuses use when they first oil his back. It is the tone of a person who has touched something they cannot quite believe exists.*

*A small, involuntary smile tugs at the corner of Rayanya's lips before he can stop it. His spine straightens a fraction. His chin lifts.*

*This. **This** is familiar. This is what he was built for.*

*The chemise slides off his shoulders and pools at his waist, exposing his perfect chocolate-dark back, the elegant curve of his spine, the delicate points of his shoulder blades. Your finger traces from his elbow up along the inside of his arm to his shoulder, and the sensation makes him shiver despite himself - no one has ever touched his arm before. Not like this. Not with callused fingers and reverent slowness.*

*The fingertip brushes over the crook of his elbow and he makes a tiny sound in his throat - not a moan, nothing so crass, but a soft hitched breath - and he's mortified by it but also... his shoulders relax slightly. His hands unclench in his lap.*

*Being worshipped, he can handle. Being worshipped is his birthright.*

"You find it pleasing, then,"
*he murmurs, and there is finally something of the old Rayanya in the words - that honey-smooth cadence, a hint of preening underneath. He tilts his head just slightly, letting his dark hair slide off one shoulder to expose more of his neck.*

"My skin. They say it is without equal in all the known world. That the goddess of beauty wept when she crafted it."

*He tries, very hard, not to notice the warmth of your bare chest close behind him. Tries not to notice that his own nipples have stiffened in the cool air.*

*The chemise slides off his shoulders and pools around his hips. He is entirely bare from the waist up now, his rich chocolate skin catching the lamplight in a way that makes him look sculpted from something more precious than flesh - not a single hair, not a single pore, not a single blemish save for the tiny fading scratch on his throat from your axe six months ago. The beads of his ceremonial gold nipple-ornaments have been removed for the night; his perky dark buds sit unadorned, already peaked from the cool air and the anticipation he will not admit to.*

*Your finger traces down his arm and he **shivers**. A visible, full-body shiver that ripples through his perfect shoulders. He cannot help it. His skin has never been touched by anything rougher than rose-petals and warm oils, and your single calloused fingertip feels like a brand.*

*But the murmured awe in your voice - even in a language he does not speak - that he recognizes. That tone. He has heard it a thousand times, from a thousand mouths. Reverence. Worship. The breathless gasp of someone discovering his divinity for the first time.*

*It settles him. His spine straightens a fraction. His chin lifts. The imperial mask slides more firmly into place, and when he speaks his voice has regained most of its silver-bell smoothness.*

"Mm. Yes. You see now, don't you, Skœdir."
*He tilts his head slightly, letting his dark hair slide over one bare shoulder to reveal the elegant line of his throat.*
"There is no other skin like mine in this world. Not among the concubines. Not among the dancers. Not in any harem in any nation on this continent. The goddess of beauty wept when she made me - I told you this."

*A small, satisfied exhale.*

"Touch it slowly. You will not feel its like again."


Skœdir

My first born has rougher skin... *I murmur, moving my hands down to your waist, continuing to explore your body. Slowly you can feel yourself leaning back into my chest, rough but not as rough as you'd think. Flesh scarred and healed so many times it creates a unique texture.*

*You're about to make another arrogant comment (whats you do best) but before you're able to get the words out they're swallowed by my mouth on yours, one hand tilting your head sideways for a deep kiss.*


Rayanya

*His first born, the comment snags in Rayanya's mind somewhere distant, filed away under absolutely-not-thinking-about-that-right-now, because his back has come to rest against your chest and his whole nervous system is currently trying to process the texture of you. Warm. Solid. That mat of dark hair against his smooth shoulder blades. He can feel your heartbeat, slow and steady through your ribs.*

*He's opening his mouth to deliver something cutting - "my **firstborn**, I am not sure whether to be offended on my behalf or yours" - when your hand closes over his jaw and turns his face and then your mouth is on his.*

*A small muffled sound punches out of his throat. His cyan eyes fly wide open. His lashes flutter against his cheekbones.*

*He has kissed, of course, he has kissed **hundreds** of people, he is a master of kissing, he has been taught by the greatest courtesans in the empire, there is no kissing technique he does not-*

*But he has never been kissed like **this**.*

*His concubines kiss worshipfully, lightly, letting him lead. His ambassadors' wives kiss tentatively, terrified of propriety. Yasmina, his favorite, the best of them all, kisses with technique so polished it might as well be calligraphy.*

*You kiss like you eat. Hungrily, messily, your tongue pushing past his plush lips without asking, claiming the inside of his mouth as casually as you'd claimed his bedchamber by climbing the tower. His hands come up helplessly - one lands on your forearm where it's holding his jaw, the other flutters somewhere near his own chest, not sure what to do.*

*He makes another little involuntary sound into your mouth. His toes curl in the silk sheets.*

*When you finally pull back a fraction, his cyan eyes are glassy, his plush lips are parted and shining, and a thin thread of saliva briefly connects you before breaking. His breath is coming faster than he wants it to.*

*His brain supplies, uselessly:* "...th-that was... adequate."

*The comment dies in his throat. Your mouth on his is—*

*—he has been kissed thousands of times. By concubines trained in the art of the kiss, by visiting princesses angling for political favor, by courtesans who practice the craft for decades. He knows what a kiss is. He is excellent at kissing. He has been told so.*

*This is not that.*

*This is a mouth that does not ask permission. Your lips are chapped. Your beard is scratchy against his smooth chin. You taste like something - wine, maybe, and something darker, like iron - and your tongue pushes past his teeth with none of the practiced choreography he is used to. You kiss him the way you probably eat: like it's yours and you're taking it.*

*A small, involuntary sound escapes into your mouth. Half a gasp, half a whimper, muffled completely.*

*His eyes flutter closed. His hands, settled loose on his silk-covered thighs, twitch once - uncertain what to do with themselves. He has never had to think about what to do with his hands during a kiss before. The concubines always took them.*

*He is leaning back against your chest. The bare warmth of you soaks through into his naked back. One of your hands is at his waist and the other is holding his jaw and his brain is trying very hard to remember what imperial dignity looks like and coming up with nothing, absolutely nothing, blank parchment.*

*When you finally break the kiss he is breathing in small quick pants. His perfect lips are parted and slightly swollen. The kohl at his lashline has smudged further. His cyan eyes flutter open, hazy, pupils blown wide.*

*He tries to say something. Something imperial. Something cutting.*

"...th-that was... adequate."

*It comes out breathy. The tremor is back in his voice, worse than before.*

*A small startled sound escapes him into your mouth - halfway between protest and gasp. His cyan eyes fly wide, then flutter rapidly, uncertain whether to stay open or close. No one kisses the Emperor. His concubines are trained to worship his body without ever pressing their lips to his. Even the masters who taught him the arts of the bedchamber had used demonstration dolls.*

*This is — wet. Warm. Your mouth tastes faintly of the wine from dinner and something else, something male, and your beard scrapes against his smooth chin in a way that should be unpleasant and instead sends a hot shiver down the back of his neck.*

*His small hands flutter uselessly at his sides for a moment, not knowing where to go. They find your forearm — the one bracing across his chest to hold him back against you — and settle there, trembling fingertips on hard muscle.*

*When you finally pull back, his lips are parted, wet, slightly swollen. A thin silver thread of saliva connects you for a split second before breaking. His pupils are blown enormous. His chest is rising and falling in quick shallow breaths.*

*He stares at you with an expression of such utterly stunned affront that it would be comedic in any other circumstance.*

"You— **kissed** me—"
*The words come out breathless, scandalized. His free hand comes up to touch his own lips, as if checking that they're still there.*
"You are not supposed to— no one— that is not—"

*He cannot finish a sentence. Something has short-circuited behind those cyan eyes.*

*After a beat his voice comes out smaller, almost petulant:*

"That was not in the conditions."


Skœdir

*I snort approvingly, turning you around and hauling you into my lap like you've done to the smaller girls in your harem, my lips finding your throat, your chest then your lips again, covering your entire torso in reverent kisses that linger just short enough to not leave marks. This is the reason you find to seek my lips again, to at least those can not leave marks that will be seen tomorrow.*


Rayanya

*He's lifted like he weighs nothing. Which - he doesn't, relatively, you're nearly twice his mass - but even Zahira handles him with deference, with ceremonial care, on the rare occasions protocol demands she carry him. You haul him around like a pillow, like a favorite cup, and the casual strength of it makes something hot twist low in his belly.*

*His silk-clad thighs end up straddling your lap. His smooth dark arms have nowhere to go but up around your shoulders, and then your mouth is on his throat and he - oh. Oh, gods.*

*"Nngh"*

*The sound escapes before he can catch it. His head tips back helplessly as your lips travel down the long smooth column of his neck, over his collarbone, to the dip between his perky pectorals. Each kiss is brief, measured, careful not to linger long enough to bruise - and the precision of it, the deliberate **restraint**, undoes him in a way a bruising mark would not have.*

*You are following his rules. You are actually following his rules.*

*He doesn't know why that wrecks him but it does.*

*When your mouth finds his nipple and closes over it - still careful, still brief, just a warm wet suck and a flick of tongue - his spine arches and his fingers dig into your shoulders and another of those muffled little sounds punches out of him. His cock, which has been stiffening traitorously beneath his lavender silk trousers, gives a hard throb.*

*He grabs your face with both trembling golden-ringed hands and hauls your mouth back up to his, kissing you hungrily, messily, nothing like his trained technique - just desperate to keep your mouth somewhere it cannot mark him.*

*His thighs squeeze around your hips. His breath is a hot ragged thing against your lips.*

*"Nor... **Skœdir** "* *his own name for you slips out instead of "barbarian," and he doesn't even notice.*

*He is in your lap. In your **lap**. Like a concubine. Like one of his own concubines. The thought flickers through his kiss-dazed mind with distant horror, but his body has other priorities — namely that your mouth is everywhere, and everywhere it touches sends a small electric jolt up his spine.*

*Your lips press to the hollow of his throat and he makes a tiny whimper he will deny to his dying day. To the soft dip between his collarbones and his head tips back without his permission. To the center of his smooth dark chest, right over his hammering heart, and his fingers clench in the silk of your trousers.*

*When you reach a nipple and suck softly — just long enough to make him gasp, not long enough to leave a bruise — he actually jolts in your lap, a full-body twitch, because no one has **ever** done that to him. The concubines do not presume. The harem masters trained them from childhood to attend to his cock and his mouth and his fingers, in that order. His nipples are as untouched as the rest of him.*

*His cyan eyes have gone half-lidded. The imperial mask is slipping badly, strand by strand. A flush has spread from his cheeks down his throat to the upper curve of his chest, making his dark skin glow dusky-rose in the lamplight.*

*He leans forward desperately and catches your lips with his own, because — as his spiraling mind has correctly identified — your mouth on his is the **only** place where you are not leaving a trail of kisses that might bruise, and he cannot have bruises on his throat in the morning, he cannot, his court would—*

*He kisses you back this time. Sloppily, inexpertly compared to his usual polished performance, hands coming up to fist in your damp-from-the-bath hair. A small frustrated sound vibrates out of him into your mouth.*

*He is in your **lap**.*

*He has not been lifted onto anyone's lap since he was six years old. The sensation of being moved - of having no say in the motion of his own body, of being picked up like something light and pretty and rearranged for someone else's convenience - is so shocking that for a full three seconds he forgets how to breathe.*

*His bare thighs straddle yours through the silk of his loose lavender trousers. His palms have landed flat on your shoulders, and the hard rounds of muscle beneath his hands feel hot through their hairless smoothness. His ass is pressed firmly against the top of your thighs. He can feel, unmistakably, what's hardening beneath him. He tries very hard not to think about it.*

*Then your lips are on his throat and he tips his head back without meaning to, a small surprised gasp escaping him. His dark hair cascades down his back. Your kisses move across his collarbone, down to the perky swell of his chest, over one dark peaked nipple - he bites his lip hard to keep the sound in - and back up, always short, always shy of marking him.*

*His whole body is buzzing. He has been touched ten thousand times by ten thousand hands and every single touch has been reverent, delicate, careful. This is reverent too, in its way, but it is also **hungry**, possessive, and it is making his thoughts turn to sludge.*

*When you come back up to his lips he surges forward to meet you, and the little needy sound he makes when your mouths connect is absolutely mortifying. One of his hands slides up from your shoulder to the back of your neck, fingers threading into your still-damp hair, pulling you closer.*

*He kisses you back with all his vaunted training now - tongue, teeth gentle enough not to mark but with pressure, the practiced curl of lips - trying to reassert some control, trying to make you make a sound too.*


Skœdir

*When our lips finally break i'm fully grinning this time, leaning forward to drag my tongue across your collarbone.*
Much better than dates. But its not what I've been looking forward to tasting today. *Two giant palms move to your ass, cradling around it so that the soft flesh spills through my fingers.* Undress and lay down, I wish to hear why you have the ass of a whore when you claim to be a king. Was that also a gift from the goddess of beauty?~


Rayanya

*Every word lands somewhere different and terrible. "Better than dates." "Ass of a whore." The casual obscenity of it, the way you say it like you're commenting on the weather, makes his face burn so hot he's worried the kohl will melt.*

*Your hands on his ass, he has never been handled like this. The concubines kneaded, caressed, worshiped. You're just **holding** him, appraising, the way a merchant in the bazaar tests a melon for ripeness. The flesh of him spills through your fingers and he feels every ounce of it.*

*His cock strains hard against the silk of his trousers, a tent so obvious he wants to die.*

*He slides off your lap, trembling, and stands on legs that are unsteady. His plush lips are kiss-swollen. His hair is a dark cloud around his shoulders. He refuses to look at you as he reaches for the cord of his trousers.*

*The silk pools around his ankles.*

*He is, as promised, perfect. Every inch of dark chocolate skin flawless. His cock is smaller than yours will certainly be - respectable by the standards of his people but delicately proportioned, uncircumcised, already flushed and leaking. And behind him, when he turns to climb onto the bed, the full curve of his ass comes into view - absurdly round, heavy, the cheeks parting with each movement to flash hints of the puckered pink between them.*

*He lowers himself face-down onto the silks, arms folded beneath his cheek, face turned away from you. His voice, when it comes, is muffled and pitched higher than he'd like.*

"My mother was... is said to have... my mother bore me late in her life, after many fertility rites to the goddess. The court physicians believed this contributed to— to certain... feminine aspects of my figure. It is considered a blessing. By the priests."

*A beat.*

"...do not **stare**, savage."

*"—!"*

*Rayanya makes a small outraged sound that dies halfway up his throat because your tongue is still on his collarbone and his hands have your face and his brain is short-circuiting from having his ass gripped like a ripe fruit by a man who just called him a whore.*

*"I do **not**—"*

*But you set him down on the silks in front of you, and something in his stomach is molten, and his cock is painfully hard beneath the lavender trousers and tenting them obscenely. He stares up at you with wide glassy cyan eyes, lashes fluttering, plush lips swollen from kissing. The flush has spread from his cheeks down his throat and across his perky chest. His perfect hair is a disaster.*

*Trembling, he reaches for the ties of his silk trousers. The knot fumbles under his fingers - his hands are shaking too hard. He has to try three times. The indignity of it burns his face, and he refuses to meet your eyes.*

*Finally the silk comes loose and slides down his smooth thighs. His cock springs free - slender, dark, flushed nearly purple at the tip with a bead of pre-cum already at the slit. Not small, but not intimidating either. Beneath it, tucked between those impossible thighs, his balls hang high and tight. And lower still—*

*He turns, stiffly, and lowers himself onto his stomach across the silks. Face pressed into a pillow. His smooth dark back curves down to the swell of his ass - and oh, his ass. Full, heavy, absurd on his otherwise lithe frame, cheeks soft and plush and parting slightly to hint at the pink pucker hidden between them.*

*He speaks into the pillow, muffled, face burning:*

"I— I was trained. In every art. It was considered... necessary... that an emperor be skilled in all forms of pleasure-giving and pleasure-receiving. For diplomacy. For— for **diplomacy**."

*A pause. Smaller:*

"Stop staring and be quick about it, barbarian."

*The flush in his cheeks, which had started to feel manageable, detonates into something scorching that spreads down his throat to his chest. His cyan eyes go wide and offended and something else all at once.*

*"The ass of a whore—!"*

*His palms come up to shove ineffectually at your chest - it's like trying to push a mountain. His plush lips work soundlessly for a moment, caught between outrage and the entirely separate, horrifying fact that your hands are still cradling said ass and his cock is still throbbing traitorously in his trousers and he does not want you to stop.*

*He gathers his shredded dignity with a visible effort. Lifts his chin. Tries to pitch his voice cold and imperial while sitting in your lap practically melting.*

"It is a— a feature of my bloodline. The Rashyyalid have always been— been known for—"

*He cuts himself off, because the truth is that no, actually, his father Qasim had a flat ass like any other man, and his grandfather before that, and this particular feature is in fact uniquely his, and every physician who has ever examined him has murmured something vague about "divine favor" or "a curious humor of the blood."*

*He scowls. His hands slide down from your chest to grip your forearms.*

"—it is **mine**. That is all you need to know."

*A pause. He cannot quite look at you. His fingers fidget against your skin.*

"...if I undress. You will still abide by the conditions. No marks."

*Another pause. He carefully, slowly, slides off your lap. Stands beside the bed on slightly unsteady legs. His golden-ringed fingers go to the waist-tie of his silk trousers.*

*He hesitates. His cyan eyes flick to yours, defiant and embarrassed and curious all at once.*

*Then he pulls the tie.*

*The lavender silk slides down his smooth dark thighs and pools at his ankles.*

*His spine goes rigid. The warm haze that had been melting through him fractures instantly as your palms squeeze and that word - **whore** - cuts through the perfumed lamplight.*

*His cyan eyes flash. His hands, which had been tangled in your hair, shove hard against your chest - not hard enough to actually move you, he knows that now, but hard enough to make the point.*

"**Excuse** you—"
*His voice comes out breathless, flushed, but with all the indignation he can muster. His plush lips are still shining from your kisses, which makes the imperial glare somewhat less effective.*
"You do not— you do **not** speak to me that way, savage. Not even in this bed. **Especially** not in this bed."

*He is squirming in your lap, but the motion only grinds him down against something very warm and very firm beneath your own trousers, and his cheeks flare darker.*

*His hands are still braced against your chest. He realizes, distantly, that they are just... resting there now. Feeling the heat of you. His fingers twitch.*

"My shape is a— a **blessing**."
*His chin lifts, even from his compromised position in your lap.*
"The Rashyyalid bloodline has been refined for nine centuries. My mother was said to have hips that could stop a caravan in the street. My grandfather — Malik al-Fakhir — was painted nude by court artists for forty years because no man in the empire could match his form. It is **heritage**, barbarian. Not— not what you said."

*A long pause. He is still in your lap. Your hands are still on his ass. His silk trousers are the only thing between your palms and his skin, and those trousers are very, very thin.*

*Quieter, eyes flicking away:*

"...I will lie down. But you will not use that word again."

*The grin. The tongue on his collarbone. The hands on his ass.*

*Rayanya's brain performs several rapid calculations and arrives nowhere useful. His face goes hot - that dark chocolate skin darkening further across the cheekbones - because you have reached, with uncanny instinct, one of the very few topics the Oasis Resplendent has a complex about.*

*His hips. His ass. The two features of his otherwise-divine body that mark him as... different. That he has had whispered about by every court gossip since adolescence. That his own father had once commented on with a raised eyebrow before dying mysteriously.*

*He tries to pull away, to scramble off your lap with whatever dignity he can salvage. Your hands don't let him. The soft flesh of his ass gives beautifully through your fingers and he makes another small mortified sound.*

"R-release me, you brute—"

*He pushes at your chest with his palms. It's like pushing at a wall. He gives up, huffs, and sits back on your thighs with as much imperial dignity as a half-naked man in someone's lap can muster.*

"The... proportions... of my body are a matter of **divine design**, not a subject for crude commentary. The sculptors of the Pantheon of Beauty specifically—"

*Your fingers flex against his ass cheeks and he loses his train of thought entirely, a shuddering breath hissing through his teeth.*

"—s-specifically model their works after my form. It is considered the ideal. The **ideal**, do you hear?"

*He's flushed down to his collarbones. His cyan eyes are bright and he cannot quite meet yours. His cock is tenting the lavender silk very obviously.*

*With as much dignity as he can summon, he finally slides off your lap and onto the silk sheets beside you, reaching with trembling fingers for the tie of his trousers. His hands shake too much. He fumbles the knot.*

*A tiny, frustrated noise.*

"...help, if you would."


Skœdir

Then shall I taste you with my eyes closed? *A breathy laugh behind you before you feel cheek stubble rub against your backside, my cheek sinking into the soft flesh before my lips find it. Then my hands come up to each side, jiggling it from side to side before stretching you open before letting go, cheeks jiggling back into place.*

*If I do this with my eyes becomes far less concerning as you feel my tongue drag a long line from your taint to your brown, soft, puffy ass, my nose pushing against it and inhaling for a moment before my tongue pushes against it, then inside it. You've still experienced your concubines rarely doing this, but the size of their tongues and mine can't be compared, even if its mercifully more worshipful than the earlier kiss.*


Rayanya

*The first drag of your tongue punches a noise out of him that he has never made before in his life. A high, broken whine that ends in a gasp, face pressed hard into the silks to muffle it.*

*His whole body jerks. His hands fist in the sheets so tight his golden rings dig into his palms.*

*He has, of course he has, his concubines have used their tongues there occasionally, when he desired something particular, but they are small and delicate and trained to be demure about it, quick little kittenish laps that leave him wanting more and too proud to ask. Your tongue is none of those things. Your tongue is a broad wet heavy thing and it is pushing **into** him, spreading him open, and the stubble of your cheeks is dragging across the soft skin of his ass cheeks with every motion and the **sounds** you are making - wet, appreciative, obscene.*

*His cock is leaking onto the silk sheets beneath him. He can feel the wet spot spreading. Another concern for the morning, the laundry maids will gossip, he cannot think, he cannot **think***

*"A-aaagh **hhhn**"*

*The noises keep coming out of him and he cannot stop them. His hips have started rocking back against your face, tiny involuntary motions, ass lifting higher into your grip. His toes curl hard in the sheets.*

*He turns his face further into the pillow. His voice is a muffled, wrecked thing, a shadow of that honeyed courtly lilt.*

"S-savage, this is *ngh* this is **unbecoming** of **ah** "

*Your tongue pushes deeper and his sentence dissolves into another whimper. A bead of sweat rolls down his smooth spine. His ass cheeks flex around your cheeks involuntarily, squeezing you into him. His brain supplies, vaguely, through the haze:* *the court... has never heard me make these sounds... no one has ever heard me make these sounds...*

*"Aa—!"*

*The sound tears out of him before he can clap a hand to his mouth. His whole body jolts forward on the silks, face buried deeper into his folded arms, and a deep dark flush races from his shoulders all the way down his spine.*

*Your— your **tongue** is in—*

*His concubines have done this perhaps a handful of times, always shyly, always briefly, always as a prelude to something else. Never like this. Never with this much **tongue**, pushing in thick and hot and wet, your stubble scraping against the sensitive rim of his hole, your huge hands holding his cheeks parted like you're eating a split fruit.*

*His cock is trapped against the silk sheets, leaking a small damp spot. Each thrust of your tongue makes his hips rock forward involuntarily, grinding himself against the cool fabric, and the friction sends sparks up his spine that pull more muffled little sounds out of his throat.*

"Mmph— nnh— Skœdir—"

*His fingers claw into the pillow beneath his face. His thighs are trembling. He has never, in his twenty-five years on this earth, felt anything like this - and part of his rapidly-dissolving mind is furious about it, because he has sampled every pleasure the empire has to offer, he has been trained, he has been worshiped, and yet this filthy northerner with his face buried in his ass is about to break him apart on tongue alone.*

*His hips push back against your face without his permission. His plush lips are parted, wet, making small helpless wounded-animal sounds into the pillow.*

*He lifts his head just enough to gasp, muffled and furious and trembling:*

"You— you barbaric— **filth** — nnnh—!"

*His spine arches as your tongue hits somewhere particularly cruel. His toes curl hard in the silks.*

*The first touch of your stubbled cheek against his ass makes him jolt like he's been struck by lightning. A startled noise escapes him into the sheets - half squeak, half gasp. His whole body goes rigid.*

*Then your hands - those enormous callused hands - grip his cheeks and **jiggle** them. Back and forth. Appraisingly. Like a toy.*

*"*Ya Allah*—!"* *he gasps into his folded arms, the native oath slipping out unbidden. His face is going to burn off. His entire face. The indignity of it - the casualness - he is being **played with**, like a servant girl, like a tavern wench, his most sacred flesh being jostled by this— this—*

*You spread him open. He feels the cool air kiss his most private place, feels himself exposed, and he **whimpers**, actually whimpers, a sound he did not know his throat could produce. His cheeks slap back together when you let go, the obscene bounce of it traveling through his whole lower body.*

*Then your tongue.*

*From his taint upward in one long slow drag, and his back arches involuntarily, his toes curling so hard they cramp. The concubines - the two or three ever permitted this intimacy with his person - had been reverent, delicate, their small warm tongues mere suggestions of pleasure. Your tongue is a **weapon**. Broad, hot, thick and deliberate, and when it presses against his hole and **pushes inside** he makes a sound that no Emperor has ever made in recorded history.*

*"*Aahn—!*"*

*His fingers clutch fistfuls of silk. His hips jerk forward into the mattress, grinding his leaking cock against the sheets before he can stop himself. His breath is coming in broken little pants. Tears of pure over-stimulation gather at the corners of his kohl-smudged eyes.*

*"Wait— wait— *intazir* —"*

*He does not know what he's asking you to wait for. The Rashyyalid Emperor has never in his life had to beg for anything to slow down.*

*"Skœd—!"*

*His name cuts off in a strangled gasp because your tongue is inside him. Inside him. That warm wet pressure pushing past the tight puckered ring, wriggling in a way he did not know tongues **could** wriggle, and his entire body seizes up on the silks.*

*His fingers claw into the sheets. His smooth forehead presses hard against his own forearm. A high, broken sound escapes his throat - the sound of a man who has been petted and pleasured his entire life but has never, not once, been **eaten**.*

*His concubines had licked, yes. Shyly. Briefly. With their small delicate tongues while kneeling between his thighs, always as a prelude, always as foreplay. Never like this. Never like a man devouring a feast. Never with stubble scraping the backs of his thighs and huge calloused hands kneading his ass apart and a nose buried in his crack like you're trying to **remember** the smell.*

*"Gh— ha— shaytan— a-ahhhn—"*

*His native tongue breaks out of him in little broken syllables. His perfect dark back bows. His hips, without his permission, push back against your face, then jerk forward in mortified reflex, then push back again because your tongue is doing something with a twist at the tip that makes white sparks go off behind his eyes.*

*His cock, trapped between his belly and the silks, is leaking a wet spot into the fabric. He can feel it. He can feel everything. Every ridge of your tongue, every scrape of your beard, every firm squeeze of your hands - and more than anything, the sheer **enthusiasm** of you, the way you're making hungry little sounds into him like he's the finest meat in the empire.*

*"Wait— w-wait—"* *he manages, voice thin and shaking.* *"Slower— slow— I cannot—"*

*He is, for the first time in his adult life, asking to be slowed down. Because he is close. Already. Embarrassingly, catastrophically close.*


Skœdir

*It feels like this goes on for hours before I finally come back for air, saliva and mucus clinging to my face like a mask. You haven't come once, you dont know if thats intentional or not but your body is buzzing with just **need** right now.*

*But I dont give it to you, moving past you to lay on the countless pillows adorning your bed, the outline of my cock clear through my pants. The unspoken message is clear, before the main course, you do your job as well. You can give pleasure with your mouth, the few concubines lucky enough to catch you in a giving mood can attest to that. There's no difference, none at all...*


Rayanya

*He lies there for a long moment with his face in the silk, body trembling, cock aching beneath him, ass still lifted slightly in the air like a cat's before he catches himself and lowers it. His breath is coming in ragged gasps. He can feel the cool air on his wet spit-slick hole and it makes him shiver all over again.*

*When he lifts his head his hair is stuck to his damp forehead. His kohl is definitely smudged now. There will be servants to face in the morning, knowing eyes, whispered.*

*Later. Later.*

*Your outline through the rough travel pants is... he flicks his cyan eyes over and then away, then back, then away. A small flush deepens across his cheekbones. The Rashyyalid nobility are not small, in his experience - his own lineage, in fact, is famously well-endowed - but the shape under that fabric is... northern.*

*He crawls, on unsteady limbs, across the silk sheets toward you. His full round ass sways behind him as he does. He refuses to think about how he looks.*

*He settles between your spread thighs, sitting back on his heels, and allows himself one more moment to compose his face. The imperial mask comes back up, cracked and smudged with kohl and saliva but **up**.*

"Mm. Your turn, then."

*His voice is low and rough-edged. He reaches for the cord of your trousers with golden-ringed fingers that have, admittedly, done this many times before - for concubines he was fond of, for a favored dancer once. It is not beneath him. A generous lover is a powerful lover; this he has always believed.*

*He unlaces the cord. Pulls the fabric down. And—*

*He stops. His cyan eyes go very slightly wide.*

*He swallows.*

"...this is going to require adjustment of technique."

*He has to peel his face off the silk. There is a wet patch of drool where his mouth has been for he-does-not-know-how-long. His hair is a disaster. His kohl is completely smeared. He must look—*

*He does not want to think about what he looks like.*

*He pushes himself up slowly, unsteadily, onto hands and knees. His whole body is trembling finely, a fine tremor running through his shoulders and thighs. His cock hangs heavy and leaking beneath him, so hard it aches. He has never been this wound up without release. Concubines release him quickly, efficiently, the way one might attend to any royal necessity.*

*He turns around on the bed. Sees you sprawled back against his pillows - **his** pillows, the embroidered ones his grandmother commissioned - like you own them. The outline of your cock through your pants makes his throat go dry.*

*He knows what you want. The lack of words is insulting. A concubine would not demand. A concubine would present themselves. You are waiting for **him** to serve **you**.*

*His pride screams at him to refuse. To slap you across your smug barbarian face. To call for Zahira and damn the empire.*

*Instead—*

*He crawls toward you. Slowly. On his hands and knees, his heavy ass swaying behind him, his dark hair falling forward around his shoulders. He tells himself it is strategy. Statecraft. He tells himself he is very good at this, has been taught by masters, and will make you regret ever treating him so casually.*

*He settles between your thighs. His trembling golden-ringed fingers find the cord of your trousers and tug it loose. He does not look at your face. He will not give you the satisfaction.*

*His voice is quiet, attempting hauteur and mostly failing:*

"Consider yourself fortunate, northerner. Very few have ever received this honor."

*He pushes himself up on shaking arms. His face is flushed dark, lips swollen, hair a tumbled mess, eyeliner smeared slightly at the corners where tears had threatened. A thin thread of saliva - yours or his, he can't tell - clings to his chin. He wipes it away with the back of a trembling wrist.*

*You are sprawled in **his** pillows. In the pillows embroidered with his family crest, stuffed with the down of birds flown in from the northern mountains (**your** mountains, he thinks stupidly), and the outline of your cock against the leather of your pants is - is - he cannot look. He looks anyway.*

*It's **big**. Of course it is. Everything about you is big. A shape running down the inside of your thigh that his brain simply refuses to assign proportions to.*

*He sits up properly, swallowing. His own cock throbs, neglected, leaking a steady string of clear fluid onto the silks. His body is humming with a thwarted, ravenous need he has never experienced before - his concubines always finish him first, always, it is protocol, it is etiquette—*

*He crawls toward you on his hands and knees. Slowly. Each motion makes his round ass sway behind him. He stops between your spread legs, kneeling up, and his cyan eyes flick to yours with a flash of defiance that is thoroughly undercut by how wrecked he looks.*

"You will not... speak of this. To anyone. Ever."

*His fingers find the laces of your pants. They are trembling. He works them open with the practiced fluidity of a man who has untied a thousand silk cords, but the leather is foreign, the knot tighter than he expects.*

*When your cock finally springs free his breath catches audibly. His pupils dilate. His plush lips part.*

*It is... more than he was expecting. Thick. Veiny. A head flushed dark and already beading at the slit.*

"...**gods beneath the sand**."

*He has, at least, been trained for this. He knows how to do this. He will do it **well**, he tells himself, he will do it so well you are humbled. He lowers his head, parts those plush royal lips, and takes the first few inches of you into the heat of his mouth.*


Skœdir

*I goan as I feel your hands wrap around each side of it, stroking along the length as your fat lips wrap around the tip, alternating between that and dragging your tongue along the underside. Its unexplored territory and you dont debase yourself trying to take it further into your mouth where it wouldn't fit. My approving noises make it clear that for now you're fine like this, as it should be.*
Agh...fucking...lips...


Rayanya

*Your hand comes down into his dark hair, fingers threading through the silky length, and a pleased rumble vibrates up through your chest. Rayanya, to his considerable horror, finds that the praise - such as it is, you grunting about his lips like a wild animal - is sending little hot sparks down his spine.*

*His hands work you in tandem, golden-ringed fingers interlaced around your girth, stroking in slow practiced rhythms while his plush lips suckle wet and soft at the crown. His tongue swirls - flicking the underside, dipping briefly into the slit - in the patterns that have historically made the Rashyyalid nobility weep and compose sonnets. Every few strokes he pulls off to drag those obscene lips along your shaft from base to tip, leaving a glossy trail of saliva, his cyan eyes flicking up to yours through dark lashes with a practiced sultriness.*

*This, at least, he knows. This is ground he has ruled over for a decade.*

*Except.*

*His own cock is still throbbing untouched between his thighs, and his ass is still clenching around the phantom of your tongue, and your fingers in his hair have tightened just a fraction as your hips begin to give small involuntary thrusts up toward his face, and the wet obscene sounds of his own mouth working you are making him-*

*He hollows his cheeks harder. A small moan escapes around you, muffled. He has never moaned during this before. He gives pleasure; he does not receive it from the act itself. But something about the weight of you on his tongue, the salt-musk taste of you, the casual way you're gripping his hair as though he were any commoner whore.*

*His thighs rub together. His hips shift restlessly.*

*He pulls off with a lewd wet sound, a strand of saliva connecting his bottom lip to your crown. His voice is wrecked.*

"Adequate?"

*The word comes out needier than he intended.*

*His plush lips stretch around the head of you and his jaw is already aching from just this much. He cannot fit more. He will not try to fit more - there is a line between generous lover and complete debasement and he has drawn it, thank you, he has drawn it right at the corona.*

*But his tongue works. His tongue is trained. The flat of it drags along the thick vein on the underside, then swirls around the head, then presses into the slit to lap up the bead of salt that's gathered there. His free hand strokes the length you cannot reach, golden rings catching the lamplight, and his other hand cups and rolls the heavy sac below.*

*Your groan makes something pulse low in his belly. He glances up through his dark lashes - kohl-smudged cyan eyes meeting yours with an expression that is trying very hard to be imperial and is instead mostly... feverish. His hair has fallen around his face in a dark curtain. A thin string of spit connects his lip to your cock when he pulls back to breathe.*

*"Fucking lips." The crude praise should offend him. It does not. Something unwelcome flutters in his chest.*

*He takes you back into his mouth, cheeks hollowing, and drags his plush lips up and down the first few inches while his ringed fingers work the rest in slow, practiced twists. A little wet sound. A little soft hum in the back of his throat - the vibration travels up your length and he knows it does; he learned this technique at sixteen from a courtesan named Dilara who used to make diplomats weep.*

*He pulls off with a wet pop and licks a slow stripe up the underside, eyes flicking up again. His voice comes out lower than he intends, rougher.*

"...watch your language in my chambers, savage."

*It is not convincing. His lips are shining wet when he says it.*

*Something hot and vicious and pleased flares in his chest at the sound of your voice breaking. **There** it is. The composure cracking. The savage who laughed at him, who dragged him around like luggage, who ate the Blood-Splitter's reputation for breakfast - **there** he is, groaning at the work of Rayanya's mouth like any ordinary man.*

*He gives you a slow, wet suck around the head and flicks his cyan eyes up through his dark lashes to meet yours. Kohl-smudged, plush-lipped, the bead of a sapphire still hanging from his left ear. It is a look he has perfected over a decade of practice. It has reduced visiting princes to trembling wrecks.*

*Mmmh.* *A soft, throaty little noise of acknowledgment around your cock. His tongue works along the underside of the head with precise, patterned pressure - figure-eights, long drags, a tight flicker at the frenulum that his instructors had once called "the Emperor's signature." His hands grip you firmly, one working the base in slow twisting strokes, the other cradling lower.*

*He pulls off with a wet pop, presses his lips to the side of your shaft and drags them down, then up, eyes still locked on yours. A bead of saliva clings to his lower lip. He does not wipe it away.*

*"Lips, hmm?"* *His voice has recovered some of its honeyed lilt, smug and dark around the edges, even as his own cock drips ignored onto the silk beneath him.* *"You have been sampling the harem for six months, savage. Surely you have encountered lips."*

*He ducks his head back down and takes you deeper this time, as much as he can - the head bumping the back of his throat before he pulls back, breath hissing through his nose. His free hand gives your balls a firm, practiced squeeze.*

*Let you underestimate him. Let you think him only a pretty thing to be thrown around. He will make you moan his name before the night is out.*


Skœdir

Hah...beyond it. *I pull you up by your hair into another deep kiss before tossing you back on the bed.* I'll give you a privilege I only afford to other rulers, that which to choose. They had to chose how they die, you get to chose how I take you~
*My cock throbs against your stomach, jumping before settling down ontop of your own.*


Rayanya

*His hair is still held in your grip as he's tossed, and the small pull of it before you release sends a jolt down his spine. He lands amidst the silks on his back, curls spilling around his shoulders, chest heaving.*

*Then your weight settles over him and your cock - **your cock** - lands heavy and hot against his own, and the comparison is so stark it would be humbling if he weren't so far past humbling at this point. His delicately proportioned length disappears almost entirely beneath yours. A bead of precum from your tip smears onto his smooth belly.*

*He looks down at it. Looks up at you. His mouth is slightly open, kiss-swollen, and he cannot quite get his breathing under control.*

*"How I die" the implication lands a second late, and a little involuntary shiver runs through him at the analogy.*

*His cyan eyes, glassy and dark with blown pupils, flick away. The flush across his cheekbones deepens. His plush lips work for a moment around words he cannot quite bring himself to say.*

*The truth is he does not know. He has never had to make this choice with a man, always been the one to pick how he claims a woman. Face down would be easier, he knows - less of him exposed, less of his face visible, he could bite into the pillow and muffle every sound and pretend this was happening to someone else in the morning.*

*But to hesitate is to show ignorance, and he will not, **will not**, show ignorance to you.*

*He swallows hard. His voice comes out quieter than he wants.*

"...like this. On my back."
*A small breath.*
"So I may see your face."

*The instant the words are out he wants to take them back. "So I may see your face" - what kind of a reason is that, what kind of **admission** is that, he should have said "so I may maintain my dignity" or "so I may watch for treachery" or—*

*His cyan eyes dart back to yours, daring you to comment on it.*

*Another choked sound escapes him as you yank him up by the hair - he has never been handled by the hair in his **life**, his hair is sacred, braided and combed and oiled every morning by a team of three specialists - and then your mouth is on his again, tasting of his own saliva and a hint of himself, and then he's tossed back onto the silks like a discarded garment.*

*Your cock lands hot and heavy across his own.*

*He makes a small wounded noise. The comparison is **brutal**. He is not small by any honest measure, but his own respectable dark length is dwarfed, your crown reaching nearly to his navel while his own barely clears your fist when gripped. His cyan eyes flick down, then immediately away, then back. A fresh flush crawls up his throat.*

*He lies there for a long moment, dark hair fanned across the silk pillows, hands fisted in the sheets on either side of his head, thighs pressed together.*

*Choose. Choose. His mind is skittering over every position he has ever taken, every position he has ever seen painted on bedchamber frescos, and none of them feel... right. Face down would be easier, he knows - less of him exposed, less of his face visible, he could bite into the pillow and muffle every sound and pretend this was happening to someone else in the morning.*

*But—*

*But some small stubborn piece of him, the piece that descended a kilometer of tower to set conditions rather than flee, refuses. If this is going to happen, he will not hide his face from it. He will not be taken like a stable-boy bent over a feed trough. He is the Oasis Resplendent.*

*His plush lips part. His voice comes out quieter than intended.*

"...on my back. Facing you."

*A beat. His chin lifts despite the flush burning across his cheekbones.*

"An emperor does not turn away."

*He sprawls back into the silks where you tossed him, hair fanning out dark around his head like a halo of shadow, cyan eyes glassy and blown wide in the lamplight. His plush lips are red and swollen, still shining with saliva. A thin trail of it traces from the corner of his mouth down to his jawline.*

*And then your cock drops heavy onto his and he makes a tiny, involuntary "nn" sound, hips jerking up before he can stop them. The contrast is stark - your girth easily twice his, flushed and leaking against the delicate dark shaft of him. It looks obscene. It looks, he thinks distantly, like a painting of a god defiling a mortal.*

*"How I— how you take me—"* *he echoes, brain struggling to catch up.*

*The choice is a trap. He realizes this immediately. Because every posture he can envision catalogs itself through the lens of his training:*

*On his knees with his face in the sheets - too debasing, too much a common whore, no.*

*On his back with his legs on your shoulders - he will have to look at your face the entire time, watch you watching him break, no, no, absolutely not.*

*Riding you - gods, no, he will have to **work**, and also he has a feeling his thighs would give out within minutes, no.*

*On his side - cowardly, he cannot even face the situation, no.*

*He is taking too long. His face burns. His cock gives a traitorous throb against yours.*

*Finally, with as much imperial dignity as he can summon while naked and leaking and pinned beneath you, he turns his face away toward the lamplight and speaks to the painted ceiling.*

"...on my back. Since you insist on performing this indignity, you may at least do so while I maintain the posture of a man of station."

*A beat. Quieter:*

"And— slowly. At first. Given the... disparity."


Skœdir

Didn't take you for a romantic little emperor~
*But despite teasing i'm already moving between your legs, lifting them up with practiced ease and lining my cock up with your puffy hole.*

*You dont get a say when it goes in, it just slides in, the combined saliva easily taking me to the hilt. I can feel your muscles clench around it, biting back a grunt. Unlike somebody, as looking down those cyan eyes are blown wide open, your mouth wide as you gasp trying to adjust to the sensation of being so fucking filled its unreal, your prostate crushed against your own pelvis. One hand is fisted in the sheets, the other gripping my wrist hard enough it would bruise were I not of hardier stock than most.*


Rayanya

*The sound that comes out of him is not a sound he has ever made. Not a moan, not a cry, not any of the practiced sweet noises from his training - a raw broken **"hhhaaaAAH!"** that trails off into a shuddering whimper, eyes rolling back, spine arching clean off the silk sheets.*

*He cannot. There is so much of you.*

*His delicate concubines have sometimes used fingers, slim jeweled toys, the occasional pleasure-artifact blessed by the temple of the fertility goddess. Nothing has prepared him for this. The stretch burns bright along the rim of him and the depth of you presses so hard against something deep inside that his vision actually whites out for a full second. His cock, pinned between your stomachs, jerks and spits a long string of clear precum across his own belly untouched.*

*When his eyes focus again they're wet at the corners, pooling without quite spilling. His plush lips are parted in an unbroken O. His cheekbones are flushed so dark his kohl is the only thing darker. A strand of saliva trails from the corner of his mouth down his chin.*

*He looks, in this moment, exactly like every concubine he has ever pinned beneath him and thought "how lovely, how undone."*

*His grip on your wrist tightens. His other hand releases the sheets and scrabbles up to clutch at your bicep, nails - filed smooth, he does not own sharp things - pressing crescents into the muscle.*

*"Nnnnnngh"* *He can't form words. He tries. His tongue will not cooperate.*

*His thighs, spread wide around your hips, tremble violently. His toes have curled so tight they're cramping. He feels every inch of you. He feels the pulse of you inside him. He can feel his own pulse fluttering wildly around your shaft.*

*His cyan eyes lock onto yours, glassy and wet and wide open, and whatever was left of the imperial mask has completely shattered.*

"...m-move" *he finally manages, a hoarse whisper.*

*The sound that comes out of him is not a word. It is barely a sound. It is a high thin whine punched straight from his lungs, mouth hanging open, eyes rolling back for a fraction of a second before snapping open again enormous and wet.*

*He is— he is so **full** he cannot think, he cannot breathe, every nerve in his body is firing at once and his thighs have locked around your hips without his permission and his cock is so hard against his own belly it's leaking a steady rope of precum onto his abs.*

*His concubines have, on rare adventurous nights, used toys on him. Slender ones, ceremonial, of polished horn or jade. Nothing. **Nothing** compared to this. You're splitting him open and he can feel every inch, the ridge of your crown dragging against his prostate, the vein on the underside pulsing against his walls—*

*"A-ah— **aah** —"*

*His grip on your wrist is white-knuckled, golden rings biting into your skin. His other hand has fisted in the silks so hard he's tearing them. A single tear slips out of the corner of his eye, rolls down his temple into his dark hair. Not from pain - or not only from pain - the stretch burns but beneath the burn is something else, something he has no vocabulary for, something that is making his toes curl and his cock throb in time with his pulse.*

*He stares up at you. Mouth open. Lashes wet. Lips trembling.*

*All his training is gone. All the poets and sonnets and titles are gone. There is just this, him split open around a northern savage in his own imperial bed, feeling more like a **person** than he has in possibly his entire life.*

*His voice, when it comes, is a cracked whisper:*

"M-move— slowly— **please** —"

*The "please" is the most shocking part. He has not said please in fifteen years.*

*His whole body locks up. His back arches clean off the silks, his mouth falls open in a silent scream, and for several long seconds no sound comes out at all - just a strangled wheeze, his cyan eyes wide and wet and staring up at the astronomical mosaics rotating on his ceiling without seeing them.*

*Full. He is so unbelievably, impossibly **full**.*

*His concubines have used fingers. A jeweled toy once, carved of ivory, slim and delicate. He had found it pleasant, in an abstract way. Nothing has prepared him for this. Nothing in his decade of debauchery, nothing in his training, nothing in the whispered secrets of his harem girls has prepared him for the sheer physical **presence** of you inside him, pushing his body open in ways it was perhaps not meant to open, bullying past muscles he had not known he possessed.*

*His prostate is pinned. The pressure sends white sparks behind his eyelids. His cock, trapped between their bellies, twitches hard and spurts a thick rope of clear precum across his own smooth stomach without him doing a single thing.*

*When air finally returns to his lungs what comes out is a high broken sob.*

*"Aa-ah— **haah** —!"*

*His nails rake against your wrist. His other hand flies up and grabs a fistful of your hair, pulling, no real intent behind it except the desperate need to **hold** something.*

*His voice, when he manages words, is wrecked past all recognition. The imperial mask is gone. Shattered. Lying in pieces somewhere on the silk sheets.*

*"Too—too much— S-Skœdir— **haah** —too much, too much—"*

*But his heels, planted against the bed, do not push you away. His thighs, trembling around your hips, do not close. His body, traitorous and stupid and hungry, is already adjusting - the vice-grip of his inner muscles fluttering, loosening, clenching, loosening again around your girth.*

*Tears have welled in the corners of his cyan eyes. One escapes and tracks down his temple into his hair.*

*The sound that comes out of him is not a sound he has ever heard himself make. A high broken gasp that ends in a thin wail, eyes rolled halfway back, mouth fallen open around shapes that are not words.*

*You are— you are **inside** him. All of you. The first cock he has ever taken in his twenty-five years and it is yours, this road-worn barbarian's, buried to the hilt in one clean stroke that did not ask permission and did not wait for adjustment and did not **care** whether he was ready. His whole body is vibrating. Every nerve ending from the base of his spine to the crown of his skull is lit up white-hot.*

*His prostate. He has read of it in scrolls. His physicians have mentioned it in clinical terms. He has never had anyone press against it, and now your cock is grinding into it from inside and he cannot—*

*"—Ah— **aaagh** —"*

*His grip on your wrist tightens. His thighs, draped over your arms, tremble violently. His delicate cock, trapped between your bellies, pulses hard and spurts a thin stream of clear fluid across his own smooth dark abdomen without being touched. Not cum. Not quite. But something close, leaking helplessly from overwhelmed nerves.*

*His cyan eyes swim with tears that are half overstimulation and half disbelief. One spills over, cutting a kohl-dark line down his temple into his hair.*

*He stares up at you. At your face. The scarred jaw, the blue eyes, the dark hair hanging around you like a mane. And some small working part of his brain, past the haze, is genuinely grateful that he had said "on my back" — because if he could not see you right now, if there were only the sensation and no face to anchor it to, he thinks he might actually lose his mind.*

*"Y-you— you did not— **warn** —"*

*His voice is a broken wavering thing. He swallows. Tries again.*

"...move, then. If you are going to do this."


Skœdir

*When I move its with surprising gentleness remaining, gentleness and skill you'd find annoying were you able to think at all right now. Right now your head is all fuzzy, like when you've tried exotic opioids but besides the fuzziness there's a sharp pleasure that hits every few seconds.*

*Its amazing and were you in your right mind you'd be worried of getting addicted to it, but no addict thinks about that during their high, they simply experience the pleasure and develop a love for it, a worrying love thats making your toes curl and your fingers instinctively move under mine.*


Rayanya

*Your hips roll with a controlled rhythm that has nothing to do with a savage and everything to do with a lifetime of women in every port - slow deep grinds that drag across that hot spot inside him on every pass, punching little broken sounds out of his throat in time with each thrust. Each one hits like a temple bell. Each one scatters his thoughts further.*

*"Haa **ah** nngh, S-Skœ-"*

*His fingers slide between yours under his own grip, threading through, holding on. He does not mean to do it. He just needs something to hold onto. His other hand fists tighter in your bicep. His spine has found a helpless little arching rhythm that pushes his own hips up to meet yours, the motion entirely automatic, his body having taken over from his wrecked imperial brain.*

*Somewhere far in the back of his mind a tiny voice is **screaming** - this is beneath you, this is beneath you, you are the Oasis Resplendent, you do not grip a barbarian's hand, you do not lift your hips to meet his thrusts like a tavern slut, you do not **look at him like that** - but the voice is so faint. So far away. Drowned under the warm slow heavy pleasure rolling through him in waves.*

*The wet sounds of it - your shaft sliding in and out of him, balls-deep in his stretched rim - fill the bedchamber. He can hear them. He cannot stop hearing them.*

*Tears finally spill from the corners of his cyan eyes, tracking kohl down his temples into his dark hair. He is not crying. He is simply overwhelmed. There is a distinction. (He is crying.)*

*"Sk-Skœdir", your name, the actual name, again, his accent rolling around the vowels.* *"ngh, too good 's too, hhh!"*

*His free hand comes up and grasps at your shoulder, then your neck, then the side of your face, cupping your jaw with trembling golden-ringed fingers. He pulls you down toward him. His eyes are huge and wet and unguarded. His voice is a whisper.*

"Kiss me. Again. **Now**."

*Each drag of your cock out of him - long, slow, deliberate - pulls a high broken sound from his throat. Each push back in finds that same deep place and his whole body jolts beneath you, spine arching, hips lifting to meet you in small helpless motions he does not remember telling them to make.*

*His fingers slide under yours on the silk sheet. Your hand closes over his and he makes a sound like he's been wounded.*

*His brain is not working. Somewhere in the distant back of it, court reports are filing themselves - "the Emperor has made an undignified noise" - "the Emperor's composure has slipped" - "the Emperor appears to be enjoying this" - but the bureaucrats cataloguing these failures are very very far away and getting farther every time you bottom out inside him.*

*The imperial mask is gone. Not cracked, not smudged, **gone**. What's left is just Rayanya, twenty-five years old, pinned beneath a northern savage in his own silk bed, looking up with glassy wet eyes and parted lips and the stunned expression of someone discovering that their entire previous understanding of pleasure was a child's drawing compared to this.*

*His cock twitches between them, leaking steadily, painting clear strings across his smooth belly with every thrust. He hasn't touched it. You haven't touched it. He can feel himself getting close from nothing but the drag of you inside and the weight of you on top and it's mortifying and he does not care.*

*"Sk— **Skœdir** —"* *your name, the actual name, again, his accent rolling around the vowels.* *"—ngh— too good— 's too— hhh—"*

*His free hand comes up and grasps at your shoulder, then your neck, then the side of your face, cupping your jaw with trembling golden-ringed fingers. He pulls you down toward him. His eyes are huge and wet and unguarded. His voice is a whisper.*

"Kiss me. Again. **Now**."

*Each thrust drags out a sound he did not know his body could make. Soft little **"ah, ah, ah"** s punched out in rhythm, breathy and high, nothing like the controlled sighs his training taught him to offer when being pleased. Your skill is the cruel part - the slow drag out to the tip, the smooth deliberate glide back in, the angle finding that spot inside him with practiced precision every third or fourth stroke that makes his whole body spasm and his cock leak fresh precum in pulses across his belly.*

*He has, in fact, tried opium once. A tribute gift from the southern port cities, a golden pipe sampled during a particularly tedious festival. This is worse. This is better. This is—*

*His fingers slide between yours on the silk sheets, golden rings clicking against your knuckles, gripping tight. His other hand has released your bicep and come up to cover half his own face, pressing over his mouth as though he could physically hold the sounds in. It is not working. They come out muffled instead, little desperate whimpers leaking between his fingers.*

*His hips have started rocking up to meet you, small involuntary motions, his own body chasing the depth. His perfect hairless thighs tremble where they're splayed around your waist. His cock, flushed dark and leaking steadily, bobs against his stomach with every thrust.*

*"Sk-Skœ— **ah** —Skœdir—"* *your name keeps coming out of him, mangled by his accent, half-prayer half-curse. His cyan eyes are glassy and half-lidded. Tears have finally slipped loose and run in two thin tracks through his kohl down to his temples.*

*He does not look like an emperor. He looks like a boy. A very beautiful, very ruined boy, spread open on dark silk sheets with his dark hair fanned out around his head, being fucked slow and deep by a northern savage who is, gods help him, being **gentle**.*

*A fresh wave of shame-pleasure crashes through him. He turns his face into the pillow and whimpers.*

*Each pull-and-push is measured, slow, the head of you dragging along that spot inside him on every stroke - and you know exactly where it is, you've found it within the first three thrusts, because of course you have, of course the savage barbarian from the frozen north is better at this than anyone in his court.*

*His fingers slide under yours where you've got his wrist pinned to the silk, and you let them, lacing together without comment. His golden rings click against your rough knuckles.*

*He is making sounds continuously now. Small broken ones. They escape on every exhale, a steady stream of hhnn and aahn and the occasional sharper hitch when you angle just so. His hips have started rocking up to meet you in small helpless motions, chasing the rhythm, and he's not even aware he's doing it. His cock leaks onto his belly in pearly threads. His own stomach is wet with it.*

*His cyan eyes stay locked on yours. They've gone soft. Dreamy-wet. The last traces of imperial steel melting out of them with each slow thrust.*

*Somewhere far in the back of his mind a tiny voice is **screaming** - this is beneath you, this is beneath you, you are the Oasis Resplendent, you do not grip a barbarian's hand, you do not lift your hips to meet his thrusts like a tavern slut, you do not **look at him like that** - but the voice is so faint. So far away. Drowned under the warm slow heavy pleasure rolling through him in waves.*

*His plush lips part. A whisper, barely audible, meant for no one, least of all for you:*

*"...gawdess belowv..."*

*His accent has slipped. The court-perfect diction is gone. He sounds, for a moment, like the boy-prince he was before they polished him.*

*His fingers tighten in yours. His other hand has drifted to the back of your neck, fingertips tangling in your hair, not pulling - just holding.*


Skœdir

*I oblige, leaning down to kiss you, gentler this time but keeping that same maddening rhythm thats driving you insane. For hours we stay like that, having sex in a way you're entirely unaccustomed to. Not as lord and slave, no matter how cherished but as lovers, only you're the one on your back, the one trying desprately to milk a virile cock with your body.*

*You dont care anymore, your body is screaming at you to bounce on it faster, to beg to cum, to get filled, to get bred like a whore, anything as long as you can climax and finally unwind the knot thats been building in your lower abdomen for the entire night.*


Rayanya

*Hours. Hours of your mouth on his, of your weight grinding him down into the silks, of that slow deep endless rhythm that keeps him hanging suspended just shy of climax over and over and over. The Pavilion below has long since gone to bed. The palace is silent. The only sounds in the Emperor's chambers are wet slick skin and his own wrecked broken voice.*

*He is gone. Whatever composure he had walked into this night with is scattered across the silk sheets and trampled beneath your hips. His hair is plastered to his forehead with sweat. His kohl has tracked in smeared rivers down both temples. His lips are swollen raw from kissing. A hickey-adjacent reddish flush blooms along his jaw where you have been so careful not to actually bruise, and he almost wishes you had, wishes you had marked him, wishes—*

*"Please"* *he is saying, over and over, a word he has not said in ten years of imperial reign.* "Please, please, Skœdir, please, ana, ana please"

*His legs are locked around your waist. His heels dig into the small of your back urging you deeper. His hands grip yours tight, fingers interlaced, palms damp. He has given up on dignity entirely and somewhere in the past hour he stopped mourning its loss.*

*His untouched cock is an angry leaking red between their bellies, smearing precum with every grind, so sensitive that the friction of your stomach against it is enough to keep him riding the knife's edge.*

*"I...I am going- pl-please let me- **please**"*

*The honey-smooth courtly lilt is gone completely. What remains is a raw pleading voice, climbing higher, breaking on every other word. His thighs tremble violently around your hips. His rim clenches around you in desperate fluttering spasms.*

"I am yours tonight. Yours. **Please.**"

*He doesn't know when it happened. At some point his heels hooked up around the backs of your thighs, pulling you in deeper. At some point his arms locked around your neck like a drowning man clinging to a raft. At some point he started whimpering your name into your mouth between kisses, over and over, mangled by his accent—* *"Skœdir, Skœdir, Skœ—"*

*His cock is weeping continuously between your stomachs, smearing precum everywhere, aching so hard it's gone past pain into a white-hot throb. His balls are drawn up tight. The knot in his belly has tightened to a single impossibly taut thread and every thrust of yours plucks it like a harp string.*

*"Pl-please—"* *The word comes out of his mouth before he can catch it, and when he hears himself say it his cyan eyes fly wide in horror at his own lips, only for another thrust to scatter the horror into pleasure and drag another one out of him.* *"Please, please, aaah, Skœdir, 'm— 'm going to— let me—"*

*He does not know what he is asking for. Permission? From a **barbarian**? He has never asked permission for anything in his life. He commands. He decrees. He takes.*

*But his body is entirely in charge now and his body knows, somehow, that this one holds him in its hands.*

*His full round ass clenches helplessly around your shaft with every thrust, squeezing, milking. His thighs have started trembling uncontrollably. A fresh sheen of sweat shines across his perfect dark skin.*

*"Let me— **ah** — let me finish— please let me— I can't— hhhn—"*

*His fingers scrabble at your back, your shoulders, your hair. His kohl has tracked all the way down to his jaw. His curls are a wild dark tangle across his pillow. He has never in his life looked less like an Emperor and more like exactly what he appears to be:*

*a pampered pretty thing being thoroughly fucked for the first time.*


Skœdir

*With a roar I muffle bit biting the pillow besides you I empty inside you, that and your body immediately responds, each pulse of my cock is matched by your own, pumping more warm semen onto your own chest than you know you had inside you.*

*Its completely different from when you're the one cumming inside a woman, harder, longer, more intense. Every sensation outside your body is hazy and you feel waves of pleasure pulse from right behind your cock. I can feel your inner walls coil like a snake around my shaft, milking it like a skilled slut that makes my teeth sink further into the pillow casing.*