Total pages in book: 209
Estimated words: 196141 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 981(@200wpm)___ 785(@250wpm)___ 654(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 196141 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 981(@200wpm)___ 785(@250wpm)___ 654(@300wpm)
His heart is in a perpetual state of racing. Feeling heavy in his chest, yet charged at every hour of the day, anticipating a release that isn’t allowed to come.
It isn’t even about the music anymore.
Kaleb wonders if it ever was.
Markadian doesn’t even bother with an attempt at creating illusionary clothes for Kaleb anymore, either.
He wonders if everyone in this place is naked.
The violin was just a pretense for the two of them to unite. Playing in the banquet hall in front of the directors a few nights ago was the last time he touched a violin. Markadian only saw a handsome face, the violin being just an intriguing facet to the forbidden fruit he wanted desperately to bite.
It doesn’t matter to Kaleb. If this is the price for living longer, for living better, for the ease and comfort of privilege and luxury, he can bear it. Is it really such a punishment to be desired? To be the center of someone’s deepest craving? Someone as powerful and influential and admirable as Lord Markadian?
“Open your eyes.”
Kaleb opens them, realizes he might have looked too tense. “Markadian,” he greets him. “Is something wrong?”
“Nothing at all.” Markadian smiles. “Your Lord is pleased. You taste perfect.”
“I did everything you asked,” says Kaleb. “Washed every inch of me, scrubbed my body in the shower, shaved in places. I want to make you happy.”
Markadian gives his cock another lick. “But are you?”
Kaleb props himself up with his elbows, looking down his body at Markadian. “Am I what?”
“Happy.”
Markadian does this often. He asks questions. Pointed ones. They feel like tests. Kaleb hasn’t forgotten Raya’s warnings. He wears them like an invisible armor of his own, never allowing himself to become complacent, to take any of this for granted.
He is also learning to play the game. He offers Markadian a sensitive smile, tilts his head, softens his voice. “What could I possibly not be happy about? You’ve been so generous with me.”
Markadian stares at him, for a moment appearing skeptical, eyes sharpening. Kaleb wonders if he’s laying it on a bit too thick.
The look is wiped away the next instant as Markadian slowly crawls up Kaleb’s body, putting a peck on his navel, then his belly, then his chest, and finally bringing his handsome face in front of Kaleb’s, eclipsing the shimmering lights from the chandelier.
“Tonight,” says Markadian, “you are going to be a star.”
Kaleb nearly forgot. The days blend together. “It is already tonight? The banquet?”
“Poor thing.” Markadian gently runs his fingertips up the side of Kaleb’s face, caressing him preciously. “Are you nervous about your big performance?”
Kaleb weighs the truth against how he wants to seem. “I … shouldn’t be,” he decides to say, playing the role of a confident musician. “I’ve rehearsed a lot. For years, technically.”
“But never for an audience so grand. Isn’t it meaningful to you? To showcase your talent to a room full of … gods?” He hesitates on that last word, choosing it with a note of humor.
Kaleb feels fingers around his slippery, wet cock.
Then those fingers move, stroking him.
“You are so strong, Kaleb. You are a strong man with deep resolve and magnificent … fortitude.” The stroking maintains an even pace. Kaleb’s lips can’t close as he fights yet another desire to come. “Do you enjoy when I say nice things to you?”
“Y-Yes,” Kaleb stammers, controlling his breath.
“This strength of yours, this fortitude, it is something that no one can take from you.” He brings his lips to Kaleb’s left ear and whispers, “No one.”
The words cause the tiny hairs at the back of Kaleb’s neck to stand, prickling pleasurably. Markadian never stops stroking him. Kaleb’s chest rises and falls as his breathing deepens.
Markadian’s lips are at Kaleb’s right ear now. “I like men like you. Strong men with opinions. Strong men with resolve. Strong men who don’t cower in the face of gods.”
These descriptive words are not any that Kaleb would ever have attributed to himself. He has spent so much of his life in fear. So much of it cowering. Was it just that he never had the opportunity to stand? The encouragement to be strong?
The belief that it was possible to be confident?
“Do I have your permission …”
Kaleb clenches up, fighting back the orgasm, waiting for the other half of Markadian’s question, to be asked to be bitten.
“… to kiss you?”
Kaleb opens his eyes to find Markadian’s face before him.
His commanding, yet sensitive and searching eyes.
Markadian is in no way repulsive. He is good-looking by any applicable standard Kaleb can think of. He may be a man, but he is a powerful man, and with no exaggeration, he holds the quality of Kaleb’s very life in his hand. And that isn’t a joke about what Markadian presently holds in his hand.
Kaleb would do this for a friend, wouldn’t he?