Page 11 of Golden Bond (Pleasure Palace #1)

I’d never been kissed. Not by a boy behind a temple wall. Not by a girl in the shade of a cypress tree. Not even in the secret places of my own imagining. I had always told myself there would be time.

My hands hovered, helpless for a moment, until instinct caught hold and I clutched at his sculpted arm. My fingers curled there, tense and searching, and my other hand rose to his shoulder as if I could brace myself against the storm building in my chest.

Auren pressed closer.

His lips parted slightly, just enough to pull me deeper, and my body responded before I could stop it—leaning in, opening, breath hitching in surprise at the feel of him.

It was like I had been asleep for nineteen years and someone had finally whispered my name.

My heart was a wild thing, panicked and exhilarated, thundering beneath the cage of my ribs. I didn’t know what I was feeling. I didn’t know how to carry it. But I couldn’t look away. Couldn’t step back. Couldn’t pretend that something ancient and wordless hadn’t just shifted in me.

When Auren finally drew back, he didn’t go far.

He studied me: my face, my breath, the tremble I couldn’t hide in my fingers.

“You’re not what I expected,” he said, his voice low and uneven at the edges .

I didn’t know what to say. My instinct urged me to apologize for that. My lips were still parted. My throat too tight with something I couldn’t name.

So I didn’t speak.

I just stood there, stunned and aching, my skin flushed and trembling from a single kiss.

Auren’s gaze didn’t leave mine. His breath ghosted against my cheek, warm and unhurried, and then he touched me again—this time not with his lips, but with the flat of his palm against my chest.

He held it there, just over my heart, as though listening to its rhythm.

“I need you to lie down,” he said. Not a command. A request. But his voice was low enough to carry weight. As if the very walls had leaned in to listen.

I nodded.

His hand slid away slowly, leaving my skin bereft of its heat, and he turned. I followed, though my limbs felt boneless, like water poured into a vessel too large.

The altar loomed behind him—broad, low, padded in red silk with a depth that spoke not of comfort, but of intention. It was beautiful. Ornate. Intimidating. But not cruel.

Auren reached it first. He rested one hand on the edge and turned slightly, looking at me not with hunger, but something else—patience, maybe. Or reverence.

My throat tightened, but I stepped forward.

He helped me up, his hands under my arms, then at my back, guiding me until I was seated at the edge.

The silk was cool beneath me. Smooth as river-washed stone.

I leaned back slowly, the pressure of his hands never leaving, until I was flat, breath shallow, limbs trembling with something I couldn’t name.

The ceiling disappeared above me. The golden sconces blurred. All I could feel was the weight of my own heartbeat and the soft hush of Auren moving around the altar.

He didn’t climb over me. Not yet.

He started at my feet.

His fingers traced the top of my arch, sliding up the bone of my ankle.

Slowly. Thoughtfully. As if he was memorizing the shape of me.

I hadn’t known it could feel like this—his palm on my shin, his fingertips at my knee, the press of his hands gliding up my thighs, not groping, not taking. Just… learning. Claiming. Worshiping.

When he reached my hips, he paused.

The silence between us thickened. It wasn’t awkward—it was anticipatory, like the moment between lightning and thunder. My eyes fluttered closed. I felt his breath first. Then his lips.

Soft. Just beneath my navel.

He kissed me there.

Then again, higher, following the centerline of my torso. My breath caught as he reached my chest. He didn’t avoid it. His mouth found the ridge of my ribs, the slope of my sternum, and the hollow between.

Every press of his lips sent sparks beneath my skin.

When I opened my eyes, he was above me.

One hand beside my head, the other braced near my waist. He hovered there for a moment, studying me with an expression I didn’t know how to name. His face was flushed, his eyes darker now, not just with want but with something heavier.

“I won’t hurt you,” he murmured. “I promise.”

I believed him.

He kissed me again, mouth to mine. Slower this time.

Searching. His tongue teased at the seam of my lips and I let him in by instinct, breath stuttering.

Our bodies hadn’t fully touched yet, but I could feel the weight of him everywhere—his presence, his want, the sheer heat of his skin brushing mine.

His hips settled against mine. The feel of him there, aligned so perfectly, made my legs tremble. His cock, hard as the marble in which the likeness of gods was carved all around us, pressed against my bare flesh, and a breath lodged itself in my throat.

It excited me more than I dared believe. The warmth of his cock, the slickness of it against my tender skin, sent a wave of tingling sensation through my limbs.

My cock stirred and I inhaled, parting my lips wider for Auren’s tongue to explore me.

We moved together in slow, exploring rhythms, and I didn’t know where to place my hands. I settled them first on his arms, then his shoulders, then at his back. His muscles shifted beneath my palms—warm, hard, alive.

When his chest met mine, slick with oil and heat, something in me cracked open.

I gasped .

It wasn’t pain. Not even fear. It was just too much.

Too much sensation. Too much closeness. I had never been this near to another person. Never breathed their breath. Never felt their heartbeat like a second rhythm inside my own.

Auren slowed. A lock of silver hair fell over his brow and onto mine.

He lifted his head just enough to meet my eyes.

“You’re with me,” he said softly.

I nodded my assent.

“Say it.”

“I’m with you,” I whispered.

His lips curled triumphantly.

He lowered his head again, nuzzling the side of my throat, and kissed the place just beneath my ear. Then my jaw. Then the hollow between neck and shoulder.

I let my head fall to the side. I let him mark me in kisses.

It wasn’t just dominance. It was devotion.

His movements grew more fluid. Less restrained. His body rocked gently against mine, bare skin sliding over bare skin. His cock rubbed against the low plane flat stomach. The air thickened with the scent of sweat and sacred oils and our bodies. I didn’t think I could take more.

And then he reached between us, fingers wrapping around us both, holding up in a loose grip that brought me to the verge of screaming.

The shift made me gasp aloud, my back arching from the altar, every muscle drawn tight like a bow .

Auren stilled me with a kiss, deep and anchoring.

“I’ve got you,” he said, lips brushing mine. “Just feel their presence. They watch.”

And I did.

What followed wasn’t rushed. It wasn’t violent.

It was guided by breath and instinct. We moved together, slowly, instinctively, like waves drawn by the moon.

He cradled the back of my neck. I clutched at his spine.

His mouth stayed close to mine, lips brushing and breaking apart and returning again.

Auren’s hand worked us both in slow, deliberate strokes, likely feeling every throb that rocked my body. He lifted his torso and let the kiss end, looking at me as he reached for the chalice with scented oil beside the altar.

The sconces had dimmed somehow, or else the moonlight had grown stronger, pouring in through the carved apertures high in the dome above us.

Moonstones embedded in the ceiling spread their light and scattered it down in a soft, iridescent shimmer—blue and silver and soft gold across the marble floor.

The glow fell in sacred patterns, some ancient geometry known only to priests, but it wrapped around us now like another layer of skin.

Statues encircled the chamber—tall, silent forms of the gods I had once only known in stories.

I saw the archer with his shattered bow, the twin-faced guardian of truth, the goddess of the flood with her palms raised high.

And there, at the far edge, the bound lovers carved in moonstone, their bodies forever intertwined beneath the watchful gaze of the divine .

They looked down on us now.

And Auren was beautiful in that light. Truly beautiful.

His torso gleamed like sculpted bronze, not hardened into perfection but alive with motion.

Muscles shifted with each breath he took.

Oil caught the curves of his body as he dipped his fingers into the chalice and let them move lazily through its contents, warming them between his palms.

He didn’t look at the statues.

He looked only at me.

And I had never felt more seen.

I watched the motions of his hand, watched as he lifted it, drops of oil falling back into the chalice. He pressed his other hand against my flat stomach, eyes locked onto mine, and brought his slick hand between my legs.

His fingers touched the taint between my balls and my rear, rubbing its hardness gently and making my cock pulse. Auren lowered his hand, and I swallowed loudly, a shivering breath drawing into my lungs.

When he found it, the one place I still feared him touching, it was the warmth of his flesh and the softness of the oil that seeped deep into my flesh long before he applied pressure.

“Relax, Callis,” Auren said, his voice soft like wisps of mist still lingering over the glassy fields at dawn. “It will be much better for you if you relax.”

Though the words could have made a threat, it wasn’t one. A kinship formed between us, and I held onto it. He was guiding me, rather than commanding me .

I tried. I really did. Relaxing seemed crucial, yet as unattainable as sitting down with gods to feast at their long tables in their moonlit halls.