Page 12 of Golden Bond (Pleasure Palace #1)

The pressure of Auren’s finger was far from grand, yet its persistent motion didn’t move me to relax.

Every slight change in where he touched me sent ripples through my body like pebbles in a lake, my cock tensing, leaping off my body with tension.

My body felt like sailors’ rope, twisted so tightly that it was bound to snap—yet it never did.

Leaving his hand between my legs and his fingers pressed against my hole, Auren leaned down and found my mouth with his. He exhaled over my lips, giving me his breath freely, and with it, a strength I hadn’t been able to find on my own.

I flowered like a ripe bud in early summer, opening to him just as my soul found that distant place he’d asked me to go to. I relaxed.

I was grateful for the oil. The warmth of our bodies thinned it, and it seeped into me moments before Auren’s finger penetrated my flesh.

Air drained from me just as Auren inhaled. My eyes widened, my chest tightened, and warmth spilled through my body as Auren pushed his finger deeper inside me. The momentary slip of attention made my cock throb and my hole tighten around his knuckle, forcing him to halt at once.

The kiss he pressed on my lips was fiercer now, taking away my reservations.

Auren continued his careful work as my body relaxed again, my flesh accepting him inside as if he belonged. He inserted himself deeper, making my eyes roll back, gaze sweeping over the upside-down statues of the gods. Had their eyes always been directed here?

As the sensation strengthened, my limbs grew restless, toes twisting and fingers digging into Auren’s flesh.

Auren’s lips dragged over to my neck, kissing me as his finger fell in and pulled out of my body, the feeling never growing more familiar, never failing to startle me. That breath between one direction and the other, that glimmer of anticipation, led me always to be surprised.

“Do you think you can take more, Callis?” Auren asked in that voice, like tendrils of smoke, as his other finger pressed against the stretched flesh of my rim.

I was his by the laws of the gods. I was his by the customs of the men. “Yes.”

My voice broke into a strangled moan as Auren pushed a second finger into my body, oil making it far too easy for him, yet the doubled size stretching me wider than I had anticipated.

I felt myself tearing through the middle of my torso. I felt it searing the space between my eyes.

And then, it was gone. Not even a lingering echo of that pain remained.

It was simply warmth and such intense pleasure that it bordered on shameful.

In this, I could belong to him, I told myself.

In this, I could be his bonded companion even if I couldn’t say the same for all our waking hours in the days to come.

Yet as he loosened me for the next step, Auren didn’t exhibit the cruelty I expected of him, cruelty I had earned on our first encounter.

His fingers slid out of me, rubbing circles around my tender hole, soothing it while he kissed me.

Auren’s torso straightened, and he dipped his hand in oil once again. This time, he didn’t bring his fingers back to me. Instead, he folded them around his cock, and I let myself watch.

I lowered my gaze over the sculpted muscles of his torso to the gleaming spear he held in his right hand, stroking it with oil.

Its thickness terrified me, and its length put me to the thankless job of not comparing myself to him.

And yet, as he leaned toward me again, he didn’t hesitate with distaste for what he saw waiting for him.

The scents of pine cones and needles burning in the brazier wafted closer to us, mixing with the oils and our own bodies. Auren settled himself higher between my legs, lowering his hips until the girthy head of his cock was pressed against my hole.

He couldn’t do it. Not really. He simply couldn’t, could he?

I was too small, too tight, too inexperienced for a man like him. It would tear me, wouldn’t it?

“Hush,” Auren purred over my lips and kissed me, silencing the rising flurry of fear into oblivion.

My thoughts stopped abruptly as the pressure grew on my hole.

Auren slipped his hand away from his cock and pressed it against my stomach. His lips hovered over mine, and he whispered instructions. “Push, Callis. It will help if you push.”

It seemed wrong. It seemed far too disarming, far too like surrendering to the charge of this strange new thing. And yet, I was his, so I did his bidding.

When I pushed, muscles in my stomach contracting, his cock tore into my body with searing pain and terrifying ease. Once again, the pain flashed like lightning, but thunder never arrived. Instead, new warmth filled my body as Auren swung his hips back and thrust them down again.

A cry broke out of me, yet it bore no pain. Only pleasure.

How could this have been kept from me? For over a year, I had been a man grown, yet never once had I been taught to seek such pleasure. Never once had I thought of it as a pleasure at all.

Not until the immense, intimidating size of Auren’s cock filled my slender body and made tears of joy well in my eyes. Not until I wanted to weep and sing the hymns. Not until my nails scratched the skin on Auren’s back in a sheer act of devastation sparked by the pleasure that soaked my body.

I didn’t know when my eyes closed.

I only knew that when I opened them again, we were still joined, still moving, and something sacred was blooming behind my ribs. A kind of ache I didn’t want to end.

And somewhere in the dark curve of the chamber, the gods bore witness .

But it was Auren’s voice I followed, and Auren’s breath that I breathed.

And when I whispered his name, it wasn’t with fear.

It was with awe and surrender.

The embers glowed brighter. The fires brought on by the bellows of a smith solely forging bonds and pleasures.

My legs rose higher, coiling around Auren’s waist as he filled my body deeper.

Each thrust, determined and precise, made me yearn to yelp with joy.

It untied something twisted inside of me.

It relaxed something tense. It made my chest rise higher, body pressed against body, mouth slammed against mouth.

The speeding, intensifying movements of Auren’s hips broke into me, broke everything inside of me, and repaired it in the right order.

The knots gave way, the crookedness straightened, and the wrinkles smoothed.

He fucked me. It was that plain and simple when I thought about it. He fucked me like a rich and powerful lord who could. He fucked me with the confidence that he couldn’t do wrong and skill that proved it.

Yet it was more than that.

His soul, bathed in moonlight, glimmered when its tendrils ventured towards mine.

I held back, though not because I didn’t want them to mingle.

I held back because it seemed so soon and sudden.

Not so long ago, my life had been charted before me in all the simple ways I’d hoped.

Now, I was adrift at sea, and Auren was the only scrap of land I could find.

This didn’t make him a bad land, but I didn’t know if it made him the only land that ever could be.

“Give yourself to me,” Auren said, reading my thoughts.

A bolt of shame passed through me before I obeyed him. I surrendered to him, abandoning the thoughts and letting my body coil around him.

My skin rubbed against the rich silk draping the altar, and the scent of sex lay thick in the air, feeding the raw fire within.

The intense motions of Auren’s hips, the tensing of his marble muscles, and the sweat breaking over his brow and dripping onto my flesh all merged into a glorious conquest of my body.

He ravaged me at that altar, and I breathlessly wished for more.

And when he crushed his lips against mine, his heated breath told me what was happening.

Auren’s hand moved between our grinding torsos and found my aching, throbbing cock.

His thrusts hastened, scrambling to spear me harder and deeper before it ended.

And as he wrapped his fingers around me, motioning his oiled fist along my unimpressive length, I gave a cry into his open mouth, drowning it between Auren’s lips.

I felt his throbbing. I felt the pulse that pushed the ribbons of his heated semen, the white seed he planted deep inside my body for no other use than the glory of the gods and the union between men.

Tears spilled down the sides of my face as Auren tightened his hold on my cock and the sudden sensations overwhelmed me. They welled and spurted from me in a storm of feelings too scattered to catch and name.

Heat drizzled over the taut skin of my stomach, semen squirting over my body and his, unstoppable, as every muscle in my body tensed and pulsed. My cock ached, reaching the climax of our ritual, my lower back arching as I thrust myself up from the altar.

Auren’s cock remained deep inside me, impaling me still as he began to soften.

The last drops of my heated seed were smeared between our grinding bodies, and I drew a deep breath into my burning lungs.

It felt like breathing in anew, as though the person who had entered this chamber no longer existed, and I was finally born.

My bonded lover gently pulled away from me, his hand sliding from my cock to my bruised hole, rubbing it soothingly. “Keep it inside of you,” he told me. “It strengthens the bond.”

I groped with tingling fingers for his upper arms, feeling his glowing skin and the gold ring around his bulging muscle, pulling him to me.

Auren hesitated only a moment, then leaned in as though he hadn’t been certain I would allow it. Did I have the choice to deny him this after all we had done? Even if yes, I could not imagine finishing in any other manner.

I lifted my head, my hair matted with sweat, and kissed him on the lips.

Auren didn’t kiss me back. Not right away. He tensed, eyes fluttering open .

I wanted to shrink into a pebble when his surprised gaze swept over my face.

“Forgive me.” The words welled to the surface. I almost said them, but for the crushing blow of his mouth against mine that imbued me with new heat, with life itself. He kissed me hungrily, thrusting his tongue into my mouth and running his fingers through my sweat-drenched locks.

And when he pulled back, there was no reservation left in his glowing blue eyes.

Auren’s mouth brushed mine again—gentler this time, a question instead of a command. And I answered without speaking, without thinking. Just a sigh, just a shift, just the way my body tilted to meet his as we moved.

Together.

Bound.

And utterly undone.