Page 16 of The Laws of Nature (Heirs of the Empire #3)

TOBI

A bath sounds wonderful. Tobi agrees eagerly and climbs out of the cage, then follows Lymok out of the stables, across the courtyard and into Urynwud through a small low doorway.

It takes them into a stone passageway, which turns into a broader corridor with wide windows opening to views of the forest. The walls are heavy with foliage, like every other wall Tobi has seen in Urynwud.

They reach a staircase and climb to an upper floor. This new part of Urynwud is very rich. There is a thick red carpet on the stone floor and candles burn in sconces every few feet..

After a few turns, each one bringing them into a finer corridor, Lymok stops outside a wide pair of double doors.

“This,” he says pointing,” is Irgo Harok’s chamber.

” Next to the wide doors, a few yards further down the corridor is another, narrower door.

Lymok leads Tobi to that door. “And this,” he says, opening the small door. “Is yours.”

The chamber is not large, but it is richly appointed.

There is a bright fire with chairs set before it.

A narrow bed is hung with delicate white silks.

There is a window looking out onto the forest. The room has a second door.

Clearly a door that adjoins Harok’s chamber.

Which explains the narrow bed. This room is not designed for the covering of the kushir.

For that the king would order his kushir into his own rich chamber.

Tobi wonders what the bed is like through that door.

Huge, he is sure. For a giant like Harok to sleep and rut in comfort.

In the centre of the room a large bath tub of gleaming copper is already in place. Seeing it makes Tobi realise how much he needs to bathe even more strongly, how sweaty and sore he is from the ride and the way he still feels prickly and sticky from pressing to Harok’s body the entire time.

“Wait here,” Lymok says, “I will see to the water women.”

Tobi only waits in the room a moment, before Lymok reappears, leading a procession of silent sturdy Ambolk women bringing in pail after pail of steaming water, swinging on yokes over their shoulders like dairy maids. Every one of them is taller than Tobi. These people are a race of giants.

Tobi sighs aloud to see such a vast, generous amount of hot water. Again, he thinks that he has not seen anything like this since he lived in the Rose Palace.

Steam starts to fill the air of the small chamber. It smells pleasant. Sweet and rich. Like the forest. Tree sap and musk, damp earth. Tobi wonders what oils have been added to the water to create such heady scents.

Lymok and the water women leave Tobi alone to bathe.

Tobi pulls off his fine heeled knee boots first, before peeling his leather breeches down his legs and taking off his embroidered waistcoat.

He folds both carefully on the chair beside the fire and walks naked to the bath.

He climbs in and sinks into the warm water letting out a deep sigh of bliss.

His mind is full of what will happen to him next. Lymok said something about an anointing? Whatever that means. It must be some kind of ceremony where he will be officially named as Harok’s kushir.

Tobi has seen couples on the steps of the Temple of Ceruleum, being blessed with bells ringing.

Women veiled head to toe in white or pale yellow.

There were no official ceremonies in Copperhead Circus or with the mummers in Fanost, but raucous celebrations, pairings offered up under the sky.

Will Harok take him with some grand formal ceremony, a riotous party or something else?

He remembers Cyrus’s words about the meaning of kushir again.

A pillow slut. A hole for a cock. One who is fucked.

That makes him squirm a little in his bath. To think of it. A hole for a king. He breathes the scented steam rising from the bathwater once more. The steam smells good. Heady and delicious.

Tobi slides his hands over himself, letting a finger drift over his ass, and then he circles his hole.

Perhaps along with learning as much Ambolk as he can, it would be wise to try and make sure that when Harok takes him, he spends like he has never done before in his life.

Tobi has some bed chamber skills. He could make sure of that.

Thoughts of that fill Tobi’s mind as he touches himself.

He keeps one hand playing over his hole and wraps the other around his hardening cock.

The warm, scented water is rich with oils and his cock is heavy in his grasp.

It seems impossible not to stroke himself, letting the familiar flesh of his palm glide over the sensitive head of his cock.

He tips his head back to look at the ceiling of the chamber as he gives himself pleasure.

The chamber ceiling is beautiful, carved wood ornately worked with entwined leaves and flowers and amongst them are figures of people.

Tobi realises with a gasp what he is seeing.

The people are entwined like the leaves and flowers.

They are fucking, in pairs and groups. All over the ceiling of the chamber.

Tobi has never seen anything so sinful. Even in a pillow house, no building in Azuria would be so bold as to illustrate something like this.

Something so carnal. In the carvings, men and women kneel before other men to give suck.

Women lie with legs parted so others can bury their heads at the join of their thighs.

Men mount men, women mount women. Multiple people take ecstatic looking figures in every hole.

Tobi is breathless looking at it. The work is so fine. The combination of elaborate, skilled craftsmanship and absolute sin makes his head spin.

All his thoughts about his mission to best assimilate himself into the Ambolk are gone. He is thinking only of Harok.

Harok is a great warrior king. He thinks of Harok’s body.

His wide powerful chest in that harness, his thick thighs, his obvious strength.

It’s easy for Tobi to imagine how little effort it would take for Harok to hold him down.

How Harok could fold him in half like a piece of old parchment, forcing his knees up to his chest to take him so hard he screams. A hole for a king.

Tobi twists in the water, gasping as his hand moves fast on his cock.

He slides his other hand from his ass and strokes over his wet chest, slippery from the oily water.

He teases his fingers over his nipples, pulled to tight points, stroking them feels good.

He teases himself before he slides his hand, slowly, back down his body, over his belly and back down between his legs.

He rubs slowly over his hole again, making small circles, following the sensitive puckered skin of his rim.

He thinks about Harok’s leather gauntlets; his thick wrists, big hands and huge fingers.

How big those fingers would feel tracing the same path on Tobi’s body.

How sweet the anticipation would be of that big finger breaching him, slipping inside, making him feel desperate.

He slides his own finger inside himself as he thinks of it, his other hand still a curled fist working his cock.

He’s not far from spending, he thinks, a few more strokes.

He twists his finger inside himself, rubbing over a pleasurable spot that makes him draw up his knees.

The water sloshes around his body as he moves.

He slides a second finger into himself alongside the first. He’s so close to his edge now, breath coming ragged.

He’s fighting back. Drawing out the pleasure, savouring this moment before he falls, stretching it on and on like a single glittering thread.

He tips his head back onto the edge of the bathtub and peaks with a sudden rush, spending hard, gasping through it. It’s so sweet and good.

He blinks slowly, finding himself staring at the ceiling of the chamber again as he returns to his senses. He gazes at the entwined figures again, overwhelmed once more by the sight of something like that on a chamber ceiling, even a chamber meant for a kushir.

He’s still thinking about this, thinking and basking in the afterglow of his spend, when Lymok walks back in.

Tobi startles. He thrashes around in the bath in surprise. Water sploshes as he rolls onto his side, one leg crossed quickly over the other, hiding himself.

Lymok stops in the middle of the room, a good distance from the bathtub, but with a smirk on his face that suggests he knows exactly what Tobi was doing.

He is carrying a gold tray .

“Greetings again,” he says with a small bob, “My kushir.” He speaks it almost as if it is a formal title. Perhaps it is.

Tobi wonders if that is now his name. But he doesn’t think he can protest about being called a hole after Lymok almost caught him with his fingers inside himself as he dreamed of being roughly taken by Harok.

Lymok reaches the edge of the bath, “I brought you some refreshments.” He lifts the gold tray he carries.

“To further help you prepare.” On it is an elegant fluted glass containing a pale pink liquid.

“Flower cup.” He sets the cup down on a small table beside the bath, then stirs the contents with a long handled silver spoon.

Sitting up straighter in the scented water, Tobi leans over and picks up the glass with a wet, slippery hand.

He has to grip it tightly. He lifts it and sniffs at the content.

It smells deliciously floral. Like the scent of summer flowers. “What is this?” he says. “Flower cup?”

“I think you might enjoy it. It is a sweet delicacy. Our tradition is that only kushwen may drink it. It is traditional for a kushir to drink this before the anointing. They say it makes you ready for a man’s cock inside your body.”

“You said kushwen meant women?” Tobi says as he takes a sip of the drink. The drink tastes as flowery as it smells. It makes his belly feel warm. It is like drinking summer.