Page 47 of The Laws of Nature (Heirs of the Empire #3)

TOBI

W hen Harok’s wound is entirely covered in the green paste, Tobi binds it with linens and gets up onto the bed beside him. He climbs over to Harok’s left side so Harok can pull him near with his good arm.

Harok kisses Tobi’s hair and says, “I not lose Suskara.”

“No,” Tobi says. “No.” Then he grins up at Harok. “Irgorye oliki?”

“Suskara,” Harok growls. “I save you from the Exceli. So you know I am sorry. My shoulder tells you I am sorry.”

And Tobi thinks that is the best he is going to get for now. Still, Harok said sorry and he is going to be happy with that. And perhaps, happier with a few other things too. “I show you book,” Tobi says.

Harok frowns. “Book? What book?”

Tobi knows he must be looking very pleased with himself as he says, “When you gone, I sad. I miss you. I find book. I want show you book.” He climbs from the bed and crosses to the door that leads to his own chamber.

He fetches the book which sits on the table beside his bed and brings it back to Harok .

He sits down beside him.

“Book, Suskara?” Harok says, in his clumsy Artemian,

“Book,” Tobi says back in Ambolk, presenting it. Harok seems surprised Tobi is presenting him with a book. Tobi wonders if he has the words to explain its significance. He says, “In Azuria. No book this thing.”

Harok takes it, frowning like he doesn’t understand. He turns it over in his hands and smiles to himself, switching back to Ambolk to say, “You like this book, Suskara? You read it?” It is clear he knows what the book is about.

Tobi shakes his head. “Ei,” following up with his own words in Ambolk. “I no like to read. I look.” Tobi might still struggle with his Ambolk words but he speaks Harok’s language far better than Harok does his. Although it is almost touching when Harok tries to use Artemian words.

Harok opens the book at a vivid illustration of a large man covering a smaller one. The bed in the picture looks a lot like the one they both lie upon. “You like book, Suskara?” Harok says in Artemian, pointing at the picture with a blunt finger.

“I like it, Irgorye,” Tobi says in Ambolk.

His voice sounds breathy. Before Harok had burnt his clothes he had been excited to show Harok this book, dreaming of what it would be like to lie in bed together and look through the pages, but the reality of looking at these lewd pictures with Harok beside him is so much more arousing than he could ever have imagined.

It takes his breath. He can barely speak.

Ambolk words seem to fly from his head. But he so desperately wants to tell Harok more.

That in Azuria there could never be a book like this.

That what he has with Harok would never be permitted.

But he can’t find words for that. So he simply says, “I like Irgorye bed. Thing in book. Irgorye and kushir. I want all life. In Azuria bad.”

“You like this? Show me the ones you like,” Harok says. His voice sounds equally heavy with arousal. But he still doesn’t really understand the significance of this book to a sly man who grew up in Azuria.

Tobi takes the book and flicks back through the pages to the illustration of the two men kissing. “This,” he says, in Artemian, pointing, then using Ambolk words he learned on his first night in Harok’s bed. “ Priss. Alla-priss. With men. Two men. I no see this before. In picture.”

Harok nods. “You like this,” he echoes, before leaning over with a soft grunt of pain, placing his left hand on Tobi’s cheek and kissing him deeply, recreating the scene in the way Tobi hoped he would, despite his injury.

Tobi presses close to Harok’s body, feeling the familiar warmth, breathing Harok’s dark, heady scent.

And maybe making Harok understand doesn’t matter so much as enjoying the freedom he has now. Something he never knew possible.

Tobi pulls back breathless from the kiss and lifts the book, scrabbling to find another favourite page. The Ereyek and kushir on the throne together with the Ereyek’s hand wrapped around the kushir’s cock. “This,” Tobi says. His voice cracks a little to say it, desire blooming.

“Solwen watching. Suskara,” Harok says in Ambolk, sounding amused. “Beast Tamer. Solwen no watch Irgo punish kushir. Solwen watch—” Harok finishes with a word that Tobi thinks must be the word for pleasuring with the hand. “ Velinan. ”

“Mmm, yes, velinan .” Tobi says softly, snuggling close to Harok’s body. Then, “Please,” his voice cracking over the word. ‘Please’, the Artemian word that Tobi uses so much in Harok’s bed it seems like all it means to him now is ‘please fuck me’.

Harok chuckles to himself. He reaches over and turns the pages. He stops at a picture of the kushir curled between the Ereyek’s legs as the Ereyek lies sprawled on the bed. He points to it. “I like this, Suskara. Suskara’s clever mouth.”

“Oh, dekuna ,” says Tobi, looking too. “You like that, beast. Dekuna Irgorye. Sho .”

“ Sho. Ga gari garasiana. ”

“Yes, my beast,” Tobi says in Artemian.

“Beast. Karran. Daedon. ”

“ Ereyek ,” says Tobi, touching Harok’s chest.

“ Ereyek. Sho .”

Harok turns the pages again and stops at another picture. Here the kushir is spread on his back, legs wide, with the Ereyek lying with his face pressed close to the kushir’s hole, running his tongue over it. Harok nods at it. “This, I like most of all,” he says.

Tobi blushes. He likes that image too.

“ Ullilava-kush, ” Harok says.

“That’s what it’s called?” says Tobi in Artemian. “ Ullilava-kush . When you fuck me with you big beast tongue?”

“ Ei, Suskara. Ambolk,” Harok says. “Big beast tongue.”

“ Ullilava-kush, ” says Tobi. “ Sho. Ga garan garasiana .”

Harok laughs. He finds another picture in the book. This one of the Ereyek sliding a finger into the kushir’s hole. He points and says, “ Velli. ”

Then Harok slides his hand down Tobi’s body, finds his hole and strokes over it. Tobi gasps. “ Velli ,” he says.

The tip of one of Harok’s finger slips into Tobi. “ Velli ga ?” says Harok.

Tobi groans and shifts a little to take more of Harok’s finger into himself. “ Ga, ” he says. “ Velli ga .”

Harok chuckles and adds a second finger alongside the first. “ Ven sho ?”

Ven means two. Tobi moans and says, “ Ven, Ereyek. Ven, tal, elip, endel .” He knows the Ambolk numbers up to one hundred. But five is enough for this conversation.

“ Endel? ” says Harok, sliding his two fingers in and out. He sounds amused, as well he might as Tobi has just demanded five fingers inside him.

Harok leans over carefully and kisses Tobi again, more deeply this time. Tobi coos into it. When the kiss breaks, Tobi strokes a hand down Harok’s side. “Please,” he says, “we do things in book?”

Harok looks at Tobi with a dark smile. “This day I cannot. No strong. No Ereyek.”

“Then I suck you, Irgorye?” Tobi says, using one of the first Ambolk words he ever learned. Dekuna.

But Harok shakes his big head against the pillows. “Suskara mouth is sweet, but I want to see my Suskara’s pleasure.”

Tobi smiles back. “How Ereyek? What pleasure you wish?”

Harok takes Tobi’s wrist, draws his hand up and kisses it, Harok’s lips pressing soft on Tobi’s palm. “With this,” Harok says. “ Velinan .”

Tobi nods. “Yes, my Irgorye.” He sits up and pulls off his alit. Harok draws a sharp breath through his nose at the sight. He puts his left hand on Tobi’s hip as Tobi moves to straddle Harok’s body. Harok grunts a little with pain, but when Tobi looks at him, he nods for Tobi to continue.

Tobi wraps a hand around his cock and whispers, “You like watch me, Ereyek?”

“You like to be watched,” Harok returns, breath catching.

Tobi nods, his voice is equally breathy. “I love to be watched, my Ereyek.”

Harok makes a dark chuckling noise as Tobi moves his hand on his cock, pleasure sparkles through him. His cock is already flush to his chest and glittering wet at the tip. He gasps as he strokes himself, tossing his head back as he feels pleasure. Harok makes a soft growling sound. His eyes darken.

“I put a finger into kush, Ereyek,” Tobi pants. “Finger is Irgorye cock.”

Harok groans with pleasure. “Do, Suskara,” he pants, “Show me.”

Tobi brings his free hand to Harok’s mouth and presses one finger inside for Harok to suck. Harok keeps his eyes on Tobi’s as he does so, sucking deeply, then pulling back to lave his tongue up and down the length of Tobi’s delicate finger.

Tobi smiles and offers Harok a second finger. “My fingers are small than you cock, Irgorye,” he says, voice throaty. “I need two.” Harok sucks two of Tobi’s fingers into his mouth, before he pulls back and says, “Only two?”

Tobi wonders how many of his own, or, even more deliciously, how many of Harok’s fingers he could take inside himself when Harok is recovered.

But he says nothing. He is too close. Finding Ambolk words is beyond him.

Instead he reaches around himself and slides the two wettened fingers into his hole with a gasp.

His head falls back. His throat exposed to Harok.

Harok murmurs, “Suskara, you are so beautiful.”

At these words, Tobi gasps with pleasure. He moves his hands faster, stroking his cock and his hole wildly as he spends. Putting on a show for Harok with every part of himself as he spills onto the sheets that cover Harok’s body.

Harok pulls Tobi to him. Tobi’s body is still shaking with pleasure. Harok kisses Tobi’s hair and coos sweet things against his skin.“Suskara so beautiful,” over and over .

Tobi turns his face to look up at Harok. “My beast,” he says in Artemian.

“Karran,” says Harok.

“I know,” Tobi says, sweetly. “It was Lymok that taught me that.”

Over the next days and nights, as Harok slowly recovers from his injury, they begin to work through the many pages of the book together.