The Reborn Sovereign of Ruin, Bound by His Star

The stone would form between them.

That was what Liam kept repeating in his head as Arik led him down the narrow inner corridor, their bare feet silent on warm stone. The stone would form, they would be bound, and then he could eat something and sleep for a year.

The ceremonial chamber opened before them.

Liam stopped at the threshold.

He had expected something austere. Maybe a low bed, some candles, and perhaps a suspiciously convenient pool of water. Instead, the room was round and perfectly dark except for a ring of soft light falling from somewhere above, illuminating a wide circular platform at its center. The air smelled of amber and something green, like leaves crushed underfoot after rain. The walls were not walls. They appeared to be carved from a single continuous piece of black glass, shifting faintly as though breathing.

"Say nothing," Arik murmured.

Liam turned his head. "Why would I—"

His voice died.

Arik had pulled his shirt off.

Liam had seen Arik undressed before. Many times, actually. But here, in this room, with the pale light tracing the lines of his chest and catching in the dark hair below his navel, the sight landed differently. The air thickened. Liam’s mouth went dry against his will. Heat pooled low in his stomach, immediate and unwelcome.

Arik stepped closer, bare feet silent. "The room responds to ether," he said quietly. "Everything you feel, it amplifies."

"That seems designed to embarrass me."

"It is designed to make the bond easier to complete."

Arik’s hands found the hem of Liam’s shirt. His fingers slid beneath the fabric, thumbs pressing into the soft skin above Liam’s hipbones, slow enough that Liam’s breath caught.

The room brightened slightly.

Liam noticed the way the walls shimmered in response, and his face heated. "I could have undressed myself."

"You would have stalled for another half hour."

"That is not true."

Arik raised the shirt.

Liam lifted his arms despite himself, and the fabric slid away. Cool air touched his skin, then Arik’s mouth was against his throat, just below his ear, and the coolness vanished entirely.

The scent hit him a moment later. Arik’s scent of caramel, no longer masked by imperial robes or the lingering smoke of coronation incense. Liam’s knees buckled. He caught Arik’s shoulder with one hand, and Arik made a low sound against his neck that was almost a growl.

"I cannot—" Liam started.

"I have you."

Arik guided him toward the platform, but they didn’t make it that far. Liam’s back met the black glass wall, which was warm and strangely yielding beneath his spine. His hands tangled in Arik’s hair as their mouths met, open and urgent. The room was humming. It vibrated through the stone, through Liam’s bones, through the place between his thighs where heat was already pooling into slick that his body had no business producing this quickly.

He was wet. Already soaking, the thin fabric of his trousers clinging to his thighs. His body had apparently decided its own schedule, ignoring every reservation his mind had voiced minutes ago.

Arik pulled back long enough to strip Liam’s trousers down. The movement was not careful. The seam tore. Liam couldn’t bring himself to care.

"Raise your leg," Arik said, voice rougher now.

"What?"

Arik lifted him.

Liam’s back slid up the wall, legs wrapping around Arik’s waist by pure reflex. The stone against his back pulsed with heat, and Arik’s mouth was on his chest, tongue dragging across one nipple, then the other, teeth grazing just enough to make Liam’s whole body twitch toward him. A sound escaped Liam’s throat. Not quite a moan. Something closer to a whimper, and the room brightened again, the light above flaring until Arik’s skin seemed edged in gold.

"This chamber won’t let us hide anything," Liam gasped.

Arik lifted his head, eyes black with pupils blown wide. Sweat already gleamed along his collarbone. "Do you want me to stop?"

Liam hated that he asked, because it meant he had to answer.

"No."

Arik shifted him, and Liam was moving before he understood how, laid back on the platform with his legs spread and Arik kneeling between them, Arik’s mouth following the line of his hipbone. Kissing him there, then lower, then breathing against the wet heat at the center of him without making contact.

Liam’s fists clenched in the material beneath him.

"Please."

"What was that?"

Liam lifted his head, glaring, but the expression disintegrated when Arik’s tongue finally touched him. A broad, slow lick over his hole. The sound that came out of Liam’s chest was not a sound he had ever made before. The stone beneath him throbbed as if in response, and Arik did it again, slower this time, cradling Liam’s thighs with both hands.

"Your slick tastes different here," Arik said against him. The vibration of his words shot through Liam’s body. "Sweeter."

"Is that appropriate conversation during a sacred ceremony?"

Arik swept his tongue across Liam’s entrance, lingering at the place where slick was pooling most heavily. "I think the ceremony is already well underway."

The world flared white behind Liam’s eyes.

Arik’s tongue pressed inside.

The chamber continued to brighten in waves, matching Liam’s stuttering pulse. But it was Arik’s fingers that broke him. They slid in beside his tongue, two of them, curling upward as his mouth worked Liam patiently. Liam’s body arched from the platform. He said something. Words. They might have been Arik’s name, or a curse, or both. The room shattered into light every time he got close.

But Arik kept moving before he could fall.

Denial, over and over, until Liam realized the room had shifted colors: the silver had warmed to gold. The stone beneath him had become scorching hot without burning him. Arik lifted his head, mouth glistening, and Liam watched him rise to his knees, and then his hands moved to his trousers.

He did not remove them.

Instead, his fingers worked the cloth down just enough to free his cock.

Liam’s thighs trembled. He could feel his heartbeat in his teeth.

"The room," he whispered. "It’s using my pleasure to—"

"I know." Arik’s hand closed around the base of his own cock, guiding the thick head through Liam’s slick, pressing against his entrance but not entering. "Let it."

The stretch when he finally pushed inside was devastating.

Liam cried out, back arching from the platform, hands flying to Arik’s shoulders. His nails bit into skin. Arik was suddenly deeper than he’d ever been, or perhaps the chamber was making him more sensitive, every ridge and vein in Arik’s cock felt as though it was being traced into his inner walls. The thick head pressed against the very limit of him, kissing his cervix with a pressure that made his vision blur.

Arik groaned. The sound echoed.

"You are so deep," Liam managed, voice shaking wildly.

Arik’s hips drew back, then thrust in again, and this time the angle was different. Higher. At the gates. The head of his cock ground against Liam’s cervix in a way that was too much and not enough in the same breath. Liam felt tears slip from the corners of his eyes. His body was tightening and releasing in waves, the internal muscles no longer cooperating with him. Arik braced one hand on the platform beside Liam’s head. The other pressed flat against Liam’s lower belly.

Liam looked down.

Arik’s palm covered the slight swell there, the outline of himself inside Liam’s body visible beneath the skin.

"Look," Arik said.

Liam looked.

His stomach jumped. Then Arik thrust again, slower, and Liam felt the pressure change and felt the tight ring of his cervix begin to soften. It was too much. It was impossible. But the room flared brilliant gold, and Liam’s mouth fell open in a silent scream as Arik’s cock pushed through that final resistance, sliding into the deepest channel of his body with a single, unbroken thrust.

For a heartbeat, neither of them moved.

Liam could feel Arik inside his womb. The taut walls there pulled at him, pulsing in a rhythm that matched the chamber’s light. Arik’s whole body was shaking, his jaw clenched, sweat dripping from his hair onto Liam’s chest. His thighs quivered with the effort of holding still.

"Liam," he choked.

The word was reverent and desperate all at once.

Liam reached up with both hands and pulled Arik down to him. His voice was broken when he found it. "Don’t stop now."

Arik surged into him.

Each thrust drove deeper now, spearing through the channel of his cervix into the silken heat beyond, and Liam felt the world begin to fracture.

The black glass walls were cracking with veins of gold and violet, the air itself vibrating with their combined ether. Arik’s mouth found Liam’s throat, teeth closing over the spot where the old bond mark sat, the scar from more than a year ago. Liam felt Arik’s fangs graze the nape of his neck, and he tilted his head back in offering.

The stone. The collar. The binding.

Everything in him was hurtling toward one point of light.

Arik drove into him once more, the full length of him buried in the deepest part of Liam’s body, and then froze. His throat worked against Liam’s skin. The world tilted sideways into color and heat and something like singing.

"If we finish like this," Arik whispered, his voice barely audible over the pulse of the room, "there will be no undoing it."

Liam’s answer was pulled from somewhere beneath thought.

"Then make it permanent."