Chapter 14 #2
Luca took Matej’s hands from the table — both of them, lifted them free — and brought them up slowly. Set one against the side of his face. The other at the back of his head, fingers against his hair. He held them there, making sure Matej felt the weight of the placement, what it meant.
Then he looked up.
“Take,” he said. “You seemed to have opinions.”
He moved his own hands — the ones that had been holding Matej, guiding, setting the pace — and brought them deliberately behind his back. Crossed them there. Let Matej see him do it.
The cave was very still.
Matej looked at him. The hands at his own back, the open mouth, the waiting. He was uncertain — a flicker of it, real — and then Luca’s eyes did something. A glint. A come-here quality, unhurried, entirely sure of what it was inviting.
Matej’s hands tightened, slightly, in Luca’s hair.
He wasn’t rough. He was careful — some part of him tracking, adjusting, paying attention.
But he took. He held and moved and found what he wanted and took it, and Luca’s hands stayed behind his back and his eyes stayed open and his arousal — visible, undisguised, his jeans still open at the thighs — made clear that this arrangement suited him completely.
At some point Matej looked down.
Not at what was happening — at the floor. The stone. Luca’s knees on it, bare skin against cold rock, how long they’d been there.
He stilled.
His hands loosened. He looked at Luca, who looked back, unhurried, not understanding yet.
“Up,” Matej said.
Luca raised an eyebrow.
Matej reached down and got him — hands under his arms, not rough, just certain — and brought him to his feet. He looked at him. Then at the table behind him.
“Your knees,” he said.
“I told you. Fine.”
“You’ve been down there for —”
“Matej.”
“— a while.”
Luca looked at him. Something in his expression shifted, went more exact. He glanced at the table. Back at Matej.
“Right,” he decided. “Okay.”
Luca made a sound — not pain, something more aggrieved than that.
“My lord is destroying my fantasy.”
Matej blinked. Luca looked at him, breath not quite steady, waiting for him to catch up.
The lord. The secret cheese cave. He’d said that.
“I —” Matej started. Stopped. Tried again. “I am. The lord.” He straightened slightly. “You are — the —”
“Serf,” Luca offered.
“Yes. So we follow —” Matej straightened slightly. “My rules.”
Luca considered this with great seriousness. “Stable boy,” he said. “Specifically. A handsome, rugged stable boy. Gravely negligent. In need of correction.” He held Matej’s eyes the whole time — light, an out kept open, watching to see which way Matej would take it.
They looked at each other.
The cave was very quiet. The cheese wheels said nothing.
Then they both committed — simultaneously, without discussion — the way people commit to something slightly insane because the alternative is explaining why they didn’t.
“What,” Matej said, with new authority, “have you done.”
Luca’s expression arranged itself into something approximating contrition. “The horse ate the cheese, my lord. I cannot explain it. I was nearby. That is all I know.”
“That is —”
“There must be consequences, my lord. Severe ones.” Then, lower, almost out of the game: “Please.”
“And what,” Matej said, “would you have me do about that.”
Luca turned. Set his forearms on the table, weight forward, and looked back over his shoulder with an expression that was doing several things at once — mock penitence, genuine invitation, and something that was simply, straightforwardly: well?
His jeans were still at his thighs. The answer was not unclear.
Matej looked at him.
“You unruly man,” he said. “You are absolutely right. This requires action.”
He moved with more certainty than he’d felt a minute ago — the absurdity of it had loosened something, made the next steps simpler. He pushed Luca’s jeans further down. Found the leather belt still threaded through the loops and worked it free.
Luca went very still.
Just the sound of the leather moving through the last loop, and Luca’s breathing, which had changed in an immediate and unmistakable way.
Matej noted this. Kept it.
He kicked Luca’s feet apart — not roughly, just wide enough — so that Luca’s full weight came forward onto the table, chest and forearms flat against the oak. He stepped in behind him.
And then he didn’t do anything.
Just stood there. Close. The warmth of him, the unmistakable fact of his arousal, against the exposed skin of Luca’s backside. Present. Not moving.
Oh, Luca thought. Oh, you absolute —
He’d expected the belt. A sharp crack, the sting of it, the punishment he’d written into his own scenario. He’d expected hands — fast, decisive, the same way Matej did everything when he finally committed to it.
He was getting: nothing. Deliberate, exquisite nothing. The heat of Matej’s body three millimetres away and no contact, no release, no —
Grab the table, he told himself. Just grab the table and hold on.
His knuckles went white against the oak.
Then Matej’s hands. Moving over him — unhurried, exploratory, like he had all the time that had ever existed. The belt, when it came, didn’t crack. It moved slowly across his skin, almost stroking, the leather warm from Matej’s hands.
That is not — Luca thought. That is not what I —
Matej’s hands found him — both of them, broad and rough and certain — and took their time.
Kneading. The give of him under those palms, the muscle working loose under the pressure, the spread and the release and the spread again, unhurried, thorough, hands that knew how to work a material and wait for it to yield.
Luca pushed back into them, looking for the contact Matej would not give him, and Matej gave him less, slower, reading the impatience and feeding it.
Hard, untouched, entirely ignored. The not-touching was worse than any touch.
A sound came out of him he had not meant to make.
Matej noted it. Kept it. Did not hurry. Luca felt himself opened to the cold air and to Matej’s attention at once, and could do nothing about either.
Then the belt came around — not his backside — his throat.
Not tight. Just present. A held pressure, a reminder.
What Luca exhaled was not a word.
Matej’s finger found his mouth. Luca understood. Opened. Let him.
The finger moved away.
Matej leaned in close, not speaking, just there, his breath warm against Luca’s shoulder, and explored with a patience that bordered on cruelty.
Then, quietly, almost not for Luca at all: “Oh.” And then nothing — the silent one reaching for a word and not closing his hand around it — and then, lower, like it had been pulled out of him: “...how you—”
The rest didn’t come.
“Fuck me,” Luca said.
“My lord,” he added, after a moment. “Please. Fuck me.” The contrition entirely gone, replaced by something considerably more urgent. “Lube. Condom. My jeans. Back pocket. Let’s — please.”
Matej laughed — real, low, startled out of him.
“Such an unruly stable boy,” he said.
He reached for the jeans.
Matej found the condom and the sachet. Luca heard one foil tear, then the other, ordinary sounds too loud in the stone.
He kept his forearms on the oak and his face down.
A fine tremor went through him, want he couldn’t hold still, and he made himself stay with it. He had never been good at waiting.
The lube was cold. He drew a breath at it, more surprise than complaint. Matej’s other hand stayed flat at the small of his back, steady, no theatre in any of it. Quick. Not rough.
Then a finger. The cold of the lube first, then the press, slow, just past the resistance and no further.
Luca breathed through it. The finger worked him, patient, circling, easing, until the breath he was holding went out and the muscle gave.
A second then, the stretch of it, the burn just short of pain, and Matej held at each step — felt for the moment Luca opened around him, and only then asked for more.
Luca made himself stay open. Made himself give it over.
Matej crooked his fingers and found the place that lit up the base of Luca’s spine, and Luca’s whole body came up off the oak before he could decide anything about it.
A sound tore out of him. He pushed back onto the hand, chasing it, and Matej gave it to him again, once, deliberate, then went back to the slow circling work as if he had all night, a third finger easing in alongside the others.
“Matej,” Luca got out. “Now. I already —”
He had already asked. He was past words now, his control slipping as it always did when he couldn’t put a thing into language, and Matej, who could feel exactly how far gone he was, did not hurry by a second.
This was the part Luca couldn’t do. The giving over.
The doing nothing while the decisions belonged to someone else.
He was doing it anyway, against his will, finger by finger, his face down against the oak.
Then the blunt heat of him. The first press, the slow insistence of it, more than fingers now and asking for more room.
Luca breathed out. Out again. The resistance, the burn, the half-second where the body says no before it says everything else. Matej waited it out. Did not push. Held there, still, and left it to Luca to be the one who moved.
Luca moved.
The belt lay against his throat. Matej had it in his hand now — not pulling, just holding, the leather caught in his fist at the back of Luca’s neck.
Then a draw, slow, deliberate, enough to tip Luca’s head back and lift the line of his spine, then the give of it again.
Not tight. Never tight. Just the lead of it, the warm leather and the small drag on the skin, and Luca felt himself steered without a word, held at the angle Matej wanted him.
He could feel where the control was. It was not in his hands. He let it not be.