RAGNAR #3
It’s close to evening, so there aren’t many people around. We manage to make it through the hallways and up to the second floor, where his room is.
The adrenaline that triggered my partial shift isn’t fading easily.
I’ve retracted my spikes and the armor plates; they’ve pulled back into the spaces between my ribs, but my body still hasn’t returned to normal.
My muscles are swollen, the glands in my neck are puffed up, and my face… it must look monstrous.
I usually keep my features slightly shifted, some bone plates relocated to give myself a bit of a different look, since Moon potentially showed Anzo pictures of his ever-absent marine brother. But now I probably appear even stranger, with my face partially deformed, and thicker lines.
Once we’re inside and the door shuts, Sun suddenly stops.
He turns toward me. He’s a mess, his shirt’s ripped, hair wild, Vito’s blood smeared across his shoulder.
"Please, wait here a minute," he says hoarsely.
He grabs something from the closet and runs into the bathroom. I stay there, unsure what’s going on, dizzily scanning the room, noticing the harp in the corner and the wide bed with soft, velvety covers. Golden cage?
But Sun emerges from the bathroom pretty quickly. He no longer has his blood-splattered shirt on. He has washed off his shoulders too. His chest is naked, with some water droplets, gleaming gold.
His eyes fix on me. "Before you go wash up too… I just want to thank you. You saved me, you protected me from those fuckers, I’m forever in your debt!"
He steps closer. I catch the sweet scent of oranges, and my body tenses. In this state, half-shifted, everything inside me is more animal than human. It’s harder to control myself. Especially sexually.
His hands lift, brushing lightly against my chest. The touch sends a soft shiver through me and a wave of heat hits me. I can’t stop the sound that slips from my throat: ‘ Appreciation’ call, one of the basic mating signals in AO language. A low, almost involuntary note of desire.
Sun blushes, his eyes change expression, from one of gratitude to something more inviting? But I immediately mutter, "Sorry. I couldn’t help it."
"It’s okay, Ragnar," he whispers, as his slender fingers tickle my chest. "I just needed to say thank you. You risked everything for me. And I’m nothing to you. Just some random guy. But you did it anyway. You could’ve lost your life for a stranger. I’m forever in your debt, Ragnar. Forever."
I don’t say anything. He’s right, I did risk everything. My mission, my brothers. Only a miracle saved us both… embodied by Luca and Mauro stepping in when they did.
His fingers are still on my chest, gently moving, stroking me in soft circles. I clench my jaw, fighting every instinct.
"Sun, please. Don’t touch me. I’m still in partial shift, it’s hard to stay in control." Forcing myself to do it, I gently peel his hands off my chest, though even touching his wrists sends a hot pulse through my veins.
Sun opens his mouth like he’s about to say something, but I back away quickly, going to the bathroom door to the left, stepping in with a frown. I notice right away it doesn’t lock. This is clearly a single room with its own bathroom, and nobody’s bothered with any kind of privacy measures.
That doesn’t worry me, so I strip off my blood-soaked, torn clothes and catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror.
I look like my muscles have swollen to twice their size. My skin’s flushed red. The scent glands on my neck are bulging.
There’s a bruised, bloody mark on my forehead where the bullet grazed me, and two more on my chest, but they’re already starting to fade, as purple alphas regenerate fast. In a partial shift, the metal-bone plates just move under my skin, protecting the organs, but they don’t push out through the lines marking my body, trunk, or limbs.
That only happens during a full transformation into imago .
My face is still distorted; that doesn’t fade away too quickly. Even though the bony plates above my eyes have retracted, the tissue around them is still thickened, giving me a brutish, almost caveman look. And this isn’t even my full shift. When that happens, I barely resemble a human at all.
I must look repulsive to Sun. Or… maybe not? I bite my lip, trying to shake the image of his soft mouth whispering thanks so close to mine.
I step into the shower and start rinsing off the blood, letting cold water pour down my body.
It’ll help bring the swelling down faster, but I know I’ll still look like this for at least twenty more minutes.
I’ll have to wait it out. I can’t leave the compound looking like this, guards in the pass-through would start asking questions right away.
But just as I’m about to step out of the shower, I hear the door click open.
Sun walks into the bathroom, and he’s completely naked.
I freeze.
I don’t know if a body can be more beautiful. Perfect proportions. Compared to my bulky, massive build, he looks like some kind of ballet dancer, slim, graceful. Long legs, gorgeous narrow hips. Of course my eyes drift lower, and I see he’s already half-hard.
I want to say something, tell him to leave, to protest, but my body, already on edge, refuses to let my vocal cords work.
Sun steps closer. His eyes are wide, pupils blown, and now he’s looking at my crotch. My dick betrays me instantly, reacting to his gaze. How the hell could it not?
Then he looks up at my face, and I finally manage to choke something out.
"Sun… I warned you. The transformation hasn’t worn off yet. I’m not in full control, I need you to—"
"But I don’t want you to be in control."
He slides the glass door of the shower aside and steps into the stall with me.
That’s when I see he’s holding something in his hand. I catch the scent: plastic wrapping. I can guess what it is.
"Sun, seriously—"
But then he abruptly presses up against me, his young, lithe body vibrating with life, energy, and heat.
I can smell him again; sadly, not his natural pheromones, but that sweet, tempting orange blossom scent from his body wash. His arms come around my back. He clings to me, chest to chest.
I should push him away, dear Fate, I should, but I just… can’t. There’s no force in the universe that could make me reject this beautiful, desperate body pressed against mine.
He leans in close, standing on his tiptoes, his mouth brushing under my ear as he murmurs, "Please…"
And still I don’t push him off.
Kissing my neck, he whispers, "I want you to fuck me."
That’s what finally snaps me out of it.
I push him back to arm’s length, but he’s still clinging to my biceps like a vine. There’s barely enough space in the stall to create distance, and probably not enough space on the entire damn planet.
"Why are you doing this, Sun? This isn’t the right moment. You’re in shock and under stress, you were just assaulted—" I blurt out, grasping for any reason to hold him off.
"Yes, I’m under stress, constant stress!" He pants, his pupils are so dilated they nearly eclipse the green of his irises. "I need to be my own person, to decide something for myself, not just do whatever he wants, because if I don’t, I disappear."
"Sun, don’t you understand? If he finds out, if anyone finds out, Anzo will kill us. Luca and Mauro know we came to the same room! If I stay here too long—"
"They don’t seem like Anzo’s biggest fans. Please, Ragnar… it’s such a small thing for you to give me…"
He’s still gripping my arms. I try again to shake him off, but he’s latched on tight. The only way to get him off now would be to use actual force, and I don’t want to manhandle this distraught, beautiful guy.
"I’m not in this fortress of my own free will," he whispers. "I don’t want to be here. But he’ll kill my family if I try to run. I have nothing, Ragnar. No hope. No chance at being even remotely happy, no way to feel normal. But you… you could give me a slice of that."
"I can’t, I…"
He lunges at me with so much urgency I can’t stop him in time. He presses against me again.
"There’s nothing left of me to hold on to. Please, don’t make me beg before I fall apart…"
His soft lips again brush the side of my neck. That warm, wet kiss sends a full-body shiver through me.
Goddammit, what a fucked-up situation.
A miracle got me out of one disaster, and now I’m about to cross another line? Risk it all again, when I’ve just started to believe I might get back on track with my mission?
And yet… I haven’t had real sex in a year. Before that, just scraps, quick, meaningless encounters with other desperate operatives.
So now, standing here, I’m practically defenseless. The closeness of his sweet-smelling body unlocks the hunger that’s been building in me over months of tension.
The knowledge that he’s Anzo’s lover—what used to hold me back—starts to fade. I try to summon all those negative feelings again, but they slip right through me like smoke.
His hands won’t let go of me, his hips press against my thigh, and I can feel… the hard length of his cock against me.
Fuck. Mine reacts instantly and becomes fully erect in response. I squeeze my eyes shut, trying once again to will myself to push him away. But it takes a moment to gather enough motivation. I keep repeating to myself, "Do you want to save your brothers, Ragnar? If Anzo finds out, this ends."
But my dick clearly isn’t on board with the minimizing the risk plan. And with this gorgeous guy practically begging for it, and me being starved and stressed out of my mind lately, my self-control drops to absolute zero on the Kelvin scale.
Before I can think it through, my hands are already wrapping around his slender back, pulling him closer. And Fate, it feels incredible. My whole body lights up with the intense, primal urge to bury myself in him and fuck until we both lose it.