Chapter 6
6
B e devoted to one another in brotherly love; give preference to one another in honour.
Romans 10
We work in silence.
It is a nightly occurrence: from sunset until morning, we choose not to speak to one another—an order meant to focus us on our work.
Silence is the bane of my existence, for it is within these quiet hours that I find my mind most unruly. It is far easier to stare at my brothers and have the excuse of staring for their attention, and not for ungodly reasons. But so, too, do I find that, without the distraction of conversation, I think over and over again about why God has punished me so.
I am choir monk Alessandro, twenty-two and not yet a don. I am working not in the monastery I was raised, but in a small town I have visited in the south of Italy. The details do not matter: the boy does.
He is three years older than me, and brilliant. His name is Raffiano, but he wishes to be called Paul. Paul is beautiful. I see Heaven in his eyes, God in that perfect smile. He is kind, and I cannot comprehend what his kindness means. If it means anything at all.
One day, I reach out and I take his hand. He squeezes my hand back. I think to myself that this is it. I have been vulnerable; I have done the thing I have been scared to do, and for as long as the silence lasts, I don’t have to know whether Paul sees it that way or not.
The next day, I am still delusional with my love for him. He tells me, “It is good to have a brother unafraid of his affections. You are Romans 10 in a man, Alessandro. I aspire to be like you.”
And he will still take my hand for the next month, but I know I am a brother to him. When I leave the town and return to my own monastery, he writes me a letter with Romans 10 written below his farewell.
I do not reply.
I snapped awake in Prince Vassago’s arms and squirmed with fear as I attempted to sit up. My head aches, and Vassago is shushing me. My cheeks are wet with tears.
Paul. Raffiano. I hadn’t thought about him in years.
“You wanted affection, then. Not sex.”
“All of it,” I whispered.
“Perhaps it became easier for you to think of carnal sin as more accessible than for one of your brethren to return your affections.”
I hated that Vassago could speak so easily on this. I hated that I might be eternally craving something I couldn’t have. I wanted to ask about the Hellish visions I had been shown of my monastery. I imagined Oliviero on his knees, my rosary in his mouth. I squeezed my eyes shut; it was easy to think of Oliviero like that. If he had looked at me with care in his eyes, would I have found the will to put my cock in his mouth?
Vassago shushed me; I had been breathing hard. He ran his fingers through my hair and encouraged me to lie back again. His touches were soft, gentle strokes across my neck or my chest, and never lower.
“Alessandro. You want to be loved.”
“Is it a sin?”
“We don’t care about that here.”
But Vassago wasn’t comprehending. I wanted love to be a sin. It would be so much easier for a demon to indulge in affection if it was against the will of God.
I said, “What if I have condemned myself to an eternity where I will never be loved?”
And Vassago said, with great wisdom, “Why are you worried about that when you are currently unable to let yourself love at all?”
I turned to look at it, relaxing minutely under its gaze. To shift the conversation away from such vulnerable things, I asked, “You’re… benevolent?”
“I am good-natured,” Vassago corrected. “Still a demon.”
I nodded, though I didn’t fully understand. Vassago smiled. “I am perhaps the most honest of all my brethren. I have no interest in trickery. I encourage true natures to emerge.”
“Is that all?” I whispered quite cynically.
Vassago ignored my tone. “No, no. I share the past and future with any who summon me, should they ask. I can locate lost objects, or?—”
“Tell me my future,” I said quickly.
Vassago looked at me, a devious little smile spilling onto his lips. “What would you know?”
“If I’m happy one day. Loved.” I glanced away, ashamed that I was so desperate to hear these words.
But the demon only took my face between its fingers and said, “If you allow me to kiss you, if you let me be slow and gentle with you, if you tell me what you like and dislike, then I can see a future where you have all those things and more.”
I nodded, and he let go of me. I thought he would lean in then and there, but he seemed to know better. After that moment, Vassago spent hours talking to me, touching me. He made me laugh. He showed me his time in Heaven, the way Marchosias had done. The outrage he had felt at his creator subjecting Himself to a mortal life, the lack of understanding he’d had for God’s decision, and his refusal to accept it. It all seemed—well, rather justified. How odd it was to me that these demons had not been as cruel as the ones occupying inferior ranks.
Vassago knew so much of what I had studied because he had lived it.
As we talked and laughed, I felt as I had done around Paul: that affection for another who understands you.
I know it was likely magic. I know it must have been, to make any sense at all. I might have been lying draped across Vassago’s bed for days or months, a slow romance blooming in mere seconds of my consciousness; Hell was Hell. It followed no rules. In any case, I felt affection, attraction, and equal parts fear and desire every time I met Vassago’s eye.
This time, when he shuffled closer, I did not flinch away. He smelled as familiar as myself, and all my walls lessened until he had wrapped his arm around my back and pulled me close. Vassago leaned his mouth down, and I surged up to meet him. We breathed each other in, and then I was fighting to tear his doublet free.
And he stopped me.
“I’m meant to be making love to you. Not fucking you senseless.”
My gut churned in fear, and I let go of him immediately. He was chiding me, and it felt as terrifying as a lecture from a bishop. Vassago took my hand in his and guided it back to touch him.
“Slow,” was all he said, murmured softly like a reminder. He kissed my cheek and then my neck.
My nerves were shot. I jerked at every touch, terrified and yet wanting. Vassago ignored my mewls of fear, and soon, he was pulling moans from my lips. He moved slowly, tongue lapping up my neck, lips sucking on my earlobe as his fingers trailed down my waist. He tongued at my nipples, entire mouth pressed to the perked bud, and I rolled my hips instinctively, eager for him to remove my pants.
I was growing hard, face flung to the side and eyes closed, when Vassago tilted my chin back towards him and commanded, “Open your eyes, Alessandro.”
I squeezed even tighter before I gained the courage, and then I was staring up into the warm brown eyes of a man I felt some kind of love for. A man I was certain loved me back.
The absurdity of the situation meant nothing to me. I wasn’t thinking about how it was possible or moral. I was thinking: Prince Vassago loves me, and I am terrified of that love. Prince Vassago loves me, and I crave that love.
He kissed me gently on the lips, and then his kisses became slow and intentional. Tongue licked out against my lips, and I opened my mouth for him with a soft moan. Vassago shifted himself so he was straddling both my hips with his legs. He undressed himself above me, unbuttoning his doublet slowly, peeling it over his head with inefficient motions designed to tease. With the blue fabric removed, my eyes were filled with the pillowed rise of his pectorals and the sea of black hair that curled over his bare skin. He arched slightly; I’d never seen a man so muscular arch in this way. I reached out to touch him. His thighs and ass were warm in the cream hose, and my cock twitched towards their soft centre, the cleft between the two cheeks. Vassago lowered himself onto me with a knowing laugh.
“Do you want to put it in me?” he asked, looking down at me.
And I—laughed. It was a panicked sound. I gripped both his thighs and tried to throw him off me, but the Prince was far stronger, and he stayed fixed in silence, waiting for my panic to subside.
He was being serious. This demon was requesting of me something I had never done.
“I. . .I’ve never. . .”
“Make love to me, Alessandro,” he whispered, bending low for another kiss. He stayed pressed to my mouth, inhaling hard, and when he pulled away, his hands were against my cheeks, eyes searching.
Waiting for my answer, for my acquiescence. I gasped, drawing in all the air in the world for my answer, but I couldn’t even say it. I nodded my head, and a small smile appeared on Vassago’s face.
He moved down my body slowly, the way Furfur had done, fingers dancing in the soft divots of my groin to tease the tender flesh. He put his tongue on my balls and sucked gently at them, the underside of his tongue lapping up the full hot length of my cock, which was aching. He sucked at the head teasingly, slowly, a great wash of saliva coating my cock, and pleasure was a mounting thing. The rough hairs of his moustache tickled against the sensitive skin, a gentle scrape that had me bucking up into the warm embrace of his mouth.
Vassago gagged and spluttered, sounds he followed up with moaning and a firm but encouraging grip on my hips. He worked me with his mouth, up and down, and often would gag himself for my own pleasure; the tip of my cock kissed the back of his throat, and I could feel every time the sphincter of it pulsed around my length.
Seconds turned to minutes, and then I was in a dream-like trance with a wash of pleasure encompassing me every time I rolled my hips. It was easy when he was down there to forget I was meant to be making love; I could fuck the warm, wet vestibule without worry. So when he pulled free with a grunt and brought himself up again to be kissed, I grew anxious once more. He was hard himself, and we turned to lie face to face so we might fondle one another and kiss and stare, a ritual of a kind that slowly unstitched my worry from this growing tapestry of touch.
Vassago’s beard grazed against my clean-shaven face. I drew him closer and breathed deep, inhaling his scent, and a valve opened in my body: a flood of warmth as blood surged into my already aching cock. Vassago noticed. He smiled against my lips and reached down to squeeze around the member, tugging carefully and teasingly as I spread my legs for his touch.
“What do you want?” he whispered, and I thought of Asmodeus at my first summoning. The answer I had given then had been you , but it seemed insubstantial now. I wanted something precise.
I closed my eyes and thought back to the decades of fantasies I had entertained in the monastery. They came to me in ill-formed flashes. Most of them had been nothing more than picturing my fellow brethren naked, and it had been years before those simple sins lost their flavour. When I’d wanted to access the same thrill I had felt in those early days, I thought of greater taboos: of someone’s hand edging up my cassock in the middle of a sermon or something surging towards me when I was bent over in the garden pulling out the weeds strangling my beautiful flowers. And then the fantasies had become more specific.
Oliviero spread on my bed, back arched and looking back at me; a lustful stare framed by long lashes, face shadowed by lust. I imagined the swell of his balls, the sharp angles of his hips, and how the meat of his thighs might spread as he settled into the bed.
It had been a fantasy that seemed most inaccessible. Looking back, I could understand why so many of my desires had focused on my body as the object of fucking. It seemed easier to comprehend myself as a vessel to be used by other’s desires, and it kept my own desires safely locked behind a door of deniability. If I was used, it didn’t mean I wanted to be used.
But to direct Vassago now would confirm what I had always known: I was whorish in every conceivable way. I wanted to enjoy the bodies of men as much as I wanted to be enjoyed. I realised I could desire both: that even if, in my heart, I was most drawn to being taken, I did desire to give on occasion.
And such an occasion was now.
“I want you on your knees,” I whispered. Vassago let go of me and shifted. He removed his hose, and the mattress creaked as he changed positions, and then he was lying with his face pressed into the pillow and his knees tucked beneath his hips. He was arching, chest pressed to the mattress. I shivered and pushed off the bed to see better.
Vassago’s was all perfect angles and curves bent over the bed like that. His ass was firm and round, and the muscle of his hamstrings was evident, tiny black hairs curling sparsely along the skin. I couldn’t see much of his head from this angle, just the rush of black hair obscured by the curve of his upper back. My eyes were transfixed on the heavy droop of his balls, which fell so perfectly I was transfixed by the sight of them. I reached out and cupped them. Vassago leaned back into the touch with a shiver, his cock straining hard. I ran my fingers over his back and over his ass, and I watched the twitch of his hole as my breath rushed over it.
I got off on the bed, lowered myself, and pressed my face between the cheeks.
Now, this felt like the most dutiful of all acts I had partaken in. I was on my knees off the bed, the way I would be in prayer, my hands clasped either side of Vassago’s cheeks to spread them apart. My tongue lapped over his balls, up his taint, over his hole, tentative and unsure, until Vassago pressed back with a moan and another blockade lifted from my mind. I buried my face eagerly between his cheeks and licked like it was my duty, tonguing up and down and around the hole as deep, breathy moans filled the room. Vassago’s hole kept twitching closed, and I pressed my tongue against it, wanting to fuck it open. My tongue lacked the strength.
Frustrated, I reached around to fondle Vassago’s cock, slowly stroking over the slick tip, just as I pressed my thumb to Vassago’s ass. I pressed hard, and it slipped inside with a pop.
“ God ,” Vassago heaved, a false prayer that made me whine loudly.
“What of Him?” I whispered back, understanding perhaps for the first time the sadistic pull the demons felt whenever they saw me desperate like this; a religious man overrun by lust.
Vassago began to rock back and forth on his knees. My finger popped free of his wet hole with a shlick , and again and again, Vassago rutted back onto it with a grunt. I tore my finger free at the next rock backwards and delighted in Vassago’s rough cry. His pink hole twitched, small gape quivering, and then I drove forward again with my tongue. This time, I had no trouble slipping in. I flexed my tongue and pushed it deep, and when that began to make my jaw ache, I rocked my head back and forth, fucking in and out of Vassago’s ass until it was warm, wet, and open.
Vassago arched into it, thrusting down to meet my tongue and moaning loudly. He pushed himself off the pillow for a better vantage, and his wordless cries became a “ Yes, yes, yes ,” percussive and deliberate.
Saliva ran down my chin, and my own moans filled the room, and I thought of the perfection of this design: of how much fun I was having, of Vassago’s beauty, of the way we fit together. I found what I wanted wasn’t always total domination. I wanted to give and to receive. I wanted a symbiosis of pleasure, an understanding I could reach with each partner.
So when Vassago said, “I want you inside me,” I pulled my tongue free and urged him onto his back.
In any other instance, I would have wanted a man—a demon—like Vassago inside of me. But I couldn’t deny the urge I had to feel the depth of him.
“Alessandro. Alessandro ,” Vassago hissed. He looked back at me over his shoulder, dark hair covering one eye. His mouth hung open as he panted. “Touch me. Come now; I want you to fuck me.”
His head pushed back into the pillow, and I was thrilled by the excitement driving him to move so eagerly. He looked beautiful on his back.
“Hold your legs apart.”
He shifted and held his beautiful legs. Brown eyes framed by thick brows and curled hair. Hair covered his chest, belly, arms, legs. I ran my fingers over his feet, which were smooth and bare, and I came close to him. Our cocks were straining. I looked at his ass, relaxed enough I could see it pulsing. I wanted to press inside, but I stopped myself. I leaned down to kiss Vassago slowly instead. He moaned and rolled his hips high. Our bodies touched, hips meeting, the bones of our pelvises locking together as if our bodies were a shattered mosaic being pieced back together. Vassago’s fingers laced into my hair and tried to pull me closer, but I resisted. I pulled away and looked down at him, and said, “I am nervous.”
I expected a flicker of disdain to pass over his face, but nothing of the sort happened. I could forget what he was and where we were because he sat up, took my hand, and pressed it to his belly. I felt the warmth of the skin, the slight softness of the flesh.
“We are two men loving one another. What is there to be nervous about?”
Touch him , a voice whispered to me. Asmodeus itself, come to bear witness. But all the tenor of its voice had been stripped away, and with it, the heavy thrum of fear I often felt. Asmodeus’ voice was a warm and welcoming thing, an embrace to urge me forward. He wants to touch him, to slip inside. Give him everything you’ve ever wanted to give another man. Take from him your pleasure; be rough or gentle, but enjoy it. Make him enjoy you.
I ran my hands over his chest, fingers grazing over his nipples. Vassago’s smile was gentle but lustful. He settled back into the pillows and spread his legs, and the sight was delectable. I wanted to consume the feast of his flesh.
I pressed our cocks together and rutted forward. The both of us gasped as hundreds of pleasant jolts spread throughout our bodies. The friction was delicious, but not enough. I wanted more. Vassago reached up and held his legs apart. I dragged the leaking tip of my cock to his hole.
“ Please ,” Vassago murmured, eyes dark with lust.
And I pushed it all in.
Vassago’s hole opened for me with ease, and I sank all the way inside.
“Oh. Oh. . .”
“Fuck—ah!” Vassago cried, and a garbled noise escaped him when I slowly drew my cock out, focused on feeling the smooth walls and tight clench of the sphincter over the sensitive head. With only the tip remaining inside, I plunged back into the warmth with a heavy thrust.
Vassago wailed. His hands tightened around his calves, and his brows crashed together. His mouth hung open, and his spine arched.
He was wanton. Pathetic. Beautiful . My heart seized at the sight of him, another man exposing himself to me, opening his body for my pleasure.
All I could think of was the tight heat hugging my length, the walls convulsing as Vassago moaned and squeezed. I thrust in and out of him slowly, feeling every part of him; my whole body trembled with the pleasure.
How had I. Managed . For so long. Without this?
I knew if I fucked him how my body wanted, I would reach climax in moments. I relaxed the muscles in my lower belly in the hopes I could delay orgasm, and I grinded my hips down until something happened, and Vassago’s hole relaxed so much I felt the warmth of his insides envelop part of my balls.
“That’s it,” I whispered, as the feeling changed. Now that Vassago was relaxed, I pounded into him without care. I was ruthless, thrusting hard and revelling in every reaction the demon had: his breathless gasps, heavy cries, Vassago’s deep voice growing steadily higher in pitch with every thrust. Then Vassago’s eyes snapped open, lust and fear and delight filling up his brown eyes, and each slick fuck had Vassago screaming.
Then, I slowed and moved slowly. Vassago’s hands wrapped around my head. He pulled me down into a kiss and moaned into my mouth as we moved together, the divots of our pelvis locking together perfectly. He turned his head, and I dove into his neck, kissing and licking the exposed flesh there.
“You feel—so good,” I told him.
Our chests were connected. Sweat pulled between us. I didn’t care—I loved the noises I was pulling from this man. I loved the way he was looking at me, like I was a divine thing.
This slow pace only made the mounting pleasure difficult to ignore. He felt it, too; his hand was between his thighs, and he was rutting up eagerly into the palm of his hand. At one particularly deep thrust, Vassago’s eyes slipped to the back of his skull, and I felt his hole clench.
“ There ,” he breathed, and so I focused on the knot of nerves I had found, pressing into it again and again in time with Vassago’s moans. “Yes,” he cried out. “Yes, that feels so ? —”
Vassago came in a silent scream that melted into a long, protracted moan. His hole spasmed just as cum spurted from his cock. Vassago fell back, still in the throes of his climax, and I pounded into the wet heat with a desperation. My cock was pulsing, throbbing—I stared down at the moaning mess of a man beneath me and squeezed the two soft cheeks of his ass. I rammed up into him three more times, and seconds later, with Vassago’s hole clenching tightly around me, I came hard inside him. I spilled everything I had into that man.
My own moan had me throwing my head back with pleasure. I kept moaning and thrusting, even when the sensation became unbearably sensitive. I wanted to milk myself of every last drop.
When the exhaustion hit, I closed my eyes and spent a moment suspended over Vassago’s body.
Then I pulled out slowly, watching as his hole fought to keep my deflating cock inside. When I popped out, my cum oozed free in a gush. I moaned, thumbing the liquid back into Vassago’s hole. He looked positively ravished. The sweat sheen on his forehead had made his hair stick to his skin. His eyes were heavy. Drool dripped from the corner of his mouth. And I loved what I had done to him: that I had filled him up like a prophetic dream, the way the fear of God had always filled me up. In fucking Vassago, I had made myself relaxed.
I slumped down beside him, and we moved close to hold one another—something I had never truly experienced. As the vulnerability bubbled up in me, I fought it down, thinking to myself that I was well beyond such worries now.
Instead, a new worry was filling me.
I longed for Asmodeus.
The realisation hit me like a curse. I wanted Asmodeus, all of it. I wanted it to treat me as I had treated Vassago; for it to look into my eyes and see my desire and my love. So, too, did I want its total domination. I wanted to be a mewling mess and lover; slave and taken care of.
Vassago looked more human than ever. He breathed heavily, air whistling through his nose as if he was asleep. But what was more terrifying than a demon who could make you forget he was one?
I turned and lay on my back, letting myself fantasise that this was my life: that I was still alive, as human as I had once been, and committed to a man like Vassago’s bed rather than to the cloth. Would it have mattered, I wondered—for such a thing would not have been possible. The blasphemy, the constant threat of sin and being discovered, all would have destroyed me in some way or another.
Again, I thought: this was the only solution for me. Coming to Hell.
I closed my eyes and reached out for Asmodeus. Bravery filled me up. I told it, “I wish you and I will make love. I wish you would wreck me and leave me in the afterglow of rough pleasure. But so too do I wish you will love me.”
I didn’t know, in truth, what I wanted or what I was asking. Could I really assume a demon of Asmodeus’ standing would ever have anything beyond lustful feelings for me? I had admitted to many demons along the way that I knew I was nothing special; just another set of holes for the demon to fuck.
But now I said, “Call me your little priest. Mean it when you say you are proud of me. These are things I wish for but not things I need.”
Because in the end, I would take whatever it had to give me. Sex or soft touches, a rough breaking, or a slow loving—I would be Asmodeus’ toy.