7. Chapter 7 #2
Levi hadn’t meant to, but his hand had reached of its own accord to touch those fascinating ridges.
They were too symmetrical to be scars. They almost felt like bone.
Ashmedai had claws after all, however delicately he used them, as well as points on every tooth.
Levi had read about many creatures of myth, all of which someone in the Dark Kingdom had emulated after the curse, sometimes a combination of several.
He didn’t know what Ashmedai was supposed to be.
“More of my strangeness,” Ashmedai said quietly, referencing an old conversation about how they both had trouble accepting who and what they were.
Levi answered with the sentiment he had finally taken to heart.
“No such thing in the Shadow Lands.” He flattened his hand over the ridges, mimicking how Ashmedai had covered and smoothed the stitches over Levi’s heart.
Feeling Ashmedai shiver, which was far too tantalizing an act from the Shadow King, Levi found his nerves strengthened.
He lifted his other hand to the opening of Ashmedai’s robe and drew both sets of trailing fingers downward, parting the soft fabric as he went, until he reached the tie at Ashmedai’s waist. The king made no move to stop him, so Levi undid the tie and pushed the robe from Ashmedai’s shoulders like he’d envisioned.
Similar ridges to what arched across Ashmedai’s chest were also along his ribs, as well as lining his elbows and knees, usually in three or four parallel rows. None crossed over the flat of his stomach, but some curled up around his hips, fading downward where they pointed in a tantalizing V.
Ashmedai’s cock was also ridged, with fainter but clearly there lines, especially visible with how he was hardening
Levi wanted to touch every one of them.
“I want to pleasure you as you did me,” he said, beginning to untie his own robe.
“I-I barely touched you,” Ashmedai sputtered, like it was no great feat, though for Levi, he had never known anything as blissful.
“You can touch me now,” Levi said, letting his robe fall to join Ashmedai’s on the floor.
Levi had never been bare in front of anyone but Braxton, and then, it was always clinical.
Where once he would have been frightened, now, those nerves were pure anticipation.
He watched Ashmedai reach for him with what Levi still felt was undeserved reverence, yet from the king, he knew it was genuine.
The first touch was simply along Levi’s cheekbone, and then down his neck over his heart. Ashmedai seemed to be tracing all the places where he had already smoothed away stitches, mimicking how he had touched Levi beneath his clothing in the rain, only now nothing encumbered him.
Finally, once every other part of Levi had been gifted a caress, and they were both hard, Ashmedai reached between Levi’s legs. Gentle claws found Levi’s cock, and the soft underside of his fingers curled firmly.
Levi gasped and bucked into his grip. “M-may I… touch you too? ”
It seemed words failed Ashmedai, but he nodded.
Levi’s hands had a roughness to them, the hands of someone who had worked hard over many weeks.
He thought that might make them unpleasant against the preternatural smoothness of Ashmedai, but the king shuddered with every stroke along the lines of his beautiful ridges.
Ashmedai was so warm, both his touch on Levi, turning into rhythmic strokes, and his cock in Levi’s palm.
“I want my mouth on you,” Levi husked when they were both panting.
Ashmedai laughed, more like a startled eruption. “I… don’t mean to doubt your desires but… do you know what you’re doing? What we’re doing?” he corrected, for he clearly didn’t mean to imply he doubted Levi’s skills, only that he wondered if Levi was aware of what this type of intimacy meant.
“I’m not a child, remember?” Levi removed his hand from Ashmedai to still Ashmedai’s strokes on him. “I’ve only been this version of me for a short time, but I know what I want. And… I’ve read a few romances in my studies.” He glanced aside at the admission.
“Brax has romances in that tower?”
“He’s not completely cold.”
“I feared I was becoming cold,” Ashmedai admitted, drawing Levi’s eyes back up to meet the haunting white-on-black that Levi had never quite been able to perfect when conjuring illusions of Ashmedai in his room.
This was no illusion.
“All I feel from you, my king,” Levi said, “is warmth.”
Levi kissed him, unprepared for how the closeness of their bodies brushed their cocks together. He loved those ridges as much as he loved Ashmedai’s claws and sharp teeth, but especially after feeling them on his skin.
A shaky breath puffed from Levi against Ashmedai’s mouth in the aftermath of their lips and tongues entwining, and he fought the urge to rut forward. He had released too swiftly once before and had no desire for that again.
The large canopy bed behind them was perfectly aligned for Levi to back Ashmedai toward it, and he did, slowly, carefully, guiding Ashmedai where he wanted him to go.
The curtains of the bed were also red and black brocade, tied to their posts but capable of shielding Levi and Ashmedai from everything but each other.
For now Levi left them tied and pushed on Ashmedai’s chest for him to drop down onto the edge of the bed.
Ashmedai had always been a vision of beauty, but with his arms extended to support him and his back arched, the toned muscle down his torso tightened, making every one of his ridges more prominent. Levi could barely contain how much he wanted to descend upon the offering laid before him.
Visions swirled behind Levi’s eyes, like what he remembered from their first kiss behind the festival stall.
Levi hadn’t known this with another man in his former life, but he had wanted it, craved it desperately, and been denied.
Been… unable to reach for it. Now nothing stood in his way, and Ashmedai, Shadow King in all his naked splendor, was better than any wayward daydream.
Levi lowered himself to his knees between Ashmedai’s white thighs.
Whenever Levi blushed, his skin turned indigo, but Ashmedai’s pure white tones took on a faint rosy pink.
That telling hue was in his cheeks now and slightly down his chest, but also along the inside of his thighs and pulsing from his ripe cock.
With saliva rapidly building, Levi bent forward and eagerly took Ashmedai into his mouth.
A plaintive whimper left them both like a harmonizing chorus.
Levi descended farther, hollowing his cheeks to increase the suction around Ashmedai’s length.
He took Ashmedai in as deep as he could, until Ashmedai’s tip touched the back of his throat and Levi’s nose was pressed to Ashmedai’s belly.
Ashmedai was hairless here. He was entirely hairless other than his eyebrows and the long black hair on his head.
Levi was mostly the same, but above his sex were dark curls that didn’t match his red waves.
That thought might have saddened Levi, to think that so little of him was him , but all that mattered now was who he was today and what he had in his grasp.
Levi licked the underside of Ashmedai’s cock, only to bob down once more with added saliva and suction to ensure Ashmedai felt this.
The haggard moan the king released was wonderful encouragement.
On the next bob, Levi paid close attention to Ashmedai’s ridges, working his tongue between each groove.
He hadn’t been sure where to place his hands, but with his confidence increasing from every wanton whine pulled from Ashmedai’s lips, Levi spread his fingers across Ashmedai’s inner thighs and squeezed as he quickened his pace.
“L-Levi….” Ashmedai uttered brokenly. The blankets on the bed were completely black, outlining Ashmedai’s body starkly and how his clawed nails gripped into the fabric like he might tear it.
Levi hastened, massaging the ridges up Ashmedai’s hips while his tongue massaged the ones on Ashmedai’s length.
He bobbed and sucked Ashmedai down as obscenely as if he could swallow him whole.
He could feel such glorious heat through Ashmedai’s skin, and he wanted to feel more spill down his throat.
“Levi!” Ashmedai cried sharper, one hand starting to lift as if to reach for Levi, but then it twisted into the blankets again.
Even more of Ashmedai’s white skin was flushed pink, and when his eyes closed and fluttered briefly, Levi could have sworn Ashmedai’s white pupils went black like the rest.
“I-I—” Ashmedai tried to speak, tensing all down his body, his neck arching backward and mouth falling open, so that Levi knew how close he was and doubled his efforts to bring Ashmedai there .
When Levi felt the heat he’d been waiting for, he swallowed and licked the remnants from Ashmedai’s skin.
Ashmedai slumped heavily onto his arms but kept himself propped up, breathless as he gazed down his body at Levi in apparent wonder. “You are so… beautiful….”
“Me?” Levi dropped his eyes but raised them swiftly again to not miss one moment of Ashmedai lying there rosy and spent. “ You’re beautiful.”
A twitch at Ashmedai’s lips seemed to say he didn’t believe that, so Levi vowed to prove it to him.
He swooped upward from between Ashmedai’s knees and climbed onto the bed, crawling atop Ashmedai and straddling his hips.
Their cocks brushed each other again, Levi’s firm and heavy, with Ashmedai’s wilted but twitching with promise.
Seated in Ashmedai’s lap, Levi grasped the king’s face in both hands and kissed him.
The taste of Ashmedai still lingered on Levi’s tongue to share, and he did so boldly.