Chapter One #3
Luther pulled back then and thrust into the sacrifice’s mouth one more time.
The human moaned his pleasure around Luther’s dick, and the vibrations were all it took to push Luther over the edge.
Tossing his head back, he roared as perfection rushed through him, making it impossible to think clearly, to think at all.
His claws scratched at the human’s shoulders, pulling him closer as he came, but even in the midst of his orgasm, Luther was careful—his claws didn’t do any damage that a human’s nails couldn’t have done.
Feeling Luther spill into his mouth seemed to trigger the sacrifice’s orgasm.
He jerked between them as Blaine thrust into him again and again, riding him through his orgasm.
A moment later, the sacrifice sucked hard around Luther’s cock as Blaine buried himself deep inside him and came, just a moment after their human.
For what felt like a lifetime, they all remained frozen where they were.
Luther stared at both the men before him.
Blaine was always glorious, and his eyes shone with satisfaction as he blinked them open and met Luther’s gaze.
For just a second, all the tension that usually swirled through Blaine’s body was gone. He was all contentment.
Eventually, Luther sensed Blaine return to reality and pull back a little. He knew he had to force himself to move away from the sacrifice, too, but he realised that he didn’t want to.
For some reason, Luther found he was reluctant to end his time with a human in a way he never had been before. But he knew he couldn’t actually stay on the rug in front of the fire forever. Even if reality would somehow let them do that, he doubted Arslan would.
Slowly, Luther withdrew his dick from between the sacrifice’s lips. For a moment, the human’s mouth worked the empty air before his lips slowly came back together.
It wasn’t easy to bring them all up onto their feet. Their new human, still blindfolded and bound, had even less coordination than Luther and Blaine did in their combined reluctance to end the moment.
Out of the corner of his eye, Luther saw Arslan studying them. When their gazes met, the leader of their pride smiled, just slightly, before he turned his attention away from them and signalled for the other lions in the pride to bring in the food.
Putting that strange little smile out of his mind, Luther helped Blaine guide their human to one of the big leather sofas that flanked the fireplace. Luther knew Blaine well enough to know that they were both equally determined that none of the other lions should be allowed to take a turn with him.
This man was theirs, and he seemed willing enough to go where he was led, at least until they settled him between them on the sofa. Then, the human moved as if to shuffle away from them both.
“No. You have to rest now,” Luther told him.
The sacrifice didn’t take the least notice of the very clear command.
Frowning, Luther put his hand in the centre of the human’s torso and pushed him back toward Blaine. The sacrifice lost his balance, landing heavily against Blaine’s chest. Blaine quickly wrapped an arm around him and held him there, settled neatly against him.
Luther watched him for a moment, just in case their human should try to make another bid to wander off, toward where the other lions in the pride would be more than happy to receive him. No. He stayed where he was. Nodding his approval, Luther turned his attention to the trays of food.
Arslan had started the feast, and the other members of the pride were already helping themselves. Piling one plate high with enough for three, Luther carried it back to the sofa and took his place on it with Blaine and the sacrifice.
He seemed to have that awkward way about him that all humans had, as if he didn’t really understand the way his limbs should be arranged when men were trying to share a space comfortably with each other.
Blaine’s repeated nudging finally formed their human into a vaguely appropriate shape, and Luther nodded his approval. Taking a piece of meat from the plate, Luther tried to offer it to the sacrifice, but he pulled away as soon it touched his lips.
“It’s chicken. It tastes good. You’ll like it.”
The human hesitated, a trace of uncertainty making its way into his scent, but he opened his mouth and let Luther feed the piece of meat to him.
“Thank you.”
Blaine smiled at Luther over the man’s shoulder. As Blaine took a piece off the plate for himself, he stroked his other hand over the sacrifice’s body, and Luther couldn’t help but trace the path Blaine’s fingertips took with his eyes.
There was a smudge of cum on their human’s stomach. Leaning down, Luther lapped it up.
The sacrifice did seem to have some sort of instinct, even if it wasn’t a proper lion’s intuition. He curled in on himself the moment Luther’s tongue touched his stomach. The move was too instant to be borne of any thought process. It had to be instinct, if a rather strange one.
Luther looked past the sacrifice to Blaine. His lover seemed to be both as bemused and amused as he was.
“There was cum on your stomach. It gets uncomfortable if you leave it there,” Luther explained, patiently.
“Sorry. Tickles,” the human said.
Luther lowered his head and licked the same spot on the sacrifice’s stomach again.
That time the human stayed still, but his whole body tensed.
He bit his lip as if he was really having to fight against the desire to move.
Luther ran his tongue over the little patch of skin again, quietly fascinated.
“Just there?” Luther asked.
The human shrugged as well as any man could while his hands were behind his back.
Luther licked a little lower on his stomach, just to see what would happen.
Nothing. He lapped lower again, making his way across pale skin and neatly trimmed jet-black hairs on his way to their human’s cock.
He received no response until he ran his tongue over the length of his softened dick from tip to base.
The sacrifice gasped. Some of the sleepy contentment that seemed to have flooded into him after he’d come vanished.
“Does that tickle, too?” Blaine asked from behind him.
Their human shook his head. “No, that’s fine. Lick there as much as you like.”
Luther smiled against the sacrifice’s cock. In some ways, humans really weren’t that different from lions. Content with his explorations for the moment, he straightened up and returned his attention to the food.
Very slowly, the contents of the plate disappeared. Their sacrifice liked to be told what was being offered before it was put into his mouth. Once that was established, it was far easier to feed him. In between, he seemed to be happy to allow them to explore his body any way they chose.
His skin was very pale, especially in contrast to his hair, which was as black as the leather cuffs he wore. He was a bit shorter than both he and Blaine, and a bit younger, too, as well as Luther could judge past the blindfold. And every single detail about him was fascinating.
In an absent-minded way, Luther was aware that the other lions in the pride hadn’t disappeared.
They were still in the room. He could hear Arslan talking to them, but right then, Luther had little attention to spare for what the rest of the pride might have to report.
Their new sacrifice was infinitely more interesting.
He called to Luther’s instincts in a way none of the other humans who had been sacrificed to him had, and Luther was sure Blaine felt the same way.
“Luther, Blaine. Do either of you have anything to say?”
Luther shook his head, all his attention on the sacrifice’s reactions as he trailed his fingernails over his skin.
Blaine didn’t say anything either, and Arslan didn’t try to draw them out the way he sometimes did.
They were left in peace to explore the sacrifice’s body as their leader’s attention moved on to the other lions in the pride.
“Are you going to take the cuffs off at any point?” their human asked, sometime later.
Luther tilted his head to one side as he thought about the possibility. The man’s hands were still bound behind his back. He couldn’t reach out to touch them the way they touched him.
“No. We don’t do that,” Blaine said from behind the sacrifice’s shoulder.
Luther met Blaine’s eyes. That was true. Lions didn’t free a sacrifice’s hands or his eyes. Except for when Ryland was thrown to Arslan, of course, but that was different—Ryland was Arslan’s mate now, and…
“It’s late now. The car’s outside waiting for him.”
Luther turned and looked up at Arslan. The other members of the pride were still lingering, but they were obviously ready to leave and were only waiting for the sacrifice to be properly handed back to the humans before they returned to their own homes.
Luther was in the best position to untangle himself from the knot they’d formed on the sofa.
He stepped forward to face their leader.
Lacking any inclination to free the sacrifice, the solution seemed obvious to him. “We can—”
“He leaves with the driver,” Arslan cut in.
Luther squared his stance to face Arslan head on. “You—”
Arslan just raised an eyebrow. “If you’d known him before he arrived here, perhaps that would change things, but you didn’t, did you?”
Luther had never been more tempted to lie to the leader of the pride.
If he’d actually thought there was the least chance Arslan would believe him, he’d have tried it.
But Arslan had proved to be impossible to fool so often in the past, Luther knew it would only waste time.
He couldn’t even protest that Arslan hadn’t already known Ryland long before Ryland had been thrown to them, when he so obviously had.
Luther turned away from his leader and strode back to the sofa. “The car’s here.”
Blaine hesitated before he let the sacrifice go, but as his eyes met Luther’s over his shoulder, he seemed to accept that they had little option.
He let Luther help the sacrifice to his feet.
The walk to the car that delivered and collected the sacrifices from their doorstep had never felt shorter.
It had never been harder to make sure his grip on the human they were escorting stayed gentle either.
Luther’s instinct to hold on to a human and damn the consequences hadn’t been that strong since that first disastrous time that they’d tried to accept a human’s sacrifice. Even after the years that had passed since then, Luther could still taste the blood in his mouth when he thought about it.
He pushed the memory away as hard as he could, but it was impossible to hide from the fact that putting this particular human in the back of a stranger’s car felt as if it was just as much a betrayal of his trust as hurting that first man had been.
From the way Blaine slammed the car door, it was clear he felt the same way. As Luther walked back to the doorstep, he felt the tension pouring off Blaine, sensed the pain that seeing this human leave gave him.
Even when the car was far out of sight, they both remained in the driveway, staring at the empty road as if that would somehow mean their human was less gone than he really was.
Luther was the one who finally moved. Sliding his arms around Blaine’s waist, he pulled him back to lean comfortably against him.
“You didn’t want to let him go either?” Blaine asked. It was only half a question.
Luther had no doubt Blaine already knew the answer, but it still had to be said. “No, I didn’t want him to go.”
Blaine’s body moved against Luther’s as he took a deep breath and let it out very slowly, almost like a sigh.
Luther lapped gently at Blaine’s neck, unable to hold back his smile. “Do you remember when Arslan wanted to discuss how humans should be treated when they agreed to be thrown to us, when he went to visit the man who arranges the sacrifices?”
Blaine shrugged.
“Do you know where to find that man?”
Blaine turned around within the circle of Luther’s arms. “You know!” His eyes sparkled with renewed pleasure as he realised it.
Luther smiled. That knowledge hadn’t made it as easy to let go of the sacrifice as it should have, but it would certainly make him much easier to track down again.