7. Chapter 7 #3
“I love your ridges,” he said between fevered peppering of more kisses to Ashmedai’s lips.
Then to his cheek. Then down his neck. “I love the way they feel against me. I love the way you feel against every part of me.” To make that clearer, Levi toppled Ashmedai backward, Ashmedai’s arms giving way to lay him flat upon the blankets.
Like that, Levi could truly touch all of Ashmedai, spread out atop him, kissing and writhing.
Wanting so much more than a shuddery outcome in the rain, Levi was close to bursting, and after mere moments of squirming and pawing and tasting Ashmedai’s skin, Ashmedai was there again with him.
“ Yes ,” Levi mewled at the firm presence of Ashmedai against his hip. “I want more. I want you. I want us to both find release again. Please.”
Ashmedai
It had been so long since Ashmedai had known any kind of pleasure, let alone something as potent as having Levi beg for more after having his mouth on Ashmedai and drinking him dry.
Already Ashmedai knew he could easily join Levi in a second tumble over the edge, and the thought of doing so together was stirring.
Levi seemed so desperate, so fervent and passionate, his hands constantly moving over Ashmedai’s skin, and his thin hips wriggling and thrusting to find any kind of friction.
Ashmedai wanted to hold Levi there atop him and rut upward until his mind went blank from the exertion, but they could do better—slower—and draw this out to both their hearts’ content.
The way they were now, Ashmedai’s legs hung off the end of the bed, and Levi was scrunched to keep from tumbling backward. That wouldn’t do.
Seizing Levi by the waist, Ashmedai ceased the young man’s wild writhing and rolled them with a firm toss of Levi onto his back. He immediately scooped Levi into his arms again and hefted him up the bed with barely any effort, for to him, Levi weighed but a trifle.
Levi’s eyes showed only a thin ring of violet now, they were so blown black, and he was one deep shade of indigo save the inside of his lips, pink and panting.
Ashmedai leaned over him but kept his weight on his own hip, sliding his cock alongside Levi’s to share the existing and still-pooling wetness between them.
Levi seemed to recognize Ashmedai’s intent to make this last, and his franticness settled.
He lay back to enjoy what Ashmedai offered, trembling at the slick, slow slide of their lengths.
As Levi’s hands reached upward to spread across Ashmedai’s chest, still seeming so in need of touching him, his arms quaked.
Ashmedai felt it too, stimulation on the verge of being too much, but right now it was perfect.
To that end of heightening each sensation that much longer, he kept their pace slow, but drew inward on the power of his magic and brought it to the edges of his skin—not only into his fingertips but everywhere.
“Tell me… would you like all your stitches washed away?” Ashmedai asked.
Levi’s eyes widened, taking in how Ashmedai was glowing with dark violet pulses. “N-n-not all,” he stammered. “Some? I’ll finish too quickly again if you do too many,” he ended with a bashful smile.
“Then I will leave my favorites until a time when you are ready,” Ashmedai said.
Levi’s eyes bulged briefly, surprised perhaps to hear that Ashmedai had favorites among his stitches. He did, for they were part of how Levi looked when Ashmedai first knew him. Ashmedai understood, however, the desire to have them gone.
He let his magic wash over Levi like a silk sheet but kept the true power only in his touch. With each smoothing of a set of stitches, he timed a thrust of his hips and pressed a kiss to Levi’s lips.
Once.
Then again.
Then again .
“Ash….” Levi gasped, appearing to glow purple too with the magic around them.
In sync with Ashmedai’s downward motion, Levi thrust upward to meet him, writhing once more with his hands braced on Ashmedai’s chest, along the ridgelike grooves that Ashmedai had always thought made him more alien, foolish as that may be in a land where everyone was unique.
When all that remained were the stitches in Levi’s smile and around his neck, Ashmedai stopped, though he didn’t stop the deep rocking of their hips, their cocks wet and throbbing.
Rather than rein in his shadow magic, Ashmedai continued to spread it outward, caressing Levi with it in ways no skin contact could.
The shadows were part of Ashmedai, an extension of him, and through their undulating across Levi’s body, Ashmedai felt what they did to Levi and shuddered at how much more it made him feel touched in turn.
The shadows had no tangible shape but could be anything and everywhere, seeping from Ashmedai’s skin like the sweat beginning to sheen on him. They held Levi’s limbs like extra hands, cloaked Levi like soft fabric, and coiled around Levi’s cock tighter than the slide of Ashmedai’s thrusts.
Levi’s breath caught then, his body tensing, so very close to releasing, and in that moment, Ashmedai slipped his shadows inside Levi too.
“Ah!” Levi cried, followed by the same sag and delighted smile touching his face as had happened in the rain.
Renewed by the added heat from Levi between them, Ashmedai pumped harder, faster, and let his forehead drop to press to Levi’s, until a great flickering of meandering dark and light, of shadow and sparks, tolled Ashmedai’s end again too.
The shadow magic dissipated, and with it vanished the mess between them, as Ashmedai fell onto his side, not wanting to drop his full weight on Levi. He didn’t want to stop touching him either and snuggled close against Levi’s side.
“Leander….” Levi breathed quietly, his eyes falling closed.
“Flowers again?” Ashmedai asked, equally hushed .
“No… not oleander. My name. My name was Leander.” Levi’s eyes opened and seemed to flash with the echo of memory.
“You remember more?”
“So many things, like a puzzle struggling to form a picture. My mother. Our cat.” Levi laughed. “My little brother….”
An entire family , Ashmedai thought, shifting to prop himself up on his hip. “The boy you saw?”
Levi nodded, looking at Ashmedai like he wasn’t quite seeing him.
“Emerald isn’t the kingdom you remember.
None of them are. I had to hide being a half-elf.
So did my brother. Our mother is human. Our father…
he left to find the elves, his people, and never came home.
I had to hide other things. My magic. My… desires.”
“Why?” Ashmedai asked, disturbed to hear such news when the kingdoms he recalled were far freer and never would have denied someone who or what they were.
“Something… would happen if I was found to love men, or have magic, or be part elf. I… I can’t remember what, but I think I was sent away.”
“And found your way here,” Ashmedai said, seeking Levi’s hand between them and lacing their fingers, “where Brax made you into something new.”
Levi’s smile was somber but didn’t dissolve.
“I’m not angry with him. I understand why he didn’t tell me the truth.
But I am not his. He may be my creator, but I want a life of my own.
I had a life of my own, yet even in Emerald I lived with my mother, too afraid to be alone, or maybe for my brother’s sake.
Maybe both. Don’t all children eventually leave home? ”
Ashmedai looked away down the length of the bed. He supposed he had, but home wasn’t something he could quantify anymore outside a millennium in the Shadow Lands.
“You were from Diamond, Klarent said. ”
Ashmedai’s attention snapped back to Levi.
“He told me he was from Emerald,” Levi continued, “and that you were new to Amethyst when the curse struck.”
“Yes….” Ashmedai answered sluggishly. “I was passing through, visiting, and… I found reason to stay.”
“The prince? Klarent said you were friends.”
Even now, in bed with the most exquisite creature Ashmedai had ever known, the mention of Cullen wounded him like the sharp point of a blade.
“I’m sorry,” Levi said, reading Ashmedai’s emotions easily since they must be plain on his face. “His loss still hurts you deeply.”
“It’s… difficult for me to talk about,” Ashmedai said.
Levi nodded again, and it was clear he had no intention of pressing for more, but although Ashmedai felt that familiar ache that had been carved into his heart since the moment Cullen was gone, he also owed Levi some of the truth.
“You remind me of him,” he admitted, smiling when Levi’s eyes flashed upward. “His eyes were violet too, and like you, he was sweet, soft-spoken, but fiercely loyal to the people here. He just wasn’t certain of what he wanted out of life.”
Levi cuddled closer against Ashmedai, as if to say he didn’t mind the comparison. “If you don’t like talking about him, what about your life before coming here?”
“That’s even more difficult to discuss, I’m afraid.”
“Did you leave home because you were unhappy?” Levi asked.
“More so lonely.”
“You didn’t have friends? Family?”
“Many had left home long before to explore other lands. Those that remained became reclusive. Hermits.” Ashmedai huffed.
“I was almost allowing myself to become that here. Until you,” he finished with a renewed lessening of the weight in his chest, something only Levi had managed in hundreds of years.
“The people love you,” Levi said. “I’ve never understood why you seem to think you don’t deserve that devotion.”
“I don’t,” Ashmedai said without falter. “There are still things you don’t know, Levi, things I’m… not ready to share. I’m sorry.” Again, Ashmedai looked away toward the end of the bed. He felt a stir of guilt that they were lying here when lying remained a barrier between them.
“It’s all right.” Levi’s gentle fingers touched Ashmedai’s cheek and tilted his face back to him. “I can’t imagine there is anything you could tell me that would change this feeling blossoming in my heart.”
Ashmedai placed his hand over Levi’s. He wished he could believe that.
He wanted to….
“If the curse is truly to be lifted soon,” Ashmedai said, “and one day, I can walk with you in the sun,” and my penance is over , he thought, “then perhaps I will tell you everything. Until then, know that there is nothing in this world that has ever felt as precious to me as you.”
The joy in Levi’s eyes made the violet color sparkle in a way Ashmedai had always hoped to have directed at him but never seen—until now.
Until Levi.
They leaned toward each other in tandem, lips connecting like practiced repetition, like reflex. The simple press and then push for more, with Levi’s tongue being the first to seek a breach, was all Ashmedai had ever wanted.
Levi
The smile remained on Levi’s face, perpetually stretched and beaming, even as he entered the tower. The rain had stopped, and although Ashmedai had offered to walk Levi home, they’d only made it as far as the edge of the residential area before they were cornered by Dreya.
Levi fell back against the tower door. He wasn’t even sure of the time.
What he had shared with Ashmedai seemed to fill some great emptiness that had been inside him—as Levi and Leander, much as there were still many missing memories to reignite.
He knew love between men wasn’t accepted in Emerald, which seemed so strange, since here love between anyone was celebrated, and those who chose to remain alone were celebrated too.
For that reason, much as a part of Levi ached for what he’d lost—a mother, a brother, even a family cat—he couldn’t imagine being anywhere but where he was as this version of him, fully realized into someone who would no longer be shunned or denied his true passions.
“Are those Ash’s clothes?”
Levi gasped, eyes darting upward from where they had been distant during his musings. Braxton had appeared from his workshop and was already halfway toward Levi.
As Braxton wheeled closer, Levi knew he had to answer, for he had borrowed a pair of trousers, a shirt, and a doublet far more fanciful than his usual clothing, in Ashmedai’s signature red and black.
“I-I… got wet from the storm and—”
“You don’t need to lie to me, Levi.”
The sharp dismissal made Levi snap his mouth shut with a click of his teeth. Much as he had become his own man, Braxton still had the power to make him feel small. “I did get wet. We did. We went back to Ash’s castle.”
Braxton stopped in front of Levi, his expression tight but unreadable as he eyed Levi from head to toe and finally settled on his face. “I assume fresh clothing wasn’t your main priority.”
Levi didn’t know how to answer that.
“Don’t look so fearful. Only a fool would not have seen this coming, the way you act around each other, how much time you’ve been spending in each other’s company.
You’ve brought him back to the world of the living.
” Braxton smiled, though it was a strange, malformed expression, like something else pretending to be a smile.
“You don’t disapprove?” Levi asked.
“Ash has secluded himself for too long. He deserves someone who can be everything he ever wanted.”
Braxton had never spoken of such things before, and Levi still wasn’t certain how to react to it. He shifted on his feet. “Then why do you seem so angry?”
“Levi,” Braxton said, gaze unblinking and words sharp with consonants, “I couldn’t ask you to be anything other than what I made of you.”
The air was as tight as Braxton’s expression, almost impossible to breathe, until the moment Braxton’s eyes shifted focus and he began to wheel away.
“I’m not taking any more draught,” Levi called after him, unsure why he felt the urge to rebel just then. “I don’t need it anymore.”
Braxton answered without looking at him, “On that we can agree.”