I KNEW what the others said about Neskaya: that his name held no meaning in our language, that without the names of his ancestors he could inherit none of their traits, that his sorceress mother had seduced our king, and that his coloring was strange and wrong. Warriors and old women alike gossiped that Neskaya held too little interest in feasting, mead drinking, and wenching for a healthy young man. They spoke of his long, silent spells and of his days missing from his father’s grand hall. Many speculated on where he went, though no one knew for sure.
But none dared say he did not love and excel at battle. None dared to question his courage. I had stood shoulder to shoulder with him on many fields, his swords moving in arcs so fast and graceful that my eyes could scarcely follow. I wondered if any others lived who had heard his little chuckle when an enemy fell at his feet and the warm blood painted his white cheek? Of all of our people, Neskaya alone could fight with a sword in each hand, instead of a single blade or axe. He wielded them so beautifully that when he fought; it looked more enchanting than a dance. He was a fine warrior, deadly and quick, a man any other would happily take on a raid, and yet a man no other could sit comfortably with around the fire afterward. As for me, I had known Neskaya long, half of my life, and while I could not refute what others said of his strangeness, I didn’t feel ill at ease with him. He was the best swordsman, the best archer, and the fastest runner of our people. For these reasons, and many others, some I had no words to name, I loved him.
I’d followed him as he’d slipped away from his father’s table. The other men, distracted by knife throwing, arm wrestling, or just drunkenness, did not see us leave the feasting hall. Neskaya, in his blood-red cloak, moved like a shadow over the snow. I worried that my own clumsy feet would alert him to my pursuit, but if Neskaya became aware of me he neither stopped nor turned. Though cold as the grave, the night was at least still, with no wind to bite my face or pelt me with the ice from the roofs and eaves. Even so, I missed the fire and spiced drink already, and I wondered why Neskaya hurried so recklessly from these comforts. To find out, I stayed a good bit behind him as he descended the hillock from his father’s gates to the village. I hid in doorways and behind carts as he passed the little wooden houses and shops. When he entered the woods, the sacred grove where we offered to the gods, the holy trees wrapped me in their shadows and obscured me from his sight.
Sacrilege though it was, I hated this grove of twisted trees, fed for centuries on blood. Even in the perfect stillness, their boughs creaked and moaned, and it seemed to me that the stench of death clung to the soil that nursed them. Why would Neskaya come here? I shuddered as a wolf bayed and hid myself behind a thick trunk to watch him.
Neskaya cast his hood back and shook his dark hair. His black locks were one of the many things that aroused suspicion among our fair-haired people. None had ever seen such a thing. His hair fell across his face, mirroring the silhouettes of the trees that striped the snow. Neskaya pulled off one of his leather gloves and laid his bare palm against the wood of a tree. Next he went to the nearest tree and touched it the same way, skin to bark. Moving in a circular pattern, he touched every tree, his quickening gate spiraling further and further from the temple. These woods stretched far; I feared I would lose him, or that the wolves would find him, or me. It did not take long before he melted into the dark. I could no longer see him flit from tree to tree, nor hear the crunch of his boots on the snow.
“Neskaya!” I yelled.
To my surprise, he’d been standing only a few feet off, regarding me with his shoulder resting against a trunk and his ankles crossed. “Lars,” he said in greeting, and he then turned and walked to a long, wooden bench.
He sat down, and I sat beside him. I found I could see well, with the moon nearly full and the snow reflecting her light. Neskaya’s black eyes glittered. His lips were full in a way I’d only seen as a result of injury, though Neskaya’s lips swelled without losing their fine shape. Also, they were red—an unnatural red that couldn’t be explained away as ruddiness or health. No, his face was as white as a bone and his lips the color of blood. Though I’d done so before, I removed my glove and touched his lower lip, sure that it would burst under the pressure. When it didn’t, I slid closer to Neskaya and thrust my two fingers beneath his upper lip, drawing it up and seeing the same stark contrast inside his mouth: white teeth against scarlet gums. I ran my fingertips over his top row of teeth and then over his bottom. He allowed this. I wriggled my thumb beneath my finger and then parted the two, forcing Neskaya’s mouth open. As I rubbed circles over his tongue, enjoying its texture, my other hand closed in his hair and inclined his head further back. A little gasp escaped him, and his lips fell further apart. My face moved toward his, eager to taste his mouth, devour his mounds of ruby flesh with my lips and teeth.
Instead I withdrew and pushed him off a little too forcefully with the hand that held his hair. He didn’t give me the satisfaction of shock or hurt, only looked at me with his steady, unreadable gaze. I’d known him almost ten years and still found myself unable to decipher his eyes most times. “Neskaya,” I hissed. “Why do you not come to my bed anymore? Why do you not ask me to yours?” And then, perhaps because I didn’t want to let him answer, I asked, “Why come to this forsaken place on such a night?”
“This is a holy place,” he said.
“That’s no answer,” I said, getting frustrated. I wanted to leave. I remembered the sacrifices hanging from these branches, strangling slowly: horses, hogs, bulls, and men. And soon it would be time to hold the Midvinterblot again, to buy the gods’, the ancestors’, and the alves’ favors with blood.
As if reading my mind (and I’d thought many times that he could) Neskaya said, “It’s almost time.”
“Every nine years,” I said.
“Do you remember last time?” he asked.
I’d been eleven and had just lost my father to a petty war with a nearby kingdom. I remembered men and beasts dangling above me and priests showering me with blood. Then somebody shoved a few chunks of roasted meat and a cup of ale into my hands, and I squatted in the gore-soaked snow near the fire. As the men and women grew intoxicated, as they coupled and fought, I watched around the edges of the circle of orange light, because now and then a boy with strange eyes that sloped up at the corners and a strange mouth like a berry ready to burst with ripeness appeared, watching me. As soon as I turned to look at him, he disappeared. A few times I’d run into the shadows to seek him, thinking he might be an alve I could catch and demand a wish from. But I never found him, and the thrashing of the dying bodies in the trees, the awful stuff that rained down from them, drove me back into the light. I feared the spirits of the dead and the other alves that lingered in the twilight on this night and had not the courage to be alone among them.
The next day my mother and I went to live at the King’s great hall. The King and my father had been closer than brothers, and with my father in Valhal, the King welcomed us in his home. My mother went off with the women, and the King took me to meet the sons of the warriors living on and around his estate. Many of them were boys around my age. One of them, to my bewilderment, was the alve-boy from the Midvinterblot. His name was Prince Neskaya, and he’d turned nine years old the night before.
“Do you remember?” I asked Neskaya in turn.
“Mmmm,” he answered, without elaborating.
“I remember seeing you, though I hadn’t met you yet.”
“Yes, I remember,” he said. “Lars?”
“Neskaya?”
“Tonight,” he said, standing and draping his hand over my straw-colored curls. “Come to my bed. Come.”
He kissed my hairline, turned on his heel, and melded with the forest-shade. The scent of his hair, and of his body beneath his woolen tunic, lingered for a moment, and I wanted to grab hold of it and clasp it to my chest. But a breath of wind whisked it from me and no trace remained of my Neskaya nor his smell. Alone, I waited with only my cloud of frozen breath as a companion. I did not want to rejoin the feasting in the hall, if it could even be called feasting now that the crops had failed for the third summer in a row. I wanted to go straight to Neskaya’s bed and not be held up by a dance or wrestling match. I would be cross if detained, and so I waited to trek back to the King’s Hall.
I DO not think any of the other men knew about Prince Neskaya and me. I don’t know what they would have said or done if they had. Early in our friendship, I’d been accused of manipulating Neskaya’s affections to get myself closer to the throne. The accusations stopped when I broke enough noses and cracked enough ribs. But more than that, Neskaya’s affections were immune to manipulation.
When I first moved to the King’s home, I spent my days with a group of about a dozen boys, practicing archery, playing at wooden swords, and training to be great warriors and conquer lands. Neskaya joined us only on the rarest occasions, where he proved himself to be easily the best with a bow and the quickest, if not the strongest, with a blade. Most often, though, I’d see him from the corner of my eye, watching from the shadows. As he had at the Midvinterblot fire, he dissipated before I could turn my head. I asked the other boys about the Prince, but they only told me he was a changeling.
I could not deny my fascination with Neskaya. I wondered where he spent his days, and I wandered the halls and grounds in search of him. Yet I only ever saw him at the supper table, and by the time I’d made my path through the drunken throng, Neskaya had slipped away.
Midvinter came again, though the blot fell only every nine years, so hogs and cows alone were slaughtered for the feast. Spring came, and the gods, alves, and ancestors returned our warmth and light. I took up again with my friends. One fine morning, we were throwing our axes at some large trees beyond the animal pens.
“Lars.” Neskaya stood a little way inside the glade; I had no idea how long he’d been there.
“Prince Neskaya?”
“Come with me, please.”
I turned my back on the others and followed him without a second thought. He wove among the trees and I trailed along behind. We passed through the gloom of the wood and into a little clearing where Neskaya had his black horse tied. Grasping a handful of mane, he swung his leg over the elegant beast’s shoulder, and then he held his hand out to me. I took it and mounted up behind him without hesitation. Neskaya looked over his shoulder at me and his red lips curled up. Enthralled, and a little afraid, I put my arms around his small waist and he spurred his animal forward.
We rode all day, through the woods, across newly green fields, through wildflowers that grazed our knees, and finally to the coast. Neskaya guided his mount to an outcrop of rock. We hopped to the ground, and I followed him to the end of the jutting shard of rock. Fifty feet or so below, waves crashed against the stone, spraying foam almost to where we stood. I tasted the salt on the air, feeling exhilarated. Neskaya stretched his neck toward the grey-green expanse and breathed deeply of the sea-smell. His hair and eyes looked blacker, his skin whiter, and his lips redder than I’d ever seen. Impetuously I reached over and grabbed his wrist, squeezed once and let go.
“Why did you bring me all the way out here?” I asked. “We won’t make it back until late tonight. Won’t your father wonder where you are?”
He laughed, and I didn’t like the sound. I wouldn’t realize until much later why tragedy tainted his laughter.
“Are you afraid of wolves?” I persisted. “Bandits? Bears?”
“I killed a bear at the end of the winter,” Neskaya said.
I was jealous and impressed; I’d killed nothing bigger than a fox. “Well, why are we out here?” I repeated.
“Just wait,” he said, and he took a piece of cheese, some dried meat, a round loaf of bread, and a skin of mead from his pack. He removed the thickly woven cloth that he’d worn around his shoulders and spread it on the ground. Before he sat, he touched the side of my hair with his free hand. I flinched away, confused. He laughed his mirthless laugh again. I could think of nothing to do but sit down beside him and refresh myself. We’d been riding most of the day.
“How long must we wait here?” I asked him, uncomfortable being in the dark.
“Oh, I don’t know.”
“Well, this is stupid. I’m bored and wish to go back.” I made ready to stand and demand to be taken home.
“Do you miss your father?”
I froze and balled my fists. “What?”
“Do you?”
“He sits at Woden’s table in Valhal!”
“Your mother will choose another warrior soon,” he said, still looking out over the churning sea. “Many of the men in the house admire her beauty.”
“Be quiet!” I aimed my fist at his face, as I would have done to any of my other playmates, had they spoken so. With the tiniest flick of his head, he avoided my blow and continued talking.
“My father has had three wives since my mother disappeared,” he said. “But not one of them has borne a son.”
I expected him to brag about his claim to the throne, but instead—
“If my father fancied your mother, we could be brothers, Lars-Son. I would love a brother to stand beside me in battle. To go out there,” he swept his hand along the horizon, “and conquer lands and carry home such treasure….”
“Carry off their wenches,” I added enthusiastically, since the eldest boys of my group favored the phrase. I expected spirited agreement.
“No,” Neskaya said softly, “I would not take their women.”
“Why not?”
“I wish only for a brother, a warrior as my companion.”
“You are just too young, my friend,” I started to say, content that I possessed superior knowledge in at least one area. “Besides, there are no ships that can cross the sea. I don’t think it would be possible.”
“There!” Neskaya exhaled, pointing out to the ocean. His other hand clutched my thigh just above the knee, and his eyes widened, sparkling with delight.
Following the line of his slim arm, I saw nothing but sea foam at first and began to think Neskaya’s witch mother had driven him mad with her singing, as some of my friends gossiped. But then a white flipper broke the surface of the water, followed by a tail and then a dorsal fin. I watched as dozens of creatures traveled across our vision, each three times the size of a man. Miraculous as it was, my heart somersaulted when one of the beast’s heads emerged, crowned with a single, ivory horn. More of the creatures leapt into the air, and as they frolicked, I saw that each of them possessed the same spire at the forehead. I could not decide whether to feel horror or awe.
“What are they?”
Neskaya shook his head and continued to watch, enrapt. The sun began to sink, turning the water into a red-purple jewel etched with gold. As quickly as they’d appeared, the horned whales became tiny specks and were gone.
Neskaya spoke, but not to me. He was trying to reconcile something within his own soul. “All we can see is the surface. But there’s so much more we can’t see beneath. I bet it’s as big as the world down there, underneath the water. There could be anything down there. Things we can’t even imagine. How can we understand anything if we can see so little of it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Come,” he said, rising. “I’ll take you back.”
I cannot say what possessed me then, but I got to my feet and said, “I’ll be your brother, Prince Neskaya. I’ll stand by you.”
Rather than the ecstatic gratitude I expected, he gave me only a sad little smile and a single nod before turning toward his horse.
AS I left the sacred grove, I wondered why, of all the boys, Neskaya had chosen me to see the horned whales. I’d always meant to ask him. But as the years hurried past, it never felt right. Neskaya sought no company but mine. Surely it seemed to others that our friendship was a convenience only to him; he appeared when he needed me to accompany him on some adventure and then deposited me where I had stood until he required me again. If I sought him out in the hall or around the town, I could never find him. But he showed me such wondrous things, spoke to me as no one ever had. We were brothers as surely as if we’d shared blood, and as soon as our bodies could comply, we became much more.
As I entered the hall and rubbed the chill from my hands, I recalled some of our early trysts, and the memories lit a fire in my belly. Neskaya always complied with me, and many times, overcome by my youthful urges, I’d taken him unceremoniously and hard. He allowed this, though he held a higher rank than I and was a better warrior. I’d always wondered why.
I still wondered as I looked around at the men and women slumped in the corners of the hall or sleeping with their heads down on the long tables. Large hunting dogs curled at their feet, and many dishes lay overturned. The fire burned low in the great hearth, doing little to banish the chill. I inspected a platter, hoping to find a scrap of meat, but the bones of the hog had been picked clean. A usual supper in the King’s Hall meant six hogs, not one. But since the farms had failed to produce for so long, even the richest went hungry. I would have to do the same, though I needed more than meat to satisfy me. Stepping over the sleepers, I made my way to Neskaya’s chamber.
The fire within burned brightly, and it lit the planes of Neskaya’s naked body, accentuating his musculature. My cock swelled as I watched him, stretched luxuriously on his back across his bed of furs. I’d seen plenty of nude men; we all swam together in the summer. I’d seen my share of women too, but none of them affected me as Neskaya did. He made me feel as senseless as a beast in its breeding season.
When he heard me enter, Neskaya propped himself up on his elbows and turned to look at me. My gaze met his black eyes and then traveled down his graceful neck, across the plateau of his almost hairless chest, down the crunched-together muscles of his stomach, and to where his cock lay in the little valley where his thighs pressed together. I unpinned my cloak and let it fall in a heap behind me. Then I knelt down to tear at the strips of leather that held my fur boots to my calves.
“What kept you?” Neskaya asked me.
“Thinking.” I’d gotten rid of the boots and shed my tunic and under-gown as I approached him.
“About?”
I didn’t answer him but crouched on my hands and knees above his body. I was angry with him for ignoring me lately, but I felt his hot breath against my lips and I wanted him. By the gods, I wanted him so badly that I felt it would tear me apart. I grabbed the back of his head and yanked it back so that I could run my tongue up his neck and savor the honey of his sweat.
“Lars—” he breathed.
Holding him firmly, pulling his hair, I nipped at his earlobe, making him groan. My mouth found his, and I forced my tongue past his teeth. His tongue met mine, and they wrestled, sparring for control. Neskaya’s hand closed around my shoulder. I seized his wrist and pulled it away, pinning his arm at his side as I drove down toward his throat, seeking to dominate our kiss. I let my chest fall against his, and he landed on his back. Our teeth knocked together. A low growl escaped him, and I swallowed the sound before returning it. I drew his lower lip into my mouth and bit hard, my desire as strong as the lust for blood and battle. For many minutes more our tongues struggled for superiority, but mine eventually pinned Neskaya’s down, subjected it to the will of my own. I felt, as I often had when we’d dueled as boys, that he let me win. Even so, I pressed my advantage and pillaged his mouth and throat.
To catch my breath, I broke away from him and boosted myself up a few inches. Neskaya reached for my neck, lifting his head and mouth back toward mine. With the heel of my hand, I pushed him down and held him there, panting, senseless, almost afraid I would hurt him if I tried to make love to him in this state. Maybe part of me wanted to hurt him, as he’d hurt me with his neglect. He lay beneath me, his black eyes sparkling. Then his red tongue shot out between his impossibly full lips and the tip swept across his teeth. His wet mouth glistened, and I lost all control, smashing my lips against his again. I let him dig his fingers into my blond locks as I pounded and strangled his tongue with mine. He twisted and writhed below me, his erect cock pressing against my hipbone.
“Why do you do this to me, Neskaya?” I said, finally breaking away, my mouth sore and swelling. “You wait so long to ask me to your bed that my love is built up like a storm. I worry to unleash it on you all at once!”
He laughed a little. Then, just to show me that he could, he grasped my biceps and flipped me, reversing our positions. Sitting up, he straddled my waist so that I could feel his hot cleft waiting just at the tip of my cock. His balls fell heavy against my stomach. I took hold of his waist, wanting to lift him and then yank him down, stab up into his ass with my aching dick. Before I could, he laid one of his hands over mine so gently that I felt calmed. With the other, Neskaya thumbed back his foreskin to show me the deep red tip of his penis.
“My love is built up too,” he told me in a husky voice. When he stroked himself a few times and squeezed hard just below his head, a spray of come shot from his slit and dribbled down his knuckles. He brought his hand to my mouth so I could taste his nectar, and the flavor sent me reeling again with need.
Cradling his head so he wouldn’t smack it, I flipped Neskaya on his back and wrenched his legs up and apart. I kissed the smooth globe of his knee, kissed down the inside of his thigh until I reached the triangle of black hair that grew between his legs. Plunging my face into his curls, I inhaled deeply of his scent. Near my temple, he’d taken hold of his cock again. I swatted his hand away before pushing his knees closer to his shoulders, making him curl his spine and spread himself wide open for me.
My lips closed around his balls, and I sucked them into the recesses of my mouth, stretching Neskaya’s sack and making him pant like he’d just run from the mountains to the sea. His cock bucked and he thrust into the empty air. I chuckled, making his nuts quiver in my mouth.
“Lars!” he breathed. “You mean to drive me mad!”
Pulling my head back, I gave his bag a last stretch before releasing it. It slapped wetly against him. Leaning back in, I ran the bridge of my nose back and forth over his wrinkled little opening, savoring his aroused, masculine smell. “No,” I said, replacing my nose with my finger, drawing circles around his hole and making it spasm. His body reacted more eagerly to my touch than any woman’s ever had. No partner of mine had ever reciprocated desire the way Neskaya did. Though I was hard and aching, I didn’t want to have him yet. I wanted to taste his mouth again, and, moving up his body to find it, I did.
I kissed him furiously, savaging his lips, nipping them between my teeth until I found myself dizzy with lack of breath once again. I planted my palms beside Neskaya’s dark head and pushed myself up. I looked down at his heaving chest, his skin pale orange in the firelight. His nipples stood up like tiny red gems, and he held his arms out to his sides, his hands resting palms-up beside his neck. I grasped one of his wrists, the left, and stretched his arm over his head. There, on the backside of his upper arm, an ugly, raised scar stretched from his elbow almost to his shoulder. We’d been hunting one day and encountered a raiding party from another village. Neskaya had insisted on ambushing them, and we’d overcome them even outnumbered half a dozen to two. I smiled at the memory and ran my tongue along the old wound.
More scars decorated Neskaya’s pallid skin, and each carried a story: the slash he’d suffered across his belly in our first battle; another that intersected it and crossed his hipbone, earned as we’d raided treasure from a well-armed band of traders; a purple, pear-shaped mound where he’d been stabbed trying to steal me a horse so we could ride together; I ran my fingertips over each of these, exploring the way his flesh had healed in bumpy whorls. I touched them with the edge of my tongue, and my spittle made them shine. They seemed so erotic to me, these places where his skin had opened.
“What are you doing?” Neskaya breathed. His half-shut eyelids fluttered, and he circled his groin, moistening my chest with his erection.
My hands skimmed down his waist, their heels coming to rest on the V of muscle that angled toward his root. I could feel his heartbeat against my palms. “Remembering,” I told him. I lifted my face from his belly-scar and found his black eyes. I couldn’t decide what I felt for him. There was no man I’d choose over him to stand by my side in battle, and he was beautiful, more appealing to me than any wench. But he confused and frustrated me; I never knew what place I occupied in his thoughts or heart. Part of me longed for an honest fight, where neither of us would hold off and we could see which was truly superior. But just then, I only wanted him, and anything else could wait.
“Neskaya—” I lifted my face from his waist and moved it back down between his legs. My tongue found his hole. I lapped at it, enjoying his flavor, and then I plunged in. He moaned as I sampled the silken walls of his anus and twirled my tongue around and around his hot, slick tunnel. I felt him opening to me and wriggled a finger into him below my tongue.
His muscles relaxed, and he panted, “Yes.”
I let a second finger slide into Neskaya beneath my tongue. The heel of my hand brushed my chin, and I put my thumb into him too. He choked back a squeal, but his flesh yielded eagerly. My saliva streamed down, filling his open channel and slicking the fingers buried within. I drove both my tongue and my fingers deeper. Neskaya opened for me like a spring flower, and I withdrew my face so I could kiss him.
As I enjoyed his mouth again, a third finger infiltrated his body. With my thumb atop the three, I slowly spread him open. My fingers moved apart, stretching his rectum further and further. I pushed to the sides, up and down, until his flesh almost begged to be filled. He moved his ankles to rest upon my shoulders. Removing my hand, I positioned my cock and thrust into him.
“Oh, Lars,” he cried.
Being inside Neskaya felt completely different from entering a woman. Instead of hurrying to satisfy myself, I struggled to hold back as I felt my flesh delving into Neskaya. I wanted to come, but I wanted this connection to last forever. This was the only time I felt he laid himself bare to me. I felt like a hero, almost like a god, atop this magnificent warrior. I felt like I must be the worthiest of men for Neskaya to give himself to me like this. I pressed into him, burying my cock all the way to the base. His lids crinkled, and he bit his lip, but his eyes never left mine. Hot, tight flesh wrapped my body, and Neskaya’s hands gripped my ass cheeks and urged me on. I rotated my pelvis slowly, staring into his black orbs, trying to finally see inside him.
“What is it—” he grunted. “What is it you want?”
Holding tight to his waist, my nails cutting his flesh, I thrust into him hard and deep. He couldn’t completely strangle his cries this time, and his eyes clamped shut. My fervor doused, I stopped short and smoothed his moist brow. He smiled ecstatically at my touch. “I hurt you,” I said to him, trying to damn my lust enough to speak rationally. It was not an easy thing with Neskaya’s flesh wrapped snuggly around my own, his heartbeat shaking my cock inside him. “I hurt you, Neskaya. And yet you never ask me to stop, or even to be gentle. I, I don’t understand. Do you want me at all?”
“Yes,” he panted, arching his base toward mine, closing all the space between our bodies. “I do. So much.”
I still didn’t understand as fully as I wanted to, but the urging of my body and my heart quickly silenced the arguments of my mind. A warrior, after all, did best to react instinctively and not to think. I did as my instincts told me and pumped into Neskaya. His back arched off his furs, his head rolled to the side, and he groaned in time to my thrusts. Sweat broke from his pores and coated him in a sheen, emphasizing his musculature. My hands moved up his sides to clasp his collarbones, where I could pull him down against me as I drove up into him. The friction our skins produced felt hot and sweet, and I thrust faster. Neskaya’s head tossed back and forth, and he mouthed my name without sound.
“Do you like this?” I asked, plunging deep.
“Ungh. Yes,” he noised. His asshole squeezed my cock. Neskaya’s own erection darkened to the burgundy of a late-autumn leaf. Come streamed over the swollen head in golden rivulets. The failing fire deepened the shadows beneath his brows and lips, hiding the details of his face but accentuating the cleft between his chest and stomach muscles, which tensed as we moved against each other, faster and more urgently. He gripped my lower back, encouraging my thrusts. His hot, glossy flesh twined so tightly around my dick that I didn’t know how much longer I could last. Neskaya was such a paradox: muscle like carved wood, but a body so soft and yielding that it set my mind and body alight.
Neskaya’s ankles moved behind my neck and crossed, trapping me, leaving me no option but to roll my groin and send my cock in and out of his body. His slick insides hugged me, and his hands grasped my blond hair. Our chests lay flush, glued together with sweat. Neskaya’s scent rose from his damp skin like a cloud. I inhaled it, savored it, as I continued to plough into him. My face dropped between his arm and his neck, and I licked at his wet skin. Enjoying the saline flavor, I nibbled my way up to his earlobe as I fucked him furiously. He tried to match my strokes, his hands moving back and forth between my ass and shoulders.
“Lars, Lars,” he panted.
I lifted my head from his perspiring, fragrant skin and seized his chin, making him meet my eyes. “Neskaya?” I wondered, but I don’t know what I wondered.
His red lips trembled; he neared the end of his endurance. I gripped the middle of his cock, the curved belly striped with raised, blue veins. My fist moved toward the head as my dick delved deep into Neskaya. He whimpered with need, his fingers digging into my shoulders. I stopped thinking then and let my body take over. I fucked Neskaya fast and hard while I yanked and tugged on his dick. I felt his hands moving up my back to my hair as if seeking a place to hold on. I detected a hitch in his breath, and I opened my palm to spit in it and alleviate the burn against his skin. I couldn’t stop now; he’d made me wait so long.
“Neskaya, I can’t hold it back,” I said, mining down into him and pulling on his cock. “You make me a madman.”
“Lars—I—You—”
“What?”
“Ah!” he screamed, spurting his cream over his stomach and my hand. His body twisted as more white foam flew from his cock. The sight of his toned torso doused in semen and sweat, the sight of his handsome face contorted in pleasure, and his hands clawing erratically at my back sent me over the edge. I cried out as I did when I ran to meet enemy warriors, and my seed exploded into Neskaya. My forehead collapsed against his sweaty, scarred chest, and I held onto his ribs as I shook with bliss. His arms sheltered my head while I whimpered and moaned, my dick emptying spurt after spurt of seed inside him. I tried to leave him, to end the delicious torment, but his heels pressed into my lower back.
“Neskaya, stop it!”
“I don’t want to. Lars, this is so good.”
“I can’t anymore. I’m sorry, Prince Neskaya.”
“I hate those words.” He shifted beneath me, and my penis felt cold and abandoned, leaving his body so suddenly. He rolled on his side, his back to me. I touched his shoulder, but he didn’t react.
Tired, satisfied for the first time in weeks, content to sleep beside the person I loved, I closed my eyes and left Neskaya’s peculiarity as a puzzle to ponder another day.
