The following chapter contains explicit sexual content with dubious consent and is intended for mature readers only. Please use your own discretion.

* * *

Rain hammered down on the roof of the Reaper’s Rest in a thunderous roar, drowning out any sounds of the world outside. With gentle ease, Umbra pulled Esra fully into his lap, taking the youth into his arms.

Esra’s stomach swooped as the knight leaned over him, the ruthless beauty of his features lit golden by the dance of the fire. Strands of his ash blond hair swept over his brow, casting shifting shadows over fierce grey eyes that raked over Esra’s nervous face, his mouth, the knot of his tunic that fluttered at his throat.

With a deft tug, the knight undid the bow. Fabric peeled open. Esra let out a trembling breath, and looked away.

He heard Umbra’s soft hum of amusement, shut his eyes as the knight thumbed over his jawline. “Look at you,” came the deep rumble of his voice. “What a sweet thing you are, already shaking.”

“Sir Knight, forgive me, I--” Esra whispered, and then gasped as the knight tugged loose his tunic, and with a large hand pressed hot between his shoulder-blades, pulled Esra close. Umbra mouthed hungrily up the revealed skin of his neck, sucking hotly at the sensitive underside of his jaw. Esra shuddered, breathy, a tiny shivering thrill coming to life in his own body. He felt too keenly every place their bodies met: on the back of his thighs, his spine, and his throat, his jaw, then his lips--

The knight easily captured his mouth in a yearning kiss. Tongue slipped over tongue, and Esra was held tight to a heady, melting kiss that had him shivering with a frightened pleasure. He reached out, tentative, and his fingers, palms, pressed to Umbra’s chest, solid beneath his black shirt. Umbra made a grateful moan at this tremulous search for connection, and pulled Esra tighter still in his arms.

Umbra kissed him, moved him, like Esra was a creature that he owned completely. Whether Esra tried to shy away, or yielded to his mastery, it didn’t matter. If the knight wanted something from him, he would take it, and there was nothing Esra could do to stop him. He'd proven it endlessly already.

In a strange way, this was a comfort.

The world he'd once known, with its expectations for him, its burdens, no longer existed. Everything and everyone in it was forever lost to him, leaving in him a vast emptiness, the echoing chasm of loss. Grief still buried him, but with this ceding of control, Esra found safety in obedience.

The heat of Umbra’s mouth was silken upon his. The power of the knight’s arms held him, so gently, in his place.

Esra made a soft sound when their lips separated, his thin hands fisted in Umbra’s black shirt. He should want to let go, unfurl his traitor fingers one by one, but he couldn’t. His mouth was still warm from Umbra’s, and he felt the pull in his heart when his gaze swept up, and he saw above dark cloth the pure skin of Umbra’s strong neck, the flex of his jaw, his lips, his eyes...

The knight’s breath had quickened, his face still close to Esra’s. When their eyes met, he saw dark pupils snap wide, engulfing the smoky grey.

* * *

When he stood, he drew Esra with him. Esra swayed on his feet, clutching at Umbra’s chest, his forearms, unsure of what to do with his hands. Without the warm fuzz of wine to spin his senses, everywhere seemed wrong, too real, too intimate. He yelped as his feet left the ground, weightless as the knight swept him up like a man might carry a bride.

A few long paces, and Esra was thrown down, laid out on softness of the blankets and furs he'd piled up on the enormous bed. Umbra pulled his shirt off over his head, tossed it to the side, his powerful figure cast golden from the light of the flames. He didn’t take his eyes away from Esra, and though it terrified him, Esra didn’t break their gaze.

“Take off your clothes,” he said. He pulled back far enough so Esra could move beneath him. “I want to see you.”

Esra obeyed, though his hands were shaking. He unbuckled his belt, paused in a moment of shy hesitation, before pulling off his tunic with clumsy fingers and pushing it to the side. Umbra helped him take off his breeches, unhurried, tracing his fingers over Esra’s skin with a reverence that startled him. As the knight skimmed his hands over the velvet-soft skin of his waist, Esra sucked in a breath, sensitive, shocked at the tenderness of his captor.

The air was slightly cool on his skin as the fabric was whisked away. Esra wrapped his arms around himself, drew his knees together, shivering as he lay prone, naked on the blankets. Overhead, Umbra undressed too, and moved over him.

Esra closed his eyes. He didn’t know why, only that he felt so defenceless, so split open by desire, that to look upon Umbra for any second longer would ruin him.

The knight descended on his prey.

Esra felt the heat of his breath, then the sudden bruising press of his lips. His mouth was ravaged in a forceful kiss that stole the air from his lungs, that set him trembling anew. He felt it in his core; something gave inside of him, unfurling treacherously in his soul and reaching for the man above him, for the heat of his passion.

Umbra, urgent now, pressed kisses to his jaw, and then his greedy mouth trailed down the youth’s neck, his collarbone, to lick over his nipples. Esra squeaked at the burst of pleasure, his hands flying to press at Umbra's broad shoulders, wriggled fitfully back, his tongue tripping over a blurred whisper of nos and pleases.

Strong hands gripped hotly over his hips and pulled him back to his place beneath the knight. Umbra’s fierce features took up Esra's vision, and Esra stared openly at him; bone-pale skin, ashen silk hair, the unnatural symmetry of his countenance. The dark need in his deep grey eyes, glittering gold in the firelight, like embers.

“Don’t struggle so,” the knight ordered, an intimate whisper, soothing his strong hands over Esra’s narrow chest, up his arms, wrists, to pin the youth’s hands above his head.

Esra, he couldn’t help himself, tested that grip, and he felt his blood surge, that rushing hidden thrill again, when Umbra’s strength proved immovable. As if he’d been clamped in irons.

His body, shamefully, reacted to being so restrained, leaving him hard, twitching. He felt his face heat, embarrassed tears stinging the corners of his eyes.

What was wrong with him?

The knight loomed over him, his powerful form between Esra’s splayed thighs, dipping his head to taste the youth’s skin, his chest, neck, his tender face, with insistent hunger. Esra could make out the shape of him in the firelight; the muscles of his chest, his coiled waist, between his legs where his manhood jutted out, and… he hadn’t had much of a look at it before, but his eyes bulged now. No wonder he’d been in such agony, before.

“Umbra, I c-can’t…” he begged, but was cut off in a delicious gasp as Umbra wrapped a hot hand around his burgeoning erection, squeezed him, sending a pulse of pleasure-pain up his spine, down his shaking thighs.

“You know far better than to refuse me,” the knight murmured darkly, “don’t you?”

Fear bloomed in the youth at his mistake, his stomach knotting up. “I’m sorry,” he breathed, and cried out as Umbra squeezed him again. His wet eyes spilled over from the shock of it, tears slipping down his cheeks as Umbra slowly stroked him with a skilled hand. His chest heaved, his slim body trapped, unable to twist away.

“I know you are afraid.” The knight’s eyes burned, watching Esra's every tortured reaction. “I won’t go too hard on you if you behave. I won’t hurt you. But you’re mine now, Esra.” Another painfully exquisite squeeze. “And if I want you, I will have you.”

He leaned close, dark lashes lowering over those smoky eyes, catching his lips in a rapacious kiss. Esra came apart under it, his body a shaking arch beneath the knight, pinned so easily by one hand over his wrists, paralysed by the steady stroke over his hardness.

Umbra pulled away, panting, his smoky eyes running over the exposed youth beneath him. “I'm going to keep you,” he said. “This is what that means; this is all mine: your flesh, your little sounds, all the pleasure your body can bring me, at any time I want to possess it.”

He curled his fingers faster around Esra’s prick, and Esra responded fitfully, his body bucking helplessly up for Umbra, eyes dipping closed, mouth dropping open in a desperate moan. He pushed, uselessly, against the hand that held him down.

A single hand - it sent thrills through him. With such little effort, Umbra completely overwhelmed him.

A dark laugh. “See? Your body knows what it wants, even if you deny it.”

The sensation conquered him. “Umbra!” he gasped, his voice so shockingly vulnerable.

Umbra’s answering smile devastated him.

* * *

Esra had never experienced such pleasure before.

His skin tingled, his breaths came in shocked gasps. He lay spread out on the mattress, fingers clutching the pillows above, his thighs splayed around Umbra’s bobbing head.

Umbra slowly opened him up with sweet slick oil, his fingers sinking into Esra’s core, and curling just so to make him moan, the youth’s voice like a bird’s cry. Umbra’s mouth consumed Esra’s cock, swallowing him, sucking back up with a pressure that made his spine arch, his whole body tremble.

He felt it again, that golden falling sensation, but before he reached completion, Umbra pulled back, a hand tightening ruthlessly around the base of his prick.

“Umbra!” he groaned, biting his lip as the air brushed over his wet hardness. He could barely contain himself, filled to the brim with a vibrating energy that pushed, needed, to be released.

He couldn’t, with that grip, and he sobbed as he felt that energy settle back, curl into him again, edging from pleasure into almost-pain. He wouldn’t be allowed such a mercy as release, not yet.

“I think you're ready for me now.” Umbra eased his fingers out of Esra slowly, deliberately wringing a whimper out of him. Esra could hear the burning need in that low voice, a dark desire only barely held back, a beast straining at its chains.

Umbra positioned him on his back, Esra’s knees bent high, vulnerable and open beneath him. He was moved so easily against the blankets, with no choice but to accept it. Begging, pleading, didn’t work with the knight. All he could do was lie back and await his fate.

He was just a thing, he thought tremulously, as Umbra settled between his legs. A kept thing.

But the knight caressed his shivering skin with something close to veneration.

Esra stifled an unguarded groan when Umbra shifted his hips, the slick tip of his manhood pressing against him, piercing into him with that humiliating stretch. He gripped the sheets so he wouldn't skitter back, panting hard, pressure rising in his skull from the fear of it.

But still, there was that threat of pain. The knight was so large, and Esra knew from the last time he’d been taken that he needed to relax, that struggling, resistance, would only hurt him. It mortified him to just lie back, to force himself still, perfect and obedient, and let the knight penetrate him.

He felt a sick sort of relief as Umbra's hands gripped his hips, immobilizing him. One more choice out of his reach.

The knight dug further into the youth’s flesh. Esra gasped at it, as his insides were deliciously spread wide. Umbra was pitiless. His eyes were lowered, fixed where they were joined, watching his hardness rock deeper and deeper into the tight heat of Esra’s body. A drop of sweat trickled down his brow, down the bridge of his nose. His full mouth was slack in a panting gasp.

His skewering didn't stop until he was pressed fully into Esra's core, skin to skin. By then, Esra was just a shaking mess, any attempt at relaxing into his violation forgotten.

“Please,” he begged up at his knight, for mercy, to be spared. “Please, don’t…”

Those violent eyes snapped to Esra’s face.

Esra cried out blindly as Umbra withdrew, speared him again, fast and fierce. The sudden impalement sent a sharp jolt up his spine, too intense to be anything close to pleasurable. Oil slicked Umbra’s movements, and he hammered into the youth, his thrusts moving Esra bodily up the bed. He yanked Esra back beneath him, and forced his wrists above his head, pinning him in place to be ruthlessly taken.

Esra heard distressed sobbing, wrung from his own throat. He twisted his head to the side, cheek sliding over smooth fabric as he was jolted over and over into the mattress, drowned in sensation, that cruel thudding hurt, fucked so fast it didn’t seem possible.

Finally, Umbra took pity on him.

He slowed his pace, and let Esra's numb hands go. A pleased, if slightly surprised expression flashed over his face when Esra’s arms immediately rose to embrace him.

“Please don’t go so hard on me,” Esra whimpered into Umbra’s sweat-sheened skin, his hands nervously caressing the knight’s broad back, feeling owned.

Umbra smiled and kissed Esra’s bruised mouth in response. “Ah, Esra,” he hushed, in between kisses, his eyes dark and beautiful. “I know how you like it.”

As he spoke, he moved again, a slow roll of his hips into Esra’s shaking body. There was no pain, only the sweet ache of slick flesh moving within him in deep, possessive strokes. Umbra’s weight crushed him down, his size and strength all-encompassing. Esra let his head fall back, eyes slide closed, gasping little breaths with each thrust.

Then he spasmed, Umbra angling their movements to spark that coiled pleasure alive again in him. Esra cried out in shamed rapture, fingers scrunching in the sheets, his body almost convulsing around Umbra's cock. What was he, to be so undone by this?

“Esra,” the knight groaned, and started fucking him in earnest.

It felt sublime, revelatory. Somewhere, overhead, came the roll of thunder.

Esra dug his fingers into the writhing muscles of Umbra’s back, felt searing arcs of pleasure spiral down his legs, in his groin, up his spine. Umbra pressed his forehead to Esra’s neck and ground into him, again and again against that spot, letting out guttural grunts, his every breath hissing through clenched teeth.

The bed rocked with their movements, and all Esra could do was hold fast to the knight and try not to scream. He felt hard enough to burst, leaking over his own stomach, he was so close...

“Please let me,” he begged, voice ragged with need, “please let me, I need to, Umbra… oh, oh please…”

“Esra…” Umbra sounded almost shocked. He cradled the youth closer, whispered in his ear, “You’ve been so good. Come for me, Esra.”

It was not a command Esra was capable of disobeying.

He heard his own voice as he came, a paralysing groan that came from deep within him. He spilled over their stomachs, convulsing, slumped boneless in Umbra’s arms. The moment of completion felt like giving in to something greater, like he’d joined with Umbra and let him steal his soul, leaving him empty.

Umbra pushed deep in towards his belly and gripped Esra tight, filling him in return.