“Jace…” Liut finally whispered. He clutched Jace’s hands in his palm.

Jace could feel Liut’s back getting tenser, could feel the slight tremble in Liut’s hold. An unexplainable solemnity spilled through Liut’s actions.

Slowly, Liut tried to turn around, though Jace’s death grip was an inconvenience. Realizing the intention, Jace loosened his hold but did not fully let go. He would never let go of the chance to get laid with the hottest chunk of meat ever.

Those perfect, manly tits were right in front of him. Just one little move, and Jace could bury his face between them. Ugh, pervert god, help him. Jace gulped down the very little saliva his body managed to produce and forced himself to look up.

Blue eyes met his. A deep, ocean-blue shade, two precious sapphires staring at him. That was how they were described in the novel. Tilting his head, Jace curiously raised his hand to trace Liut’s temple with his fingertips.

Fascinating.

Here, in the flesh, stood words he had read himself to sleep with, imagined countless times, dreamed of, and thought of when the nights got too loud. In this one stalemate of a moment, once the adrenaline rush from… everything dulled down, Jace blinked his eyes open and saw.

How truly lovely this face was. A man? Please, that was a youth, somewhere in his early twenties, with not a single line on his forehead or a crease under his eyes. So full of life, so vigorous.

Exploring, Jace trailed over the shape of Liut’s jaw, a ghost of a touch. He traced his lip, the one he himself had bitten bloody in a raging kiss, because Liut kissed like he wanted to devour you whole, and Jace could not simply take it without biting back.

As Jace was about to take away his hand, Liut grabbed his wrist. He brought it back to his face and nuzzled into Jace’s palm.

“You are right,” Liut murmured.

He kissed Jace’s pinky.

How cute.

“I mustn’t abandon you so.”

Liut’s lips pressed against the middle phalanx of Jace’s ring finger.

Adorable.

“You gave me your body and soul.”

Not sure about the soul, but Jace could look past it—those lips were now kissing up his middle finger.

“I shall take responsibility.” Liut kissed the pad of the index finger.

Umm, truly, no need for responsibility, just one nice case of marathon sex would suffice.

“You are mine now, Jace.” Liut twisted the wrist so he could bite into Jace’s thumb.

He bit hard.

It really fucking hurt.

“Umm, Liut, could you pleas— Ouch!”

Those fucking sharp canines of Liut. One punctured the skin, drawing blood.

“You dog!” Jace tried to pry away his hand, but it only hurt more—Liut kept his jaws clamped tight.

Wet, warm tongue licked the wound, and Jace stilled. Damn it, that was hot. Liut circled the finger with the tip of his tongue, glancing down at Jace with… were those the inglorious “dark eyes”? In any case, Jace bit his lower lip and forgot to blink.

Dazed, Jace watched Liut take the thumb deeper into his mouth. When he lightly sucked on it…

“Ngh.”

It hurt, and it didn’t. It was so intimate, yet so vulgar. In short, Jace whimpered. It felt good.

There was no force behind Liut’s hold anymore; Jace himself chose to stay like this a bit longer. Tentatively, he tugged his thumb free; it caught Liut’s lower lip, and Jace was enthralled by the plush satin under his pad. Wet and bloody, he painted a crimson line over it, over his own bite splitting Liut’s lip, their blood mixing as he traced the remnants of it to the corner of Liut’s mouth.

His heart thrummed so loudly he felt it pulsing in his temples. Still, Jace could not move away. The most he could afford to do was look up. Liut’s pupils were dilated, thin circles of sapphire around them, two precious frames. If the eyes were windows to the soul, then, so close, Jace could only see his own murky frame reflecting in the blackness of Liut’s gaze. And with those eyes watching him like so…

Jace’s insides did a thing.

Liut looked at him with hope.

As if Jace was some miracle, something good, someone who mattered. As if Jace was worth it, as if Jace could be important enough, and, maybe…

Maybe there was none of that. Only delusions in Jace’s sick imagination, but… nothing made sense from the moment he woke up, so what was another peculiarity?

Gently, Liut kissed the pad of Jace’s thumb and smiled at him, eyes softening even more, overflowing with—

What was Jace even thinking!?

“Wherever I go, you follow,” Liut said, reverently. “You are mine now, Jace. The realms were to collapse, and you were to stay by my side, always and forever.”

The hell!?

Even if Jace wanted to think over that fuckass, cheesy vow from some dark romance, Liut leaned down and caught Jace’s lips in a kiss, effectively rendering all attempts null.

Something was wrong. The way Jace could not make his brain work was wrong. Five shots of vodka could not make him this confused, but some head-spinning, nicely paced, tasty kiss could?

Truly, such a good kiss. Liut was very skilled with his tongue, licking into Jace’s mouth with a sense of propriety that made Jace weak in the knees.

Inside his head, bliss reigned, tangy sweetness enveloped his reason. Thoughts hazy, mind in a fog, lost in a high that was both worse and better than all the drugs he had ever tried. The tongue wreaking havoc in his mouth was a grounding, welcome anchor. So Jace opened his jaws wider and reciprocated with everything he had.

So warm, so wet, so good. How nice it was—to have another beating heart under his palm.

Into the kiss, Liut whispered, “My wife…”

Wait. Abort.

The word brought back all the lost rationale. A jump into a freezing pool after boiling in the steam of a sauna.

Jace moved away, frowning.

“Wife” was never, not once, mentioned in all of the free 143 chapters of The Venerable One Has Found His Way. With that genre and all the story tags, the readers would rise in revolt should Liut be associated with anything but free-spirited fucking around.

The gist of things was this: Liut fucked his paramours every other five to ten chapters; it never influenced the story; only the first three love interests got names, all others were written namelessly; and he simply left them to go on with the main plot. They never resurfaced again. How could they? The chapters were basically sex bait.

That was the only reason Jace threw a hissy fit—he knew once Liut left the confinement of the smut chapter, Jace would never see him again. But smut chapters never influenced the plot, so as long as it was one continuous event, even if Liut was rushing to his damn Stormlands, his delay due to fucking Jace some more would be overlooked.

What fucking wife!?