Knight's ChoiceChapter 26

Suddenly there was heat, a broad palm upon his stomach. Esra gasped, eyes flying open to see Umbra looming above him, a black shadow come to life. His large hand splayed over the soft vulnerability of the youth’s belly.

It was a struggle to look up at him, in his magnificence; the carved perfection of his masculine features, the slow sweep of his eyes burning over Esra’s prone figure. He slid his hand over Esra’s skin. Subtle emotion flickered across his face: deep, unhidden satisfaction. nWTo7p

He savoured the intimate feeling of Esra under his hand.

The hot touch skimmed over his ribcage, finding its aim atop his heart. It pressed Esra down into the cushions. There he was held, so easily, pinned into place with careful force.

Story translated by Chrysanthemum Garden.

The command was clear: Stay.

That dangerous hand caressed the fragile flute of Esra’s throat. Esra sucked in a sharp breath at the tingling intimacy, his pulse skittering under elegant fingertips. He thought of the tall forests by his home, rabbits, and snapped necks. IOVvYn

Umbra’s touch remained light.

It took all his willpower to lie still. He could feel the heat of Umbra’s hand upon his throat, the pressure of his attention. Nervously, he swallowed, and long fingers caged that helpless movement.

A tremor went through the man above him. Umbra’s expression shifted minutely, as shadows dapple beneath riverwater: a rapt desire, then something dark, possessive.

He lowered himself, the heavy weight of his knee on the cushions tilting Esra slightly towards him. A warm palm pressed over the youth’s eyes. As their lips met, darkness shrouded him. Esra moaned blindly into the kiss, and trembled, overcome.

Umbra’s lips brushed his ear. “Keep your eyes closed for me,” came the hushed order, and he sealed this command with a soft kiss to his cheek.

Esra nodded shakily, a black thrill rushing through him to tighten in his chest.

“Good boy…”

Umbra’s hand kept him blind as a hot kiss was sucked into the side of his throat. Teeth and tongue and pressure, rising heat somewhere on the edge of pain. Without sight, Esra felt all the more keenly. He whimpered and squirmed as Umbra tasted him, the softness of his neck, the dip of his collarbone. The knight’s hot breath, his desire, had Esra crying out as wet sucking kisses feasted upon the soft peaks of his nipples. YRvpwW

Umbra hungered for him, so fierce in his ravishing of Esra’s flesh that the youth felt himself consumed. A naked meal left helpless for a monstrous prince. Umbra’s mouth sucked over him, pulling up blood from within. Deep red marks blossomed like petals over the youth’s skin. Gone was the knight’s proprietary caution over the purity of Esra’s unblemished appearance. He had his prize where he wanted it now; kept bare, exposed, and well-marked as his own.

Still blinded, Esra panted with fear, with shocked pleasure. The knight’s name spilled freely from his traitor tongue, between pleas for patience, for mercy. He was granted neither. When he pressed his hands to Umbra’s unyielding shoulders, this small resistance only stirred up a dark urgency in his knight.

The hand left his eyes, though he dared not open them. Umbra rose from him, for only a moment. He heard a muted clink, the unstoppering of a bottle.

We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.

A hot hand slid between his legs, wringing a gasp from his throat. His thighs tensed against Umbra’s wrist, a futile attempt to stay the invasion of slippery wetness, brushing that secret place. Still, he let out a soft cry when he felt the thickness of Umbra’s finger slide and rub at the clench of his hole, slick with oil. b20mac

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Robbed of sight, Esra could only feel as he was breached. That moment of penetration that stole his breath as Umbra pushed his finger deep inside, to the last knuckle. The slide of it was easy, slick as Esra’s flesh yielded, opening for him. No pain, but a shame so hot at the lack of it, how readily his body welcomed Umbra’s touch.

Beneath the heat of his palm, Esra’s lashes wet with tears.

Umbra was a quick study of his body. He knew where to slide, to press, to induce upon his captive a heart-thudding pleasure. Esra buckled beneath his manipulation. With every smeared thrust of his fingers, Umbra stoked within him a deep heat that had him panting in frightened desperation. Lr5uCV

Esra shook against him. His skin prickled with sensation everyplace velvet brushed over his bare flesh. The decadent sweep of it over his chest and trembling belly, the kiss of it against the silk of his inner thighs. He clung to the strength of Umbra, surrounded by him, against the open nothingness of the room. Blindness swelled his imagination. He lay upon an altar for the pleasure of some dark enormity, and he felt himself succumbing to its will. The thought had him crying out, in pleasure at the sensations, in grief at this loss of himself.

The beast in his knight responded to the call of the youth’s soft cries and helpless shudderings. Before Esra was truly ready, Umbra’s restraint snapped.

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He moved his powerful body between the youth’s thighs to mount him, too hurried to undress, only unlacing his breeches to release his jutting manhood. He hitched up Esra’s slim hips, and conquered him with a slow insistent press.

Esra let out a groan that became a shaken cry as he was spread open and filled by the knight’s thick cock. He pushed his palms at Umbra’s chest. Despite everything, it was still too much. Too close to pain. OXQ6sc

“Umbra,” he gulped, his eyes near spilling over with tears. He stayed spread obediently, but shook in the hungry embrace. “Umbra, please… don’t move…”

Umbra responded with an animal groan. Esra stilled, awash in a cold terror. Lost in the moment, he’d forgotten himself, and let denial slip mindlessly from his lips. He knew the consequences. Next would come pain, and the viciousness of Umbra’s ire at his refusal. There was nothing Esra could do but brace himself for punishment.

Yet above him, the knight made no movement. The retribution Esra feared did not come. Instead, he felt only Umbra’s deep breathing, the tightening flex of his muscles, his stillness.

Esra gulped, and shifted his hips to ease his discomfort. But this stirring of his body around the thick penetration seemed to shock Umbra. He felt the knight’s grip on his waist tighten, stilling them both. “Esra…” he groaned lowly, in what could be a warning, though he did not move further. His towering figure loomed over Esra, now quivering with the effort of restraint. 1ciIld

“Wait,” Esra begged. He reached up a shaking hand to cup his knight’s face, and Umbra huffed a breath at the unexpected tenderness, lips parting. Esra saw his grey eyes shimmer as they darted over his face. “Wait…”

Umbra exhaled. His forehead pressed to Esra’s. His eyes were burning. Esra could feel it, the dark ardor coiling in his knight; the air heavy with a metal tang, silent, as though before a storm. Umbra’s every breath was greedy for him, barely controlled. Still, he didn’t move. He watched Esra’s mouth, gripped him tight, and waited for the youth to open to him.

Beneath him, Esra breathed tightly. With every inhale he felt it, the shape of it within him, pressing up into his belly, and back into his spine. He was stretched thin, muscles aching in remembered pain. But as Umbra’s arms tightened around him, hot and strong, a beating thread of pleasure pulsed through him.

The knight would always bring up from him a momentous pleasure. He feared it, burning hot and merciless fierce, the inevitable conquest of his flesh and will. Time and time again he would lose himself, and what did that say about him? He feared the debased creature he became beneath his captor. There was already a seductive whisper of it that flickered through him, in spite of the ache. xXSmks

He stroked his fingers over Umbra’s sculpted cheek. The sight stole his breath; his frail calloused hand staying the knight’s brutal urges. He saw it again, his hand on Umbra’s face in the bittersweet dawn light that streamed through the window of a ruined hall. How Umbra had bowed to feel it close. A living dream; still, yet filled with meaning. He had felt such a rush of power…

My salamander…

His hand slipped from Umbra’s face, onto the solid strength of the knight’s arm. His fingers curled into the fine linen of Umbra’s shirt, as he let out a slow exhale. Umbra let out a longing moan as Esra’s body clenched around him. They breathed together for a long moment, stilled in the dark room.

Something in the youth seemed to melt. His thighs skimmed up the knight’s sides. His head tilted back, baring his throat as a sacrifice. d0vQuP

Esra was wordless, but Umbra understood the language of his body.

With a low groan of desire, he claimed the youth in his arms. He thrust deeply, rolling his hips in a slow, delicious plundering until he had found the exact slide and rhythm that reduced Esra to a mewling wreck for him. Then he took Esra hard, and unyielding.

He did not hold back. His ferocious passion, the hot grind of his hips; it drove the air from Esra’s lungs. He was held close and fucked without remorse. Each hungry push into the tightness of Esra’s body had the youth crying out, overwhelmed with a bursting, swelling pleasure. The powerful grip of Umbra’s hands was so heated that the sensation branded the youth’s bones. He struggled against it; he couldn’t not struggle, but it made no difference. The knight was immovable.

Held in place, he could only endure it. The hard smack of Umbra’s hips against his flesh, the deep pressure of Umbra’s thick cock grinding relentlessly inside of him, into a place that made his prick twitch and his spine liquid with pleasure. Esra found himself begging, pleading, in a voice so slurred that his words made no sense, only blurring out as passionate moans. KuN7BR

He had never been so overcome, the entirety of his being laid out for Umbra’s hunger. He did not know how he could survive this – this assault on mind as well as body. Umbra feasted while he laid claim, biting kisses over Esra’s tender neck, and jaw. He growled out the youth’s name in a deep passionate rumble.

Heat coiled violently in Esra’s body, a tight, burning urgency that wound and twisted about every nerve and vein until he was breathless, seeing stars. Umbra’s fingers dug into his hips, hitching him closer for deeper, fiercer thrusts, and he groaned with it, lush and wanton. He arched brazenly into Umbra’s embrace, his flesh seeking the fullness that only Umbra’s flesh could provide, clenching, his body clinging wetly to the unyielding girth that despoiled him. He was racing, reaching a fierce pleasure that sliced into the core of his soul, rippled through his body, leaving him trembling, seizing and ruined.

Story translated by Chrysanthemum Garden.

With a shocked cry, he spilled lushly between them, seed dripping pearl white down the slim length of his flushed prick. Only too late he thought of the richness of Umbra’s clothing he would be spoiling and tried to flinch away. Umbra only held him tighter. He kissed the youth, hard, and pushed deep into his core, filling him with liquid heat.

* * * 8Cgd5m

How low burned the untended fire, Esra thought dreamily, hearing the muted crackle. The flames were close to death, red now, rather than gold. He saw little that did not glimmer, only vast shadows, stretching out into the blackness that seemed unending.

Umbra lay heavy over him, still inside of him. His face pressed to the crook of his neck, breathing Esra in. His hands stroked Esra’s pliant flesh with a lazy surety, enjoying the feel of him, the smooth texture of his skin. His touch was assured, possessive.

After so long joined, Esra shuddered when he felt Umbra shift, and slide out of him. He whimpered at the humiliating spill of wetness that followed, and worse, the cold emptiness left behind. 1pxejh

The knight pulled back to observe his captive where he lay prone: stained with sweat and seed, inky hair tangled, long strands sticking to his face. With the memory of how pristine he’d been, fresh from the bathhouse, the image made an obscene contrast.

Hot shame rose in Esra at this awareness. Reflexively, he curled inwards, arms rising to cover himself. His body twinged, awakening to the ache of well-used muscles, the stick of sweat to his skin, the mortifying dampness that dripped from his hole. He would have grasped for a blanket, but there wasn’t one. He’d been left deprived, even of that small modesty.

Umbra saw something of his fears, and was softened by them. With a fine linen towel, he cleansed them both. Esra, exhausted beyond shame, let himself be moved. The room shifted and fell away beneath him. His hair, like water, fell from his shoulder in a black swathe.

Umbra took him easily into his arms, and carried him into the bedroom like a spring bride. GjDrMi

* * *

The ceiling swam above him as he passed weightless into a dark, inner sanctum. With great care, Umbra lowered him onto a vast bed, its silken sheets cool against his skin. The knight hesitated over him for a long moment, looking upon him, before stepping back and away to shut the door.

Esra pulled the sheets up over himself, thankful to be covered at last.

All he could see through his tired eyes was lit by a single candle on a bedside table, its long flame steady in the still night air. The room was round, private, yet had a vastly high ceiling, and three long narrow windows with a stained glass pattern he could not make out. There was a great sense of luxury, in the enormous canopy bed, the richly dense carpet underfoot. Narrow flamelight danced glossily over the soft fabric, glinted off the polished darkwood furniture. 09gVYo

He sank into feather pillows, weighed down by a creeping lassitude. He was heavy from his long travels, the many new sights and sounds. He was half asleep when the mattress dipped, pulling him from the beginnings of a dream.

Umbra slipped under the covers with him, naked, and pulled him close to kiss him. That mouth moved hotly against his own, and Esra fell languidly into him, his full lips, hot tongue and the warm caress of large hands across his back.

When they broke, Umbra stayed intimately close, and Esra’s heart ached to look upon him. The pure line of his regal face, the gleam of pale white skin over firm sweeping muscles. He’d compared Umbra to a statue before, but a statue could not be this beautiful, no matter the skill of the sculptor. It would forever lack the knight’s tangibility: the give of his flesh, the heat of him, heart thumping in his broad chest. He was sinew, and softness. The ashen fall of his hair over a strong brow.

Umbra put a hand to Esra’s thigh, under the covers. Mc1 zY

“Perhaps I was too eager for you, at the start. Been wanting you all day,” he murmured, voice quiet, but he gazed at Esra with fixity. “Having you in the waters of Boann… it only whet my appetite. And even after this, my desires have not yet been quenched.” A grey storm flared in the depths of his eyes, and he swallowed thickly. “Indeed, I begin to wonder if they can be.”

Esra’s gaze flinched to the sheets, face flaming, insides hot and spirit brittle. The intimacy of such a confession would surely burn him through. He could not bear it, the burden and blessing of Umbra’s desire.

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Yet a tendril of pleasure uncurled, too dark and secret to be quashed. In Esra’s heart, a mirrored yearning had taken root: this compulsion, to touch, to feel, to submit anew to this man who terrified him.

In the obscurity of night and shadow, he allowed himself a small transgression. With unusual boldness, he slid his hand into Umbra’s own, and allowed their fingers to entwine. In this they were together, a wordless understanding. jnzQ7W

Esra heard his slow intake of breath.

“You look such a tender thing,” the knight said, almost to himself. “Yet you inspire such rough passion from me, that I wonder at my own heart.”

And he looked down at Esra’s small hand, engulfed in his own. Esra wondered at what he was thinking, at the scuffs over his knuckles, his witch fingers. A heathen’s hand.

Yet Umbra brought it to his lips, in a devoted gesture the youth had seen in tapestry. When he kissed them, his lips were full, soft over Esra’s skin. KtJRcf