Earthly Desires Read online

  Dmitri’s mouth twisted into a smile, and he laughed softly, ducking his head to lick and kiss at Efrosin’s sweaty neck. He pushed Efrosin’s hands, which floated in the air beside them, down to the mattress. “Did you not know?” he asked, clearly amused, his dark eyes sparkling.

  “I…no. I’ve seen it before and watched other men crumble and cry out under its power, but…” Efrosin trailed off, blood rushing down to his still-sensitive prick, stiffening it again, at the memory of what he’d just felt, what they’d done.

  “Watched?” Dmitri asked. “Is it not a private thing elsewhere in the kingdom? My parents gave the idea that taking one’s pleasure in another’s body, or even one’s own, wasn’t something done in front of spectators.”

  Efrosin pulled one hand free of Dmitri’s restraining grasp and flapped it in the air, waving the words away. “No, it’s private. Though I have heard rumors of brothels where…but no, it is private.” Here Efrosin felt a shocking thing—heat that rose over his chest, up into his cheeks, and burned his ears. Was this shame? He’d never felt anything quite like it before. “However, men and women do not often check their rafters whilst seeking release.”

  Dmitri’s brows lowered and he shifted his body, the sticky mess between them smearing. “Do you not know that’s wrong?” His voice seemed to hold no censure, however.

  “I was curious. But my prick never did those things.” Efrosin remembered how funny it had seemed, the urgent rutting, the cries and wails, the silly faces as the end drew near, and the mess. He’d been unable to refrain from busting out in chortles on more than one occasion and he’d had to dodge flying slippers and boots as he bobbed down the hallways of the castle, ringing with laughter at what he’d seen.

  Now, feeling Dmitri’s weight holding him down, and still vibrating with the resounding pleasure they’d taken together, it did not seem so funny. Efrosin did not know what to make of that. He felt almost afraid, but when he looked up into Dmitri’s face, seeing no anger or malice there, and felt Dmitri’s cock lengthening between their bodies again, he felt in his bones that he was safe.

  “You’ve never…?” Here Dmitri flung his fist back and forth in a crude gesture to illustrate self-pleasure.

  Efrosin shook his head. He’d always been vaguely curious as to why his cock didn’t seem to function as others’ did, and so Efrosin had asked Geoffry about it once. The old dear, sputtering and looking red in the face, had answered, “It’s a rather grave undertaking at heart, sire. A primal urge. Quite deep. Perhaps your affliction doesn’t allow you to reach down to such base impulses.”

  All it had taken was one kiss from Dmitri, Efrosin realized, and his dormant, earthly desires had risen in him fast and ruthlessly hard. He’d been quite…what was the word he’d heard the knights use? He’d been quite the trollop.

  Dmitri stroked a finger over Efrosin’s lips. “That was the first time you’ve ever spent?”

  “It was.”

  “You looked so beautiful.”

  “As did you. Have you felt it before?”

  Dmitri laughed, a warm chuckle that spread through Efrosin until he was laughing, too. “More times than I could count. But never with another. It’s different with you.”

  Efrosin laughed harder, as if the chuckle he’d caught from Dmitri had reminded him of his nature. His body started to rise, his feet and head and hands floating up where Dmitri did not hold them down. Dmitri’s hand slid between them and grasped their cocks together, squeezing. Efrosin gurgled in a combination of renewed lust and amusement.

  “You begged me to bugger you,” Dmitri said, his voice thick with want again.

  “Oh please do. The knights who take each other that way cry out so loudly. Given how often they do it, and how they squirm and beg for more, it must be ever so wonderful. Do you think I will squirm? Shall I beg?”

  Dmitri bit his lip, his eyes going even darker with lust, and then he shifted off Efrosin to lean over the side of the bed, rummaging for something under it. As he did, Efrosin rose up with a stomach-lurching swiftness, but Dmitri grabbed him by the ankle and pulled him back to the bed, holding a jar in his other hand.

  “Of course, I should warn you,” Dmitri said, as he reached for edge of the blanket their rutting had wadded up against the side of the bed. “I’ve never buggered anyone before.”

  He held Efrosin down with one palm flat on Efrosin’s chest as he used the other hand to shove one end of the blanket between the mattress and the wall, and then, moving away, he pulled the blanket taut over Efrosin’s upper body to hold him in place. He tucked the other side under the mattress, and then leaned back, double-checking his handiwork.

  Efrosin’s arms and legs floated up, but his body was trapped against the soft, worn mattress. The blanket was not of a fine material, and it rubbed Efrosin’s hard nipples roughly, making him want to rub against it and simultaneously move away. He squirmed to test its limits, surprised when the binding held.

  He felt contained and vulnerable, with his hard cock and twitching balls bare below the blanket. Dmitri’s eyes were fixed there, his tongue running over his lips as he knelt between Efrosin’s floating legs and seemed to study Efrosin’s prick and exposed anus.

  “Have you never put your fingers there?” Dmitri asked, and Efrosin shuddered at the thick, muddy sound in his voice.

  “Yes,” Efrosin said. “It hurt. And I couldn’t stop laughing. It was too funny. I stopped at two.”

  “You know enough from watching, I assume, to understand what I must do?”

  Efrosin nodded, though at the moment his mind was blank, and he could recall nothing other than the fact that he was bound naked to a bed, cock and balls alive in a way he’d never known, and his asshole flexing in a distracting, tingling way under Dmitri’s gaze.

  Dmitri opened the bottle and spread the slick contents over the fingers of his right hand, and then over his cock, before pouring some into his palm. Efrosin bucked, his heart thudding, his legs quivering in the air next to Dmitri’s shoulders, and then Dmitri leaned forward, two fingers pushing tentatively at Efrosin’s asshole. He rubbed and pushed until Efrosin felt his pucker give way and take one finger in.

  It was a sharp sensation, a burning stretch, and then Efrosin felt his body adjust, a softening and welcoming that took place deep within Efrosin’s soul, and he moaned. Dmitri’s second finger worked in, and Efrosin reached out with his hands, fingers wriggling in the air, as he rotated his hips and pushed down, forcing Dmitri’s fingers farther inside.

  Efrosin bit his lip, and Dmitri’s mouth parted, his eyes wide and hot, his firm chest heaving with lust. “Is this all right?” Dmitri asked.

  A lust for more welled within Efrosin, and he whimpered and begged with his body. He squirmed down on Dmitri’s twisting fingers, heart pounding, his cock rigid with urgency. Dmitri’s eyes sparkled. “I know what you need,” he whispered, and Efrosin felt flooded with relief when Dmitri edged a third finger into him, drawing his asshole breathtakingly tight.

  “Dmitri,” he whimpered.

  As Dmitri fucked him with his fingers, Efrosin rolled his head back and forth, surprised by the sudden weight of it against the soft pillow, but then the thought was gone. He cried out and kicked his feet in the air, overcome by a sensation he’d not known to expect. Then it came again. Efrosin gasped, his sight blurred, and sweat broke out over his skin as he writhed in the throes of ecstasy.

  Dmitri had hooked his fingers and touched something, something that was the very meaning of deep, the very opposite of airy, and Efrosin rode Dmitri’s fingers wantonly, pushing his ass at him, begging to feel it once more. He kicked at the air, his body tensing and clenching around Dmitri’s solid, working fingers as the fantastic feeling exploded through him, shocking him with depths of pleasure.

  With a groan, Dmitri muttered, “Can’t wait. You need it. You need it so much.”

  Efrosin’s eyes squeezed shut. His heart pounded, his legs floated and shook, and he tangled his hands into his
own hair, tugging hard to keep from falling so heavily into sensation and lust that he’d never crawl out. Then he felt the horrible sensation of Dmitri’s fingers pulling free, and just as he cried out, bereft, there came a pressure and stretch—so thick, so big—that nearly blew off the top of his head.

  He pushed down to accept Dmitri’s prick, arching his neck as he cried out. He felt the burn and stretch at his asshole, and then the pain seemed to drill into him, touching him somewhere inexplicably deep, like an undiscovered mine inside him was bleeding jewels.

  Efrosin threw his legs around Dmitri’s back, jerking and crying out as the thick head of Dmitri’s cock pushed past his ring of muscle with a pop that jolted him to the core. Then there was a thick, slow, deep slide in, and Efrosin pounded Dmitri’s back with his heels and squirmed, his body spasming and releasing as he took Dmitri’s length.

  Efrosin had never felt so unfathomable, and yet when he opened his eyes, his breath caught on a whimper. Dmitri was there, his cheeks flushed, and tender understanding on his face.

  “There, there,” Dmitri whispered, bent over, holding Efrosin’s arms down. “It’s almost in. Bear down, my Efrosin. Take me.”

  Efrosin felt a hot prickle at the back of his neck, and then a sweeping, consuming, burning chill that made him quake all over with mad, mad lust. He threw his hips up to meet Dmitri, slamming Dmitri’s cock in to the root, clawing at Dmitri’s back to better grasp his solidity.

  “Oh God,” Dmitri groaned, his eyes screwed tight as he lunged forward, hands gripping the pillow underneath Efrosin’s head. He muttered, “I’ve never…” And he froze, his face flushed with effort, flexed into Efrosin’s body, stretching him open.

  Efrosin squeezed his ass around Dmitri and he bit his own lip, digging his heels into Dmitri’s back. Dmitri’s cock felt heavy, a thick weight where it stretched Efrosin’s inner walls and brushed against him deep inside where he had never been touched before. The thought alone made him whimper again. He shifted beneath Dmitri’s weight, digging his prick into the scratchy trail of dark hair beneath Dmitri’s navel.

  “Good God,” Dmitri cried, his body straining over Efrosin, holding so perfectly still.

  When Efrosin brought his arms around Dmitri’s neck, they stared into each other’s eyes. Their breath mingled as their bodies pulsed and ached where they joined, and Efrosin didn’t feel like laughing. Not even a little bit.

  Dmitri knew if he moved he’d spurt his seed. He’d never been inside another person before. Never known the sweet, delicious tightness and heat. Never felt the fast thud of another’s pulse around his cock, nor watched another’s eyes open wide with feverish need as he pushed into their ass and held there, trembling.

  It was that need most of all that had him hanging on the edge. His very bones seemed compelled to answer its call, and yet to move would surely make him spend. It was a desperate paradox that left him sweating and moaning.

  That it was Efrosin—a man more beautiful than any Dmitri had ever seen, a prince troubled with an astounding lightness of body that made Dmitri feel as though his cock was thrust into a surprisingly solid ghost—only served to drive him closer to the edge. Somehow, despite the heavy scent of their previous coupling, Dmitri thought he could still smell the sharp odor of clouds in Efrosin’s hair and taste it on his skin.

  He leaned forward, sucking on Efrosin’s earlobe, groaning as Efrosin squirmed under him, eyes rolled back in his head, pulling against Dmitri with his hands, urging him on with his body. As moments passed and Efrosin’s body screamed for more, Dmitri felt himself slip until he was clinging to the edge.

  Efrosin moaned low in his throat and met Dmitri’s eyes, begging, “Please! More!”

  Unable to deny such outright need from Efrosin, Dmitri rolled his hips, fucking deeply with a powerful thrust. Grimacing, he plummeted over into ecstasy. He twisted in Efrosin’s embrace as he yelled and shook, shooting his seed deep into Efrosin’s body.

  Efrosin jerked. “Oh my God! Oh it is so much!” His voice was laced with confusion and want.

  Dmitri didn’t pull out, driven by his need to see Efrosin through to the end. Everything about Efrosin’s wide eyes and open, red mouth told Dmitri that their coupling must go on, and his own desire rose again to meet that requirement. Dmitri had been so alone, and now he was tangled with another, moving as one, commingled fluids and breath making him quiver. He wasn’t ready for it to be over either. He hunched and thrust, driving his too-sensitive and still-hard cock into Efrosin’s tight, hot, slick hole, now made sloppy by Dmitri’s seed. Both of them crowed and clawed, hunger once again consuming them.

  Efrosin felt heavier in Dmitri’s arms, and Dmitri leaned forward to kiss his crooning mouth, shocked to see a depth in Efrosin’s eyes that hadn’t been there before. As he plunged into Efrosin’s body, swiveling his hips, hitting every angle, he knew that he’d rubbed the sweet spot inside when Efrosin’s legs kicked out on reflex, and his fingers clenched on Dmitri’s shoulders, nails digging in.

  Then there was the sound—the noise of sheer wonder and terror combined—that tore out of Efrosin at those times, and Dmitri almost slowed his rapid assault on Efrosin’s hole, thinking that it must be rather scary for him to feel these things when he’d never even known the pleasure of his own hand.

  But he did not. He couldn’t. His hips did not slow, his pounding did not ease, and Efrosin’s screams of, “Yes! Yes! Please!” overrode the trepidation that Dmitri saw in his eyes. Understanding Efrosin’s need for more was greater than any need for comfort. Consumed, he slammed into Efrosin, seeking their climax.

  Efrosin didn’t last long, not once Dmitri found the right angle, and he rammed the thick head of his cock over the place within again and again until Efrosin struggled in his arms, desperately trying to get his hand between their bodies. Before he could, Efrosin stiffened, crowed with a startled bliss, and his ass spasmed and clenched around Dmitri.

  Efrosin’s seed splashed against Dmitri’s stomach and, looking between them, Dmitri saw another great glob of it land across the top of the blanket that was still anchoring Efrosin down. Dmitri kissed Efrosin’s mouth, swallowing the sound of his cries, and pulled back to gaze into his blue, surprised eyes, crinkled at the edges with such ready joy. Dmitri gave up to that sweetness, cocking his hips and thrusting hard. He yelled in delight as his cock convulsed inside Efrosin, filling his hole with seed again, and he shook all over as the ecstasy raked over him, leaving him feeling exposed, like earth freshly tilled.

  Dmitri tore the blanket away before collapsing on top of Efrosin, who reached up with one shaking hand to stroke Dmitri’s hair as they rested, skin to skin, trembling, and still joined below.

  Dmitri knew that what he felt was impossible, but having been alone for so long, he found he couldn’t help himself. In his heart, where it had no business and did not belong, Efrosin had planted a seed as surely as Dmitri had loaded Efrosin with his own. It was a seed of friendship, affection and—worst of all—love. Dmitri knew then, kissing Efrosin’s red, bitten lips, and feeling his body clench and tremble around him, that this seed would be his undoing.

  After Dmitri wiped their spendings from Efrosin’s stomach and between his legs, he realized Efrosin began to rise up again, a steady increase in his flotation until he was difficult for Dmitri to hold down. It was as if Efrosin’s body longed for the sky.

  “That was so beautiful,” Efrosin said, eyes shining and his lips ruby red from their kisses. There were stains on his neck and jaw too, from where Dmitri had bitten and sucked, and he looked like a debauched angel, especially with his arms and legs levitating effortlessly. The only thing holding him against the bed now was Dmitri’s strong arms around his waist.

  “When they find me, you must come home with me,” Efrosin said. “You could be my consort, my lover, my pretty peacock of perpetual penile pleasure.” And he laughed, a tinkling sound more like what Dmitri had heard from up in the tree, and not the deep rumbling one that had filled them both
when Dmitri had been buried deep inside him. “You must come. I don’t think I can live without you.”

  Dmitri thought he sounded anything but sincere, but understood Efrosin probably couldn’t sound sincere about something as serious as death if he tried. “I can’t.”

  “Of course you can. You have nothing but a hovel here. I can give you a castle, and servants, and anything your heart desires. You’ll come stay with me, sleep in my bed, drag me down from the ceiling to have your wicked way with me, make me heavy with your seed and then drop off to a snoring sleep as I watch you from above like a guardian angel. No one would ever dare bother you. You’d have a place by my side and my father would have to accept you. Wouldn’t that be lovely? How can you say no?”

  “Because I can’t. I can’t leave my land— my father’s land.”

  “For heaven’s sake, whyever not?”

  Dmitri touched Efrosin’s handsome face, his thumb tracing the light line of his golden stubble, and told his story.

  Chapter Four

  Once upon a time, there was an old woodcutter who took a pretty, young wife to live with him deep in the forest. Always eager to fulfill the needs of good-hearted people, the earth fairies saw to it that the woodcutter and his wife had all that they could ever want with their small but fruitful garden, a lake for fishing and woods for trapping game.

  In the midst of so much plenty, the differences between them, given his old age and her youthful bloom, seemed unimportant, and they were quite happy there, alone amid the trees on their several acres of land.

  Eventually, the young wife let the old woodcutter know that she was with child. Both of them were quite filled to the brim with joy. The earth fairies seemed to share their happiness, for the garden was never so prolific as it was that summer. As autumn approached, the wife’s belly swelled with the melons from the furrows, and not wanting any time apart from his lovely bride, the woodcutter gave up his trade, happily settling into domestic bliss in the last years of his life.