Chapter 13: Forbidden Knowledge
The cold water ran clear, then pink, then finally clear again. It did nothing to wash away the feeling. Reese felt Roman’s cock, still semi-hard, slip from his body with a wet, tired sound. The slide of spent seed and water down his thighs was a humiliation so complete it felt mundane. Roman’s weight against him was less a domination now and more a collapse. The great demon, brought low by his own cursed hunger.
They stayed there until the water ran icy. Roman finally moved, a shuddering effort. He reached a trembling hand and turned the faucet off. The silence that followed was broken only by the drip of water and their ragged breathing. Steam, which had never truly formed, was just a ghost in the chilled air.
Roman didn’t look at him. He straightened, his movements stiff, and walked out of the shower, leaving wet footprints on the stone. Reese slid down the wall, his legs incapable of holding him. He sat on the shower floor, knees drawn up, watching the water circle the drain. His body was a map of miseries, each one layered over the last: the deep soreness of relentless penetration, the chafe of stone and wood, the phantom burn of the ginger, the hollow, itching void where the berries' magic still hummed. He was empty, yet full of Roman’s come. Used, yet still desperately, shamefully aroused.
He heard Roman moving in the bedchamber, the rustle of fabric. A clean pair of trousers, perhaps. No words were spoken.
When Reese finally found the strength to stand, his muscles protested like rusty hinges. He dried himself with a rough towel, the abrasion on his tender skin another minor agony. He didn’t look for clothes. There was no point. Roman’s silence was a command in itself.
He found Roman standing by the hearth, staring into the low fire. He had pulled on black trousers but remained bare-chested. His back was a landscape of tense muscle and old scars. The powerful set of his shoulders was still there, but the line of his spine spoke of a profound, unsettling fatigue.
“It hasn’t faded,” Reese said, his voice hoarse from disuse and screaming.
Roman didn’t turn. “No.”
“The berries. My… what I did. It’s looped. A feedback.”
“Yes.”
A simple acknowledgement. The most dangerous creature Reese knew was trapped in a cage of his own making, and the lock was Reese’s essence. The power balance hadn’t just shifted; it had melted and reformed into something horribly interdependent.
“We need to break the cycle,” Roman said, his voice low. He finally turned. His eyes were shadowed, but the predatory focus was returning, hardened by frustration. “The curse needs a catalyst. A… shock to the system. Something to override the magical feedback.”
Reese wrapped his arms around himself. “What kind of shock?”
A grim, humorless smile touched Roman’s lips. It didn’t reach his eyes. “Pain. The purest kind. Not the playful burn of ginger, or the deep ache of fullness. Sharp, clean, terrifying pain. The kind that makes the body forget everything else. Even magic.”
Fear, cold and slick, traced Reese’s spine. “How?”
“The library. The Forbidden Tomes. There are rituals. Artefacts. Things that… cut through enchantment like a scalpel.” Roman stepped toward him, and Reese forced himself not to flinch. Roman’s hand came up, not to strike, but to cup Reese’s jaw. His thumb stroked over a bruise on Reese’s cheekbone. The gesture was possessive, contemplative. “You will help me find it.”
It wasn’t a question. Reese nodded, a tiny movement.
The walk to the library was a silent, painful procession. Reese’s bare feet were soundless on the cold flagstones. Roman’s footfalls were heavy, deliberate. The palace was a maze of shadows and echoes, but Roman moved through it with an absolute sense of ownership.
The doors to the Forbidden Tomes section were massive, forged from black iron and etched with sigils that hurt the eyes if stared at too long. Roman placed a hand on them, muttered a phrase in a guttural tongue, and they swung inward without a sound.
The air changed. It was cooler, drier, smelling of dust, slow decay, and something else—ozone and old blood. The room was vast, a cathedral of knowledge and malice. Towering bookshelves, impossibly high, formed narrow canyons. They were crammed not with paper, but with bindings of tanned hide, some scaled, some furred, some etched with runes that seemed to squirm. The light came from sickly green witch-fire orbs floating near the ceiling, casting long, dancing shadows.
Roman grabbed a cold iron lantern from a hook, its panes made of thin, transparent horn, and it flared with a white, sterile light. “Stay close. The wards here are… temperamental.”
They moved into the stacks. The silence was not true silence. As they passed, Reese heard them: whispers. Not from Roman, not from any living thing. They seeped from the books themselves. Hisses in dead languages, sensual murmurs in tongues he almost understood, promises of secrets that would unravel the mind. The whispers seemed to curl around him, probing at his soreness, his emptiness, his lingering arousal.
…such a pretty, used thing…
…he aches so sweetly…
…the seed of the old one is still hot inside him…
Reese shuddered, pressing closer to Roman’s back. The demon’s presence, for once, was a shield.
“Here,” Roman said, stopping at a junction where four aisles met. He handed Reese the lantern. “Hold this. I need to consult the index.”
Roman moved to a massive plinth of black obsidian covered in constantly shifting glyphs. He traced symbols with a focused intensity. Reese stood alone in the circle of lantern light, the whispers pressing in.
…let us taste his pain…
…open him, let us read his flesh like a text…
…the demon is fraying, can you not feel it? His control is a leaking vessel…
A particularly loud, slithering whisper came from a shelf at his eye level. A book bound in what looked like pale, smooth human skin, the nipple of a breast used as a raised boss in the center. It pulsed faintly.
Reese took a step back. His heel brushed against something on the floor. Not a book. A chain, cold and heavy, connected to a ring set in the stone.
Roman looked up from the plinth, his eyes catching the light. A decision flashed across his face, hard and immediate. “Kneel.”
The command was absolute. The exhaustion, the confusion, the relentless whispers—they all coalesced into a single, unavoidable point of obedience. Reese’s knees hit the cold stone floor. The impact jarred up his thighs.
Roman was on him in three strides. His hand fisted in Reese’s hair, yanking his head back. The other worked the fastening of his trousers. The demon’s cock, which had never fully softened, sprang free, thick and heavy, the head dark and wet.
“The books hunger for sensation,” Roman growled, his voice strained. “They feed on degradation. We’ll give them a show. And you… you will serve your purpose.”
He aligned the tip with Reese’s lips. Reese opened his mouth, a conditioned response. But Roman didn’t just push in. He shoved, a brutal, deep thrust that bypassed lips and tongue and hit the back of Reese’s throat instantly.
Reese gagged, eyes watering. The taste was overwhelmingly Roman—salt, skin, and the faint, electric tang of the unresolved magic. It was the taste of his own torment.
Roman held him there, buried to the root. Reese’s nose pressed into the coarse hair at the base. He couldn’t breathe. He struggled, hands coming up to push weakly at Roman’s hips.
Roman pulled back, just enough for air to whistle into Reese’s starved lungs, then slammed forward again. “Suck it clean, pet,” he commanded, his voice a dark caress. “Suck the frustration out. Every drop.”
He set a ruthless rhythm. In, out. Each thrust was a punishment, a reassertion of a control that was slipping. The wet, choking sounds echoed in the silent aisle, answered by a crescendo of excited whispers from the books.
…deeper…
…make the pretty thing choke…
…gag on it, choke on his power…
Reese’s jaw ached. His throat burned. Tears cut hot paths through the mess on his face—spit, pre-cum, shame. He tried to relax, to take it, but the violation was too visceral. He gagged every time the thick head bumped his soft palate.
Roman’s composure was fraying. His hips stuttered. The magical sensitivity, the curse, was eating at him even now. “Relax,” he snarled, not to Reese, but to Reese’s body. He placed his thumb on Reese’s throat, and a jolt of compulsion magic, cold and invasive, shot through him.
It was like a key turning in a lock. Reese’s throat muscles, clenched in protest, went lax. It was an unnatural, terrifying feeling. His body obeyed a foreign command, opening a channel it was designed to protect. The gag reflex vanished.
Roman moaned, a sound of pure, strained relief. He fucked into that slack, open throat with deep, piston-like drives. “Yes. Like that. A perfect hole.”
Reese could only kneel and take it. The sensation was bizarre, detached. He felt the scrape of flesh, the stretch, the hot bulk moving in a part of him that shouldn’t accommodate it. He watched, tear-blurred, as Roman’s abdomen tightened with each thrust. The whispers of the books became a roaring in his ears, a symphony of obscene encouragement.
Roman’s fingers tightened in his hair, pulling until the roots screamed. His pace increased, becoming frantic, jagged. He was chasing his release, but also fleeing from the unending need. He was using Reese’s face to bludgeon his own curse into submission.
“Take it,” Roman gasped, his voice breaking. “Take all of it. Swallow.”
He thrust deep and held, his body shuddering. Reese felt the hot, bitter pulse against the back of his tongue, flooding his subdued throat. Roman came with a ragged cry that was part agony, part surrender. The flow seemed endless, and Reese had no choice but to swallow, the act mechanical, compelled by the magic still holding his throat open.
When Roman finally pulled out, his cock slipped free with a slick pop. Reese slumped forward, coughing, strings of saliva and semen connecting his lips to the glistening, spent flesh. He drew in huge, shuddering gulps of the dusty air.
Roman staggered back a step, bracing himself against a bookshelf. The skin-bound book next to his hand gave a pleasured sigh. He looked down at Reese, who was trembling on all fours, vomiting nothing but air and shame.
For a long moment, there was only the sound of their breathing and the slowly diminishing whispers.
Then Roman’s eyes, clearing slightly, fixed on something behind Reese. He crouched, his movements slow with exhaustion and residual tension. He picked up the heavy chain Reese had brushed against. It was not merely a chain. At its end, fused to the last link, was a pendant. A shard of something blacker than the surrounding shadows, shaped like a long, vicious thorn.
“Here,” Roman whispered, his voice full of a grim wonder. He held it up. The witch-light glinted off its keen, impossible edge. “The Scourge of Oblivion. It doesn’t cut flesh. It cuts… connection.”
He looked from the shard to Reese, his gaze calculating, the Master reasserting himself through the haze of his distress. The relief from his climax was already being eroded, the hungry magic stirring once more in his veins. His cock, defiled and wet, twitched against his thigh.
The sharp, clean pain he’d spoken of. It was in his hand.
Reese looked up at him, at the dark thorn, then at the demon’s face, which held not cruelty now, but a terrible, necessary resolve. The cycle hadn’t been broken. It had only led them to the tool for a more final, more terrifying solution.
The library held its breath.
The library held its breath. Roman stared at the dark thorn in his hand, his knuckles white around the chain. The purpose of it, the clean cut it promised, was a clear thought in a feverish mind. Then the feedback surge hit him, a white-hot cramp of need that started in his groin and radiated outward. He dropped the chain. It clattered on the stone, the thorn skittering away into shadow.
“Fuck,” he hissed, doubling over. His cock, which had begun to soften, hardened again in a brutal instant. It was an ugly, painful erection, the skin stretched tight and shining, oversensitive to the point of agony. Every heartbeat sent a jolt through it.
He looked at Reese, who was still on his knees, wiping his mouth. The solution wasn’t in some artefact. Not right now. The solution was in the conduit. The receptacle.
“The ring,” Roman gasped, gesturing to the iron set in the floor. “Put your wrists in it.”
Reese saw the animal distress in Roman’s face, the tremble in his hands. The demon was disappearing, consumed by a base biological fire. There was no arguing with this. Reese crawled to the ring. It was a heavy, hinged manacle, designed to close over limbs. He slid his hands through. The cold iron snapped shut with a final, resonant click.
Roman was on him before he could test the give. He’d retrieved the fallen chain, not the thorn, but the length of it. He wrapped it around Reese’s torso, pinning his arms to his sides, then secured it with a harsh, efficient knot at his back. Reese was trussed, kneeling, utterly exposed.
The earlier goal was ash. Roman’s world had narrowed to the unbearable sensitivity between his legs and the only thing that could momentarily soothe it. He fumbled with his trousers, freeing himself fully. He was leaking constantly, a thin, clear fluid that beaded at the tip and dripped. He stepped forward, his cock bobbing, and shoved the weeping head against Reese’s bruised lips.
“Open,” he panted. It was a plea wrapped in a command.
Reese opened his mouth. Roman pushed in, not with the brutal force of before, but with a frantic, shallow desperation. He fucked Reese’s mouth with short, jerky strokes, his hips trembling. “Suck. Just… suck.”
Reese obeyed, using his tongue, trying to gentle the act. He lavished attention on the hypersensitive head, swirling his tongue around the rim of the slit. Roman whimpered. The sound was utterly alien.
When Roman was close, he pulled out with a wet sob. He moved behind Reese, his hands gripping the chain binding him. He didn’t bother with preparation. He just spat into his palm, wiped it over his cock and Reese’s entrance, and shoved inside.
Reese cried out, his body bowing against the chains. The dry stretch was exquisite torment. Roman sank to the hilt and came almost immediately. A hot, spastic flood filled Reese, a quick, violent release. Roman shuddered against his back, gasping.
It provided three seconds of respite.
Roman’s cock, still violently hard, twitched inside him. “No, no, no,” Roman chanted, a mantra of despair. He began to move again, pulling out and pushing back into the slick mess he’d just made. Every drag was a gasp, a flinch. “It’s too much. It’s too fucking much.”
Reese, chained and filled, could do little. As Roman pulled back for another thrust, Reese turned his head as far as the bindings allowed. He found the demon’s shoulder, the sweat-salt skin, and pressed his open mouth against it. He didn’t bite. He kissed. A soft, open-mouthed press of lips. Then he sucked, gently, on the corded muscle.
Roman froze, mid-thrust. A full-body shiver racked him. “What are you doing?” His voice was broken.
“Trying to help,” Reese murmured against his skin, then kissed the spot again. He let a whisper of incubus energy flow, not the overwhelming flood from before, but a trickle of soothing warmth, a mimicry of comfort. He traced a line of kisses up to the juncture of Roman’s neck.
Roman groaned, a deep, shattered sound. He resumed moving, his pace slower now, a ragged, grinding rhythm. He buried his face in Reese’s hair. Each thrust was a deliberate, painful negotiation with his own nerves. Reese kept his mouth on any skin he could reach, sucking love bites into Roman’s shoulder, nuzzling the side of his throat, whispering ragged, senseless comforts. “It’s alright. Let go. Just feel it.”
The second orgasm took longer, building as a tight, cramping coil in Roman’s gut. He came with a choked-off roar, his fingers digging into the chains around Reese’s chest. More seed spilled out around the joining of their bodies.
He didn’t stop. He couldn’t. He fucked through the oversensitivity, his movements becoming clumsy, graceless. Tears of frustration and raw sensory overload mixed with the sweat on his face. Reese, his own body screaming from the brutal pace and the chafing metal, kept up his soft assault. When Roman leaned close, Reese captured a nipple with his lips, sucking and tonguing the pebbled flesh until Roman sobbed.
The third release was a dry, convulsive heaving, little more than a pulse of agony. Roman’s legs were shaking. He collapsed forward, his weight driving Reese into the cold stone. The cock inside Reese felt like a heated iron rod, a permanent, brutal invasion.
“I can’t,” Roman wept, the words hot against Reese’s ear. “It won’t stop. It’s a fucking live wire.”
“Once more,” Reese coaxed, his voice hoarse. He twisted, finding Roman’s mouth with his own. He kissed him deeply, sharing the taste of blood and salt and desperation. He fed that trickle of energy, a cooling balm laced with submission. “Give it to me. Again.”
Somehow, Roman found a reserve. He braced his hands on the floor on either side of Reese and fucked him with a relentless, punishing piston-drive. The wet, slapping sounds echoed in the silent stacks, a counter-rhythm to Roman’s ragged pants and Reese’s muffled cries. The books watched, sated and murmuring.
The fourth climax was a surprise, tearing through Roman like a lightning strike. He screamed, a raw, unfiltered sound of pure physiological betrayal, as his body spent another wave of fluid he didn’t have.
He slumped, his sweaty forehead pressed between Reese’s shoulder blades, his cock still impossibly, wrongfully hard. He was trembling uncontrollably. “One more,” Reese whispered, his own consciousness fraying. “You can do one more. For me.”
It was a cruelty and a kindness. Roman, his mind blank with exhaustion, obeyed the voice in his ear. He moved, a slow, torturous rise and fall. Each inch of withdrawal was a gasp. Each sinking return was a prayer for an end that wouldn’t come. Reese pushed back against him, meeting each feeble thrust, clenching his internal muscles around the ravaged shaft.
The fifth and final orgasm was barely an event. A weak, shuddering pulse, a trickle of heat. A final surrender.
Roman went completely limp, his full weight crushing Reese into the stone. For a long time, the only sounds were their torn breathing and the slow, slick drip of fluids from their joined bodies. Roman’s cock, finally, began to soften, slipping from Reese’s well-used hole with a slow, deflating sigh.
The library exhaled. The thorn, the Scourge of Oblivion, lay forgotten in the shadows a few feet away, glinting under the witch-light. The chains were ice against Reese’s skin, and Roman’s weight was a mountain. But for the first time in hours, the air wasn’t vibrating with frantic, cursed need. It was heavy with spent ruin.