Chapter 8: T
The cooing sound he made went straight through me, hot and bright as a brand. His neck tasted like ozone and something uniquely Octavius, a flavor I’d have on my tongue for days. But kissing wasn’t the destination tonight. It was the gateway. I pulled my mouth from his skin with a soft, wet sound, our foreheads resting together, breathing the same frantic air.
“Okay?” I whispered, my voice shredded.
His amber eyes were blown wide, the analytical gleam drowned in a dark, swimming need. He nodded, a sharp, jerky motion. “The data is… compelling. Proceed.”
A laugh rasped out of me, even as my own need tightened like a fist in my gut. He was still trying to frame this as an experiment, even as his whole body trembled against mine. “The main course, then,” I said, my hands sliding from his hips to grip his thighs. “On your back. For me.”
He went, moving with a sudden, fluid grace that surprised me. He laid back against the rumpled fur blankets, his sleek head on my pillow, wings splayed awkwardly but deliberately to the sides. He was a sacrifice on the altar of my bed, and the sight of him there—spread out, exposed, his cock standing stiff and eager against his belly—punched the air from my lungs. It was different from a hellhound’s. Sleeker, with a slight, graceful curve, the skin like dark velvet. I wanted it in my mouth, but that wasn’t the plan. Tonight was for him.
I knelt between his thighs, the posture familiar yet utterly new. This wasn’t some anonymous brute from the pits. This was Octavius. My hands ran up the insides of his legs, feeling the powerful muscle there, the soft down giving way to smoother skin.
“Loon,” he said, and my name was a question, a plea, a warning.
“I’ve got you,” I said, and I meant it in every way. I reached for the small jar of salve on the cluttered bedside table—hellhound-made, slick and cool, scented faintly of obsidian and ember. I coated my fingers thickly, the shine catching the flickering candlelight. “This might feel strange. Just breathe into it. Tell me to stop and I stop. Always.”
“Understood.” His gaze was locked on my hand, on the glistening fingers. “I have read about the physiological process. The theory is sound.”
“Fuck theory,” I murmured, and I pressed a slick, careful finger against him.
He jerked, a full-body spasm, a sharp inhale. His claws dug into the blankets. I held still, just the pressure, letting his body decide. I felt the incredible heat, the tight, clenching resistance. “Breathe out, Oct.”
He exhaled, a forced, ragged stream of air, and as his body relaxed minutely, I pushed in, just past the first knuckle.
The sound he made was nothing avian. It was a raw, gut-punched groan. His head pressed back into the pillow, his beak parted. “Fuck. That’s… intrusive.”
“It is,” I agreed, working my finger slowly, feeling his body fiercely resist then reluctantly yield. “It’s also just the start. You’re doing perfect.” I crooked my finger, searching, and when I brushed that specific spot inside him, his legs shot out straight, his talons scoring the sheets.
“What was that?” he gasped, his voice shot through with shock.
“That’s the point,” I grinned, doing it again, rubbing slow circles over the bundle of nerves. His cock twitched violently, a bead of clear fluid welling at the tip. The clinical detachment was incinerated. His hips began to move in tiny, helpless jerks, fucking himself back onto my finger. “Oh, you like that. You like that a lot.”
“Shut up and add another,” he commanded, the order strained, desperate.
I obeyed, slicking a second finger, pressing in alongside the first. The stretch was tighter. He hissed, a sound of pure, bright pain that quickly morphed into a low, wanting moan as I scissored my fingers gently, opening him. His channel was scalding hot, clenching rhythmically around my digits, trying to milk them. He was learning fast, his body understanding the language far quicker than his mind ever could.
“I’m ready,” he announced, his eyes wild. “The stretch is within tolerable parameters. Proceed to the… primary objective.”
I couldn’t help it. I leaned down and kissed him, hard and messy, our teeth clacking. “You magnificent bastard.” I pulled my fingers free, and he whimpered at the loss, a high, needy sound that went straight to my cock. I coated myself with the salve, the cool slap of it a shock before my own heat overwhelmed it. I was throbbing, aching, the head dark and wet. I lined myself up, the tip nudging against that impossibly tight, wet heat.
Our eyes met. The candlelight danced in his. There was fear there, a last bastion of his fortress walls. And beneath it, a trust so vast it made my chest hurt. I pushed forward, just an inch.
It was like splitting firewood. The resistance was immense, a hot, clinging vice. He cried out, a sharp, pained sound, his claws ripping the sheets. I froze, trembling with the effort of not sheathing myself completely. “Breathe,” I gritted out, my own voice strangled. “Just breathe, Oct. Let it in.”
He dragged in a shuddering breath, his body convulsing around me. Then, deliberately, he exhaled, and as he did, he pushed his hips down, taking me another devastating inch.
“Oh, fuck,” I groaned, my vision spotting. He was so tight it was almost unbearable, a friction so intense it bordered on pain. I sank deeper, slowly, each millimeter a conquest, until I was fully seated inside him, our bodies flush, belly-to-belly. I was buried to the hilt in Octavius. The feeling was indescribable. It wasn’t the frantic, pounding consumption of the orgy. This was a claiming, a joining, a singular, profound violation of his sanctum that he had invited.
He was panting, his chest heaving against mine. A single, traitorous tear traced from the corner of his eye into his feathers. “It’s… full,” he managed. “You’re… very full.”
I kissed the tear away. “You’re taking me so well. Fuck, you feel like heaven wrapped in hell.” I began to move, a slow, inexorable withdrawal, then a push back in. The slide was smoother now, his body yielding, accepting. I set a deep, rolling rhythm, belly slapping against belly with each solid thrust. The sound was filthy, wet, intimate—a private music. I braced my hands on either side of his head, my arms trembling, and looked down at him.
His composure was in tatters. His beak was open, panting. His eyes were screwed shut, then fluttering open, hazy with a pleasure so profound it looked like agony. His legs came up, wrapping around my waist, his talons digging into the small of my back, anchoring me to him, pulling me deeper.
“Is this…” he gasped, “the… the symphony?”
“No,” I grunted, driving into him, feeling his walls clutch and spasm around my cock. “This is a duet. Just us.” I shifted my angle, and on the next thrust, I nailed his prostate dead-on.
His back arched clear off the bed, a silent scream on his face before the sound tore out of him—a raw, shattered shout that held no trace of sarcasm or intellect, just pure, animal ecstasy. “THERE! Fuck, Loon, right there, don’t you dare stop, do it again, please!”
I did it again. And again. I fucked him with a relentless, pounding focus, my world narrowing to the slap of skin, the gasp of his breaths, the blinding tight heat of his body. He was babbling, a stream of broken, beautiful obscenities and pleas. “Oh god, yes, fill me, you fucking animal, I feel you everywhere, it’s too much, don’t stop, it’s mine…”
He was right. It was his. This frenzy, this loss of control, was entirely his own. I was just the conduit. I watched him unravel beneath me, a prince of nothing but sensation, and it was the most powerful thing I’d ever seen.
“I’m close, Oct,” I warned, my thrusts becoming ragged, losing rhythm. “Where do you want it?”
“Inside,” he demanded, his voice a feral growl I’d never heard from him. His hand flew to his own cock, jerking it in frantic, rough strokes. “Fill me. I want to feel it. I want your fucking seed inside me.”
The crude, possessive words from his usually pristine mouth were the final trigger. My climax ripped through me with the force of a detonation. I slammed into him, buried myself as deep as I could go, and roared as I came. Thick, hot pulses of cum shot into his depths, coating his insides, claiming that sacred, private space. The feel of my own release pushing into him, of his body milking me dry, sent endless aftershocks juddering through my spine.
The convulsions of my orgasm against his prostate were all he needed. With a choked, guttural cry, his own release hit him. Strings of white shot across his belly and chest, some even reaching his chin, as his channel clamped down on my still-spurting cock in vicious, rhythmic spasms. He shook violently, his wings flapping once, uselessly, against the blankets, a complete and total systemic overload.
I collapsed on top of him, spent, crushing him into the mattress. We were a slick, sweaty, cum-soaked mess. The air reeked of sex and salve and us. His arms came around me, holding me with a desperate, exhausted strength. We lay there, joined, as the tremors slowly subsided. The only sound was our harsh, gulping breaths and the distant, eternal hum of the city.
After a long while, he spoke, his voice hoarse and wonder-filled, mumbled into my shoulder.
“The data,” he whispered, “was insufficient.”
I laughed, a weak, breathless puff of air. “Yeah?”
“The phenomenological experience…” He trailed off, his clever mind clearly struggling to process. He shifted beneath me, wincing slightly at the movement, feeling the full, leaking evidence of what we’d done. “It was… operative.”
I pushed myself up on my elbows to look at him. His expression was shattered, open, utterly beautiful. “Just ‘operative’?”
A slow, ragged smirk touched the corner of his beak. He lifted a claw, tracing a line through the spend on his own chest. “It was… transcendentally vulgar.” He met my eyes, the amber depths holding a new, quiet light. “We should collate more data. Repeated trials. To ensure the results are… reproducible.”
I kissed him, deep and slow, tasting us both. “Your place or mine next time?”
“Mine,” he said quietly, his claws tracing patterns on my back. “The sheets are higher thread count.”