Chapter 1: Soap and Sweat
The stolen card was a cold, hard shard against his ribs, tucked into the thin leather pouch he’d sewn into his tunic. Derek could feel its unnatural chill even through the layers of cloth and his own panicked sweat.He’d done it. He’d actually infiltrated a dragon rider’s hive, a place where the air itself hummed with latent power, and he’d snatched the legendary Stealth Shrinking Card from under their arrogant noses.Now, he just needed a moment. One single, fucking moment of privacy to use it.That moment never came.
The alarm bells had scarcely begun to wail when he was spotted. Not by a rider, but by a scrivener’s apprentice who’d chosen the worst possible time to fetch a forgotten scroll. Derek ran, his heart a frantic bird in his throat, ducking through archways and skidding across mosaics that depicted glorious battles he’d never be part of. He could hear the thunder of boots, the shouted orders.He was a mouse in a castle of lions.
With no other choice, his scheme unraveling into pure survival, he tore the pouch open, snatched the card—a plain rectangle of smoky grey crystal—and did the only thing he could think of. He pressed it hard, point-first, against the skin over his own heart.
A searing cold, sharper than any blade, lanced through him. The world shuddered, warped, and then expanded in a dizzying, nauseating rush.The fine grain of the marble floor became a vast, pitted plain. A discarded thread from his tunic swelled into a grimy rope. The sound of the pursuing boots transformed into earth-shaking concussions.He was shrinking.It was working.And then he was falling. A one-inch man, tumbling through a suddenly cavernous space, towards a floor that was now a lethal distance away.He flailed, a pathetic scream trapped in his tiny lungs. His back hit something soft and slightly damp, arresting his fall. It was a discarded washcloth, crumpled near a drain.He gasped, clawing at the coarse, giant fibers, his entire body trembling.
Before he could even think, a shadow blotted out the light. A hand, gigantic, each finger thicker than his entire torso, descended. It scooped up the washcloth with a casual, terrifying force. Derek was pressed into the damp terrycloth, the world a violent, swinging blur of motion and sound.
“Filthy day,” a voice boomed from above, so deep it vibrated in Derek’s bones.It was Arthur Rowantree.The legendary rider himself. Derek knew that voice, had heard it echoing in victory halls. “The Blue-Scale battalion is full of preening idiots.Nearly clipped Scylla’s wing with their formation flying. Amateurs.”
Another laugh, gruffer. “You’re just sore their commander out-drank you last night, Arthur.”
“Fuck off, Brogan.”
The world tilted. Derek clung to the fibers, his knuckles white. He was carried, jostled, through the humid air of the bathhouse. The scents intensified—cedar soap, male sweat, the sharp, ozone-like tang of dragon oil. Then, the sound of running water, a roaring waterfall, and steam that enveloped everything in a thick, wet heat.The washcloth was lifted. For a second, Derek dangled in the open air, the mosaic floor a deadly chessboard far below. Then, the giant hand began to scrub.It was monumental. A landscape of tanned, weathered skin, corded muscle, and a thick, dark pelt of hair. Arthur was scrubbing his own chest, the rough cloth moving in powerful, sweeping arcs. Derek was slammed against a pectoral muscle as hard as stone, then dragged through a forest of chest hair, soaked with soap and hot water. He coughed, sputtering, blind.The scrubbing moved lower. Over the ridged abdomen, across the powerful hip.And then the world inverted.
Arthur, with a grunt of effort, twisted the cloth behind him and began to scrub his back. Derek, a prisoner in the fabric, was dragged into the damp, shadowed valley between Arthur’s formidable shoulders. The motion was vigorous, thorough.Then, Arthur swapped his grip, reaching further down.
The cloth was pulled, with immense, untroubled strength, through the deep, hairy cleft of his ass.
Derek knew true darkness then. Not the dark of night, but a hot, humid, oppressive blackness, reeking of soap, sweat, and pure, potent man. The giant cheeks clenched around the cloth, the muscle like moving cliffs, squeezing the air from Derek’s tiny lungs. He was pressed face-first into the hot, damp skin, then dragged through the thick, coarse hair that lived there. The friction was terrifying.The sheer scale was incomprehensible. He was a speck, a grain of sand, being worked through the most intimate, ignored geography of a demigod.The scrubbing stopped. The cloth was dropped. Derek, dislodged by the final, firm pass, did not fall.He adhered.
Pressed into the sweaty, soapy depths, nestled against the very pucker of Arthur’s anus, held fast by moisture and pressure and the cruel curvature of the giant’s body.He couldn’t move.He could barely breathe. The heat was a living thing.The scent was overpowering, primal, disgusting. Every slight shift of Arthur’s stance sent ripples through the flesh that encased him, a constant, humiliating reminder of his captivity.
“Feels like I’ve got a gods-damn stone in my boot,” Arthur muttered, his voice a muffled thunder from above.
“Probably just your head, finally settling,” Brogan’s voice echoed, closer now.“You spending all evening at the springs? Or you got a scent to chase?”
Arthur chuckled, the sound causing a deep, resonant vibration that traveled through his body and directly into Derek’s prison. The flesh around him tightened briefly, a colossal, unconscious squeeze.“Might pay a visit to the silk district later. Heard a new troupe of dancers arrived from the Southern Isles.”
A new voice, younger, smugger, cut through the steam.“Already been.They’re exquisite.Particularly the one with the emerald eyes. Limber as a wyvern, screams like a harpy.”
“Vance.” Arthur’s tone was flat. “Do you ever think about anything that isn’t between a woman’s legs?”
“Do you ever think about anything that is?” Vance shot back, and Brogan guffawed.
The conversation swirled above Derek, a cosmos of crude, casual power from which he was utterly excluded. He hung there, a secret shame, buried alive in the sweaty, hairy ass of a legend. Arthur shifted his weight, scratching his balls with a casual, grating sound that was like boulders grinding overhead. The movement made his cheeks part slightly, and a sliver of dim, steamy light pierced Derek’s world for a second. A draft of cooler air teased him, carrying the smell of cedar and the distant, mocking laughter of the riders.Escape. He needed to peel himself free, to drop to the floor, to find some crack, some corner where he could be alone and reverse this nightmare. But the moment the thought formed, Arthur stretched, letting out a satisfied groan.The mighty glutes clenched again, sealing Derek back into the hot, dark vault. The giant turned, turning on the shower, and a fresh torrent of hot water cascaded down Arthur’s back, hitting Derek like a warm, relentless monsoon, driving him deeper into his foul sanctuary.
Privacy.He needed a single minute without this giant, magnetic presence. But Arthur Rowantree, dragon rider, hero of the Hive, was a social creature, a man of action. He was never alone. And as long as Derek was stuck here, pressed against the very root of him, neither was he.The water shut off. Arthur stepped out, his feet slapping the wet marble with earth-shaking impacts. He grabbed a fresh, vast towel, drying himself with a roar of fabric.“Coming to the mess, Brogan? Or are you just going to prune in the water all night?”
“Lead on, you hairy bastard. I’m starving enough to eat the ass out of a dead dragon.”
Derek, buried in the warm, damp cleft, his world a rhythmic, swaying darkness punctuated by the riders’ booming vulgarities, felt a new kind of despair.This wasn’t a hiding place.This was a sentence. And as Arthur’s booming laugh echoed through the bathhouse, Derek realized, with a cold, sickening certainty, that he had no idea how—or when—it would end.