Chapter 2: The Tasting Room
The world became a vise.A hot, relentless, grinding pressure. Arthur’s monumental weight settled onto the hard bench of the mess hall, and the two mighty hemispheres of his ass compressed, squeezing the air from Derek’s prison with a finality that felt like a landslide. He was buried alive in a canyon of muscle and hot flesh, every slight shift a seismic event.
The noise was a different kind of assault. Where the bathhouse had been echoes and steam, the mess hall was a roaring cacophony. Hundreds of dragon riders shouted, laughed, and bellowed, their voices merging into a storm of sound that vibrated through the bench and into Arthur’s body, a constant, dull tremor in Derek’s dark world. The clang of tankards was a cathedral bell, the scrape of a plate a landslide of ceramic.And the smells. Even here, buried deep, they seeped in.Roasted meat, greasy and rich. Spilled ale, sour and yeasty. The pungent, raw aroma of unwashed leather and male bodies, a musk that overpowered the cedar soap from the baths. Derek’s own prison contributed its own intimate, humid stench to the mélange. He gagged, his tiny lungs fighting for clean air that didn’t exist.
“—and then the dumb bastard tried to bet his dragon against a hand of Kings and Ruin!” a voice boomed nearby—Brogan. “I told him, ‘Mikael, you’re so deep in your cups you’re tasting your own dragon’s shit!’”
Arthur’s laughter was a deep convulsion that tightened the muscular walls around Derek, pulsing him in a wave of stifling heat. “He lost, I assume?”
“Lost?His bonded Green is polishing Vance’s boots for a fortnight. It’s a fucking disgrace.”
A vast hand reached past Derek’s world, the fingers briefly blotting out the sliver of dim light from the hall’s torches as Arthur grabbed his own tankard. The giant lifted it, and Derek heard the deep, glugging swallows, felt the subtle expansion of Arthur’s belly as he drank. Some of the ale, perhaps, heading towards its inevitable, gaseous conclusion.The thought was its own fresh hell.Then, a shift. Arthur leaned forward, elbows on the table, to reach for a haunch of boar. The pressure on Derek’s front lessened infinitesimally, but the angle pushed him deeper into the crease, his face now pressed firmly against the tight, wrinkled pucker of Arthur’s anus. The hot, powerful musk of it was absolute, a dense, organic odor that was the very epicenter of his imprisonment.He could feel the concentric muscle, relaxed now, but holding a latent, terrifying strength.
The giant ate with gusto.The sound of tearing meat and grinding molars was deafening. Crumbs, unseen but sensed, fell onto the bench. Arthur chewed, swallowed, and let out a satisfied sigh that ruffled the dark hair of Derek’s surroundings.Suddenly, the world lifted. Arthur stood, his thighs like great oak trunks pushing upwards. The cheeks parted, and for a glorious, terrifying second, Derek was exposed.Cool, smoke-tinged air flooded his tiny form. The roaring hall was a blur of firelight and monstrous shapes. He was perched on the precipice, a tiny figure stuck to the sweat-damp skin of a colossus’s ass, the floor a lethal drop yards below.
“A toast!” Arthur’s voice erupted, a thunderclap that silenced the hall. “To the Blue-Scale idiots, who remind us that even the loftiest flight can end in a faceful of shit if you’re not paying attention!”
The hall erupted in roars of laughter and agreement.Tankards slammed. Arthur remained standing, one hand on his hip, the other raising his drink. Derek clung desperately, exposed to the air, a potential spectacle for any eye sharp enough to see a speck on a legendary rider’s backside. The moment stretched.He could try to leap. It would be death, smashed on the stone or trampled under a thousand giant boots, but it would be an end.
Then, with a final bellowed laugh, Arthur sat.It was not a gentle descent.It was a collapse. The full, armoured weight of the man drove downwards, and the muscular cheeks slammed together with a wet, fleshy force that ejected the air between them.Derek was caught in the cataclysm. He was crushed, flattened into the hot, hairy skin, driven so deep into the crevice he felt his own bones creak.The light was extinguished.The cool air was gone. He was back in the dark, but now it was tighter, hotter, more suffocating than before. The pressure was immense, a constant, grinding weight that promised to pulverize him. Arthur shifted, settling his weight comfortably, and the cheeks clenched, locking Derek in a final, absolute embrace.
Time became a blur of agony and sensory assault.Courses came and went.Stories were told. Vance bragged about the emerald-eyed dancer, describing her talents in graphically obscene detail that made Arthur snort.
“Sounds like she’s had more riders than your dragon, Vance,” Arthur grumbled.
“Jealousy is an ugly color on you, Arthur. Especially with all that grey in your fur.”
More laughter.More ale.The hall grew louder, warmer, denser. Derek faded in and out of a pained consciousness, his thoughts reduced to a single, grinding refrain: The card. The cold card against my ribs.I need out.
Finally, Arthur pushed back from the table with a scrape that echoed in Derek’s bones.“Enough.I’m for the district. Anyone joining?Brogan?No, you’re too old.Vance? Don’t you have a boot-shining dragon to attend to?”
Amidst the jeers, Arthur stood. The pressure lessened, but Derek was now fused to the skin by dried sweat and sheer pressure. He didn’t drop.He remained, a tiny, desperate barnacle on the hull of a giant.
The walk through the Hive was a swaying, jostling nightmare. Then, the sounds changed again.Music, sultry and rhythmic, replaced the war chants. Perfume and incense battled with the smell of sweat and sex.The Silk District.
Arthur was greeted by name, with reverence and knowing smiles. He moved through a labyrinth of silken drapes and low lighting, finally entering a private room thick with the scent of sandalwood and arousal. A woman’s voice, low and smooth as honey, greeted him.The emerald-eyed dancer.
Derek listened, helpless, as pleasantries faded into the sounds of carnal immediacy. Clothes were discarded; a heavy belt and trousers landed on the floor with a thud that shook Derek’s world. Then, the bed groaned under Arthur’s weight.
The giant’s naked ass was now his entire universe. As Arthur positioned himself over the dancer, the cheeks tensed, the powerful muscles knotting and releasing.Derek was pressed into a new, more violent intimacy.The rhythm began.
Arthur fucked with the same untamed vigor he did everything else.Each thrust was a cataclysm. The cheeks slammed together, then parted with a wet, peeling sound. Each forward drive crushed Derek into a pulping oblivion against the dancer’s body; each withdrawal sucked him back into the sweltering, hairy darkness. The sounds were raw and explicit: Arthur’s guttural grunts, the woman’s sharp cries and filthy encouragements, the slick, rhythmic slap of flesh on flesh.“Fuck me, rider,” she moaned, her voice strained. “Split me open with that big, hairy cock.”
“You take it… you take all of it, you greedy slut,” Arthur panted, his pace increasing, becoming punishing.
The world dissolved into a violent, rhythmic pounding. Sweat, new and profuse, rivered down the cleft, soaking Derek, mixing with the scents of sex and female arousal.The pressure was relentless, the heat unbearable. He was a mote in a hurricane of fucking, crushed and stretched and pummeled by the raw, unthinking biology of the giant who owned him.
Arthur’s breathing hitched, his grunts growing sharper, more urgent. His whole body tensed, the asscheeks clamping down on Derek in a final, vice-like spasm. “Gods… I’m gonna… fill that filthy cunt…” he roared, and with a last, shuddering thrust, he climaxed. Derek felt the deep, internal thrum of the man’s release, a subterranean tremor that shook the very flesh he was embedded in.
For a long time, there was only heavy breathing and the smell of sex.Then, Arthur rolled off with a satisfied groan.The dancer murmured something about cleaning up. Arthur waved her off, already sitting up.“Stay.I’ve got an early muster. Marcus would never let me hear the end of it if I’m late.”
Derek’s tiny heart, which had nearly stopped, gave a pathetic lurch.Marcus.Muster. No.Before despair could fully take root, the door to the room opened. A new voice, deeper, gruffer than Brogan’s, filled the space.“Saw your dragon outside. Knew you’d be buried in here, you fucking animal.”
Arthur chuckled, tired and satisfied. “Marcus.Come to check on me? I’m a grown man.”
“Grown, maybe.Wise?Never.We’re flying at dawn for the Western Scar.Scouting report. Need clear heads.”
“My head’s clear,” Arthur said, standing. Derek felt the awful, familiar lift and separation.“Just emptying my balls for the journey.”
“Charming. Get dressed.You’re sleeping at my quarters tonight. No more distractions.”
A moment of resistance, then a sigh.“Fine.Fine. You’re a tyrannical old bastard.”
“And you’re a hairier version of a horny teenager. Move.”
As Arthur dressed, Derek clung to a fading hope, now shattered.There would be no solitary moment tonight.No escape. He was trapped, a secret passenger on a mission he couldn’t comprehend, destined to spend the night pressed between the cheeks of a sleeping legend, with his vigilant friend Marcus inches away. The card, cold and inert against his microscopic ribs, felt like a mockery. He was buried in the sweat, smell, and spent seed of Arthur Rowantree, and the world above, the world of giants, was moving on without a single thought for the speck in the dark. The crushing weight of a future contained entirely within another man’s ass settled over him, final as a tombstone. The muffled sounds of the Silk District faded, replaced by the crisp night air and the steady, crushing tromp of Arthur’s boots toward another door, another room, another endless stretch of captive darkness.