By Chance Met (16 page)

But now, it did matter that Naeth was one. Reijir was deeply moved that the youth had chosen to yield him his innocence. Consequently, he needed to make Naeth’s first sexual encounter a wonderful experience for him. To this end, he chose to bring Naeth to satisfaction first without regard for his own needs, urgent as they were.

Naeth buried his face in Reijir’s chest, his hands clutching at the Herun’s shoulders, half-frightened, half-awed by the exceedingly strong tension slowly mounting within him. His breath came in rapid pants, and he moaned intermittently while his body visibly trembled.

"Let go, Naeth," Reijir urged him. "Don't fight it."

Naeth gave a strangled cry as he bucked one last time into Reiji’s hand. Thin ribbons of semen burst forth to dapple his belly and coat Reijir’s fingers.

He clung to Reijir until his trembling ceased. When he finally opened his eyes a little dazedly, Reijir deliberately brought his fingers to his lips. Naeth’s eyes widened as Reijir licked his fingers clean of seed. Reijir softly laughed when Naeth turned his face away.

Still grinning, he leaned down and plied his tongue on the youth’s semen-stippled belly.

Naeth stiffened then groaned at the sensual sensation. Only when Reijir was done did his breathing slowly return to normal.

After recovering some calm, Naeth looked at Reijir in some befuddlement.

Correctly divining the reason for his confusion, Reijir said, "I wanted you to enjoy yourself first.”

“Oh.” Naeth huffed a nervous chuckle. "I thought you didn't want to go further," he admitted.

Reijir grinned and shook his head. "I've waited far too long to put this off now.”

Even as he spoke, he nudged a knee between Naeth’s legs, compelling him to spread them. He caught up the bottle of oil from the bedside table and drizzled a generous amount onto his fingers. Naeth stared in fascination as Reijir thoroughly coated his shaft with the oil.

“Raise your knees,” Reijir murmured, shifting between Naeth’s outspread legs.

Gulping, Naeth did as he was directed. He caught his breath when his buttocks were parted and Reijir smeared oil on the tight entrance to his backside with his thumb, teasing the sensitive flesh as he did. A moment later he gasped when Reijir’s thumb pressed into him, retreated then pushed in once more, all the while smoothing more oil up Naeth’s arse even as he accustomed him to the intrusive feeling.

*

Naeth averted his gaze when he realized Reijir was studying his face while he steadily breached him. He started then whimpered when he felt the entry of more fingers, twisting gently as they proceeded deeper. Naeth cried out in surprise when the stroking within him fetched him a burst of pleasure. He clutched at the beddings, panting unevenly as the delicious sensations continued.

He sighed when Reijir withdrew his fingers, torn between relief and dissatisfaction, only to sharply inhale when something else sought entrance. His throat tightened as he finally realized just what being taken would actually entail.

"This may hurt a bit," Reijir said in an oddly hushed voice.

Naeth fought back a surge of panic.

"I'm scared," he admitted in a rather thready voice.

Reijir asked very gently, "Do you want me to stop?"

Naeth looked at him incredulously, stunned that Reijir should still offer him a choice, even when he was obviously in great need of his own release. He blew his breath out then willed the tension out of his lower body.

"Don’t stop," he murmured.

“So brave,” Reijir commented with a small approving smile.

He began to ease into Naeth, sprinkling small kisses on his forehead, eyelids and cheeks. Naeth winced as he felt himself stretched beyond what was comfortable.

Reijir paused and said, “Bear down on me as if you’re pushing me out.”

Naeth stared at him. “Why would I—?”

“Trust me, Naeth-
min
.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Naeth obeyed. He gasped as the action opened him up further to Reijir’s entry, allowing the Herun full ingress into him. Suddenly filled to the brim with hot, hard flesh, Naeth moaned and closed his eyes. The discomfort was acute and would take some getting used to.

“Are you well?”

Naeth opened his eyes and gazed at Reijir in wonder. He could not quite believe it, but after waiting so long, he was finally one with the Deir he adored. Reijir had taken possession of him, fulfilling a wish Naeth had nursed these past two years.

"Yes," he assured the Herun. "Thank you."

Reijir looked at him searchingly. "I should thank you," he quietly said.

Before Naeth could respond, Reijir started to move, sliding repeatedly up his backside. Naeth shuddered with each plunge of Reijir’s shaft into him. Before long, the earlier pleasure returned, this time wrought by the frictional slide of a hard shaft against sensitive flesh. Gasping from the sensations, he wrapped his arms about Reijir’s shoulders and pressed his lips to the Herun’s throat.

He heard Reijir’s breath catch as he moved his lips lower. The Herun half-laughed, half-groaned when Naeth eagerly kissed the length of his throat and what he could reach of his shoulders, his tongue stroking him in just the way Reijir had earlier done.

"Veres Almighty, you'll drive me mad," he raggedly gasped, his muscles taut with the effort to keep his body under control.

He pinned Naeth down and claimed his lips with a fierce kiss. Naeth eagerly lifted his hips to meet Reijir’s thrusts. He moaned against Reijir’s lips, his body trembling helplessly. His body began to shake as they made the final climb to a shattering climax.

When the explosion came, Naeth uttered a low cry and tightly wrapped his legs around

Reijir’s waist, as if unwilling to relinquish the pleasure of being so fulsomely filled.

*

His shaft buried to the hilt in snug velvet heat underlined by the hint of strength in satin swathed muscles, Reijir gave in to his body’s demand for release and nearly shouted his pleasure when torrents of sensation threatened to completely engulf him. Only by sheer force of will did he manage to hold on to one last tenuous thread of bodily restraint and bite back that cry.

The unexpected intensity of their lovemaking had taken him by surprise. Naeth's response to him, for some inexplicable reason, almost shattered his rigid bastion of control. That he’d managed to stave off that breaching was testimony to the strength of his will over his body.

But it had been a near thing. A very near thing indeed.

Chapter Twelve

Reijir and Keiran decided to spend the height of winter in Ilmaren, and they departed Rikara before more snowfall beset the capital. And since the university’s winter recess coincided with the coldest weeks of the season, the Herun invited Naeth to join them.

Naeth was surprised but pleased as could be. Though he was Reijir’s ward, he had not been previously invited to visit the fief. He wondered if in warming his guardian’s bed quite frequently, he had engendered a desire in Reijir for more of his company.

Whatever the reason, Naeth was most grateful for the chance to continue serving Reijir.

For truth be told, he had feared the possibility of some other Deir supplanting him in Ilmaren. But if he were on hand to meet most if not all of Reijir’s needs, potential rivals would find it difficult to get a foot in the door so to speak.

They rode out to the Great Field, and when they were a fair distance down the wide avenue from the city, they crossed a half frozen meadow to an empty spot. They would make the journey to Ilmaren by way of a translocation corridor, the generation of which both Arthanna brothers possessed the power and skill to perform.

It was an unwritten rule that anyone who created a corridor did so far from populated areas for the blossoming of a portal expended energy strong enough to kill or destroy.

Only a very few, the inordinately powerful templars and specially gifted physicians among them, could be so precise as to safely open corridors inside structures or in the middle of a busy street or square. Naeth knew the Ardan Rohyr was also one of that bare handful due to his inheritance of the fabled Essendri potential.

Well wrapped in a fur-lined cloak, he curiously watched Reijir and saw that he was staring at a spot a short distance in front of them. Naeth looked in the direction of Reijir’s fixed gaze.

He became aware of an unusual stillness around them—as if the chill breezes of the open plain had vanished and taken all sound and movement with it. And then he caught his breath as the air before them visibly shimmered. The shimmer expanded into a pulsing mosaic of light and movement. He was wide eyed and all agape by the time he comprehended that Reijir had opened a translocation portal.

Reijir glanced at him and asked, “Nervous?” When Naeth nodded, the Herun said,

“Stay close behind me.” With that he lifted a hand in a commanding gesture to the others then urged his steed toward the gateway.

Naeth swallowed hard then followed Reijir into the portal. He gasped when they passed through the icy mist that veiled the entrance and rode into the nigh oppressive coolness of the corridor within. Vague images of what appeared to be the countryside they were rapidly bypassing registered at the periphery of his field of vision. But too frightened to take a good look at the mysterious passageway they now traversed, Naeth resolutely kept his eyes on the reassuring figure of the Herun in front of him.

With neither daylight nor passing scenery to give him an idea of how fast they were travelling, Naeth quickly lost track of time. Indeed, it felt as if the whole world had come to a stop. Or ceased to exist. The silvery blue light within the corridor was steady but diffuse while the air just seemed to hang there, cold and unmoving and voiceless. Naeth knew a twinge of terror at the thought of being stranded in this utterly still and silent place.

Just when he thought he could no longer bear the chilling silence, he saw a glow in

the distance. It was little more than a pinpoint of light at first, but mere seconds later, it increased in circumference until it appeared a bright disc. Naeth hoped it was the end of the corridor. He doggedly rode on, keeping as close behind as possible to Reijir. The light suddenly seemed to rush at them, and before he could think twice about it, Naeth was past it.

They emerged from the tunnel onto a wide meadow now rendered brown and dry as the coldest season overtook the land. Naeth looked back in time to see the last rider emerge from the portal. Before his eyes, the gateway shrank and closed and all around air and sound and movement was normal once more.

He came abreast with Reijir, blinking a few times to accustom his eyes to the light. It was quite bright for it was a cloudless day and high noon was upon them. Naeth realized it had taken them little more than a quarter of an hour to reach the midlands of Ylandre, a good fortnight’s ride and more than a month’s journey on foot or by slow-moving wain from Rikara.

Looking about, he discovered that the meadow was to the right of a wide highway—

the main approach to Althia he would later learn. Quiet and empty for the most part in winter, this thoroughfare would come alive with traffic in the spring.

Reijir glanced at him questioningly. Naeth hastened to reassure him, saying, “I am well.” At Reijir’s nod of acknowledgement, he asked, “Is it much farther?”

“Althia lies beyond those woods,” Reijir replied, cocking his head in the direction of a small forest that concealed a bend in the road.

Once the party regrouped, they rode onto the highway and continued their journey.

Almost as soon as they rounded the bordering trees, Naeth caught sight of their destination.

In a shallow basin amidst several low hills was a city of considerable size. An expansive ice-covered tributary curved around its western bounds to go on for leagues before it emptied its waters into the Nyllos, the mighty river that virtually ran the length of Ylandre and of which the Azira River that cut through Rikara was but a branch. With most of its structures built largely from bronze-and amber-hued stone and sand, the city appeared golden in the midday light.

This was Althia, the capital and herunic seat of the Lords of Ilmaren, principal fief of the upper Ylandrin midlands and one of the three major agricultural centers of the kingdom. It was a populous, prosperous city that bid fair to match Rikara in appeal and sophistication if not in sheer size.

As they neared Althia, Naeth took note of the low hills in the distance, towns and villages visible between them or scattered around at their feet. Before them sprawled acres of fallow fields to be sown with grain, pulse and edible seed come the end of winter. Naeth remembered that farther south the fief of Edessa held sway over the lower midlands and with Ilmaren controlled the central region that was foremost known as the breadbasket of Ylandre. He turned his gaze back to Althia.

In the south of the city stood a walled many-towered manse. From the highest tower of the manor a large banner fluttered in the strong wintry breeze, revealing a sprig of evergreen crowning a white majestically antlered roehart stag on a deep burgundy field.

Thus did Naeth lay his eyes for the first time on Arthanna Court, home of the ruling family of Ilmaren.

He knew the mansion had a long history. Keiran had told him some wings of the

great house harked back to the small Naeren fortress that had once dominated the site.

Instead of tearing down the old building, the first Herun had incorporated it into the stately home that would become the seat of all succeeding fief-lords.

As he eagerly viewed the mansion, Naeth thought with some disappointment that it looked rather small for a Herun’s home since all he could see was the front portion of the building. But as he rode behind Reijir and Keiran down the main avenue of Althia and approached the tall wrought iron gates that bore the Arthanna coat-of-arms, he did know a renewed sense of wonderment and acute pangs of curiosity, regular occurrences for him since making the acquaintance of the Lord of Ilmaren.

The gatekeeper opened the gates to allow the company entrance into the courtyard.