Page 19 of Prior Claim
Sevastyan was already there, sitting on the edge of the four-poster bed, a book written in German in his hands. He laid it aside as Rei passed through the doorway.
Rei’s heartbeat quickened. It always did, the first time he was with Sevastyan after being parted for a period.
He stopped just inside the room, eyes lowered, watching for Sevastyan’s signal from the edge of his vision.
Sevastyan motioned him close and signaled for Rei to kneel between his feet.
Rei approached and folded himself down to his knees, spreading his thighs and folding his arms behind his back, cradling his elbows in the palms of his opposite hands. He kept his eyes down, gazing at a disassociated point just below Sevastyan’s cock where its shape was outlined through the creases of his slacks.
Sevastyan gave him time. He always did. Time for Sevastyan to study Rei’s bare form and time for Rei to feel the sensation of being seen. Rei breathed in and out, surrendering to the moment, to his master. He was Sevastyan’s. This body was his to see, to touch, to use.
To care for.
His muscles relaxed, one by one. His eyes fluttered shut.
He flinched when Sevastyan’s fingers threaded through his hair. Sevastyan tightened his grip. Rei let go of his breath, releasing his tension at once. Two weeks alone had been too long. The fear had crept back in during the long nights and days wrapped in his work clothes without any voice but his own to speak his name.
Sevastyan carded his fingers through Rei’s hair, searching his scalp. He tilted Rei’s countenance upward, traced the lines of his face, turned his head this way and that, touching each scar and ridge of bone. Rei let Sevastyan do what he would, his mind subsiding into quiet. A tap on his elbow brought him to his feet. Sevastyan went over Rei’s torso, front and back in the same way. Clinical and thorough, measuring, testing, searching for injury or tenderness.
He found the paper cut on the side of Rei’s hand and the bruise he’d gotten while getting groceries out of the drop box.
Sevastyan guided Rei back and tapped the bed. Rei crawled up onto the mattress and lay flat on his back, spreading his legs and folding his hands behind his back. Sevastyan circled the bed, opening Rei’s mouth, checking his teeth and his throat, then running his hands down Rei’s legs, picking up his feet, bending his knees and spreading his thighs, handling Rei’s genitals with the same impassive inspection as any other part of him.
He finished, tapping Rei’s legs.
Rei rolled over. Sevastyan went to his kit, a case that could have held a rifle or instrument, and returned with rope. Rei watched Sevastyan’s hands. Strong boned. Knuckles protruding from the backs of his palms. The skin slid back and forth revealing wide blue veins tracing channels beneath the skin.
Beautiful hands. Hands that had killed. Hands that had hurt him. Hands that had been burned saving his life. Hands that had soothed him. Yearning and need rose up in Rei’s throat.
Sevastyan’s touch whispered over Rei’s scars on his ribs. “So strong, my thrall.”
“Yours,” Rei whispered.
There was no greater truth. There was nowhere else he could exist other than at Sevastyan’s feet. Those beautiful hands held his life and death, and from him he would accept either. Had drunk both from his palms.
“Beautiful,” Sevastyan whispered. He touched his lips to the upper slope of Rei’s hip.
Rei blinked tears. “Master.”
Sevastyan gathered up Rei’s right wrist. He wrapped a doubled length of rope around him twice and secured a knot that would not slip, then anchored it to the bed post. He paced around the foot of the bed, moving toward Rei’s left wrist. Rei watched him.
Sevastyan took Rei’s left wrist in his hand, and Rei’s breath rose in his chest.
“Through fire, through hell itself,” Sevastyan whispered.
Rei’s breath stuttered. He blinked back the tears again, his fingers uncurling. Sevastyan wrapped the second rope around Rei’s wrist.
Through fire, through hell itself.
Not mere words, not between them. Hell was where they had met.
Rei
Five years previous, somewhere in The People’s Republic of China
The flames were on the bed. They had climbed the walls and enveloped the curtain. Rei knelt amidst the sheets, blood streaming from his fingers, his right wrist manacled to the burning headboard. He jerked, willing the bones in his hands to break, to let him slip free. The heat licked at his cheek. Sparks caught on the pillow beneath his knees. He slapped them out, a pointless struggle.
This was where it was going to end. The sleeve of the white collared shirt draped over his arms and shoulders caught fire.
