This is part of my Shameless Slash Contest: so it was originally fan fiction. Be the first to correctly guess what novel/movie inspired this source in the comments and you’ll win a copy of my next book, The Dishonest Lover!

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Tides of Pleasure

A man sat in King Yuugen’s tower.

Very calm.

Very pristine.

Without doubt, a prince. No sailor had ever washed into his tower looking so calm and pristine. No sailor had ever sat so still kneeling with his hands folded in his lap watching as King Yuugen ripped through the waves.

Yuugen watched him in the dim light of twilight. He knew the man could see him.  Yuugen’s black and monstrous mass would be visible beneath the water, even in the low light.  His scales reflected every trace of dying sun. He circled his own tower, waiting for the man’s flinch.

But it never came.

Not even when Yuugen launched himself from the waves.  He flew over the tower and dropped pieces of water, like diamonds from his scaly body onto the man’s bowed head. The water reached up to take Yuugen on the other side of his tower.  Safe beneath the waves Yuugen circled around again.

The prince had never flinched.

Yuugen grasped the staircase. The salty water and his will kept the glass rail clear of scum and he pulled himself through the water and put his feet on the stairs.

The man sat perfectly still, head bowed lower now.

Yuugen floated just far enough out of the water to see the prince’s body. The hard slope of his shoulders, the leanness of his back. The robe was not ornately decorated, merely red and gold silk. Rare enough to be expensive. Too plain to be royalty. The red and gold struck him as familiar but King Yuugen could not bring it to mind. He thoughts were too much on the sea, on the great dragons to the south, of the twenty hundred vessels floating on the glass surface of the trade routes under his protection.

He did not think to speak, not even when the man turned his head slightly. He had the most beautiful face. It broke the gray mist of the ocean like the glints of sunlight painting the deep forests of kelp. Mouth soft and calm, eyes long and nearly shut, but so young and smooth.  He should not have been so still. Yuugen ducked lower in the water.

“Master of sea and salt, forgive your humble servant for disturbing the privacy of your great house.”

Yuugen drew his feet under him on the stairs and rose out of the water. The water bubbled and splashed onto the tower.

The man who could not be a prince or a sailor, who ought only be called an intruder, shifted on his knees to turn and face his king.

“No. Don’t look at me.” Yuugen took a step back about to drop into the deeper water. He’d never been pleased about his appearance after the dragon’s curse, but he’d never be so ashamed about it until this moment.  He did not want someone that beautiful to see him. He did not want to startle his calm.

The boy turned his face forward and bowed his head.

Yuugen stepped fully out of the water. The ocean crashed around him as he left it.  The glass, so smooth and polished prickled under his feet which were more used to swimming than walking by now. “No person should set foot here.”

The intruder smiled, a tiny uplift of his mouth that Yuugen could see over his shoulder. “Then, perhaps, my king should think of me as my father does, not as a person to disturb his master’s solitude, but as a gift to pay for his more precious life.”

Yuugen remembered then. A bedraggled and half-drown man in red and gold silks thrashing in the waters. So desperate to live. Yuugen had called the dolphins to bear him to the tower hoping the stranger was a witch who would reward his kindness by removing the curse.  Instead, the man was a merchant. A simple grovelling fool, who had begged his life spared and offered his most precious possession in exchange for safe conduct to land. Yuugen remembered now demanding the first animal that greeted the merchant. He’d expected a dog or a pig, and he’d forgotten how literal his subjects could be.

But it explained the boy’s calm. “Your father warned you about the monster you’d find here?”

“He confirmed only what all good seafarers know, my king. The master of sea and salt is a fierce and terrible king to behold.”

“I don’t like formality or flattery.” Yuugen didn’t like conversation. “Close your eyes.”

The man obeyed and Yuugen moved around him. His skin and his clothes were dry, except for the droplets of water that had fallen on him when Yuugen soared overhead. He was too precious a gift and his father was a fool to trade such a son for his own life.

“What’s your name?”

“Komorebi, my king.”

Yuugen growled a little. Manners were wasted on monsters like him. “Komorebi, what the hell did your father expect me to do with a boy?”

“Sir, I believe, he is under the impression you wished to eat me.” Komorebi did not seem to be under that impression himself.

“You seem very resigned to that.” Yuugen studied the boy’s neck, the pale white flesh and the graceful arch. He noticed the boy’s eyes were not fully closed. Rather, he peered though long thick eyelashes which gave the half-smiles of his eyes the illusion of being shut.

Still he was too calm to see much. “I’m hopeful my father is superstitious and given to believing too much in silly stories of brutality and gore.”

Yuugen let his eyes drift over the boy’s back, down his narrow waist, to his ass seated firmly on top of his heels. The things he wanted to do to this boy could only be described as brutal.  He tried to put those from his mind. Maybe if the boy had been a stranded sailor or a desperate prince, but as a gift from a very foolish merchant…as a man who came here on his own free will…

Yuugen realized he had no idea what to do with the merchant’s son. “And what do you expect me to do with you, boy?”

Komorebi did not answer at once, but when he did a little of the courage had gone out of him. “Whatever you want, King Yuugen.”

The man’s reply send the king’s breath spiraling. Sailors told stories. Of course, they did. And of course, Yuugen would do whatever he wanted. He was the king and the merchant’s son belonged to him.

Still even in the days before the curse, when at the height of his arrogance he would have demanded any body he wanted, he did not treat them as prisoners. Not the way he treated the sailors now-a-days. But the palace below the waves was not ready to receive a guest and Yuugen had no place for the boy except the prison cell. Really there was no reason for the boy to expect any better treatment than his king gave the sailors.

Yuugen put a hand on the back of Komorebi’s neck. “Stand up. Walk forward. Keep your eyes shut.”

He’d never hidden his ugliness from the sailors.

The merchant’s son nodded and rose, graceful as a flower. He moved where Yuugen directed him into the deeper darkness of the tower.

***

Komorebi watched the world through the narrowest slits of his eyes.  His lashes turned the world hazy, but he could see the stairs leading up into the glass tower.  He could see something black, thin, and prehensile just over his shoulder.

He had seen little of the king of the northern waters, when the monster had leaped over the crystal tower.  He’d had the vague impression of something man-shaped, with half a dozen sleek arms, and a hundred black glinting scales. Though his impression may have been colored by his father’s description of a man with tentacles instead of legs and claws instead of hands.

His father was wrong.

Komorebi already knew the king was mostly a man. He’d seen two strong legs pacing around him as he knelt eyes mostly shut. True the legs glistened like a seal’s well-oiled skin and the bare feet were webbed and black as a shark’s fin. But the monster in the crystal tower was a man. This king of the sea and salt wore about the same amount of clothing as a beggar in the street, and the ragged scaled cloth around his broad waist did little to hide his powerful thighs or the erection bulging against the cloth. Just a man. Above the cloth there was some kind of thick belt, maybe crafted from an octopus’s arm, but that was reduced to vague outline but his eyelashes.

The hand on the back of Komorebi’s neck squeezed harder. It pushed him toward the tower and it’s spiraling stairs, but it was warm and undeniably human. Just ended with sharp nails.

So what was that black tendril just at the corner of his vision?

“You’re at a case of stairs.” King Yuugen’s voice was more animal than man. Out of practice. Gruff. “Walk up.”

Komorebi closed his eyes and touched the walls, groping for a rail. But when his blind fingers found the rail, he opened his eyes a little once more. There was no light in the staircase and the deepening twilight made the crystal beneath his feet even more translucent.

Around noon, when his father’s men had rowed him over to the tower and left him for the king, Komorebi had explored the little tower. The rest of the castle was under the water, a wavering ghost.  He felt if he looked at too hard at it, the palace might disappear and leave him floundering in the deepest part of the ocean. So Komorebi had walked up these stairs.

Only five or six stairs and then a round room. Delicate golden chains, for a chandelier perhaps, had hung from the middle of the ceiling. There was a pile of white fur in the corner.

In the twilight, through the haze of his eye lashes, Komorebi could see none of this and relied on the king’s hand to guide him.

King Yuugen stopped him in the center of the room, below the chandelier chain. Komorebi heard them tinkle above his head when something taller than him, no doubt the king, brushed against them.

The hand squeezed his neck and the other pulled sharply at Komorebi’s sash.

The damp salty air hit his skin and Komorebi gasped and stiffened. It’s not that he didn’t expect this. There were nearly as many bawdy stories of King Yuugen as gory ones. But he had expected… what? More time?

The sash slipped away held in Yuugen’s large hand and the folds of the robe slipped open.

It was not time he had expected. Anyone one uses a gift at the earliest convenience and for King Yuugen it would never be a matter of convenience. They were alone and Yuugen wanted. Just without any kind of… Ceremony? Is that what he expected?

Yuugen wrapped the sash around his hand. Something pulled at the collar of the robe, not either of the king’s hands. The silk slipped down Komorebi’s arms with a little hiss.

Not ceremony. Not even the gruffest sailor’s talk dealt with matters like this explicitly for there to be a ceremony. Komorebi was not a bride or some well-trained virgin whore; he was a gift to be opened and used.  An impatient child did not carefully unwrap a gift, he tore the strings, ripped the paper.  In his violence, no card was carefully set aside, no prettily tied bow survived.

Something caught the robe. Komorebi hear it being folded, but Yuugen’s left hand, wrapped in the sash pressed against his hip and his right squeezed at his neck.

“My king.” Komorebi swallowed hard listening to that sound, trying to understand, feeling the first bubble of real fear. “How many hands do you have?”

“Two.” Came the reply.

Was that sarcasm? Honest naivete? Was it a deep and terrible loneliness? Had he offended his king?

That’s what he was missing. Knowledge of the man himself.  He’d not even seen King Yuugen.  Other lovers, he could see and anticipate their moods, their bodies, their feelings. He’d exchanged precious few words with Yuugen and there was nothing of a lover in that conversation. More of a dungeon-keeper, a protector of some dark—

Something long and wet wrapped around his neck and waist. Komorebi instinctively fought, grabbing the rope around his neck. Not rope. It was alive in his hands, writhing thick flesh, soft and giving under his fingers. The tentacle on his waist squeezed tighter as Komorebi dug his fingers into the muscle wrapped around his neck.

“Be still.” Yuugen commanded.

Komorebi struggled to obey.  Not knowing his tormentor’s intention made his instincts twitch with his desire to live. If he had a promise that he would not be killed… even if he knew he would be killed… he should meet death calmly, accept pain in silence.  He could be still. He would be.

The tentacle around his neck relaxed when Komorebi stopped struggling. He could breathe freely, but his breath hitched into his chest. Yuugen’s hands drifted over his bare shoulders, his chest, and his abdomen. They were claws, as his father said, and with slightly more pressure would tear his skin to shreds. Komorebi shivered with fear from the gentle fingers. It had to be fear. That warm glow of lust made no sense, not when he was in the hands of a monster.

Yuugen’s hands moved to Komorebi’s wrists. Komorebi didn’t resist as Yuugen drew them over his head. The chains tinkled again and they were cold when Yuugen finished fastening them around Komorebi’s wrists.

Something soft, dry, and slippery touched his closed eyelids. Instinctively Komorebi flinched away, wary of the monster’s claws, then he realized it was his own silk sash. Yuugen tied it around his eyes turning the half-glimpsed shadows of the room into pure blackness.

The tentacles slipped away and Komorebi relaxed his arms and let them hang in the chains. In its own perverse way, it was liberating to be chained. Komorebi could not escape the chains, so he could not shame himself by running away. He only had to endure in silence to die with honor.

A few moments later, some light flared in the room. Komorebi shivered. The monster could see him, chained and frail, unprotected even by the simple robe he had been allowed. The chains rattled, drew his arms taut over his head. Then everything was still in the yellow darkness of his closed eyes.

Komorebi thought of prisoners being punished in the public squares with their hands tied to posts over their heads so everyone could see their faces and know they had stolen, or broken their oath, or used forbidden magic.  He thought of meat strung up to dry.  He wondered which he was.

Yuugen growled, a low deep noise of raw hunger. His claw scraped over Komorebi’s belly again, sharp enough to cut, but the pressure came from the man’s palm and not his fingers. Something wet touched his nipple, but it was not until he sucked gently, that Komorebi knew it was the king’s lips and not another tentacle.

A hot shiver went up his spine him as Yuugen’s tongue licked over his nipple. A tiny spark echoing though Komorebi’s body, trying to warm the chill of fear. Undeniably lust.

“You’re very beautiful.” Yuugen kissed a line from his chest to his neck and up to kiss the line of his jaw and end by pressing soft cool lips against Komorebi’s cheek. His hands grazed up and down Komorebi’s sides. “I’ve never had a boy as beautiful as you.”

The flattery fanned the flame of his lust. Komorebi knew there was something wrong with him. He’d known that for a long time. But he’d never been so bare before his own wrongness. Never felt the twists and perversion of his own skin react so strongly until he heard that low possessive growl.

The tentacles slipped around Komorebi’s bare legs. But it was a hand that groped Komorebi’s cock through his shorts, squeezing and sending another shower of sparks along the pathways of lust. Claws teased at the hem of Komorebi’s last remaining clothing, but instead of ripping, another set of tentacles tucked into the hem and pulled down. At least four, then.

The ones around his ankle lifted his feet and Komorebi exhaled sharply when he hung in the air only by his wrists, the tentacles, and his king’s lazy grip on his waist.

The tentacles slipped over each other, changing jobs, so that the ones pulling his underwear became the ones gripping his legs at his thighs and the ones holding his ankles, pulled the shorts away, dropped them elsewhere. Yuugen’s hands shifted one gripping at his ass, the other slipped around his cock.

“You’ll have to forgive my impatience.” Yuugen kissed him under his ear, then sucked the lobe and squeezed his cock.

The sparks ignited and Komorebi trembled at the fire blazing to his cock. He resisted the desire to throw his head back and moan, to thrust his hips, wiggle his ass, to pump his cock in the king’s hand. Undeniably something broken in him, it ought to be hidden.

Komorebi swallowed hard, spoke coolly. “My body is yours to do with as you please.”

“Sure it is,” the monster answered. The second set of tentacles returned. One coiled around his waist, the other slithered between his thighs. The clawed hand on his ass cheek tightened, sharp tips threatening to draw blood, pulling him wide as the tip of the tentacle pressed nearer.

Komorebi breathed evenly as the moist tip invaded his body. Slimmer than a finger, but widening faster and flexible. It wiggled inside, stroked against his inner walls, and danced inside him. Komorebi felt another rush of fire hit his cock and grit his teeth to bear his desire.

Yuugen growled in his ear and pulled his body closer. The chains jangled over his head. The hand tightened around his shaft. The king’s cock rubbed against his balls. Another set of tentacles, the third set, rubbed along his ass cheeks spreading them wider, their tips inching closer to his hole and the tentacle already pumping in and out of his body.

“I’m just sorry it won’t be gentle.”

The two new tentacles joined the first suddenly and Komorebi cried out as the three writhed and pushed deeper into his body. The blood rushed to his cock and he hung quivering from the chains hoping his king could not see his weakness and his shame.

***

The boy, Komorebi, handled pain like he was born to it. Yuugen wondered what experiences had lead a merchant’s son to be so stoic while a monster chained him to the ceiling and prepared to fuck him.

He hardly made a sound with three tentacles writhing around inside him, not to deep. Yuugen wanted to keep this boy’s ass tight for his cock, but he still expected more of a reaction. The boy’s face has flushed, a lovely pink. His cock was hard, but why wouldn’t it be with Yuugen stroking it? There was only so much control a young man had over his body, even less when his body had been sold for safe passage over the ocean.

Still Komorebi whimpered when the tentacles withdrew and pulled at the edge of his hole, spreading him. There was no lotion to ease the passage, but there was salt water. Yuugen summoned the water to him and a lick of the waves ran up the stairs and to his hand.

The boy cocked his head hearing the streaming running uphill and trying to understand what exactly was happening to him.

Yuugen only smiled silently.  The water, obedient to the whims of its king, flowed over Yuugen’s tentacles and into Komorebi’s ass. The man’s face darkened from pink to a deep red blush as the king’s magic fucked him slowly. He trembled again in his abject fear. Whimpered a little as the chill water circled around inside him, until it was warmed by his body. Yuugen moved the water faster, deeper.

Komorebi moaned, a soft wanting sound. Arousal, need… the boy bit his lip and silenced himself at once.

But it was enough. The tiny noise of desire shot through Yuugen, disrupted his concentration, and startled him. The water forgot its instructions and obeyed nature again, flowing out of Komorebi and washing down Yuugen’s tentacles.

Was it possible that part of this beautiful man could want this abuse?

It was not something Yuugen had ever considered before, but it was a possibility that his imagination immediately surrendered too. He trembled overwhelmed with fantasies of the boy willingly kneeling before him smiling before he took Yuugen’s cock into his mouth, of Komorebi sliding on top of him, smirking down as he gyrated his hips, of this man as a lover touching and stroking his malformed body.

No, that was not correct. Komorebi would be appalled, unable to escape the hideousness, to see anything but a monster. There would be no happy light in those pretty eyes when they gazed at Yuugen. Nothing but horror and dread.

Yuugen stepped back, withdrawing his tentacles and hands. Komorebi’s legs fell to the floor and he staggered a moment in the chains before he got his bearings again. By then Yuugen was behind him, gripping the boy’s ass in his hands.

His hole was wet from the water, spread from his tentacles, wide and welcoming. Yuugen’s cock hard and veiny pointed at it, the tip weeping with desire.

Yet the king paused, certainly longer than he had ever waited for either sailor or prince. He ran his hand over the boy’s chest, tracing over his hard nipples, his lean chest, his erect cock.  He squeezed at Komorebi’s shaft and licked his ear. The boy’s body trembled and his ass brushed against Yuugen’s cock pressing back as if we were offering.

“Do you want me?” Yuugen regretted asking at once. Of course, Komorebi didn’t want him but he couldn’t very well say no. Not to his king. Not to the monster that had chained him up in a tower.

“I want to please my king.” The man’s voice was soft, but his formal words trembled with emotion, fear, grief, helplessness.

Yuugen took the boy at his word. Yuugen pushed his cock past the tight muscles resisting him, into the heat and the crush of Komorebi’s trembling body. Then farther, entering too fast and plowing past any resistance in the waifish body hanging before him.

The boy whimpered once, a tiny muffled squeak, that escaped only because Yuugen squeezed the breath out of him. His tentacles wrapped tightly around Komorebi’s stomach and chest, yanking him down, straining the chandelier chains and slamming his cock up until it was buried.

Yuugen growled with pleasure, the satisfaction of possession. His new toy was unyielding and firm, his ass tight and hot. Yuugen touched the boy’s mouth, found it crushed hard together, his jaw clenched from the pain.

With a vicious curiosity, Yuugen tested the limits of his toy’s silence. He drew out nearly completely, then plowed back in, tearing through any resistance. The boy made no sound. So Yuugen did not pause again.  He slammed in hard and fast, holding his own breath as he pounded again and again so that he would not miss the slightest sound that escaped the other man. In case it was too much pain… In case it was by some miracle desire.

Yet no sound came. Chasing his own release— so long since the last sailor, so much longing— Yuugen wrapped his hands around the boy’s waist, gripping his knees and calves in his tentacles. Letting one slide up the boy’s neck and press into his mouth, stretching past his lips and forcing the boy to make a wet sucking noise as the tentacle fucked his mouth.

He pushed in and swung with Komorebi’s bound body, always thrusting deeper never really withdrawing. He panted as he felt the orgasm rise in him, and because he was careless—had always been stupid and careless—he was only now aware of the crashing sound of the waves outside of the tower. The sea around his castle roiled with his mad violence, his desperate drive for ecstasy. The waves pounded against the crystal tower as wild as his lust, ready to slam through the shining barrier and drown his new lover.

And then…

Yuugen roared as he came, still pounding in as he poured out into the boy’s body. Komorebi hung limp in the chains as if any firmness left in his muscles dissolved with Yuugen’s flood. Yuggen dropped his head to his prisoner’s shoulder, letting the last of his fluid squeeze into the boy’s dripping ass. His prick still rocked in and out. The way was slick and sloppy now and Yuugen’s juices ran down the boy’s thighs to his tentacles.

He let the tentacle recede from the boy’s mouth, sliding it gently over his jaw.

Komorebi breathed fast, in stilted gasps. Yuugen realized in time with his thrusts as if his prisoner could only inhale when his king’s cock withdrew. His prisoner… Yuugen ran his hand over the boy’s concave abdomen and up to his straining arm. His toy… His hand pressed over the boy’s mouth, so silent in his suffering. His lips were dry. Then softly pressed against Yuugen’s fingers. A kiss. Unmistakably, a kiss.

Yuugen drew his hand away, shocked.

His lover?

He reached down to touch the boy’s cock. Found it still hard though he had forgotten to stroke it. Yuugen resumed now and Komorebi sighed and tilted his head back. The silk of the blindfold brushed against Yuugen’s face and Yuugen growled. He had avoided kisses, worried Komorebi would sense the misshapenness of his mouth or shudder from the cat-fish whiskers. But in his hunger, he forgot and kissed at the boy’s neck and shoulder.

Yuugen gyrated his hips, squeezing his tentacles tighter around the boy and pulling him close so he could slide his spent cock deeper. As he stroked faster at the boy’s cock, Komorebi sighed and gasped. His body jolted and trembled. His voice high, warm, excited.

“Did you enjoy pleasing your king?”

“Yes.” The confession full of shame and resignation. The boy’s head hung forward.

Yuugen took Komorebi’s neck in his hand and eased his head back, kissed his mouth. He wanted to be gentle, reassuring, but the taste of his lips, the promise of that warm mouth drove him to rough passion again.  He twisted the boy’s body until he could pour lust into his mouth. The boy whimpered and trembled.

Yuugen felt his cock respond to the demands of his lust. He growled and bit at the boy’s ear. The monster wanted too much and his prisoner was going to suffer for enjoying.

***

Komorebi felt his shame and fear and hate all drown in the tide of pleasure that came with Yuugen’s fingers stroking his shaft and Yuugen’s cock in his ass. He felt his king harden again, amazed by how aroused the man was, how quickly he recovered. It made him proud to be desirable, then humiliated that was proud. Ashamed that he desired to be used this way. Then the king would thrust deeper, growl low and hungry in his ear and the pleasure would wash over him again.

Then the pleasure was drowning him, rising with every stroke, coming faster as his new master filled him again and again with his cock. Komorebi bit his lips again to stop from moaning like a wanton thing, to hold on to whatever semblance of dignity he had.

But what hope did he have for dignity when his cock threatened to burst any second. He fought so hard to hold the orgasm at bay while Yuggen took him the first time and now… with his thrusts gentler, with his fingers stroking, with his hungry mouth ravishing his throat and neck.

“Komorebi.” Yuugen spoke his name as if it were precious, whispering in his ear, squeezing at his throat and at his cock. “You are beauty itself. I may die from my desire for you.”

The pleasure overwhelmed his resistance, and Komorebi sank into the whirlpool of his lust. He cried out a whorish breathy noise that shocked and aroused him as it tore itself from his throat. His cock spasmed and erupted from his king’s ministrations. He cringed and tried to shift his legs to stop it, to control his outpouring, but the gush would not stop and he and he sullied his king’s hands as he came.

“Forgive me, sir, for my… oh-”

Yuugen punished him for his wantonness, the way one punishes a whore. He took him hard again, straining at the chandelier chains and filling the pristine crystal tower with the lewd sounds of his cock possessing a wet and slovenly hole.

Komorebi burned with embarrassment and hung in silence, trying to distance himself from the pleasure of that cock ramming into his body. There was no pain now, only the fullness and the sense of being wanted, of driving the man wild with lust. Komorebi liked it, and chastised himself for liking it.

Yuugen rattled at the chains and suddenly they were loose and Komorebi was falling. The blindfold did not let him see the floor, but he could imagine the shine of it as his face plummeted towards.  He would shatter against it, his nose bloodied. His neck might snap if the gods were merciful.

The king did not let him fall. His arms and his tentacles wrapped tightly and carried Komorebi. When he was lowered down into soft furs, Komorebi kept his hands together under his face to keep from touching himself, to restrain his fingers from wandering over his king without permission.

Yuugen gripped his thighs and hips and fucked him harder. This was better. No kisses, no little touches, or whispered compliments. This was the way a wanton should be treated, hard and fast and without tenderness.

He took his punishment in silent shame. Still he could not help himself from smiling when Yuugen roared again with orgasmic joy.

This time when he’d finished with his slave, his wanton rag of a man, Yuugen dropped him and stepped away. Komorebi lay still as he had fallen, naked onto the pile of furs. A hot river of his king’s seed snaked down his thighs and his shivered taking a sick delight in his domination. He had pleased his king.

Yuugen stood over him a long moment and Komorebi wondered how much the man could want. If he dared remove the silk from his eyes would he see the king watching him with his cock hardening for a third time? Would the monster use him, fill his ass and his mouth, squeeze and wring his body until Komorebi died from the abuse? Was Yuugen merely disgusted to see his slave so used up and filthy?

Then the light disappeared from the room and his king spoke in his gruff, unused voice. “I will make the palace available to you by tomorrow morning. You may go into whatever rooms are not barred to you. I will come for you again tomorrow night. You will put on the blindfold when the sun sets and wait for me here.”

“Yes, my lord.” Komorebi shivered with delight. Again. He would take him again. “Thank you for your…”

What desire? His brutality? His mercy in not forcing Komorebi again… his discipline in leaving him now?

“Your hospitality.”

Yuggen did not answer, only walked out of the room. Komorebi heard his footstep down the stairs and pressed his face into the furs to resist the urge to tear the blindfold off and try to see the king through the clear walls of the tower.  When he heard a great splash of water in the stormy seas, Komorebi rolled onto his back in the furs and pulled off the sash.

He could see the stars overhead.

He lay in the darkness of his prison and surrendered to the heat of what just happened.  He stroked his cock, unruly and wanting again and thought of the man who, whether he was king or monster, was his lover.