Page 24 of The Concubine King
“You just want him for yourself,” Gallus accused.
“I can fill him again,” Ainder said, leaning closer.
“Leave him be,” Gnaeus called, to Ethyr’s conflicted relief.“We have plenty of time to play with him.”
Ainder and Gallus pouted, but let him go.Varuut pressed kisses to the side of his face.
“His mortal body lasted longer than I thought it would,” Catocus admitted.“Being untrained and all.”
“We’ll get him trained,” Ainder said with confidence.Gallus tugged at Ainder’s hand and he obligingly slid off the seat to follow him to the ground, locking mouths with almost vicious vigor.
Varuut sighed, standing up and pulling Ethyr with her.She stepped over them and Ethyr stumbled after, legs still shaking and weak.
He sank onto a cushion by the table, completely forgetting about proper posture, but the gods clearly didn’t care anyway.
Ethyr peered over the table to see Langath’s drawing.She was still adding in details, but it was a perfect likeness of him; torso arched, mouth open, face flushed and contorted in pleasure.Disembodied hands held his legs open and his arms up, and she’d even captured the arm snaked into his pants.
If Ethyr’s face had cooled at all, he knew it turned red again in an instant.The vulgar noises from behind him didn’t help.He glanced back to see that Ainder and Gallus’s activities had already escalated to one of the invasive scenes in the book involving fingers and tongues.
He whipped forward again, feeling like he was suffocating under a heat worse than the most oppressive summer sun.
“Don’t pay attention to them,” Ithna said, voice strained with humor.“They have no sense of decorum.”
“Do any of us?”Varuut asked.
“I resent that,” Langath said.
“Well, if any of us do, it’s you, if that makes you feel better.”
Catocus straightened in his seat, clearly offended.“Really?”
“You just pretend you do,” Ithna told him, and laughed at his glower.
Varuut brushed Ethyr’s hair back from his face, admiring him with a smile and tilted head.“You’ll learn how to be one of us soon enough,” she told him.She held up a bit of meat and Ethyr let her feed it to him.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Ethyr spent the rest of the night being fed wine and little treats, having his hair played with, and being traded around for an endless shower of kisses.Some of the gods smattered his face with kisses and caressed his head like he was an adorable pet, some kissed sweet and sensual, some hard and deep.But he was happy to be subjected only to affection, and not ravaging lust or forced performance like he’d been expecting.The only one who didn’t participate was Kiaro, who silently disappeared halfway through the night.
He fell asleep on Gnaeus’s lap while she brushed her fingers lovingly through his hair.Deian used to do the same thing when he was young, and it lulled him into a deep sleep with heart-aching dreams.
He woke when the door opened.The empty room was dim with a dying lantern and the light of dawn fading down from the top windows.He was lying across the same cushioned seat, but his clothes were significantly more rumpled than when he’d first sat on it.He pushed himself up to look at Yorith surveying him with pursed lips.
“I suppose they were pleased with you, then,” he said, cold and disappointed.Ethyr didn’t know why, he thought he was supposed to please the gods.“Come along.We’ll get you washed up.”
Ethyr’s head spun when he sat up, but Yorith was already walking out.He stumbled off the bench, not sure if exhaustion or wine or something else was making him so woozy.When he reached the doorway, Poyut was there to take his elbow and help him down the corridor.He leaned gladly on her muscular arm for support.
“Are you okay, Your Divinity?”
He nodded, not meeting her eyes.
The temple that had been so empty the evening before was filled now with priests praying, studying, or cleaning.They all stopped what they were doing when the group passed and bowed low, but Ethyr could feel their eyes on him once they were behind him, accompanied by the occasional whisper.
When they returned to the palace he was once again dragged to the bathing room.He pleaded to wash himself, and Gionan reluctantly agreed, sending the other attendants away, though he stayed to supervise.Apparently his help could not be dismissed.
Despite the fact that morning sun was filling the palace halls, after he had bathed Gionan dressed him in a silk undershirt and brought him straight to his bed, but he had no complaints about that.He hadn’t exactly gotten much sleep during the night.He fell into the cocoon of blankets and passed out.
A long, warbling birdcall pulled him from sleep.For a brief, blissful moment, he thought it was the call of the village rooster, waking them at the crack of dawn to start the day.It was a dream that quickly dissipated when he realized he was on too soft a material in too bright and big a room for it to be true.
