After the Twin Suns Descend

This story features Xavian Ajamar from my main series.

Remember that whatever DOES happen here is its own thing and does not translate directly back to the trilogy in any way, even if I use existing characters, scenes, or situations. Let’s say that what happens when the twin suns descend below the horizon stays in the dark.

Your transport lands on the pad outside the strange sanctuary. There are few permitted to enter here, but you are one, chosen and summoned. There was no explanation in the letter you received, only that Ajamar Clan wished your presence. You know that involves the blade seers, the enigmatic warrior society of the Ajamar, and there is no small amount of fear nestled in your heart at the thought of what those killers may want with you.

As you descend the transport’s loading ramp, a wind blows in from the plains, carrying with it the scent of grass and the pungent, sweet-sour scent of the maudrin trees. Their flowers open only as dusk falls, closing again with first light. A part of you wonders if you will live to see the suns rise and who you will have become if you do.

A clan servant, robed in black, greets you at the foot of the ramp. “This way,” he says. “Clan Ajamar thanks you for coming on such short notice.”

The clan servant leads you along a brick pathway and up several sets of broad, flat, stone steps. You pass beneath an archway where a banner painted with the encircled fan of blades that is the crest of Ajamar Clan flaps in the lazy breeze.

The blade seer sanctuary seems more a temple or monastery than anything, and you imagine the shamans would be quite at home among the simple stone buildings and lazy walkways that wind between neatly tended garden beds, some filled with flowers and others with edible plants.

You resist the urge to question the clan servant about your summons. That information will come only from a blade seer. Your heart thumps heavily with expectation, wondering if what you have imagined all these years could be true.

The clan servant leads you along one of the winding paths, strolling at a leisurely pace that was perhaps meant to be relaxing but serves only to fuel the anxiety of your expectations. In minutes, the lowest levels of the sanctuary are behind you, and you are ascending another set of steps and then another. Up and up you go, as if the side of the mountain into which the sanctuary has been carved is itself a tower, its walls built by nature’s ageless hands.

Just when you think your legs may give out and send you tumbling unceremoniously back down the many flights of stone, the clan servant stops at what appears to be a nondescript door, not that any others you passed were more elegant. This is not the luxurious tower citadels of the great clans, yet its reputation alone is its majesty. You know that beyond that door lies a future you dared not imagine.

“The blade seer will see you now.” The clan servant rings no bell and does not knock. You know there is no need. Your presence is known, and announcements are unnecessary.

When the door closes behind you, you find yourself in a surprisingly simple room. Carved into the cliff, the room is entirely of stone, although a simple round carpet cushions the center. The only other furniture is a small table with three chairs, a bed, and a work desk upon which a simple computer console stands.

There is only one other figure in the room. You know him, and his presence confirms half of your expectations.

“Xavian?”

The man, whom you have known as a man since your teenage years, yet he barely looks a day older than you, takes a few steps closer. His bare feet are entirely soundless, as if he walks without touching the ground. He is dressed only in a simple black half-robe, leaving his muscled chest exposed.

“I was not sure if you would come,” Xavian says.

“How could I not?”

“A son such as yourself has many responsibilities. My invitation would be rather easy to ignore.”

Xavian takes a step closer, and you cannot help but stare at his face. The spread of umber freckles that dust his nose and cheeks makes him seem strangely younger. His irises are the color of moonstone and seem to glow in the dim light of the room’s single lamp, and his age is reflected in them, a depth of experience that is strangely at odds with his almost boyish appearance. He stands taller than you, and when he looks down, a few locks of his black curls tumble down in front of his eyes. Your hand twitches with the intention to brush them back, but you cannot move. It is as if the glowing emanation from his eyes has ensnared your soul.

“Refusing an invitation from you is not so easy as you make it sound,” you reply.

Xavian grins at you, white teeth glinting in the light. “Yet you did not know it was from me.”

It is true that with your mind you did not know. The letter was merely a clan summons and could have been sent by anyone. Your heart, however, did know that only one hand could possibly have penned such a summons, and the possibility of it has tugged you like a fish on a line across the arid plains, through the meandering gardens, and up the endless flights of stone to this place and this moment.

Xavian’s hands reach gently for your traveling tunic, and you allow him to pull it over your head, exposing your own body. He tosses the garment away, and in the next instant, his firm arms are closing around you, pressing you to him. For an instant, your anxiety spikes, peaks. Your heart trills, and there does not seem to be enough blood in your body or air in the universe. He devours your gasp of surprise with his mouth, his cool, moist lips pressing into yours as he holds you upright.

Your arms reach around the firm muscles of his shoulders, and your legs curl around his hips as he lifts you effortlessly, pushing you back against the door as he claims your mouth with even greater fervor.

At once, your anxiety dips as you can feel every part of yourself melt against the warm firmness of his skin. The scattering of hairs on his chest tickles against your own smoothness.

How many times have you imagined him being this close, doing this? Yet you never imagined yourself worthy of his notice, let alone his affections. Everyone knows that Xavian Ajamar would never take a partner. Everyone knows that his soul is steel, his mind is filled with blades, and his heart holds only the desire for death.

Perhaps everyone is wrong.

There is no coldness in the way his arms wrap around you, in the way his growing hardness presses against you as he pushes you against the door. You cannot help but gasp as his lips trace across your cheek and down your neck, where his tongue licks tenderly against a sensitive spot that makes you squirm.

When you feel as though Xavian may undo you with his tongue alone, taking you right to the edge of an unceremonious release against the door, he puts you down, leaving you breathless and panting with need.

He takes you by the wrist and leads you over to the table where a simple basin of warm water sits. With tenderness, he removes the rest of your clothes and takes a cloth, dipping it in the water. He begins to clean you, washing your body with gentle, cleansing strokes.

Night air drafts from the open window in the room’s far wall, and its touch cools the water against your skin, sending a faint shiver down your spine. This washing continues, an alternating rhythm of warm cloth and chill air. Then Xavian reaches your lower parts, and with a tiny gasp, you feel the warm cloth against the stiffness of your erection. He cleans this as well, with the same meticulous devotion that he has shown to every other inch of you.

By the time it is over, you know that you are immaculate, and more. He knows you. He has examined every inch of you without shying away or turning you out in disgust. It is more than your body he has cleansed. The strokes of his cloth have wiped away your uncertainties and your inadequacies, and you are left only with your readiness, your acceptance, and your desire to be claimed.

He leads you by the wrist toward the bed, discarding his own robe. You smell the sweet scents of infused oils, and you know that he has prepared himself expertly. This was all part of his plan, his knowing plot, and you cannot help but belong to him.

You should feel trapped, but you don’t. You feel...home.

On the bedside table, there are a variety of infused oils, and he dabs some into his palm before he begins to caress your back. His fingers find every point of tension and stiffness within you, traveling across your body with unnerving precision. It is as if he knows exactly where to touch, as if there is an open window in your mind through which he can see, knowing your feelings as precisely as you do.

He takes just as much time with this massage as he did with the earlier cleaning, sliding his fingers across every part of you from the nape of your neck, down your back, your butt, between your legs and down your calves even to the tips of your toes, causing your feet to jerk as his touch sends thrills up your nerves.

Then he turns you over and repeats this process with your front. From your neck, down your chest, across your abdomen, around your hips, your thighs, to your toes again. You close your eyes, floating in the pleasure, as relaxed as a feather in a pool.

You imagine what it would feel like for his hand to stroke you, and in the next moment, you feel his palm close around your erection, gliding up and down and up and down, and your back arches as you release a small moan of pleasure. Once again, his hand brings you right to the edge of release before relenting at the last of last moments.

You open your eyes to see him smirking at you, and you understand that he knows. That window into your mind was no metaphor. He will always know the moment before your release, and his eyes promise to bring you to it again and again without ever letting you tip over the edge, but there is another vow in that moonstone gaze. Ultimately, he will not disappoint you, and by the final moment, you will be beyond wanting.

His hands slide up your body, and his weight and heat press down on you. His mouth claims yours again, and his tongue dances against yours. Again, he finds your neck, his tongue seeking the spot that makes you gasp with pleasure. Your legs wrap around his back, and your entire body invites him.

With one hand, he takes a different bottle of oil and rubs it against your opening, spreading a soothing warmth across your sensitive skin. A low moan of pleasure rolls from your open mouth.

He kisses you again, asking with his eyes if you are ready, and you need not but think it for him to know. A sudden hot pressure drives against your opening, but something in the oils has loosened you, and he slips inside you, releasing a groan of pleasure that sends sparks shooting up your spine.

There is both gentleness and firmness when he takes you, the weight of his body pressing you down into the bed. His mouth drinks every gasp and moan that escapes your mouth. In a moment, you are flushed and sweating, and his hardness drives again and again into your place of greatest sensation, sending spirals of ecstasy like coils of heat through your every nerve as your hands grip his back like claws, desperately trying to pull him closer to you, defiant of the limits of space.

Then it stops, again right when you are on the edge. Xavian smiles down at you, knowing what he has done, his sweating body seeming frozen above yours, pulling you back from the brink. A cry of anguished need trembles from your lips as you try to push yourself against him, forcing him into you, but he withdraws, and you cry piteously when he slides out of you.

He presses a moist finger to your lips to cut off the plea of desperation vibrating on your tongue. His eyes tell you to remember his promise. You can only imagine how much control, what perfect warrior discipline is required for him to stop, and you are humbled by his mastery of himself and his desire to bring you not just over the edge of release but to drown you in the pools of perfection that lie below it.

His fingers glide along the impossible hardness of your erection, his thumb swiping at your leaking tip and making you shudder.

His lips dance down your body, waltzing across your chest, pirouetting around your nipples, and sashaying down your abdomen before he takes your hardness into his mouth. Your hands instinctively tangle in his hair as you moan out his name. His lips glide expertly across your most sensitive skin. With the press of his tongue and the deep suction of his throat, you find your release rising again like a churning tide. You imagine what it will feel like to cum into his mouth, to explode across his face.

Every part of your body hums with the desire for it, a rising vibration that sends your heart skipping from one side of your chest to the other.

Once again, his mouth slips from around your erection at the last moment, dashing your body’s trembling, desperate hopes. A pain has begun to ache around your groin, your body protesting this inhibition. It is as if Xavian has built a dam against which every liquid fiber of your being is pressing. You no longer feel like a complete person. There is only the ravenous, aching, giddy desire to press against that dam until it shatters and you can cascade outward at last.

Again, he prepares you with the oil, and his fiery hardness slips inside you effortlessly. He finds your spot and slams against it until you scream, and you understand this is the moment, the place he has been guiding you to since the moment your eyes first scanned across his invitation.

Your entire body feels like it is on fire. A tension like a hot coil squeezes every muscle. Every part of you comes unraveled in an explosion of heat as you feel a warm wetness shoot across your abdomen, up your chest, even splashing against your own face. You are left with only a moment to wonder if this is what it feels like to call over the cliff of ecstasy. Then a groan escapes Xavian’s lips, and he whispers your name as his body tightens, and you feel the flood of his own pleasure inside of you.

That is when you know you are truly falling. The damn is broken and shattered, and every part of you is being washed away in a tumble of heat and sweat, and when you fall into the warm flood of perfect pleasure at the base of that cliff, you understand what it means for Xavian’s promise to be fulfilled. For he has shown you the place that lies beyond ecstasy for which language has no word. A piece of you will be left there to drift in memory, floating forever in an infinite warmth.