Ryland's Sacrifice Read online

  Ryland continued to murmur his pleasure, but they were slow sleepy sounds now, as if his connection with his master provided quiet contentment now, rather than the waves of ecstasy that shot through him as he came.

  Arslan didn’t want to stop either, but as slow and careful as all his movements were, each one still pushed him closer to the edge. Even a lion couldn’t last forever.

  He thrust deeper inside the other man’s hole and barely held back a roar as his orgasm tore through him and he spilled inside Ryland’s body. The younger man gasped. His eyes fluttered open before falling closed again as the professor fell still.

  Arslan let a little more of his weight rest against the younger man’s body, as he offered a lick to his shoulder. He forced himself to pull away far enough to separate their bodies, but couldn’t convince himself to move any further than that from his lover’s side. They remained in contact, allowing him to feel every breath Ryland took as they lay there, sensing every little change in his mood while his body half covered the other man’s smaller frame.

  “Hush,” Arslan whispered to him. “That’s right, rest now.”

  He couldn’t ever remember feeling so protective of any human who had come to them, or of anyone at all—not even the lions in his own pride. He laid one more gentle lick on Ryland’s neck. His human pet made a sleepy sated noise and curled slightly on one side, arching his back as he invited Arslan to spoon behind him more comfortably.

  The shifter smiled against his lover’s skin. He’d been right to keep an eye on Ryland. He stroked his hand over the younger man’s body. Even stretched out in front of the fire, he had that very slightly cold feeling humans always seemed to possess. Arslan molded their bodies more closely together, automatically seeking to keep his pet warm and content.

  A sudden bang on the other side of the room made Ryland jerk and gasp. Arslan reached over him and set his palm on the rug the other side of his lover protecting him with his body as he turned and snarled at the disturbance.

  Chapter Two

  Ryland lay very still as Arslan’s larger frame covered his, holding him down against the rug before the fireplace. When some semblance of control over his muscles returned to him, he closed his eyes. Moments passed. Even after he re-opened his eyes, Ryland kept his gaze on a small patch of rug a few inches in front of his face. He had no inclination to look up and face the world.

  Perhaps somewhere in the back of his mind, he’d been aware that they weren’t as alone as he and Arslan tended to be in his fantasies. Accept, of course, for that one daydream where the professor called him down to the front of the lecture hall and…

  Ryland closed his eyes again. There were important differences between that fantasy and this reality. He wasn’t at the university. He was in the lion’s den. It wasn’t his fellow students watching him, it was an entire pride of lions. And he wasn’t being called to account for letting his mind wander during a lecture, he was whoring himself out so he could finish his degree.

  It wasn’t fair. His mind raced in a dozen different directions, but there was one thought that stood out from the others clear and pure. It wasn’t fair. All he wanted to do was stretch out in front of the fire and drown in afterglow with his lover. It wasn’t fair for reality to intrude on such a simple, honest desire. It wasn’t fair that he should have to face the fact that Professor Arslan wasn’t the only lion he’d agreed to be thrown to that night.

  Unable to close his eyes any tighter, Ryland bit his bottom lip to keep back the sudden and overwhelming need to shout out at the injustice of it all.

  “Everything’s fine,” Arslan said. He sounded pissed off at the return of reality too.

  As Ryland considered that line of thought very carefully, his toothhold on his lip drew blood. He had no actual reason to assume Arslan believed that he was indulging in anything more significant than a quick screw in front of the fire, a bit of fun with a willing human sacrifice. He had no proof that Arslan had ever felt anything other than reality as they lay together.

  Ryland dropped his head forward to rest his forehead against the rug once more. When the professor pulled away from him, Ryland stayed where he was, resigning himself to staring at the carpet and waiting for whatever would happen next to happen. It wasn’t as if he could turn back now. It was far too late for that.

  Even though he didn’t move, the entire world still changed around him. The pleasant ache in his muscles stopped feeling pleasant. It felt far more like weakness that he couldn’t afford.

  The comforting weight of Arslan resting against him quickly became little more than a distant memory. With each second that passed, the heat from Arslan’s body faded a little further from his skin.

  The warmth from the fire couldn’t compete with that of a lion pressed intimately against him. A shiver ran down Ryland’s spine. Whatever magic had let him lose himself in the sheer rightness of being with Arslan was truly gone. His head felt hollow, as if he had lost something that had been right on the edge of his reach for just a little while.

  A hand touched his shoulder. A gentle tug demanded he rise from the floor. Ryland turned and sat up, hoping the other man wasn’t going to order him to stand. He wasn’t sure he could if he tried. Lifting a hand, he pushed it through his hair and tried to make his brain work through a fog of confusion. Apparently ascending into a fantasy world wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Reality was a real bitch when it came back and bit down hard.

  Arslan crouched in front of him. He tucked a knuckle under his chin and coaxed him to look up. Ryland put off the moment for as long as he could, but even naked on a hearth rug, Arslan was too imposing a presence to consider disobeying for too long.

  Ryland met the lion’s eyes as Arslan’s other hand settled itself in his hair, supporting his head as he tilted it back to stare up at the shifter.

  A question flickered in the older man’s gaze. Ryland desperately tried to work out what it was. His thoughts scattered as an unexpected noise from the back of the room made him jump.

  “They can’t hurt you,” Arslan promised, not looking away from him for a moment. “They’re just foolish cubs—harmless.”

  A little grumble of discontent came from one side of the room as someone heard what he’d been labeled.

  “Something to say, Luther?” Arslan demanded, still not breaking eye contact with Ryland. “Speak up.”

  Ryland half expected him to say that there were people at the back of the lecture hall who would love to hear what he had to say on the topic. He’d heard those words in that tone of voice so often, he could easily imagine that he was safely back in one of the professor’s lectures.

  “No.” The younger lion sounded like he was pouting, but Arslan seemed to have already dismissed the other lion’s existence from his mind. He continued to study Ryland until he felt himself blush under the scrutiny.

  “If you’re not going to let us have any fun with him, can we at least eat?” someone asked.

  “Fine,” Arslan told the other lion with something that sounded suspiciously like a long-suffering sigh. “Bring in the food.”

  The shadows in the corners of the rooms morphed into lions, more than a dozen of them. As he remained on the rug with the professor, the other men…the other shifters who made up the pride…moved around them. Doors opened and closed. A handful of different conversations started up above their heads. The scent of food drifted across to them.

  As Arslan stood up, he casually stroked his fingers through Ryland’s hair. Ryland found himself leaning into the other man’s touch. The professor smiled when he noticed. As he reached his full height, he took Ryland’s hand to help him to his feet as well.

  The older man was all muscle. Ryland had been half-sure of that when he’d stared down the lecture hall at a man in a suit. Now that he’d seen him without the suit, now that he’d felt that body pressed intimately against him, there was no room left for any doubts.

  Arslan pulled him easily to his feet and close within the circle
of his arms at the same time. The shifter’s hand settled on the small of his back, strong and certain about everything, as if he had no intention of ever letting Ryland take a step away from him again. Suddenly, Ryland felt safer than he’d ever believed possible.

  Frowning slightly, he tried to catch hold of a thought that fleeted onto the edge of his consciousness. As soon as he reached for it and tried to study it, it slipped out of his grasp. It was almost as if it wasn’t really a true thought at all. Maybe something that was more like a feeling, an instinct that dated back to a time before thoughts truly existed.

  A rough palm slid up Ryland’s spine, calling his attention to more important things. Thin lines of sensitized skin ran along his back. Ryland tried to look over his shoulder, but Arslan shook his head, stopping him short.

  “A few scratches. They won’t do you any harm.”

  Ryland nodded, as if made perfect sense for the professor to have left those sorts of marks on his body. And it did make sense to part of him. In a way he couldn’t explain, even to himself, it felt…good.

  When Arslan led him across to the food, the older man kept his hand resting casually on the small of Ryland’s back, almost like a mark of ownership over him.

  Ryland glanced up at the taller man as it occurred to him that Arslan really wasn’t the kind of man who’d leave scratches on his lover by accident. He was too controlled for that, too careful. If there were scratches there, it was because Arslan made a decision and put them there on purpose.

  A slight heat stole to Ryland’s skin as he dropped his gaze. Maybe it wasn’t so strange that something inside him liked the idea of those marks after all. As they walked into the middle of the group of lions, Ryland found himself staying close enough to his lover that it would be easy for Arslan to keep his hand resting against his skin.

  When he looked up from the various plates of food, he saw the other lions waiting for Arslan to take his share first. His taking something off one of the trays seemed to act as silent permission for everyone else to do the same. Arslan was obviously in charge in some shape or form, and not just in charge because he was the type of person who took charge, but because he held some sort of official rank in the group.

  When Arslan left alone him by the table, Ryland hung back a little, not willing to take anything for himself until he had a better understanding of the situation. Watching the other lions very carefully, he did his best to work out if there was some sort of order of precedence after that and who was next in the shifters chain of command. If the signs were there, he wasn’t able to spot them.

  Only one of the other lions stood out from the group. He was smaller than the rest, his hair shorter and fairer compared to the manes that fell around the other lions’ faces. He caught Ryland’s eye and nodded to the trays of food, silently encouraging him to take whatever he wanted, but even he didn’t actually go so far as to speak to Ryland.

  No one said a word to him. Ryland wasn’t sure if it was a personal comment or if it was merely the custom among lions not to speak to humans unless they were having sex with them at the time. The thought made Ryland look over his shoulder.

  Arslan had taken his platter over to the fireside. He lounged back on one of the big leather sofas, completely naked and completely unselfconscious about that, just like all the other lions in the room. He glanced across to Ryland and met his gaze.

  A slight motion of the older man’s head called Ryland to join him. The seat next to him was vacant, but Ryland somehow found himself lowering himself down to sit on the rug at his feet instead. Arslan stared down at him slightly curiously, but he didn’t order him away.

  He’d never struck Ryland as the kind of man who would allow someone to do something that displeased him because it would be easier to let things stand as they were. If the lion side of his personality was anything like the professor part of his psyche, he was apparently happy for him to stay there, maybe he was even a little bit pleased with his choice.

  Ryland relaxed slightly. He relaxed even more when it became clear that the other lions intended to keep their distance. Every one of them chose to sit on the opposite side of the fire.

  Balancing his plate on his knees, Ryland ate a little of the meat he’d taken from one of the trays and attempted to follow what went on around him. As far as he could tell, he was now in the middle of some sort of social gathering for lions. Arslan’s attention moved from one lion to another. Ryland’s gaze followed his questions, settling first on two lions who sat close together in a tangle of limbs on the sofa opposite them.

  Luther and Blaine, the lions Arslan had spoken to earlier, when they were… Ryland felt his cheeks heat at the memory of exactly what those lions had watched him and Arslan do together.

  When he looked up, he realized that he wasn’t the only one making observations. Several of the other lions were studying him in return. He wasn’t sure if they were remembering his time on the rug in front of the fire with Arslan, or not. For all he knew, the entire feast was just supposed to be some sort of mid orgy snack and they were actually thinking of what they were going to do with him after they’d satisfied a different sort of hunger.

  Whatever their reasons for studying him, Ryland found himself sitting up a little straighter, squaring his shoulders back, trying to make the best of himself. He wasn’t sure what he wanted them to think of him, but he was very sure that he didn’t want Arslan to be ashamed of him.

  He glanced up and he saw Arslan watching him. The older man nodded once, as if in approval, before guiding Ryland to sit even closer to his feet and rest his head against his thigh.

  When Ryland had settled in a position that seemed to please him, Arslan went back to his conversations with the other lions, but his hand remained buried in Ryland’s hair. As he spoke, he stroked his fingers through the strands with casual tenderness. Ryland felt his eyes drifting closed as the gentle rhythm soothed him and encouraged him to just relax and let his lover take care of everything for a little while. As tempting as the proposal was, Ryland forced his eyes to stay open.

  The last man the professor turned his attention to was the smallest, youngest lion, the one who had nodded to him by the food tables. “And what do you have to say, Kefir?”

  Kefir looked to Arslan first, but he soon dropped his attention to Ryland. Their eyes met. The younger lion smiled slightly before he looked away again.

  “It’s going well,” he said very softly. His voice had more of a purr than a roar to it. Ryland’s hand itched with the desire to reach out and stroke him just as he would a kitten.

  Looking back up at the professor, Ryland was just in time to see Arslan nod his approval to the younger lion. Whatever was going well, it was obviously something that everyone present knew about, something that had no doubt been discussed on other nights when the pride met, perhaps while other human sacrifices sat at Arslan’s feet.

  Swallowing down a sudden rush of uncertainty, Ryland stared at the empty plate resting on his lap.

  Arslan’s fingers tugged gently at his hair, prompting him to look up. Ryland offered the older man a small smile, but the professor didn’t look convinced by it. He seemed to sense something was wrong, but he didn’t appear inclined to press the issue in front of the other members of his pride.

  Ryland turned his attention back to the other lions. They sat as close to each other as he sat to Arslan. Bare limbs crisscrossed each other as they sprawled together. Blaine and Luther were obviously lovers, but he didn’t get that sense from any of the other lions. They just seemed very friendly and comfortable with each other with no understanding of personal space.

  Like a sleeping heap of puppies, or perhaps like a litter of newborn kittens. They were big cats after all… Ryland’s lips twitched as he imagined their reaction to the comparison. Blaine and Luther would probably be particularly furious with the label. They certainly hadn’t liked Arslan calling them to heel. They were all swagger and bravado, or at least they seemed to be that way, whenever th
ey weren’t casually stroking each other or butting their heads against each other’s bodies.

  As Ryland watched, Blaine rubbed the top of his head against his lover’s shoulder. Luther responded by licking the other man’s temple and squirming his way down the sofa to steal a kiss.

  Ryland looked up at Arslan. The professor was studying him very carefully. His eyes flickered across to Blaine and Luther for a moment, as if he was tracing Ryland’s line of sight to see what he’d been staring at. Color rushed to Ryland’s cheeks at the realization he’d been pretty much spying on the other lions making out.

  The fact that they’d watched him do far more didn’t matter right then. Bad manners were still bad manners. When Arslan looked back to him, Ryland tried to think of the right words to frame an apology, but there was no time for that.

  Arslan had already turned his attention back to the other lions. Ryland’s input obviously wasn’t required right then. He closed his eyes and concentrated on Arslan’s fingers as they trailed through his hair over and over again. If he had a choice between panicking and feeling quietly content, there seemed to be little point clinging to his worries. He’d made his choice. He belonged to the lions until morning.

  He belonged to Arslan until morning. That was an even better statement. Arslan would make sure everything was fine. Taking a deep breath, Ryland let it out very slowly and shifted even closer to Arslan’s side, wanting to keep as much contact with him as possible. The sex, the food, the heat from the fire, the comfort of somehow accepting the fact that he didn’t have any decisions left to make all wrapped around him, snug and secure.

  For the first time since he was eighteen years old and standing in the middle of his parents living room confessing to the one sin he knew his family would never forgive him for, he felt perfectly at peace, perfectly at ease inside his own skin.