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As he walks through the familiar halls of The Family’s headquarters, Khaslana’s heart gradually turns cold, the temperature descending with every step. Mafiosi bow as he passes them in the halls, the respect accorded to the successor of The Family, and also the youngest to have ever attained the position of commander.
Khaslana doesn’t acknowledge them. He doesn’t need their regard, nor does he want their admiration.
The path he has trod many times before ends at the drawing room. What lies beyond the heavy door of dark stained wood is his so-called family. Steeling himself to face the trial, he turns the handle and goes in.
Evening light filters in through the French windows, the setting sun lending a burn orange glow to antique wood furnishings and dark leather couches. It’s a rare assemblage that has gathered for the event; six of the seven highest ranked Bosses are in attendance, the inner circle that answers only to the Godfather.
“Well, well. Look who decided to join us again,” Asat Pramad drawls from the nearest armchair. A dice spins between his fingers, his gaze calculative from beneath the brim of his hat. “The legendary Khaos has returned. It’s a pleasure to have you back on board, I’m sure.”
“Asat, there’s no need for formalities between us, is there?” Khaslana returns with formal indifference.
Asat chuckles, idly brushing the lapel of his stylish suit. “Why else are we here today? Our youngest is still so cold.”
From the opposite seat, Phantylia smiles, the tilt of her lips a sly, wicked thing. “Did you have fun then, little Khaslana?”
“Just a job.” The reply is bland, a variation of the same Khaslana gives for every mission.
Seated primly on the couch next to Phantylia, Celenova’s gaze is indifferent, but she meets his eyes, giving him a near imperceptible nod.
Khaslana doesn’t respond, nor does he need to. Sentiments are a weakness in this world of theirs. Celenova doesn’t have them, but she does feel something for him—though that something can be as dangerous as it is beneficial.
“Was it?” Black lacquered nails rest against Phantylia’s dark-painted lips. “After playing house for so many months, are you sure you haven’t lost your edge?”
Khaslana doesn’t get the chance to respond, the insincere pleasantry decisively terminated by a harsh voice.
“Cease your chatter.” Zephyro stands at the front, one hand habitually resting on the weapon holstered at his hip. For all that he is the most feared of their number, Khaslana occasionally appreciates his direct manner, ruthless as he can be. “You’re in the presence of the Godfather. Show some respect.”
The room goes quiet. Asat doffs his hat, six heads bowing to the man seated at the head of the room. He has been silent the whole time, but his presence is undeniably felt, the dense, heavy aura of danger and bloodthirst he exudes filling the room with a pressure that makes even the finest and cruelest of the Family uneasy in his presence. The person is handsome in a severe kind of way, his golden eyes as sharp and vicious as those of a beast, the only softness the long, white braids lying over the front of his three-piece suit.
Nanook looks just as he remembers.
Going up to him, Khaslana sinks to one knee, his first greeting to the Godfather after having been away for six months. “I’ve returned, Nanook.” For anyone else, it would be disrespectful not to address him as Godfather or Boss, but Khaslana is the exception.
He is the exception for many things when it comes to Nanook.
“Khaslana.”
A heavy palm comes to rest on Khaslana’s head. He resents the touch as much as he craves it; patronizingly paternal, a blessing. When the hand is held out to him, Khaslana ceremoniously receives it with both his own, bowing his head to kiss the gold signet ring, the symbol of his authority. The others rarely do this. Only Khaslana is made to regularly perform the traditional obeisance, a reminder to their most recalcitrant member of to whom he owes his fealty.
“Report.”
Khaslana recounts the intelligence from the neighboring lands of Amphoreus. The government there isn’t their concern, but the rivals in the dark underbelly beneath are. After his statement is picked apart and analyzed by the bosses, they discuss further plans, each offering their own proposal. The inner circle has much latitude to enact Nanook’s will, only requiring his final approval. Their plans are adjusted and sanctioned, one by one, until each has their assignment.
“See to it,” Nanook says simply, a dismissal.
“Yes, Boss.” They are none of them respectful people. But to Nanook, they are reverent, lowering their heads to him again before departing. Zephyro is the last to leave, closing the door behind him with the soft thump, the sound heavy in the silence.
A single person is left behind, still kneeling at Nanook’s feet, wound tight with tension.
With the two of them now alone, Nanook asks a personal question. “Did you enjoy your time in Okhema?” His voice is terribly soft, the way it is at his most dangerous.
Okhema was a beautiful dream. He had hidden in the light as the bright young student Phainon, attending Chrysos University as a youth with smiling blue eyes and pale hair—a suitable cover from which to investigate the city’s shadows.
It was a taunting glimpse of a life Khaslana could have lived if he wasn’t so deeply bound to the Family. While he was there, Phainon wore a smile on his face for his friends, but it was a bittersweet happiness, knowing that the persona was a lie.
Khaslana is the bleak reality he must return to. The white dye has been washed out of his hair, the bright blue contacts removed to reveal the golden haired and golden eyed killer beneath.
If Phantylia had continued to interrogate him about his time in Okhema, Khaslana would have parried her questions without difficulty. But the one in front of him is the sole person he can’t deceive.
There is no safe answer. Instead, Khaslana offers a concession. “I missed you,” he confesses, because it’s true, as damning as that is, as much as he hates himself for it, and hopes that it is enough.
A hand cups his chin, lifting his face for Nanook’s piercing scrutiny.
“Wanted to stay?” Nanook presses him, his voice still deathly soft, and something about the way Nanook says it has the fine hairs on the back of Khaslana’s neck standing on end, his pulse going unsteady. He doesn’t let the apprehension show on his face, holding onto his composure.
“No,” Khaslana answers, heavy with surety. Perhaps in another life, Phainon could have stood with his companions in sunlight. But if Khaslana, a shadow of the underworld, reached for that light, he would only endanger them all.
Because Nanook will never let him go. The fate of those who stand in the Blemished One’s path is utter annihilation.
“I belong here,” Khaslana says, resigned. He is one of them, a killer steeped in the bloody mire of the underworld.
As if in confirmation, thick fingers move behind to grip the black-gold choker around Khaslana’s neck, pulling it taut. The tension forces Khaslana’s head back, his throat bared and his breath restricted. It’s a collar, a constant reminder of who he belongs to. Despite it being on his body, Khaslana is not allowed to take it off, the only person allowed to remove it is Nanook.
Nanook looks down at Khaslana, the weight of his gaze seeming to bore straight through to his soul. His expression is devoid of emotion, impossible to read. Khaslana can’t tell if Nanook is angry, if he is displeased, but the chances that he was able to deceive Nanook are vanishingly small. With others on the line, Khaslana decides to play it safe. Putting a hand high on Nanook’s thigh, he asks, voice strained with constriction, “May I?”
It’s a long moment before Nanook releases the collar, letting Khaslana breathe more easily. Sitting back, Nanook shifts his knees apart, allowing Khaslana in close.
Wetting his lips, Khaslana reaches up to unfasten the tailored trousers. Nanook wears nothing beneath, warm skin under Khaslana’s hand. The softness of disinterest revealed gives him hesitation, looking up at the other with uncertainty.
If Nanook doesn’t want it… If Nanook doesn’t want him…
Nanook says nothing, impassively returning his gaze.
…It doesn’t matter. There is only one way he can proceed. Wrapping his hand around the thick length, Khaslana licks it into his mouth, deftly stroking what he can’t fit with his palm. To his relief, the organ soon hardens in response. Breathing through his nose, he sinks down, all the way to the root, feeling the familiar weight sliding over his tongue, the thickness stretching open his throat as it sinks in deep. Head in Nanook’s lap, he gets to work, sucking and swallowing. He’s good at this, he knows, humming when he feels fingers in his hair, stroking in appreciation. Heat pools between his legs, the slow burn of breathless arousal getting him wet, a Pavlovian response to performing this act for Nanook. He ignores his body’s excitement, closing his eyes to focus on pleasuring him.
Doing this is oddly comforting in its familiarity, like settling back into his skin. He wanted this, a little, but mostly he just wants to appease Nanook, to quell destruction’s wrath before its gaze can turn to Okhema.
Of Nanook’s subordinates, Khaslana has always been the most willful, wanting to change their ways, balking at orders he can’t abide. He has had to find other ways to show his deference when needed, and this is one of the things he is willing to do.
Though… it’s taking an awfully long time at present. Nanook often likes to make things difficult for him, but Khaslana doesn’t sense that kind of malicious intention today. Rather, Nanook just seems to have little earthly desire, resistant to pleasure. It’s not unusual for Nanook, whose appetites are as unpredictable and difficult as the man himself, spanning the full range from complete apathy to keeping Khaslana in bed for days.
If Nanook didn’t agree to this for lust, then he must want the act of submission, to see Khaslana offer up his own abasement.
By the time Nanook finishes, Khaslana’s jaw is sore, his eyes reddened and wet. As the musky taste fills his mouth, he swallows, dutifully drinking the thick fluid down. When the last drop is swallowed, he goes to draw off, needing to breathe. Abruptly, the hand in his hair tightens, forcibly holding him down on Nanook’s cock. Khaslana chokes on the massive girth, throat spasming and lungs straining for air. His body jerks and shudders in place, equal parts deprivation and desire, the crotch of his underthings soaked through with lust.
Nanook callously watches as Khaslana struggles to breathe, struggling to stay yielding for his patriarch, controlled by the person’s hand. It’s only when Khaslana’s vision begins to dim at the edges that Nanook pulls him off.
Freed of the object suffocating him, Khaslana coughs and gasps, his limbs gone limp and his head dizzy. The fine wool of Nanook’s trousers is soft against Khaslana’s cheek, the involuntary tears on his face dampening the expensive fabric. Large fingers slowly stroke through his hair, like petting a domesticated animal. Khaslana closes his eyes, feeling the weight of possession in that touch… feeling the warmth of a care he never asked for.
This couldn’t have been enough to satisfy Nanook’s obsessive need for control, but without the avenue of sex, Khaslana doesn’t know how else to satisfy the other. All that is left are words he doesn’t want to say.
It has been six months since he last saw Nanook. Six months since he breathed this warm, resinous scent of expensive cologne and cigarette smoke. Six months since he last heard the rich timber of Nanook’s voice, since he felt the rough, hot touch of Nanook’s hands on his body.
“I missed you,” Khaslana says again, but this time it comes out with an honesty so raw it burns, tinted with helpless anger, steeped in frustrated self-loathing.
Nanook hears it all, the fingers in Khaslana’s hair going still.
In the silence that falls, a clock ticks on the mantel, steady and sotto voce. Dim, muffled tones drift through the double paned windows, the suppressed rumble of engines from the street below.
“My Khaslana,” Nanook finally says, low, possessive, and Khaslana clenches his jaw, wanting and hating the claim in equal measure. The petting resumes, the touch slow, lingering. “Has your mind settled?” he asks, his deep voice almost gentle.
Khaslana’s brow furrows, an uncertain possibility coming to mind—that the reason Nanook allowed Khaslana to pleasure him was so Khaslana could reassure himself, not just to receive the obeisance. Likely, it was both; Nanook is never so benevolent. It’s this that Khaslana can’t stand the most; these glimpses of what could have been, the illusion that the heart within that chest hasn’t withered.
“Please.” It’s not a word he has said often to Nanook, but he gives it easily now. “Please leave them be.”
“You are the only one that concerns me.” The light brush of fingertips tickles down Khaslana’s nape, Nanook touching the collar again. The touch is more restless than proprietary, as if he can’t help himself. “Don’t give me a reason to pay those people any mind, and I won’t.”
Relief washes over Khaslana, releasing some of the tension in his shoulders. His friends are safe.
All he has to do is give up on that life and walk back into the cage.
All he has to do is put the collar on himself, placing the leash back into that cruel hand.
Oh, how he resents that heavy hand.
“Do not forget, Khaslana. This is mercy.”
So he should be grateful for it? Grateful he didn’t have to crawl for days; grateful lenience was granted at all. “Thank you for your magnanimity,” Khaslana grinds out through gritted teeth, festering with resentment and frustration, churning with longing and desire. “Damn you Nanook. What more do you want from me?”
“What I want is very simple,” Nanook says. Complete possession. He guides Khaslana forward.
Resentfully, Khaslana licks Nanook clean, then puts him away, refastening the front of the trousers.
“I will have you tonight,” Nanook decides, gazing down at him consideringly. “It seems you need to be reminded of your place.” The choker tightens around Khaslana’s neck again, Nanook continuing on casually. “I’ll put you on your knees and hold you by the collar, favoring you unsparingly until I’ve impressed into you the shape of my desire, until you remember to whom you belong.”
Khaslana’s skin goes hot with unwanted arousal, the place below clenching with conditioned want. His body burns with need, the craving to be brutally possessed intensified, yet the golden gaze looking down at him remains cold with calculation, the temperature of their feelings disparate. It’s sudden spite that has Khaslana saying what he does next, wanting to drag Nanook down to his level, to ruin the other as much as he is ruined. (Needing to be desired as much as he desires.)
“When I was there, I touched myself while thinking of you.” Khaslana speaks with reckless abandon, foolishly seeking to ignite dormant danger. Despite tasting the sweetness of sunshine in Okhema, he still couldn’t quit this person. “I fingered myself, opened myself up to the sound of your voice, playing the recording over and over on my phone while imagining it was you moving inside me, until I came with your name on my lips—”
There is nothing calm or controlled about the hand that grabs Khaslana, hauling him bodily up into Nanook’s lap to be devoured. The flames he was playing with scorch his lips, the triumphant proof of Nanook’s inability to resist him rigidly hard against his soft, dripping core. As his heart desired, he is violently possessed, every inch of him ruthlessly reclaimed, aching marks of the other’s hunger for him left on his skin. That secret place, where no one else is allowed, neglected for months, is filled with the thick fluid of desire, lavished and glutted with creamy essence until it spills down his thighs.
In the tremorous and ugly aftermath, Nanook is still mostly dressed, but his hair is in disarray, braids pulled and half undone by Khaslana’s desperation. His sleek suit is disheveled and stained, the white dress shirt hanging open to display bronze, scarred skin slick with sweat, the powerful chest moving with heavy breaths—the untouchable sovereign dragged down into the earthly mire.
Khaslana will always dream of sunlight, but he thinks, perhaps, that he can be satisfied with this; to ruin the other as much as he is ruined, this sinful and base entanglement.
Tomorrow, he will struggle against his fate again, picking up the resistance.
But for tonight, he lets himself lie in Nanook’s arms, drugged with intoxicating kisses, savoring the heat of obsessive desire.