I ly there as the dawn came through the window in slow stages, the light going from grey to gold across the ceiling, and thought about the fact that this was the most peaceful I'd slept since arriving in this world. Possibly the most peaceful I'd slept in my life, which was a thought worth sitting with given the specifics of the situation that had produced it.

  Someone was in the bed with me.

  I had always assumed sharing a bed would be annoying. The logistics of it, another person's weight and heat and the inevitable territorial negotiation over bnkets. I had imagined it would keep me up. Caleo was curled against my side with the unconscious confidence of someone who had decided this was where he was going to be and saw no reason to discuss it, one arm thrown across my chest, his soft cock pressed warm against my leg, his golden curls spread across my shoulder in a way that should have been uncomfortable and wasn't. I ran my hand through his hair without deciding to and stared at the ceiling and wondered when I had become a person who did things like that.

  The ring warmed at my base. Morning business as usual, my cock hardening with the patient inevitability of sunrise, Morning Dew already beading at my tip in the cool dawn air.

  I felt Caleo shift.

  It was subtle at first — a small repositioning, the arm across my chest sliding down slightly, his head moving with a kind of drowsy purposefulness. Then his face was level with my cock and he took a slow lick of Morning Dew off my tip with his eyes still half closed, the casual ease of someone reaching for a gss of water in the night.

  "Can you fuck me," I asked quietly. Not really a question. More like a suggestion offered to the morning.

  I saw him smile against my hip. He stretched slowly, the full length of him, spine arching, arms over his head, every defined muscle moving under smooth tan skin. He made a sound of profound satisfaction.

  "Absolutely," he said. He sat up and looked at me with those sleep-warm blue eyes. "Prepare yourself, Jack." He reached down and wrapped a hand around his cock, already hardening, the tapered tip emerging from the foreskin. He wiped Morning Dew from my shaft and stomach with his palm and coated himself thoroughly, working it down his length and over the firming knot at his base with practiced efficiency. "Prepare for Maximus."

  "Please never say that again," I said.

  "I'll say it every time," he said pleasantly.

  I decided to be adventurous.

  I got my ankles up behind my head, the cross country flexibility doing its job, and felt my cock swing forward into easy reach, the wide fred head level with my own mouth, Morning Dew running freely down the shaft in a warm luminescent thread. I licked my tip zily, just gathering what had accumuted, the familiar sweetness of it on my tongue, the ring pulsing with approval.

  Caleo looked at me arranged like this and his expression was somewhere between scientific appreciation and something considerably less academic.

  "The flexibility," he said. "Is that natural or — "

  "Four years of distance running," I said. "Can you get on with it."

  He got on with it.

  He used his own generous precum to prep me, working it against my asshole with slow deliberate circles, the warmth of it spreading on contact, and I felt my body opening up the way it had learned to over the past week. He pressed the tapered tip against me and I felt it seat with the pop of initial entry and the ring lit up immediately, warmth radiating outward from the point of contact.

  Then he pushed deeper.

  The taper was doing exactly what a taper was designed to do. A gradual insistent widening with each inch, my body negotiating with it in stages, the Morning Dew smoothing the process. He went slowly, patient and deliberate, watching my face with those blue eyes as inch by inch his cock worked deeper into me. I licked Morning Dew off my own tip in slow passes while he worked and felt the dual input the ring was running — the stimution from inside and the stimution from my own tongue combining into a single signal that made thinking clearly about anything a theoretical exercise.

  He bottomed out on the knot.

  The knot pressed against my asshole from the outside, firm and dense. Six inches of diameter that was not getting inside me today, possibly not ever. I felt the full length of him seated inside me and my cock jumped hard enough to pull away from my mouth and sp back against my face. I ughed a bit.

  Caleo looked down at where we were joined with professional satisfaction. Then he started moving.

  He picked up the pace faster than I expected, the tapered length of him driving into my hole with increasing force, the knot impacting my asshole with each thrust in a way that sent a deep pressure through my whole lower body. He was trying to work it in. Not aggressively, not forcefully, but persistently, the way Caleo seemed to do everything. With the patient optimism of someone who believed the outcome he wanted was achievable if he kept at it.

  My ass had other ideas. It was not Caleo's ass. It had not had three years of dedicated preparation starting at age sixteen. It was doing its best under the circumstances and its best did not currently include accommodating a fist sized knot.

  He seemed to accept this without distress and redirected his energy into simply fucking me thoroughly with what was working, which was considerable. I kept licking my own tip between his thrusts, the rhythm of it syncing up with his pace, the ring drinking charge from both inputs simultaneously and running it all back through me doubled.

  Then he stole my cock from me.

  He bent forward without warning and took my wide fred head into his mouth and the sound I made was not dignified. His lips stretched around the fred ridge and he took as much of my shaft as the geometry allowed while simultaneously driving Maximus into my ass at a pace that made the headboard bang against the wall. I y there with my ankles behind my head being thoroughly used from both ends by one extremely focused nineteen year old and stared at the ceiling with the bnk expression of someone whose higher functions had clocked out and weren't expected back shortly.

  I could hear him gag. The wet sound of my horse cock hitting the back of his throat, his breath coming hard through his nose. I looked down at him, he was, objectively, beautiful even choking on my dick. The golden curls fallen forward, his blue eyes watering at the corners, his jaw stretched around my fred head with determined commitment.

  He hit my prostate at a new angle and my whole body seized.

  I felt him cum first, deep inside me, the long pulses of it, his cock throbbing through the orgasm while he kept his mouth on me and kept moving. The sensation of him cumming inside me pushed me over whatever edge I'd been walking. I grabbed the ring's absorption with conscious intent and released it entirely.

  It burst out of his nose first.

  Then the sides of his mouth, my cum running down his chin in thick streams while he choked around my cock, his throat working, his eyes watering, his hands gripping my thighs hard as more kept coming, the ring released and letting everything through in a sustained overwhelming rush. He pulled back coughing, my cock coming free of his mouth with a wet gasp, cum spraying across his face and chest as he caught his breath, wiping his nose with the back of his hand, blinking through watering eyes.

  He looked wrecked. Thoroughly, completely, beautifully wrecked, cum dripping off his chin and running down his chest, his cock still pulsing through the st of his own orgasm inside me.

  He started ughing.

  Full ugh, genuine and helpless, even as he was still coughing slightly, wiping his face with completely inadequate results.

  "Hah," he managed. "I love the taste." He licked the corner of his mouth with obvious pleasure, completely unself-conscious about the state of his face. "It was always the best part of training. I used to practice with lesser preparations but nothing — " he paused to wipe his chin, " — nothing like this. The theoretical literature undersold it catastrophically."

  He pulled out slowly, his long cock withdrawing in stages, the absence of it leaving me feeling thoroughly used in the best possible way, my ass clenching and unclenching in the aftermath. He colpsed forward onto my chest with the complete physical abandon of a person who had expended everything and had nothing else to offer, his cum-wet face pressed against my shoulder, his spent cock soft and warm against my leg.

  I y under him and stared at the ceiling.

  The ring hummed deep and satisfied at my base. My status screen flickered briefly at the edge of my vision and I blinked it open with one eye.

  ? BOND ESTABLISHED

  ───────────────────────────── CALEO ANIMA Bond Type: Primary Bond Slot: 1 of 3

  ───────────────────────────── Primary bond established. Vitalist output efficacy increased by 40% when administered directly to bonded partner. Bonded partner gains passive Morning Dew residual benefits. Cum Crafter recipes administered to bonded partner operate at maximum potency.

  I closed it.

  Outside the window the city was waking up, the early sounds of the merchant district starting its day, carts and voices and the distant smell of something frying. Caleo was a warm heavy weight on my chest, his breathing evening out, his hand resting ft against my ribs.

  I was thinking about his father. About the locked recipe. About what maximum potency meant for a man with a degenerative condition and three years before it became serious. About the bond slot notification and what primary meant and whether Caleo had any idea what had just happened.

  I was going to tell him. Just not in the next thirty seconds.

  The knock at the door was loud and businesslike. Three sharp raps, the knock of someone who expected to be answered.

  Caleo lifted his head from my shoulder. Cum still drying on his face. Blue eyes alert despite everything.

  "Are you expecting someone?," he asked.

  "No," I said.

  We looked at each other, eyes wide