Chapter Seven

It was far more difficult for me to speak my stories with the raw honesty that had been missing when I recounted them for Aikos.

My unrequited love for the mortal king Admetus.

My forced love of Daphne, pricked by Eros's arrow, only for her to be "saved" from me by becoming a tree, and for real mourning to follow even as my false love faded.

Cassandra's betrayal, only pretending to love me to receive the boon of prophecy.

The love and loss of Hyacinth.

And the would-be but wasn't love for the ill-fated Icarus.

Dax listened without interruption to each tale, each memory, each story of woe and regret. And through it all, he held my hand.

I'd cried with Aikos. I'd shed tears already with Dax. Yet again, tears fell, turning to steam on my cheeks, as the intensity of sharing my pain made me run as hot as passion did. As any strong emotion did. If I became too hot to touch, Dax showed no signs of it, but held my hand tighter still.

We did not remain in the mortal courtyard for all of it. We walked, paused to eat, or share a drink. Eventually, I even told Dax how I had reenacted the loss of Icarus with Aikos.

"You pushed Aikos out of your chariot?"

"I caught him!" I defended, bracing myself for terror to fill Dax's eyes, but was further amazed when all he did was laugh.

"Oh, I would have loved to see his face!"

I laughed then too, and it felt surreal after sharing so much pain to feel mirth in its wake. It felt good and made me feel… lighter, like how healing Zephyrus had made me lighter.

Somehow, with my tales done, we had quite unconsciously ended up at my chamber doors. The whole day had passed by but not a moment felt wasted. I wanted to hang on to the joy between us, though some somberness remained, as it always did when one thinks back on loss.

"The worst of my stories, I suppose," I said, "is that I never saw any of it coming."

"As the god of prophecy, that must have been terrifying."

"It was. I cannot see my own future. Even when I see something through another's eyes, there is no guarantee the tides won't change."

"Then isn't there also no guarantee that the tides will?"

"I hope so." I clung to Dax's hand. I wanted to bring him into my rooms, to bring him into my bed so badly, but I… faltered, unsure what to say or if I was ready.

"Tomorrow, my dear Apollo?" Dax said.

Whenever it was that he had ceased calling me "my lord" or "my god," I could not say, but I adored hearing "my dear" in their place, while also yearning for what it might be like to have that endearment become "my love."

"Tomorrow," he said when I failed to answer, and as was often the case between us, he kissed my hand.

"Here," I said, clinging tighter when he tried to depart. "Meet me here, before dawn. I would like to bring a new day to fruition with you at my side, dear, beautiful, wonderous Dax."

Dax smiled and squeezed my fingers. "Then here I shall be."

"Hush, Pyrois. We will leave soon enough." I patted the red mare's nose, and she snorted in impatience with tiny licks of flames escaping her snout.

The horses grew restless when dawn approached.

Today, the same was true for me.

My left hand that continued to pet Pyrois was the one that bore a sunburst cuff connected to a ring. Why save it for a wedding band, I'd thought after losing Hyacinth, when there was no hope of me ever giving my heart to another? There was no heart left in me to give, only a husk.

I felt my heart struggling to beat again now, cracking the ice that had frozen around it, not to shatter all that was left of it, but to burst forth from its prison with new life.

Almost. Almost, it beat for me in rhythm.

"Your sunset tunic," I heard from behind me and looked to see Dax approaching. "Or sunrise, I should say. I never tire of seeing it on you." He, in contrast, wore a deep blue tunic with shimmers of celestial black, as if dotted with stars, like the sky before the sunrise began.

"Thank you. And you, dear Dax, look lovely." I patted Pyrois's nose again, and then met Dax and took his hand to lead him onto the chariot.

The horses were hitched, with Helios ever at the ready, currently out of sight. The tethers of my chariot to his brilliant mass were unseen by mortal eyes, but once we took flight, they would pull the great burning sun behind us as easily as a chariot on earth pulled a wagon.

It was a far larger vehicle than would be feasible for a mortal driver, and Dax marveled at being upon it, as I guided him to sit on the bed. Leaving him to lounge, beautiful as ever as he sprawled upon its pillows, I moved to the small platform up front, taking the reins to begin our trek.

"Onward, Aethon, Pyrois, Phlegon, and Eous!" I urged my steeds. "Let us light the dawn!"

Full pelt forward, they galloped us off the edge of the balcony. My horses had no wings, but they took flight as if they did, and for a moment, my wings were visible, propelling us with an added boost. I glanced back to see the widening of Dax's eyes at the outline of their sunbeam spectacle, which he very rarely got to glimpse.

But I looked not to gauge his wonderment of me. I nodded behind us so Dax might turn and witness as Helios appeared, rising from beneath the horizon to join us in the sky.

Dax gasped when he saw and crawled up the bed to better peer over the chariot's edge. With him crouched on his knees and bent forward, the view was… encouraging.

I released the reins, for once set on their path, my horses knew the way.

Dax turned to face me, sensing my approach, and sprawled again in wait. He offered a hand as I neared him and yanked me onto the cushions. I laughed from the tumble. He was very different from Aikos. More genuine. More open. Although I knew Aikos had never lied to me, and in fact, had shown me the sweetest truth that led me here.

A truth I hoped to see made real.

I turned my attention to the center of the chariot, and with a wave of my hand, my lyre was summoned, along with a pan flute, and they hung in the air, playing the same music that Dax and I had played together.

Dax giggled, moving closer to me across the bed, and reached for my face. But he hesitated, hand hovering between us.

"You can touch me, if you'd like," I encouraged.

"I would like that very much," he said, fingertips near my lips but still not touching them. "I would like to offer you the heights of what my training taught me, to make the sun god whine and writhe and whimper for release that I would… eventually grant you."

Courtesan training indeed.

"But," Dax continued, "if we are two men, not man and god, what do you want of a mortal coupling, Apollo? If any coupling at all?"

"If any?" I stammered, not having expected an offer of celibacy.

"I yearn for more of your kiss, your hands on me, your body pressed to mine," Dax so intimately professed that it made my heart race like in the midst of a hunt right before my arrow loosed. "I yearn for any touch you might grant me, but it is not only the promise of pleasure that keeps me with you. I want you, Apollo. All of you. Your heart most of all. I can wait to know the wonders of your body entwined with mine if you need more time—"

"No." I said it swiftly and, like some eager boy just reaching adulthood, kissed his hovering fingers, desperate to not be denied my first taste. "Please. No more waiting. I want to believe that happiness does not have to be fleeting."

At last, he touched my lips, and I parted them at his press. I licked their tips, and he expelled another laugh. Then he slid his hand to my cheek and pulled me to him.

"Wait. Understand that I do not wish for you to worship me, courtesan, talented though you may be. Today, let me worship you."

Dax blinked amazement but nodded his assent.

I rolled on top of him, flattening him to our skyborne bed. My warmth could get away from me, I knew, but I also knew the pleasure it could cause when used right. Slowly, I ran heated fingers down his cheek, kissed him once at the corner of his mouth, once centered, and then slid my tongue between his lips and claimed him with a lick.

Dax moved beneath me the way any courtesan would, should, must have in the past, but there was a vulnerability, an honesty in how he let me lead, like he had since our beginning. I needed that assurance, that I was trusted to guide, the same way I led the sun across the sky.

"A truly beautiful garment," I whispered, slipping a hand up Dax's thigh beneath it. There would be no tremors today, no doubts. He dropped his thighs open for me, and I reached between them to feel his ripening prick.

Dax grunted and arched his neck, bucking into my grasp.

"So beautiful. I almost hesitate to disrobe you. Almost," I spoke against his lips before kissing him again. "Where did you find such a rare gem?"

"The tunic?" Dax furrowed his brow as he looked at me. "It wasn't from you?"

I paused my first stroke down his length. "No."

Dax laughed. "I only assumed. It was waiting in my rooms when I woke. Aikos perhaps? Or Aphrodite?"

Or Zeus. It was his meddling that started us down this path when he plucked Aikos from the earth. But whoever the benefactor, the tunic was almost as soft as Dax's thighs or his tender sac and velvety cock.

Almost.

I lifted the tunic to his waist and rocked his hips back. Such uncut beauty, growing harder and larger and peeking its head out of the tempting pocket of its flesh. The domes of his cheeks were alluring enough to want to sink in teeth. I contented myself with exploring by hand. I caressed their curves, the crease between them, the yawning entrance at their center. I poured more heat into my hands as I traced over its bud.

Dax panted, watching me with the faintest squint. The hotter I ran, the brighter I glowed, my eyes, and very being. Yet Dax didn't look away.

"You are as worthy of worship as any god." I tilted Dax's hips further, folding him to better access the glory of him bare. With tongue as heated as my fingers, I licked up the length of him and caught the first spills of pre-release from his tip.

He gasped, and I made sure he was watching when I licked back down, lower, and lower, until I licked where my fingers had teased his puckered skin. "Ohhh." He rocked against the press of my tongue.

I grinned over the bob of his cock. "You once prayed for a lover with the heat of the sun god in his touch."

For a moment, the wonder and fear that had filled Dax when we first met was in him again.

"Would you have the heat of the real thing in you, Dax?" I blew cool air upon the wetness I had left. "To fill you and know you as much inside as out? To hold and t-to… have…" I bent to lick his hole again.

To protect from all harm.

Please, let him come to no harm, not from me, no folly of mine nor another's, nor even the threads of fate dare try.

Some quaking seized my hands after all. I sought purchase on the backs of Dax's thighs to still them and licked my tongue inside him.

"Ah!" Dax yelped.

Too hot, too hot, I chided and said, "Forgive me. You spring me to such passion, I forget myself."

I thought of the frigidness of the skies around us. Let me be cool, I pleaded, and as I had learned from my time with Aikos, I summoned heaven's chill.

One hand remained heated, while the other froze over with frost. I sought to tease Dax open in circling tandem with hot and cold. A swipe of the sun. Then the cooling skies where the sun dwelled. Again. Again. One after the other, swipe after swipe, until my hot and cold thumbs pressed inside Dax at once.

"Ah-ahhh!" No pain or flinch now, but a desperate thrust upon where I breached him.

I rotated my thumbs in and out of Dax, with fingers splayed to massage his cheeks. I pried him apart, wider and wider, with my now steaming digits and bent to lick between them.

"My… god!"

"Apollo," I beseeched. "Only ever Apollo, dear Dax."

"My Apollo," he amended, and with his eyes locked on mine, I needed to see all of him and to hurry us on to our rapture.

The removal of a single pin spilled open his tunic, and I unwrapped the rest of him. Twilight blue was now a backdrop to frame his loveliness, from bare chest, to stomach, to hips, and cock.

"Let me see you as well, my Apollo," Dax begged, tugging at the hem of my tunic. The arch of his body was all courtesan, but all only for me.

"Tap… here." I indicated the sunbeam at my belt.

Still so wonderfully sprung beneath my gaze, Dax tilted his head at me. A smile played on his face as he did as I'd said, and with that simple tap of a finger, my tunic unraveled as if disappearing inside my adornments, until likewise, the adornments vanished too. Only the cuff at my wrist with its ring remained.

My promise to remain unbound to another, until the risk again seemed worth it.

Dax reached to touch me, at first seeking my chest. I caught his hand and guided it there for him. If I was the one doing the worshiping, let me remain the guide. I drew his palm and fingers down my stomach, down my hips and prick, then wrapped his hold around me, and together, we stroked.

"Oh… you are marvelous," Dax said.

"You are marvelous," I echoed, "and shall be treated as such."

I stilled his hand from touching my more, for my cock had better things to pump inside than a hand. Summoning heat and cold into parallel fingers, a natural balm to my fire, I reached beneath Dax again.

"I only wish… that I had been the first to breach you." I breached him then, deeper than my thumbs had gone, and twisted my fingers up inside him.

"Mmm-oh!" He rocked against them.

"I can see the past at times as easily as the future you know. Your priest fucked you slow… and deep… didn't he?"

"Y-yes." Dax shuddered at the equally slow and deep thrust of my fingers.

"He was gentle, allowed you the time you needed to adjust." I pulled my fingers free to replace them with my tip but did not yet press inside. "Then, when he believed you could handle him, he made certain you felt every… buck… inside."

"Apollo!"

The shallow dips inside him now as I slowly canted my hips made my leaking tip feel like it must be searing him, but his only utterances were of bliss.

"Every slow… slide, every filling pulse, as he grew harder from your exquisiteness." My head popped in him at last.

"Yes."

"And still, you were unsatisfied?"

Dax's head had dropped back, his eyes closed as he writhed in attempts to pull me deeper, but at that, he looked at me. "Yes."

"Why?" I asked.

"Because he wasn't you. And I do not need to be treated gently."

I thrust in halfway, and Dax's back arched off the bed.

"Oh!"

Again.

"Ahh!"

Again.

"Apollo!"

Further, and further, until I felt Dax swallow me whole, I thrust. Then I held there, buried inside him, and waited.

Sweat glistened on Dax's skin, and he peered at me from beneath heavier lids. He took my hand, the one still steaming with hot and cold fingers. Despite them last being inside him, he sucked them into his mouth and left them sopping. "Please, my dear Apollo… can you apply this wonder to your cock as well?"

It twitched in response inside him. "Shall we see?"

With my first true backstroke, I unleashed the whole of heaven into his sheath.

"Ye-esss!" he cried as I fucked him, moving him up the bed with each slam, with hot and cold mixing inside him. His head nearly crossed its edge, and his long hair spilled out of the chariot.

Dax was so beautiful to witness, arching into me, moaning for me, displayed for me upon the dark blue sky of his tunic. How easy it was to worship him like this.

But to truly worship meant claiming something as yours.

"A-pollo!"

My wings erupted to lift us from the bed, enough that when I thrust downward again, I drove even deeper inside him.

"Ohh… yes! Yes!"

While carrying us airborne and down upon the surface of the bed, again and again, I trailed my fingers across Dax's skin. Both burning and healing in my touch, no hiss from his lips was ever one of pain, but at a precipice near pain that made him whimper. Wherever I drew, laurels or instruments, my bow, even sunbeams, a darker tan remained, keeping Dax marked as mine.

"I-is this… worship, my Apollo?" he asked, gazing at an arrow shaft up his arm with a smile that made me want to cover every remaining inch of him with my symbols.

"Almost," I said, for I was close—so close to claiming him completely. "But no worship is complete without anointment."

I thrust harder, lifting us off the bed again with a flap of my wings. As I fucked Dax back onto the bed, I took his cock in hand and began to pump. I pumped and thrust and let him feel the heat and cold I could command like a tidal wave of elements. All the while, I prayed, to who or whatever answers the prayers of the gods, I prayed…

Let our anointments overlap.

They did, for the next pump of my hand shot Dax's seed over my fingers and onto his chest. He clenched so tightly around me in his release that I released too, coating his insides with the hottest part of me yet. Still, it was cooled enough, calmed, tempered enough, that Dax's moans as it filled him harmonized with the continuing tune of my lyre and the flute playing behind us.

I collapsed onto him, wings fading like bonfire sparks, and held him, while my cock pulsed with aftershocks inside his spent hole.

"Ohhh…" he moaned again, wriggling his hips, as if to further enjoy me and how stuffed I had made him. "Your heat, Apollo… your icy touch too, but your wonderful heat, is like nothing I could ever have imagined."

"Enjoyable then?"

"Thoroughly." He wriggled again and curled his ankles up around my hips. "I could hold your cock and the warmth of your release inside me forever. But, if we are to bed each other as men, then this man is not yet done with you."

Dax had a mischievous twinkle in his eyes.

"I have enjoyed being worshiped," he continued, "but I am inclined to worship too. Not the sun god, mind you, but my Apollo. My courtier. My…" He smiled, and like only a courtesan with torturous teasing in their seduction could, he kissed me without finishing the phase.

Oh, that he would call me his beloved.

He dislodged me from him, but within our kiss, reached between us to find my yet hardened prick. He pumped me slowly, then moved his hand to my sac to pull and fondle. He moved lower to my entrance and twirled slick fingers around my pucker.

Dax paused, pulled his hand away, and when it returned, his fingers were slicker still, and I knew he'd reached up inside himself to gather some of my own spillage to use on me.

I grinned at him, admiring his fortitude, boldness, and capable fingers, as he thrust them inside me.

"Tell me then… dear Dax." I shuddered from how leisurely he twisted them, while enjoying how I tightened around his thrusts. "What do you want now?"

Dax grinned back at me. His eyes sparkled with flecks of gold that seemed brighter with the light from my eyes reflected in them. "To be inside you, as I'm sure you surmised. But only if you trust me."

"Of course I—ah!" Slow and careful as Dax was being, he was not holding back either. He had touched that wonderful place inside me that made all the world below seem as glittered with stars as the sky.

"Good," Dax said. "And I… trust you."

Then he rolled us to the edge of the bed and out of the chariot.