5

he gasped, falling back into the cushion of his wings.

Antero stepped closer.

"None of that, my Melis,"

he whispered, Melis' mouth once again beneath his.

Melis fought not to rise up to let their mouths meet, though he parted his lips and tilted his head as he had seen countless humans do.

Antero spoke his name, savoring the sound of it or the shivers it drew from Melis, while a thousand kisses played out in his mind, all the places and ways he might use his mouth to make Melis happy.

Melis' thoughts were a heated mess of both of their desires and the feverish awareness of Antero's hand continuing downward over his tunic; the cloth the thinnest veil between them.

Antero paused when he found Melis hard.

Antero had imagined kissing Melis there too; was Melis supposed to pretend he didn't know that and it hadn't excited him?

He didn't get an opportunity to ask; leaving the tunic as a barrier, Antero traced the length of Melis' cock, his mouth open over Melis' as if to catch every shuddery exhale.

Then Antero pressed down, his palm hot over flesh that had never been so sensitive.

Melis sought restraint too late, but he couldn't stifle his cry as he pushed back into Antero's hand and came without any chance to stop himself.

He hadn't even known he was going to until his cock was jerking against Antero's palm.

He groaned at every pulse and wet, hot spill into the linen, futilely trying to silence himself and growing louder instead.

Antero only pressed back in response, breathing harder when Melis bit his lip and his groans emerged as a high whine.

Melis glared at him, or wanted to, but cock was even more sensitive now, which had to be some sort of design error.

He squirmed, foolish and embarrassed and still coming, but that hand stayed firm on him.

It was humiliating. It was good. And Antero knew exactly how much Melis was enjoying it. Melis could have burned under his satisfaction like a human in the sun. His hips continued to stutter forward, mimicking motions he had only ever seen in passing.

He imagined himself thrusting forward into the air, red-faced and whining, and belatedly tried to be still, his hands clutched tight around his feathers.

"Hush,"

Antero told him quietly as though Melis had spoken, and perhaps he had, too lost in spikes of pleasure to notice.

"You've pleased me so much."

Antero stared down between them at his hand, which to him must seem to hold nothing although he could feel the impression of Melis' cock and the cooling puddle of his seed.

Melis licked his stinging lip where he'd bitten it.

"This is not how a god is meant to treat a lover."

Antero raised his head.

"I am a lover treating a god, a god who blessed me by allowing me to introduce him to such matters.

You are new to it.

That's all. People who do this many times learn to hold off because desire delayed can make the pleasure greater."

"It gets better?"

Melis wondered without thought, blood sizzling with embarrassed delight when his words made Antero swoop in as if meaning to kiss him.

But Antero held himself back and spoke with a smile in his voice.

"Oh yes.

They use your gift for that, and you could learn to enjoy it too if you wish.

But I don't mind that you lost yourself to my touch so quickly."

"I wanted to touch you,"

Melis confessed, turning his face to hide his blushes, then realizing anew what a fool he was—and a coward, for staying hidden.

"I'd like to make you feel as you made me feel, though I don't know how to do that."

Antero pulled away from Melis and flexed his hand several times before holding it to his face and breathing in as if the scent was pleasing.

Which it must have been because he was hard.

Stupidly surprised by that, Melis looked at Antero's erect cock in the moonlight until his eyes burned.

He could kneel down. He could inhale as Antero had done, he could—

He couldn't.

For Antero's sake, he couldn't.

"You've truly never had others?"

Antero asked, unaware of Melis' confused hunger for at least the scent of his cock if he could not have the taste.

Melis exhaled shakily.

Antero seemed to take it for his answer.

"But there were some you wanted?"

"No."

The very idea was ludicrous.

"Only you."

"‘Only me?'"

Antero made a quiet sound of surprise.

His thoughts were filled with prayers glorious and heady.

He wrapped the hand he'd used on Melis around his own cock, his thumb to the foreskin.

"I have more to offer, if you ask or demand it of me. I wouldn't refuse you."

Melis watched that hand slide slowly up and down, Antero tugging his cock for Melis to see.

Antero wanted, Melis couldn't deny that, but this was not all he wanted.

Melis had to remind himself of that several times.

"You don't desire to only be used."

Not even the eastern winds could have found Melis' words, so small they might not have been said at all.

"You want more than this."

"What do you think this is?"

Antero might have meant it to be playful, but his voice was rough and he slowed his hand to further tempt Melis into touching him.

Melis snapped his wings out behind him to splay them against the wall, the sound returning some of his sense, and with it, fury at himself and his behavior.

"You're teasing me."

Melis could not give like an experienced human and he could not take like a god.

Now, Antero, crafted by The Most Fair herself, thought to tease him? Of course, he would—his past lovers were better at pleasure than a god.

Even The Ever-Present would have laughed in Antero's place.

The wind rose up, carrying what was more of a cry of anguish than an angry snarl. "You play with my body and soul?"

Melis moved with the wind, whirling away from Antero in less than a heartbeat.

He was on the opposite side of the room when the chill of Antero's fear hit him.

He stopped, wavering.

"Melis?"

Antero searched the dark, stepping forward until he reached the foot of the bed.

"Melis, don't go.

Please.

Or tell me that you'll still hear me, even if you won't visit again. I forgot how little you know of this. I wasn't playing with you. Don't leave."

The break in his voice brought Melis' feet back to the floor.

"I'm here."

Antero spun toward him, twitching forward before stopping himself.

He released a long, shaky breath.

"Stay, if you please."

He appeared calm but his thoughts were not.

"I pushed where I should not have, so I will leave space between us this time—not that it matters with how you move."

"I can go wherever the wind can,"

Melis informed him distractedly, more concerned with the splintering ice around Antero's heart then how he traveled.

Antero let out another, longer breath.

This one seemed to steady him.

"I'm not playing with you,"

he said again.

"How could I? Even if my desires weren't here for you to read, I'm only human and you are a god."

"A little god."

Melis turned away from Antero's loveliness and his crown of roses tipped over his forehead into his eyes.

"A powerful god would be worthy of you.

But I suspect it's a human you need as a beloved if you want a husband.

One who is not indifferent to you and who will develop affection for you."

"What,"

Antero said flatly.

Melis raised his head.

Antero's glare knocked him back a step.

"First, I am worthy of a legendary figure found by Desire himself, and now, I only deserve someone who is ‘not indifferent' to me? If you will leave me too, Melis, you don't need to dress it up or throw some pour half-soul my way."

Melis flailed his arms, which Antero could not see.

"I am giving you what you want!"

He growled in frustration.

"I cannot pleasure your body the way your past lovers could.

I can't even put my hands to you to soothe the worries I have stirred within you.

But this I can do for you!"

Antero tossed his head, his gaze once again unerringly meeting Melis'.

"Will you? And once this mildly affectionate husband is here, you'll be content to watch me with him? You'll listen as I continue to desire my true match and try to be satisfied with some fondness and a warm body in my bed? Will it please you, my Melis, to watch me give ecstasies to another that I might have given you? Because I don't think it will.

I don't think you'll be able to bear it, because I know I will not.

When your breath mingled with mine, I felt the brush of our souls where they fit together.

But if you think it best, I will turn from you. If you ask it, I will cease my presumptuous conversations with you and talk only to my husband. But know before you find this man for me that you are wounding the one you called Faithful. Know that you are also wounding yourself."

Lightning tore through Melis and stopped his lungs, crushing his heart while his blood boiled.

He had not even left the room or begun his search and he wanted to howl to the heavens.

"You will have someone by your side for the length of your life as I cannot be.

And….

And I ought to know longing,"

Melis bit out, fingers curled like claws.

Antero would have a better lover and Melis must not touch them to alter their affections.

He must not think of Antero satisfying another while he still yearned.

Melis would ensure that didn't happen… somehow. "If I know this ache, it might temper my actions in the future. Make me less cruel, less foolish."

"Less cruel than you are right now?"

Despite his words, Antero looked ready to charge across the room and take Melis into his arms.

"You'll leave us both unsatisfied?"

Melis could think of no argument.

"Clever One, I am trying to do what everyone says I'm not capable of."

Desire could be selfless.

Surely even Melis could manage that.

"I'm not clever, Melis."

Antero shook his head sadly.

"I simply know what you don't—or are unwilling to know."

He raised his voice, ensuring his words were heard alongside the truth in his heart that he continued to show Melis without shame, the way most humans were scared to do even with each other.

"Perhaps I have offered myself to others so boldly all this time because I was never meant for a human.

Perhaps I've done it all in preparation for this, and have only realized it tonight.

The others weren't weak, Melis, they just weren't you."

"Faithful, you named me."

Antero went on over Melis' gasp.

"I wait, and I give, and I offer, but you do not take.

You'll marry me off to someone who starts no fires in my heart.

You must be a little god, as mean-spirited as everyone says, as unwilling to make yourself as vulnerable as those you gift and torment. I humble myself before you, but you can't even risk a touch? Then you are right; you are not the other half of my soul and love is not meant to be yours."

He was magnificent, a human king bathed in silver, breathing hard while his desires spilled out into the dark around them.

He could have scorned any god and they all would have shuddered before him.

Melis was no exception.

He took a step, then stopped himself so forcefully that his roses slipped farther into his eyes.

He licked his lips but his tongue and mouth were dry.

"But I could not marry you."

He was nearly begging to know why he could not.

"Even disguised as a human, I could not stay at your side as some sort of consort.

And I have no palace to bring you to.

You longed for a friend and companion as well as a lover. For love. I don't know how to do that. I don't even know how to kiss."

Antero stared at where Melis should be for several moments, a hopeful glow pushing out his dark, frozen fear.

"Are those your only objections? Should I even call them that? Your doubts, perhaps? Ah, now I am the silly one.

You've been telling me you're inexperienced, that you aren't used to being wanted.

I should have listened better. Forgive me."

Melis was already shaking his head.

"You've done nothing wrong."

"But I have.

You have been more forthcoming than you might even realize, telling me you don't know what to do, asking what's happening to you."

Antero sighed and studied the air around Melis again before glancing at the bed.

"Maybe I am meant to show you love, even just for my lifetime.

Maybe that is what my life is for."

Moonlight haloed the bed, telling Melis whose side the moon was on.

Antero put a hand to his chest over his heart.

"Maybe Love is meant to be part of your realm too, Sweet Melis, and my fate is to love you so you might help others."

Melis still didn't understand what about him should be worthy of that, but the wise king before him did, and perhaps also Mother, who had arranged this.

He took another step forward, absently pushing roses from his eyes.

"For that, you ask for my heart, mind, and body? You ask for all of me?"

Antero's smile was warming.

"All I require, Melis, is knowing you are near, if not every day, then enough that I don't miss you too much."

He glanced at the bed again before sitting on the edge of the soft mattress and looking back over to Melis.

"I would like to lie with you, in sleep or otherwise, and in doing so, give you a place where you can rest.

A home, even if it's only a human palace, even if it's only for the nights.

I wish to make you happy—to know that I've made you happy. I would be more than content with that."

Less happiness than he deserved, but more happiness than he would find with another.

"You make no demands of me?"

Melis wondered, genuinely confused.

Antero raised his eyebrows.

"Didn't I just say them?"

"No."

Still lost, Melis gestured his frustration though Antero couldn't see him.

"You listed my desires."

Antero's eyebrows went even higher.

"Melis, beloved husband, you don't know what you tell me when you speak so."

Melis bumped into the bed, clumsy with beloved husband ringing in his ears.

His crown once again tipped forward into his face, blocking his view of Antero, so he yanked it off and tossed it to the side.

"You haven't even seen me,"

he argued, his weight sinking the mattress and his palms sliding over bedsheets, making his progress vexingly slow.

"Does one have to see a husband to know him?"

Antero returned, sitting back against the head of the bed to watch the mattress dip as Melis crawled to him.

"Clever,"

Melis muttered, his tone admiring.

"Wise and beautiful.

Upright and compassionate.

Are you certain I am your equal? I have nothing for you."

"‘Have nothing for me,'"

Antero said back to him in low, aching voice.