Other Worlds Than These

The Bard’s Song-3

The next morning Taurin woke with strong arms around his waist, holding him tight against a warm body. The memory of a night of passion etched into his aching muscles, his weary mind. Turning gently, he looked at Quim in the dim light of the room. The half-elf’s eyes were closed, his lashes long and dark, casting slight shadows onto his cheeks. Taurin studied the pale brow, the purple hair falling back softly from a face still and innocent in sleep. Touching the porcelain flesh, he felt its coolness beneath his fingertips, then traced along the curve of Quim’s cheek, down his jaw, around the edge of his mouth. He brushed against thin lips that opened as Taurin rimmed them with one finger.

“My song,” Quim murmured, taking Taurin’s finger into his mouth. His tongue wrapped around it and sucked gently.

Taurin smiled and ran his other hand down Quim’s flat belly to brush through the dark softness below. “My bard.” Beneath his hand Quim hardened and rubbed into his palm. Kissing Quim’s nose, Taurin whispered, “I have to go.”

Quim looked at him with sad eyes. “Must you?”

Curling his finger around Quim’s tongue, warm and wet inside his mouth, Taurin nodded. “I’m already late. I’ll have to run an extra two miles to make up for it.”

“And what if you never show?” Quim asked. “What will they do to you then?”

Taurin let his mind play out the consequences. Here beneath the sheets, with Quim pressed close against him, it was easy to think about never returning to a knight’s life. To lay in the arms of a lover all day, to listen to his wondrous music, to make sweet love all night. “I would be branded a deserter,” Taurin said softly. “I would never work as a guard again. My days as a paladin knight would be over.”

Quim smiled. “You’re being overly dramatic,” he said, taking another of Taurin’s fingers into his mouth and kissing the fingertips lightly. “Stay here.”

But Taurin shook his head and met Quim’s gaze. “I can’t.”

“You want to,” Quim said.

It wasn’t a question, but Taurin thought a moment before he nodded in reply. He wanted to stay here forever, true. In this warmth, in these arms, the hint of music just beyond his reach and ready to erupt into trills at any moment.

The look in Quim’s eyes pinned Taurin to the bed. “You are my song.”

Suddenly Taurin couldn’t breathe. His arms wouldn’t move, and he could no longer feel the linen wrapped around him or the heat of Quim’s body against his. “You are my instrument,” the bard purred. “The music within you is beautiful and I alone can set it free.”

“What are you doing?” Taurin tried to ask.

But the words wouldn’t come. They were gone, replaced by notes and scales that trickled through his mind like a musical brook. All thought had left him; all knowledge, erased. When he looked around, he couldn’t remember where he was, what he felt, who he thought he was supposed to be. Instead, the bed beneath him chimed a discordant E flat, the sheet tugging around his swollen erection rang with a sweet high C sharp, the light falling through the small window was a gentle G natural.

The man in Taurin’s arms, licking his fingers as if playing a symphony on his soul, was smiling. The purple in his hair and eyes melded into a concerto that threatened to engulf Taurin. Quim’s arms entwined around his body, pulling him close, rubbing his chest, his back, his c**k. Taurin leaned into the touch and closed his eyes as the bard wrapped a tender hand around his hard d**k. When he opened his mouth to gasp in pleasure, silvery notes fell from his lips.

Quim whispered again, “You are my song. I alone play you now. Your music belongs to me.”

A wave of sensation flooded Taurin as the music exploded within. His world dissolved into notes and chords as he lay beside the bard who held the music of his soul in the palm of one hand.

THE END