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The blue of the sky turned into indigo, turned into black. When Zang Hai did arrive, perfectly punctual as always, the Marquis barely said a word to him before turning on his heel and letting him follow to his rooms, shutting the door decisively behind him.
With as little as possible further ado, they were naked and entwined on the bed of the Marquis. Zang Hai was on his hands and knees, with the Marquis behind him. Zang Hai was tight and uncomfortable from the minimal preparation, but the Marquis had no sympathy for his plight. When Zang Hai yelped in pain at his hard thrusting, he told him as much.
“Serves you right for making me wait,” he dug his nails into Zang Hai’s sides, “after being such a tease.”
“My—My Lord, this unworthy servant begs for your forgiveness,” Zang Hai pleaded.
The Marquis scoffed. “You’d do it again tomorrow if you thought it would be amusing.”
Zang Hai laughed, a little out of breath. “I am guilty, My Lord. I love—ah!—love how you fuck when—when you’re angry.”
“I know you do. Slut,” the Marquis punctuated with an especially sharp thrust, which made Zang Hai gasp. The Marquis loved this, too—he felt awestruck, as always, at the slick grip of Zang Hai’s walls around his cock, and at the pretty sounds he made when he was rough with him. It was worth the wait, as annoying as it was whenever Zang Hai tried to call the shots.
As Zang Hai grew accustomed to the stretch, his noises of pain turned into moans of pleasure. The Marquis himself sighed in satisfaction when he buried himself to the hilt inside his lover. Zang Hai started to push himself back against the Marquis, matching his movements. The Marquis’s breath hitched when he did. He slammed into him harder, his hips making a slapping sound against Zang Hai’s ass. The force almost shoved Zang Hai forward on the bed, but he braced himself before he could lose his balance, and he continued to meet the Marquis’s thrusts.
The Marquis’s fingertips indented Zang Hai’s soft flesh, sure to leave red marks for minutes after he removed them. Under his grasp, there was a feminine sort of curve to Zang Hai’s waist that the Marquis hadn’t initially expected to find attractive on a man, but did. It made him so easy to hold and maneuver as he pleased, and it looked divine, especially from this perspective.
The Marquis fisted a hand in Zang Hai’s hair, using it for leverage while he fucked him. He yanked it to force Zang Hai backwards onto his cock, his whole body yielding to the Marquis’s painful grip. Zang Hai arched and moaned into it like a whore.
“You like that, do you?”
“Yes, yes, My Lord,” Zang Hai breathlessly confirmed.
The Marquis huffed with put-on disapproval. “The depraved thing you are,” he commented, then slapped Zang Hai harshly across the ass. Zang Hai yelped and flinched, involuntarily straining against the tight grip in his hair, causing him to dissolve into another moan.
The Marquis pulled Zang Hai forward by his hair, then back onto himself. It was a clumsy way of fucking him, offering less control and power than holding him by the hips or shoulders, but it was so unapologetically domineering that he loved it anyway. Zang Hai didn’t resist, letting himself get dragged back and forth like some kind of doll. Now there was a thought, the Marquis mused. Zang Hai as his mindless sex doll, confined to his bed. It seemed not so far off, with Zang Hai on his hands and knees, crying out lewdly in pleasure while the Marquis bounced him on his cock.
“I should—should keep you like this forever,” the Marquis said, punctuated with a groan. “I should make you live in my bed, so I can have you when—hah—whenever I want.”
Zang Hai visibly clenched his fingers into the sheets. “Ye—hnn—yes, ah, tie me down so I can’t leave, so you can—can use me, use me, ah!”
The Marquis squeezed his ass in appreciation, conjuring with lust the image of Zang Hai, wrists and ankles bound, free for him to fuck as he pleased. “You always have the best ideas, my Zang Hai.” He thrust his hips forward at the same time as he yanked Zang Hai back onto him, sending a shock of pleasure up his spine as he sank completely into him. Zang Hai yowled in response and clenched hotly around him.
He adjusted his grip on Zang Hai’s hair, holding closer to the scalp. He dragged him around more forcefully, at the same time as he thrust into him with harsh want. Zang Hai cried out in pain when the Marquis pulled his hair, then moaned needily each time he hit deep, only to shove him off and repeat. He was so loud that any passing guard or servant could definitely hear, but the Marquis didn’t care. They knew they were dead if they talked, anyway. Part of him liked it, too; the thought that someone would know that the untouchable, socially pristine Zang Hai was letting Zhuang Luyin fuck his brains out. It was like another conquest, like stepping out onto the beautiful landscapes of Dongxia to draw the line for the Great Yong.
Wanting to hold him closer, the Marquis hauled Zang Hai up by the hair and caught him by the throat with his other hand, so the young man was up on his knees, unable to support himself while the Marquis continued fucking him. Zang Hai yelped in surprise, and his fingertips stretched towards the bed in a futile effort to relieve his own weight from his hair and windpipe. The Marquis yanked his hair and tightened his grip on his throat, and Zang Hai went obligingly limp in his hold. He brought his hands up to delicately clutch at the Marquis’s wrist and forearm. His fingers brushed over the fading burn scar, and it was torturously intimate, reminding the Marquis of the twining of their lives. That day had become a scar on his body, yet in his mind, it was indelible love, where he had not expected it again. A phoenix from ashes, from death and division.
When it became clear that Zang Hai was close, the Marquis halted his thrusting and pulled Zang Hai up further against him, so that his back was pressed flush to the Marquis’s front. Zang Hai took in a strained, urgent breath as the Marquis held him in place by the neck, releasing his hair to palm down his abdomen. Zang Hai gasped softly when he wrapped his hand around his cock. The Marquis affectionately ran his thumb over the vein on top, then gave him a firm stroke. Zang Hai’s breath stuttered in response.
Slowly and deliberately, the Marquis slid his hand up and down until Zang Hai’s thighs were quivering. “Do you want to come, whore?” the Marquis questioned, feeling Zang Hai twitch in his hand at the degrading word.
“Please, please let me, My Lord!”
“Tell me why I should bother.”
“Ah—My Lord, I know you like to—to fuck me afterwards. Use me, make it hurt, make me—hah—make me cry, My Lord. Pl—ahh!” Zang Hai was cut off by a moan when the Marquis stroked him hard and fast, the way he knew he liked it. At the same time, the Marquis squeezed Zang Hai’s throat. He tried uselessly to inhale as his airway was cut off, but he didn’t fight, and the Marquis could fly on the elation of his absolute, devoted trust. Zang Hai let out a series of choked-off whimpers as the Marquis pleasured him.
Only when Zang Hai started to slump in his grasp—the Marquis couldn’t see his face, but he could lustily imagine his eyelashes fluttering and his eyes rolling back in his head—did he loosen the hand on his throat. Zang Hai gasped when he did, trying to make up for the air he had missed, and he moaned loudly when the Marquis handled him with a skilled twist of his wrist. The Marquis only allowed him a moment of reprieve before he choked him again, silencing his young lover’s only weapon, that damnable and wonderful silver tongue, with cruel physical power.
With that, Zang Hai went over the edge. He shuddered bodily, clenching around the Marquis’s cock still buried in him, which made the Marquis moan and drop his forehead against Zang Hai’s skin. He felt Zang Hai’s come spill onto his fingers and drip lewdly onto the bedding below. The Marquis stroked him through it, and when Zang Hai slumped again, he dropped him.
Zang Hai landed on his face, then scrambled in surprise. The Marquis grabbed his hair with his soiled hand, making an obscene picture of him, and shoved the side of his face firmly down into the bed. He wasted no time railing into him, at which Zang Hai shouted. Zang Hai was right; the Marquis did like to fuck him after he came. He liked how desperate and oversensitive Zang Hai would get, tearing up and clawing at the sheets or his shoulders until he decided to have mercy.
The Marquis pounded into Zang Hai ruthlessly as he chased after his own pleasure. Zang Hai’s body was relaxed after his orgasm, though he tensed in discomfort and cried out at each brush against his prostate. The Marquis groaned and dragged an admiring hand down Zang Hai’s back. He was entranced by the strange, faint crossed scar, the muscles working beneath his fair and vital skin, and each hidden ridge and hollow along the line of his spine. The body was evidence of how a life was lived, and the Marquis wanted to trace it all, follow every physical memory until the story belonged to him as much as it did to Zang Hai. And he wanted—oh, how he wanted—this love to leave its mark on Zang Hai, so that he could never again touch or be touched without being reminded of him. It was possessive, perhaps unseemly so in a dynamic like theirs, but the Marquis couldn’t bring himself to care. Zang Hai had offered himself, so why shouldn’t the Marquis have him totally, completely, eternally? No one could tell him not to.
Zang Hai struggled and whined underneath him, reflexively trying to escape overstimulation. He attempted to push himself up onto his hands, but the Marquis held him down by the hair. He grabbed both his wrists with his free hand and pinned them down above Zang Hai’s head, keeping him firmly in place. He fucked him like there was nothing else in the world that mattered. He could forget about all his troubles and obligations; there was only this bed and Zang Hai, so perfect around him, as if he existed to please him. Zang Hai sobbed helplessly underneath him, dampening the sheets with tears and drool.
“So beautiful,” the Marquis praised him. “My beautiful Zang Hai.”
Zang Hai didn’t respond, except for a wet, pained moan. Sweat glistened on his back, catching the candlelight like a dusting of little stars. His trapped hands were clenched into fists, and his legs trembled from exertion and exhaustion.
The Marquis wanted it to go on forever, but it couldn’t, and eventually he buried himself in Zang Hai and came with a wrenched-out cry. He curled over him, holding tightly to his hair and his wrists as the sensations washed over him.
He slowly came back to himself, panting heavily and suddenly quite tired. He let go of Zang Hai’s hair, leaving it dirty and mussed, and soothingly rubbed his back until the youth’s hiccups and sobs abated. Zang Hai blinked, unfocused, when the Marquis gently swiped away the tear tracks on the side of his face. He allowed him another moment before he pulled out, making Zang Hai whimper as the head caught on his rim. Zang Hai collapsed in relief onto the bed. Come dripped out of him; yet more evidence of their tryst to stain the sheets.
While Zang Hai recovered, the Marquis made himself decent and discreetly summoned a servant—who looked healthily embarrassed—to prepare a bath. They scurried off with their task, and the Marquis cast off his robes again, feeling much too warm. When he returned to bed, Zang Hai had wiped himself off, though his hair would have to wait for the bath, and laid sprawled out on his back with his eyes closed. One of his legs was drawn up, and his hands rested elegantly upon his stomach. His cheeks and chest were still flushed, his lips parted slightly as he breathed. He seemed, to the Marquis, to become more beautiful by the day. Perhaps it was his attainability; his ever-deepening attachment and loyalty to the Marquis. Entrenched as they were, he had never seen anything so bewitching as Zang Hai’s nude form, draped over his bed.
The Marquis sat down beside Zang Hai, who opened his eyes and blinked up at him with one of those mysterious, faint smiles of his. He yawned dramatically, then rolled himself over to cuddle up against the Marquis. The Marquis had once refused him this, finding it inappropriately romantic for something he’d intended to be strictly sexual, but he was long past the point of deluding himself. Of course he wanted this. He wanted everything, everything Zang Hai could give. The Marquis obligingly opened his arms for him.
Zang Hai tucked his face into the crook of his neck and wrapped his arms around his middle. The gesture struck the Marquis as hopelessly familiar, and suddenly, he was many years and many more li away—on the border, during the first spring thaw of Dongxia; the frigid air slowly becoming bearable, the frost glimmering into dew, and Shen Wan’s cheek laying against his shoulder. The Marquis was overcome with longing for his lost best friend, soon followed by his now-routine resentment and guilt at the thought of her. Who was she, to ever retract her faithfulness? And who was he, to ever let her stray? They had promised so much to each other as children. Were they both such fools for chasing after it, only to lose it? It seemed so, all these years later, with her gone and him still aching. Love turns its servants, one and all, into liars, cheats, and idiots, thought the Marquis.
But it was not Shen Wan’s cheek against his shoulder. It was Zang Hai, young and lovely and alive. He smoothed down his ink-black hair over his shoulder, and Zang Hai curled in closer. The Marquis wanted to believe in him. After all, he was everything he wanted. A capable servant, a shrewd advisor, a trustworthy confidant, and even a fond companion. Yet the Marquis knew of Zang Hai’s ambition. Would he leave him, like Shen Wan, for someone else? What would he do when offered something the Marquis could not, or would not, give? It troubled him, surprisingly so, to imagine it in matters of intimacy. Zang Hai had so much life and vigor ahead of him. Could he really expect Zang Hai to toss it all aside for him, graying and scarred and rough-edged Zhuang Luyin? Zang Hai had money and reputation now, if his good looks weren’t already enough of a draw. Certainly, he could have his pick of men or women. The Marquis thought, with a twinge of disgust, of Zang Hai running off with that young lady he had gone to visit at Zhen Tower several times, letting her pleasure him, as if he had not learned it all from the Marquis.
The Marquis decided to prod him. “You could make good money here in the Capital,” he informed him, “if you let anyone pay to have you like this.”
Zang Hai paused, deciphering that the hypothetical was not about money. “Why would I want to be with anyone else, My Lord?”
“My Zang Hai, always so sweet,” the Marquis rubbed his back affectionately. “Don’t you know you could have anyone you desire? Surely, you’d want someone as young and beautiful as yourself?”
Zang Hai shook his head vehemently, then pressed in closer, as if to claim him. “I only want you, My Lord. Only you.”
The Marquis was startled by the utter conviction in his voice. He didn’t quite know what to do with it. It was too earnest to hold without pause, and it hung suspended in the air between them.
“Believe me, My Lord,” Zang Hai implored him. “I only ever wanted you.”
The Marquis contemplated silently, weighing what he knew of the inherent selfishness of man against the Zang Hai’s words, and what he had come to understand about the young man. It all felt beyond him, somehow, even with all his years of reading and dealing with the intentions of others. He didn’t know if he could cope with trusting just to be betrayed again, and yet, he didn’t know if he could cope without the certainty that Zang Hai would always remain his faithful servant.
In the end, he sighed heavily and pulled Zang Hai in tighter. If the Marquis couldn’t believe in Zang Hai, then who, in the world, could he believe in? No one at all, thought the Marquis. No one at all.