In which Ashenivir is breathless.
When Rizeth had mentioned breath control, Ashenivir thought eagerly for days of hands tight around his throat, of floating into a sweet space of thin breath under his Master’s control until he passed out. He knew he probably wasn’t supposed to want to pass out during a scene—and Rizeth would never let him—but he liked the idea all the same.
What he got was not that.
“Exhale to my inhale,” Rizeth instructed. Ashenivir lay beneath him, wrists bound to opposite shoulders in a clever arrangement of rope. Rizeth’s lips were, fittingly, a breath from his own. “You only breathe when I do.”
His hands bracketed Ashenivir’s face, warm and firm—Ashenivir held his Master’s gaze, and did as he was told. Or at least he tried to. The tickle of Rizeth’s breath into his mouth was so strange it made a laugh shiver in his chest. He swallowed it down, but in doing so lost the delicate pattern of breath they had begun to build. Rizeth lightly slapped his cheek.
“Focus, Ra’soltha.”
“Yes, Master.”
For a handful of breaths he managed it. For a handful of breaths he was the rise to Rizeth’s fall. For a handful of breaths he floated like blown glass, Rizeth spinning him into something fragile and wonderful.
Then that tickle of breath caught his consciousness again, pulled him out of the flow, and this time he couldn’t stop the laugh from breaking forth. And of course, once he’d started, he couldn’t stop. Rizeth sat back as the giggles consumed him, stealing his breath from his Master’s control.
“Ra’soltha,” he admonished. Ashenivir wished he could cover his treacherous mouth with a hand, but all he could do was turn his head.
“I…I’m sorry, Master,” he gasped out, “I—”
Another fit of laughter caught him and he pressed his mouth to his shoulder in an attempt to smother it. He didn’t dare look at Rizeth. He heard him sigh, though, and a moment later the rope of entanglement slackened and slid from his arms.
“No, no, I can do it.” Ashenivir grabbed the rope and tried to school his face into something suitably respectful. “Let me try again.”
“Let go,” Rizeth said. Ashenivir tightened his grip as the rope tried to slip away again, the tug of war between his hands and his Master’s magic one he knew he couldn’t win. Rizeth eyed him coolly. “Very well, then.”
Three heartbeats later, Ashenivir found himself sprawled over his Master’s knee, hair hanging tangled about his face, all the blood rushing to his head. Rizeth’s hand pressed firmly to the small of his back.
“You will hold your breath till count of twenty,” Rizeth said, his voice full of iron. A shiver, not of laughter now but of anticipation, thrummed through Ashenivir’s entire body. “Each time you fail, I will restart the count. Am I understood?”
He trailed his palm in a slow promise over Ashenivir’s ass.
“Yes, Master,” Ashenivir said.
It took several long, beautifully painful tries, but he managed it in the end. And when he was at last successful, Rizeth stole his held breath in a rewarding kiss—which was, Ashenivir felt, the best way to lose it.