The Immortal Who Holds the Demon Lord's Heart novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Chained

Han chains the Demon Lord in his own bedchamber because the heart will not let them part; the first night is a kiss, a fight and a long, slow pulse game.

The dungeon was only half a li from Han's bedchamber, and it was too far.

They found out at midnight.

Han had ordered the Lord of the Black Tide locked in the deepest cell, behind three iron doors and a ring of sword-formations.

Mo had gone in smiling.

Two hundred paces later, Han had dropped to his knees in the corridor with both hands clamped over his heart.

It felt like a fist closing around it.

Down in the cell, he could feel Mo's pain as clearly as his own, because it was the same pain, running in both directions.

"One li," Mo said, when the guards dragged them back together.

He was on the floor too, white hair spilled across the stone, breathing hard.

"Any farther than that and it tears. I'd have told you, but you didn't ask."

"You knew."

"I guessed. I've been awake for two days, Marshal Han. I'm a man of limited facts."

That was how Mo Xuanyi came to be chained to the foot of Han's own black lacquer bed.

Qin Shu had objected twice.

Han had said, "Out," and then, "Out," and the door had closed behind a very unhappy adjutant.

Now the room was quiet.

One lamp burned.

Mo sat on the floor with his back against the bedpost.

One wrist was in a silver chain long enough to reach the washstand, and he watched Han take off his armor.

Han did not stop.

He would not give the man the satisfaction.

"Your Court calls you the Immortal Who Never Sleeps," Mo said.

"Yes."

"I think it's because you can't. Look at the shadows under your eyes."

"I have a demon lord in my room."

"You've had one in your chest for three hundred years. This is merely an improvement."

Han set his breastplate on its stand, then the greaves.

When he straightened in his thin inner robe, Mo's eyes had moved from his face to his collarbone.

The red in them had turned darker.

"You're staring," Han said.

"I'm trying to work out why my heart is still beating for you."

"It's not beating for me. It's a stolen organ in the wrong body."

"Then come here and let me prove it."

Han should have said no.

He had read every manual of the Court.

Not one told a marshal to kneel in front of a chained enemy.

He did it anyway, and he knew exactly why.

For three hundred years he had lived alone on a cloud with a heart that was not his.

In all that time, no one had touched it.

He knelt.

Mo's hand came up slowly and opened over Han's chest through the thin cloth.

Han's heart bumped into his palm.

"There," Mo said, very low. "You feel that? It doesn't want me to pull it out."

"What does it want?"

"Let's see."

Mo pressed lightly with two fingers, and Han's heartbeat slowed.

Not by much.

A long, thick, sweet drag, each beat taking twice as long as the last, and with it all the strength went out of Han's thighs.

He caught Mo's shoulders to stay upright.

"What are you doing?"

"Ruling it." Mo's voice had gone rough. "It's my heart. I've had it for six hundred years. It does what I say."

"Stop."

"Do you want me to?"

Han's fingers tightened on the broad shoulders.

Under his hands Mo was hard muscle and heat.

A pulse beat in the strong neck, and Han felt it in his own chest, one beat late.

"No," he said.

"Say it properly."

"Don't stop."

Mo's mouth met his.

It was not gentle, and it was not what Han had imagined, in the late hours when he allowed himself to imagine.

It was slow and sure and thorough.

Mo kissed him like a man who had waited three hundred years with nothing to do but think about it.

Han opened to him at once.

A groan went through them both.

The hand on his chest slid up to Han's neck.

Mo turned him by the jaw and kissed him deeper, until Han was gripping the white hair with both fists.

The silver chain rang against the floor.

"Take this off," Han gasped, tugging at Mo's robe.

Mo laughed against his mouth and shrugged out of it.

His chest was broad and scarred, with the same thin mark on the left side as Han's own.

Han put his palm over it without thinking.

Mo's heartbeat answered him, strong and slow, and it was Han's own rhythm, and Han's breath caught.

"Careful," Mo said. "I'm trying to be patient."

"Why?"

"Because I've been dreaming of your hands for three hundred years, and I don't want to finish in the first minute."

Han undid the ties of his own robe, and Mo's eyes followed every inch.

"Zhaohe," Mo said, almost to himself.

It was the first time he had said Han's given name.

It went through Han.

He pushed Mo's trousers open and wrapped his hand around him, hot and heavy, already hard and slick at the tip.

Mo's head fell back against the bedpost.

"Fuck," he said. "Yes. Like that."

"You're very big."

"That's usually considered a compliment."

"It was an observation."

Mo's fingers wrapped around Han in return, and Han's knees nearly went.

They moved together, awkward and then not, hand over hand.

Every time Han stroked, Mo's pulse jumped under his other palm, and every time Mo stroked, Han's pounded back into Mo's chest.

Mo slowed Han's heart again, only for a moment.

Han's whole body went tight, shaking on the edge, and he could not come.

"Xuan..." He bit it off. "Please."

"What do you want, Marshal?"

"Let it go."

Mo let go, and Han's heart slammed into a gallop.

He came with a cry against Mo's shoulder, shuddering over both their hands.

Mo followed a breath later, his low growl rolling through Han's bones.

They stayed like that, foreheads together, Han's palm still on Mo's heart.

"Hm," said Mo, when he could speak. "That didn't loosen it either."

"I'd say it was the opposite."

"I'd say you're right." The corner of his mouth lifted. "How inconvenient for both of us."

Someone hammered on the door.

"Marshal!" Qin Shu's voice cracked. "Marshal Fu's banner has crossed the Southern Gate!"

Han's heart, still in Mo's keeping, gave a sick, cold lurch.

Mo felt it.

"Who," he asked, quietly, "is Marshal Fu?"

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