Once Upon a Time (Calluvia's Royalty 3)

As if sensing his doubts, Rohan spoke again. “I know a merge is highly intimate, but it doesn’t have to mean anything. I’ll try to make it as quick and impersonal as I can.”

A strangled laugh left Jamil’s throat. “Can a telepathic merge even be impersonal?”

“We’ll have to try and find out,” Rohan said, shrugging a little. His voice dropped to a hoarse murmur. “Let me? Let me inside you? Just once.”

Heat pulled in the pit of Jamil’s stomach. Ignoring the voice at the back of his mind screaming that he was making a mistake, Jamil nodded dazedly.

Rohan’s nostrils flared.

For a moment, they just stared at each other. Then Rohan’s large hand cradled Jamil’s head, his thumb pressing against his telepathic point. A breathless sound left Jamil’s lips, his whole world narrowing to that hand and those black eyes. Warmth seeped into his senses, slowly, too slowly, sensation like no other spreading through his body. He could feel another presence entering him, and everything in him reached out hungrily, trying to pull it deeper, swallow it into him. Someone let out a breathless moan, but Jamil wasn’t sure which of them it was. It felt… it felt terrible and terribly good, the intensity of the connection both scary and perfect all at once. It still wasn’t enough. He wanted more.

“Deeper.”

“That would be… unwise, Your Highness.” Rohan’s mental voice was low and soothing, far warmer than his real one.

“Deeper.”

Rohan obliged, slipping deeper inside him, past the upper layers of his mind, toward his telepathic core. He seemed distracted now—annoyed by something. Thanks to their deep connection, it took Jamil only a moment to realize what was annoying him: his bond to Mehmer, or rather, the remnants of it still twisted around Jamil’s telepathic core.

“That thing is vile.” Rohan reached toward it.

“Don’t.”

“You do realize that it’s limiting your telepathy, right?”

“We both know it’s not the reason you want to remove it.”

A flare of irritation came from the other man, but Rohan could hardly deny it—not when Jamil could feel his thoughts almost as clearly as his own. Rohan’s presence wrapped tighter around him, something vicious and possessive about it. Jamil should have probably been bothered by that—annoyed even—but it was difficult to be annoyed by this inappropriate display of possessiveness when he felt so good, his nerves singing with pleasure. He could only drag Rohan deeper inside him, feeling his answering pleasure as they wrapped tighter and tighter around each other. Heavens... If Jamil thought he was drowning before, he didn’t know a word for this feeling. Pure bliss filled his mind to the brim, every sensation shared between them on every possible level, a connection so absolute that he had trouble telling where he ended and Rohan began. He’d never felt closer to another person. He could feel Rohan’s heart beating, he could feel the pleasure traveling through Rohan’s body almost as vividly as he felt his own.

It felt as good as sex.

That thought made Jamil imagine doing this during sex—and he shivered, imagining their bodies connected as intimately as their minds were right now.

“Stop thinking about sex, sweetheart. It’s weird.”

In any other circumstances, Jamil would have been humiliated. But with their minds so deeply intertwined, it was impossible for any awkwardness between them to exist. They felt almost like one person.

“Not that I blame you,” Rohan told him, his thoughts laced with soft amusement. “I know you can’t help it. I always had sex with women I merged with. It’s natural to mix up mental pleasure with physical one.” It felt like he was smiling. “That said, I would appreciate it if you could stop thinking about my cock. It’s a little weird. I don’t have sex with men.”

“It’s still stroking your ego.” Had they been having this conversation outside of the merge, Jamil would have felt mortified. But such concerns seemed so distant and irrelevant at the moment.

“Of course it is. I told you: you’re very pretty, for a man. It’s very flattering.”

“Stop calling me pretty. I don’t like it.”

A laugh. “Sweetheart, I’m so deep inside you I can feel what you’re really feeling and it isn’t offense.”

“Shut up.”

“You don’t want me to shut up.”

“Get out of my head.”

“You don’t want that, either.”

Jamil focused on what Rohan was feeling and said dryly, “And you think I have the most beautiful mind you’ve ever been in.”

But if he thought that would embarrass Rohan, it seemed he was sorely mistaken.

“You do, but it would be more beautiful without this ugly thing in it,” Rohan said, nudging the remnants of his bond to Mehmer.

“Your possessiveness is as baffling as it is inappropriate.”

“It’s the merge. I’m not responsible for feeling this way.”

“Convenient,” Jamil said.

“It’s the truth. A successful merge makes people feel a lot closer than they are out of it. Just as you wouldn’t want to have sex with me in real life, once we end the merge, I will stop wanting to rip another man’s bond out of your mind. It’s the merge, not us.”