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pray to me | stayrus

sum: every other day, you returned, drawn to the temple like it possessed a heartbeat that synced with yours. initially, it was to clean; to repay that unseen kindness it offered when the storm cut like needles that night. the more you visited, the more the temple started to feel like it breathed. tonight, the candles at the altar all burn for you. cw: fallen!god au, female anatomy described, cunnilingus, yearning, praise, light degradation, restraints, explicit language, size difference, belly bulge, brief alcohol mention, overstimulation, pain before pleasure, 12k wc notes: phew! after nearly a year of putting this off since sylus’ second myth, it is finally here. thank you @darkeskye for putting up with my whining and imposter syndrome, and for helping me get through this. thanks so much for reading! recommended tunes.

The steering wheel rattles in your palms as your Jeep weathers the familiar road pebbled with stones.

The sky streaks orange behind you, a smudge of pastel colors colliding with the pristine sea. Seabirds chant in the distance. Wayward branches slap against your windshield as music fills the cabin.

It’s peaceful out as the day lazily concedes to nightfall. It’s been calm on this road lately, as if some greater force is holding the heavens apart to make your journey less arduous.

You arrive at a clearing haloed by towering trees. Roots crack beneath your tires when you draw the vehicle to a stop. You kill the engine, the serene burr of the forest unfolding as if welcoming you with a red carpet.

A smile warms your lips. Something near excitement slowly puddles in your chest.

Peeling yourself from the driver’s seat, you round the vehicle to fetch your pack from the trunk. After slinging it onto your shoulders and adjusting the straps, you glance skyward, hand raised to shield your eyes from the sun’s brilliance.

Amber light dapples the ground through the leaves above. It’s enough to get you to your final destination with daylight to spare.

Looking to the sloped path ahead, adorned with local flora and sea-weathered trees bending outwards like they’re bowing, you test the durability of your soles before beginning your hike.

It’s humid. Not unpleasant, but enough to bathe your skin in a dewy sheen of sweat. The path is too narrow and steep for your Jeep to navigate. Not that you mind walking, with distant ocean waves licking the shoreline and wings fluttering in the treetops, offering you company.

You know this trail like it’s etched onto the surface of your brain. How many steps it takes before reaching the cliff. Where the density of the forest fades, where mangled roots and loose gravel yield to stone. It’s become something of a weekly pilgrimage. A ritual sewn so deeply into the fabric of your routine, you feel antsy when you don’t make it out to this side of the island.

By the time you reach the top, winded yet exhilarated from the climb, a familiar stone arch greets you, its tip shining like polished gold held to the sun. It scrapes the sky, half-buried under moss and vines winding through cracks formed from years of disrepair. Despite its age, it’s still impressive, siphoning your breath when your shoes scrub to a stop at its threshold.

As you ascend the stairs leading past the archway, you’re flanked by two statues on the rails, eroded by time. One is birdlike, massive wings folded towards a bowed back, a talon raised in offering. The other statue is broken in half—destroyed by the storms, no doubt—with a stone bowl at its feet.

You recall the words of the locals as you pull on your pack’s strap, how their eyes creased with wistfulness whenever you inquired about this place. They recited the same line as if it were second nature. A quiet, mindless part of their culture whispered down since their ancestors inhabited this island.

“To receive, you must give selflessly.”

You pat the partially intact sculpture on its crown before ascending the remaining steps.

The entrance trembles when compared to the temple beyond, hidden at the top by centuries of overgrowth.

Wild ivy coils around cracked columns. Warped trees push through the remnants of a collapsed roof, replacing it. The temple’s inner sanctum is mostly intact, save for uneven stones jutting from the floor, moss blooming from the seams, and the walls yellowed by time.

When compared to how it looked a few months ago, it’s a pleasant change. No longer covered with graffiti or littered with beer cans and broken glass left by squatters. The air is still rife with dust, mildew, and sea spray. But the temple seems more alive now. Like it’s slowly releasing a centuries-old breath, courtesy of you putting your hands and Amazon Prime to good use.

Removing your backpack, you collapse the distance between you and the altar. Kneeling, you swipe a careful hand over the textured dais, a plume of dust stirring in the remaining sunlight. It’s warm here, an ancient, featherlike glyph carved into the platform’s surface beneath your palm. The warmth reminds you of a hand holding yours, squeezing it in a wordless greeting.

After admiring the cipher for a beat longer, you set your bag down beside you. The jarring sound of the zipper reverberates off the high walls, competing with the waves crashing against the cliffside. Once opened, you procure a set of gifts from inside, coupled with your textbook and a water canteen.

In your palms, you cradle vibrant hibiscus flowers—replacements for the wilted ones on the altar you brought last week. Next comes a cheesecloth filled with pastries you snagged from the night market. There would’ve been more, but someone couldn’t resist sampling some, the tart marriage of blackberries and dough reminding you of home.

Lastly, you place the blanket, frayed at the ends but thoroughly loved with your scent enmeshed in its intricate weave, onto the altar. It’s brought you comfort many nights. Maybe it’ll help warm whatever cold soul still haunts this sacred place.

They’re mindless, the things you bring. Thoughtless. Pieces of you that would be useless to someone else.

You never expect anything in return when you visit. Never anticipate anyone, let alone a god, responding to your voice carrying prayer and mindless chatter. But it feels nice to bring something, even if it will rot and collect dust, to the place that offered you reprieve when the storm cut like glacial, jagged sheets across your skin that night.

When you’re satisfied with your arrangement, you lean against a wall, a contented sigh pushing through your nostrils. You swirl the canteen in your hands after a swig, watching as the final vestiges of sunlight wane through the canopy, giving way to the soft spill of stars and moonlight.

Before the clouds sweep in, you begin the other half of your ritual, pulling a lighter from your pocket and bounding around the temple to light the candles you brought some months back. The sanctum blooms with soft light, growing warmer like a hug to thank you for chasing away the darkness.

You cross the temple again to pick up your book, hunkering down in an alcove to review some study material.

You enjoy coming here, escaping from the languid buzz of the town on the island’s other side to bask in the serenity. There might not be a god left here to worship, to bring offerings to, to exalt. But that’s alright.

To you, this place is a living, pulsing thing left behind in his absence. And, like a fallen god, it grows lonely when there’s no one left to scrub spray paint from its walls and to sweep cobwebs from its jaded ceiling.

Essentially, you’re comforting this shrine. Safeguarding it. Repaying it for sparing you space beneath its wings, sheltering you until the waves calmed and the lightning receded.

With your book in hand, knees tucked to your chest, and a quiet smile warming your face, you let the waves and wind threading through the treetops comfort you, blissfully unaware of the shadows opposite the altar pulling away from the candlelight’s dance.

—

In the native tongue, he’s known as Stayrus.

Owner of the sacred temple you’ve converted into a book nook.

In your language, his name translates to Sylus. Not nearly as cool as the former, and in your humblest opinion, just as easy to pronounce.

After that fateful night his sanctuary shielded you from the storm you wandered into, you did some digging.

You were pretty new to the island. A wanderer seeking reprieve from the city, hoping to continue their studies somewhere less fast-paced. More ambience. More freedom. You were a beach baby at heart, pining for the salt-stained air and sand scraping the interstices of your toes.

Through the local markets, fishing boats docked at the shore, and some sketchy Google searching, you’d gleaned that Stayrus was once a prolific god. He’d also become a fallen one as the centuries progressed until he vanished like the smoke of a pinched-out flame.

Stayrus. God of Wealth.

Not the sort of deity who blessed greedy merchants with gold and fattened monarchs’ pockets. He didn’t pull mermen from the sea, dropping them at the feet of fishermen unwilling to work for his blessings. Coins didn’t rain from the sky following a thoughtless offering, and paupers weren’t suddenly donning priceless gems on their fingers.

No.

Stayrus governed true abundance. Prosperity earned through courage, resiliency, and a little patience. Fortune amassed from weathering storms, literal and figurative. He rewarded diligence. Sweat. Blood. Sacrifice. Selflessness.

Once, his shrine overlooking the coast was a popular pilgrimage site. Sailors left rum and tokens bearing the silhouettes of their ships at his altar. Farmers placed baskets of the first blooms of their harvests at the entrance. Traders adorned the steps with jewel-encrusted urns and lamps. His shrine once glittered like gold in the setting sun, it was so full of gifts. Couples tied red strings around the pillars, binding them to their clasped hands, praying for an unyielding future together.

But, like the tide, the worship waned. Empires came and fell. Beliefs changed. The world moved on, and people all but forgot about the beautiful deity who kept the sea in harmony and the town prosperous.

At first, the natives didn’t speak of him to you as if they were taking part in a casual conversation about the weather.

When you first inquired about the decrepit temple hidden by time and overgrowth, everyone looked at you like you’d grown a second head. Their gazes were flighty when they glanced at each other, as if you’d dug up a piece of the island’s past that should’ve stayed a murmur beneath the sand.

You gently pressed until someone caved. An older native, grey hair gathered in a braid down her back, hands weathered and mottled by years working in the sun. With a reluctant sigh, she dropped the dried sage into her basket, dusted her hands off her apron, and cautiously took you by the wrist.

She tugged you beneath the awning of her shop, glancing about with wariness lining her worn features. After wetting her lips with her tongue, she cradled both your hands in hers. Spoke low, the ambience of the beach threatening to swallow her words whole.

“Our ancestors called him The Keeper of Full Hands.”

You snorted at that, biting your lips when the older woman shot you a look. People weren't very good with names around here, were they? Ah well. You couldn’t complain. Stories passed down through word of mouth were more valuable than crumbs of information scraped from Reddit.

Through her, you learned that Stayrus wasn’t merely the God of Wealth because he could craft gold from thin air and grant impossible wishes.

He blessed people with what they needed rather than what they wanted. Food to survive the elements. Luck to keep the turbulent waves from sinking ships. Enough fortune to provide for their families. Shelter to stave off the world’s cruelty. Sunlight for their crops—despite how much he was rumored to abhor it—and rainfall to feed the fields that sustained livestock.

“Abundance without greed,” came her wistful words as she studied your hands clasped in hers. Crow’s feet creased her eyes when she peered at you with a smile. “That was his way. The words passed to us from our families and beyond.”

You continued to listen intently, your heart in your throat, after she guided you to sit whilst she finished stringing up her herbs and gave you her back.

“He punished greed. Thieves. Those who took more than what was given and thrived off the misery of others.”

The woman scooped up another handful of herbs, continuing her ritual of tying them together to be sold at her stall. Her voice steeped like she was winded. That, or like speaking of the fallen deity aloud would somehow invoke him after centuries of silence.

“The last noble family that lived here tried to tear down his temple. They pilfered the offerings left at his altar and pocketed them. Desecrated the walls with nonsensical symbols for their own rituals. Spoke ill of him like he was an imposter masquerading as a god.”

Wiping sweat from her brow with the back of her hand, the shopkeeper laughed, her eyes lighting with the remnants of her youth. The sea breeze swept in, pulling some hair loose from her braid like the elements were taking part in her mirth.

“The sea swallowed their estate within weeks of them moving here. Crumbled up with the cliffs. No survivors. Not even rubble to show for it.”

A glacial chill racked your spine. You huffed an anxious breath disguised as a laugh, toying with the threads of your clothes. Whoever Stayrus was, he was no one to sneeze at.

Gratefully, the older woman continued, disrupting the fear pricking your chest.

“Times have changed since then. People no longer exalt gods who demand humility. Humans want wealth that grows without end. Instant gratification. No giving to receive.”

With her hands resting at the edge of the table, the woman exhaled, slowly looking at you with somberness knitting her brows.

“Stayrus taught my ancestors balance. Punished wastefulness and those who demanded excess. He believed in gratitude over obsession. When we forgot that, he disappeared.”

Her eyes softened when you stood beside her, leaning against the table’s edge with your arms crossed over your chest, lips scrawled into a pensive line.

“Stayrus’ sanctuary fell quiet. He stopped answering prayers. Stopped holding back the storms. With time, reverence became fear. Fear bred hatred. And soon, everyone just…stopped believing.”

Following a dramatic pause, the woman pressed a bundle of lavender into your hands. Pat your wrist for good measure before returning her attention to her basket. The shift in her demeanor nearly gave you whiplash.

“If you ever go up to his temple, bring an offering. He might be dormant now, but who’s to say he isn’t waiting for someone worthy to bring him back?”

The grin she flashed didn’t bode well. Had you been more attentive, you would’ve realized she was foreshadowing your fate. Almost like she was in cahoots with the slumbering deity.

“Back then, he favored sincerity. Be intentional with what you bring and what you ask of him in return. To receive, you must give selflessly. If you’re patient, maybe he’ll bless you after all this time.”

With that, the conversation petered out, making way for the symphony of dried shrubbery working between the woman’s hands, her soft humming amid the caw of passing birds, and your pulse quivering in your neck.

—

Tonight, the temple breathes differently.

It’s still warm, offering its hands beneath the soft spill of stars like a god extending mercy to those without a home to return to. But its heartbeat feels slower. A docile beast beneath your palm as you walk into its maw, touching the wall like an archeologist unearthing a hundred-year secret.

Your veins are warm with rum. The friends you made in town insisted you try some when you wandered to the beach to wet your feet. They looked wary when they tried to invite you to the boardwalk, and you insisted you had somewhere else to be. Almost like everyone knew something you didn’t.

It’s been a week since you last set foot in Stayrus’ temple.

The candles you arranged on the windowsills remain untouched, wax pooled around their stems. There are a few leaves scattered on the ground. Brine in the air. But the shrine otherwise looks the same way you left it—tidy, sleepy, quiet, godless.

Your offerings at the altar lay unchanged, save for the hibiscus flowers curling into themselves in decay.

“Sorry,” you murmur with a kneel, sweeping away the wilted petals, and replacing them with fresh blooms your new companions helped you pluck. “Got caught up with life. Forgot to stop by and say hi.”

You run your hand over the raised dais in apology. Talking to an inanimate object—a temple—like it’ll answer back. Accept your bid for penance. There’s a new candle in the altar’s center, the wick white and unburned. You don’t recall it being there before, but you don’t always keep track of everything you leave here.

Luckily, you keep the lighter tucked in your pocket. You light the candle, the slow exhale of the flame dancing over your features. You murmur a prayer to the sea-salted air. Words of thanks. Another apology. Sorry for leaving you alone. For taking so long to come back.

Like always, you don’t expect a reply. Sometimes just talking helps you feel a sense of peace. A god needs memory to live. Even if you’re the only person to keep that flame of remembrance burning, you figure it’s worth a shot.

Your lids lower as you slump against the altar, a small smile twitching your lips. You’re feeling good from the alcohol. Not completely gone, but that pleasant sway between coherency and inebriation.

It isn’t until the candle flickers, quivering like a skittish animal in your periphery, that you sense a change in the atmosphere.

The air feels heavier. The silence is fuller, your ears ringing to dampen the symphony of the forest birds and insects outside.

A whisper touches your ear. What feels like deft fingertips, graze your shoulder. You spin towards the source of the disquiet, your eyes landing on the moon-laden path of the ruins’ entrance, inebriation a distant memory.

Something feels off in a way you can’t describe. A roiling, pinching feeling in your stomach, hairs standing ramrod stiff along your body, instinct telling you this isn’t right.

You stand and investigate, convinced that some kids are playing a prank on you. When you find no one but the outline of tree branches on the stone steps, you lean against the threshold, trying to gather your bearings.

Maybe you shouldn’t have drank. Because when you glance at the altar, you swear the shadows behind it are moving. Stretching, warping, yawning like a long-slumbering beast awoken from its nap. And the candles perched by the windows—they’re lit.

When the shadows peel away, retreating behind the column, fear roots you to the spot. Your eyes tend to play tricks on you, but not to this extent.

The particles in the air shift, piling into something ominous. An amorphous figure takes shape. You hold your breath when it steps from behind the column as if summoned from the darkness, slowly uncovering itself like waves pulling back from the sand.

It moves, unhurried, languid, like it knows you. Like it’s been waiting for you longer than you can fathom.

Your heart pulses with each measured, bare scrape of feet against the temple’s floor.

An ivory cloak trembles as it moves, trimmed with gold that catches in the moonlight and beads that rake the ground. Scarlet glows from beneath, burning down to the hulls of your soul. The figure, a good head and shoulders above you, stops at the altar’s side, making even the shadows shudder in their presence.

“You’re late,” croaks the sanctum’s new occupant, speaking as casually as they would to a longtime friend.

It’s pleasant yet unsettling, that voice. Gruff yet disarming. Ancient. Otherworldly. A sound mortal ears weren’t meant to hear. You don’t know whether to run or remain still. And then, the being peels back the hood of their cloak in a dramatic flourish, your eyes widening with the revelation.

The air thickens around you. You can’t help but stare, nearly swallowing your tongue. The being—a man—scrutinizes you with his lips drawn into a pensive line. A furrow between his brows. Hair reminiscent of seafoam, half-tied in a knot, whilst the rest waterfalls off his shoulders and down his back.

The silence threads itself into something restricting. A snake coiling around your neck, threatening to cut the air from your lungs. The pressure he emits feels familiar, like the coast’s warmth coalesced into one.

So distracted by this man’s beauty, you hardly register his earlier statement until reality slams back in, and you blink rapidly, trying your damndest to sober up.

“I’m sorry, what?”

The man shifts, one hip poked out, arms folding over a broad chest. Even through the hang of his cloak, you can make out the masculine shape of his body. His expression doesn’t change. Still annoyed that you could be so daft.

“You’re late, mortal. You were gone for far too long.”

His words hang in the air like the brine from the sea, like the moon rays pouring through the canopy above, limning him in its ethereal light. They’re more of a statement than a question. An admonishment wrapped in the celestial calm of a deity.

Deity?

Wait…what?

Realization descends, your mouth agape. You’d read about this—details of the once prolific God of Wealth.

The locals fed you scraps of what he looked like. Yellowed journals from ancient seafarers you found in the library gave you brief descriptions. Forum posts and artistic renditions online barely quenched your curiosity. The accounts varied, though some things remained consistent across each encounter: white hair, red eyes, a youthful face, an unmistakable nose.

Something tightens in your chest. Your throat burns. Adrenaline spumes like lava through you, your body caught in a state of fight-or-flight. Any normal person would likely run, never to return. Bury the memory of what they saw in the deepest regions of their mind.

You?

You…you laugh. Incredulously. Fearfully. Still a laugh despite the gravity of your situation. Not only has a god, once thought to have disappeared from this world forever, manifested himself before you, flesh, ichor, beating heart. But now he’s scolding you.

Blinking, you scrape your nerves from the ground, an anxious tilt to your lips. “Uh, yeah. I had plans, and…things happened. Wait, what the hell am I saying?”

You shake your head, hoping to call up some sense. You have to be dreaming. A product of sleepless nights and stress from overwhelming yourself with your studies. Maybe the alcohol still singing your skin. No matter how much you try to make sense of things, the glowing man in white doesn’t leave, still very much real, and…is he pouting?

The being narrows his eyes, looking like you’ve just insulted him. “You used to visit me religiously,” he says, his voice thick and carved from centuries-old stone. “Then you vanished for a week as if the sea swallowed you.”

Unfolding his arms, the man—whom you’ve accepted is Stayrus—steps forward, the jewels lining his cloak clinking with each movement. He doesn’t release you from the pull of his gaze, halfway cautious like he’s approaching a wounded, cornered beast.

“Your offerings stopped. The temple grew quiet. Your absence was louder than the tide.”

Your neck strains as you behold him. He’s close, exuding the heat of the sun and smelling of cloves and incense and freshly-spawned moss. You can do nothing but swallow, as if the god has compelled you to remain anchored to this spot.

“Mortals do not simply disappear from a god who shelters them. Especially not the only one who still speaks to him.”

His pause is brittle. He looks to the side, reminding you of a haughty child. Your chest swells, your lips threatening to spread into a smile. You should be terrified. On your knees, begging for forgiveness. For your life. Perhaps halfway across the island, screaming bloody murder, thinking you’ve gone insane.

Instead, you brim with a warm sensation. Pride? Excitement? And—

Did…did he miss you?

As if sensing your thoughts, parsing through the layers of your silence, the deity continues, his voice steeped with thoughtfulness. “I had grown accustomed to you, mortal. While you were away, these grounds felt hollow.”

Almost as if he’d felt abandoned again, you finish internally.

You flinch when his hand lifts, tanned and uncharacteristically weathered for a god, expecting him to strike you for your insolence. For a crime you were unaware you had committed. Closing your eyes, you brace for divine punishment.

But it doesn’t come as you expect. Instead, you release an indignant sound when Stayrus, the immortal god of unfathomable wealth, harbinger of doom, capable of ripping this land asunder, flicks you between your brows.

Rubbing your head, you hardly have time to reel back before the deity bends, hands on hips, peering at you with eyes spun of playfulness and something undecipherable. His voice descends, soft, forlorn.

“Do not disappear without warning again, little mortal. I find I do not enjoy it. Not when I’ve grown so fond of your voice and the gifts you bring.”

That nearly knocks you off your feet. He was…fond of you?

He studies you the way the sun surveys the skyline before tucking itself away for the night. Your mouth hinges open, words dying in your throat. Somehow, you envisioned this would be easier, speaking with a god who’s existed as long as the universe.

What does one honestly say in this situation? Sure? Roger? It’ll never happen again, good sir?

Sensing your plight, Stayrus taps your chin, encouraging you to close your mouth. It’s brief, but it’s enough to ignite fire in your chest. His eyes shine with this youthful amusement that sends your stomach plummeting to your feet.

Since the English language eludes you, you meekly nod, still thinking you’re living through a dream sequence. A terrifyingly realistic one, where you can clearly make out the texture of his skin and feel the heat of his body seep into your bones.

The deity steps back when he’s satisfied with your answer, yet to release you from his omniscient gaze. You’re unable to help yourself in the impending silence, staring like he’ll disappear if you look away.

No book, alleged firsthand account, or exaggerated artwork can compare to the real thing. Not even your imagination can measure up to this.

Stayrus is devastatingly beautiful. So gorgeous, your throat wells, and your eyes burn with the promise of something wet. He’s not attractive in the conventional sense. Not in the way mortals describe each other. He is unimaginably ethereal. Could sink ships with a face like that. Cause the tectonic plates to shift with the size of his body, power brewing beneath the wispy sweep of his cloak.

His hair is reminiscent of moonlight refracted off calm waves. His eyes shine like dusk piling on the horizon. The aura he exudes is electric yet peaceful, and you feel it brewing in the chasm of your chest, branching through your limbs as if your body is trying to accept and yet reject this intense feeling of divinity.

Your pulse thrums in your neck. You swallow against the grit of your throat. You find your body responding in ways you wish it wouldn’t.

Sure, you’ve felt this underlying sense of unease each time you entered the temple. Each time you wandered to this part of the island. And it’s still there. But now, you feel something different. Highly inappropriate, starting with that pulsing, molten feeling coagulating in your stomach.

He notices the change, your nervousness, how your thighs press together. Of course he does. He’s a god, having known of humans long before they worshiped him.

Where you expect his expression to manifest as smugness at your suffering, he appears confused. A faint furrow forms between his brows like you’re ancient glyphs he’s trying to decipher.

“You feel warm, mortal,” states the deity, leaning close, his hand hovering near your cheek. He stops himself, unsure if he should touch. He may be a god, but you’re sure he’d think twice about harming the only human keeping his name alive. “Have you fallen ill as a result of my proximity?”

You want to smack yourself, hiding your mortification behind your hand. He sounds deceptively innocent, like he has no idea what effect he has on you. Surely, it’s been a while since he’s walked amongst mortals, because anyone with basic social skills could tell that you’re fighting for your life.

The beads of his cloak clack together when he lowers his hand. The knot between his brows loosens, his breath dusting your warmed cheeks, as if he’s slowly assembling the pieces of your puzzle.

“Your pulse quickens when you look at me.” Canting his head to one side, his eyes burn through the marrow of your bones, and you find it most difficult to hold his gaze. “Do you fear me, little mortal?” Your stomach sinks beneath the weathered mosaic of stone of his temple as his voice slinks into dangerous territory. “Or is there something else?”

The crown of your head tingles. Your ears ring with it. If you were a tea kettle, steam would billow from your ears. He’s so wonderfully close. So delightfully hot, and you feel safe. Safe like that night you first sought shelter in his domain. Safe like any other day you’d spent beneath the glittering dust and the overhead canopy.

You swallow as something cold yet hot blooms behind your ribcage. Wetting your lips with a swipe of your tongue, you hold his stare, willing your mouth to work with you tonight.

“I’m…not scared.”

It isn’t a complete lie. You’re not afraid of him. Not like you were initially when he called himself from the shadows. You’re more fearful of what you may say or do next if you’re allowed to stand here longer, basking in his godliness.

You sense it coming like a wave overtaking a crab and drawing it out to sea. You wince, steeling yourself against the inevitable. And when his question comes, it settles between you, heavy and unmistakable like the ivy-wrapped pillars jutting from the ground.

“Then tell me, mortal. What do you feel?”

No tease lives here. No arrogance of a god bearing himself to a human. He knows you’re out of sorts, wanting to draw the truth from your quivering lips. You make a distant sound in the back of your throat, fighting your legs to keep from shaking.

Words escape you, your silence making room for the ambient tune of the world outside. Stayrus takes your quietude as an invitation, closing the last bit of distance left between a mere mortal and a god.

Thankfully, your mouth moves this time. But it’s futile, forming around excuses that sound like mindless dribble, so you just end up looking like a fool. But the god doesn’t bask in your mortification. Doesn’t tease you for being at a loss for words. He, too, would likely lose himself if the beaded robe were on your shoulders.

Your breath stilts itself when his fingers raise again, loosely curled, cautious. You glance between them and their owner. Sift through his expression and body language for any intent to hurt you. When you find nothing but soft curiosity beneath the beaded headband encircling his hair, the tension between your clenched teeth relents.

Nodding, you don’t take your eyes off him after granting him your soundless permission to touch. The world narrows to a single point, the temple blurring into a feverish haze of color and sound. Your heartbeat thrums like a countdown in your ears. His fingers finally graze your skin, cool to the touch like the sand before dawn, and you both stiffen when you flinch.

After he ensures you’re still alright with this, his exploration warms to the soft glide of your skin. His knuckles ease down the slope of your cheek before dipping below your jaw. Instinctively, you angle your head back, allowing him more passage of your throat despite your nerves flaring like coronal ejections from the sun.

When the deity’s thumb finds the thrum of your pulse in your neck, and he presses down, so achingly gentle, he sucks in a quiet breath. Something in him stirs, startled by the warm flutter of a mortal’s heartbeat. To you, he’s unreal. But to him, perhaps you’re the specter.

Tilting his head back, his mouth spills slightly open, his eyes glowing like rubies uncovered from the sand.

“So quick,” he rasps, palm smoothing up the side of your neck, and the rough pad of his thumb passes over your bottom lip, tugging it slightly down. “Your heart runs to meet me as if it knows my touch.”

You shudder when his divine fingers descend lower, soft like a blind man testing the threshold of his other senses. Each graze of his knuckles sends a pulse of electricity through your body. He ends his excursion at the tease of your sternum peaking through your top, and the way you suck in a sharp yet quiet breath, blinking rapidly as if to shake yourself from a trance, makes his lips quirk almost imperceptibly.

“You respond to my fingers as if your body anticipates me.”

Just when you think he’ll be merciful, the god resumes his languid, innocent torture, his palm fully cupping your cheek. He thumbs the space just shy of your waterline, so tender, it aches.

You bite your lip against the threat of a keen. A sound dredged from the bowels of your chest. He tracks the movement, subduing a groan of his own.

You hate how your body betrays you. How your knees soften, something warm and moist pooling between the clench of your thighs. Do all gods have this sort of effect on humans, or is he a special case?

When his following words come, you almost anticipate them. A statement born from centuries of solitude, bound in this quiet yet dangerous yearning.

“You have given me so much, little mortal. Offerings. Warmth. A voice in an empty sanctuary.” His eyes still locked on you, he tracks the languid glide of his knuckles along your face.

Your lids lower from the tenderness of his exploration. Your breath lodges itself in your throat.

“You have given without asking, wanting, or taking. Maintained my temple out of the purity of your soul.” He pinches your chin between his thumb and forefinger, baring your wet, darkened eyes to the flickering candlelight and his scrutiny. “That is not the nature of mortals or gods. So, tell me.”

You feel it in your very being, the threads of your genetic coding, when his voice descends into something darker. Thicker with the heat you’ve heard of in his myths.

“What do you desire in return?”

Your heart trips over itself. Threatens to break free of your ribs. You blink, the air suddenly too dizzying to bear.

Sensing your confusion, the deity wreathes his palm around the back of your neck, his fingers delicately weaving themselves with the fine hairs at your nape. You don’t resist as he draws your face closer, falling into him like a star wandering too close to an event horizon. So close, you feel the warmth of every word leaving his lips.

“I have listened to you when you thought you spoke to the shadows. I know of your quiet thoughts. Your wishes. Your loneliness.” Scarlet, celestial eyes rake down your body, chilling your spine, numbing your fingers. “Your longing. Anything you ask of me, I will give it to you, mortal. Wealth. Protection. Companionship. Comfort. Or perhaps…there is something deeper that you desire.”

You release a soft breath, legs promising to give out. His eyes smolder at your response as if he’s perused your thoughts. Read the manuscript of your body, all too familiar with the signs of human desire.

“Ask, dear mortal. What do you want from your god?”

The word quivers out of you, high, thin, breathless. “Nothing.” You swallow, trying to steel yourself, but Stayrus’ oppressive presence makes it difficult to think. To stand. To breathe.

He watches your throat bob as you swallow. Strokes the space behind your ear with his thumb, reveling in how your pulse rockets each time he touches you. Each time he lightly bunches your hair between his fingers, and a gruff little noise worms its way from your throat.

“Nothing,” the deity parrots, tasting the word in his mouth like aged wine. His gaze flits from your eyes to your parted lips, back up. A maddeningly slow dance that stirs the dragonflies inhabiting your stomach. “You say you want nothing from your god, yet your body speaks to me in a language older than invocation.”

That nearly does you in. Heat branches from the pit of your stomach to your extremities. It clots in the space between your legs, throbbing, coiling, burning. Your carefully-constructed composure frays, burned away by a god already well-versed in the vernacular of yearning.

He feels it, too. The dangerous shift in the air. How the forest has quieted outside, the sea docile as if presenting a stage just for the two of you. He’s a god. Forgotten, but still not immune to the temptations of the flesh like a mortal man.

Tentatively, he raises his unoccupied hand. He observes the flutter of your lashes, quietly asking for permission to touch you more. When you make no move to pull away, his palm brushes your hip. A ghost of touch, a tease, but it still makes you gasp and shudder like you’ve been branded by a hot poker.

Stayrus huffs a soft, pleased sound against your mouth, weaving you deeper into the fibers of his spell. “You came here without expectation. I sense no greed in your soul. You gave freely. You took nothing. You kept me company and tended to my temple while others sought to desecrate it.”

He’s merciful this time, granting you reprieve from the swell of desire, the headiness, his hand clasping around your ribcage if only to feel the violent tremor of your breath.

“How could I not answer you, dear mortal?”

Your legs turn to jelly, the weight of his divinity too much to shoulder. He catches you with his hands at your waist, scorching through the layers of your clothes and flesh down to bone. His forehead finds solace pressed against yours, mouth spilled open with the effort of breathing as if he shares your desire, too.

“If I asked what you truly felt right now, little mortal, would it still be nothing?”

It wouldn’t, and he knows it. Your body betrays you, your mind following suit. You’re dizzy and entranced. Burning everywhere he touches. Wherever he breathes. Wherever he looks.

It terrifies you. You came here months ago, genuinely not seeking anything. But with him presenting himself before you like this—touching you like you’re made of stardust, like you wreathed the sky with the stars by your own hands—you want everything.

But you never imagined this. A god, this god, Stayrus, the inevitable, the bearer of wealth and wrath and humility, wanting you as much as you’ve burned for him. For his presence, feeling it bleed from every crevice and alcove in his temple, even when you thought he’d never manifest. When he’d permanently turned his back on humanity.

He wants you. To sate you. To repay you for your selflessness in any form. Physical, mental, carnal. You see it in his eyes. Sense it in his skin. In the warmth he bleeds. In the pinch and release of his hands at your waist. In how his mouth hovers, so catastrophically close. So tempted to kiss, to taste what he’s been deprived of in his centuries of solitude.

Would he truly give you that if you asked? Is it profane for a mortal to request something like that from a deity?

Swallowing against the dry grit of your throat, you lick your lips. “I…can’t ask for that,” you say, more to yourself.

Gently, he silences you, a single finger held to the tender swell of your lips. “You feel you cannot ask because mortals have been taught to fear yearning for a god.”

His words are a statement. A truth that sinks low in your stomach. You recall the things you researched. The advice given to you by the locals. It’s almost common knowledge that humans do not seek the flesh of immortals.

Drawing you from your mind, Stayrus drags his finger down your lips, crooking it beneath your chin, and tilting your head slightly back so that you can look at him. The pulse between your legs rabbits. It’s embarrassing. It’s obscene, and you’re convinced he can hear it if the corrupted glow of his eyes is any gauge.

“Your desire doesn’t frighten me, dear thing. You should not feel ashamed. I do not find offense in the way your body warms to me.”

His aura sweeps over you like a whirlpool, drawing you inwards. His presence is inevitable. A slow, creeping thing that doesn’t yet take, yet threatens to swallow you whole. His voice, if at all possible, dips lower, melting the air in your lungs. Your resolve. The common sense you try desperately to scrape up.

“You tremble for what you will not name, yet I feel every pulse of it.”

Your words come out croaky, shaky, shy. You hate it. “I shouldn’t…ask a god for something like that.”

A laugh, rolling like the threat of a storm, is his reply. “You misunderstand, little mortal. You are not asking any mere god for repayment for your selflessness. You are asking me. You may ask for anything your heart desires. Anything your body yearns for, and I will not deny you. I will not turn you away.”

You look into his eyes, head tilting, body ready to abandon you. He’s presenting himself on a silver platter. Practically pleading to satiate the unbearable thrum between your legs. But you’ve always been like this, haven’t you? Always felt like you never deserved anything. Like your sole purpose was only to give. Like good things weren’t meant for you.

Stayrus’ fingers lock around your hips. He tugs you close, robbing you of a gasp. Your hips become acquainted with each other, and the power he boasts—the shape of a god—presses against the apex of your thighs. You find yourself clinging to the spider-fine fabric of his cloak. Holding fast to the gold trim for dear life, losing your fight.

“Is your desire truly so unworthy,” says Stayrus, mouth hovering over yours, teasing, grazing, as he has every intent of kissing you, “that even I should be denied it?”

The truth hits you all at once. A point of clarity that caves in like sand filling a forgotten temple. You want him. Badly. Not his divinity, not his beauty that eclipses the moon and the unearthliness of the forest beyond his temple walls. You’ve desired him since you first set foot in his temple. A feeling you couldn’t name. A pressure you couldn’t give a corporeal shape because you felt it all around you. Gentle warmth. Protective silence. A strange, foreboding sense of being watched. Desired. Pined for without understanding why or how.

You thought it was your mind playing tricks on you. Superstition born of conversing with the locals and faint trails of your own faith, long forgotten. You never knew it was him watching over you this whole time. Keeping vigil whilst you swept the cracking, mosaic floors of his temple. When your hands were stained with paint and dust from scrubbing graffiti from the walls. When you placed offerings at his altar and spoke to the moon-flecked air as if someone were listening. As if someone were as lonely as you were in a place so big.

You never suspected that a god was listening the entire time. That Stayrus was there, listening so carefully that your voice became his tether to the mortal realm.

And now, he stands here before you. Around you. Inside you, filling your mind with smog and turning your limbs to vines. Divinity given form, beautiful enough to make your chest ache and your breath stutter.

Your throat tightens. Words come out tight and unsure. You’re overwhelmed by the truth. But you force it out, figuring you’ve gone long enough shoving your own wants and desires into the backseat.

“I…want you. I’ve wanted you for a long time. Since I came to this place.” You laugh, strained, embarrassed, wet. “Just didn’t know it was you I was feeling.”

His breath catches at your confession. His fingers flex on your waist. You swell with something unknown. A god holding his breath? Because of you? What other surprises could the night possibly have in store?

“You…felt me?” he queries, tone awed, soft, halfway wounded. “Even when I hadn’t yet taken form, you felt me? And you burned for my presence?”

You laugh again. A shaky exhale more than humor. You must sound insane. Desperate. Pitiful. “Yeah. Crazy, right?”

Where you expect him to ridicule you, to push you away and disappear, he surprises you. Then again, he’s been doing that a lot lately, subverting your expectations. A noise leaves him, dredged from the deepest reaches of his existence. He groans. A pained, bitten-off sound that prickles your toes and the crown of your head.

He closes his eyes, seemingly overwhelmed by you. Consumed by you in turn, sucking in a steadying breath. “Little mortal,” he breathes, his lips finding yours in a kiss that isn’t yet that, but it’s still enough to light your body like the candles lining his sanctuary. “You are dangerous. I fear you are not aware of the words you speak. How you manipulate me.”

He shivers against the fingers you have buried in his cloak. “Tell me again that you desire me. The god who awaited you each night. Who looked forward to your prayers whispered in the dark. Tell me that you mean this. That you want this. Want me.”

You do. So sweetly. So shy. So dizzy, slurred with warmth, eyes drooping, mouth trembling with the need to kiss him. “I..want you, Stayrus.”

The god stiffens as if you’ve burned him. His restraint is a delicate thing. A thread only a swipe away from breaking. “Then ask it,” he whispers, his breath cycling through your lungs as if it’s your own. “Say that you want my lips on yours, and I will show you exactly what a mortal who appeases their god receives.”

“Please,” you whisper like an incantation, your voice paper-thin.

Your cheek finds solace against his chest, his godly heart beating wildly beneath. You shyly nuzzle against him, your mouth parting, mind reeling. It’s embarrassing how quickly you succumb to him. How willingly you offer yourself to a god despite how wrong it is. But you don’t care about saving face right now. Not when you can barely stand.

“Hmm, my sweet mortal.” Stayrus draws you away from his chest, bringing your lidded gaze back to his. He smiles so sweetly, it rivals the blackberry pastries you’d leave for him to eat. “How could I deny you when you plead to me like this?”

Finally, finally, he grants you the mercy of his mouth. Presses his lips to yours like you’re made of moth wings. It’s a slow, deep, consuming kiss that siphons what little air remains in your lungs. You surge onto the tips of your toes to deepen the kiss, pulling at his cloak for leverage. Delightful tingles flow from your lips to your toes, swelling back up like a tidal wave to coagulate in your center.

He fastens you to him, his arm wreathed around your waist, his other hand molded to your cheek to keep you steady. His lips part yours, sucking in your quiet gasp, tasting you with a warm, slick tongue, pushing past the barrier of your teeth.

To your dismay, he breaks the kiss with a sticky click, and it takes all of you not to whine from the loss of his mouth against yours. Chuckling fondly, the deity taps your nose, taking in your dazed eyes, your kiss-bitten lips, the heat taking possession of your face.

“You beg for me so sweetly, sweet thing. Tell me. Do you crave more of your god’s touch?”

You nod drunkenly, not even thinking, your fingers taut in his cloak as you strain on the tips of your toes, desperate to kiss him again. He is massive. He is divine. He is a dream.

His body hums with power and warmth that threatens to turn your body into an amorphous blob. You don’t care about restraint. About dignity. About pride. If he doesn’t touch you again—if he doesn’t take you—you might die tonight.

Biting his lip, a gruff sound ascends from the wealth god’s throat. You unknowingly wield great power over an immortal. Your trembling obedience, your softness, your devotion, are enough to nearly bring him to his knees. He holds you by the waist like he intends to push you away, his body rigid with barely-concealed restraint.

“Please touch me,” you plead, sensing his hesitance, your arms locking around his shoulders. Your body burns. An otherworldly feeling you’ve never experienced. A pleasant one you never want to forget. “Take me,” you beg on a whisper, so wonderfully out of your mind.

Your voice is his undoing. His Achilles heel. He doesn’t speak as his eyes drill down into your soul. Instead, he moves, kissing you again. A god starved of pleasure for centuries, having the first taste of warmth like a man emerging from a desert’s drought.

This time, his lips are more possessive. His tongue seeks out the wet glide of yours with a growl, his hands raking across your body to find purchase at the globes of your ass. You’re dizzy, but he doesn’t stop. Not until you're breathless and leaning into him to stay afloat. Not until you’ve all but ripped his cloak from his shoulders, baring a tease of warm ivory skin to your greedy fingers.

His palms slide down, fingers tight around your inner thighs, and he’s lifting you without a second thought. Before you realize what he’s doing. Your legs intuitively wrap around his waist, and he carries you like a sacrifice to be bestowed onto an altar, kissing you like you’re his only source of oxygen.

The temple warps around you, the sounds of the forest, of the sea, or the world, dampened by your desperate panting. His groans, his breath syncing with yours, the beads of his robes clacking together and scraping the floor as he carries you deeper into the temple’s sanctum.

Stayrus’ mouth finds your throat, open-mouthed kisses that make your head loll back in open invitation, eyes closed, fingers buried in soft waves of moonlit white. He brings you to the altar as if he’s completing a rite. Tender like you’re the goddess he means to worship, and he’s but a mere mortal at your mercy.

You’re surprised to feel softness in place of cold stone at your back when he lays you down. In your periphery, you catch petals of various colors surrounding you. Flowers he used his powers to bloom, spongy, soft, welcoming.

He hovers over you like a starving beast savoring a fresh kill, eyes aglow in the moonlight streaming through the canopy above and the ivy-wreathed windows. Hair caught in an errant sea breeze, dusting his shoulders, falling into his face. He is the vision of dreams. Wild and divine and tender all at once. His hands smooth up the sprawl of your body, bunching up your clothes in their soft yet desperate exploration, and you arch into his touch, never getting enough of it.

“You will be worshipped tonight, mortal,” he promises against your lips, bent over you, hips notched between your spread, quivering thighs. “Not only for what you have given me, but for who you have become.”

He kisses you anew, his weight half-atop you, palms moving beneath your clothes as if he’s pushing away the frail barrier between you and divinity. Your legs lock around his hips. You sigh, head thrown back into the flowers whilst he brands your neck with the scrape of his teeth, the apex of his thighs pressing to yours like a lost jigsaw piece.

He disrobes you slowly after marking your shoulder. After he’s tested the weight and fullness of your breasts with his hands. After he’s sucked and licked your nipples to pebbled peaks, running the roughened pads of his thumbs over them in apology. He’s a god, once forgotten, finally found. You can’t blame him for being a little overzealous. You don’t fault him for finding solace in the warmth of your body. Your suppleness. Your scent.

You hold your breath when his hands leave your breasts, instead trailing down to your hips. He sinks with them, resembling a mortal man falling to his knees in worship. He doesn’t break your gaze, his eyes smoldering like wind blown over greying coals. Your stomach pinches at the prospect of a celestial being kneeling for you. And when his breath dusts the heat of your wet sex between your thighs, you nearly leave your skin.

Drawing your thighs onto his shoulders, your toes curling into the divots of his back, his eyes find yours through the lust-laden haze once more. He doesn’t ask with words. Instead, his gaze carries the question. A request for permission. You don’t deny him, nodding your head once before he nudges your lower lips open with a groan and a devilish mouth.

You tremble in his hands. A shaking fawn lay bare to the world. His tongue strokes you open, his nose finding the distended pearl of your clit. He tastes you. Acquaints himself with the language of your body, the whispered pitch of your voice. You writhe, the hot, wet suction of his mouth too much. Something you don’t think you’re worthy of.

He hums into the milky mess of your cunt, the vibrations curdling in your stomach, and he anchors your hips to the altar, one hand splayed across your stomach to keep you down, the other coiled around your thigh to keep you nice and open. Vines spring from the bed of flowers at your back, looping around your wrists, keeping them pinned above your head as he subjects you to the torture of his mouth.

Pleasure burrows deep in your stomach. You twist your head side to side, tugging against your restraints, trying to stave off that sparkling rush of sensation. It’s too good. He’s too good to you, licking, fluttering, sucking, chasing the undulation of your hips with his tongue, refusing to let you run from a blessing long overdue.

“Stayrus,” you sob, feeling your body spill towards that slurry edge of no return. “Stayrus, please. I can’t—I can’t—”

“You can,” he rasps in between his wet worship. “You can, little mortal. My divine thing. My sweet little love. Give in to me. Allow yourself this pleasure just this once.”

He groans something anguished when your thighs lock around his head. Your nails bite unforgivingly into your palms, the vines manacling your wrists, leaving pretty grooves in your skin. He doubles down on the flick of his tongue, putting his previous efforts to shame. You’re close. He can feel it. He craves it. He devours you, trying to sate the divine hunger that’s roiled in his body for centuries.

You fall apart as if he commanded it, your mouth hinged open in a shuddering gasp. A scream. A shattered cry of his name. Your body convulses, the air punched from your lungs, your pleasure washing over you like waves licking jagged cliffs.

He finally slows when your hips return to the makeshift bed, your mind blank, too full of pleasure too vast for a mortal body to contain. You shiver as he trails kisses from the inner sprawl of your thighs up to your hips, blistering your belly, up to your sternum.

His lips are wet with the taste of you, hair disheveled, cheeks flushed an ethereal shade of red to match his eyes, which burn brighter than any flame you’ve ever lit in his temple.

“Exquisite,” praises the deity, pressing his lips to yours with a languid kiss. You moan at the earthy taste of your body enmeshed with the flavor of his mouth. How he kisses so achingly tender, like he’s trying to draw the ichor of your body into his.

“I nearly forgot how fragile you mortals were. And how easily you break.”

Had you not been spent, panting for your life, and your hands bound, you would smack him. You would risk him smiting you if only to wipe that smug look off his face.

As if remembering himself, the ivy slowly recedes from your wrists, freeing you up to wreath your arms around the deity’s neck. He holds you by the hips, not wanting to crush you while you descend from the heavens, but his desire presses intimidatingly against the cut of your thigh.

“Will you indulge me a little further, my little mortal?”

Despite the bonelessness of your limbs, a new wave of want pulses in your loins. You want more, even as your body shakes and your chest heaves as if you’ve run miles through a dream. You want him to ruin you. You want him to claim every region of your soul, to make you wholly his. You’ve never felt pleasure so immense. You’ve never craved someone so desperately.

“Please,” you beseech so sweetly, your voice brittle around the edges.

With a smirk and slight nod, Stayrus rises to full height between your legs. Time is but a construct in this space of heat and wanton desire, your breath corking itself in your throat.

With one concise motion, the wispy cloak spills from his shoulders into a serpentine heap at his feet. The sound it makes when it greets ancient stone embeds itself into your memory. But not like the celestial visage before you, a sight you feel mortal eyes weren’t meant to witness, and you’ll never forget the sight, even in death.

A silken, deep-red cloth stitched with gold patterns and trimmed with the same weave at the hems sits low on his hips. A golden buckle, reminiscent of a crow’s skull, rests at the cloth’s center, seemingly keeping it tied to his waist. Beaded bracelets and a necklace, similar to that sewn into his cloak, dangle off his wrists and neck.

He is bloody divine. Sculpted. Towering. Every line and muscle of his body forged like a God of War’s statue brought to life. His chest rises slowly, breaths even while yours eludes you.

He is gorgeous in a way that makes your soul ache, and yet you can’t look elsewhere. Can’t think of your life before beholding his body, your eyes growing warm with a wet film of tears. His expression melds into one of ruefulness, and he bends to kiss your forehead, hands gathering up your face.

“Shh, my little mortal. Why do you weep?”

You can’t speak; his presence is overwhelming. His beauty, too much. The tenderness of his words, his hands, this moment, promising to draw you out to sea.

He litters your face with kisses, each one growing more delicate than the last, as if he’s trying to coax you down from the pedestal he placed you on. “You want me to ruin you,” he rasps against your quivering lips, swiping molten tears from your cheeks. “I will give you everything you ask of me. But I will not be cruel. I will take you apart, but in a way much older than the stars.”

You shudder at the thought of it, his hair gliding over your skin, his dangling earrings a cool contrast to your overheated body.

“Let me in,” he breathes, nudging your face with his nose, his hips slotted between yours. “Let me show you what true ascension feels like.”

He reaches between your bodies, his knuckles grazing the sensitive throb of your sex on its way down. The buckle holding the cloth in place clinks, and the sound of fabric meeting stone follows.

He watches you as you sit up on your elbows, and your eyes nearly bulge from their sockets. You laugh, a quick, unsure, incredulous sound that you can’t help.

He is massive in the ways that count. Long, thick, beautiful, framed by a dusting of white hair. Intimidatingly large, as if the laws of mortal limitations don’t apply to him. Your thighs shake when he takes hold of himself, dropping the heated girth of his body onto your pubic mound with a dull but noticeable plop.

Swallowing, you wince, your eyes flit to his. “Will that even—” Your voice cracks around the petered words, and it’s embarrassing. You’ve never…experienced someone so well-endowed, especially not a god.

His lips quirk when you make a silly gesture with your hands to signal the sheer size of him. His fingers curve around the inner cuts of your knees, dragging you down the bed of flowers with a sticky intake of breath until your pelvis slots to his, and the head of his cock nearly brushes between the undersides of your breasts.

“It will because your body calls to me. Because I’ve craved it in turn since the first time your hand touched my temple.”

Leaning down, he kisses you again, slower than before, as if savoring the taste of your shock. Despite the nerves flaring around your spine, you return his affection, arms looping around his shoulders, your thighs spreading wider to accommodate the wide span of his hips.

“I will take you slowly,” he assures, so sweetly, so indulgent, it makes your eyes sting with a new wave of emotion. “You will feel every inch of me inside you, claiming you, ruining you for any man who would dare to touch you after I’ve had my fill. But you will take me, my little mortal.”

The heat he exudes nearly crushes you. Your nails dig waning moons into his back in anticipation, and you hiss through clenched teeth when his shaft sifts through the sticky, overstimulated mess of your cunt.

“This,” groans the deity, the head of his cock delightfully nudging your clit, “was always meant to happen. You were crafted by the gods to take me. And I was manifested to adore you until you fall apart.”

When Stayrus draws his hips back a little too far, the head of him prods your slobbering entrance. You share a pleasured exhale at the contact, your bodies shivering, his arms flexing as he holds himself above you against the delicate flowers of the altar, trying not to ruin you all at once.

Finally, he puts you out of your misery. His tip presses against your entrance, impossibly thick, and your body seizes up, not ready to take him. Your nails rake down his forearms, spine arching, head thrown back with your eyes clenched shut. Your body protests, but your soul aches to be filled with him. To drink from him, to only know the shape of him and his words and his divinity.

He senses it, angling himself down with his weight gathered on one elbow above your head, his unoccupied palm finding yours, threading your fingers together in an unspoken promise. “Look at me,” he commands, his tone brittle like the last of his restraint is slipping through his fingers like sand through a sieve.

You caution your eyes open, and he is so fucking beautiful, it pains you.

“Breathe, my sweet mortal. Let me in slowly. Feel me. Do not tense up.”

It’s easier said than done—he’s not the one taking divine, engorged dick. Still, with a breath out, you will yourself to relax, your fingers tightening against his. Your gazes interlock in a quiet exchange, and when he’s sure you’re ready for him to press further, he does just so.

The stretch is cruel. Maddening. Aching. You feel like you’re being speared. Rearranged to make room for something mortal bodies weren’t meant to take. Tears spill down your face in hot rivulets, plopping unattractively on the pretty blooms beneath you.

Your god shushes you with chaste kisses to chase the hot leak of your tears. Lips pressed to your temples to soothe you. His mouth descending on yours to swallow those pathetic little sobs you can’t help but let out.

He pulls back his hips, then presses further with each grind forward, and you feel every inch, every vein, every twitch as he wars with himself not to break you in twain with one catastrophic thrust. He’s too big. Too deep. Too hot, and yet you don’t want him to stop. You weren’t exaggerating before when you said you would die without him nestled deep inside you.

“Shh, my sweet thing. You can take me.” His grip on your fingers tightens as if he’s trying to convince himself. “You are already performing so wonderfully. So brave, beautiful, and divine. This bewitching body was made solely to take me, wasn’t it?” His breath shudders against your tear-slicked skin, and he is on the verge of losing himself to the hot suction of your body.

You sniffle as your walls yield to him. Greedily suck him in, fluttering and clenching, rejecting and yet welcoming him all at once. Your thighs quiver. You claw up the expanse of his shoulders in search of anything to hold onto while you bear the brunt of his might.

He gives you everything that you can take. Patient, sluggish, godly, unreal. Pressed so deep that you feel him in your lower stomach, overwhelmed and somehow begging him to fill you further.

You whimper when he’s fully seated inside you. Instinctively try to curl into yourself. Lick your wounds clean, skewered, spread open, and bare. He doesn’t let you, his weight against your breasts to moor you down.

“Cry if you must,” soothes the deity. “Scratch me. Bite me. Mark me. But your body knows me. It wants me. It calls to me in the most divine ways.”

He’s thankfully merciful, giving you time to adjust to the sheer depth of him as the tears dry like wells amid a desert from your eyes. After the pain subsides slightly, making way for ricochets of pleasure humming through your body, you release a breath you were unaware of hoarding.

Stayrus drops a kiss on your lips. The corner of your mouth. Your cheek. Back to your mouth. So soft, you clench around him, and he groans, twitching inside you. “Are you ready to take me, little love? Are you sure this is what your precious heart desires?”

It’s a little too late to turn back now, given how deeply he’s nestled into your soul, how much he’s molded you around the shape of him in just one night. Figurative and literal.

You manage a broken, “Y-yes,” eyes wet, skin afire.

With your consent, something in him shifts. His eyes glow with it, a feverish flame like you’ve never seen before. He doesn’t take all at once, not like he burns to. Instead, he moves slowly like the lazy drag of a tide, pulling out until only the tip sits between your walls with an obscene hiss, then pistoning back in until you feel him blooming in your heart. The fullness of him has your back bowing off the altar, your toes curling helplessly at the divots of his back just above the swell of his ass.

Your mouth spills open in quiet, fractured whimpers. Your body tries valiantly to adjust, but it can’t. Not when it’s faced with something so unfathomably massive. Still, you take him, pushed further up the flower-dressed platform with each grind of his hips.

He watches you through hooded eyes, through the soft veil of his hair spilling around you like snow, the shadows cast by the dwindling flame dancing over his body as he splits you in two.

“You feel like heaven, taking me like this,” pants the god, thoroughly wrecked by you. “So warm. So tight. So good. So deep. You’re trembling, little mortal.” He strokes deeper, phosphenes darting across your field of vision in dazzling white. “Your body is trembling just for me.”

He pushes further still, hitting that spot meshed inside you so perfectly, you cry out. Your thighs lock around his waist, and now, he has both your hands pinned overhead, fingers braided together, your bodies moving as one.

“My precious little vessel. Feel how deep I am. How much of me you take, even when you thought you couldn’t.”

You open up for him again and again like flower petals unfolding towards the sun. He’s nestled so far into you that you feel him at the center of your very being. His abs knock against your swollen clit just right, and you know that won’t last much longer with him moving against you like this.

That sparkling rush finds you, starting its journey in your belly, unraveling like a spool of thread leaping off a table, throughout the rest of your body.

When you hiccup around him, panting, trying to make sense of your breath, the god leans down, his smile boyish, skin dewy with sweat when his forehead drops to yours.

“That’s it, mortal. Come for me. Show your god how much he means to you.”

You come with his name on your lips. Shaking, convulsing, gasping. You contract around him in waves that feel endless until you’ve soaked his waist with your essence, the fluid splattering obscenely on the ground, scorching down your thighs. You’re gorgeous and helpless and wonderfully his. He reminds you of that as the flowers grow brighter, fuller, burying his face in the hollow of your neck as you ride that cresting wave of numbing pleasure.

“Beautiful. Radiant. Perfect. Everything I’ve ever craved. Everything I knew you would be. You were glorious,” he lauds, his thrusts shallow inside you until he spills white hot deep inside, driven to the brink by your perfect body wrapped around his.

He comes almost ceaselessly. Hot, furtive spurts that dribble down your legs, dropping in thick plops on the ground.

He stays buried deep, shaking from the force of his climax. From your body clenching around him, from your nails soothingly raking down the space between his shoulder blades. His breaths are ragged as the pair of you descend, and he draws back slightly, weight on shaky arms, to litter your face with appreciative kisses.

You don’t know why it happens. Likely a consequence of the sheer amount of pleasure you’ve just endured. But consciousness slips away like a feather drifting from the treetops, left in the wake of a bird taking flight.

Just before you sink into the abyss, you hear something unfurl. Feel cool wind glazing over your dampened skin, before a soft pressure furls around your body, reminiscent of those wings that had shielded you from the storm those months back.

“I have you, dear mortal,” Stayrus lovingly rumbles into your ear, brushing the shell of it with his lips. “No harm will come to you so long as I have you wrapped in my wings.”

—

When you next awaken, you’re in your home in your bedroom on the other side of the island as morning light seeps in through your curtains.

You’re pleasantly sore, your skin welting from the thorns pressed into your back from the flowers, your thighs still swollen and slick. You ache in the best ways, the pressure of something thick and molten still carved inside you.

When you sit up, something wispy slips down your naked body. It’s not the familiar texture of your sheets nor the glide of your clothes.

A sheer, weightless cloak puddles around your waist, the telltale beads and gold adorning it catching in the soft light.

A whisper tickles your ear, a chuckle that pinches your stomach and threatens to reignite the flame once burning between your thighs like a never-ending ember.

“Rest, my beloved. You are never far from me. The temple is as much your sanctuary as it is mine.”