The last bale settled into place, and Garen stood upright, back arching a little in a stretch. “There,” he declared, “finally done!”

His companion dipped his head slightly. “Yes, sir,” the lion rumbled.

“What?” Garen laughed, winding an arm around the bigger creature’s waist. “It’s just us here, Shevar. You don’t need to ‘yes, sir’ me when we’re alone here.

Shevar nuzzled into the human’s brown hair. “I need to stay in the habit.”

Garen sighed into the lion’s shoulder. “Three months,” he mused. “Three months until we can get that collar off of you. Come springtime…” He drew his head back, a grin spreading over his face. “We can go somewhere we won’t need to keep a blanket in the hayloft for our time together, huh?”

Shevar blinked. It wasn’t hard to see where Garen’s thoughts were going – not with the smaller man’s hand tugging at the lion’s loincloth. He shivered. “Garen,” he whimpered, “what if someone hears?” It wasn’t exactly late into the night yet…

“They won’t,” Garen insisted, undoing his own belt one-handed, his other hand slipping under that loincloth. “And if they do, I swear to you it’ll be on my head. My risk, my choice. Hmm?”

Shevar groaned, pushing up into the human’s touch – and not just with the arch of his body. “I do want you,” he husked.

“It’s been too long.” Garen tugged his shirt free, dropping it atop one of the many bales of hay they’d brought up to the loft together. “Soon, though… soon we won’t have to scramble about.”

He slipped off his boots and trousers, the lion’s breath quickening, golden eyes intent on the sight. When Garen finally turned to pull Shevar’s loincloth away, leaving him clad only in a steel bondsman’s collar, there was already a finger’s width of pink flesh rising into the open, and the sight of that made Garen shiver in turn, licking his lips, feeling his own manhood swell and rise.

Shevar lay back on the blanket while Garen kneaded along his swollen sheath, tugging it back from the stiffening taper within. A bit of magic flowed through his fingers – yet another thing his family wouldn’t approve of and didn’t need to know – and the slight dampness at the lion’s tip grew quite copious indeed, slickness flowing down over the firming flesh.

As it always did, that flesh felt delightful sinking into him, and even better as he rose up, barbs tickling inside him with each stroke. The whimper that the lion muffled against his shoulder was as exquisite as the wet heat pulsing into him.

And then Shevar took over, easing Garen’s back onto the blanket, and the vigor of his thrusts drove the smaller man right back into the strewn hay. He yearned to cry out, to let the world know just how much this man pleasured him. It was all he could do, instead, to bury his face against his lover’s shoulder, muffling his hoarse grunts as more of the lion’s seed pumped into him, as his own spilled out over Shevar’s stroking fingers.

The scent of the lion, mingling with the smell of newly-dried hay, at least gave that discretion some present reward.