Hungry

The Paladin Alcides had just returned from another successful quest — the defeat of the dragon Acheron, who had staged a hostile takeover of the kingdom of Hashaton.

He and his party made their way back to Hamlet, the small merchant and vacation town they had each invested in and called home. It was the kind of place that rewarded people who stayed. Chaehyun, their rogue, went straight to the orphanage she maintained on the east side of town. The fighter Surak broke off to rejoin his clan. Deucalion, their dwarf wizard, disappeared into his library without a word. Mayara, their monk, headed to her family’s restaurant, where she was probably already being handed an apron before she made it through the door.

Alcides went to the cold springs.

He sat alone in the water, bare in totality, and focused on his breathing.

He was a Highborn — someone born with celestial blood — but not of any gentle or gracious deity. His divine lineage traced back to Adora, goddess of excess in all its forms: bloodlust, feasting, lust of the body, hunger without limit. Most of her Highborn wore that inheritance openly. They became tyrants. Conquerors. The kind of people who fought and feasted and took what they wanted and called it a blessing.

Alcides had chosen otherwise. He chose the path of heroism, and so he channeled everything — the hunger, the heat of it, the pull toward violence and indulgence — into his work. Into the quests. Into being useful to people rather than consuming them.

It wasn’t easy. It was, in fact, a continuous physiological problem: if his heart rate climbed past a certain point, the impulse overwhelmed him. It didn’t matter what had raised it — a battle, a sprint, a poorly timed emotion. The lust would kick in regardless, indiscriminate and insatiable.

Defeating a dragon, it turned out, raised his heart rate considerably.

So he sat in the cold springs, alone, and waited for his body to remember that the fight was over.

Unbeknownst to him, Chaehyun was on her way to find him.

He’d recommended the cold springs so many times that she’d finally gotten curious — curious enough to skip the orphanage for an hour and see what the fuss was about. The hot springs on the other side of town had a perfectly good reputation. Whatever Alcides’s reason was for preferring these, she intended to find it out.

The front counter was staffed by an elderly elven couple who didn’t look particularly elderly — the way elves never quite did. The wife clocked Chaehyun immediately, her expression warming with the practiced hospitality of someone who’d been welcoming strangers for a very long time.

“Oh, a human! And such a pretty one.” She folded her hands on the counter. “Here to relax and recharge?”

“My friend Alcides recommended the place,” Chaehyun said.

The effect was immediate. Both of them brightened like she’d said a magic word — which, apparently, she had. Alcides was, it became clear within about thirty seconds of conversation, their favorite customer. Their most favorite. The kind of favorite that was keeping the business afloat and probably had his own unofficial reserved spot.

“We adore our hardworking little hero,” the wife said warmly. “Any friend of Alcides is a friend of ours.”

“He’s still in, actually,” the husband added. “The all-gender springs, if you wanted to say hello.”

Chaehyun nodded as she said “that would be lovely” before she paid, then found the dressing room, and smiled to herself. She hadn’t seen Alcides without his armor on — not once in all the time they’d traveled together. She was curious what he actually looked like under all that magic iron and steel. He’d mentioned once, almost in passing, that the armor wasn’t technically metal, but that was a conversation she’d never fully gotten to the bottom of.

The dressing room answered part of the question, at least. The armor sat quiet on a stool in the corner, waiting — there was no other word for it — as though it were simply resting until needed again. His weapon (Benevolent Regent) a great axe that could shift int a greatsword that could harness the powers of lightning and fire leaned against the wall beside it. Even sitting still, the room carried the faint calming presence that tended to follow Alcides around. Chaehyunhad never quite figured out if that was him or the armor.

She changed and headed out to the springs.

Alcides without his armor was not what she’d expected. She’d half-assumed there would be something godlike underneath — the kind of physical perfection that tended to come with divine bloodlines. Instead he looked almost plain. Almost ordinary.

Almost, except for his skin. It was a deep metallic bronze, and it was covered in symbols — crimson marks that were slowly cooling into blue as she watched, the color of them shifting like embers going to ash. She recognized the iconography. It was Adora’s.

She stood there for a moment, looking at him.

Adora was the goddess of excess — of bloodlust and feasting and hunger that didn’t know how to stop. Cruel. Capricious. The kind of divine patron that explained a lot of the worst people Chaehyun had ever crossed paths with.

And Alcides was — Alcides. Their moral compass. The one who talked them out of taking the easy road. The one who asked after the names of the people they’d saved.

She watched him for a moment before she said anything.

Part of her — the part that had spent years making a living by trusting no one — turned the situation over with professional suspicion. The noble hero act. The kindness, the patience, the careful moral compass. She’d seen people use a reputation like that before, building goodwill until the people around them felt indebted enough to overlook things. Was that what this was? A long game?

But the longer she watched him, the harder that theory was to hold onto. He wasn’t performing for anyone. He didn’t know she was there. He was sitting alone in cold water with his eyes closed, breathing with the deliberate focus of someone trying to keep something very large from getting out.

“Dez?” she said.

He turned around so fast the water moved.

“You can’t be here.” His voice was stripped of its usual steadiness — raw, urgent. The symbols across his skin, which had been a cooling blue when she’d first spotted him, flooded back to crimson. “I’m trying to stop the lust from overwhelming me and I don’t — I don’t want to hurt you, Chaehyun, you need to leave —”

She didn’t leave. She watched his eyes instead.

They were glazing. Slowly, the way a candle looks just before the flame goes out — or just before it catches something else entirely.

She understood, belatedly, what she’d walked into. Alcides had only ever seen her in her working clothes — the layered, silhouette-obscuring outfit she wore on every job. He’d never seen her like this. And now he was looking at her the way a man looks when something he’s been refusing to want suddenly materializes directly in front of him, and all his careful refusals are occupied elsewhere.

“Oh,” he said. His voice had changed — dropped into something low and hungry that she’d never heard from him before. “You should have shown me the real you.”

He rose from the water.

Chaehyun’s heart rate made a decision her brain hadn’t fully signed off on yet. She crossed the distance between them, grabbed his shoulder, and put him against the wall.

He let her. That surprised her.

“Why didn’t you tell us you were a Highborn of Adora?” she said.

He was breathing hard. The crimson in his symbols was still burning, but he was fighting it — she could see the effort in his jaw, his hands, the rigid set of his shoulders. His eyes found hers and held on like she was something to anchor to.

“Because I was afraid,” he said. “That you’d all look at me differently. See me as a rabid dog waiting to be put down.” A beat. “I’m not — I’m trying so hard to be good. I just want to do the right thing. You have to believe that.”

She did, actually. That was the problem. She’d believed it for a long time — longer than she’d been willing to admit to herself.

Chaehyun had been in the business of keeping her feelings practical and her expectations low for most of her adult life. It had served her well. It was, objectively, a very good system.

She kissed him.

She broke the kiss first.

Not because she wanted to. She broke it because Alcides had gone very still against the wall — not relaxed, but braced, the way a person stands when they’re actively preventing themselves from doing something. His hands were flat against the stone on either side of him. He hadn’t touched her.

She leaned back and looked at him.

“Chaehyun.” His voice was careful. Strained at the seams. “I can’t.”

“You keep saying that.”

“Because I mean it.” The symbols on his skin were burning a steady crimson now, and his jaw was tight with the effort of whatever he was doing internally. “This is exactly what I was trying to prevent. If I let myself — if I start —”

“Alcides.” She said his name the way she’d say stop talking to anyone else. “Who do you think is in charge right now?”

He blinked.

“You’re not indulging in me,” she said. “I’m indulging in you. There’s a difference. I came here. I kissed you. I have you pinned against a wall.” She raised an eyebrow. “Point to the part where you’re doing anything except standing there.”

His mouth opened. Closed.

“I’ve watched you for two years,” she said. “Do you know what that’s like? Watching you be so relentlessly, exhaustingly good all the time?” She said it without cruelty — almost fond, which was probably worse for him. “You talk every one of us back from the easy road. You learn the names of people we save and then actually remember them. You recommended a cold springs bath to me eight separate times because you knew it would help with my shoulder and you didn’t want to make it weird by asking about my shoulder.”

“You noticed that.”

“I notice everything. It’s my job.” She held his gaze. “I also noticed that you never let anyone do anything for you. You carry everything alone because you’ve decided that’s what keeping people safe looks like.” She tilted her head. “That’s not nobility, Dez. That’s just loneliness with good PR.”

He exhaled — a slow, unsteady thing.

“I know who you are,” she said. “Not who you perform for the rest of them. I mean the actual you — the one who goes to cold springs after every major fight, the one who white-knuckles his way through banquets, the one standing in front of me right now holding himself together with both hands.” She reached up and pressed her palm flat against his chest, over the place where the symbols burned brightest. “I want that one. All of it. I’m not afraid of you.”

“You should be,” he said quietly.

“Probably,” she agreed. “But I’m not. And I’m asking you — I’m telling you — to let go of being the hero for tonight.” She met his eyes. “Just tonight. You’ve earned one night.”

The silence stretched.

She watched him fight it — watched him go through every argument he’d clearly rehearsed for exactly this kind of moment, the ones he’d probably delivered to himself in cold water a hundred times before. She watched him find them all, one by one, and then look at her and lose them.

His hands came off the wall.

“One night,” he said.

“One night,” she confirmed.

The crimson in his skin stopped fighting itself. It just burned.

Alcides started by kissing Chaehyun. She smiled into the kiss as she felt his hunger. He grabbed her and carried her into the water. Her arms wrapping around his as their bodies adjusted to the mutual heat but also the numbing cool. After an hour of this Alcides broke the kiss and said “I’m starving,”

Chaehyun smiled and said, “well then let’s get that fixed,”

The two of them got dressed and left the cold springs the elven couple waving them off. They arrived stopped by a bakery the fish market, the regular market…pretty much anywhere that sold food and bought a lot of food and drink and the went back to Alcides home. It was a modest dwelling on the coast protected by simple magic to prevent erosion and sustain the open air concept that Alcides used to foster and deepen the community.

They walked in and Chaehyun marveled at the inside. Its warmth and cozy feel despite being a coastal residence, but she couldn’t enjoy it for long as Alcides was upon her again kissing her all over. His crimson mark glowing steady.

When he broke a kiss near her neck his eyes were completely crimson. Chaehyun smiled and said, “are you still with me?”

Alcides nodded slow eyes locked with Chaehyun hunger radiating from his entire being.

“Strip!” he said, his voice was cold firm and unyielding. It sent a chill down Chaehyun’s spine as she looked at him.

“I want to eat off of you,” he said

Chaehyun smiled and said, “well then I guess I should.”she stripped down before laying on his banquets table and she saw his rapacious gazes she smiled again and said, “well what are you waiting for big guy? Taste,”

Alcides stopped for a moment then said “I need you to drink this blood of Fire elemental potion first,”

Chaehyun raised an eyebrow Alcides paused then said, “I want to eat off of you and for that I’ll need to be able to cook off you. So fire elemental blood potion allows you to raise your external temp safely to where I can do both,”

after he spoke he chugged a potion of heat resistance as he did Chaehyun laughed and said “that’s hot,” before taking the whole potion in one shot. Chaehyun felt her body heating up before partially bursting into flames. Flames covered her body but she was thankful that she didn’t have clothes on as those would have been burned. She got back on the table and laid down invintingly to Alcides.

Chaehyun smiled as she watched Alcides almost froth at the mouth as he drooled all over her magnificent body, before readying the food, drinks and a pillow to rest Chaehyun’s head.

“How sweet. Even when you loose control you still treat me well,”

Alcides eyes narrowed and Chaehyun’s heart quickened.

He started with the fish across her tummy. Another shiver as the cold salmon filers rested across her belly.

“Oh” she gasped. “That’s cold!” She added

Alcides  looked at her and nodded.

Chaehyun laughed before he set two strips of thinly sliced steak on her breasts. The coldness of the Meat and the sensitive location caused another moan. She turns to Alcides and says “you’d better rock my world”

Alcides smirks handing her a salmon fillet which she happily takes

“Umm that’s good,” she says after swallowing.

As she speaks Alcides slyly leaves another slip of steak on her pussy. Chaehyun jolts and stares at Alcides. Her mood flash from sexual frustration to arousal. Which intensifies when Alcides takes her nipple into his mouth.

His eyes locked on her as he sucks steak juice and the slip of steak off her breast.

Chaehyun moans and yells “fuck me please,”

He goes between her legs and buries his face in her snatch. She groans as he barely sticks his tongue in her before she cums all over his face slathering him in her cream. He laughs then licks the slab of steak. He  smiled and said “you’re ready now,”