Altered

His sleep was plagued with strange dreams filled with fingers on his skin and cool lips on his brow.  The jar-bound denizens in the distant dark became an obscene audience while his body was explored by fingers with too many knuckles and not enough warmth.  The alien digits skittered over the angles of his jaw and over the flat plane of his chest and abdomen; when they ventured further down, panic fluttered up to clog his throat.

Too many fingers; far, far too many fingers were sliding over him and his skin crawled with a combination of revulsion and inadvertent arousal.  The adrenaline kick, the rush of fear, conspired against him to make him stiff and unreasonably anxious.  Every inch of his masculinity was explored by curious fingers and he couldn’t find it in himself to stop it.  He had a dim awareness of blankets being peeled back to expose him, though his eyes refused to work; he was left in a dream-world of sensation, devoid of sound or sight to dull his awareness.

Every touch sparked a new sensation; every caress jolted his nerves awake and fueled the hot pressure building in the pit of his stomach.  His very body was played like a rare instrument, with a skill and tenderness that spoke of a deeper conflict within the player.  Emery could only grasp the raw edges of that conflict and puzzle over it for a matter of seconds before the fingers dug a little deeper.  Sensation blossomed into a full eruption, one that left him crying out and clutching at the sheets for some sense of connection to the world.  An abstract lacework was left on his stomach, warm and slippery and strange.

Then something else descended and it took him a few dumb moments to realize it was a mouth and tongue roving over his abdomen to clean him utterly.  Lips that were too mobile; a tongue that was entirely too long.  The latter wrapped around his manhood to drain the last of him while leaving no trace of saliva behind to catch the chill of the room.  Then the greedy spirit departed to leave him reeling in aftermath of his waking dream.

It was the presence of a draft in the room that fully snapped him out of his slumber and wrenched him from the remains of his dreaming.  The blanket was still in place and, aside from a dull ache in his groin that might have been left from the intensity of the fantasy, there was no hint that his nocturnal visitor was real.

Yet, the door was ajar.

He pulled himself out of bed and shuffled toward the door.  The chair beside it had a robe on it and he grabbed it; for all that he’d been nude this whole time, only now, with the prospect of freedom, was he concerned about his nakedness.  The robe was perfectly fitted and comfortably warm, though he couldn’t help but wonder how many unfortunate souls had worn it before him – and how many might wear it after him.

He urged the door open and leaned out, casting a glance to either side.  The hallway itself was narrow and made of stone – the selfsame stone that the exterior of the castle was constructed of.  More sconces full of magefire were evenly spaced on both sides of the hall, providing dim light that was constant if not copious.  Emery hesitated and withdrew, but only to hunt down something to wedge the door open.  In the end, he settled on a small pillow, a thing that could easily be kicked out of the way if he had to return in haste.

Emery hoped it wouldn’t come to that.