The Lion at My Altar

Dedication

To the Lion who found me. For the way you touched my soul before you ever touched my skin. For your fierce tenderness, your wild gaze, your worshipful hands. For turning my trembling into fire, and my silence into song.

This altar was always yours.

Author's Note

There are stories that whisper their way into existence, and then there are stories that blaze. *The Lion at My Altar* was born from the second kind--a story forged in longing, shaped by surrender, and blessed by the kind of love that refuses to follow the rules.

I wrote this not just for the lovers who break rules, but for the sacred rebels who love with fire in their veins and starlight in their bones. For those who have known what it is to be seen, to be devoured, to be held.

To write sensuality as sacred, eroticism as devotion, and pleasure as prayer--this is my rebellion, and my offering.

May this little fire warm your soul and light your own altar, wherever it may be.

With love,

Kavya

The Lion At My Altar

Chapter One: The Waiting

The Lion at My Altar

The house was quiet--too quiet. The kind of silence that doesn't hum with peace but aches with anticipation. I moved through the stillness like a woman haunted by her own heartbeat, every step echoing against marble floors and unspoken prayers.

I had lit the lamps. Not all of them. Just enough to cast warm halos over the rooms he might walk through. I wanted shadows. I wanted flicker. I wanted a hush he'd have to step through, as if crossing into a temple.

The tea was steeping.

The sheets were fresh.

And I--God help me--I was already trembling.

Two hours.

I had two blessed hours to have him, to hold him, to come undone with him. No one else home. No voices, no questions. Just me, and the thought of him.

I stood by the front door, one hand over my chest, the other wrapped around the doorknob I hadn't yet turned. My palm was sweating. My lips tingled with unsaid things. I wasn't wearing anything extravagant--just a soft wrap and bare skin beneath. But I knew, in his eyes, I would be a goddess. Not because of the silk. Because I was his.

I felt him coming before I heard a sound. My whole body knew. The air shifted, thickened, stilled like the world itself was holding its breath. My hands trembled slightly, my breath catching somewhere just behind my collarbone, as if my body was trying to prepare--but how could it?

And then, I heard it--

A quiet knock.

Three soft taps.

Not demanding. Not rushed.

Just... certain. Like a heartbeat that had always known the rhythm of mine.

I opened the door.

And there he was.

My lion.

My Sher.

Nothing could prepare me for the way he walked in.

The way his eyes locked onto mine like they had all day, but now stripped of pretense. The restraint was gone. The heat was there--raw, unrelenting--but so was the tenderness. And gods help me, that tenderness destroyed me even before his fingers touched my skin.

He didn't say a word.

He didn't have to.

He didn't smile right away. His gaze swept over me slowly, reverently, like I was the first sip of water after a long, brutal hunt. His mouth parted slightly. His chest rose with a silent inhale.

I didn't say a word.

I simply stepped back, and let my life walk in.

Chapter Two: The Arrival

The Lion at My Altar

The door clicked shut with a soft finality, and the world outside ceased to exist.

He stood there for a moment, still as moonlit stone, his chest rising with quiet reverence. The dim light caught the raven gloss of his hair, his rugged stubble, the outline of his jaw, the curve of his lips--lips that had smiled at me in corridors, whispered to me in twilight, teased me through time and space. And now... now they would worship.

I moved first.

Let my robe slip down from my shoulders.

Let it puddle at my feet.

He exhaled. A sound like surrender.

"God," he murmured, barely audible. "You're... you're everything."

My heart was a war drum in my ribs. But I didn't flinch. I took a step forward and laid my palms flat on his chest. Felt the steady thunder beneath skin. He was warm--burning, even through the fabric of his shirt. I wanted him bare. I wanted skin to skin. But I took my time.

I began with his buttons.

One.

Two.

Three.

Each one a breath. Each one a promise.

He didn't move. Didn't rush me. Just looked down at me with those eyes--tender, raw, lion-deep. As if he couldn't believe I was real. As if he'd been starved of this moment for lifetimes.

My hands slid under his shirt, up his back. And then his hands were everywhere--my hips, my spine, my hair--and it was too much and not enough and perfect.

When I slipped his shirt off, my fingers grazed his skin--and he trembled. Just slightly. Just enough.

I kissed his collarbone.

He inhaled sharply.

Then my lips found the hollow of his throat, and I felt the groan build in him. It stayed caged, barely. But I knew. The lion was stirring.

He cupped my face. Looked at me like I was sacred. The moment stretched, then snapped--and we collided. His mouth on mine, my arms around his neck, the low sound he made in his throat when I melted into him like I'd been waiting a lifetime.

Oh, that kiss. It wasn't sweet. It wasn't shy.

It was homecoming.

Mouths opened. Tongues met. And the world tilted.

The kiss was chaos.

Breathless. Bruising. Beautiful.

His tongue met mine like it had been aching to, like it knew the path to my undoing. I moaned into his mouth and felt the heat spike between us, thick and desperate.

He backed me toward the bed, one hand tangled in my hair, the other gripping the curve of my waist like he needed to hold onto something real. His kisses grew hungrier, deeper, wetter--until we collapsed together in a tangle of limbs and need.

And then--

He broke from my mouth.

Dropped to his knees.

And looked up at me like I was both altar and flame.

"Lie back," he said.

I obeyed.

I lay on the sheets like an offering. Breathless, bared, burning.

And my lion... began to feast.

Chapter Three: The Offering

The Lion at My Altar

My lion, my Sher..

He knelt between my trembling thighs like a worshipper at the altar of a forbidden goddess.

His eyes never left mine as he lowered himself, reverent and ravenous.

My breath hitched.

I looked down, and his eyes--oh, those hazel eyes--held mine while his hands pushed my clothes aside like they were in the way of worship. When his tongue touched me, I gasped--then whimpered, then forgot how to make sound altogether.

Oh holy Aphrodite.

May she raise a glass to us from Elysium herself.

For what happened next--

Was not of this earth.

There's no polite word for what he did to me--his mouth claimed me like I was his birthright.

He devoured me.

He ravaged me.

With hunger. With reverence. With a knowledge so ancient it must've been carved into him by the gods themselves.

He knew where, how, with what pressure. He moaned into me and I cried out, trembling, undone. He held me wide open with hands that were both gentle and unrelenting, like he needed to feel me fall apart to know he was real.

His tongue, that wicked, blessed weapon, made contact. And I drowned in the divine collision of soul and flesh.

I lost myself in wave after wave of pleasure so intense it left me weeping. My back arched, fingers twisted in the sheets, mouth open in stunned, feral ecstasy. I didn't moan--I wept. I bucked against him, undone, unravelled, caught in the holy inferno of his mouth.

Pleasure rolled over me in waves--catastrophic, yes.

But oh, that kind of destruction?

It doesn't break you.

It remakes you.

When I finally shattered--volcanic, glorious, sacred--he held me through it, still worshipping, still feasting, still drowning in the taste of the woman he had undone.

He reduced me to molten light.

To ash and stars.

To something holy that trembled and cried out his name like scripture.

And when I opened my eyes, I found him watching me like I was something sacred.

And when I gasped his name, voice cracked from crying out too much truth, he smiled at me.. devilishly.

Lips wet. Eyes wild. Face lit with devotion and something primal.

And I knew--

He hadn't just tasted my body.

He had drunk from my soul.

Chapter Four: The Worship

The Lion at My Altar

Then it was my turn.

He lay back on the bed--breathless, glistening, disarmed. The beast momentarily stilled, not from weakness, but from a surrender so complete it tasted like worship.

And I--

I became everything.

I couldn't let it be one-sided.

My lips brushed his chest first, kissing the sweat-slicked skin just above his heart. I could feel it thundering, out of rhythm, undone by what he'd just done to me. My hands followed--one tracing the line of his ribs, the other moving lower, lower, until I wrapped myself around the heat of him, divine, heavy, aching.

I dropped to my knees, trembling and hungry, and held him. The weight and heat of him in my hand made me ache deeper. I took him into my mouth slowly, reverently--like communion. And when I swirled my tongue around him with desperation I could no longer hide, he let out a moan that shook me.

Low. Broken. Guttural.

It tore through the room like prophecy.

And that--that sound--woke the she-wolf in me.

I looked up at him. His gaze was barely holding, pupils blown wide, lips parted in stunned desperation. But he didn't plead. Oh no. My Sher knew who I was now.

And then he whispered my name.

Like a lifeline. Like oxygen. Like prayer.

I trembled like a leaf. And I kept going, not because I had to, but because I wanted to worship him.

I descended.

My tongue met his flesh with reverence--slow at first, torturously slow, licking, tasting, claiming. My mouth closed over him, and I sucked gently, then with purpose. His hips bucked. His breath shattered. His taste, his gasp, the way he shuddered when I deepened--he was a man unraveling in my hands, and I loved him more for it.

And I--

I kept going.

Swirling my tongue, taking him deeper, stroking him with my palms--every motion guided by some sacred instinct, some ancient ache that said this man is yours--devour him.

"Oh--fuck," he choked out, hands fisting the sheets, body tensing.

And then--

He moaned.

Not just any sound. A sound from the core of him. Wild. Raw. Like a lion in chains coming undone.

It echoed off the walls and straight into my bloodstream. He writhed beneath me, caught on that impossible edge between holding on and letting go.

But I wasn't done.

I drew back--just enough to leave him gasping, shaking, whimpering.

His eyes flew open--wild, hungry, desperate--and they found mine.

And oh... what I saw in them.

A man on the brink. A king brought to his knees. My name trembled on his lips like a sacred word, the only prayer he could still remember.

And I smiled.

Not cruelly. Not sweetly. But like the lioness I had become. With fire in my belly and his power in my mouth.

Because in that moment, I wasn't just pleasuring him.

I was claiming him.

Worship and wildfire, surrender and sovereignty.

I was not his lover.

I was his undoing.

Chapter Five: The Conflagration

The Lion Devours the Sun

His wild, smoldering eyes locked onto mine in that moment--fierce, aching, infinite--and then, like a seraphic dance given flesh, he moved.

One moment I was above him, mouth-wet and worship-hungry. The next, his body surged forward--fluid and holy--and he was over me, around me, the heat of him pressing into every trembling breath I drew.

His body found mine with a hunger too vast for language.

The fiery hardness he could no longer contain sought my innermost sanctuary--and in that sacred, skin-to-skin joining, time simply shattered.

He paused just at the edge.

His breath--hot and trembling--kissed the curve of my neck. His eyes, wild and golden, bore into mine with a need so pure, it was almost unbearable. We hovered on the brink of everything. The world narrowed to the fragile, electric space between his body and mine.

And then...

He entered me.

The tip first--soft, aching, reverent.

My gasp was sharp and helpless. I felt every nerve ignite, stretching around him, fragile and ravenous all at once.

His hands, those strong healer's hands, framed my hips like sacred anchors, steadying the storm as he pressed in--inch by inch.

I couldn't breathe.

Every torturous inch of him slid deeper, and my body arched in exquisite surrender, torn between unbearable fullness and the desperate need for more. My fingers dug into his shoulders, anchoring myself to the only reality that mattered--him.

His breath caught. Mine scattered. And still he moved.

Deeper.

Wider.

Home.

The stretch was holy agony, and I trembled under him, each inch a revelation, a worship, a wildfire blooming in my core.

And gods help me, I clung--to him, to sensation, to the fragile edges of myself--because he was undoing me from the inside out.

His slow, relentless glide became rhythm.

His rhythm became language.

His thrusts, his retreats, his hunger, his ache--it was a sacred dialogue carved into flesh.

His lips found mine--soft at first, then desperate, crashing into me with the same rhythm that moved inside me. The kiss tasted of want and war, of devotion and destruction. We were molten.

I moaned against his mouth. He growled against mine.

Each thrust was deeper, harder now--his control slipping. His hips surged forward with a primal hunger. I cried out, not from pain, but from the unbearable rightness of it--of him buried inside me, thick and pulsing, claiming every trembling inch of me.

I wrapped my legs around him, urging him deeper still. Our bodies slapped, slick and burning, a crescendo rising from the pit of the world.

And then I whispered his name.

His real name. The one only I know. The one that's mine to say.

And my Sher--my Lion--roared.

His whole body went taut, buried to the hilt, as he shattered. His climax ripped through him like a storm breaking the sky. When he broke, he broke into me. I felt him pulse deep inside me, spilling fire and worship into my womb, shaking against me with a sound that wasn't human--it was divine.

He moaned my name--broken, reverent, as if it was his prayer and salvation all in one.

And I...

I wept.

Silent, sacred tears for the love I never expected but always deserved.

As he collapsed against me, I cradled his head to my chest, kissed the sweat-damp curls at his crown, and whispered the only truth that mattered:

"You are home."

Chapter Six: The Benediction

What Remains After Fire

Afterwards, there were no words.

Just the hush.

The kind of hush that falls over a world still trembling from divine tremors. The kind that follows sacred ceremonies, where everything has been offered and nothing more can be taken. The kind of silence that isn't empty, but full--brimming with breath and blood and the echoes of worship.

We lay there--twined, tangled, tear-soaked, and still.

His body, molten and bare, folded into mine. His head rested on my chest, cheek to skin, as if he could anchor himself in the heartbeat that thundered beneath. As if listening long enough would make it his own. As if he were trying to become part of me.

And I kissed him.

Not out of hunger this time--but out of something so vast, so unbearably tender, it cracked me open.

I kissed his brow.

His closed eyelids.

His stubbled cheeks.

His lips--soft now, slack with spent sweetness.

I kissed him like prayer. Like worship. Like I needed to press this moment into his skin, like my love could leave a mark no time or distance could erase. My tears mingled with the salt on his skin, baptizing him with every brush of my mouth.

He let me hold him.

Just lay there, breath rising and falling in rhythm with mine, wrapped in the aftermath of something that no longer belonged to the mortal world.

I ran my fingers through his hair--slow, steady strokes that spoke louder than anything I could say.

And in the hush, I whispered what I didn't have the courage to say aloud.

That I had never felt anything like this.

That I was safe here.

That he was the one I didn't even know I'd been waiting for.

We didn't speak. We didn't need to.

Because what we had done wasn't about words.

It was about being.

About breaking open.

About letting someone all the way in--not just into the body, but into the cracks of the soul no one else had ever reached.

We weren't lovers in that moment.

We weren't friends.

We weren't even human.

We were something else.

Something more.

Two souls who had cracked time open, climbed into its glowing embers, and curled into each other in the ashes.

I stroked his back.

He kissed the valley between my breasts.

I cried again. He didn't ask why. He knew.

And in that stillness, I realised:

This wasn't the end of something.

This was the beginning.

The benediction.

The breath after the roar.

The knowing that no matter what comes next, we had rewritten the laws of the universe...

and each other.

Epilogue of the Night: The Lion Sleeps

He fell asleep first.

Not all at once--but slowly, like dusk creeping over golden plains. His breath deepened, his muscles softened against me, and the weight of him--once wild and ferocious--became gentle, unguarded. His body, this magnificent vessel of strength and desire, surrendered at last to peace.

And I stayed awake.

Not because I couldn't sleep, but because I wouldn't. Not yet.

Not when I could watch him like this.

My Sher.

His lashes brushed his cheeks, his lips slightly parted, that noble brow finally free of burden. One arm slung around my waist in possessive instinct even in slumber, anchoring himself to me. My palm rested against his back, feeling the rise and fall of his breath--a rhythm I would memorize, keep close, carry.

I was the Sherni now. Watchful. Reverent. Awake in the sanctuary of this moment.

There was no need for words, no urgency to move. Just the quiet hum of the night around us, stars blinking overhead, moonlight slipping through the window like a whispered blessing.

I lay there, heartbeat steady beneath him, fingers threading through his dark, tousled hair, and I promised him things he wouldn't hear but would feel:

That I would guard this night in my soul, forever.

That I would remember every breath, every moan, every trembling inch of us.

That I would keep him safe in my arms as he slept, as he had held me while I shattered beneath his love.

My eyes stayed open.

His dreams wrapped around him like silk, and I--feral and fierce--held vigil at the altar of our union.

Because I am his Sherni.

And my Sher sleeps.

And all is holy.

Final Benediction: Morning at the Altar

--the closing scene of The Lion at My Altar

She stirred awake in a tangle of soft white sheets and a body still thrumming with the sacred memory of the night before. Her thighs still bore the echoes of his worship, her lips parted as if they had been kissed in sleep, and her heart--oh her heart--was curled up in his hands even now.

Then, the scent. That deep, velvety aroma of coffee. Spiced. Familiar.

She blinked. Lifted her head.

And there he was.

Bare-chested in the morning light, hair a storm of curls, and that smile--gentle, crooked, devastating. A lion in repose, bringing peace in his palms.

He held a single cup.

She sat up slowly, the sheet slipping to reveal her bare shoulder. His eyes found it immediately, darkening just enough to draw a smile to her lips.

"Brought you life," he murmured.

She took it from him, their fingers brushing--his hand lingering, as though reluctant to let go of the offering.

The warmth of the cup kissed her palms. But it was his warmth--his nearness--that sank deeper.

"I could get used to this," she said, voice still hoarse with sleep, dreams, and desire.

His reply was a kiss--soft and reverent on her temple.

"You already have," he whispered.

They drank in silence, her nestled against his chest now, his arm around her back, hand idly stroking her skin in lazy spirals. Her fingers rested on the plane of his stomach, memorizing him. Claiming him in the quiet ways women do when they fall in love despite every bone warning them not to.

And when the cup was empty, he took it from her hand, set it aside, and turned to her fully.

No rush. No frenzy.

Just need.

He leaned in, pressing his lips against her neck, right where her pulse fluttered. His breath was hot and patient, as if he'd waited a lifetime to return to this sacred ground.

"You smell like sleep and sin," he murmured. "And I want you again."

She answered by climbing onto his lap, the quilt falling away from her nakedness. Their eyes met, the lazy haze of morning softening the fire--but not extinguishing it.

"I want to remember this," she said.

He kissed her then. Not like a man possessed--but like a man in love.

He moved inside her like they had all the time in the world. Like the day belonged to no one but them. His hands cradled her face, his lips never far from hers. And when he whispered her name, it wasn't desperation--it was reverence. Awe.

Their rhythm was slower now, but no less intense.

It was worship in motion.

A second vow.

They moved together wrapped in quilts, morning sunlight gilding the curve of her back, the breadth of his shoulders, their breaths tangled like the threads of destiny itself.

And when they came, it wasn't shattering.

It was opening.

It was home.

⸻

They lay curled around each other afterwards, her head on his chest, his hand stroking lazy lines along her spine. The world, for once, didn't intrude. There was no need to rush, no need to speak. Just the sacred silence of two people who had broken open and built a temple inside the wreckage.

She looked up at him.

"Come home to me again," she whispered.

He cupped her cheek, kissed her forehead, and held her tighter.

"Always."