First Time (Eternal Dungeon #1.3)

"Layle was the High Seeker. He ought to be able to penetrate behind this wall of love to find the fear that must still lie behind it. The fear remained within Elsdon; there could be no doubt of that, given his background and the mind-sick manner in which Layle had initially handled Elsdon's declarations of love. Yet Elsdon seemed to have succeeded, by sheer force of his will, in driving back that fear and imprisoning it so that it could not be of harm. . . . Just as Layle had imprisoned his own dark desire seventeen years before. And now Elsdon had opened the cell where that desire lay bound. "

One man seeks to heal from abuse. The other man dreams of abusing. Now they're in love.

As the Eternal Dungeon's chief torturer and the dungeon's newest member strive to find a middle ground on which they can meet, their lovemaking forces Layle Smith to return in his mind to an older dungeon he had long abandoned. In that dungeon lies a helpless prisoner . . . yet perhaps the prisoner is not quite so helpless as he appears.

This suspenseful novelette (miniature novel) can be read on its own or as the third story in the "Rebirth" volume of The Eternal Dungeon, an award-winning speculative fiction series set in a nineteenth-century prison where the psychologists wield whips. Friendship, family, gay love, and rebellion are intertwining plotlines in the series.