by T M Chris
“What? You think you’re the only one who can suffer stoically? Come on.”
Dalin planted his hands on Thoros’s shoulders and leap-frogged onto his back. Thoros hooked his arms under his legs and started down the road towards home, almost as if didn’t notice the weight. Dalin ducked his head down to catch Thoros’s scent along his neck—ripe and raw. Thoros had bathed him last night, stood him out in the barnyard and covered every inch with a soft cloth, lathering, rinsing, drying, smoothing the rough spots on his skin with sweet lotion. He should’ve done as much for himself from the smell of him.
“You need a bath,” he told the man carrying him.
“Mmph,” Thoros agreed. “More than likely.”
“I could give you one. I owe you. For the training.”
“Thought I’d take it out on your ass.”
Well. He might not be opposed to that either. “I suppose we could do both. If I must have your rank cock in me, it could do with a wash first.”
Thoros only grunted, but Dalin was pretty sure it was a grunt of approval.
Flexibility
Dalin
Dalin slept inside now, on the floor at the foot of Thoros’s bed, his hands left unbound since he spent large portions of every day bound. He could get a hand on his cock if he wanted to, stroke himself off with Thoros slumbering nearby, but he chose instead to remain hard and ready, thinking about the large body naked and close and waiting for a summons.
Thoros would snap his fingers and, shamefully, he would come, scraping across the packed dirt floor to suck him down eagerly, hands clinging to the comfort of Thoros’s thighs as the familiar thickness he’d once rejected filled his mouth and throat. Thoros would lean over and put a hand on Dalin’s cock, stroking it with the rhythm of Dalin’s mouth, bringing him to a release that left him giddy and ashamed, ashamed of wanting this so badly that he couldn’t bring himself to satisfy his own desires because he preferred, night after night, to wait and hope.
By day, he waited in rope, arranged to Thoros’s pleasure in one cramped posture after another—head to knees, ankles to wrists—or splayed in contorted shapes over one of the rough pieces of wood-and-rush furniture that graced the cottage.
Thoros loved tying him up—Dalin couldn’t doubt it—but there was a purpose to it too, which was something else he could no longer doubt. Flexibility, Atalanta had said, so Dalin went willingly into his bondage, finding the purpose of his own place in it. This was for the contest. But also for Thoros.
“Like a pig at the roast,” Thoros said with a ringing slap on his buttocks. “Except that’s no apple in your mouth, is it?” Thoros had him curled tight enough that the head of his own dick pushed through his lips. His arms were behind his back, wrists tied tight together, feet snugged up against his ass as he made an obvious display on top of the table exactly like a pig at the roast.
Thoros had squeezed and pulled, working the curve in Dalin’s spine until Dalin had sworn he couldn’t possibly curl tighter and then—he’d felt it. The hot, salty tip of his own cock tapping against his lips.
“Open,” Thoros had said, and he’d opened his mouth obediently and allowed Thoros to guide his cock inside it and tie him there, neck bowed to take himself in as his cock expanded to fill his throat the way Thoros’s so regularly did.
“And Atalanta thought you were too big to be flexible,” Thoros said. “Not many men can suck their own dicks. Enjoying that?”
He moaned around the eager press of his own flesh in response. Difficult to work his tongue at this angle, but sure, he liked it—liked the wetness and the heat, liked the soft pressure of his own mouth, though perhaps he’d prefer the rough friction of Thoros’s hand. But this .. this was so fucking dirty. It made him so hard, and he was trussed like a dish at the banquette, his ass high and open. He longed for Thoros to use it.
He almost asked, almost said please. But, no. Please meant he wanted Thoros to stop, and he didn’t want that. He wanted to be flexible for the contest, and he wanted Thoros to fuck him. So instead he asked for what he wanted, voicing it like a question because Thoros didn’t take orders. “Fuck me?” His words came out thick and garbled around the hard flesh filling his throat, but Thoros understood them.
“That’s the plan, pretty thing. Just going to admire my handiwork a bit here. You keep working that cock for me, huh?”
He nodded a little, bobbing as much as his restraints allowed, relishing the slide of cock in throat, of throat on cock, his body heat rising from the way Thoros pinched and prodded him as he circled, checking a knot here, stroking at a bruise there.
Dalin wasn’t sure he could make himself come, as good as it felt. He just didn’t have the range of motion for it. If only Thoros would fuck him, if only Thoros would get on with it. The word please almost broke from him again, and he choked it back with a whimper.
“Impatient for my cock, aren’t you?”
There was no use denying it. He let himself go lax in his bonds, having already learned that acceptance was the key to tolerance—sink deeper into it, don’t strain against it. Last week’s practice in stillness helped too. He couldn’t move, so why try? And he couldn’t rush Thoros, so why try to do that either? It was right to hunger.
Finally, finally, he felt the nudge at his backside that meant Thoros was coming in—a blunt, greasy pressure that gave way to a burning flare of intrusion, and then that longed-for filling, the deep slide that reached to his very soul. Behind him, Thoros groaned out his satisfaction at being so well-seated in his welcoming heat.
Dalin breathed around his dick, summoning a wash of saliva to salve it with as the rocking started, driving him deeper onto his own dick. Like a pig at the roast, split from both ends.
Orgasm rushed towards him. The cock in his mouth swelled—pulsing, throbbing, filling him with pleasure and come as he took his own load in great, sticky globs, nearly chocking as he strained to swallow around himself. Thoros’s fingers on his hips were punishing as he reached a similar climax, his grunts filling Dalin’s ears as his load filled his ass, and there—flooded from both ends, ass and mouth awash in come, body awash in pleasure. Dalin melted into the ropes as his cock softened and withdrew from his mouth, as Thoros softened and withdrew from his ass.
“Another hour or so before I let you out,” Thoros warned him with a light tap on his upturned ass. Dalin didn’t even bother to nod. He was fine where he was, no need to be free. He could only barely reach the tip of his soft cock with his tongue, but he gave it a few licks, cleaning and soothing it as he relaxed in his bonds.
Thoros
It was entertaining seeing how many positions he could fuck Dalin in, how tightly he could truss him up before he did it, sometimes curling him into shapes that tweaked at the limits of his flexibility and other times spreading him out in ways that had little to do with the upcoming contest. He just liked to see Dalin on display—all the heft and meat of him restrained for his pleasure, helpless to fight against the way Thoros took him, though Thoros never minded a fight.
At night he left Dalin unbound—giving his limbs a chance to stretch—and promised himself he wouldn’t bother the man, but the way Dalin came to him when summoned, slithering low across the dirt floor as though not to draw attention to how eagerly he moved, carried its own thrill. Both Dalin’s willingness and his unwillingness had their appeal, and after a day of having Dalin at his mercy, Thoros enjoyed those moments that could almost be called consensual. As though they were lovers—tired from training in their mutual cause, reaching out to each other in the blanketing quiet for relief.
Dalin would win. Thoros couldn’t doubt it. He was … perfect. Astoundingly perfect. So full of fire, so stoic and untamed. The subtle ways in which he bent to Thoros almost undid him. Thoros had known what he wanted to craft Dalin into, but Dalin surpassed anything he could have imagined.
Lucky Atalanta.
Thoros turned away from where Dalin lay placidly despite the extremity of the arch into which Thoros
had bound him—toes touching the back of his head, arms overwrapped around calves, all his body one smooth circle of manly flesh rocking on the long rod of his hard cock. Dalin almost always got hard when Thoros tied him up now, whether Thoros fucked him or not. Anticipating it. Anticipating being fucked.
But no, Thoros wouldn’t fuck him. He was becoming too attached to this man he trained for someone other than himself, too accustomed to sinking into his body searching for comfort and release, too eager to watch the gorgeous slopes of Dalin’s naked body as it moved around his spare cottage. Soon Dalin would belong to Atalanta, and Thoros …? He would go back to an existence he hadn’t known was lonely.
“How long can you keep that up?” he asked.
“It’s not like I can go anywhere,” Dalin replied. “The rope does the work.”
That meant he’d bound Dalin well, but: “I meant the way you’re working your cock. Such a wanton slut, aren’t you? I can tell you want me to fuck you, but perhaps I won’t today.”
“Mm.” Dalin rocked so that the table massaged the hard length which bore his weight. “Don’t need you to maybe.”
And so Thoros watched, spellbound as surely as Dalin was rope-bound, as Dalin stimulated himself to orgasm, his eyes closed and his body lax, just a gentle rocking that culminated in the quietest of gasps and a puddle of come soaking into the wood of the table.
“Surprised there’s anything left in you,” Thoros observed as he mopped at the droplets with a rag.
Dalin regarded him with sleepy, satisfied eyes. “If you arrange me right …” Dalin opened his mouth.
It wasn’t as if Thoros hadn’t thought of the possibilities. It was just that he’d sworn he wouldn’t this time.
He tugged Dalin closer to the edge of the table and rocked him down to accept Thoros’s cock in his mouth. Up, then down—a sucking circle, bobbing Dalin’s mouth as he fucked into it, fighting to keep his eyes open because it felt so good, but this—this was a thing that needed to be seen. Atalanta would have Dalin soon enough, but for now he belonged to Thoros.
Dalin
What this had to do with flexibility, Dalin didn’t know. Yes, he was bound—Thoros had called that correctly, as always—in a similar position to the one he’d been in the other day when he’d been able to suck himself off while Thoros fucked him, but he was in no way bound tightly enough to reach his cock. It seemed to him that anyone might be able to tuck themselves into this position—head resting on knees, arms behind the back—and stay there eternally. At least, he knew he could.
They weren’t even being ordered to stay still the way Thoros demanded of him. No, they’d been told to free themselves—that was the challenge—and what it had to do with flexibility, Dalin didn’t know, but he knew why his cock was hard. It was an automatic response to being in rope now. Too bad the member of the King’s Guard who’d bound him hadn’t made his posture a little more challenging so he could reach his throbbing member.
Dalin turned his head to seek out Thoros and found him not far off and watching. Someone who didn’t know Thoros as well as Dalin would probably call his expression blank, but Dalin could see the hunger in it, could pick out the way Thoros’s skirt bulged over an answering erection.
It made Dalin loose—Thoros’s hot eyes and hard cock. It made him sink deeper into the rope as he waited for the Chancellor’s command to begin, and the deeper he sank, the looser his bonds felt.
By the time the contest had begun, Dalin already knew how to win it. He need only tuck himself in closer and accept the rope rather than fight it, and the rope fell free practically of its own accord. He made slow, fluid movements, sloughing off one coil after another, not wanting to attract the attention of the other competitors out of fear of giving away his methods. Around him, he could hear the trashing of men fighting against their bonds.
He’d fought the first time Thoros had bound him—fought until his skin chafed with rope rash and his muscles ached, until he’d accepted that Thoros had him trussed too well for escape, that Thoros had him trussed too well even for resistance. He did not submit to Thoros, he told himself. He submitted to no one. But to the rope, yes.
Farther down, one of the competitors called out for freedom, begging as Dalin had sworn he never would: “Please, please. I can’t stand it.”
To submit was to enjoy. To fight was to fear.
The begging man was released and led to the side of the arena to face Atalanta. The words of her dismissal carried even over the groans and thrashing of the other men, but Dalin paid none of it any mind, thinking only of Thoros, of the strength and security of Thoros’s bonds, which were not these bonds. The guard who’d tied Dalin chest to thigh had been quick and hapless. His knots were easily undone when Dalin twisted to reach them with limbs that moved easily within their confines.
Yes, this was what Thoros had taught him: to be still and smooth, to accept and adapt, to melt in deeper rather than pull the knots tighter.
When he had himself free enough to shake the rope completely from his body, he looked over to Thoros to see if he was proud and saw that he was. But also he caught the subtle hand gesture that told him to stay in place, so he settled back into the initial posture, leaving the ropes in a loose drape over his body and daydreaming of better ropework.
“I tire of this,” Atalanta’s voice rang out. “It seems none of you can complete this simple task, and I’m bored with watching you thrash about.” She strolled down the line of men and stopped in front of Rory. “You’ve come the closest, but I fear you’ve done yourself more harm than good. Release him.” She snapped her fingers at a guard who jumped to do her bidding.
Dalin turned his neck and saw how Rory, in trying to escape his bonds, had only managed to wrap them more tightly around his neck. Dalin admired Rory’s willingness to strangle himself, but the result was neither useful nor attractive.
“There is one who completed the task.” Thoros grabbed the end of Dalin’s rope and gave it a light flick so that it coiled itself at his feet, leaving Dalin unencumbered. “Sit up, Dalin.”
He rose onto his knees, his head light with the change in height and the excess of blood pooled in his cock, which thrust, uncovered, out at the Princess.
“Impressive,” she said. Dalin met her eyes coolly, more pleased with Thoros’s approval than concerned about her opinion. “But why did you not alert us you’d gotten free? That was the goal, after all.”
“His goal is to please you, Princess. He remains at your convenience.”
“You always make him sound so docile, Thoros, but I suspect he’s not.”
Thoros grabbed Dalin’s chin with unyielding fingers, and Dalin dropped his eyes at the command in them.
“Not docile,” Thoros agreed, “but obedient under the right handling.”
“I see. Yes, I do see the appeal.” Atalanta’s evaluating tone rankled. Dalin fought to keep his eyes down as the pinch of Thoros’s fingers reminded him of the role he played. “He’s done well in every task thus far, but I doubt he’ll do so well with the next one. I don’t think gentility will suit him.”
She drifted away to hand out her usual raft of dismissals, and Thoros gave Dalin a hand up, holding him by both forearms until Dalin could feel the blood tingling in his toes again.
“She’ll not be sending Rory home,” Dalin observed, pushing away from Thoros to walk on his own. “He finished second again.”
“Nevertheless, he didn’t impress her today. She might have told you to free yourselves, but Atalanta enjoys rope work, and rope work is spoiled by fidgeting. The mess Rory made won’t win him favor.”
They plodded along in silence for a few moments, neither of them leading the way, both knowing where they were headed.
“He’s still your closest competition though, despite his misstep today. He’s her type. Lean, graceful. Pretty.”
Pretty. Dalin didn’t care who Atalanta should find attractive, but the comment worked its way under his skin. “You call me pretty thing.�
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“To tease you. You don’t want to be pretty, do you?” Thoros stopped and evaluated him much too closely before throwing his head back with a roar of laughter. “I see that you do want to be pretty. But only for me, eh? Don’t fret, pretty thing. Once we get home, I’ll show you clear enough how pretty you are.”
Grace
Dalin
Thoros insisted on making him pretty. First bathing him—not the way he’d done before with rough strokes and probing fingers, but gently in perfumed water—then fluffing his hair out over his shoulders and twining it with wildflowers.
There was a tunic. More clothes than Dalin had worn since stripping that first day in the arena. He should be grateful for it, but it skimmed one shoulder, leaving the other bare in a way that seemed flirty, and teased at the top of his thighs, only nominally covering his cock and balls so that every move put him in danger of exposure.
He’d been fully exposed to Thoros for weeks now, in positions and poses and situations far more revealing than giving a glimpse of the tip of his cock if he turned too suddenly, but it felt newly intimate, those teasing peeks at his most private spaces.
Thoros pinched Dalin’s cheeks, bringing blood into them until they sparked with pain—hot and eager under Thoros’s regard.
“Your lips could use some color too.”
And Dalin chafed under this new humiliation but also wanted. He’d never kissed anyone before. He’d seen it often enough—men and women pressed mouth to mouth, sucking at each other in a way that seemed messy and unappealing and unnecessary. A mouth on his cock, sure. But one touching his own? In the hurried couplings he’d engaged in prior to being trained by Thoros, he’d turned his head in refusal from anyone who’d tried.
But he wanted—wanted the harsh line of Thoros’s lips leading out from the jagged edge of his scar, wanted to lick at their roughness and feel Thoros’s tongue licking back.
