by T M Chris
He bit his lower lip, chewing it slowly and intentionally with the heat of Thoros’s eyes on him as he pinked it up. He pursed his mouth, trying to make it tempting, feeling ridiculous because he didn’t know anything about seduction. His tongue traced the resulting plumpness of his bottom lip and Thoros latched onto it—chewing and licking much like Dalin had been doing to himself but so, so much better.
Dalin’s mouth opened on a gasp he couldn’t suppress, and Thoros pressed his way inside it. Dalin kissed back, desperate to be inside Thoros the way Thoros was so often inside him.
“So pretty,” Thoros said into his mouth.
“Not pretty.”
“Pretty, pretty,” Thoros repeated, gentling him down with motions that were light and reverent. Dalin fought even as he sank, his hands clinging to Thoros’s biceps as though only Thoros could stop him from drowning in this sea of softness.
Thoros kept him like that all week—dressed in flowing clothes with ribbons in his hair, besieged by courtly compliments. Thoros seated him at the table and offered him a hand up after dinner. It made Dalin feel unsettled and light. He missed the whip and the demands, couldn’t bear the flattery and the charm.
“You’re supposed to be training me,” he grumped at dinner one night, slumping out of the posture Thoros had recently insisted on and throwing down the fork Thoros now expected him to handle with dainty grace. “Enough with this nonsense.” He’d liked it better when Thoros hand-fed him scraps on the floor.
“I am training you. The next contest is grace, and your manners are a long way off from courtly. Remember that you’ll become Prince Consort if chosen. Do you think Atalanta wants you embarrassing her in front of visiting dignitaries? So you’ll learn how to eat and walk and sit and speak.”
“You’re a fine one to teach me.” But Dalin picked up his fork and re-squared his shoulders, admitting to himself that Thoros had, as always, a point to his methods, that it wasn’t solely a matter of Thoros’s enjoying torturing him. “And must I be taught how to sleep as well?”
He no longer slept on the floor. Thoros gathered him into the bed every night as though he were too tender to lie on hard-packed dirt, as though his skin might mar or bruise if not pampered by a thick straw mattress and the soft sheen of linen.
And there, in his bed at night, Thoros perpetrated the worst of his indignities. He made love to Dalin—face to face, the way men made love to women, pushing up into him slowly with long, soft strokes, telling him how beautiful he was and peppering his face with kisses, staring him so deeply in the eye that Dalin thought he might scream, hypnotized and pleasure-soaked and coming apart at the edges.
“I can’t do this anymore.” He threw his fork down again and rose from the table. He tore at the stupid, flimsy tunic Thoros had draped him in, needing it off and wanting Thoros to punish him for taking it off, wanting Thoros to wreck him the way he wanted to wreck it.
Thoros
“Dalin.” Thoros kept his voice low in warning. His wild colt was about to buck, to shed his halter and run free. Funny how Dalin had held up so well under all manner of indignities and physical hardship, but this—a little tenderness—could ruin him.
“I can’t.” Dalin’s voice shook, his hands pawed at the tunic, fingers catching in it and clutching, his muscles tense with the urge to tear it off.
“Go ahead.” Thoros nodded at him. “You want to show yourself to me? I’ll allow it.”
Dalin’s hands ripped the tunic into tatters.
“But you’ll pay for it,” Thoros told him, too late, but he knew Dalin wanted to pay for it. “I’ll take every penny of that cloth out on your hide.”
“Fine.” Dalin threw the ripped remains down to the floor in a petulant fit. “Punish me. I can take it.”
“You want to take it.”
Dalin tilted his head, considering, then nodded in agreement. “Hit me, Thoros. Hurt me. Hurt me like—”
“Like you need.” He’d seen that his protégé was at a breaking point, but he didn’t mind the maelstrom to follow. After a week of gentle grace, they would both enjoy something rougher, but he’d have to be careful where he marked Dalin’s flesh because he needed it silky and clear for the contest to come. And much as Thoros understood the reasons for Dalin’s rebellion, he would make sure Dalin regretted it.
“Come here.”
Dalin took a step towards him, then stopped and shook his head. “You’re going to have to come for me.”
It was going to be like that, was it? Thoros licked his lips, a grin rising to them which he tried to suppress for the sake of maintaining an authoritative dignity, but fuck this was going to be fun. Dalin sweet and pretty was a fine diversion for a few days, but Dalin rough and angry would always be his first choice.
He approached, circling as Dalin circled, each looking for an opening, a weakness. They knew each other too well by now to surprise each other, but Thoros had the size advantage and years of experience subduing partners who wanted to play at being recalcitrant, so he stalked forward with the confident expectation of success.
Dalin tried to duck when Thoros charged, but Thoros’s head met his chest squarely across the ribcage. Dalin staggered back, almost losing his feet as the breath rushed out of him. He pulled himself back up to full height and rubbed a hand over his chest.
“That’s right. I’m not fucking around. Now, do you get over my lap willingly or do you get a beating first?”
“Beating,” Dalin chose.
Thoros gave it to him—more of a wrestling match than a boxing match to minimize the bruising, but he vanquished Dalin thoroughly enough that when he rose to his feet to set the cottage back to order after the shambles they’d made of it, Dalin remained on his back panting, not even trying to make another attempt to rise, simply watching until Thoros returned to his chair and patted his lap.
“Get over here.”
“I said you had to make me,” Dalin complained.
“This is me making you. You’ll get over my lap because I told you to, and because to me, you listen.”
“Why your lap?”
“Find out.”
“I’m not going to like this, am I?”
“Not at all, but remember that you asked for it.”
With a mix of anticipation and trepidation, Dalin allowed Thoros to arrange him face down over his lap where his ass made a striking target. This was a spot Dalin wouldn’t be showing off in court on Saturday, a spot Thoros could destroy. He set to it. No warning smacks—Dalin hadn’t earned those—just a blistering pace that had Dalin squirming almost immediately.
“You can’t just fucking spank me.”
“Can’t I?” Thoros spanked him some more.
“I’m not a woman to dress up in finery, and I’m not a child to turn over your knee.”
“You’re whatever I tell you to be.” And Thoros spanked him some more, clamping hard around Dalin’s waist to hold him still for one punishing smack after another, ignoring the blistering heat in his own palm to give Dalin the punishment he deserved—demeaning, unrelenting, painful—until Dalin stopped blustering about the ignominy of it and started reacting with the truth of his pain, squirming to escape it, sobbing into it.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” His feet kicked up like the child he’d claimed he wasn’t as Thoros turned his ass first pink, then red, then edging towards purple until Dalin broke. The tension drained from his body until he lay acquiescent over Thoros’s lap, accepting his punishment with cleansing sobs.
“There, there.” Thoros rubbed his hand over the glowing ass in his lap appreciatively, his touch light and comforting.
“Don’t.” Dalin pushed Thoros’s hand off him.
“All right.” Thoros stood, tumbling Dalin to the floor, then yanked him up by the waist and shoved him forward over the table. He didn’t bother with more than a quick coat of grease on his cock before forcing his way into Dalin the way Dalin needed him to, fucking him hard with quick snaps of his hips and driving towards his own pleasure wit
hout seeking out Dalin’s.
Often he treated Dalin to a hand on his cock, but not today. Today was about doling out the uncompromising treatment Dalin needed, about giving them both a break from the sweetness of the last week. Thoros could use Dalin, could use him any way he wanted to, and after he’d come deep in Dalin’s body, he reminded him of that fact while Dalin twitched angry and hurt and unsatisfied beneath him.
“This is the deal we made. I train you, and you serve me. However I demand to be served. If it’s sweet and tender, then you’ll take sweet and tender. If it’s fast and rough, you’ll take that too. Do you understand me?”
When Dalin choked out a sobbing yes, Thoros flipped him and worked him to climax with his hand while Dalin cried and bucked and almost, almost said please.
Dalin
Dalin felt like a fool in his court finery, but a prepared fool. As uncomfortably ornamented as his tunic was, it at least covered him decently, disguising both the fire that still burned across his ass from that spanking Thoros had administered and the swing of his manly parts between his thighs. It must have cost Thoros a fair penny to rig him up so well, and he regretted destroying his training tunic in a fit of temper. It also would have cost Thoros from his own pocket, and it might’ve been a memento later.
Dalin’s time with Thoros grew short. Only five contestants remained. Earlier contests had eliminated the well-born—too soft, too slow, too unaccustomed to discomfort—so the five remaining were all like him, low born and awkward in their court clothes. They dotted Atalanta’s reception room, easy to pick out amongst the high born mingling with them.
Dalin smiled politely at the woman next to him. His fingers coiled around the delicate stem of the chalice in his hand which he reminded himself to grasp lightly, as a man accustomed to delicate things would. His scalp itched where Thoros had tugged his hair back into tight braids designed to emulate the shorter hair currently in fashion among the nobility.
“I should cut it,” Thoros had said, not cutting it, and Dalin had submitted to the sharp pulls and the unaccustomed tightness because he didn’t want Thoros to cut it either. It would have to be cut when he and Atalanta were married, but things would be different then. He wouldn’t have time on his knees with Thoros’s cock down his throat, would no longer feel Thoros’s hands tugging to command his service.
At the front of the reception room, Atalanta sat on a raised dais declining the delicacies offered by the courtiers who flocked around her. Dalin should go over there and press his case—prove he could be a proper Prince Consort—but the way people fawned over her turned up his nose. He hadn’t considered how much he wouldn’t enjoy diplomacy when he’d entertained the fantasy of becoming lord of all the land.
He missed Thoros’s eyes on him. The trainers had been banished for this contest to prevent prompting. Thoros’s absence left him untethered, made him wonder if he’d been working this hard to please Atalanta or if it had always been to please Thoros.
Rory had already made an obeisance to the princess, had been kept by her side for perhaps a quarter of an hour and allowed to feed her sweets before being shooed off to join the crowd. Dalin needed to do the same. He had no desire to bring his fingers to her pink, pursed lips, but he hadn’t come so far to fail. Determined to represent himself well, he approached the dais and sank into the low bow Thoros had taught him.
“Dalin,” Atalanta said with evident delight. “You’ve been turned out well for our occasion.”
“Princess.” He acknowledged the compliment with another deep bow. “If it pleases you.”
“It does. Does he not look well, Leister? You take an interest in the results of my little competition, I believe.”
Leister looked like he’d like to take an interest in knocking Dalin to the ground. Dalin recognized him from that first day in the arena—a contestant who hadn’t even been chosen to compete. Dalin suppressed a victorious smirk. Let Leister look daggers all he wanted. He’d already lost, and it wasn’t hard to see why no trainer had chosen him. He was aging and soft around the middle, his tunic failing to hide his paunch and only drawing attention to the downward slope of his undeveloped shoulders.
“It’s a shame, Your Majesty,” the courtier said. “I do appreciate the entertainment which your contests of strength afford, but you’ve eliminated all but the basest of your suitors. I’m familiar with this one in particular, for I know his master who calls him a house servant, though even that is too dignified a title. Dalin spends more time with animals than with people, I believe. Certainly, his barnyard duties have brought out his musculature, but …” Leister clicked his tongue as if the implication of what Dalin lacked were obvious.
Did Leister think he could humiliate Dalin into a show of temper? A better man than Leister had spent a week trying. Dalin would take a jibe over perfume and pampering any day. He summoned all the softness Thoros had drilled into him and said, “I thank you for the compliment. You do me honor.”
“That wasn’t a compliment, you fool. I was pointing out that a muscle-bound brute is hardly a fit companion for our princess. She’s deserving of the finest of our land.”
“Indeed, we agree on that. I could never hope to be worthy of her.”
Leister spluttered. “Your clumsy attempts at flattery—”
“Do lower your voice, Leister,” Atalanta interrupted. “You sound like a braying ass, and you know I don’t tolerate bullying in my court. “
Dalin saw how Leister was caught, unable to argue but unwilling to concede the point either.
“I have no wish to offend,” he said finally. “I’m concerned that the results of this contest will not be to your liking. I know you have no urge to marry at all, and to marry—” He gestured at Dalin before breaking off under Atalanta’s glare.
“If I must marry—and father decrees I must—then it will be one of my choosing. Perhaps there are things I value more than a pedigree and fine manners. There’s much that goes on in a marriage outside of the public eye.”
She gave Dalin a significant look, and he suppressed a shudder at the idea of submitting to this woman. She seemed an interesting person with a sparkling sense of a humor and no wish to be unkind to those she ruled, but he didn’t want to kneel to her in the way Thoros had taught him to kneel, didn’t want to feel her ropes around him or have her hands in his hair, couldn’t imagine touching their tongues together, though he’d learned to crave the touch of Thoros’s tongue against his own since discovering how that felt.
“Let’s have some dancing.” Atalanta clapped her hands, and the musicians who’d been playing in the background broke off and started again. “It’s a new custom from Philodonia,” she explained to Dalin as Leister moved towards the center of the room, guiding one of Atalanta’s maidens by the hand. With a smirk for Dalin and a bow to his partner, Leister began to sweep her around the room.
“Men and women dance together,” Atalanta said. “It’s quite entertaining, I’m told. Perhaps if you watch a bit …”
“If I may have your hand, I would be happy to lead you in a dance.”
Atalanta quirked her brow at him. “Would you? I don’t dance myself, but here, take Elena’s hand, for she would love to dance, I am sure. Show me how you comport yourself.”
Dalin offered a gracious hand to Elena who had pretty eyes and an eager smile. Thoros had taught him to dance by leading him around the barnyard in full view for anyone to see, chiding him for being graceless.
“Sweep and glide,” Thoros had urged him. “Sweep and glide. You trudge like a slave on a forced march.” And Dalin had bit back the retort that all his life he’d only been a slave on a forced march and had tried to sweep and glide, believing at the time that it was only another of Thoros’s attempts to humiliate him with gentleness. But of course, Thoros had been right all along.
What Thoros had not taught him, though, was to lead. Always Dalin had played the role of the follower, struggling to anticipate Thoros’s movements, to follow the suggestions
of a change in pressure against the small of his back. He almost presented himself to Elena to be led in this way but caught himself in time and raised up his arms to guide her into them, thinking of how he felt when Thoros steered him—small and fragile, kept protectively close, at his mercy but trusting to it.
He tried to impart that same confidence of command to Elena as he steered her about the room, to fix with her a gaze as full of possession as the one Thoros had fixed on him, though he didn’t feel so towards Elena. She was delicate and light in his arms and gazed back at him with an expression that had Dalin wondering if that was how he’d looked at Thoros when they’d danced, as if Thoros were a god who had the right to command him.
When the musicians stopped playing, he made Elena a courtly bow, not as deep as the one he’d made to Atalanta but respectful and as graceful as he could manage, and she ran back to her mistress with a hand over her mouth to suppress a giggle. He saw her whisper in Atalanta’s ear as Atalanta regarded him with approval, and he wished once again that Thoros were present, that Thoros could witness the triumph his training had wrought
It was a tedious evening, making conversation he didn’t care about and guarding against his instincts so as to keep himself soft and polite, never acting the brute Leister had accused him of being. He was more grateful to be released from the stuffy hall with its jingling music and tinkling voices and bits of glimmer than he’d ever been to be released from the bonds in which Thoros bound him or to have the whip cease striking against his back.
“And?” Thoros prompted when Dalin came upon him under the base of a tree out in the moonlight.
“It was well, I think.” He gave Thoros a summary of his time in the palace. “She dismissed two others. There are only three of us now.”
“The next competition will be the last then. Come on. There’s work to do.”
Dalin tucked in behind him, ready to be home.
“She was pretty, that girl you danced with?”
“Pretty enough.” He glanced over at Thoros who wore his customary leather skirt. His bare chest was a lighter shimmer above it in the moonlight and his hair stood up in spots where it had grown longer in the last month. Thoros put more effort into preparing Dalin for these contests than into his own appearance. Nevertheless.
