by T M Chris
“You’re prettier,” Dalin told him.
Thoros snorted. “I may not keep a mirror at home, but I know full well how I look. You’ll do well enough at court if you’re giving out compliments you don’t mean. Perhaps you’ll make a good prince.”
But did he want to be a prince? Did he want to live amongst those people? Elena had been nice enough, and Dalin had no quarrel with the princess despite his lack of interest in submitting to her—let her marry him and she would find out soon enough how unlikely he was to submit—but the others, with their false miens and soft bellies?
He wouldn’t say it to Thoros since Thoros didn’t care to believe him, but Dalin would take him over any member of the court, no matter their finery or their manners. Thoros had no kindness in him, but he didn’t pretend to a kindness he didn’t have, and his rule, though rarely soft, was just and bore a purpose, even when that purpose was only to find pleasure in Dalin’s body.
Dalin could sense the same iron in Atalanta, but he couldn’t yearn to be subjected to it. He could only think of rebelling against it, as he had towards Thoros’s authority at first. There was a purpose to his submission to Thoros. Thoros trained him, and Dalin served him in payment, and the training was good, was effective, was bringing him to the desired end.
Only Dalin wasn’t so sure he wanted that end anymore.
Endurance
Thoros
Oh, this was going to be good.
Wrestling, Atalanta had said. It was a common enough sport for young men to engage in, but Thoros knew there would be a twist to it, knew the ways in which Atalanta’s mind ran, so similar to his own. If it were simple wrestling, Dalin might not need even to be trained. He was strong and smart, driven to succeed at any cost, not likely to be vanquished with either physical prowess or mental subterfuge by either of the two remaining contestants.
That Dalin could out-muscle Rory, Thoros had no doubt, though he still suspected Atalanta would prefer Rory to win. If she could find a way to swing the contest in his direction, she would. The other contestant, Provo, was likewise youthfully slim. He hadn’t distinguished himself at any point in the competition but had never embarrassed himself either. He’d been allowed to linger because Atalanta fancied him, but he was slow and weak, and however Atalanta thought to rig the last contest, Provo wouldn’t win it.
No, it was Rory she would choose to win, and so Thoros thought on how Rory and Dalin were different and how Atalanta might use their differences to Rory’s advantage, and when he hit on it, he couldn’t help but smile. Because training for this? Thoros was going to enjoy it.
“I’ve been indulgent,” he told Dalin. “That ends today.”
“Indulgent how?” Dalin asked. He was eating his breakfast from the floor between Thoros’s knees where he belonged, no longer the pampered lady from last week. “Indulging me with the whip? With a cock up my ass?”
“With pleasure.”
Dalin snorted. “What pleasure?”
“Don’t pretend your cock isn’t hard right now. We’re at breakfast and already you’re shamefully begging for me.” That was his Dalin—so beautifully hard, so constantly eager for a climax brought on my Thoros’s cock or a quick stroke of his hand. But those indulgences stopped today.
“I’ve never begged you for anything.” Dalin turned his eyes away in an attempt to deny his eagerness.
“Oh no? You wouldn’t beg me to come right now?”
Dalin made a face of disbelief.
“We’ll see, pretty thing. We’ll see.”
Dalin would be begging soon enough. But he wouldn’t receive, no matter how much he begged. That was the lesson to be learnt this week: perseverance, restraint. Endurance.
“What happens when you climax?” he asked Dalin later when he had him strung up to the ring bolt overhead and was teasing his hard cock with an insufficient hand.
“Come shoots out of my cock.”
“Oh, sarcasm. You’re not ready to focus yet, I see. Very well.” And he applied his whip to Dalin’s back until Dalin’s eyes were soft and yielding though his cock remained hard and hungry.
“Now, I’ll ask you again. What happens when you climax?”
“It feels good.”
“I’ll bet.” He greased up a hand to keep his strokes light and ran it slick along Dalin’s shaft, relishing the shudder it invoked. “And then what?”
Dalin shrugged as best a man hanging by his wrists could. “I get sleepy.”
“Exactly. You lose all sense of urgency. Ejaculating depletes a man’s essence, makes him compliant and easily swayed.”
“And so?” Dalin challenged.
“And so we’re not going to do that. You’re not going to come this week, not even by your own hand. If you don’t have the willpower to adhere to that rule, I can keep you chained up.”
“You think I can’t keep myself in check for a week?”
“I think I’m going to make that difficult.” And enjoy every minute of it.
“I won’t miss your cock.”
“You won’t need to. You’ll be getting plenty of it. In fact, let’s start now.” He lengthened the tethers that bound Dalin to the ceiling until his knees touched the floor. “Suck me.”
Dalin gave him a look meant to signify hatred and unwilling compliance, but it was made ineffective by the way his tongue peeped out to lick at his lips as he contemplated the cock Thoros held out towards him. Thoros wasn’t all the way hard yet, but Dalin would fix that up fast enough, so Thoros stuffed himself half-soft into the warm cavern of Dalin’s mouth and felt Dalin’s lips come firm around his shaft, felt the quick and clever tongue work over him.
“Ah, pretty thing. You suck cock so good. I’ve taught you many things, but best of all is this one.”
Dalin rolled his eyes up angrily, but he didn’t stop sucking, making a wet and sloppy mess because his hands were bound over his head and he couldn’t control how deep Thoros thrust into him. Thoros’s cock was plenty hard now. He worked it like a ramrod as he watched Dalin’s equally hard cock bob between his knees.
“Bet you wish you could get a hand on that,” he said, but he kept his cock well down Dalin’s throat, not giving him a chance to answer. “Bet you wish you felt as good as I do—driving myself into a warm, wet space with my balls up tight to my body. Feel how tight my balls are, Dalin. Oh, that’s right. You can’t.”
He freed Dalin’s hands with a quick tug. He would allow Dalin to pleasure him, then take his time torturing him in return. By the time he finished not making Dalin come, he’d be ready to go again himself.
Dalin never pretended reluctance once he had a cock down his throat, so when Thoros gave him the use of his hands he did in fact bring them to Thoros’s balls, cupping and squeezing with just the right amount of pressure to have Thoros roaring as he came. But Dalin automatically dipped a hand down to himself as he worked on licking Thoros clean.
“Oh, I see. Citizen I-can-last-a-week has already caved.
Dalin’s hand reluctantly dropped to his side.
“I make you too hot to resist, don’t I?”
“Nothing to do with you. Normal reaction to stimulus, that’s all.”
“Except nothing was stimulating you except my cock down your throat. But let’s fix that.”
He made Dalin kneel up on the table and took a seat in front of him. Dalin’s cock stood proud and straight, pointing away from his body at a forty-five degree angle and bobbing from the urgency of his arousal. Their positioning meant that Thoros was comfortably at eye level with it. Dalin’s knees might get tender from kneeling on the hard wood of the table, but Thoros could distract him from it. If not? Eh. Dalin had been trained to enjoy pain, after all.
Thoros started with his hand—a sensation to which Dalin was accustomed—and continued until the signs that Dalin was about to come were unmistakable.
“If you come, you fail.”
“And then what?”
“And then you’ve failed.” He grinned
at Dalin’s scowl. “Since I’m so resistible, show me how you resist me.” And he did what he knew Dalin would least expect.
Dalin
The first touch of Thoros’s mouth to his cock felt like a mistake. Thoros was situated with his mouth so close to it, that Dalin could only assume he’d leaned farther than intended, that the swipe of tongue over cock was an accident. But when Thoros opened his mouth wide and swallowed him down whole, his intention couldn’t be mistaken.
He was trying to make Dalin come. After telling him that if he did, he failed. And he was using the most effective, the most ruthless, the most amazing tactic possible. There’d been men through the years—other lowborn like himself—who’d admired Dalin’s form enough to put their mouths on it, but their ministrations had been rushed and frantic, never like this.
Thoros worked him methodically, slicking him with saliva from root to tip, sliding his foreskin all the way back to leave the head of his cock raw and vulnerable and then tonguing soft, wet strokes over it that shot too-good bolts of painful pleasure through him. It was too much, the intensity almost keeping him from coming even as he moved helplessly closer to the edge he wasn’t supposed to go over.
“Fucker,” he cursed, spewing from his mouth since he couldn’t spew from his cock. “Asshole. Tease.”
Sure, Thoros had proclaimed that Dalin couldn’t come this week, which after the sexual feast of their time together would feel like famine, but a lack of orgasms hadn’t been unusual in his past—bondservants didn’t have the time or privacy for self-indulgence. How holding off would contribute to victory in this contest, Dalin didn’t know, but by now he was willing to believe whatever Thoros told him.
But this, this teasing, this torture, this intentional attempt to make Dalin explode only minutes after being told he couldn’t—couldn’t now, couldn’t tonight, couldn’t tomorrow—this was cruel.
“Sadistic bastard.”
“You know it.” Thoros popped off his cock for a moment to grin up at him. “That’s why you chose me, remember? Or do you mean to tell me you’d rather have gone home with Samas?”
“Maybe if I were fighting for Samas, Samas would be the one winning.”
“Oh, just for that.” And there went Dalin’s cock back down Thoros’s throat, deeper this time. “This is how you do it, by the way,” he said, pulling free for a moment again. “You’ve still got work to do on your deep throating.”
“As if I’ll need to deep throat Atalanta,” he mumbled to the top of Thoros’s head as he watched his cock disappear all the way down to the root this time. Thoros’s throat muscles worked him like a wet massage until Dalin grew dizzy, wondering as he swayed how Thoros couldn’t be dizzy himself. How did he breathe with his throat so full of cock? It was something that, yeah, maybe Dalin could learn another day, but right now he didn’t have the brain power to do more than hang on to the very edge of his sanity.
Don’t come, don’t come, don’t come, he chanted to himself, then winced when Thoros chuckled, realizing he was actually saying it out loud, begging himself not to fail at this impossible task. But that was OK. He was begging himself, not Thoros, and he wouldn’t beg Thoros, but he said, “Thoros,” and it sounded like begging. “I’m going to come. I’m going to. I can’t not.”
Thoros laughed. “Go ahead, then. Let me win.”
But he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t. He sobbed as the pleasure ratcheted higher, becoming more and more like pain the longer he didn’t give in to it, but the pain was pleasure too and it all mixed together in his mind. He tried to distract himself, to think about his stupid owner who probably had a warrant out for him, or Atalanta and the pretty handmaiden who’d giggled behind her hand, or Rory trying to steal his victory. But his brain was too full of Thoros. All he could see, all he could feel, all he could think of was Thoros.
His legs shook from the effort to hold back until they gave out on him entirely and he sank back onto his heels. His cock pulled free from Thoros’s torturous mouth with a wet plop.
“I can’t.” He hadn’t come, but he couldn’t support himself any longer, couldn’t stay where he’d been told to stay.
“OK, pretty thing. That’s enough for now. Come down here and bend over for me.”
Thoros’s hands were almost soft as he fingered him open. It was a relief to endure just that small amount of stimulation until Thoros drove his cock deep and it stroked over the hungry spot inside of him. Thoros had come not so long ago, so he had endurance now, time to fuck Dalin raw and hard until Dalin was back at that edge again, driven there by the sense of fullness and the sparks that raced through him with every stroke.
He wondered how long Thoros could last, how long he could last, as it went on and on until he was sobbing again. He wasn’t cursing Thoros now, just saying his name with deeper and deeper desperation, so close to asking him please. Please let him come, or please stop this torture. It was worse than anything—worse than the whip, worse than the clamps, worse than being coddled and flattered, worse than being bound and gagged.
He was sobbing so hard—the tremors wracking him—that it took a while to realize Thoros had stopped, that the cock inside him had softened and the heat of his channel was being soothed by the wetness of Thoros’s release.
Thoros ran easy hands over his back and flanks. “There, there. You’re OK. Take your time, pretty thing. We can stay here a bit.”
Dalin needed the anchor of Thoros’s body as his scattered senses returned slowly to him. His cock jerked angrily between his thigh, his nipples were tight points of need, and his breath hitched as he struggled to rein himself back in. He wanted to turn to Thoros and be comforted by him, but he couldn’t do that, so he appreciated being allowed to stay just like this, bent over for him with his cock in his ass.
Just as he was starting to feel human again—aroused, but not unbearably so—a hand closed around his cock.
“No.”
“Yes, Dalin. All week.” And the hand worked him up as the cock in his ass grew firmer. “You, me, this. All week.”
Thoros
Dalin looked good covered in oil. All three of the young men did, but Dalin particularly because of the muscle he carried and the length of the cock between his thighs, soft but plump and sheltered by the heavy hood of his foreskin. Thoros had brought him to a thundering orgasms the night before—his first in a week of unrelenting teasing during which Thoros had fucked him and sucked him and used him and abused him and Dalin had borne up under it, not giving in until last night.
“Tonight you come,” Thoros had whispered against his ear, reaching around to give him a hand to help.
“But the contest,” Dalin had gasped out, as though he had a hope of holding out if Thoros really, really decided to make him come. “It’s better I should retain my vitality.”
“Tonight you come,” he’d repeated. Dalin hadn’t lasted long, not once he had permission, not when Thoros made it impossible.
So Dalin’s cock was soft this morning as he stood next to Thoros waiting for Atalanta to address the assemblage, but it hung there on display, as did the instruments of his two competitors. They were wholly naked, every inch of them thoroughly oiled—a gorgeous sight for the assembled crowd to see. Today’s turnout had the arena filled almost to the top tier. It was the final competition, after all—today a winner would be chosen—but oil wrestling always brought out a good crowd. Thoros wasn’t the only one interested in watching naked male bodies grapple with each other.
Atalanta rose to address the competitors, and the crowd hushed to hear her as her voice rang clearly across the arena. “Normally, there are certain areas of the body considered off limits in such contests as these, but today we play by different rules.”
Thoros smiled. Of course they played by different rules today. This was Atalanta’s contest. He’d have been disappointed if it had been otherwise.
“A woman has many needs in a husband,” she continued, “but perhaps greatest of these is that he be able to ho
ld his own pleasure in check long enough to see to hers. Though I am, of course, a maiden—”
Her assertion was greeted by friendly chortles. Not everyone knew of Atalanta’s predilection for certain sexual practices, but everyone knew her appetites to be bold and frequent.
“—I’ve heard that not all men have such skills.”
Some of the ladies tittered behind their fans, while some of the men glanced guiltily around as though they’d been called out by name.
“I have no wish to saddle myself to a horse that can’t complete the journey,” Atalanta said, “so the winner of today’s contest won’t be the one who pins his competitors to the mat, but rather the one who retains his seed the longest.”
Samas sputtered. “What is she suggesting?”
“I think she’s suggesting an orgy,” Thoros said. “Last man … standing, shall we say, wins.”
“There are no holds barred,” Atalanta said. “So to speak.” Laughter erupted from the crowd as they came to understand Atalanta’s intention, clearly on board with it. “Though of course if a contestant chooses not to participate, he may be dismissed.”
Dalin’s grin was about a mile wide. When Atalanta questioned the competitors about their willingness, he gave his consent with a bow. “You needn’t fear my endurance, Princess.”
Rory and Provo exchanged uncertain glances before Rory shrugged. “I don’t envision difficulty in completing this task.”
“Nor do I,” Provo said.
Of course they didn’t think another man could bring them easily to orgasm, but they didn’t have Dalin’s skills either, did they?
“No one makes you spend but me,” Thoros warned Dalin before the three men were led away by the Chancellor acting as referee. They were brought to the center of the arena where a cloth had been laid down and were given the order to begin.
