Work Text:
le trou du cul du monde, in a turbulent year
“Oh, really?” Bertrand said, excessively interested. “Well, bring him down here. I’d like to see a real life lord.”
Jean-Claude nodded. There was no reason, really, why Bertrand should be giving orders of any kind. In the Republic—newborn, still squalling—there was an argument to be made that they were all equals. But Bertrand was the prodigal son, back from a decade in Paris, with city learning; he’d been the one to bring their revolution all the way to wine country. And force of personality still counted. More so, now that blood was out.
Bertrand wasn't sure he cared too much about the rights of all his fellow man, but he cared a lot about the rights of Antoine Bertrand. And he liked the idea of breaking down a failed society, and putting it back together in a way that suited him. It had seemed like it might be easier to do that out here in Nuits-Saint-Georges, the arse end of nowhere, than in Paris among the Jacobins and Girondins.
It had been easy, deliriously so. Years of hardship had done half the work for him, along with grumblings from neighbouring villages and shreds of news from Paris. A few rounds in the tavern, a few rousing speeches, and within a week of his arrival the wheel of progress was turning, smoothly and easily, before his persuasive shoulder.
With every man in the village and several women whipped up to a fever, they’d stormed the château—beaten down the oaken door, sacked the Siegneur’s study, piled up a pyre in the courtyard and burnt the feudal registers. All those taxes paid and owed, all those years of pain wrung out in ink, consigned to the flames and up in smoke in a second.
Then, in a festival mood, they’d torn through the rest of the manor house, ransacking the rooms, redressing themselves in the Monsieur and Madame de Saint-Georges’ clothes, claiming furniture for their own dwellings, or dashing it to pieces, according to their liking. Only the chapel had escaped the merry mob. Bertrand himself would have been perfectly happy to smash the stained glass, the foolish-looking saints with faces like sheep and the leering yellow-haired Madonna. He’d have enjoyed pinioning the stone angel’s wings. But he knew exactly how far to push a gang of peasants from Nuits-Saints-Georges, and where their revolutionary excesses would end—at the door of the Church. So he’d turned them instead to the pantry, where they'd eaten themselves full on de Saint-Georges food, and had now come, at last, to their famous cellar.
The de Saint-Georges family themselves, it seemed, were not at home to visitors. All except one: the son and heir. His lordship, the petit comte. Pierre Étienne Jean-Marie de Saint-Georges.
He must have been out for a ride during the first flush of revolutionary fervour, and come in the back way. How long after he’d dismounted, Bertrand wondered, had he smelt the smoke? How far had he made it back into the house before he’d understood what had become of his home, his world? He'd been spotted haring back to the stables again, accompanied by one of the family's loyal old retainers; when he was cornered there, instead of mounting up and attempting a doubtful charge out over his pursuers, he'd made an even more foolish break for it on foot.
Fast little bugger, Jean-Claude had said, then grinned like a fox—but not fast enough.
He'd been run down and tackled and dragged back to the house, kicking and protesting all the way there. The retainer, meanwhile, had got away. Hopefully, that would bring some comfort to the young lord, Bertrand thought wryly, in the coming weeks.
He continued his survey of the barrels, indicated one, had Gervaise lever the top off to reveal the liquid within. It was dark and slumberous in the torchlight as the sloe-eyes of a shipyard whore.
He felt a soft pang of excitement, deep in his core. He wasn’t entirely sure quite what he’d do with an actual noble. But he knew it would be stimulating.
He had, in actual fact, seen this particular noble before, though not for a lifetime, not since he was barely a man himself. Back then, he could have seen young Pierre any Sunday he liked, in the ramshackle Nuits-Saint-Georges church, taking his place in the family pew. But even at seventeen, Bertrand hadn't been much of a churchgoer.
Instead, it had been in the sloping tangle of trees behind this very château—the de Saint-Georges woods. Bertrand had been emptying out a snare, an injured rabbit, white-eyed and twitching in his hand. He had been idly considering trying to keep it, heal it, have it as his own. Its fur had been uncommonly soft, giving luxuriously under his firm fingers, and its movements piteous.
There’d been no noise bar the calls of the birds, but a movement had caught the edge of his attention. He’d looked up and met the eyes of the seigneur's son, standing there in a crop of waterpepper, like he'd glimmered into being along with the dew.
He must have been five or six then, old enough, at least, to be clad in a velveteen jacket and britches, with froths of white at the wrists and open collar. He’d stood very still in the dappled sun, face full of morning freshness. He had eyes like a fawn—deep, unblinking, framed by long girlish lashes.
A peasant caught poaching would be hanged by day's end.
Bertrand remembered the weight of the knife in his hand, the pounding of the rabbit's heart. He remembered trying out a smile.
To the dark-haired boy, it must have seemed like nothing more than a bestial display of aggression, a dog in a corner or a sow fighting for scraps. A wolf, jaws dripping. He'd probably been frightened, to have found he'd unknowingly brought his soft white flesh so near livestock, especially one that had so obviously turned savage. But he'd stood his ground. There'd been an unclear expression in his blank porcelain face, his china blue eyes. Even now, Bertrand couldn’t have said exactly what it had been. Just fear, or bravery? Defiance? Curiosity?
Then the voice of his noble father, winnowing through the chestnut trees. Pierrot, Pierrot. The lifted flutter of the boy’s ruffled collar, the flashing of his ankles in the dripping grass. Bertrand remembered marvelling at those tiny leather boots as they’d receded from sight—impossibly fine, impossibly small. The boots of an enchanted doll or a cat-prince or a child-hero from a fairy story.
A little once-upon-a-time boy, there and gone in a blink.
And here again now, in the rough hands of his lessers. His entrance was less silent, less full of mystic grace. He came in kicking and yelling his aristocratic head off; his cultured shouts could be heard echoing through the cellars long before he appeared in the doorway, pinned and compelled by a couple of grim-faced peasants.
Bertrand’s attention sharpened. The air in the room seemed to tighten, to draw to a hungry point under his chin.
Well, well. Hadn't little Pierrot grown up nicely?
He was shorter than the men who held him, neat and slender as a lily, and his skin had the same pearly smoothness of a lily’s broad petals, though his cheeks were currently flushed pink with outrage. They’d lost the cherubic roundness of his childhood, but he'd never look commonplace, not with those elfin features, that sweet retroussé nose. His dark hair was longer now and softly curling. It had begun the day tied with a ribbon at the nape of his neck, but it was coming loose at the front, shorter locks hanging round his face, over his forehead.
With his large eyes, bright with exertion and ire, and his sulky mouth, he could have been the model for one of those angry young men beloved by German sturm-und-drangers—young Werther, perhaps.
He’d fallen silent at the sight of Bertrand, sensing new danger, perhaps, or just out of breath. His chest was heaving; he’d lost his coat and his shirt had been torn open at the neck in his struggle. Bertrand could see the dips of his collarbones, the delicate tendons of his throat. They looked boyish and vulnerable.
He still had those long lashes.
God, he was lovely. Enchanting. Bertrand felt every nerve within him coil and tighten pleasurably.
"Hello, Pierre," he said.
The young noble panted and glared at him, his face like a firestorm. With his arms pinned like that he was a little bent forward; he had to look up at Bertrand from under his brows. His shoulders worked against his captors’ hold, without much success.
It was a good look on him, Bertrand decided. Angry and trapped and utterly helpless. Any second now he’d start spitting like a kitten.
"Home alone?” Bertrand asked lightly, "Where are Maman and Papa? And"—he smiled a vulpine smile—"when are they coming back?"
A gleam of triumph entered the aristocratic face. “Never,” Pierre de Saint-Georges said, with intense satisfaction. His voice—oh, even rent by exhaustion, it was clear and honeyed. A thing of beauty, too fine for peasant ears. “Ignace will get word to them—you'll never see them, until my father's pistol is at your temple. When they come, it'll be with troops. You've forfeited your lives for nothing.”
That, Bertrand considered highly unlikely. Funny to hear that upmarket Parisian accent, out here in wine country. Like an exotic transplant cultivated under glass.
For a second, Bertrand wondered whether the young man recognized the city in his own voice. A far rougher version, of course, dirty and honest, earned the hard way. Had his lordship ever been to Paris? What kind of notion did he have of the things unfolding there?
“Not for nothing,” he said, consideringly. “We have this château; we have lots of nice wine. And we have you.”
The young noble must have seen a glimpse of something in Bertrand's face as he spoke this last, a white hint of teeth. His eyes widened, and he made a sudden thrash against the hands on his arms. Jean-Claude, on his left, grizzled out a curse and cuffed him roughly over the head, a brisk stunning blow.
“Come on,” Bertrand advised, amiably. “Don't make this harder than it needs to be.” Don't make me harder on you, he meant, without much sincerity. Don’t make me harder, full stop. “One last chance to tell me—where are your parents?”
Pierre de Saint-Georges breathed in resolutely through his nose. His face was set, lit by a pale flame from within. “ Vive le roi,” he said.
Bertrand kissed his teeth in mock regret. “Not very politic, my lord. I suggest you adapt your manners. After all, you're a houseguest now.”
The young noble’s eyes flashed. He looked, Bertrand thought, like something from a novel: blunt and haughty and go-to-the-devil. "Vive la France, vive le roi, vive Dieu. And you bloody butchers can all burn in hell."
No answer, Bertrand was sure, could have pleased him more than this. It was like watching a lamb gambol right under the knife. A flash ran through his veins, as heady as the smell of wine in the air—mastery, anticipation. The knowledge that the men in there with him would follow him in any course now, let him do what he liked.
“All right,” he said evenly. “Somebody needs a lesson in diplomacy. Give him here.”
The men holding de Saint-Georges seemed pleased to shove him into Bertrand’s arms. He struggled gallantly, lashing out with both hands, and started up shouting again: take your filthy paws off me, I’ll see you hanged, etc. etc. That kind of thing. A nail even caught Bertrand in the cheek.
Fights like a hell-cat, he thought, like a very angry girl.
De Saint-Georges was a well-formed young man, for an aristocrat—which, of course, meant that he was lithe and spare, slender as a yearling. Athletic, certainly, but not too strong. He probably spent his time playing tennis and fencing, dancing about with a blunted sword, and thinking that made him ready for war. Enough muscle on him to look pleasing in breeches, and absolutely no more. Certainly not enough to wriggle out of Bertrand's burly grip, to keep himself from being pressed firmly against the barrel, to combat the weight of a hand on his slim nape. It was intoxicatingly easy to get him pinned there, and press down.
He’d stopped shouting now, too busy gritting his teeth and dragging harsh breaths through them. There must have been a moment during their little tussle, delicious to imagine, where he’d figured out what Bertrand meant to do with him: he’d managed to get his hands on either side of the vat, and was trying to keep himself aloft with everything in him, his lean biceps trembling. His fine shirt, damp with sweat and smudged with dirt, hung loose and dipped close to the bright mirrored surface of the wine. As soon as it made contact, it supped the liquor up fast, turning a bruised, red-purple shade.
His crucifix hung loose too, glinting in the light from the torches. It tickled Bertrand. Christ had liked a tipple, hadn’t he? He could consider this an offering, a tithe.
“Give it up, my lord,” he said, amused, barely out of breath. “And have a drink. You're wasting what strength you have.”
De Saint-Georges spat out an oath. Something in his voice told Bertrand the young noble wasn't used to saying it; it sounded new in his mouth, foreign, as though learned by rote. Well, he was going to have plenty of new experiences in the near future. He was going to learn all sorts of things.
Smiling, Bertrand inclined his head a little, and Gervaise stepped forward and dealt the boy a blow across the shoulders with the butt of his torch.
De Saint-Georges—no, Bertrand decided, he wouldn't countenance the silly, affected, aristocratic de any longer. The young man wasn't "of" the region any more; the people of Nuits-Saint-Georges were shaking his family off like the parasites they were, tossing their heir out like an unwanted stray.
Saint-Georges cried out. One wrist buckled at the rim of the barrel; one hand slipped, scrabbled—missed. His support shot out from under him, and all in an instant Bertrand's left arm was plunged halfway to the elbow in exquisite French wine. The liquid was cold; he got the sense it had been sleeping until it had the heir to its estate forcibly put face-down in it. The tinted surface frosted and splintered around Bertrand’s wrist, around what he'd pushed into it.
Semi-submerged, Saint-Georges still thrashed, twisting against Bertrand's grasp. He must be hurting himself—Bertrand was holding on tight to his soft perfumed locks, grip fit to scalp him. But the sting probably didn't register much against the onslaught of liquid in his eyes, his nose, his mouth, his throat.
Bertrand leaned against his bucking body, over his back, not a breath between them. It was like pressing a lover down against the sheets, filling them up.
The wine was in a tumult, crazed and crashing like a stormy red sea. When Saint-Georges tried to reach back and grab at Betrand's hand, his fingers just slipped wetly against his wrist, like the gentle pawing of a pet.
Devil take him, Bertrand mused, continuing his earlier thought, but he’s an appealing stray. His pert, neatly muscled behind was pressing insistently against Bertrand’s thighs, his crotch, providing a pleasant friction. Just wants someone to take him in and train him. And who better than me?
That sense of potency swelled. By the time he was through with the boy, he’d be de Bertrand, if anything, ready to beg and roll over and lick at his master’s hands.
For now, he judged Saint-Georges had had a good long drink. He pulled his hand up. The aristocrat’s dark head broke the surface like a bedraggled Venus, painfully born. All spit and seafoam. His whole body was distilled for a second to a gasp, to his open mouth, to every muscle straining for air. Then he began hacking and wretching. His hair clung to his skull, and to Bertrand’s fingers.
"How's it taste, my lord?" Bertrand asked, placidly. "Want another sip?"
Through the thin crimson film covering Saint-Georges’ face, Bertrand detected the beginnings of a snarl, but he didn't wait for a full response. He ducked him again, let his airways be invaded by blunt tides of red. Like a great wet red cock, Bertrand thought, amused at the image. Forcing its way into the pretty little lordling's throat.
This time the struggle was a fraction weaker. When Bertrand brought Saint-Georges up again, he was coughing and gagging, breathing in rags. Little bubbly shoals of spit fell from his lips and dappled the surface of the wine.
"Ready to be polite?" Bertrand asked, mildly.
Saint-Georges’ eyes were huge and dilated. Under the wine, his cheeks were flushed, fever-struck.
"Stop this," he said, and his voice was a wreck. It gave Bertrand a patriotic glow to hear it. There was a ghost of command in it still, but it was a fragile thing, a drunk, dying thing. "St–stop this—at once."
The kind of words that sounded like an order from the strong, and a plea from the weak.
His gaze flicked wildly between the other men in the room, as though, after years and years of paying his father taxes through the arse and breaking their teeth on bad bread, they might give a single solitary fuck about his plight.
Bertrand felt no compunction in rolling his eyes. "Try again," he said, and gave his lordship one more taste. He let him thrash for a bit, then drew him out, wrenched his head up and back so his trembling lips could have brushed Bertrand’s ear. “Anything more to say?”
Droplets of wine rolled down his forearm; he could hear them striking the stone floor. But Saint-Georges said nothing, just gasped and panted. His chest heaved like a courtesan trying to draw attention to her tits.
“An improvement,” Bertrand said, and, because he could, pressed a rough fraternal kiss to his wine-stained cheek—profaning his lordship with his peasant mouth. "But I'm going to enjoy teaching you some real manners, young man."
Then he released his grip.
Saint-Georges’ legs instantly went out from under him; he slumped sideways onto the wine-washed floor and surrendered to a huge, wracking orgy of coughs. They gripped him all over, like a fit or an orgasm, shaking his whole body, making him spasm and jerk against the flagstones, his legs limp and twitching. Bertrand watched, fascinated, as his shoulder blades strained, flung up against his skin under his soaked shirt. The linen clung to them, red all the way to his trim little waist.
With fantastic effort, Saint-Georges brought a trembling hand up to his mouth—a futile, instinctive gesture of courtesy—and made a high, whimpering sound. Then he coughed up a foamy mouthful onto the flagstones: red, like a consumptive.
Bertrand squatted down next to him to watch him splutter. He pushed the hair back from the young man’s face, tucked it behind his ear. “A good vintage, my lord?” he asked. “To your liking?”
Saint-Georges barely twitched at the sound of his voice. His eyes were huge and dazed, red at the rims. He was staring into the froth-speckled surface of the puddle beneath him—at his wrecked reflection, Bertrand guessed, with a thrill. There was a sweet, lost look on the lad’s face. He looked disbelieving, confused—very shocked, and very young.
That lazy heat between Betrand’s legs began to throb. He remembered again his hands round that rabbit’s neck, the powder-soft feel of its fur. Its tremulous pulse tacitly begging Bertrand’s hand for mercy.
He was going to break this young man, and put him back together in a way that suited him. He was going to relish every second.
"No?” he managed. To his own ears, the thread of excitement in his voice was laughably plain, but he doubted Saint-Georges was hearing much beyond his own heartbeat. “That’s rather ungrateful. It was worth more than any of us here would have earned in a lifetime." He pulled at Saint-Georges’ hair again, made him meet his gaze.
The aristocratic head lolled on its slender neck, and Saint-Georges blinked dazedly at him, lashes slow, spiked like a child's after a fit of crying. Bertrand wondered if he'd swallowed enough to get him drunk. Or breathed it in, let it fill his lungs like wineskins, absorbing it slowly through the soft tissue there, meek and receptive.
A drop ran down his neck, and nestled itself in the hollow of his fine throat. Bertrand reached out and traced its passage with his finger. Saint-Georges’ pulse was leaping and straining like a colt first brought to halter. The skin of his neck was so soft that Bertand suspected he was yet to start shaving.
A glimmer of feeling entered Saint-Georges’ dark eyes. Like a flash of faraway lightning, or sparks jumping from a struck steel. His mouth tensed; he lunged and spat hot wine into Bertrand’s face.
"Do your worst," he said, voice raw and pious, with red on his lips. "Death holds no terror for me. I commend my soul to God."
Bertrand laughed, delighted. He wiped his cheek with his hand, licked wine off his fingers. It tasted like years of stored pleasure, and the sweet assurance of more to come.
"Who said anything about death?" he asked. "We're just passing time here, my lord. You’ll be sent on to Paris once I get bored. Madame la Guillotine has a cold, sharp kiss saved for you."
☙
Bertrand had him kept in the cellar, among the dreaming bottles and casks, and let others attend to his basic needs, everything required to keep him alive and—to a certain extent—well. He visited each day, in between other tasks related to the total restructuring of a village society, and spent an hour or so slapping his lordship around. Tested whether Saint-Georges would reveal where his parents had gone—no. Tried to get him to renounce the king—also no. Tried to get him to renounce his lord and saviour—a firm and resounding absolutely bloody not.
These negatives had taken none of the joy out of the exercise. It had been indescribably pleasing to put bruises on Saint-Georges’ pretty face, to tug on his hair and hear him bite back a moan, to bloody his pink lips—split them and swell them to a perpetual pout.
But that had all been mere prologue. Like the kind of warming kisses you might give to a frigid mistress. Today, Bertrand would try something new.
He’d been thinking about it for days, ever since he’d first seen the young man. Especially in the evenings.
As had become customary, Saint-Georges was secured to a chair, his arms behind him and an ankle tied to each front leg. He didn’t look up when Bertrand entered the stone storeroom, carrying a chair of his own, nor when Bertrand put it down facing him and took a seat.
In his loose shirt and his breeches, he looked like some invert’s fantasy of a Christian martyr. His skin was luminous, even when bruised, and his lip was beginning to heal already, the swelling receding. Now the petulance was all his own. Bertrand reached out and rubbed a thumb against the lingering split.
Saint-Georges’ breathing remained almost comically even and controlled. He didn’t move a muscle.
Bertand smiled. Then, placing a hand on each of the young man’s knees, he pushed his thighs apart, as wide as they’d go.
He had truly delightful legs. Long, for his height, and fetchingly coltish. Bertrand pushed his hands further up, feeling the lean muscle of his inner thighs beneath his palms.
Saint-Georges twitched. Tension entered his face and he sat up a little more stiffly, back rigid.
Bertrand hummed. He sat for a second surveying the young noble, letting Saint-Georges feel the weight of his regard. Then he reached forward and matter-of-factly opened up his lordship’s breeches.
Saint-Georges took in a short, startled breath. When Bertrand drew out his charmingly modest piece, he blinked and froze like a hare. Bertrand thought he might even be holding his breath.
Swallowing his amusement, Bertrand concentrated on his prick. It was a lovely handful—not too big, not too thick, but very pretty indeed. Compact and rosy and… demure, somehow. Sweet.
At least this part of Saint-Georges knew its proper place. If it had been any bigger, Bertrand would have enjoyed having it whipped for its presumption, its overweening aristocratic conceit. He might still, in time: it was a pleasing idea—to have his lordship teary and apologetic over the monstrous size of his perfectly average prick.
Here and now, Saint-Georges was still stiff all over, except for the place where Bertrand truly wanted that. No matter—they'd get there. Out here in the sticks, they had nothing but time.
He was looking at Bertrand with the still wariness of a fox in a trap—a watchful question behind those blue eyes. It kindled a heat in Bertrand's core, a growing magnificence. Yes, cheri. Well you might ask.
He touched the prick lightly, playfully, almost absent-mindedly—tossing it from finger to finger, sending it bouncing between them, enjoying its pleasing springiness.
Saint-Georges' breathing picked up; he shivered a little. Bertrand paused, interested to see what he’d do or say. He’d half expected the young man to buck his hips from the first, to torque and try to twist his way out of Bertrand's grasp, but perhaps the last three days had taught him the futility of those kinds of games.
Those fine pink lips parted round a syllable, the first shape of a question. Bertrand smiled, and the smile seemed either to answer Saint-Georges, or to frighten his curiosity into its grave.
He watched mutely, face taut and pale, as Bertrand licked his own thumb, laved it with spit, then reached over and rubbed coaxingly at the head of his cock.
Saint-Georges twitched again and gave a little open-mouthed gasp. He blinked rapidly, eyes large and astonished. He looked like a swimmer who’d felt the riverbed drop beneath him: suddenly and acutely out of his depth.
"Do you like that, my lord?" Bertrand asked, in a tone of light interest.
Saint-Georges' mouth slammed shut, lips compressing to a thin line. A muscle jerked in his jaw—but his cheeks coloured, washed with pink.
"Answer me," Bertrand said, pleasantly. “Do you like it?”
Saint-Georges glanced up at him, eyes hard and hostile. "No. Let go."
It was a token protest; nothing about the words suggested Saint-Georges thought they’d be obeyed. He wasn't stupid, this one, despite centuries of inbreeding. Perhaps some peasant blood had got in there at some point—swelled his brain, made him pleasing to look at. Too bad it had been stifled since birth by frills and lace, by rich foods and perfumes.
Bertrand hummed and played with him more firmly, more purposefully. Soon enough, he was feeling him thicken in his hand. Saint-Georges made a choked-off noise of distress.
Realising you’ve been lied to, my lord? Bertrand thought. Told all your life that you’re born to command. Turns out you can't even command your own cock.
"It's a pretty thing," he mused aloud, thumbing the flushed head of the aristocratic prick in question. "One of your little trinkets. Do you sit in your featherbed and play with it like this?"
Saint-Georges said something very vulgar, something that, under any other circumstances, would have earned him a hard slap and more blood in his mouth. Today, Bertrand tutted.
“Like this, then?” he asked, varying his grip. “Or…” He reached into the open fall of the young man's wine-stained breeches and fingered teasingly at his nestling balls—not overly large either, very soft and sweet.
Saint-Georges made a noise like a yelp, through his nose; his thighs trembled and he pulled against the ropes at his ankles, trying to slam his legs shut. "Stop that," he said, voice higher, more urgent. "Stop it!"
For the first time, he sounded openly afraid.
“What do you aristocrats think about when you pull yourselves off?” Bertrand went on, not bothering to acknowledge his struggle. It had been so unsuccessful, he felt it didn't really deserve the courtesy. “Powdered ladies, is it? Courtly dresses?” He tipped Saint-Georges a knowing look, still playing light fingers over his shaft. “Rouged whores? Plump thighs, heaving breasts, luscious cunts?”
Cheeks flaming, eyes furious, Saint-Georges breathed thinly through his nose. He mumbled something that sounded like "dishonorable cad”.
Bertrand chuckled. “You don't seem to mind it that much,” he said. Making the most of the movement, the noise, he spat unctuously into his own palm, and wrapped his hand properly around Saint-Georges. “Come on, what is it you want? A pretty shepherdess, all curls and flounces, rolling you around in the grass?”
He let himself enjoy the image, picturing his lordship in country congress, making free with that lithe young body within his mind’s eye.
“Hm, imagine her giving you hot melting kisses, licking at your fine mouth. Letting you worship her bouncing breasts, her soft little slit. Get your nose in her bush, then your shaft inside her, where she's so tight, and so wet. Feel her part around you.”
Pink had started to trickle down Saint-Georges’ throat. His features were fixed in a stormy frown, his eyes on the wall. It was adorable, watching him try to play aloof. As though the flushed erection in Bertrand’s hand had nothing to do with him.
"No?" Bertrand said, innocently. "Perhaps you'd prefer the shepherd?"
Saint-Georges’ eyes widened, darted to Bertrand’s face, a hunted look in their blue depths; his prick practically leapt between Bertrand’s fingers.
Oh, Bertrand thought, with a rush of amused arousal. O-ho, like that, is it?
God, he was a treat. How too, too perfect.
Warmth pooled between Bertrand’s legs, his own cock steadily swelling.
Had the boy been born bent? he wondered, idly. Or perhaps somebody had been here before Bertrand—a music, or dancing, or fencing tutor. Some older man expressing his approval of his young master with rough, covetous caresses, fingers fumbling in his lust. Training his lordship to get fondled and like it.
Either way, it would make things a devil of a lot easier.
“All right,” he said, tightening his hand a little, “a man, then. A peasant like me, perhaps. Do you dream about meeting him out in the fields, letting him put his strong hands upon you, press you up against a tree, or face down in the clover?"
Saint-Georges’ breathing picked up; he was bright red down to his collar now. He squeezed his eyes shut, clearly still trying to pretend nothing was happening.
"I bet you imagine him worshipping you,” Bertrand said, the pastoral fantasy coming easily, with his eyes on that fresh, faun-like face, “going down on his knees, kissing and licking and sucking your cock. Or is it the other way about, hm? Do you want his length in your thoroughbred throat? While you stuff your hand between your legs and stroke yourself like this? Wouldn't that feel nice?" He matched his actions to his words, rubbing firmly. Triumph bloomed hot in his belly as he watched Saint-Georges’ thighs tense and relax. "Would you let him at your hole, my lord? Let him get his thick fingers inside you, or maybe his tongue? Play with you there, make your prick jump and squirt?"
Any attempt to get away had ceased: Saint-Georges was now giving tiny thrusts up into Bertrand's fist. They must be involuntary—he must be trying not to. But he was helpless against the smooth glide of the hand on him, against Bertrand’s uncouth words.
He was breathing hard, eyes a little unfocused; a gleam of sweat stood out on his forehead. Bertrand judged that he’d been brought high enough to lose his white-knuckled grip on himself, but wasn’t yet riding that close to the edge. He’d need a much firmer hand to get him to crest.
For now, though, he was right where Bertrand wanted him. He wasn't doing all this for the simple pleasure of a Royalist slut, after all.
“Very nice, Saint-Georges,” he said. The young noble turned glassy eyes up to him. He shook his head urgently, like a dog trying to clear water from its ears. His dark, waving locks bounced round his shoulders; a short curl at the front fell over his glowing forehead, and stuck there.
Not for the first time since his arrival at the Château de Saint-Georges, Bertrand thanked his lucky stars. After all, they hadn’t been obligated to deliver him an aristocrat who looked quite so lovely.
He chuckled at the dazed look in the lad’s face and gave a tiny pinch to the head of his prick, just to help him clear some of that fog from his gaze.
“Listen to me, cheri,” he said, seriously, holding Saint-Georges’ gaze like a tutor. “Those kinds of games aren't for you anymore. You're being saved for something greater.” And when Saint-Georges’ eyes stayed blank, uncomprehending, he gave his hard-on an encouraging little shake. “Remember? Madame la Guillotine's cold kiss?”
He watched the meaning hit Saint-Georges, the dawning of a queasy comprehension in his eyes—in his face. His pulse was thrashing under Bertrand’s fingers like a bird in a net.
“That's right, very good: imagine that, imagine her.” Bertrand permitted himself a grin. “What a lover: stern, gracious, perfectly formed. She's going to look after you, Saint-Georges, give you what you need."
The lad’s face was a picture—disgust, consternation and real fear, all fighting to surface under a thick glaze of lust.
His cock had wilted, just a little, in fright. Well, that wouldn’t do. Bertrand gave it a more purposeful frig, fist still loose but insistent. Come on, you little bastard, come on. He’d made up his mind: he would make Saint-Georges like this. He would twist him, pervert him—until he could come at the sound of steel being sharpened.
He took that noble chin in his hand, stroked the soft cheek that had never been near a blade, not even a razor.
“Look at that face,” he said, “I bet you’ll pull a crowd. They'll all be thinking about this”—he gave the length in his other hand a demonstrative squeeze—”and those eyes, and those lips. All of them looking at you with lust in their eyes. Some of the women might pull down their dresses, bare a breast for you. Picture that, Saint-Georges: a lovely citoyenne’s perky breast, her pink nipple, so soft. And their husbands and brothers and fathers there too, with their pricks twitching.”
Saint-Georges gave a sharp, shamed intake of breath, his shoulders rounding like a hurt animal protecting its breast—a futile attempt to hide his reaction.
“All right,” Bertrand said soothingly, amused, “All right, don’t worry—they'll want you too, all of them, even the ones who’ve never dreamed of sodomy. Aristocrats all look the same once their hair is shorn, boys and girls, and a sweet little arse is a sweet little arse. Yours’ll have them salivating, cheri. I wonder, would you hold their gaze, brassy and wanton, like you're holding mine right now, or” —alarm flickered across Saint-Georges’ features, and he pulled his gaze quickly away, breathing hard. It made Bertrand chuckle— “yes, or avert your eyes like a blushing virgin.”
His own cock was pressing insistently against the fall-piece of his breeches, greedy for attention. That would come after. Unlike some, he had self-control. But he couldn’t pretend to be immune to the picture he was painting, and the picture before him of Saint-Georges undone, and the intoxicating feeling of having the lad’s soul on a thread…
“Your executioner,” he said, words coming faster now, “will be extraordinarily handsome. You'll be his favourite: he's been waiting for you for months, his prick thick in his pants as he watches you mount the scaffold steps. I bet you’ll like his hands on you: strapping you down with your arse in the air, pressing over your body like a lover. Stroking your hair, telling you how brave you are, how perfect, what a good boy. Wishing he could stuff your hole with his shaft as Madame has her way with you.”
It was working, he could sense it, like feeling a well-placed blade begin to sink into a tender joint.
Saint-Georges was shaking his head in dismay, eyes brimming and fixed on the floor. His thighs tightened and twitched helplessly, and his prick was leaking—more than any man Bertrand had been with before, obligingly slicking the way for his hand. Wasn't that darling? So they did teach rich boys nice manners, after all.
“Don't,” Saint-Georges said, urgently, as though he could bite it back no longer, “no, don’t, stop this, I don't want to—”
Bertrand spoke over him. He’d tightened his fingers, playing mercilessly with the head. “She's cruel, but her embrace holds you so fast, and her caress is so sweet. You'd be so ready for it, wet like you are now, pissing your pleasure all over the rough boards.”
With his free hand he reached out and stroked at Saint-Georges’ throat—one finger against his fluttering pulse. He could feel the buzz of moans the boy was trying to bite off, vibrating through his skin.
“She’ll embrace you here, round your neck, and you’ll see that pack of people, all looking up at you like hungry dogs. You think you're too good for their dirty fingers, and you're right. You only belong to her. And you love that, don’t you? You’re so beautifully hard for her.”
Saint-Georges’ rough breaths echoed off the stone walls. ”No!” he cried, voice choked. “Shut up, I don’t want this, you’re making me—”
Bertrand stroked him remorselessly, hard and fast and even. “Think about her, Saint-Georges, think about her.”
Tears of anger and frustration finally slid past Saint-Georges’ lashes, slicking his flushed cheeks as he frantically shook his head. He was biting hard at his bruised lip, but couldn’t keep in a heart-rending, mortified whimper. The muscles in his thighs, his core all tensed erratically, trying ever so desperately to keep himself from falling over that sheer, shining edge.
“Stop holding out on me, sweetheart,” Bertrand said, hand flying over his adorable cock, tight and slick. “Come on—chop, chop.”
Saint-Georges made a sound like a startled sob, tensed all over and spilled very prettily over Bertrand's hand, come pattering merrily onto the flagstones like a jet from a spigot.
The noise he’d made echoed musically off the rough stone walls, then mingled with and was lost in the sound of his panting breaths. He hung loose in his bonds for a moment, his eyes screwed tight shut.
When they fluttered open again, the look in them was complex, delicious, intoxicating, like a draught of the best kind of liquor. Wounded, crestfallen, wonderfully dismayed. And the slow dawn of something new— something awed and wondering. Fear and respect, like a dog watching its master.
It went straight to Bertrand’s cock. He would remember that look when he came off later. He'd remember it, he was sure, again and again.
Feeling uplifted, like a preacher, a god, he wiped his hand carelessly on the knee of Saint-Georges’ breeches. He left his lordship like that, messy with his own spend, and walked out, whistling a little snatch of 'Ça ira'.
Not a bad start. Not a bad start at all.
☙
Bertrand kept up his visits, but he didn’t touch his lordship’s cock again. He didn’t need to—they’d conclusively established that he could do so, any time he liked, and that knowledge was enough to make Saint-Georges hold his breath, try to hide his flinches. Oh, he still kept up his top-lofty facade, but there was a cast of shame, of alarm in those china-blue eyes, whenever Bertrand stepped near. He seemed almost relieved to get a slap.
It pleased a righteous, vindictive part of Bertrand, to force the young lord to do some of that distinctive peasant arithmetic, the weighing of unavoidable evils. Yes, you were starving and the baby had croup, but at least the goat wasn’t dead yet. Thank you, God. Yes, Saint-Georges was hungry and he was being hurt, but at least his jailor wasn’t touching his cock. Yet. Thank you, Bertrand.
Right now he reminded Bertrand of a half-broken horse, with enough ginger still to feel frightened by the change being wrought in him. A proud creature, feeling itself crack.
Today, he’d decided, Saint-Georges could come to him—could visit Bertrand as he sat in state. He had something special planned for him.
He spent most of his day in what had no doubt once been referred to as The Great Hall, a self-consciously well-preserved Medieval room: high ceilings, low beams, big fuck-off fireplace. Big fuck-off portrait of the château’s erstwhile master—Monseigneur le Comte de Saint-Georges, in all his bewigged glory—above it. Big oaken table with big oaken chairs.
The room was barer than it had been, emptied out weeks ago. All that flimsy, fine furniture now filled peasant houses, propped up peasant arses, fuelled peasant fires. But it was still an impressive sort of study, and a perfectly good place to entertain guests.
Bertrand propped his feet up on the long table, lit his pipe. Not bad, Antoine, he thought, for a blacksmith's son. If your father could see you now, master of all this...
It was a counter-revolutionary thought. Nothing in this house was his; it belonged now to the people, the republic. And if Jacques Bertrand could see him now, see the things his son was doing to his lordship, he'd have an apoplexy all over again. Good old Jacques had loved Saint-Georges' father like a faithful dog loved the club, like a good believer loved God. He'd thought the squalling rural dauphinet a blessing, a beneficence, sent straight from heaven. A better creature than his own son, by simple virtue of his birth. The idea of somebody putting hands on little Pierre would have seemed to Jacques like the flagellation of Christ—whereas taking a belt to the dirt-born back of his son... Now, that was only right and natural. The proper place of a blacksmith's son was under a blow.
The door opened, and Bertrand banished these thoughts.
Jean-Claude entered, towing a pale and dirty Saint-Georges by the bound arm. He gave his lordship a rough shove towards the table, spat fulsomely at his bare feet, nodded to Bertrand and left again, his burden delivered.
Saint-Georges stood with his head high, face blank, eyes not meeting Betrand’s. His wrists were tied behind him, his shoulders stiff, back straight. He'd been the same yesterday when they'd shorn his hair—white-faced, red eyed, but silent, solemn. Self-conscious, aristocratic stiff-upper-lip-ism.
It was a little bit comical, a little endearing. The cropping of his hair had given him a sweet, fledgling aspect; with that tousled mop and his pretty face, he looked like a boy among bigger, rougher revolutionary men. It was as though he must just be playing the aloof, dignified prisoner—imagining, perhaps, that he was being led direct to some grand execution, instead of his own dining table.
Well, let the lad practice. He'd need it soon enough.
"The Titus cut suits you," Bertrand said, mildly. "I hear all the fashionable young ladies in London are wearing it like that this year.” He’d read that in a broadsheet from Paris. Over there, they were calling it something different. Coiffure à la guillotine. The thought made Bertrand smile.
Saint-Georges acted as though he hadn't heard. His face was a dead mask, with two glassy dark eyes. Firelight flickered faintly within them.
"You're standing like you have a stick up your arse,” Bertrand said. “What's wrong? Don't like what we've done with the place?"
Saint-George cast a dull look round the room, like he noticed no change. His gaze caught for a second on the portrait above the fire then slid away.
Bertrand sighed. He crossed to the boy, propelled him stumbling towards the table and compelled him to sit in one of the sturdy oaken chairs with a bump. It couldn't be comfortable, not with his arms trapped behind him, but it didn't seem to warrant the sharp hiss Saint-Georges let out through his teeth.
Bertrand frowned. His intuition stirred. He reached down and lifted the boy's loose, dirtied shirt by the hem.
Somebody had painted him in livid motley. His left flank, from his chest to below the line of his breeches, was a sprawling mess of contusions—bruises in glorious, jewel-like colours. Blue-violet, damson, magenta, puce. A haphazard stippling of camellia pink.
Bertrand was reminded of the beautiful enammelled things he'd seen in the rooms upstairs, since smashed to pieces and crushed under boots. In places, he thought he could see the prints of boots here as well.
Fury flashed up, hot in his gorge. It was like discovering a mistress had been sneaking away to get smacked around by other men. His fists clenched in the fabric, wrinkling it further. “Who did this?" he asked, a hint of a snap in his voice.
The boy barely seemed to register it. His only response was a very small movement of his proud shoulders, something that might, just possibly, have been an ill-mannered shrug. Irritation stoked, Bertrand gave him a little shake, enough to jostle the bruised ribs, to give him a persuasive throb of pain. " Tell me, Pierrot."
The name had slipped out, slipped in from another decade, a golden-green country that had ceased to exist. But it made light leap into Saint-Georges’ eyes again—surprised there by a sound he couldn’t have expected to hear again in this life.
He wet his lips, pink tongue there and gone in a second, leaving them shiny. They were chapped and cracked but so finely shaped.
He really is like a doll, Bertrand thought, unreal, almost too fine to play with. That hot flame in his blood ran even hotter at the thought of other hands upon him, other fists, other boots.
"I don't know," Saint-Georges said. His voice was rough, hollow and thin with disuse. "One of your men."
"Not my men," Bertrand said automatically. He was looking again at the storm of colour on his captive's flank. "Citizens of the Republic. Which of them was it?"
Saint-Georges looked towards the fire again, made a soft noise that might have been a snort. "Naturally," he said. There was something in his tone that had not been there before, not ever in Bertrand's time with him; a bored, disaffected malice. He sounded like a conceited college boy, addressing a master he didn’t respect. "I don't know. You citizens all look alike. Perhaps it was you."
And this was what happened when meddlers got involved, when people didn't know to leave well alone and let Bertrand work.
Bertrand pressed a heavy hand against the boy's mottled side, for the satisfaction of making him gasp and bite back a cry. "That's right, Saint-Georges. We are alike—we are equal , arms of one civic body. When one of them touches you, it's me touching you. When one of them kicks you like a dog, it’s my boot in your ribs. When your executioner straps you down under the blade, it'll be me, my hands strapping you down. Understand?" He flexed his fingers, pressing harder, trying to overwrite the bruises with new ones of his own.
Saint-Georges' face was animated again, eyes screwed shut as he breathed shallowly through the pain—firelight danced on his bared white teeth. His battered flank was warm to the touch, blood pooling so close under the skin.
"Understand?"
“Yes, yes! I understand.”
Bertrand blew out a breath, let up the pressure. He stroked absent-mindedly at Saint-Georges' hair as the boy panted away his pain, and willed his own pulse to calm.
He’d either have to convince himself of the same, or tell his men to leave the boy alone. They—whoever they were—could have killed him; could have broken a rib, punctured a lung, had Saint-Georges thrashing and burbling, drowned in his own blood. It was easily done. Bertrand had seen street brawls end that way, men going from drunk to dead in a single blow. As a child, he’d seen one of his father’s apprentices gasp out his last, chest cored out by one hard kick from a horse.
Saint-Georges couldn’t be allowed to bow out that way. He had an appointment with a certain lady that he needed to keep.
A girl brought in the food. She’d been one of the retinue who’d once worked at the château, and had stayed on to serve its new masters. When she saw the young master seated at table in just his shirtsleeves, her eyes went huge.
Bertrand rolled his own. Certainly, old habits died hard, and Saint-Georges did cut rather a romantic figure. But he was just a handsome young man. Get yourself to Paris, girl, he thought, they’re ten a sous there.
And, besides, this one’s mine.
Saint-Georges clearly recognised her: he stared at her as she placed down the plate before Bertrand, making the poor girl so trembly she dropped the silverware twice, and scurried out in a haze of blushing confusion.
Bertrand let him sit there and feel his world turned topsy-turvy. He, meanwhile, ate with great gusto, pausing at one point to pull a bottle of wine from the crate warming by the fire, and pour himself a glass. Occasionally, he’d dab at his mouth with the fine linen napkin the girl had brought in. He wasn’t fastidious, as a rule, but today he found himself enjoying the theatre. It blew on the coal of excitement in his belly, made it glow and heat.
Saint-Georges seemed determined to sit there stony-faced and silent. But finally his stomach voiced a protest. It growled, loudly.
Bertrand looked up from his place. “Oh, please accept my apologies," he said, with elaborate ceremony. "Would you like a bite?" And, unperturbed by the mutinous glare the boy gave him, he drew his chair over so they were side by side, and picked up some chicken between his fingers.
Saint-Georges’ cheeks tinted as he realised what was intended. His eyes dropped to the table. But he couldn’t silence his stomach, nor, Bertrand would be bound, would he be able to refuse meat, however it was presented.
He lifted the scrap of chicken towards the boy’s mouth. “There’s talk in Paris,” he said lightly, as though they were just making chit-chat, “of a network of enemies to the revolutionary cause. Smuggling aristocrats out of the country, to England. Now, what do you know about that?”
Saint-Georges’ face took on that dead, blank look again. He stared at Bertrand like he didn't understand the words.
“Answer me.”
"Nothing," Saint-Georges said simply. 'I don't know a thing." His eyes drifted back to the morsel of meat between Bertrand's fingers and he breathed out something that might have been a dry laugh—another flash of that adolescent rebellion. "What on earth about my current situation indicates that I might?"
Bertrand’s hand froze in mid-air. With a grim smile, he pulled it just a little way back, a little further away from the boy's chapped mouth.
Saint-Georges’ blue eyes flicked to him; he licked his dry lips. “Sorry,” he said. It sounded almost involuntary, his voice quiet and thin.
With a hum of approval, Bertrand let him have the scrap. He took it politely enough; his mouth was warm, wet around Bertrand’s fingers.
“Drooling for it like a lapdog,” Bertrand said, feeling almost indulgent. It was pleasing to see Saint-Georges learn so quickly—it meant Bertrand had begun his job well. And sweet docility looked so well on his pretty face.
That was what happened when you stripped away artificial distinctions of class and rank. People’s true qualities were allowed to emerge. And Saint-Georges could be docile. He could be sweet.
With the right encouragement.
Bertrand fed him another shred of the chicken that way, reflecting on this. Then he pushed the plate away to the side, wiped his fingers on his napkin and tucked it into his belt. With amusement, he noted the sulky twist of Saint-Georges’ mouth, the way his eyes stayed fixed on the remainder of the meal.
Too bad, he thought. “You can have some more later,” he said aloud, “if you still feel like eating.”
He took a sip of his wine, ran it noisily over his tongue, savouring the taste—holding the glass up to let the firelight shine through it. Saint-Georges eyed it too. Bertrand wondered if they were thinking of the same thing: their first encounter, the cellars, the haughty young man he'd once been.
“Want some?” he asked. "It’s not from the barrel you were blubbering into the other day, if that’s a concern.”
Saint-George gave him a glare of unfettered hatred. That burning coal had dropped, definitively, between Bertrand’s legs now. Its heat mounted and mounted.
He set down his glass and killed off the bottle, pouring and pouring until the large goblet was topped almost to the brim, leaving only the dregs behind. Then he returned to the open-slatted box by the fire and drew out four more vintages. He set them on the table before him in a row, and pulled the corks one by one, smelling the stained end of each like a connoisseur.
“Last chance to answer truthfully,” he said. “What do you know?”
Saint-Georges looked at him like he was mad, and gave another distinctly un-aristocratic shrug.
“Suit yourself,” Bertrand said, inwardly delighted. His pulse kicked up a notch; heat prickled pleasantly under his arms, behind his knees—his excitement rising to a fever-pitch. Casually, so casually, picking up the brimming glass, he stood and moved behind the boy’s chair.
Then he yanked Saint-Georges' head back roughly by his dark hair, pulling the chair off-balance towards him—Saint-Georges gave a yelp of surprise, then a rough gasp as his shins hit the underside of the table with a hollow crack and were pinned—the back of his chair thumped against Bertrand’s chest and was braced there. A little of the wine in Bertrand’s glass slopped over his wrist at the impact, running down his forearm, but he disregarded it, looking down greedily into Saint-Georges’ face where it was tilted up towards him, his upper-class mouth caught in a childish pink ‘o’.
With his free hand, Bertrand plucked the napkin from his belt, and whisked the linen neatly over Saint-Georges’ nose and mouth, drawing it taut over the lower portion of his face with his thumb and forefinger, his grip hard enough to leave bruises in the boy’s cheeks.
For a single second he allowed himself to luxuriate in the look in Saint-Georges’ gorgeous eyes. Pain and confusion, and slow, dawning fear—too stunned by the blows to his legs and his head to struggle, to understand what was coming, just knowing that he ought to be very afraid.
Then all that remained was to tilt the glass, and casually, carefully pour wine over Saint-Georges’ face.
Saint-Georges did not enjoy that one bit.
Compared to his last drowning, this one was deceptively genteel. The sound of the wine hitting the linen was like the plashing of a fairyland fountain. But Bertrand only had a second to enjoy it before the boy was yelling his head off—screaming, almost—through the darkening fabric.
Almost instantly, he gagged, hard. Then he kept on gagging, again and again. His shoulders tensed and heaved wildly, like he was tearing against his bonds, and his head jerked hard in Bertrand’s grip. His eyes had gone huge, the whites visible all the way round. The look in them was one of unreasoning animal terror.
Tutting, making soothing noises, Bertrand paused the flow for a second, so Saint-Georges could suck in a noisy, desperate breath, then continued. Smiled when the boy instantly fell to choking and heaving again, liquid tickling relentlessly at the trigger-spot at the back of his gorge.
Bertrand thought about the muscle back there, soft and hot and afraid, so easily tricked into hysteria. Staging its own kind of dizzy uprising, within the boy’s system—slamming Saint-Georges’ airways shut over and over, putting his lungs on strike, letting his bloodstream pump itself full of panic. Making him thrash and heave mindlessly, as though he were being ridden hard by fear, and trying to buck it off his chest. Those delicate tendons in his throat stood out hard, as he strained, stark against his flushing skin.
Château de Nuits-Saint-Georges was said to taste velvety, soft and dark and deep like the woods. Bertrand wondered if his lordship would agree. He wondered if he was catching the notes of mushroom, of damp forest floor.
By the time the glass was empty, he was breathing hard—though not as hard as Saint-Georges. The boy whooped and coughed and retched behind the sodden linen, face pale and flushed at once like a fever victim’s. His eyes, when he opened them, were feverish too, bright and wild.
Bertrand was willing to bet his own eyes were bright too, greedy, caressing. His pulse rang in his ears as he drank in the sight of Saint-Georges in exquisite extremis.
“Another?” he asked, as casually as he could.
He’d thought it might be a little awkward to lean over and put the glass down, reach for the first freshly opened bottle. But the back legs of the chair had caught in the pavings; it tipped forward and back smoothly like a cantilevered doctor's bench. He adjusted his grip on the boy's face, smoothed a finger over the empurpled, wet fabric. Easier to keep it in place now it was sopping, dripping, clinging, fast as a bandage over a weeping wound. It refused to be dislodged even as Saint-George gave violent shakes of his head, even as he gasped and whimpered, even as he coughed and forced out choked words.
“No,” he said, wet, hoarse but clear enough through the fabric. He sounded petrified. "Don't” —he choked, a wet chucking noise at the back of his throat— “d-don’t, no more, I’m sorry, don't—"
His breathing was shocky, lungs straining to pull air through the sodden fabric, and his eyes were glossy with fear, the pupils blown out. They tracked the bottle, widening helplessly, as Bertrand tilted him back again and held it aloft.
“Don’t,” he said again, rougher, more urgent, “no, no, no, don’t—”
Bertrand was less careful this time, too aroused for precision. Blood pounded in his head, his groin; he used it as a makeshift timepiece, roughly—very roughly—counting the seconds between each brief moment of respite. Wine cascaded down on them both in irregular spurts. It splattered musically onto the flagstones, forming a glinting puddle at Bertrand’s feet.
Saint-Georges coughed and retched, fighting valiantly for breath. His struggle was weaker, but just as heartfelt, just as delightful to watch. His chest, his whole body heaved and quaked against his restraints like he’d been struck by the ague, and tied for his own good.
At one point, before the bottle was much more than halfway emptied, he might have tried to say something, some kind of plea, then breathed in wine and spasmed all over, choking wetly.
His eyes rolled back, flashing white like a flag of surrender.
Feeling generous, Bertrand stopped the stream, and drew the fabric away to give him a chance; Saint-Georges shuddered and threw his head back at the fresh rush of air, sucking it in clumsily, gagging on it a little, a raw sound like a sob at the edge of every inhale.
His face was sticky all over, and his hair soaked so dark and shiny it looked like pitch, clinging lovingly in strands to his face, his forehead. Bertrand watched a droplet of wine track down his temple, and slide glossily away like a crimson tear. Fuck, Nature had really made him far too pretty: with those cheekbones, those lashes, with his eyes wide like this, he truly did look like a back-alley gamine, an actress playing the Maid of Orleans.
Perhaps it was just the wine, but his lips looked a little blue.
He made a limp, confused sort of noise and coughed again, turned clouded eyes on the bottles, the fire. Bertrand could almost see the dots that must be dancing and popping before his vision—those glimpses of silvery, stun-bright oblivion that came to one on the edge of a faint.
"Going to your head, my lord?" he asked, pleased. His own voice came out rougher than he'd expected, but then he'd never pretended to be disinterested. His cock was fully hard, swelling against the placket of his trousers. The rough pressure of the fabric was a pleasant tease.
Not that Saint-Georges had any knowledge of that yet. Bertrand wasn’t sure the boy had even heard his words over the sound of his own wretched hacking, his sobs. His throat was in revolt against him, rejecting the abundant air for which it had lately been so frantic. The air that Bertrand, in his mercy, had seen fit to grant it.
He dropped the chair back onto its front feet, sending Saint-Georges jolting against the table and eliciting a raw cry of shock and pain. "Ah!” He let out another, the first cry’s weaker twin, when Bertrand wrenched him back upright by the hair, and let the firelight dance again on his beautiful face, twisted and lined by agony.
For perhaps the first time, Bertrand truly understood why his father's God liked to see His subjects, His supplicants and pet saints, rent open and bleeding—understood why it was that He favoured martyrs.
Saint-Georges’ cyanosed lips were trembling round their own kind of prayer right now, a whispered litany: "Oh, God, I told you, I don't know anything, I’m sorry, I mean it, I swear." Bertrand pressed savagely on his abused side and rejoiced to see him inhale sharply, cough and spit—to hear his voice climb in pitch and volume, become a fervent, anguished plea. "Ah-hh! Please! I swear on Our Lady—I don't know anything."
Wine, pearled a little with spit, slid down his chin and traced the golden, fire-lit line of his throat. Bertrand found himself fascinated by its shine, attention caught and held.
There was a hot, tawny feeling swelling in his breast—hunger and triumph and delight and affection.
"Oh, Pierrot," he said, half a laugh, half a sigh. "That couldn't matter less." And he leaned down, thrust his free hand into the boy’s hair, and claimed his stained mouth—licking the wine out of it, tasting his chapped and stinging lips. Drinking from them while his chest heaved and he gasped and retched, just breathing raggedly into Bertrand’s kiss.
Bertand remembered describing kisses to him in the cellar, days ago, remembered trying to guess what a pampered little lordling might want doing with his mouth—soft, girlish, worshipping things.
This was nothing like that. It was all take, not one inch of give. An act of subjugation. There was no room in it for what Saint-Georges might want, including air. Bertrand held him tight, drowned him in it, bit and nipped at his lips to taste his breathless little cries.
When he finally drew away, Saint-Georges’ mouth was a ruin, swollen and red. His eyes were dark pools, glimmering with firelight. And there was something else there too, Bertrand realised, something he’d seen there before.
Only one thing Bertrand had done so far had made this boy look quite that distraught. With a mounting thrill, he dropped his gaze between Saint-Georges’ thighs.
The torn, stained breeches were wet and red across the lap, as though in his excitement Saint-Georges had lost control and pissed blood. And he was excited. The buckskin was tented and clinging around his hard aristo prick.
Saint-Georges was looking down too, and the expression on his face was one of startled horror. Anguish. Betrayal.
Fuck, he was perfect. Perfect. Impossibly so. Bertrand seized him again, fisting a hand in his short hair, dragged him forward and gave him another brutal, thorough kiss.
For a second, Saint-Georges submitted to it, his lips still lax with shock and dismay. Then, with a burst of desperate strength, he was wresting himself away, twisting out of Bertrand's grasp and shooting to his feet. The chair skidded against the flagstones noisily and Bertrand was pushed back, knocked against the table, dropping the bottle still in his hand; it rolled across the tile floor, spilling what was left of its contents. Bertrand had a flashed impression of Saint-Georges’ white face, vacant with panic, as he made a coltish, stumbling start for the door.
It was like seeing the pale flash of a scut in the underbrush. It called out the wolf in Bertrand, sharpened his teeth, his hunger.
He gave a roar, beastly and exultant, and sprang after his quarry, gaining on him with almost comical ease and tackling him messily to the floor, rejoicing in the fall—the singing second of weightlessness where he clutched at the boy's shoulder and flank and bore him through the air, before slamming him against the flagstones.
Winded, Saint-Georges bucked and retched feebly under Bertrand's weight, coughing up a thin and foamy mouthful of wine. It smeared across his cheek as he squirmed about, twisting himself onto his back. Now Bertrand could feel that hard Royalist rod, unconsciously rubbed against him by the boy’s struggle, pressing against his gut, his thighs.
He had the napkin still in his hand. Wadding it in a messy, dripping ball, he thrust it over Saint-Georges’ nose and mouth and held it there, as though he were administering ether, preparing a stubborn sufferer to go under the knife. In a way, he was playing surgeon: he was cleansing Saint-Georges, bleeding all the disobedience, the hauteur, the hateful arrogance from him. Cracking him open and cutting it away.
Panting, he waited for his patient to run out of air and stop struggling so hard—to go limp and yielding under his weight. Then he heaved him up by the shirt, dragged him stumbling but unresisting across the flagstones and all but threw him down, face up, on the ancestral dining table.
The three heavy-bottomed bottles of wine still remaining there jumped at the impact; one toppled and rolled onto the stones with a splintering crash.
Bertrand ignored it. He was breathing lustily, and hard as a ploughshare himself. Or, no, a sword. Or sword and ploughshare, both at once—an instrument of husbandry and of war, fit to cleave and harrow Saint-Georges, subdue him and ready him to be sown.
God. The wine must have gone to Bertrand’s brain; he felt giddy, exultant. He straddled Saint-Georges’ thighs, pinned him and kissed him hard, roughly rubbing the bulge in his ruined breeches.
Then he reached for one of the two surviving bottles, pulled up the tail of the boy's sodden shirt, tossed it over his face. Held the bottle aloft, and sent the ruby liquid plashing down.
He drank in the sight of Saint-Georges as he thrashed, his hard pink nipples, the beautiful, battered mess of his flank, his heaving, bruised ribs. He tilted his hand dreamily, giving it to him in increments, judging the seconds. Enjoying the wet, desperate noises the boy made, like a fit of frantic, funereal sobbing.
He put a hand against Saint-Georges’ abdomen to feel a muscle there flutter; he could see it through the pale skin, ticking and spasming wretchedly. The diaphragm, he knew, from public dissections in Paris—the boy’s diaphragm, tricked into a desperate pearly-gates panic. Bertrand grinned at it, that charming flicker: instinctive, insistent as each twitch of his prick. I commend my soul to God, indeed. No, Pierrot, he thought, you want to live. You like being alive, you like living like this. And as a reward for his honesty, he gave Saint-Georges’ heaving chest a pet, rubbed firmly at his nipples where they were slick with the wine. Ground the heel of his hand against the young man’s clothed cock.
Saint-George moaned raggedly through the wet shroud of his shirt. Each gasping breath dragged the material into his wide open mouth, drew it tight, made a concave hollow between his desperate lips. The air in the room rang with the rich, claggy noise of it—wet, thick and rhythmic. It sounded a bit like the best kind of fuck. Bertrand thought of that horse kick again, the obscene liquid noise that chest wound had made as it sucked in fatal air. How he’d shivered, hearing it as a boy. Dizzy, intrigued.
Still rubbing Saint-Georges’ prick, he poured him one last mouthful, felt his whole body seize under him, his heels drumming helplessly against the hard oak. Then the boy made an indescribable noise, his back arched, and the hardness under Bertrand’s hand jerked violently beneath the soaked fabric.
Bertrand reeled for a moment; he soared, veins warm and open from the exertion, the thrill. There was a second where he was certain he was going to come off too, without a hand on him, and had to grab at his cock and squeeze hard to forestall it. Fuck, he’d wrenched that climax out of Saint-Georges, wrung pleasure from him like a soaked cloth. Taken it from him as though it were his due, as though he were the boy’s lord and his master.
With a lordly glow of complacency, he pulled back the fabric to look at what he’d made of him.
Pierrot’s chest heaved harder than ever, as he gulped in desperate breaths. Under his thin mask of wine, his face was bright pink and screwed up hard. He was crying hard too. Hectic tears leaked from both red-rimmed eyes, leaving clean tracks down to his temples. He'd be bawling like a child if he could get a full lungful of air.
Precious. Just precious. Bertrand pushed his dripping hair back from his vacant eyes, and swept some of the mess from his face with the palm of his hand. He rubbed an admiring thumb over the boy’s lovely high cheekbone.
There was a smattering of minute purple dots—the colour of foxgloves—just there, fanning round his eye socket, up to his brow. For a moment, Bertrand thought it must be a stubborn wine stain.
Then he realised. The strain, the suffocation, the gasping for air. Saint-Georges’ body had been pushed so far that the tiny blood vessels round his eye had yielded and burst. Left a charming constellation of miniature bruises, to match the lights that must be dancing before the boy’s eyes.
The sight of them tugged at something deep in Bertrand’s belly. He found himself staring. He was breathing hard too, so close to Saint-Georges’ mouth—showing off, almost, how easy it was for him. The air was heady with fumes. “Enjoy that, my lord?” he asked, and his voice came out rough.
Saint-Georges gave the minutest shake of his head, desperate, entreating. His lashes fluttered. He was moaning weakly in fear and pain and lust, lips trembling. Bertrand thought he caught a soft "please".
Dreamily, he reached for the last of the bottles, the one he’d been saving.
“This one was laid down the year you were born,” he said. “I imagine your father intended it as a gift for your maturity. Bon anniversaire, Pierrot.”
☙
After that, Bertrand couldn’t have kept away if he wanted to.
From the first moment of waking, the knowledge that he had Pierrot stowed away, that he was somewhere in the château, waiting for him, came to him unprompted during the day, again and again. It would make his prick bulk up, his pulse thicken—as though there was a hook, tugging at his blood. Like a boy with a lover, he thought, amusedly at first, and then with a sense of trepidation. Like a boy with a lover.
Finally, unable to settle to any kind of work, he’d gone wandering through the upstairs apartments, in an attempt to clear his head.
The initial ransacking of these rooms had been orgiastic, unfocused. Smashed furniture lay about sottishly, like so many drunks in the town square after a heavy night. Bertrand smiled to remember the fun they'd had with her ladyship's room, tossing chemise after chemise from the window onto jeering comrades below.
Now he gave it a proper, methodical exploration, touching all the trinkets in the vanity, giving himself a spritz or two of Madame de Saint-Georges' orange-scented parfume. Rifling through his lordship's night-time reading, kept tucked at the back of his bedside table—satirical tracts about priests, and fellow nobles. A little scurrilous in parts, but mostly quite tame.
Then Bertrand found something wonderful.
After their little bacchanal yesterday, Pierrot had needed washing; he’d been sluiced and scrubbed and left to shiver himself dry in the courtyard, a rough rope leash round his neck keeping him secure. He was in the courtyard still, staring morosely at a couple of pecking ducks.
He gave no trouble when Bertrand removed his leash, just allowed himself to be guided upstairs by the elbow, stumbling now and then, his eyes on the floor.
They'd walked a little way into the bedroom before he even registered his surroundings. When he did, he stopped short, checking their progress.
"No," he said, emptily.
All the blood had dropped out of his face. That smattering of minute bruises on his brow-bone—more blush-pink now than purple, as though someone had burst a grape by his face—stood out starkly against his new pallor. His eyes were wide and unreasoning: the return of that blank, animal fear.
"’No’?" Bertrand said, amused. "What do you mean ‘no’?"
"Fuck you," Pierre Étienne Jean-Marie de Saint-Georges said, for what Bertrand suspected might be the first time in his aristocratic life. He turned a grim and stony face up to Bertrand, and there was venom in his gaze—a glimpse again, of the proud, patrician young man he'd not long ago been. "Fuck you, no."
Betrand had liked that young man; he'd been so amusing, and so easy to break. "To what," he asked, mildly, of the frightened boy pretending to be that Saint-Georges now, "are you objecting?"
"Not in here," Pierrot ground out. "I won't submit to your perversions, whatever they may be today, in here."
"My perversions?" Bertrand asked, lifting an eyebrow, and watching raw flashes of red start up on Pierrot's cheekbones. "But let that pass. As for submitting or not... You don't really have a choice, do you, cheri?"
Pierrot twitched as if stung, and took a shallow breath in through his nose. His wrists twisted in their bonds; his shoulders tensed. He wet his lips. "I... I can make it harder for you," he said, voice thready, uncertain. "I'll run, I'll fight you."
"That'll make something harder, certainly," Bertrand said, equitably. "And has previously worked so well for you."
Pierrot swallowed.
A thrill built in Bertrand's belly as he watched his captive come face to implacable face with the hopelessness of his situation, his total lack of bargaining power. He could offer Bertrand no favour that Bertrand could not take by force, no resistance that he would not enjoy.
In his desolation, Pierrot looked very young indeed.
His blue eyes glimmered, wet with misery, and when he spoke his voice was choked with it. "Well, I'll do something. I'll dash my fucking head against the wall!"
For a giddy moment Bertrand pictured that: Pierrot blinking up at him, dazed and helpless, bloodied at the nose or the temple. The confused little noises he might make as Bertrand put hands on him, pushed his legs apart…
"Pierrot," he said, keeping his voice kind and indulgent, as though his lordship was allowed a little misbehaviour. "Let's have no tantrums." He stroked at Pierrot's dark hair, pushing it back off his forehead–rejoicing when the boy didn't even try to buck him off, too worked up to think of that kind of concrete rebellion. "What's the problem? Don't you like this room?"
"It's my parents' bedchamber!" Pierrot cried out raggedly, his voice breaking—actually breaking—partway through, like a petit garçon whose balls hadn't yet dropped. "As you bloody well know! A filthy, fucking, perverted, irreligious devil like you doesn't deserve to take breath in here! Let alone, let alone..." Panting and wide-eyed, he trailed off for a second; presumably, a parade of infamies upon his own person, too obscene to be named, was flickering across his vision. Then he screwed up his face and let out an inarticulate and singularly adolescent noise of fury and anguish.
Something—his exhaustion, or maybe just being in this room—seemed to have shaved years off him, to have stripped him of all his chilly dignity. It was a delightful reminder that, for all his airs and graces, he couldn't be more than twenty years old.
It was hard not to feel affection for him, when he was like this. Hard not to express it, when he clearly hated it so much.
"Sh, sh, sh," Bertrand said, pulling him stumbling against his chest, putting a strong arm around him. He held Pierrot's face against his shoulder, and stroked his back, his quivering arms—flatly, firmly, as though he were soothing a dog in a fit. "Come now, come now. None of that." He could feel Pierrot take harsh, shaky gulps of air, and rub his face against the rough wool of Bertrand's jacket. He was trembling. Bertrand thought he might have heard a sniffle. His cock thickened, stirring lazily between his legs. "Good boy," he crooned. "Just breathe."
Pierrot tilted shining eyes up to meet Bertrand’s. There was a dazed questioning look in them, something that told Bertrand that the boy had registered how friendly, how comforting Bertrand smelled right now, but hadn't puzzled out why.
Bertrand let him wonder. He cradled Pierrot's head, letting him breathe in more of that familiar scent and enjoy the warmth of a larger body against his.
"I suppose you think this space is sacred," he said softly, voice full of understanding. Pierrot gave a near imperceptible, almost certainly involuntary nod. "You loved your parents very much, I think. I wonder, did your Papa teach you to say your prayers in here?"
The stiffness in Pierrot's back told Bertrand he'd guessed right. Either that, or the boy was registering Bertrand’s use of the past tense, and not enjoying it much.
"Hm," Bertrand said, and stroked at the dark hair under his hand, teasing his fingers through the boyish cowlicks at the back. "They didn't just say their prayers in here, Pierrot. You're grown-up enough to realise that. Where do you think you came from?"
"Shut up," Pierrot said miserably, the words muffled against Bertrand's chest. His voice was very quiet, but not quite defeated.
"I can prove it." Bertrand guided his charge across the room. Pierrot's steps were stumbling but unresistant; when they stood before the dressing table with its gilded mirror and ornate scrolls, Bertrand had to raise his head for him, fingers tightening in his hair and tugging upwards. "There," he said, and gave him a cajoling little shake. "What do you think that is?"
That was the object he'd found concealed in a secret slot at the head of Pierrot’s parents’ bed. It was crafted from ivory, smooth and white and long. The head was cleverly carved, clefted and mushroom-like. On one side of the base was a small, neat pair of balls; on the other, a notional frill of sculpted hair.
Pierrot's eyes went huge at the sight of the—truly rather beautiful—dildo, lying there like a relic on a lacework kerchief. His pink mouth dropped open "Wh—" he started, then stopped and looked wildly from the thing to Bertrand. "Wh— You… Where did you…What—"
"I found it," Bertrand said, "in here. By your Papa's bedside." He had been hardly able to believe his luck when he'd stumbled upon it; aristocrats truly did run true to type. "As for what—what it is and what it is for, I'd have thought a clever young man would be able to work that one out himself. No?"
A charming pink flush had started up in Pierrot's cheeks, and apprehension mounted in his eyes. His lips trembled, but he didn’t speak.
"Well, until lately, I imagine it was mostly for the pleasure of your Maman. What do you think? Was Monsieur le Père too rickety to get it up himself, and had to rely on his toy to make Maman squirt?” He gave Pierrot a friendly nudge. “Maybe he didn't like cunts all that much. Like his little boy, eh? Or maybe he was such a randy bugger that he wanted her in two holes at once, or wanted to keep fucking long after he'd spent. Who's to say?"
That flush had deepened. Pierrot was shaking his head, his eyes still huge and startled and trained on the toy. "You're lying," he whispered. "You're lying, you're lying. It's yours, you pervert, you deviant."
Bertrand laughed. "Think I could afford something like that?" he asked. "That's its origin, take it or leave it. As for where it's going now...Well, I thought I'd take it down to the others, let them all see it. Since the rest of Monseigneur le Comte has flown the coop, his tenants should at least be granted a glimpse of his cock."
"No!" Pierrot's head snapped up, arms raised and tensed in their bonds, as though he meant to aim a blow at Bertrand. There was a lovely, scandalised look on his face, like a seminary student who'd just heard his first blasphemy. "No, you wouldn't, it's a filthy lie—" His voice cracked again, panicked.
Bertrand felt a fierce rush of triumph. He had suspected Pierrot would take it this way. He had the rural aristocrat's pathetic veneration of hierarchy, even en famille. He quite clearly worshipped his Papa and Maman— probably believed them to be god-gilded, as surely as Bertrand's stupid father had. Add to that a good helping of filial devotion and a certain degree of personal pride in the de Saint-Georges name, and you had a weak spot several miles wide.
He’d already had to suffer through the ransacking of his Maman's boudoir, the parading around of peasants in her slips and frills, the filthy jokes that had run through the courtyards and halls. He'd already been made to spend in his breeches under the painted eyes of his Papa. Bertrand had noted the way these things had made him writhe like a martyr being broken on the wheel.
Now he was going to be made to break a little further. And Bertrand was going to enjoy every moment.
"Well," he said, in a conciliatory manner, "I don't have to. We could keep it our little secret. If you'll be good for me."
Pierrot's wrists worked against their bonds again, in what looked like an unconscious wringing movement. He seemed not to mark the raw stripes the rough rope was rubbing into his fine skin. "All right," he said. The desperate gleam of hope in his eyes was delicious. It went straight to Bertrand’s cock. "All right, I'll”—his mouth worked miserably for a second, as though the words tasted foul—"I'll be good."
"Works for me,” Bertrand said cheerfully. "Let's get those wrists free before you hurt them any more, huh?"
When he undid the cords, Pierrot tensed his shoulders like a fighter in the ring, but he didn't spring, just looked down at his hands as though he'd forgotten they could ever be free. Bertrand watched him, pleased, assessing. Only a couple of days ago, if the boy had had his hands free, he'd have been clawing at Bertrand like a tiger, trying to fasten them around his throat.
Now he stood still. Wary, watchful, but still.
That was Bertrand’s doing. He’d had his fingers in the boy’s soul, shaped him and tuned him to a sweeter pitch. The best part was that Pierrot himself was hardly aware of the alteration as it was made. He didn't yet realise he was losing himself, becoming Bertrand's creature. He probably thought he was resisting with all his might.
Bertrand felt a swell of arousal just at the sight of him there, passive and meek. Changed. He leaned against the front of the vanity, legs crossed at the ankle. "Undress," he said.
Pierrot’s face was like a stormcloud. Slowly, very slowly, his hands rose to the neck of his ruined shirt, and pulled it off over his head.
Bertrand had seen his chest bare before, but this was his first time viewing it in such clear morning light; this was the first time it had been bared, stilled and shivering, for his inspection. God, that gorgeous skin! Pale and glowing, and so fatally candid—the kind of thing Bertrand hadn’t thought existed outside of oil-paintings of coy, courtly ladies. But here was his Pierrot, all bruises and blushes, as dewy and reactive as one of Fragonard’s painted whores.
A girlish flush—anger or shame or fretful arousal—was starting at the centre of his chest, to match the spots in his cheeks. His nipples were small and rosy, already drawn-tight in the chill. The bruising on his side had faded splotchily, turned the colour of greengages, ripe plums, sunshocked leaves. Above the fastening of his breeches, a fine smattering of dark hair caught the light, leading irresistibly down.
Bertrand raised his eyebrows and made a "come along" motion with his hand.
Pierrot blew out a breath through his nose. His eyes fluttered closed for a second—Bertrand had a notion he might be calling on his God for strength, which was nothing short of darling—and he put his hands to the buttons. He stumbled a little as he freed his legs, his limp cock bouncing sweetly between his thighs. Then he tossed the breeches to the floor, and stood there, hands twitching at his sides, eyes fixed unseeingly on the fireside rug.
That flush had spread up to his throat, trickling over the tops of his trembling shoulders.
"Pierre Saint-Georges, sans culottes," Bertrand said, and grinned. "How singularly lovely." Pierrot shot him a glare of prodigious venom, then quickly returned his gaze to the floor. Bertrand sighed. "Still a little insolent, though, even without your breeches. Turn around."
Haltingly, Pierrot turned. It was awkward and stiff, not at all the polished movement of a whore on display, but that only made it all the more appealing. His arse was pale as milk, but high and tight and spare, healthy as a peasant's. All that riding and running and jigging round ballrooms, Bertrand supposed. It had done Pierrot no good at all as a combatant, but had prepared him perfectly for Bertrand's use.
At that thought, Bertrand’s cock jumped in his pantalons. He licked his lips.
"Bend over," he said, and Pierrot's back, already tense, twitched like a marrionette’s. He threw an outraged glance over his shoulder. "No?" Bertrand said, pleasantly. "But I thought you were being good? Wait" —as Pierrot quickly turned to obey— "wait, you've given me time to think. Over this, please." He cheerfully patted the arm of the chair before the vanity.
It was deep and wide, with a sweeping back, and high arms, carved and gilded. The seat cushion and padded elbowrests were upholstered in green velvet.
Pierrot, face like a martyr’s, paced over and, very stiffly, bent himself across it. Hesitantly, he rested his lean stomach against the padded arm, his cock dangling guilelessly below it. There was a second where he didn't seem to know what to do with his hands, then settled for placing them together, and bracing his forearms on the velveteen seat.
His legs were out behind him, a little bent at the knee, the dirtied soles of his feet turned up to the light. Betrand stepped between them and, grasping the top of the chair's back in one hand, used the other to press down sharply on his shoulders, knocking his chest down against his forearms and pressing his face against the seat. Pierrot made a breathless noise of surprise, but submitted to be rearranged.
Pleased, Bertrand gave him a pat on the shoulder, then moved his attention to the boy’s pert little backside, tense and vulnerable and comprehensively displayed. He ran a palm over it, feeling rather than seeing its light downy covering—a silvery bloom, like an underripe peach.
Pierrot's breathing was very loud in the still of the room. His thighs trembled; his arse flexed minutely under Bertrand's hand. Bertrand liked the paleness of it next to his sun-tanned fingers. He gave it a quick squeeze, to make Pierrot jump and gasp.
"Very good," he said briskly. "You're ever so pretty like this, Pierrot. Now let's see if we can't make you pretty and polite."
"And what," Pierrot said against the seat, voice tight and flat in the way that Bertrand now knew meant he was angry beyond measure, "do you mean by that?"
"Glad you asked," Bertrand said, lifted his hand, and, putting all his considerable strength behind the movement, let it fall with a crack.
Pierrot jerked and gave a stifled cry; his calves kicked, his toes leaving the floorboards for a second. Bertrand was glad he'd steadied the chair. The print of his hand came up instantly on Pierrot’s pale flesh—five pink finger-shaped brands, eager and blushing.
"Right," Bertrand said. "First things first, you're going to correct the way you address me. No more of this tu, toi nonsense. We're not schoolfellows. Understood?"
Pierrot said nothing. Bertrand, secretly pleased, drew back his hand and gave him four more hearty smacks. Three to the same place—Pierrot's candid skin made it delightfully easy to keep track of the placement—and one to the tender little curve where his arse met his thigh. That last one made Pierrot yelp and jerk his thighs together, throw his hands up to grasp pointlessly at the chair’s other arm. Neither of these actions did anything to protect his arse; Bertrand gave it a rough squeeze, digging fingers into tensed muscle, just to drive that point home.
"I understand!" Pierrot said, all in a rush. "I understand you. Je–je vous comprends!"
It was ridiculous how pleasing that was. "Good," Bertrand said. "But I think we can aim a little higher. I understand you...?"
Pierrot stilled completely. There was a long moment where Bertrand watched the flush grow on his beautiful little backside, blood rushing with sweet abandon to the sites where he’d been hit. His pulse must be hammering. "I don't know," he said, finally, soft and hesitant against the seat. "I don't know. Je vous— Je vous comprends… très bien?" His voice cracked a little. He sounded, absurdly, abashed, as though he'd been forced into playing a parlour game in unfriendly company, and was too embarrassed to perform well.
"Nope," Bertrand said, and gave him another smack, and another, and then a couple more. The other cheek, this time—he amused himself by trying to mirror exactly the raw flush on the other side, to give Pierrot a matched set of ruby-red prints to wear.
Pierrot didn’t seem to appreciate the gift. "This isn't— ah! —this isn't fair," he panted out, "I don't know what you want! I mean—" He realised his mistake almost instantly, heard the fatal tu fall from his own lips, and flinched all over. It did precisely nothing to protect him from another sharp volley of blows. "Stop," he cried, voice high and miserable. "Stop it, damn you, let me think!"
Already, there was a sharp hitch in his breathing. Bertrand had been laying them on thick enough to have his calloused palm buzzing; he couldn't imagine how much more it must sting on an aristocrat's petal-soft skin. But still… He thought back to beatings he'd received when he’d been less than half the boy's age. "Come," he said, genuinely surprised. "This is nothing, Pierrot." Pierrot made an inarticulate noise of protest. "And what's more,” Bertrand went on, more grimly, “it isn't working. Clearly, you need something stronger. I'm going to use my belt."
"No!"
Bertrand paused with his hand on his buckle "’No’, what?"
"I don't know," Pierrot said, savagely.
Smiling, Bertrand drew his belt from its loops, folded it briskly into thirds, and let Pierrot have it. He was lucky, really. Bertrand could have been laying it across his back from its full length, the way old Jacques had used to do to him, could have soaked it in wine to make each whack hum, could have let the iron buckle savage Pierrot’s lovely white skin. Instead, he was getting a nice tidy spanking, like a bad little boy.
His poor arse didn't seem to appreciate its good fortune. At the sound of every strike falling it flinched painfully, tightening up before the blow. And with each stripe its colour deepened, til it was a very fetching rose madder red. By the time Bertrand took a moment to catch his breath, it was glowing with heat.
Pierrot’s back shone with sweat, and his shoulders were so tense it must hurt. "I–I don't know what you want," he said—small and choked, but polite this time. "Just t-tell me and I'll say it." There was a pause, and then hesitant, despairing, "Please?"
The arousal simmering in Bertrand’s gut turned a shade hotter, and brighter. "What do you call your social superiors?" he asked. "What do you call your masters? What—I'd be prepared to bet your aristocratic little arse—did you call your daddy in public?"
"Oh, fuck," Pierrot said, in frank self-reproach, like he’d been a fool not to realise. "Monsieur. I understand you, monsieur."
Such a small, everyday word, and yet it was surely the first time Pierrot had ever put his beautiful mouth around it for the benefit of a peasant, a tenant. It sparked off a purely primal pleasure in Bertrand—like a wolf watching its cornered prey piss itself in self-abasement. He breathed out, slowly, and gave his cock a quick squeeze.
"Very good," he said. "Now thank me for helping you."
But Pierrot was less eager to debase himself now the immediate crisis had abated, now the pain was less sharp and immediate. Stubborn little thing , Bertrand thought fondly. He tapped the folded edge of the belt warningly against his arse, the thick mulberry-coloured stripes that were blooming up there out of the red. Given time, they’d blacken; they must hurt like Hell.
"Je vous remercie," Pierrot gritted out, finally. "Monsieur."
"There, that wasn't so hard. And it's proof that a good whacking was all you needed." Bertrand teased the belt's edge along Pierrot's neat, nearly hairless crack, nudged gently at his swinging balls. Pierrot's breath caught, and he shuddered. His arse clenched tight, as though it was trying to make itself disappear. "I suppose your sainted Papa never spanked you, did he?"
"Not like this ," Pierrot said, a note of despair in his voice. "Sir," he added, quickly
"A dereliction of duty," Bertrand said. "See how quickly you could have learned? Now, let's make sure the lesson's really sunk in." Pierrot sucked in another sharp breath. "I'm going to give you ten—no, twenty of the best, and you're going to find a nice polite way to thank me for them." With amusement, he watched the line of Pierrot’s shoulders go taut as a wire, his fingers clutch whitely at the arm of the chair. "Don't panic," he said, soothingly. "If you can't think of anything to say, I'll feed you a line. How does that sound? You'd like that, wouldn't you?"
Pierrot was too proud to be crying quite yet, but there was a tight, thready noise to every indrawn breath, the ghost of a sob. “No, sir,” he breathed, sounding plainly frightened, “no more, please. Not twenty. I can't.”
Bertrand shrugged and laid another stinging blow against his arse, hard enough that the chair skidded a little, and Pierrot yelped like a fox. “You can. You want to. You like having your arse tanned. That’s the first. Say, ‘thank you for teaching me to get beaten and like it.’”
"I don't like it," Pierrot cried, losing his careful grip on himself. "I don't, I don’t! I fucking hate it!"
"Well, cheri,” Bertrand said, brutally. “You should tell your prick."
Perhaps predictably, it was this that made Pierrot shudder from head to toe and let out his first proper, full-throated sob. But it was undeniable: his modest cock was plumped up, flushed between his legs, twitching and glancing against the chair’s arm like it was looking for friction. It probably was; despite Pierrot's best efforts, all his attempts at dignity and decorum, his cock would probably have liked nothing better than to be rubbed against the furniture like a misbehaving pup's.
Bertrand watched it wiggle, indulgently. He’d become very fond of Pierrot's cock. It was so sweet, so responsive, and full of such delightful surprises.
Its master, meanwhile, was sobbing wetly, distraught, his broad shoulders hitching, the floodgates well and truly thrown open by shame. "I don't like it,” he moaned, voice raw, "I don't, I don't know why... fuck."
“Shh, shh, shh," Bertrand stroked at the flaming cheek of his perfect arse, feeling the hot glow of blood beneath the skin. "Don't work yourself up, don't get all shy. I've seen you get harder for stranger things, my darling. In fact, by your standards, this"—he squeezed Pierrot's bruised buttock, made him choke on his tears—"is practically normal."
Pierrot made a miserable, self-disgusted noise, fisted his hands in his own sweat-damp hair, and sobbed into the seat. "Shut up," he said, in a rough whispered chant, "shut up, shut up, shut up— ah!"
"That one was free," Bertrand said, flexing his whipping arm. There was a pleasant burn building in his muscles, his shoulder. "You don't have to thank me for it. And you'll keep getting free ones until you get yourself under control and concentrate on your lesson.” He chuckled. “I am soft on you."
Pierrot swore vividly, then took a great gulping breath. "Th-thank you, sir,' he said, brokenly, "for teaching me to get beaten and like it."
He quieted a bit, after that. Occasionally, a blow would get a gasp out of him, or a breathy cry of pain. But he mostly just repeated Bertrand's words, voice hitching a little, tears running noiselessly down his cheeks and dripping onto the floorboards. Thank you for hurting me, a thousand thanks for the pain, thank you for giving me what a wicked boy like me needs. Thank you, sir, for stepping in where my Papa failed.
By the time he’d been given his last prompt and the last stroke had fallen, he was lying there, slumped and dazed, just letting the chair beneath him hold him up.
“Thank you for brutalising my pretty pink arse,” he said, limply, “sir.”
“There,” Bertrand said, as though calming a fussing child, or a pet. “There. You took that very nicely in the end. Like a very brave boy. And you really are so pretty when you cry, Pierrot.”
He took a moment to appreciate the heat of the boy’s beaten skin, the adorable way his reddened backside clenched tight at the merest brush of his palm.
Then he reached for the vial he'd found in the secret little slot in Papa's bedside, drizzled a little of its contents onto his fingers.
Hungrily anticipating the shock this new indignity would give the lax and panting body beneath him, he kneed Pierrot's thighs apart, spread his bruised buttocks, and stroked gently against his hole.
The reaction was as instant as he'd expected. Pierrot cried out like he'd been slapped again, and thrashed like a bird, trying to get away. But there was nowhere for him to go, the arm of the chair pinning him in place. The little furl of muscle trembled, frenzied, against Bertrand's fingertip.
"Oh, no!" Pierrot protested, voice high and teary. "No, you said—”
"Ah?" Bertrand paused.
"Vous avez dit," Pierrot corrected himself, frantically. "You said that we'd be done once—"
"There’s a good boy," Bertrand said, and pushed the tip of his finger inside him. "This isn't a lesson. It's a reward. You're going to enjoy it."
Pierrot made a choked noise against the cushioned surface. "Oh, God," he moaned. It had a high, incredulous edge to it, almost a laugh—like he couldn't quite believe what was happening to him.
Another of those heady swells of affection surged over Bertrand. Slowly, carefully, he thrust his finger deeper into that hot, tight entrance, then pulled it back, relishing the nervous, untaught way the boy clutched at him. Then he pushed back inside—stroked slyly, inexorably, in and out and in, pushing against that naive resistance, fucking his way through it. "Ever touch yourself here?"
He paused, and drizzled a little more oil over Pierrot's opening, his smarting crack, letting it trickle down to his dangling balls. He could have taken him dry, and rough, and fast, but he'd meant what he said. He would have Pierrot enjoy this.
Pierrot made no answer. He was tense all over, squirming a little whenever Bertrand's finger flexed.
"I'll take that to mean 'the usual amount'," Bertrand said. "You're certainly letting me in easily enough. Has anyone else been in here?"
Pierrot's shoulders trembled, and he shook his dark head.
"No? Your tutor? Boys at college? Back-alley strumpets? Or did your Papa give you a little tickle here, when he was done with his highly ineffectual spankings?"
That won him a noise of utter outrage, and Pierrot kicked out with his legs, writhing like he'd been touched with a brand. The only effect was, of course, to fuck himself more firmly back onto Bertrand's finger; it was delightful to feel him spasm inside with fury and disgust. Really, his adherence to propriety about his parents was touchingly absurd.
"No," Pierrot was saying, voice strained, "No, he never— No-one ever— ah-hh! " Bertrand had slipped him a second finger, and begun a series of firm, forceful strokes that had his thighs shuddering and his toes slipping against the floorboards.
"Poor Pierrot," Bertrand said, kindly, regretfully, stroking his trembling thigh as though he was an overworked horse, "that's not your fault. Just another area where you have been failed by your elders, huh? They wasted their time teaching you letters and dancing and other things a boy like you simply doesn't need, and completely neglected to show you your true place. Which is like this: head down, arse up, at the mercy of a stronger man—a toy for his pleasure. That's what Papa should have taken you over his knee and taught you. Thank God I'm here to teach you it now, no?"
"You don't even—ah!— believe in God!" Pierrot’s voice was high, frantic, almost hysterical. "M-Maréchal says—"
Maréchal? Bertrand was charmed beyond belief. Some of the most die-hard revolutionaries of his acquaintance hadn’t read Maréchal. Full of surprises, this boy.
He withdrew his hand, gave Pierrot a bruising smack against his hole, making his bare legs jerk, then plunged his slippery fingers in deep, stroking and searching. "Uh, uh,” he scolded. "Not trying to think, are you, sweetheart? That's exactly the kind of behaviour we're trying to correct. These days, aristocrats don't need heads, just holes."
In response to this witticism, Pierrot made an indescribable noise, and might well have been about to make violent protest. But just then Bertrand found the spot he'd been seeking. He could tell because Pierrot mewled like a kitten, a high wounded noise, and just melted beneath him. A magic, all-over change, as sweet and sudden as if his bones had been charmed into honey.
“Wh—” he huffed, startled, then trailed off into a groan. “Unh-hh.”
“That's better,” Bertrand said soothingly, immeasurably pleased, petting relentlessly at that spot. “That's better. Oh, Pierrot, that’s lovely.”
Pierrot was moaning and shuddering, awash with brand-new pleasure, his hips giving weak, involuntary thrusts against the chair’s padded arm. Bertrand watched the display with avid eyes. It was his doing, his work, him reshaping Pierrot, making him act the whore. And he’d only just started. The things he would make of him…
When he spoke again, his voice was strained and hungry. ”God, but your head is delightful, Pierrot. It does seem a shame to lop it off. Perhaps we can let you keep it, if you promise not to use it. Reckon you can do that? Become a mindless, decorative slut for the Republic?"
Pierrot made no response, except to toss his head and pant, open-mouthed, against the velvet seat.
"Think you can get stupid enough to save your life?" Bertrand asked.
"Wh—What—" Pierrot was still struggling to put together words. His lips were bitten red, swollen. He squeezed his eyes shut, sending a crystalline tear rolling smoothly over his fine cheekbone. "Oh, what are you... ohhh ."
Bertrand laughed. "Just showing you what you're been wanting all these years, how you were made to be used." He surrendered to an impulse and leaned forward, nuzzling at Pierrot’s hair, and bearing him down more firmly against the chair. He could feel every quiver and twitch of the body beneath him. He put his lips close against Pierrot's ear. "I don't believe in God," he said, softly. "But you do, don't you, Pierrot? Why do you think He’s making you enjoy this so much?"
Pierrot let out a cry of distress, and Bertrand felt his arse tremble and clench round his fingers. The thought of that around his cock… It was a temptation Bertrand could resist no longer.
He pulled his fingers out, and allowed himself a single moment to admire the storm-cluttered canvas he’d made of Pierrot’s arse. His hole was flushed and winking, like a skittish coquette. Practically an invitation.
"All right, up you come.” Bertrand pulled the boy up with brisk, firm hands, like he was handling a nervy horse. Pierrot tottered on his legs, unsteady.
"Look at that beautifully eager little sodomite cock," Bertrand said, approving. It was straining, now, standing up bumptiously against Pierrot’s lean stomach. He teased a fingertip over the flushed head, felt where it was beginning to leak and turn sticky. "Hard as a poker and slick as a bride."
Pierrot met his gaze for a second, then looked quickly away—that characteristic expression of schoolboyish shame. He was flushed all down his front and glowing with sweat. His cheeks and lips were shiny with tears and spit. He looked filthy, angelic, distraught.
Bertrand was burning to be inside him. But… He reached out and laid a finger on the ivory toy. “Shall I put this up you?” he asked, innocently “You can sit on my lap and I'll trot you up and down.” He smiled at Pierrot’s shocked intake of breath, the way he’d stiffened all over. “We can play "À Paris sur mon petit cheval gris." Ever play that with Papa, my sweet? I bet it'll feel so lovely with his prick tucked inside you.”
"No," Pierrot said in a whispered gasp, shaking his head. His eyes were bright with new tears, fixed on the false cock. "No, please, sir, not that, I'll do anything."
"But I thought you wanted it to stay a secret? Where better to hide it than here?" Bertrand patted his abused arse, expecting a flinch and an outcry, but the lad’s mouth was set in a grim line and all he gave was another vehement shake of his head. "All right," said Bertrand, enormously pleased. "Ask me for mine then, instead."
“Please,” Pierrot said immediately, turning those big dark eyes up to him. The sincere plea in them went to Bertrand's prick like a galvanic charge. "Please, sir, please give me your cock instead."
And what was Bertrand supposed to do with that, but grab him by the chin and kiss him breathless? "If you insist, cheri," he said, when he pulled back, his own voice a little ragged, "I'll have you right here."
Sitting down in that spit-stained velvet chair felt like assuming a throne. He dragged Pierrot down with him, roughly bending his knees to get him in the position he wanted, manoeuvring him as easily as he would a girl’s doll. His cock glanced and nuzzled at Pierrot’s balls, his crack, caught deliciously on his slicked-up hole.
"Go on," he said encouragingly, “guide me in,” and watched in the mirror as Pierrot, jaw tight, reached between his own legs to obey. The first brush of tentative fingers against Bertrand's shaft made him groan. When the thick head finally— finally— rubbed against Pierrot’s entrance, the boy’s eyes fluttered shut for a second at the sensation, the shame. “Good boy," Bertrand crooned and, too worked up for finesse, just pulled the boy's arse roughly down onto his cock.
Pierrot squeaked at the stretch, then let out a shocked, breathy whimper as the head popped inside him. “Oh,” he said, high and panicky. “Oh, God, you’re–” He broke off, blinking rapidly, eyes wide.
Inside you? Bertrand would have said, wryly. Certainly am. But he was a bit busy luxuriating in the feeling of that virgin hole stretching and spasming around him. Pierrot was so hot inside, soft and tight as a kid-glove, better than anything Bertrand had ever had. He paused there for a second, with just the tip inside, blinking away stars, letting Pierrot feel himself breeched.
There, he thought, with intense satisfaction. That’s your virtue comprehensively gone, my lord. I’ve taken it from you. No getting it back now.
Somebody would have had it, eventually, unless the boy had become a monk. Probably even then—putting a body like this in a catholic monastery would have been like throwing a lamb into a den of starving lions. But instead it had been taken, stolen, claimed by a low-born peasant, by Bertrand.
He’d been the one to have his lordship, finger him open and fuck him for the very first time. Nobody else. And he was going to have him again, and again. As much as he liked.
That thought eroded what remained of Bertrand’s patience. His hands tightened on Pierrot’s hips, and then he was pushing in further, filling him up relentlessly, as fast and smooth as he could without shooting off. Just forcing his way into that tight clutching channel, giving no quarter, until he had Pierrot seated firmly in his lap, trembling around him. Stuffed to the brim.
It was indescribable, heavenly. So fucking good. Every twitch of Pierrot’s muscles, every beat of his pulse was like a little stolen caress.
"Good boy, Pierrot," Bertrand soothed him, petting at his thighs, taut with strain, his quivering flank. "Good, good boy. Being so good for me.” He nuzzled at Pierrot’s hair, smelt the brisk equine tang of his sweat. “That’s all of me, sweetheart. All for you. You took me to the hilt on your very first try. You’re a natural."
Pierrot said nothing.
He was staring straight ahead, eyes fixed on the image in the gilded mirror before them. The tangle of their limbs in this beautiful space, presented in ludicrous clarity in the morning light, like some obscene pieta. He couldn’t seem to tear his eyes from it, his face stilled with a kind of horrified fascination.
Bertrand sympathised. “God,” he breathed, “just look at you.”
Pierre de Saint-Georges, dazed, hurting, with a cock up his arse, was quite the loveliest thing Bertrand had ever seen. He was flushed all over now, his chest gleaming with sweat. His dark hair was a wreck, tousled and sticking to his forehead, his neck.
Because he was there, because he could, Bertrand stroked a hand over the boy’s heaving torso. He rubbed at the lean muscles of his abdomen, his stomach, then lower, just above his pubic bone, where his bladder must be. Imagined it trapped between his hand and his cock. Watched Pierrot’s eyelids flutter closed, the twin sweeps of his lashes trembling darkly against his cheeks. Watched his thighs quiver, and between them, his sweet, puppyish prick jerk and twitch. Listened to his helpless little moans.
"Bounce," he heard himself order. "Ride me up and down."
Pierrot's eyes met his in the mirror. They were almost all pupil, and the look in them... God. Soft and stunned, like a dreamer. No reason at all. He made no move to follow Bertrand's order, but it looked less like an act of rebellion, and more like he'd barely understood the words.
He just sat there, giving Bertrand that hazy drugged stare. It was as though he was so full his mind had just emptied out. Like he'd been rendered mute and stupid by a good dose of cock— Bertrand's cock. Fuck.
"Bounce on it, Pierrot, or I swear to your god, I'll stuff that thing in your hole, drizzle your cock in honey, and let your daddy's dogs lick you till you're pissing come." Even Bertrand was a trifle taken aback by the filthiness of this image; there was a pause while he processed the meaning of the words he’d just said, and wondered at his own invention. "In the courtyard," he added, a little extraneously. "In front of everyone."
Pierrot blinked his blank, doe-like eyes slowly at him in the glass, once, twice. Then his legs stuttered sluggishly into motion. With obvious effort, he worked himself up a couple of inches, then sat himself down.
Bertrand groaned into his shoulder, and let him do it again, and again, letting him find his rhythm, encouraging his effort with a tight hand on his hips. It didn’t take long. All that riding had paid off in spades; the boy really was a natural at this. Even as his legs trembled, even as sweat began to pool stickily in the small of his back, he jounced up and down, rising and falling with the sweet regularity of a chiming church-bell.
Between his thighs, his prick bobbed perkily. Bertrand watched it adoringly in the glass; watched that sulky pink mouth caught in a pant, the pinch of concentration between the boy's brows.
Pouring honeyed praise into Pierrot’s ear, he amused himself by shifting in the seat, minutely adjusting the angle of their fucking, until he found that one place that made Pierrot give a low groan and throw his head back. It lolled heavily on Bertrand's shoulder, the boy’s lashes trembling against his cheek.
In the pale morning light from the window, the line of his throat glowed like fine china, like marble in a sepulchre. For a glorious while, Bertrand just lost himself in that tight pulsing heat, and the lush, bawdy music of the seigneur’s sole heir groaning unrestrainedly like a country slut in a hedgerow.
His mouth was a crushed, glossy rose-bud—lips smudgy and pink. Bertrand reached up and pushed two strong fingers between them. Pierrot, too busy getting fucked to fight him, relaxed his jaw with barely a protest and let them in.
His lips looked shockingly dainty, stretched around them like that.
Bertrand flexed them idly, coating them nicely with spit. Then he reached down and brushed deliberately against a pebbled pink nipple.
Pierrot startled and gasped, his eyes flying open.
Bertrand hummed, feeling playful, and gave the tight little bud a firmer rub. Instantly, Pierrot's hand shot to his chest, fingers closing clumsily over Bertrand's own, trying to pull them away.The attempt was charmingly ineffectual, like the pawings of a kitten; a sharp thrust of Bertrand’s hips and the boy was moaning, hand falling away.
"N'n, stop," he managed, before lapsing into a stuttering groan. "Oh-hh. Please, stop."
"Stop what?" Bertrand asked, amused. His own voice was a little strained, but felt he could be given some slack on that front, considering the shuddering mess in his lap. He nibbled at Pierrot's ear, still toying with his dampened nipple, and watched over the boy’s shoulder as his cock flexed and pushed out a little spurt of thin liquid, enough to run down and tickle his balls. They were drawn up high. "Stop playing with your rouged little tits? Why? You clearly like it."
Not wanting to neglect either side, he switched his attention continually between them, glossing them both with Pierrot’s spit– letting the chill of the room prickle at one while warming the other, first with teasing caresses, then with cruel pinches and pulls.
Pierrot made helpless little mewling noises and stuttered out words as they puffed up under the attention, swelling immodestly with blood. “Don’t. Oh, please don’t, please don’t make me—”
A particularly devious tweak had his hand flying up again, but this time it was to clutch desperately at his own hair, moaning wildly. If he'd seen that move on a whore, Bertrand wouldn't have believed it, but on the proud young man on his lap he knew it was all too real.
Gently, he captured both Pierrot’s wrists in his free hand, and held them neatly under the boy’s chin. It made him look like he was praying, on his knees before some filthy altar. "Can I guess? Is it that you're close? Afraid you're about to come on my cock, Pierrot?”
Pierrot shook his head desperately, trying to look back at him, stubborn brows drawn together in tense concentration. "Nuh-uh," he panted. "Won't."
“Hmm.” A bold claim from a boy who was still working himself up and down on Bertrand’s cock, still grinding whorishly against that newly discovered nice spot inside him. Yet Pierrot seemed to have no notion that his body was betraying him, selfishly chasing that foreign pleasure, working him closer and closer to the release he feared.
Bertrand felt very fond of him indeed, in all his sweet, helpless contradiction.
"If you don't come on my cock," he said, softly, a purr against Pierrot's ear, "my darling boy, I'll have to use your father’s to get you off." Pierrot gasped and shuddered from tip to toe at the thought; his arse clenched deliciously. "Well, then, you better try to relax, no? Give in to it, sweetheart. If you can come all by yourself, perhaps we won't need Papa’s help."
At this the tears that had been gathering in Pierrot’s dark eyes spilled brightly over, painting his cheeks with glassy light. His cock was leaking too, gilding his thighs, the tight muscles in his abdomen. He shone irregularly all over, like a bronze statue of a saint, rubbed to gleaming patches by adoring hands. Except that he was so mobile, so lively, tensing and writhing. He was suffering so beautifully—working himself so assiduously, so cluelessly towards his own downfall. He felt wonderful inside.
Bertrand could do anything to him.
He was gripped by a feeling—heady, unstoppable, something like madness. He wanted… He wanted…
He wanted to tear Pierrot open, to pieces, to push his way inside however he could. To seek out parts of the boy he’d barely known existed. Bring him to every edge, hold him trembling there—his to command. Make him hurt, make him sing. Make every last inch of Pierrot his, and his alone. He wanted to make him like it.
Drunk on his own power, he returned the fingers of his free hand to Pierrot’s mouth, forcing them between his lips and stroking roughly at the plush surface of his tongue—as though he were fingering a cunt, coaxing it to getting wetter and wetter, to drool and clench for him.
Ignoring Pierrot's muffled whine of protest, he pushed his fingertips back to the border of the boy’s throat. Back where, he was certain, no other man had ever been. His eyes fixed on Pierrot's frightened face in the glass.
He felt the back wall, slick and mobile, and gave it a tickle.
The effect—just from that, a slight twitch of his fingers—was explosive. Pierrot's eyes flew shut, he twisted and gagged; his wrists jerked hard in Bertrand's grip, and his throat seized around Bertrand's fingers, first clamping down like a vice, then contracting crazily round him, like it couldn't decide if it wanted to expel Bertrand or grasp him close, drag him deeper. The muscles in his abdomen lurched and heaved, with orgiastic abandon.
His hole tightened around Bertrand like a noose, wringing a stream of oaths from him. For a second he saw white, brought right to the edge.
It was the threat of coming before he was done playing that had him pulling his fingers back, more than any fear of making Pierrot empty his stomach.
Pierrot sagged against him, shuddering, hacking. Tears rolled down his cheeks, and his chin was a shining mess. Each piteous cough made his hole flutter round Bertrand, squeezing and mumbling at him as though his length was a comfort.
His cock was still, incredibly, hard.
"Christ," Bertrand said, hollowly, "if you keep that up, you’re going to make me shoot inside you, and then where will you be? Slap bang on daddy's dildo, that's where." He stroked dreamily against the heaving line of Pierrot’s throat, pictured the dark fingertip bruises blooming inside. "Want another one of those?"
Pierrot shook his head, fat teardrops flying from his cheeks. "No," he rasped, raw and scratchy, broken by sobs and moans, "no, no, no— ohhh. No, n-no more, enough, please, not—not like that, please, ju-hust let me—" His mouth snapped shut, and his gaze locked with Bertrand’s in the mirror, hazy and pleading.
"Changed your mind?" Bertrand asked, knowingly. "Decided you do want to come after all?"
The last trace of pride fell out of Pierrot’s flushed, tear-stained face. He looked at Bertrand with frank, helpless entreaty. "Yes!"
"I think you could easily come off just like that, gagging round my fingers," Bertrand said. He stroked the tip of his thumb up the underside of Pierrot's straining cock. It jerked, and Pierrot whimpered pathetically. "But you'd prefer something else? Something a little tamer?"
"Yes,” Pierrot sobbed, “yes, please, yes."
"Want me to stop playing with your throat, with your darling little tits? Want me to stop pinching and tweaking your sweet perky nipples, even though you clearly like it so much?"
"Please!"
"Ride me again," Pierrot obeyed, movements near-frantic. "You want to get a soft hand round that pretty prick? Rub it and play with it, hump your palm like a puppy? Make yourself spurt all over your chest, your thighs? Paint yourself with spend while a peasant fucks your arse? "
Pierrot keened, and his wrists tensed again in Bertrand's grip. "Yessir," he slurred, "wanna touch myself. Please, please, please, please." He was bouncing beautifully on Bertrand's thick length, working himself right up to the edge; his pleading words fell into the same rhythm, as though they were being mechanically punched out of him.
"No," Bertrand said.
"No?" It was a piteous cry. Pierrot's face in the mirror was the picture of incredulous dismay. It didn't seem to occur to him to stop fucking himself; he continued to jolt dejectedly up and down, eyes big and plaintive. "But... Sir. I— Please. "
It was nice to hear him beg—and so politely too—but Bertrand could feel the muscles of his arse, his legs trapped in a fine, ceaseless flutter, could feel the hot panic of his pulse. He was so close to falling, Bertrand was sure of it. And he'd be damned if he was about to let the little sodomite kid himself that his own hand had anything to do with it, rather than the thick length stuffed inside him, the pain he was in.
Bertrand would give him his climax, with his cock, his will, his sweet torment.
"If you wanted to pretend to be a normal young man," he said brutally, "you should have thought of touching yourself earlier." Pierrot gave a heart-rending sob, still dutifully bouncing. Bertrand smiled, and pressed a kiss to his beautiful tear-stained cheek. "It'll be all right, darling," he said, in a softer tone. "We'll get you there without that. You're almost there already. I know what you need."
“Th-thank you, sir,” Pierrot whispered. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure,” said Bertrand. And he reached up, put his big hand firmly over Pierrot's mouth, and pinched his adorable nose closed.
The effect was instant. Pierrot thrashed and torqued like a beast in a net, and mewled desperately into Bertrand's palm. The flush in his cheeks deepened to crimson. His gaze met Bertrand's in the glass—bright with terror at first, then, as the seconds without air trickled past, the fright melting into a kind of pained, helpless awe. Betrand stared avidly at his writhing form, his suffering face, gorging on his distress: he could feel the boy's insides flutter and spasm around him, and rejoiced savagely in their dance. It wasn't just his hole, but all of him, his whole being—lungs, limbs, heart—straining and dancing itself sick to Bertrand's tune.
He could feel his own climax building, cresting at the thought. He felt like a king, a giant, a god. Something grand and wicked, out of the most depraved fairytale. That opulent room, and the picturebook prettiness of the young man in his lap, and his total dominion over him... Pierrot’s body his kingdom...
Pierrot gave a muted whine. A veil seemed to fall over his eyes; they bloomed darkly, lost focus, like a mystic in a trance. His struggle lulled.
Bertrand met his own gaze in the mirror. He was grinning like a wolf.
He released his grip, and let Pierrot take a wrenching gasp of air. Let it rush back in, in great whooping sobs. Let his greedy lungs pump themselves dizzily full.
That was all it took, that tiny relief. Pierrot's cock jerked, his back arched like a drawn bow, and spend came streaming out of him with the blunt grace of an arrow—splattering against the mirror, the floorboards, their knees, his own chin.
It was the look of surprise on his face that pushed Bertrand over the edge. That, and Pierrot’s perfect, perfect arse, hot and pulsing around him.
His balls clenched; his vision wavered. His hands gripped tight on Pierrot, and he spilled so deep inside him he'd never come clean.
It took him several seconds to see again, to blink his way out of his pleasant stupor and make the room reform around them. His limbs felt heavy with delicious release.
The false cock still lay before them on its bed of lace, giving out a muted shine in the morning light. Pierrot had managed to lash it with come.
Lazily, languorously, Bertrand reached out and picked it up. He rubbed thoughtfully at the pearly smear with his thumb.
In his lap, Pierrot stirred and gave a soft moan. "Oh, sir," he said, words coming out blurred, indistinct. He coughed. "But, please, you said—"
Bertrand's spent prick gave a near painful twitch at the sound of that cultured voice wrecked to pieces, at such respectful words falling unthinkingly from those delicious pink lips. Vous avez dit ...
"I said perhaps," he said, and savoured Pierrot's desolate moan as much as any of the vintages in his father's famous cellar.
☙
Later, much later, Bertrand lay on his back against Madame de Saint-Georges’ fine linen sheets. He held Pierrot against him with one arm, his head tucked under his chin. The boy was glazed with sweat, barely conscious. Each shaky breath from his parted lips stirred the hair on Bertrand's chest.
Bertrand stroked idle fingers over his shoulder, his spine, and stared up at the molded ceiling. "I have an associate visiting soon," he said, nonchalantly, as though chatting with a mistress. "He'll probably want a go on you. Shall I let him? Would you like that?"
In truth, Bertrand wasn't entirely sure that he would like that. Yes, there was something exciting about the idea of sharing Pierrot, showing off what he’d made of him. But, counter-revolutionary as the notion might be, he’d become rather used to thinking of Pierrot as gloriously, exclusively his.
He also wasn't sure he'd have much of a choice. Nuits-Saints-Georges was just one upturned apple-cart among hundreds all over the country, and not a very big one; Grégoire, riding from Paris on Republican business, would have the perspective that everybody else round here lacked. And as Bertrand’s equal—his frère d’armes—he was as entitled to Pierrot's upper-class arse as Bertrand was, if he wanted it.
And Bertrand had known Grégoire in Paris for almost ten years. He’d want Pierrot, all right.
Pierrot didn't seem that keen on the idea either. He made a small, dismayed noise and shook his head against Bertrand's chest. It felt like a nuzzle, and the sweet protest soothed Bertrand's uneasy thoughts.
"Oh," he said, jocularly, "so the little princess is too good for my friend? He'll spend himself silly on his Papa's false prick, but he won't take good, righteous citoyen cock?"
With what must have been a Herculean effort, Pierrot raised his head to look Bertrand square in the eye. His face was blank with exhaustion, but for a second Bertrand read detestation in it. For a second, a spark of pure, white-hot loathing burnt in his eyes, kindling and dying in a breath.
So there was still a little spirit in there. Bertrand didn't know why he found that so very pleasing.
"It'll be all right, cheri." He pulled the boy more firmly against him and pressed a brisk kiss into his disarrayed hair. "You'll get through it. Just close your eyes and think of Madame la Guillotine."
☙
If Citoyen Grégoire was anything like the man Bertrand had known before the dawn of the glorious republic, then he had simple tastes. A strong drink, a pretty face, a warm slick hole.
He’d probably be happiest with Pierrot nude, oiled, and unconscious. Bertrand, though, had other plans.
There was something thrilling, something exotic about lounging in a Louis Quatorze armchair and watching his Pierrot wearily don his finery—all pulled from the boy’s own closet, and fit for a prince. White silk stockings, close-fitting silk knee breeches, a linen shirt with needle-lace at the cuffs and the throat, an ivory silk waistcoat, embroidered fantastically in gold. Like the kind of striptease one saw in more refined Paris brothels, but set in coy reverse. It was just as enticing to watch that pale skin be hidden away, softness cloistering a secret softness.
Seeing him primly wrapped up like a petit cadeau had Bertrand’s blood tingling with glorious anticipation—like, he imagined, a wealthy child might feel at a Réveillon feast, gloating over the knowledge of the treasures he would receive in a few scant hours on Christmas morn. Knowing exactly what he’d do with them once he’d torn their wrappings off, the games he would play.
And it was fitting. In this new order, fine clothes ought to be the clothing of degradation, the costume of shame.
He hadn't bothered with the heeled shoes Pierrot would have worn to court. There was an iron hook set into one of the ostentatiously rustic beams in the Great Hall; presumably, it had been intended for hanging chandeliers. With the help of an indifferent Jean-Claude, a step-stool, and a block and tackle, Bertrand had strung his captive up to it by the wrists and kept him up on his stockinged toes that way. Left Pierrot there—tottering, every muscle strained—while he passed a few hours writing by the fireside and awaiting their guest.
As a tableau, it pleased Bertrand—beautiful and instructive. This was what the old ruling class, the froth that rose to the top of the ancien régime, had made of themselves; this was a literalisation of the boy’s proper place in that order, the role he’d been born to play. Something useless and decorative, destined to spend his days as nothing more than an ornamental flourish, while real men and women went about the business of living, made the world turn around him.
Bertrand hoped the snaffle bit and blindfold would drive that point home.
The position did wonderful things for Pierrot’s backside, but it must have been hell to hold. After the first hour, his legs had a tremble perceptible from across the room. With the blindfold on, he couldn't even know who was enjoying the view, observing his humiliation. During the day, the Hall served as a corridor in the château, and each time the boy heard the bustle of activity around him, he'd tense up; his cheeks and ears would redden, vivid against the white of the fabric around his eyes. Men shouldering past, rolling barrels; women with sacks over their shoulders, or buckets of water, sloshing the flagstones and cleaning round him, laying the fire. Some ignored him; some leered, said filthy things that made his ears redden further. Jean-Claude, perhaps predictably, spat at his dainty, taxed feet.
At one point, the dogs were driven through, bumptious and milling, heading off towards their dinner, their sleek rangy bodies like so many tumbling waves. They shoved carelessly against the boy’s knees, making him gasp and cry out round the metal in his mouth, teetering on his tiptoes, panting with pale exertion.
His shadow lengthened, stretched itself dolorously towards Bertrand’s own feet.
Eventually, Bertrand stood, and put a light to the fire. Pierrot had been quiet for a while, but now he took an indrawn breath, ragged, something between a hiccup and tiny newborn sob. His head was hanging desolately between his shoulders. Stretched a little by the metal of the bit in his mouth, his cheeks were fresh and slippery with tears.
Bertrand rolled his shoulders, checked his pocket watch. He smiled and made a soothing noise.
In an instant, Pierrot's head snapped up, and turned in his direction, as though he were searching blindly through the fabric for Bertrand, trying to find him with a sense beyond sight. He'd been drooling a little, helpless against the press of the snaffle on his tongue: his chin was slick, and here and there his cravat was spangled with spit, catching the light like a necklace of jewels.
Bertrand's cock stirred, lazy and pleased. It was such a pleasing thing to look at, his pet’s distress. "Not much longer, mon pitou," he said, kindly.
And accurately. Within twenty more minutes, Grégoire was there, bowling in off his horse, tracking mud across the flagstones and bringing with him a whirl of chill outdoor air. Bertrand was pleased enough to submit to his hearty embraces, to offer him food and claret warmed by the fire, to discuss revolutionary business and revolutionary gossip with the same degree of solemnity.
Apart from an appreciative once-over on his arrival and a low whistle, Gregoire ignored Pierrot in favour of sating other, more immediate appetites. When, to illustrate one of his tales, he clapped one of his great hands down on the table, the boy flinched and let slip a thready little moan. Grégoire looked over and raised his eyebrows, amused, and turned his attention to his claret.
By the time he had finished his glass and got to his feet, Pierrot was just hanging there limply. He didn’t react to Grégoire’s footfalls as the man paced speculatively round him.
"So this is your toy," Grégoire said. "He's not very lively." He nudged at Pierrot, making him sway in his bonds. He stirred and mumbled something into his gag.
Bertrand snorted. "He's just sleepy. Come on, Pierrot. Show a little life. Citoyen Grégoire didn't come all this way to play with a broken doll." He wafted his glass under Pierrot's nose, as though he were administering sal volatile to a swooning girl. Pierrot twitched encouragingly at the scent. With a flick of his wrist, Bertrand splashed a little of the claret, against his face, his lips where they were parted around the gag.
That got results. Pierrot reared back and retched behind the bit, legs working involuntarily, stomach and chest heaving. Ever since their bacchanal in this room, the first taste of alcohol had been making him gag; Bertrand knew that behind the already-damp blindfold his eyes would be watering anew, turning red-rimmed and starry, the pale skin around them puffing up cutely.
He wanted, very badly, to see them. And yet… Bertrand felt his hackles rise, animal, instinctive. Over the past couple of days, every hour he’d spent hurting Pierrot, the boy’s world had reduced and reduced, until Bertrand took up most of it, until Pierrot turned to him unthinkingly, like a flower following the sun. That land, that interior kingdom behind those blue eyes—that was his, his alone. He didn’t like the idea of letting Grégoire—even just his image—intrude.
Maybe later.
Pierrot was showing more life now. His arms were straining in their bonds, taking a little of his weight, and he was making indistinct noises behind the bit—pleading, rather than commanding. Their lessons over the last day or so had been fruitful; he had learned a lot of new skills, and some new philosophies.
"That's better." He could have the bit off, at least. Reaching to the back of his head, Bertrand undid it efficiently with one hand, and tucked it in his pocket. Then he tried to let Pierrot have a reviving sip of claret from his glass, but Pierrot did an awful job of taking it in between lips that must be half-numb: most of it spilled over his chin, spotting his cravat again—this time with rubies.
Bertrand tutted and changed tack, dipping his fingers in the liquid and pressing them against the boy's mouth as though he were a lamb that was slow to the teat.
Pierrot's rose-petal lips parted sweetly, obediently and began to suck.
Bertrand felt the wet docile heat of his tongue, his soft insides, and rejoiced in his mastery. He pushed forward and back, began to slowly fuck the boy's pliant mouth. Pierrot obligingly hollowed his cheeks, trying to pleasure his fingers.
Grégoire gave a low whistle. "Did you train that into him," he said, sounding half aroused and half scornful, "or do all aristocrats naturally rejoice in degradation?"
Bertrand had to laugh at the words, so like something out of the kind of half-satirical tract Pierre's Papa kept at his bedside. So unlike something Grégoire would have thought up for himself. "You can't believe everything you read in the pamphleteers’ smut, mon vieux. I don't believe the boy had ever touched another man's cock until we met. And now... Well, you'll see."
"He's de Saint-Georges’ eldest?" Grégoire brushed a stray dark lock back from where it was falling onto Pierrot’s forehead, over the blindfold. His beetle-black eyes drank in Pierrot’s fine, flushed face.
"His only son." The sight of Grégoire's big rough fingers in Pierrot's hair put another hot twinge in Bertrand’s gut. He'd shared enough whores with the man in Paris to know his preferences, and knew if they’d seen Pierrot in an inn or an alley, he'd have had to fight hard to keep the boy to himself. Although... "Sorry, no tits to speak of."
"He's fetching enough," Grégoire said, philosophically, "and, girl, boy or aristo, a hole is a hole."
"True," Bertrand said, pushing away his misgivings with an effort. Possessiveness was the preserve of insecure landowners and ugly wives. He must focus on how lovely Pierrot looked hanging there, how proud he was of his work. "I think you'll like his."
He grabbed at the loose end of the rope where it dangled from the tackle, and gave it a heave. The pulley worked its magic, pulling Pierrot a little way into the air. He gave an anguished squeak of surprise, high and animal, and his legs cycled desperately.
"Look at that," Grégoire said, grinning. "Pretty little puppet."
"Doesn't he dance nicely?" Bertand agreed. Now Pierrot's face was almost level with his own for the first time, a couple of inches of air between the flagstones and his stockinged feet. They trembled and twitched, calling forth visions of the scaffold. It put a sick, knife-edge thrill in Bertrand’s belly, the image of Pierrot jerking and twitching like that at the end of a different rope. Losing control of himself for one last, definitive time, rolling his lovely eyes up and soaking his breeches. Then going stiff all over—the way he was doing now, frozen static by the feeling of hands on the fastenings of his silken fall-piece.
Bertrand got it open, got his culottes off him, had his thighs bare and quivering. Then in a perverse kind of embrace, he passed both hands round Pierrot, grasped a buttock in each and pulled them apart. A high startled noise rang out right by his ear and the breath falling against his neck turned quick and panicky. Charmingly consistent, his Pierrot—always clinging, shocked, to propriety, to decorum.
Bertrand gave his arse a comforting little squeeze, but it didn't seem to ease his anxiety. He hung there, tense and trembling like a bowstring, keening a little at the strain in his shoulders.
Grégoire moved behind him, and sucked in a breath.
Bertrand smiled, and permitted himself a nuzzle against Pierrot's dark, raw-silk curls, enjoying the rasp of his own stubble against the boy's virgin cheek and the jerky swell of his breathing.
"Fuck," Gregoire groaned. "When did you stick that up him?"
The ivory phallus had been cold in Bertrand's hand that morning, but he'd wager it had warmed up by now. After all, it had had Pierrot, sweating and struggling and clenching around it for hours. Bertrand had waited until he was strung up—but not yet blindfolded—to pull down his breeches and press the tip firmly against him. Of course, Pierrot had thrashed about at first, tried to dodge and go up on the very tips of his toes to escape it. But it had been slick with oil and Bertrand had been patient, insistent—he'd just shushed the boy, and let the strength in his calves tremor and fail until, with a moan of despair, Pierrot had relaxed and felt himself sink a little way onto it. He'd been such a very brave boy, taking his Papa's prick like a little gentleman; Bertrand had told him so, and pulled his head up, forcing him to lock eyes with the portrait above the fireplace.
That had made Pierrot let out a hiccupping sob, and slump in his bonds, just letting Bertrand impale him on the thing right up to its carved base with no further struggle. Magnificently satisfied, he'd refastened the boy's breeches, secured the blindfold, and given his arse an encouraging pat. "There, you'll feel better soon," he'd promised, "with your Papa’s cock all the way in you, just how you like."
And part of Pierrot did like it. Bertrand had watched his fall-piece swell and wane all afternoon as he'd panted and strained. The rich fabric was dark, but looked at closely, it shone with wetness. When the dogs had jostled against him, Bertrand thought he might have spilled, untouched, in his breeches. But, he reflected fondly, the boy got so wet anyway, leaking like a girl at the slightest provocation, it was hard to be sure.
God, his poor prick must be aching, exhausted. But had the toy been solely a source of torment, or was there by now something comforting to Pierrot about being filled up with his darling daddy's cock? Had he been nursing on it all day, his sole consolation against the pain in his calves, his shoulders, between his legs?
Maybe that was why he seemed so reluctant to let it go now. Grégoire had reached out and was tugging playfully at the base, and Pierrot didn’t like that at all. He was shaking his head weakly against Bertrand's shoulder, as though trying to find his way out of a daze.
“Wait,” he said, urgent and breathy, “don't, no, Monsieur, please.”
Grégoire lifted a thick eyebrow at Bertrand. "Monsieur, is it? And you've got him vousvoying like a chambermaid.”
He stopped fucking around and pulled the ivory cock smoothly out, then whistled again. Bertrand peered over Pierrot's shoulder to watch as he pressed an unrefined thumb against Pierrot's hole. It was quite a sight, flushed to a fury and swollen with use—a brattish little pout, demanding more. Oiled and stretched as it was, it drew Grégoire in all too easily, despite Pierrot’s stifled cry of protest.
“Fuck,” Grégoire groaned. “He's like silk in here.”
Pierrot gave a miserable squirm that meant he was being rubbed at inside; his stockinged feet twitched and flexed. His pink mouth was hanging open, shocked or outraged. Bertrand imagined it: Grégoire's large and calloused thumb bullying its way inside the boy's hole; the rough, textured drag of it against Pierrot’s most delicate parts. "You're making his toes curl," he observed.
Grégoire snorted, amused and approving. “Shameless little tart.” With a slick pop he pulled out, and fumbled to loose his cock. It was veined and stiff, throbbing; when he rested it for a moment against Pierrot's back, it left a kiss of slime on the fine silk of his waistcoat. Bertrand wished Pierrot could have seen it, its intimidating heft, and realised just how far it would sink inside his slim form—he wondered if the boy could feel a hint of that in its weight against his back, whether it had his heart thrumming like a rabbit’s on the butcher's block.
“Give me a hand,” Gregoire grunted, “I want him—”
“I can see where you want him,” Bertrand said, rolling his eyes, but lent his strength, manoeuvring the boy until Grégoire’s blunt head was menacing his hole.
Pierrot’s entrance spasmed fretfully round his tip, even worked as it was; it looked almost comically outmatched, as though it would be choked. "Please, no!" Pierrot cried out, voice high, clearly panicking at the stretch.
Gregoire chuckled and pressed forward a little, then drew back again, teasing his flexing hole.
Pierrot raised his head, turned it, searching blindly, instinctively. He looked like a newborn kit, Bertrand thought, whose eyes were yet to open, searching for the mama who was its whole world. He felt a sort of tender, hungry pang in his chest at the note of plaintive appeal in the boy's voice. "Please, sir, please, don't let him, it's too big, I can't--"
"You can't?" Bertrand said, at the same time that Grégoire said "Let him?" His hands tightened angrily on the boy, and Pierrot gave a choked yelp, then a drawn-out, shuddering moan, one that could have only one meaning—Grégoire had punched his way inside and begun to slide deeper.
"All right, hang on," Bertrand said, soothing them both, "Grégoire, hang on. Pierrot, if you can't take my friend's cock, then don't. Just pull yourself off him."
Pierrot made a dismal noise and flexed his bound hands. His bloodless fingers shook, struggling to move, let alone grasp the rope. Feeling generous, Bertrand reached up and clasped his own hand around them, helping him to wrap them round the cord. Pierrot’s forearms tightened, trembled. The lean muscles in his shoulders stood out, and he managed to pull himself up by maybe half an inch—not nearly enough to escape the steady pressure inside him. Whining through gritted teeth, he tried a little harder. His temples were glowing. Sweat poured out from under his arms, darkening his fine shirt, his waistcoat. If he gained any more distance, it was imperceptible.
"See, I'm not letting Citoyen Grégoire do anything," Bertrand lied, "you are. You're letting him put his thick sans-culottes cock inside you. You must like it."
Grégoire, holding obediently still, forehead against Pierrot’s shoulder, huffed out a tight laugh. Pierrot shook his head wordlessly.
"Say 'thank you, citizen'," Bertrand prompted. Pierrot said nothing, just breathed fast and ragged through his nose.
Bertrand sighed in a pantomime of regret.
Grégoire had strolled in straight off his horse; his crop still lay on the oak table behind them. Bertrand had noted it in his hand when he entered, been thinking idly about it ever since.
Now he picked it up, hefted it to feel its tidy weight. Then he swung it back, and brought it smartly against the straining undersides of Pierrot's arms.
The sound as it sliced through the air put a savage thrill in his belly, and the muffled crack when it hit linen was like a bright sunburst.
Pierrot gave a yip of pain, and his legs flailed: his arms went dead with surprise, immediately losing all the ground he'd gained. He dropped like a ragdoll onto Grégoire's cock, letting out a long winded noise as that throbbing rod sank inside him—one insolent stroke.
"Oh-hh," he groaned, sweetly breathless. “Th-thank you, citizen.”
There was a measure of real, shocked desire in there—the kind of sincerity usually reserved for the confessional.
"Shit," Grégoire panted, as heartfelt as the boy. "That's a snug little cunt." He patted Pierrot roughly on the flank. "No problem, princess."
“There,” Bertrand said, soothingly, “there’s a brave boy. I knew you could take it. Doesn’t that feel nice?” He pulled open Pierrot’s waistcoat and put a hand—the one holding the crop— against his thin shirt. He could feel his taut tummy quiver with each panicky breath.
Pierrot nodded tremulously. “Thank you,” he whispered. “Th-hank you, sir.”
Bertand pressed harder against him where he was full up inside, just to make him moan and squirm a little. He let Pierrot feel the crop in his hand. “Ask for more. You want it.”
Pierrot swallowed hard. “Please, sir.” He licked his lips, voice very quiet. “I…I want more.”
Bertrand smiled. That note of fear in his voice was heady, addictive. He took a step back, admired his work. “Let him have it, Grégoire.”
Grégoire needed no more encouragement. He placed hand on the back of Pierrot’s neck, hitched up his hips with the other, putting a beautiful arch in the boy’s back. Then he immediately began slamming in and out of him with abandon.
Bertrand rubbed lazily at his own still-clothed cock. He felt a warm glow of pride.
Grégoire was big, big enough that some whores wouldn't take him, or not without much whining and caviling about their sore cunts. But of course Pierrot had managed it— of course he liked it. Bertrand trained his eyes on the boy’s parted lips, his slack jaw, that proud face sotted with unwanted pleasure. God, it was like he'd been born to be fucked—No. Bertrand corrected himself. Pierrot was one of the Lord’s anointed; he’d been born to rule, to give orders, to pray. This was Bertrand's doing, his training, his work. In a few short weeks, he’d changed the boy completely. Irrevocably. Mastered and twisted him to his whims, for good.
Pierrot had fought the transformation—oh, he’d fought it, like a wild young colt. He’d tried and he’d fought and he’d failed and he’d lost.
And Grégoire… He was just an instrument in that process of change—nothing to choose between him and the crop by Bertrand’s side. Just a big useful prick. Right now, he was pounding away like a stud horse or a hound, uncomplicatedly chasing after his own cock as it sought out its pleasure. Bertrand amused himself for a second imagining it that way, casting his friend as an indulged, boisterous mutt, one that Bertrand was kindly allowing to sodomise his pet aristocrat, as a treat for them both.
Fitting. The man also spent like a beast, great gouts of the stuff, and was almost ridiculously virile, as many a poor doxy had learned to her cost. At least Pierrot didn't have to worry about Grégoire swelling his belly with puppies.
Bertrand’s cock jumped at that thought. He let it go, not yet ready for more.
That stubborn lock of Pierrot’s dark hair had fallen forward again, knocked loose by Grégoire’s jarring thrusts. He reached up and gently tucked it back.
“Want to know what he looks like?” he asked. “Your new playmate?”
No response. Pierrot was too busy taking the punishing pace, being jolted ceaselessly back and forth. He breathed thinly, raggedly; a rhythmic, punched-out unh-unh-unh noise spilled from his open mouth.
His pulse was fluttering in his throat. Bertrand put a hand to it—stroked at it, almost reverently, with his thumb—thought about pushing hard against it, making it slow, pressing it out of existence as easily as smoothing a fold from a sheet.
Then he gave into temptation and undid the sodden blindfold.
Pierrot blinked glassily at him, lashes tangled and glinting. His eyes were darker than ever; Bertrand got to watch the pupils slowly contract, that thin line of blue wavering wider. They had a fathomless look, like two still, lightless pools.
Bertrand spared a glance for Grégoire—his scarred, masculine face, roughly handsome. His big salt-of-the-earth hands. They made a striking picture together, a pleasing contrast to look at. Almost symbolic, too perfect to be real.
That dulled the sick worm of envy in Bertrand’s stomach a little, thinking about it like that.
"He looks like the revolution,” he whispered to Pierrot. “It’s as though France is having its way with you."
A little life stirred behind Pierrot’s drowning-pool eyes.
“How’s it feel?” Bertrand asked. “Do you like having your country’s thick cock up inside you? Does it feel nice, being all full?”
With a phenomenal effort, Pierrot shook his head. “Big,” he mumbled. “Hurts.”
Bertrand hummed, and plucked at the loose tails of Pierrot’s shirt where they hung over his thighs. “Your prick’s very hard for a boy being hurt,” he observed. "Do you want to know what you look like?"
Grégoire barked with laughter, not slowing his thrusts. "You talk too much, Monsieur Bertrand,” he panted. “Let the poor boy enjoy his fucking."
"Shut up," Bertrand said, mildly. He tapped Pierrot's cheek with the crop, made him meet his gaze. “Pierrot. Listen to me. You look like what you are. You're a whore, and a she-dog, and a cock-hungry slut. You’re an insatiable hole. You love getting fucked. You were made for it. Say it."
Pierrot blinked. Again, he shook his head.
Bertrand’s blood turned golden within him. It ran hot as flame. “Hold him still, Grégoire.”
Grégoire gave a laughing, disbelieving groan. “You're kidding.”
Like giving a gutter-dog caviar, Bertrand thought, scornfully. He only knows how to bolt it. "Trust me."
And this time he lashed out at Pierrot’s thighs, planting a thin stripe of pain across their bare fronts, once, twice, then again. Pierrot howled through gritted teeth. His fine shirt had turned translucent under the arms, soaked through with sweat.
Grégoire groaned, head back as if lost in ecstasy. “Shit,” he said. “Shit, when you hit him, the way he tightens inside…” He pulled Pierrot back fast against him, one thick arm round his abdomen. The boy's legs twitched, his slim, stockinged calves kicking.
It was like the flightless thrashing of a pinioned bird—a useless, wounded flutter.
Something about it, that movement, made Bertrand’s chest so tight and full he couldn’t think for a second. It was like he’d been gripped all over by feeling: not quite rage, not quite lust. Pure zeal, perhaps, raw and sharp-edged. A hot, rising sensation. Was this what some people felt for the Republic?
All he could do was channel it into his arm, laying another set of stripes across Pierrot's trembling thighs. The boy’s body heaved against Grégoire's restraining arms, a frenzy of pain. The throb of his pulse—in his cock, in his ears—seemed to sync with the blows. It sounded like a drum, like a chant. Mine, mine, mine, mine.
The beat was so loud in his head that it took Bertrand a moment to register Pierrot's cries. To discern the words he was gabbling, hitched with half-sobs. "Sorry, sorry! Please, Monsieur, p-please, I'm sorry, I’m a whore, I'm a whore!”
Bertrand stopped, breathed. "Good boy," he said, voice a little ragged. “And?”
Pierrot’s head hung forward; he was staring at the floor. He mumbled something.
Bertrand drew back his arm. The movement made Pierrot jerk his head up in fright. "A she-dog," he cried, frantic. "Ah!" The blow had already been falling; the stripe landed across one of the other puffed-up welts. Bertrand watched the tormented muscles twitch and jump; the skin broke, a line of red welling up in beads. "A she-dog, a she-dog."
"And?"
"Slut," Pierrot said, very quickly, his eyes on the crop. "I'm a c-cock-hungry slut."
Grégoire swore quietly, and gave him another little thrust.
Pinned under Grégoire's restraining arm, Pierrot’s beautiful, ruined shirt had ridden up, putting his cock on display. It was stiff as iron, flushed, and gleamed wet in the firelight. Breathing harsh from exertion, Bertrand traced the slit with the tip of the crop, saw it twitch and bead. Heard the groan from Grégoire that meant the boy must have squeezed down around him, caught in a tense, twisted loop of fear and lust. "And?" he said, deceptively soft, and looked back up to Pierrot's face.
He found Pierrot looking at him, eyes so large and lust-blown they seemed elfin, uncanny—a changeling darkness swallowing all traces of blue. His gaze held awe and despair, and desperate lust. His lips were wet and shiny, sucked pink. His lashes caught the firelight. He looked dazed, debauched. He looked like he’d forgotten everything but Bertrand.
"I'm a hole," he said, eyes never leaving Bertrand's. "Sir. Insatiable. Made–made to get fucked." He took a deep, shuddering breath. “I… I love it.”
Bertrand reached out, and stroked a thumb over his mouth. That urgent feeling was in his throat now. It felt hot and dark, like a roar, like a flame. If Grégoire hadn't been there…
If Grégoire hadn’t been there, he would have taken Pierrot’s mouth there and then, seized him by the hair and slipped him his tongue. Then he would have whipped him until he said he was Bertrand’s and Bertrand's alone. He thought of it—Pierrot, as he was now, gaze locked to his, slurring out the word: yours.
He took a long breath of his own. He made himself speak.
“What silly things you say, Pierrot,” he said—lightly, so lightly. “Do all aristocrats have such filthy mouths? What would your father think?”
Pierrot didn't say anything. His eyes fluttered shut for a second and his face trembled—a beautiful, desperate shiver of shame.
“All right, all right,” Bertrand said again, and stroked his hair. “I know: you can't help it, cheri. Can't control your tongue when you're this drunk on cock. Shall we put something in your mouth, save your blushes?” His heart rate was beginning to climb back down. He fingered his pocket, speculatively. “Want your bit back?”
“No,” Pierrot said instantly. “No, sir, I want…” His eyes regained some animation, flicking about as though searching for something, before landing back on Bertrand's face, bright and intense. His mouth trembled. ”Want your cock,” he whispered.
Bertrand felt a warm flood of affection, of pride. His Pierrot really wasn't stupid, except when Bertrand made him that way. He reached out to play his fingers over the boy’s flushed prick, to watch him lose a little of that hard-won focus. Pierrot gave a beautifully conflicted little whimper, unsure if he should try and flinch away, or rock into his touch.
“Sly little minx,” Bertrand said. “I think you just want to give your arms a break.”
Desperately, Pierrot shook his head. "No," he moaned, "no, no, I mean it, I swear. Please, let— let me suck you, sir, I'll be good, how you like it, promise, plea— ahh." He broke off into a low groan and tossed his short hair; Grégoire, swearing softly, had started to roll his hips again, slower now.
“You really want that, sweetheart?” Bertrand asked, watching hungrily. “Want filling up at both ends?" Pierrot screwed his face up for a second, then nodded frantically. "Want to lick me, suck me, trade sloppy kisses with my cock? Let me fuck your mouth, come down your throat?"
"Yes, yeah, want that." Being slowly, mercilessly screwed into had made the boy’s eyes glaze over again. Bertrand suspected that, at that moment, he would have said yes to anything.
"Are you sure?"
Pierrot squeezed his eyes tight. A tear rolled down his cheek. “Please,” he said, brokenly. It wasn’t clear what he was asking for—to get a taste of Bertrand, to be let down and left alone, to be touched oh-so-gently and coaxed into coming, to be hurt and hurt until he just couldn't help it. He probably didn’t know himself.
That was all right. He didn't have to worry his pretty little head about it. He had Bertrand to decide these things for him.
“Hold him, Grégoire.”
When Bertrand dragged over the step-stool and cut through the rope above Pierrot’s tied wrists, the boy howled at the returning feeling—a high animal noise, like a fox in heat—and writhed against Grégoire's hold. Whatever he did inside made Grégoire swear fervently, clutch at him, and shake with the need to come.
Bertrand looked narrowly at him, knife still in his hand. “I don't really care where you put most of yourself,” he said warningly, “but I want him on his knees and I want his arse full. Shoot before I'm done and I'll cut that monster off."
Grégoire gave a groaning laugh into Pierrot's shoulder. “Sir, yes sir,” he said, too breathless and acquiescent to really be considered ironic.
Pierrot stirred and mumbled a bit as he was borne to the floor and rearranged on his knees, tried to lift his head from Grégoire’s shoulder. “Shh,” Bertrand said, soothingly, stroking his soft cheek. “Shh, shh, it’s all right.” And his head fell back again, eyes dazed and uplifted.
Held against Grégoire’s broad chest, his knees spread and his bound hands before him, he looked exactly like something out of the kind of irreligious pamphlet peddled in the Palais-Royale. A penitent novice, big-eyed, being fucked for his sins.
Bertrand wondered, fleetingly, if Pierrot still believed in God. If he’d stripped him of that yet.
Grégoire played up to the role of the lecherous curé well enough. As soon as he could, he was rutting slowly into the boy, grunting out the occasional blasphemy. His hands gripped Pierrot tight; he was in a lather of sweat.
With the tip of his boot, Bertrand pushed back Pierrot's trailing shirt. It gave him a good view of his adorable prick, blushed deep pink and leaking onto the flagstones. A jolt of the boy’s hips sent it rubbing glancingly against Bertrand’s boot, making Pierrot shudder and whine.
Fuck. Bertrand fumbled frantically with the fastenings of his pantalons, not wanting to look away for a second from the sight of Pierre Étienne Jean-Marie de Saint-Georges, lord and heir to this manor, so empty-headed and strung out on cock he’d hump a blacksmith's son's boots like a dog.
He could have come off right there at the sight. For a second he entertained the idea of doing just that—spilling all over Pierrot’s lovely fucked-out face, getting his spend in those lashes, across those flushed cheeks—and had to squeeze himself hard to keep from turning the thought instantly into action. He cursed softly.
Pierrot blinked a little at the sound, looked up. His eyes focused enough to fix on Bertrand's cock.
Incredibly, wonderfully, he shuffled forward a little on his knees, as though fighting against Grégoire’s hold to get his mouth around it.
“Look at that,” Bertrand breathed. “Poor little puppy. Just wants his treat.” He reached out and sank his fingers into Pierrot’s sweaty dark hair, pushing it back off his pretty face. Then he held him there, almost close enough to mouth at his cock’s swollen head, and let him stick out his tongue, try and bridge the gap.
Pierrot made an unhappy, imploring noise, and looked up at him, eyes hazy, mouth hanging open. His tongue was very pink, and very inviting.
Bertrand relented, feeling almost dizzy with lust.
As soon as his grip slackened, Pierrot leaned in and began to kiss and mouth at the tip of his rod, lapping at it a little like a hungry cat. When Bertrand allowed his own hips to move, he took more in easily, eagerly, shuddering and moaning around it. It wasn’t the most precise cocksucking Bertrand had ever experienced—not even the most skilled he’d had from Pierrot. But it was wonderful. The boy’s mouth was like velvet, like satin, wet and hot and needy. He sucked fervently at all of Bertrand that he could get inside it, trying hard to take more. His eyes had fallen closed, as though he was entirely given over to Bertrand's taste; the fan of his lashes glinted darkly against his slick flushed cheeks.
“Oh, you good boy,” Bertrand said. He couldn’t have stopped his hips moving now if he’d wanted to; they were jerking hurriedly forward and back, fucking Pierrot’s willing mouth, sliding over and over his soft, clumsy tongue. “Your lovely mouth. I'm going to spill in it. Is that what you wanted?”
Pierrot whined indistinctly, and sucked harder, like that was his answer, like he was trying to draw it out of Bertrand.
Behind him, Grégoire groaned. "Shit, he's fluttering inside, fuck."
Letting out a heartfelt groan of his own, Bertrand tightened his hold on the boy’s dark hair, tugging a little. He knew what that meant. "That right, Pierrot?” His voice came out strained. “You close? It's going to hurt you, coming round something that big. Sure you want to?"
Lips stretched round his girth, Pierrot moaned something. It wasn’t clear if it was a yes or a no, or even an answer. But his arm was working—he was rubbing clumsily between his spread thighs with the heel of a bound hand. And that was an answer in itself.
“You do,” Bertrand breathed, thrusting faster, blood thrumming. “You little beauty, you like this. You like that it's filthy, you like that it hurts. You'll always want it like this, ‘til the end. Oh, fuck.” He could feel something building inside him, something singing and golden, like the truth, like Champagne. His hand clutched tight at Pierrot’s hair. “Listen to me, Pierrot: this is it for you. You're going to want it, just like this, for the rest of your life.”
Pierrot’s dark lashes fluttered, and he looked up at Bertrand. And the look in his eyes...
It was the look of a creature that was tired, and scared, and done with the fight. And wanting too, wanting something badly—release, or salvation. It was a look of devout, uplifted appeal. And he was down on his knees, turning it up to Bertrand.
Like a dog loves the club, Bertrand thought dizzily, like a good believer loves God.
“All right,” he said, voice raw, "don’t worry. I know just what you need.” He spread his hand heavily on the back of Pierrot’s head and, in one smooth thrust, pressed his way forward, right into the boy's throat.
The instant Pierrot’s nose was against Bertrand’s belly, he was gagging and choking; his every muscle seized tight. Including the ones in his pretty, used arse, if Grégoire’s cursing and whining was anything to judge by.
Bertrand let that noise wash over him; he scarcely heard it, scarcely cared whether Grégoire was alive or dead. Not while Pierrot’s spasming throat clutched and milked at his cock. He held onto him, tight, making him take it.
It was hardly needed. The boy submitted, unstruggling, teary eyes locked on his. Bertrand watched, enchanted, as they darkened, went hazy, as the lashes drooped—as that film of unconsciousness began to frost their surface. He let Pierrot peek at that other celestial shore, wondering what he saw there.
Half-seconds dilated, sticky as syrup. Pierrot’s shoulders stilled and lost tension; his eyelids quivered. Tears streamed down his cheeks. Bertrand imagined his hands falling helplessly away from his cock, imagined his fingers twitching feebly, a dying reflex. He thought giddily of a butterfly in a killing jar, its last gorgeous tremblings.
Softly, very softly, just barely audible, Pierrot keened, and nuzzled weakly at Bertrand's belly.
“Oh, fuck,” Bertrand panted, as a bright, blinding wave suddenly surged up and broke over him, “That's my perfect boy.” And then he was shaking and spilling, deep down Pierrot’s throat.
He wasn’t sure he’d ever come quite so hard. It actually hurt a little, but in a way that felt clean and good. He staggered on his feet, blinking, barely knowing a thing, and released his grip.
As soon as his throat was freed up, Pierrot’s eyelashes fluttered wildly, and he heaved in a huge, unwieldy gasp, his mouth falling open like a saint in ecstasy. The muscles in his beaten thighs were tightening, tightening, the tendons standing out starkly against the pale skin, and then his eyes rolled back, his cock jumped, and come sprayed out of him like a fountain, like a plume of sparkling wine—dizzy white reams, reeling and plashing over his thighs and the floor.
Bertrand’s prick twitched eagerly at the sight, and spat out one last little sympathetic spurt. He took a stumbling half-step back, groping blindly for the step-stool close behind him, and collapsed onto it.
He had that itching, acquisitive feeling again. He wanted to gather Pierrot close, feel his lithe body totally spent and within his power. Instead, he watched as Grégoire, sweat thick on his forehead, finally did what he must have been craving for ages—roared and hunched over Pierrot, toppling him forward and riding him hard, ramming in and out like a stallion at the end of its rut. When he came to his climax, it was with a bellow.
Almost instantly, he was withdrawing, thrusting Pierrot away from him like a toy he was done playing with, and staggering towards the table, the wine. It showed a lack of discernment that would have rankled more if it hadn’t ended with Pierrot slumped against Bertrand's shins.
The boy shifted towards Bertrand groggily, settling more firmly against him, his dark head on Bertrand’s knee. He drew his slender legs up towards him, curling up like a sleeper. His thighs were a mess, his fine skin darkened by the marks of the crop, blue stripes criss-crossed by red welts, tacky with blood. And, now, of course, spatters of his own pearly spend.
“Look at that,” Bertrand breathed. He reached down and wiped a stray tear from Pierrot’s cheekbone with his thumb. “You've donned your cockade. Red and white and blue all over. We'll make a citizen of you yet, Pierrot.”
Pierrot hummed emptily. He turned his head into Bertrand’s hand, and rested his cheek against it. His lashes gave the palm wet, trembling kisses. He wasn’t quite sleeping but he was totally limp, and his eyes had an animal vacancy in them.
Like a fawn or a calf, laying its docile head on a butcher’s knee. As though, with nothing else left to trust, he was trusting the knife. If not for kindness or mercy, then to take care of him, whatever that meant.
A ludicrous rush of affection ran through Bertrand. He shrugged out of his jacket and slung it round Pierrot’s slumped form, tucking it over his shoulder. With only his slim calves in their lightly grubbied silk stockings sticking out, the boy looked almost chaste.
Over at the table, Grégoire was drinking greedily. At this he stopped and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "Stop cooing over him," he said without malice, then gave a pleasureably exhausted groan. "Fuck, you've done a number on him. Milked that out of me like a Marseilles whore. Haven't spilled like that in years. Wish I'd had a go at his mouth."
Bertrand felt a glow of pride and tousled Pierrot’s dark, tumbled hair. "Come back next month." Enticing visions of the things he could have Pierrot liking by then drifted through his mind. Perhaps he could put him in one of Maman's corsets, let Grégoire lap and suck and slap at his precious little tits till he was in floods of tears and begging for mercy… Or maybe he could wipe old Jacques’ eye and play blacksmith with a hot poker—he wondered whether Pierrot could stay hard with a searing brand on his thigh. "I'll have him doing cartwheels for a taste of cock by then."
The harsh bark of laughter that raised from the table had Bertrand looking over. "No, you won't," Grégoire said amiably. “He's coming to Paris with me in the morning.”
"He's what?" Bertrand’s hand tightened involuntarily in Pierrot’s curls. The boy barely stirred in his grip, dead to the world.
"Didn't I mention earlier? His number's up. La Guillotine wants his blood—guess the old girl's run through all the aristos left in the city." Grégoire grinned. "And she's still thirsty. Think you can get drunk on de Saint-Georges blood?"
Bertrand found himself staring at Pierrot’s neat little ankles, clad primly in silk. It struck him, inconsequentially, how well he knew the curves of the bones, the way the veins stood out blue under his fingers.
A hot roaring had started up in his head, building and building, until it was so strong he felt almost deaf with it, until his vision tunnelled. It was fury, he realised, a little astonished. Fury, racing through him, down to his toes, heating and tightening every muscle. He felt it burn in his chest, his bollocks—like acid, like fire.
Fuck la Guillotine, fuck her hard, and all her acolytes back in Paris. Stupid, swinging-dick windbags, all worshipping that grasping old whore—that blunt, greedy, ungrateful tyrant. After everything Bertrand had done here, for their precious revolution, couldn’t he be allowed to have one thing of his own? Must he render unto fucking Caesar that which he had made with his own fucking hands? How was that any better than landlordism, than feudal law? How did that leave him any better off than before?
No. Fuck that, fuck it all, fuck the republic if necessary—confusion to fucking Robespierre, and all his prating frères.
And bare-breasted Liberty could suck Bertrand's cock too.
He breathed.
“Well,” he said, admirably even. “Vale, Pierrot. I'll have to come with you. Don't want to miss the show.”
☙
The moon was up that night, full and mystic. It seemed like a benediction of some kind, a pagan blessing on Bertrand as he moved in the dark, as he took coat and boots and a small shuttered lantern down into the cellars.
Pierrot lay in a corner of the room where they customarily kept him, on a pile of sacks. Wasn’t that kind of somebody? Perhaps there’d be others here sad to see the boy go.
Bertrand put his burdens on the floor, crouched by his side and gave him a rough shake.
Pierrot stirred, curled in on himself, and groaned, like an apprentice being woken early at harvest time. “Sir, I'm tired.” His eyes were screwed shut and his hair a dark tangle, like a kitten, just licked clean.
Bertrand simply rolled him back onto his front, and began to saw through the rope at his wrists. “Be quiet,” he said, without heat. When he was done, he picked up the coat and flung it at him. "Put that on."
Pierrot’s moves were still sluggish— as though sleep were a heavy blanket his muscles must fight against— but wordlessly, thoughtlessly, he obeyed. He was too well-trained by now to do anything else.
"Good boy," Betrand said, just as automatically. He thrust the boots into Pierrot’s arms. "Hold those.”
Then he was dragging the boy to his feet, towing him briskly up the stone stairs and along darkened corridors. He’d extinguished the lantern as they left the cellar; there was plenty of moonlight pooling in through the windows. It shaved the colour from everything, turning it all to a woodcut, something weird and stark. Pierrot was utterly soundless beside him in his stockings. If Bertrand hadn't had him by the arm, he wouldn't have believed he was there.
Only one or two dogs stirred as they passed through the courtyard, gliding like phantoms. On and on, through another wing, then the gardens, and on to the thick back wall of the grounds, with its climbing clematis, that abutted his lordship’s sloping woods. To the deep, recessed porch set in a corner there, with its stiff iron gate.
Quietly, quickly, Bertrand drew the key from his coat and got the thing open. It creaked a little, making his watchful pulse pause.
But the only being disturbed was a puss-moth sleeping in the brickwork. It tumbled out of the shadows above their heads, thwap-thwapping its great pillow-soft wings, and flew out of the open gate. For a moment it was silhouetted against the pale, faraway hills, then it fell dizzily down and was lost in the patient darkness beneath the trees.
"Put your boots on," Bertrand said.
There was a sound on the air, a continual, disorganized rippling of bells—flocks of wandering sheep, hidden out on the hills. The distant vineyards were still and pale, textured in rows, like the fur of some sleeping beast. Full of grapes that, this year, had been left on the vine, the tenants preferring to let them turn strange and jammy, rather than harvest and press and bottle them all, and hand them over to somebody else to enjoy.
With mechanical movements, Pierrot had pulled on his boots. Now he stood motionless, looking out at the night.
“Go on then,” Bertrand hissed. It irked him to hear himself so hushed and impatient. That wasn't his style at all. But he didn't know how he'd explain this, if anybody woke and caught them. He couldn't entirely explain it to himself. “What's stopping you, you little fool?"
Pierrot didn't move. “It's a trick,” he said, dully. “You say I can run, then you catch me and”—he swallowed, eyes fixed on the blue hills— “I don’t know. Do something horrible to me.”
Bertrand huffed out a laugh. It was an enticing idea—setting him running, admiring those neat easy strides of his, his pert arse and lean thighs, letting them stir the blood in his loins. Then chasing him, pinning him face down in the buck-brush, having him under the trees like a beast from a story. Bertrand could have taken the dogs with him, let them have their hunt, had them millling about, yipping happily, as he fucked their master senseless, made him spend in the dirt.
It would have been nice. Exactly the kind of thing he'd have liked to do. Ah, well.
"Not this time," he said. "No trick."
It wasn’t a question of selflessness. As it turned out, Bertrand wasn’t capable of that. It simply suited him better to have Pierrot alive and still his, than dead for the glory of some other man’s republic. He’d put a lot of work into him, after all. He’d rather throw him away than have him taken.
Pierrot slewed his eyes round to look at him, that fox-like questioning look in his face. In the moonlight he was all milk and shadow, features stark. Bertrand was so used to seeing him barefoot, in his shirtsleeves—or less—that there was something jarring about him almost dressed, booted.
They were his own riding boots, very fine, from a trunk in the hall, unclaimed as yet on account of their size. They'd make him stand out on the road, but none of the others available to Bertrand would have fit. As it was, the coat was too wide in the shoulders and long in the sleeves. He looked like a boy borrowing his father's clothes.
As a matter of fact, it had been Bertrand’s.
Pierrot was still giving him that searching look. He licked his lips. "You're just..." he said, quietly, "letting me go? After all—all that?"
Fire leapt into Bertrand’s throat. No. No, he wasn’t.
With an inchoate growl, he seized Pierrot by the throat of his shirt, pulled him in close enough that the boy’s startled breath fell against his own mouth. “No. I meant what I said—there's no 'after', Pierrot. There's no 'after' me. Everything we did together, you'll still want it. I'm going to own you, for the rest of your life, however long it is. I’m letting you have it, but remember: it's mine. Wherever you go, you're my creature. You’re mine."
He pressed a savage, biting kiss against Pierrot’s parted lips— he’d leave them bruised and swollen, just one more time. A souvenir, a parting blow. When he was satisfied, he drew back a little.
They were pressed chest to chest. He could feel Pierrot’s every jerky breath in and out.
Breathing hard himself, Bertrand gave him a little prompting shake. "What do you say?"
He’d meant it to be his usual tutor’s tone, but his own voice was almost unrecogniseable, raw and fierce.
With his face so close, leeched of its colour, he could see the faded freckles on the bridge of Pierrot’s nose, a bruise on his browbone. The minute widening of his deep, dark eyes. His face was slack with a kind of dazed disbelief.
"Thank you, sir," he breathed. There was a note of wonder in it.
“That’s right,” Bertrand said gruffly, and thrust him through the gate, so hard he stumbled in the grass. "Go on, then."
Pierrot took a couple of faltering steps towards the treeline, paused and turned back. His lips parted for a second, as though he was about to speak again. Then he set his mouth and nodded, once, adorably grave. As though he were farewelling a comrade.
Vale, Pierrot, Bertrand thought, half grim, half glowing.
And then he got to see the boy run again, coat flapping out behind him, ankles flashing in the dew-sodden grass.
☙
There was a reason they called them revolutions. They turned, and turned, and turned. Like the Wheel of Fortune—anyone clinging to one position too long would soon find himself overtaken, put arse over tit. I reign, I have reigned, I am without a kingdom.
You just, Bertrand had discovered, again and again, had to roll with it.
He’d been a bit of everything, over the last turbulent years, and he’d be any again: revolutionary, royalist, philosopher, spy. Never anything long enough to preclude a change—except French. He’d become numb to disaster, bored by shocks.
Still, there was no reason, really, why he should have merited a place at a bal de victimes. Such occasions were meant to be reserved for those members of the country’s upstart youth, the once-dispossessed jeunesse dorée, whose noble blood had washed Parisian streets, who’d lost family members to the dread guillotine.
Bertrand had lost nothing, or nothing he’d had before the frenzy began. But he liked a drink, and a dance, and pretty young things. And he was good, still, at getting his way.
It was quite the spectacle, that decadent ballroom. Black-and-white marble flooring, gilded sconces, huge Louis Quinze glasses placed face to face, mirroring everything in the room ad infinitum. The dance floor thronged with gilded youth, exquisite young women in scanty Grecian dress, bare-footed, bare-shouldered; boys in their mothers’ bloodied chemises, bought straight from the scaffold at enormous expense. Cropped hair and crepe armbands wherever you looked and the red chokers that aped the guillotine’s fatal kiss.
Strings soared and fell and soared again, in queasy ostinati; bodies moved and whirled and span. There was a reeling edge of hysteria to their revels, a kind of manic gaiety.
Bertrand’s eyes first fell on the figure by the fireside because it stood so still. Then he couldn’t stop looking at that slender back, licked irregularly on one side by warm swathes of light. Couldn’t stop his feet from carrying him closer, his eyes fixed on that dark mop of hair, curling sweetly at the nape and round the ears. The narrow red ribbon tied about the slim neck.
Everything else seemed to melt away as Bertrand crossed the room, drew close enough that he could have reached up and tugged at the limp tails of that girlish red bow. No chain alongside it, he noted—no crucifix.
The figure still didn’t stir. With one arm braced against the mantel, he seemed to be staring into the flames, like a pensive young man in a play. From this angle, most of his face was obscured. But Bertrand remembered that arse, remembered the feeling of those slim calves slung over his shoulders. And if he'd been in any doubt, then the boots confirmed it.
Like a number of survivors there, he had no waistcoat, just a loose shirt with a speaking red stain.
Pauvre Papa de Saint-Georges, Bertrand thought.
“So,” he said, “you kept your head.”
Pierre de Saint-Georges stiffened all over. Then, very slowly, he turned. His eyes were large and round, his features quite still.
He'd grown up a little since they'd last seen each other. It was something in the way he held himself, more than his looks—something firmer, more grounded. Less ethereal, less pliant. More the gallant young chevalier with his feet on the earth than something that had just stepped straight out of fairyland. He might even be shaving.
He was still the loveliest thing in the room.
A knot of excitement flared and pulsed in Bertrand’s belly. He could only imagine what his own face looked like—starving, exultant.
At the sight of it, Pierrot went pale, then flushed delightfully, right up to the tips of his ears. God. It was intoxicating, ruinous, moving him just like that, with a look. A feeling of power rushed through Bertrand, warmed him all over at once like a sunburst, a revelation. He felt like a man given his first drop of liquor in years, in so long he'd forgotten how thirsty he was.
Moving almost without volition, he stepped closer. He reached past Pierrot to rest a hand on the mantelpiece, to back him up against it, make him feel the fire’s warmth on his arse and look up into Bertrand’s face. He half-expected Pierrot’s gaze to flick wildly round the room, looking for escape like a cornered rabbit, but his big darkened eyes stayed fixed on Bertrand’s face.
The room was fashionably gloomy, all shadows and sweet-smelling smoke; the glitter of candlelight and mirrored candlelight receded away into the dizzying dark. If anybody glanced over to them, backlit by the fire, chances were they'd just see an honest Frenchman putting the moves on a narrow-hipped gamine, dressed in costume breeches and her dead father's smock.
And if they saw something else... Well, it would hardly matter. These were intricate times.
He brought his other hand up, stroked one finger over Pierrot’s smooth cheek. Pitched his voice low. “It's been a while, cheri,” he said. “Did you miss me?”
He watched a shiver run through Pierrot, watched his throat work round a swallow. Had his mouth gone dry? Bertrand could fix that for him, lean in and suck at his lips, his pink tongue. His cock, which had been filling since the first sight of the boy, stirred forcefully at the remembered taste of his fear.
"Come on, Pierrot," he murmured. "Do you dream of me still?" Bet he does, and wakes with the bed wet. Bet he won't answer. Wonder if he'll spring at me. I could take him, of course… But one word and Pierre Étienne Jean-Marie, the ci-devant Comte de Saint-Georges, would have the sympathies—the swords—of every man in the room. Exhilaration coursed in Bertrand’s veins, enlivened by the possibilities of what might come next, of how he would handle it.
For a long time, Pierrot didn't speak, just stood there, frozen and trembling like a startled doe. His silence went on long enough that Bertrand thought he might not be going to make any answer. That he was just working up the courage to take to his heels, to push past Bertrand and flee, give him the cut direct.
Then Pierrot licked his lips. His eyes were deep, illegible. When he spoke, his voice was low.
"Every night," he said. "Sir."
Fuck.
A deranged swell of satisfaction, so strong it was as though the black-and-white floor billowed beneath Bertrand’s feet. A great swoop in his stomach, a hot flush of triumph.
It was always going to be this way, from the start, from that day in the woods. This was sweet and right; this was natural. Dreamily, Bertrand hooked a finger in the ribbon round Pierrot’s neck, drawing it tight against his tense throat. He could feel Pierrot’s pulse, the runaway thrum of blood beneath his fine skin.
Trying to get away from my touch, he thought, amused, elated, or rushing to kiss my knuckle? "I made you a promise, didn't I?"
Pierrot closed his eyes, his lashes quivering against his cheek, casting long shadows there.He was shaking all over, a fine tremor of feeling. "I remember," he said, barely a whisper.
God, he was so fucking pretty. Bertrand felt almost feral with want. How had he gone without this for years? For a day? But never mind. He had a feeling—a golden, glowing feeling, coursing inside him, drawing every nerve tight—that that wasn’t going to matter anymore.
"And?" he asked. "Was I right?"
Pierrot’s mouth trembled; his jaw tightened. Then his long lashes fluttered—Bertrand had those dark liquid eyes staring up at him, and it was as though Pierrot put his whole life in that look. He looked young and desperate and scared and resigned. A kind of weary devotion, and bravery, too—daring to lay himself bare, let Bertrand see the ruin he’d made of him. A needy, reluctant, no-holds-barred surrender.
Oh, good boy. Good, glorious boy.
Bertand knew what Pierrot would say before he opened his mouth, before he’d sighed out the words. It was the only answer Bertrand had left him. But it was still sweeter than any music, sweeter than nectar, enough to get drunk on.
Addictive. Bertrand would have to hear it again and again, every day.
"Yes, sir," Pierrot said. "I'm yours."