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It had been a week since Komai the Sellsword of Kolmant had officially become Komai King of Mardan, and Ilmekhor was finally beginning to adjust to the idea that his lord and master did not, in fact, have any particular interest in using him as a slave ought to be used. In point of fact, Ilmekhor was fairly sure he hadn’t even seen the king since that first night in his chambers, save very briefly in passing. The morning after, Ilmekhor had been shown to a small suite of rooms deeper in the royal wing that he was fairly sure had been intended for a concubine or an especially favored pet, judging by the fine hangings and the wide bed and the little patio that opened onto a fountain and a square of greenery nestled deep inside the palace. There were other doors on the other sides of the garden, presumably leading to more apartments for the king’s other favorites, but in a week Ilmekhor had never seen anyone but the occasional servant or groundskeeper. Wherever the king was spending his nights, it wasn’t with Ilmekhor — which was why it was particularly startling when, several hours past sundown, there came a furious hammering on Ilmekhor’s door.
His hand went instinctively to his waist, looking for a knife that wasn’t there before he could catch himself. The king had yet to give him a new collar after he’d removed the first one, and Ilmekhor was finding it difficult to behave himself according to the standards for his new position without the constant reminder around his neck. He had to consciously relax himself as he went to the door; whoever was outside sounded impatient, and whatever particular favor the king seemed to be showing him so far was no guarantee of protection if Ilmekhor began to make a nuisance of himself.
The knocking came again almost a moment after it stopped, and Ilmekhor made sure to stand well back as he opened the door, not particularly interested in getting a fist to the face. Then he snapped instinctively into a formal salute as he came face to face with the king himself.
The king did manage to check himself mid-knock before swinging at Ilmekhor, but the motion looked strangely uncoordinated, and as Ilmekhor drew a steadying breath he caught the faint scent of strong spirits. Reflexively, he took a half-step back, every muscle suddenly tense — he’d dealt with enough of his own riders drunk on harvest beer or solstice wine that he knew how to handle a man deep in his cups, but this was his king, and whatever he wanted with Ilmekhor, drunk and impatient and halfway to the middle of the night, Ilmekhor would have to give him.
“Pack your things,” the king said, which was almost the last thing Ilmekhor had expected to hear, especially since he was rapidly revising his estimation of the king’s mood from impatient to furious. “Be ready to ride in an hour. We’re leaving.”
What things, Ilmekhor wanted to ask, and Riding to where? and most of all Why? Aloud, though, he only said, “Your Majesty?” with as much calm as he could muster. He was less afraid for himself, now, and rapidly becoming more afraid for his king.
“I won’t do it,” the king said, answering absolutely none of Ilmekhor’s unspoken questions. He set a hand on the doorframe to steady himself, and after a moment he added, so vicious that Ilmekhor felt the hair at the nape of his neck prickle, “They can have it, those fucking snakes, with my compliments. I won’t do it. Pack your things. Damned if I let them make an oathbreaker of me,” he added, loud enough that Ilmekhor winced on principle even though, to the best of his knowledge, the wing was nearly deserted anyway.
“Your Majesty, may I bring you some water,” Ilmekhor said, a bit desperately. In the face of a direct, repeated order, he couldn’t disobey — he couldn’t have refused even if he were still a captain under the man’s command, and certainly couldn’t as his slave — but the king was clearly acting on impulse, and maybe if Ilmekhor could get him to sit down and think for a minute, he’d come to his senses of his own accord.
“I don’t need water, I need to get out of this fucking cesspit,” the king snapped, refusing to be placated, and the relief Ilmekhor felt as he heard boots coming down the hall at a run was nearly boundless.
“Commander — ah, fucking hell, I knew he’d be here,” Mur’Aida said, and Ilmekhor shot the captain of the king’s guard a look that he hoped conveyed all his gratitude without words. Mur’Aida had been the one to formally apologize to Ilmekhor for how the citadel guards had treated him, in spite of the fact that the king’s guard and the citadel guards had nothing to do with one another, and as unnecessary as it was, Ilmekhor was grateful anyway. They’d crossed paths once or twice in the halls, and Mur’Aida had always treated him with nothing but courtesy. Now he came to Ilmekhor’s rescue by catching the king by the shoulder, tugging him back from the doorway and not letting go even as the king snarled and tried to shake him off. “Come on, Commander, sleep it off, you’ll break your head if you try riding out of here three sheets to the wind in the dead of night.”
“Is that a fucking challenge, Mur’Aida?” the king snapped, but Mur’Aida just rolled his eyes, glancing at Ilmekhor with an exhausted sort of sympathy that made Ilmekhor relax just a little. Whatever was happening, Mur’Aida wouldn’t trifle with his king’s safety, and if he was able to be exasperated with the king, it couldn’t be that bad.
“All right, yes, you’re an excellent rider, you wouldn’t break anything. Your horse will break a leg, though, and if not one of the others certainly will, so come and tell the men we’re not mustering out in the dead of night and then go to sleep.” He was still trying to pull the king back down the hallway, but the king only planted his feet and then those sharp gray eyes, only a little hazy around the edges, met Ilmekhor’s, and all his earlier relief dissolved at once. There was a wildness in the king’s look that Ilmekhor knew, somehow, had more behind it than a little too much liquor after dinner, and it left Ilmekhor shaken even as the king turned away and finally allowed Mur’Aida to nudge him back in the direction of his own rooms.
“I’ll see that someone tells you what’s on the wind when he’s sober,” Mur’Aida added under his breath, and Ilmekhor gave him the quick, quiet nod of one soldier to another. Then he was gone too, and Ilmekhor was left again as though the quiet of his small apartment had never been disturbed at all. It was difficult to return his focus to the book he’d been reading, though, and after only a few minutes of his eyes skimming over the same line again and again without understanding, he threw it down in disgust and put out the candles, hoping sleep might settle some of the racing nerves inside him.
He had a restless night of it, but he was not called out of his bed again until dawn, when someone came as usual with a tray of breakfast for him. It was always much finer food than he had any reason to expect; fresh fruit and warm bread and soft cheese, and sometimes a boiled egg or porridge for variety. He ate, and walked circles in the garden, and tried not to let his nerves get the better of him. Perhaps an hour later, someone came to take the tray away, and when they had gathered the breakfast things and gone and Ilmekhor had shut the door behind them, he turned back to the open archway into the garden to see the king standing by the edge of the fountain, looking back at him.
He at least looked a little more in command of himself as Ilmekhor hurried back out into the garden, offering a hasty bow once he was in range — a little more collected, a little less frantic. There was still a tense, coiled energy to his bearing, though, and Ilmekhor knew something was amiss even before the king gestured him to sit on one of the low benches facing the fountain before taking a seat on its rim himself.
“I apologize for my behavior the previous night,” he began, which was both unnecessary and baffling. “I’ve been told I have a tendency to shoot first and aim after. It’s hardly becoming of a king, and I am sorry to have put you in a position of awkwardness or distress.”
Never mind that, tell me what’s happening, Ilmekhor thought, and didn’t say. “Your Majesty must know that no apologies are necessary, though I’m grateful for the kindness of it all the same,” he finally said, and the king only grimaced.
“All right, all right. It won’t happen again, anyway.” He sighed, a restless tapping appearing in his heel before it vanished almost as abruptly. “I’m speaking wide of the point. In plain language, then, I was over-hasty in my methods last night, but my determination is the same. My company and I are leaving Mardan, with all the haste we can. If you choose to leave with us, you’ll have safe passage anywhere beyond Mardan’s borders, and I’ll see that you take enough gold with you to do well for yourself anywhere you settle. We mean to set out at first light tomorrow.”
First light tomorrow — Ilmekhor was sure his mouth was hanging open, but the king would have to make allowances for his astonishment. It was absurd. “Your Majesty cannot be serious,” he said, thoughtlessly, and winced a little as the king raised an eyebrow.
“Can’t I? News to me.” He pushed himself to his feet in a single sudden motion, pacing back and forth as Ilmekhor sat and stared at him, utterly speechless. “I will not stay here,” he finally said, not meeting Ilmekhor’s eyes, “I can’t. There’s no salvaging it. Let the country go to the dogs, or to Tarastil and Ailon — I suppose that’s an insult to dogs — and may they have joy of it. Mur’Aida thinks I’m a wasp-stung fool, but he’s not the one who has to —” he broke off abruptly, spinning on his heel. “No matter. I came to tell you to pack whatever you’ll need for the journey, and be ready to set out first thing tomorrow.”
It was an order, and Ilmekhor should have bowed his head and kept his mouth shut and done as he was told. “Your Majesty, what has happened?” he asked, in defiance of all propriety, and the king turned back to him with all the desperate sharpness of a dog in a kennel, a breath away from starting to tear into the walls with tooth and claw.
“Your fucking priests,” he said, and then, before Ilmekhor could even flinch, added immediately, “not yours, forgive me, but Mardan’s priests. More augury and fortune-telling and drawing pictures with a pigeon’s guts to say whatever Ailon pays them to — I know it was him, because he paid them enough to come out with it in the middle of morning court, and I could see him in the corner grinning with all his teeth while those old fools were blathering on about holy rites and sacred duties and placating the gods. I won’t do it and that’s flat.”
What could the priests have said to get such a reaction from him? Ilmekhor stared at the king in flat astonishment. He hadn’t been reprimanded for asking the first time, so maybe — “And Your Majesty prefers losing the crown to doing as they ask?” he asked, and winced at the bitter little laugh that tore out of the king at the question.
“No crown in the world is worth losing my honor for it,” he said, weary and a little flat, and Ilmekhor knew, in the dead weight of his voice, that he meant it, and he was truly determined to leave Mardan kingless once again. The enormity of the disaster was so staggering that it took him a long moment to find his words.
“Your Majesty, is there no — compromise? No other interpretation?” If the situation weren’t so urgent, Ilmekhor might have tried to gently suggest the king develop at least a show of following one god or another, and make sure to pay their priests, to make it more difficult from any temple of any persuasion to influence him, but there was no time for that now. “You owe Mardan nothing, of course, but even the nobles who back Tarastil and Ailon do so out of fear of the leverage they hold, or fear of an unchecked struggle among all the barons at once. No one wants to see either of them crowned, I swear to you, and there must be some way to check them. The High Priest, surely, will find some more palatable reading of the omens, and he can overrule them —”
“This is the compromise,” the king said, harshly, and Ilmekhor shut up immediately at the sheer bitter despair in his voice. “They bargained it out all morning, very civil and polite with their bowls of incense and their sacred spatterings of wine, trancing back and forth at each other, and the High Priest came to me with the final reading as smug as a barn cat leaving a mouthful of mouse guts on my pillow, and I won’t do it. I can’t. So I am leaving, and I would have you leave with me, because after what they pretended to see in the omens I wouldn’t —”
He broke off, cursing under his breath as though he hadn’t meant to say so much, but it was enough. “They named me in the reading,” Ilmekhor guessed, and the king’s sudden stiffening gave him his answer without words. “To what — to what use?”
“It doesn’t matter, you’re leaving with us,” the king snapped, and then, seeing whatever expression must have been painted a mile high in Ilmekhor’s face, he added, sounding as though every word pained him to say, “To death, at first. Three white bulls and a black mare and you, as a blood offering. Then, after they’d chanted themselves hoarse, the High Priest said another claiming — a proper claiming, he said — would suffice, and then looked at me as though I should be glad of it.”
For the second time that morning, Ilmekhor was stunned speechless. Dimly he was aware it was undignified to be staring open-mouthed at his king, but it was still several long seconds before he managed to ask, “Your Majesty, you mean to throw over the crown of Mardan… to avoid fucking me?”
“After I swore never to lay a hand on you again, yes,” the king said sharply. “No throne in the world would induce me to break that oath, certainly not the throne of this miserable pit of vipers.”
“Your Majesty, you cannot condemn the entire nation to destruction over one slave,” Ilmekhor said, almost as sharply, and knew in the back of his mind that by all rights the king should have already ordered him down for the kind of whipping that would serve just as well as a sacred knife for a blood offering. He couldn’t seem to stop himself, though; he was cold and almost shaking with fear, and he was seemingly the only one who had a prayer of a chance of restraining the king from this absolute madness. “Your Majesty, it’s foolish to —”
“Gods be kind, have you forgotten how you came to be a slave in the first place?” the king demanded, very nearly shouting, and Ilmekhor fell silent with a small flinch. “After what they condemned you to at my hands, you would still ask me to save them from their own stupidity at your expense? Have you lost your mind?” he added, and Ilmekhor, at a loss for any other argument, went to his knees in the grass.
“I do not ask it of you for the sake of Mardan’s priests, or even her people,” he said, very quietly, in the stunned silence that followed. “But I will beg, for the sake of my — the heir of House Aramar, who is no friend to either Tarastil or Ailon, and for the sake of the folk of his barony, who will suffer as well if the throne goes to one of them.” And then, terrified that that alone might not be enough to convince the king, he added hastily, “Your Majesty, please, I know I am… not to your taste, and I am sorry for it, but please, let me try to serve your pleasure —”
“Stop,” the king interrupted, all the anger gone from his voice like water draining through a sieve. “Aramar — it’s not a matter of my tastes, except insofar as my tastes run toward not fucking anyone who isn’t willingly in my bed.”
“…Your Majesty, I swear to you, I’m not unwilling. Please. I’ll beg for it in any way you command —”
“That’s not what I —” the king broke off with a small sigh, and for a moment they were both frozen there as time stretched around them. Finally the king gestured to him, a small beckoning motion. “Please rise. You don’t have to beg.” He was silent as Ilmekhor pushed himself to his feet, and it was only once they were standing across from one another that he said at last, “If that’s truly what you want, very well. I won’t do you the disservice of pretending to know better than you what might be easier for you to bear.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty.” It was horribly inadequate for the relief Ilmekhor felt, but perhaps it was better that he temper his gratitude slightly after all, judging by the way the king winced even at that.
“Don’t thank me for that, gods-all.” He seemed only weary, though, and not angry. “It’s to be a procession, and then a ceremony in the temple. Ailon paid them enough to insist on the next major feast day — that’s the one for the Lady of Thunder, in three days, if they can find the bulls for it. If you change your mind between now and then, tell me.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.” It was a meaningless promise, of course. Ilmekhor wouldn’t lie to himself enough to pretend he cared at all what happened to his father under one king or another, but Marizhen would hold the land after him. If Ilmekhor could spare him the vindictiveness of the other nobles by simply doing what he’d expected to be his duty anyway, it was an effortless choice.
“Do you…” Ilmekhor was surprised to see that for the first time, the king looked genuinely uncomfortable, but after a moment he soldiered on. “You said, the day we met, that you’d not been with a man before. Do you, ah… know at least in theory what you’re asking for?”
Oh. Ilmekhor felt himself flush a little as well, but if the king was offering him the opening to ask — “In theory, yes, Your Majesty,” he managed to say without losing control of his voice. “Though — Your Majesty, forgive me if I presume too far. You said it was a matter of my willingness, and not your tastes?”
“I did,” the king said, warily, and Ilmekhor steeled himself to ask again.
“Then… Your Majesty, setting aside my willingness, which I swear you have, am I otherwise unappealing to you?” It sounded ridiculous, as the words left his mouth — like a concubine begging for flattery, or a practiced bedslave offering a bit of coy flirtation — but the king preferred directness over the Mardani habit of circling about the point at three degrees of abstraction, and Ilmekhor would beg as baldly as he had to for this.
“Gods-all, Aramar, it’s not —” he sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose, and he would not meet Ilmekhor’s eyes as he said, very quietly, “You are not unappealing, no. Only the circumstances.”
That explained nothing; if it was only the public show that the king had no taste for, there had been an entire week already where he could have had Ilmekhor under him at a word, under whatever circumstances he liked. But it was close enough to approval that it gave him the courage to ask, finally, “Your Majesty, if I may impose on your indulgence a little more — I know the theory of the act, but you have already seen how poorly I translate theory to practice in this area. Will Your Majesty allow me to offer myself for your pleasure privately, to teach me enough of the reality of it not to disgrace both of us when it comes to the show in the temple?”
He waited on tenterhooks while the king stared at him, his dark, straight brows furrowed a little as he parsed out what Ilmekhor was asking. “You are asking me to fuck you,” he said, all Kolmanti directness, and Ilmekhor barely managed to hide his wince at hearing it put so plainly. “God of mercy, Aramar, is there no one else you would rather have for your first time being tumbled by a man?”
That, Ilmekhor supposed, was fair enough, though it did sting a little to have his loyalty and his faithfulness questioned so directly; he hadn’t chosen to be used by the citadel guards on that first night and he’d thought the king knew it. “No, Your Majesty,” he only said, and hoped the plainness of the answer would make the truth of it clear. He weathered the king’s incredulous stare as calmly as he could, and finally the king was the one to turn away first.
“If that’s what you would have of me, I can hardly deny you,” he said, rough and low. “Tonight, then; you’ll want to be rested before the feast day. If you’re still of the same mind at sundown, come to my rooms. I won’t hunt you down if you decide otherwise.” Without waiting for another word, he turned abruptly and stalked off across the garden to one of the other doorways, and Ilmekhor heard only the faint sound of a door slamming somewhere deeper in the palace before that too died away to nothing.
He did his best to put it out of his mind as the rest of the day wore on — another meal at midday, a laundrymaid in the afternoon to take away some of the linens and return others, books and the occasional pace around the garden in between — but it was an impossible task. Sundown. He could watch the angle of the shadows in the garden change with aching slowness, counting down the hours until he’d finally be called to serve his king. He couldn’t do more than pick at his food, and when the afternoon light began to turn golden with the threat of sunset, he had to sit at the edge of the bed and breathe with his head between his knees to chase away the lightheadedness and the hammering of his heart.
It was his duty; it had been his duty from the start, and he’d done it so poorly in the first claiming that he now had to beg his master to touch him even to keep the crown. He’d begged, and the king had been gracious enough to grant his slave’s petition, and Ilmekhor had no right in the world to be afraid or reluctant now that he was faced with the reality of what he’d asked for. At least the king had allowed that he was not unappealing — and if there had been desire enough to mark the claim even with an audience and even despite Ilmekhor’s fumbling, there was a chance he might show mercy and simply use Ilmekhor to his own satisfaction, and not demand a more enthusiastic participation that Ilmekhor would have no idea how to provide.
…He hadn’t lied to the king. He hadn’t asked outright, after all, and if Ilmekhor had used a little Mardani indirection in stating the facts, that was still not the same as a lie. He had the growing suspicion, though, that his own inexperience would prove the truth of it even before the king got as far as asking haven’t you ever been with a girl either and Ilmekhor was forced to reply no, Your Majesty, I was too busy running drills with a company of horsemen I’ll never lead again to look twice at anyone.
He might still be lucky, though. The king might prefer him as he would have to be in the ceremony anyway, quiet and pliant and unresisting, and Ilmekhor told himself that if all that was demanded of him was endurance of pain and not enthusiasm, he could obey. He already had proof enough, in addition to the king’s own word, that he had no desire to be cruel, and so whatever Ilmekhor would suffer that night (and in the temple, and maybe again beyond that if he did his duty well) would at least be done without true sadism behind it. It was enough of a comfort that when the bells finally rang to mark sundown, he was at least able to get up and make the short walk down the network of hallways to the king’s quarters and knock on the door without shaking outright.
He heard footsteps from within, and then abruptly the door opened and the king was waving him in with very little ceremony. The king’s apartments were no more lived-in than they had seemed when Ilmekhor was first left there in the days after the king took the throne; if anything, it looked as though even more of the ornamentation and decorative clutter had been removed in the intervening week, until nearly the only sign of ostentation was the massive bed with its thick panels of carved oak at the head and foot, and the broad canopy of brocaded silk suspended from its posts. “Too large to move it out without breaking it apart,” the king said, when he saw where Ilmekhor’s eyes had wandered, and he sounded… almost embarrassed, if Ilmekhor were presumptuous enough to call it that, and it sparked a little burst of something almost like fondness inside him before he could check it. “Have you eaten?”
“Yes, Your Majesty.” It wasn’t the truth, but Ilmekhor wasn’t sure how much he could choke down with the thought of the rest of the night’s work hanging over his head.
The king looked for a moment as though he might press Ilmekhor on the lie, but in the end he only nodded. “Straight to business, then,” he said, but his hands were still gentle and slow as he took Ilmekhor by the hand and led him farther into the room. “Do you have any objections to kissing?”
“No, Your Majesty,” Ilmekhor murmured, a little pleased in spite of himself. He’d mostly expected to be stripped immediately and pushed down into the bed — had worn the simplest of the clothes he’d been given, to make it easier to remove them as soon as he was ordered — but if the king was inclined to take his time, Ilmekhor was in no position to complain.
“Good,” the king said simply, and then he lifted his hand, where his fingers were still intertwined with Ilmekhor’s, and pressed a slow, lingering kiss to Ilmekhor’s knuckles.
His lips were warm and soft, and the touch was like lightning against Ilmekhor’s skin. It was the sort of caress given to a consort, a lover, not a slave, and Ilmekhor’s breath caught in his throat as the king turned their hands, still so slow and careful, and laid another soft kiss to the inside of his wrist, where the loose sleeve of his inner shirt slid down to reveal bare skin. What are you doing, he wanted to demand, and bit down hard on his tongue before he could let the thought slip out. If the king was inclined to give him a little taste of sweet before the bitter that would follow, he wouldn’t be fool enough to argue against it.
“This part, at least, is the same as it is with a woman,” the king murmured, finally letting go of Ilmekhor’s hand, and before Ilmekhor could even decide whether to admit that that gave him no helpful information at all, the king’s lips were on his. It was light, undemanding, no more than a gentle brush of his mouth, but it tore a little gasp out of Ilmekhor anyway, a faint heat beginning abruptly to make itself known just under his skin. When the king dipped his head for another, Ilmekhor made some attempt at kissing back — clumsy, maybe, but apparently not so entirely graceless that the king insisted on stopping. “God of hunters, Aramar, the mouth on you,” he added, when he’d put enough distance between them for Ilmekhor to catch his breath, and for the first time since the king had drawn the lot with his name on it Ilmekhor felt something like hope rise inside him. If it was only doubts about his willingness that had kept the king from making use of him so far — if he could manage to be pleasing enough in this — it wasn’t as good as freedom, it wasn’t as good as honor, but he could do his duty. He was beginning to think, though he knew it made no difference either way, that perhaps with this man it might not be an entirely unpleasant thing.
“You can touch me, if you like,” the king said, interrupting his racing thoughts, and hummed easily as Ilmekhor settled a cautious hand at his waist. “There, not so different, is it?” he added, and Ilmekhor elected not to tell him just how wrong he was, and why, in favor of tipping his head up to be kissed again. He was admittedly beginning to see something of the appeal in it, especially when the king licked into his mouth, hot and wet and delightfully indecent. He didn’t seem to mind that Ilmekhor had little to contribute in response, only laid one arm very gently over Ilmekhor’s shoulders and guided him carefully, slowly back until Ilmekhor could feel the edge of the bed press against the backs of his knees.
“Easy,” he said, and Ilmekhor realized he had gone very stiff at the reminder of what was to come next, “easy, just sit.” And then, to Ilmekhor’s astonishment, he went to one knee at Ilmekhor’s feet and began briskly tugging loose the short side-lacings of his shoes, pulling them and the short gartered hose off as tenderly as though Ilmekhor were a noble bride won after much courting and wooing, and not a slave meant only for the roughest of uses. “Undress as much as you can bear,” he added when he was through, moving to his own shoes and tossing them in a heap with Ilmekhor’s by the side of the bed. He was already moving to shed his own fine surcoat and the outer sash holding it in place, and Ilmekhor swallowed back the sour taste of fear rising in his throat and did as he was told. He’d had his moment of gentleness; now it was time to serve his master’s pleasure properly, and he thought perhaps with the memory of that little unearned kindness to steady him, he might be able to make it through the rest of the night without breaking.
He had no real idea how to make the action of disrobing into something attractive, but thankfully the king seemed busy enough with his own clothes that Ilmekhor could simply tug loose the ties on his outer doublet and slither out of the shirt beneath it, and then — allowing himself a single breath to steel himself — slide his trousers and smallclothes down together, and toss the whole lot to the floor with the shoes. Then he looked up, and felt his breath catch in his throat.
The king was standing by the side of the bed, just as bare as Ilmekhor, and those sharp gray eyes were roving the length of Ilmekhor’s body with what even he could tell was hunger. And… to his own surprise, Ilmekhor found himself warming a little with a certain unfamiliar hunger of his own. The king was tall and solidly built, broad with muscle from his shoulders to his calves, moving with a liquid ease even entirely naked. A handful of faint scars dotted his brown skin — a long cut curling around his ribs toward his stomach, a puckered mark that looked like an arrow-wound in his shoulder, a scattering of smaller marks along his hands and forearms. And there was his cock — half-hard already, rising from a nest of tight dark curls between his legs. Ilmekhor had had it in his mouth before; knew acutely well the length and weight of it on his tongue, more than big enough to hurt. But it had been worse in the throne room, with a hundred eyes to watch him choke and struggle, and like this, with the rest of the king’s body bared as well before him, he dared to hope it might not be quite as difficult. The thought gave him just enough courage to lean back a little against the bed and open his legs — not much, but hopefully enough that the king would be satisfied, and he wouldn’t be made to beg again.
“Gods-all, the sight of you,” the king breathed, and Ilmekhor had no time even for fear before he was crossing the distance to the side of the bed, one knee dipping the sheets beneath them as he bent to take Ilmekhor very softly by the chin and kiss him again, deep and sweet, until Ilmekhor was panting and shifting under him, startled at the sudden heat running in bright little currents all along his body. The king climbed up beside him, propping himself up half-over Ilmekhor, and he was putting his mouth to such good use that Ilmekhor barely had room for the fear of what would come next. And then that clever mouth was moving down — first along the line of his jaw, in fleeting little brushes, and then more slowly along his throat with the occasional feather-light scrape of teeth to make him shiver and pant, and then one on each collarbone before dipping down to his sternum in heavy, open-mouthed kisses —
To his astonishment, Ilmekhor realized he was achingly hard already. Then the king moved even lower, and Ilmekhor had only a moment to wonder if they were finally coming to the part that would leave him screaming before a hot, wet tongue lapped over one of his nipples. He did cry out at that after all, at the sudden burst of white-hot pleasure chased by a teasing pressure of teeth against the little raised bud, and only barely stopped himself from kicking out hard enough to throw the king off him. It was so good; if this was the treatment a slave might find at the king’s hands it was a wonder he didn’t have a small army at his door begging for the privilege of his collar — then the king moved to the other nipple, soothing over the spit-slick nub on the other side with a broad thumb, and Ilmekhor threw his head back against the bed and sobbed as strange, bewildering pleasure raced through him.
“Easy, easy,” he heard someone say, low and a little amused, and he tried desperately to breathe as the king finally moved down even farther to pepper soft, ticklish kisses against the heaving skin of his stomach, and then — Ilmekhor shut his eyes and prayed to every god he could lay tongue to that he wouldn’t beg for things beyond his place as the king made his way down the bone of his hip and along the top of his thigh, while his cock strained and dripped untouched. It wasn’t the point, he reminded himself; it wasn’t his place, he was there to learn to serve his king, not to indulge himself —
His eyes were still closed when an impossibly tight, wet heat closed around the head of his cock. A firm tongue ran along the underside and flicked against the tip, and Ilmekhor was suddenly fighting himself with every inch of control he had in him, trying to rein in his own searing arousal like wrestling down a horse wild with thunder. He was desperate for it to last, desperate not to lose the moment of pleasure that somehow, for some inexplicable reason, he was being given, but it was a losing battle from the start. He thought he might have tried to gasp out a warning, but it was either unheard or ignored. With a choked cry he jerked under the king’s mouth and came like a thunderclap, feeling like every muscle in his body had been wrung out like a washrag as he slowly drifted back to himself.
“Should I take that as a compliment?” the king said, with the ghost of a smile, as Ilmekhor lay gasping for air beneath him. “Lie still a moment and let yourself settle before we try aught else.” He stayed where he was, cupping Ilmekhor’s spent cock with a warm palm until the light pressure began to feel like not enough instead of too much, and then, when Ilmekhor was breathing less like a racehorse in the gallop, he reached behind with two slick fingertips and began to circle them gently over the soft skin just behind Ilmekhor’s balls. “Can you lift your legs for me?”
Ilmekhor was still dazed enough to obey, and then, which he was realizing had been the king’s intent all along, he was dazed enough to allow a slick, firm fingertip to press inside him without much resistance. Slowly, though, the ringing in his ears began to die down, and he felt himself tense very suddenly as he felt the king press deeper inside him, a broad knuckle stretching the rim of his hole.
“Easy,” he heard the king say a little sharply, “easy, you have to relax,” and Ilmekhor breathed out and tried to do as he was told. It was nearly impossible, though; he could feel a profound wrongness, an intrusion —
“Please,” he managed to gasp out, “please, Your Majesty, will you kiss me again,” and only realized he’d let the absurd thought slip out of his mouth when the king went quite still. Fear chased away the last of the pleasure-daze at once. What was he thinking — he was only in the king’s bed out of great indulgence; to ask for more —
“When you’re naked in my bed, do you think you could see your way to calling me Taše?” There was a small thread of amusement in the words, but as Ilmekhor blinked down at him, he saw something that almost looked like sadness in the king’s — in Taše’s eyes. It suited him poorly, Ilmekhor thought, and abruptly he was eager to do whatever he could to take that look from his face.
“Will you call me Ilmekhor, then?” he asked, and to his silent delight Taše smiled and shifted up in the bed to lie almost beside him.
“Ilmekhor,” he agreed, barely more than a whisper against Ilmekhor’s lips, and then their mouths were meeting, warm and unhurried and tender. Ilmekhor went limp with a small sigh of pleasure and relief, and he even managed to stay loose and relaxed as Taše worked a second finger inside and began to stroke gently inside him. On its own, the sensation might have been unpleasant, but Taše was still kissing him, and over it all there was the blinding relief of having pleased his king. Maybe — he wouldn’t presume, but maybe Taše would be willing to fuck him again, even once the ceremony was done, and maybe he would be as gentle as he was now. Ilmekhor had no idea what he might have done to earn this in the first place, but if he could just be given the chance to try again —
Taše crooked his fingers slightly, and Ilmekhor heard himself gasp as a sudden thunderbolt of low, sweet sensation tore through him, making his cock jerk abruptly. “There it is,” Taše was saying, clearly very satisfied with himself, as Ilmekhor struggled to catch his breath. Whatever Taše had been looking for, he’d found it, and with every stroke of his fingers Ilmekhor felt himself tumble farther and farther down under a wave of blinding pleasure. “Now you know why men choose to do this even without being forced into it by a miserable collection of priests,” he added, and Ilmekhor, caught between amusement and blank disbelief at his own body, dropped his head back against the pillows and let a helpless little laugh spill out of him as Taše slipped another finger inside, half-drunk on pleasure and the curve of his king's lips when he smiled.
He hadn’t really expected to enjoy any of it after Taše’s mouth had left his cock — had expected, mostly, to bear what he was given and do his best not to scream outright. It was almost impossible to accept that it was good, that it was good because his king — because Taše was making it good for him. Distantly he was aware of it when a fourth fingertip pressed into him, stretching lightly at the slick rim of his hole, but the gentle ache was only a small counterpoint to the easy waves of pleasure as Taše fucked slowly into him. It might have been moments or years before Taše finally drew his fingers out and said, sounding for the first time a little winded, “I’m going to — keep breathing, I’ll go slow.”
The head slipped in first, smooth and gently rounded and impossibly hot, and Ilmekhor heard himself groan like a broken thing as Taše slowly pressed deeper and deeper. He was full, only the smallest hint of discomfort to sour the warmth and the steady pressure, and Taše had an arm under the small of his back to help him angle his hips, firm and grounding. Taše began to fuck him in slow, smooth strokes, and Ilmekhor gasped and let out a low moan of pure pleasure as the stiff, blunt head of his cock grazed over that wonderfully bright place deep inside him. The rhythm of Taše’s hips was strong and steady, and as they settled into a gentle push and pull, Ilmekhor felt the warm tendrils of arousal creep up again, swallowing him faster and faster as Taše kept up his pace. Then Taše wrapped his free hand around Ilmekhor’s cock and stroked once, twice, timing it perfectly to the snap of his hips against Ilmekhor’s ass, and Ilmekhor tumbled away on a peak of pleasure that had stolen up to catch him almost entirely by surprise.
When he came down from it, gasping and blinking, he became vaguely aware that Taše was still hard himself, though he’d pulled himself out and was holding himself quite still next to Ilmekhor — and judging by Taše’s own shallow breathing and the slight pinch between his eyebrows, it was a difficult feat for him. Before he quite knew what he was saying, Ilmekhor heard himself blurt out, “Fuck me. Please. Like you’ll fuck me in the temple. I know you can’t be that careful with me in the ceremony, so just — take me.”
He could feel the way Taše shuddered against him, the way his cock jumped where it still lay against Ilmekhor's hip. “Gods-all,” Taše groaned, low and aching, “Ilmekhor, are you sure —”
“Very sure.” The part of him that still clung to the fiction that he only wanted to learn to serve his king was insisting, still, that he was only trying to encourage his master to take what pleasure he would from Ilmekhor’s body. The rest of him was a roaring, seething mass of want, of aching desire to see Taše as abandoned to pleasure as he’d already made Ilmekhor twice now, and he couldn’t even begin to look head-on at it for fear of realizing what part of him already knew to be true — that his king held more than his loyalty — and that his king could not feel for a slave what Ilmekhor felt for him.
“It will be on the altar,” Taše said, a bit tightly; he was still holding himself very still, but Ilmekhor could feel the tension in him where they were pressed together. “Would you have it like this, or on your front?”
Ilmekhor knew what he wanted, but he had enough sense left to know it was impossible. “From behind,” he said, and did not add, because if I had to face you I might beg you to kiss me. Taše was quiet for a moment, and then he pushed himself up with a small grimace, guiding Ilmekhor up from the bed and toward the heavy desk by the fire with a hand on the small of his back. Ilmekhor could barely feel his legs as it was, and he liked his chances even less after Taše took him properly, but then Taše was guiding him down to rest on the smooth finish of the desk, chest and shoulders and cheek pressed to the shining wood. It was cold, and a little awkward, and a little uncomfortable — but then Taše settled a hand on his hip, warm and steady and grounding, and ran the other palm along his flank as though soothing a colt to be saddled, and Ilmekhor felt the fleeting press of warm lips against his shoulderblade as Taše slid inside him again.
It wasn’t entirely pleasant at first — he was still a little tender and sore all over, and even the slick slide of Taše’s cock inside him felt like too much. The angle was even better, somehow, and Ilmekhor let out a low groan of distracted pleasure as Taše began to fuck him in earnest. The pace was faster now, each thrust coming sharper, and Ilmekhor set his teeth and weathered the rising wave of arousal. If it had been anyone else — he’d expected to feel used, helpless and pinned under an overwhelming force. But Taše was still holding him, his hands unbearably gentle on Ilmekhor’s hips, and over the wet sound of skin on skin Ilmekhor could hear him murmuring over and over easy, easy, you’re taking it so well, oh, Ilmekhor, the way you feel —
Distantly, years and miles away, Ilmekhor was aware that it hurt, and that it would hurt even more when he wasn’t riding high on an unsteady wash of pleasure. In the moment, though, he couldn’t begin to care. He was hurtling toward a third torturous peak with all the certainty of a landslide, and as Taše shifted his grip and began to fuck him even harder, he felt a warm hand slide down from his hip to circle his cock, and after only a few more minutes he went over the edge with a ragged shout. Taše had buried himself inside with a stifled cry of his own after only a few more sharp thrusts, and Ilmekhor swore he could feel the heat of his release — but then, he was more than a little distracted by Taše’s warm weight against his back as he nearly fell forward against Ilmekhor.
“Ilmekhor — Ilmekhor, are you all right —”
Ilmekhor blinked, wincing a little, as the last dregs of white-hot pleasure began to slip away, leaving him only a little more clear-headed and significantly more sore. “Well enough,” he said, wincing a little as his voice came out as a rasp. “Nothing that won’t mend in three days’ time.” Except perhaps his heart, but that was a result of his own foolishness, and no concern of his king’s. For now, he would let himself bask in the moment of cautious handling for as long as it would last. Taše was very gentle as he peeled Ilmekhor up off the desk and half-carried him back to the bed, and instead of leaving Ilmekhor there alone he came to lie beside him, combing the loose strands of Ilmekhor’s hair back from his sweat-damp cheeks.
“Do you want me to draw you a bath?” he heard Taše ask, as though from very far away, and then a moment later heard a soft laugh. Whatever expression he had been making must have been quite clear, then. “All right, but let me wipe you down, at least.” Even that sounded miserable, but then, on reflection, it would mean Taše might touch him a little longer, and he was grateful for the kindness of it. A little less grateful, when the bed dipped underneath him and the warm bulk of Taše’s body slipped away from his, but at least his tired little whimper was mostly lost in the confusion anyway. And then there was a warm hand in his hair again, brushing it back from his face as a soft, damp cloth skimmed across his cheeks and forehead, down his neck and across his chest and arms, leaving the skin cool and damp in its wake. He felt the cloth skim over his soft cock, and then lower, dipping behind, and the easy tenderness of it was enough to make his eyes water where his face was turned away into the pillow. Gods only knew why the king was being so careful with him, still, but Ilmekhor didn’t have the strength to protest even if he wanted to.
It was pleasantly quiet in the dim light of the candles in their sconces, which made it all the more obvious when Ilmekhor’s stomach growled abruptly. He heard Taše let out a small cough of laughter, but he only had a moment to feel shame before Taše was pushing off the bed and returning with a platter that smelled faintly of fresh bread. “You should eat a little, if you can,” Ilmekhor heard him say very softly, and when he lifted his head a little, there was a gentle hand guiding him to rest it on the firm bulk of Taše’s thigh, and a piece of bread dipped in oil and salt at his lips, torn small enough to eat in a single bite. Taše fed him like that, a little at a time, until Ilmekhor was beginning to doze off in the middle of chewing.
It wouldn’t last. He didn’t quite understand why it was happening at all; he’d performed adequately, maybe, but not well enough to deserve this kind of careful handling, and he hadn’t even been hurt badly enough for it to be out of pity. Taše followed every few bites with sips from a glass of heavily watered wine, cool and not so strong as to be overwhelming, and when the glass was empty he stayed where he was, running a hand very lightly through Ilmekhor’s loose hair over and over. “Sleep now,” Ilmekhor heard him say, as though from very far off, and that at least was an easy command to obey. “Sleep, and be easy, and — and forgive me, if you can.”
Though — perhaps that part had only been a dream. When Ilmekhor woke to the high sun creeping across the bed, the room was bathed in the brilliant light of morning and the king was gone.