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Henry slowly opened his eyes, blinking over and over to untangle his eyelashes, which seemed to have glued themselves together. He looked toward the window, thinking a nasty storm must have broken out outside, but the air was still and silent, disturbed only by the faint rays of a waxing moon that had not yet reached its first quarter.
When the low, gurgling sound that had woken him repeated itself a second time, twisting his gut, he realized it was neither thunder nor a storm, but his own stomach begging to be filled with something – anything.
It was the twenty-fourth night they had spent locked within the walls of Suchdol, under siege. When all of this had started, Henry had expected to die skewered on a Prague sword, or with an arrow buried right between his eyes. Not that it made any difference – death was death either way – but it seemed a little more honorable than slowly starving to death, wasting away in his own bed while his stomach growled its protest, clenching so tightly it had started to hurt.
Henry pushed himself upright in bed, wrapping his arms around himself as if he could smother the noise, the pain, whatever complaints his stupid guts wanted to hurl at him.
He cursed himself for being so honest it bordered on idiocy, for handing over every single scrap of food he possessed so it could be rationed and distributed fairly each morning.
Now there was nothing left.
He rubbed his stomach, the bare skin of his chest rasping beneath his rough fingers. He had not yet noticed any severe weight loss, but he knew that, if things kept going like this, he would soon begin to feel every rib, every vertebra running down his spine with painful clarity. Though, truthfully, it would not last long. Another week, and if the heavens did not bless them with rain, they would run out of water as well – and then things would become far worse.
Anger boiling inside him, he got to his feet. Judging by the darkness blanketing the stretch of city visible through the window, it was still the dead of night. In the distance, he could make out the pinpricks of torchlight carried by the guards on watch. Whose turn was it tonight? Žižka’s men? Or Capon’s? Henry could not remember. He only knew it was not his turn, that he should have been able to spend the whole night resting in his own bed, and yet hunger would not let him.
His gaze drifted absently to his sword – that blade from which everything had begun – resting on a bench beneath the open window beside his bow.
Well, not exactly his bow. True, Capon had given it to him, but after pressing him hard enough to wring the truth out of him, Henry had learned Hans hadn’t obtained it honorably by winning some contest for him or commissioning it from the finest craftsman in Kuttenberg.
No.
The bastard had stolen it from Jobst. Margrave Jobst. One of the most influential men in Bohemia. He had snatched it at Raborsch shortly after learning about his impending marriage, out of spite, contempt, because spitting in the right eye of every guest individually would have taken too long and drawn too much attention.
He had stolen the bow belonging to the very man they had been waiting over a week for, the man everyone trusted to arrive with reinforcements and free them from this cursed siege that was draining them dry, sucking the will to live out of them.
So why would he not have stolen something else?
Henry was no saint. Back in Kuttenberg he had often comforted desperate townsfolk over thefts he himself had obviously committed. But Hans… Henry knew perfectly well how easily anything not nailed down seemed to stick to his hands.
The man was a fucking kleptomaniac, and the fact that he was a nobleman, rich enough to buy whatever he wanted, only made him even more of a bastard. At least ten times worse than Henry himself.
Before he realized it, he was standing only a few steps away from Capon’s room, with no proper plan in mind. His feet – bare to avoid making noise – had carried him there as though they already knew his reasoning would soon lead him to the obvious conclusion. Hans equaled thief, and therefore Hans’ room equaled the perfect hiding place for food. He had stolen worse, after all.
Henry glanced around to make sure no one was nearby and crouched down so his eyes were level with the lock. It took him only moments to figure out the mechanism and turn the pick the right way. Weeks of practice in the streets of Kuttenberg had paid off.
Still, he considered himself lucky. If he had managed to pick it so easily, it meant Capon hadn’t thrown the bolt, which in turn meant he must have locked the door from the outside. A clear sign that tonight was his turn on watch, and Henry would have free rein to rummage through his belongings and find something to sink his teeth into.
He slipped inside and slowly closed the door behind him. The flickering glow of the fire burning in the hearth was the first thing to set off alarm bells in his head. These were not the dying embers of a fire deliberately smothered to burn out. The logs he and Kubyenka had chopped that very morning crackled merrily, creaking as crimson tongues of flame licked across them to feed themselves.
So if Hans had gone out, why waste firewood letting it burn away? Could the spoiled little lordling truly not bear the thought of returning to a cold room at the end of the night, with the sun already rising and summer in full bloom?
Henry tore his eyes away from the hearth and glanced toward the bed.
His heart skipped a beat.
Hans was sleeping peacefully, wearing the blissful expression of a child. So deeply lost in dreams, he must have forgotten entirely where he was and what was happening, because a stupid little smile curved his lips, and the mere sight of it irritated Henry.
And that was not even the worst of it.
Henry had been so stunned to find him there that it took him several seconds to realize his lordship was sleeping completely naked.
Not a shred of decency, as usual, he thought, considering Hans had not only neglected to throw the bolt, but had done so while sleeping with his cock on full display.
Henry stepped closer, hypnotized by the sight. He had seen Hans naked only once before, but he hadn’t had time then to properly take in the exact shape of his body. It had lasted only a moment, when he had found him in his bed after – according to Capon – an intense fuck with one of the bathhouse girls. Henry was fairly certain that was bullshit. According to everyone else, Hans had spent the entire evening alone, which meant he had climbed into Henry’s sheets for one reason only: to jerk himself off. Thinking about him. No one had said that last part aloud, but it seemed like the only reasonable explanation for why Capon had needed to do it there specifically. At first the thought had horrified him, but it had not taken long before Henry himself, in the silence of a looted and vandalized Ruthard Palace, had done the same thing, coming into his own hand with Hans’ name on his lips.
He had imagined him in countless ways that night. Ways that had made him ashamed of himself once the haze of arousal faded and blood began flowing back toward his brain instead of his cock. He had tried to reconstruct Hans’ body from that blurred flash of memory – when he had snatched the pillow stained with his seed from his hands and the sheets had slipped away, revealing him naked beneath them. He remembered little besides the shape of his soft cock lying against one thigh, slick with oil or whatever he had used to make it slide more easily in his grip.
When Henry had pictured them fucking as he wanked himself at Ruthard Palace, he had returned to that image again and again, reshaping it, rebuilding it, trying to imagine what Capon would look like hard.
He certainly never would have guessed that, less than a month later, he would have the privilege of seeing it with his own eyes.
The blond man slept sprawled, open-legged, the sheets tangled around his ankles. And whatever dream had painted that lovely smile across his face must have been truly enticing, considering how his cock was standing proud.
Henry paused to stare at him, eyes growing wider. He suddenly forgot entirely about food, hunger, or whatever reason had driven him to break into his lord’s room in the first place.
Hans looked so different from what Henry had imagined. While jerking off, he had focused only on picturing his lover’s stiff lenght, on the sensation of Hans on top of him, his hot prick grinding against Henry's stomach as the blacksmith fucked into him.
In those frantic fantasies, he had not realized how much it was not merely his cock that aroused him, but the beauty of his whole body. The curve where his thighs rose toward his ass, for example. Or the fine blond hair covering his pubic bone, or the narrow shape of his hips. Altogether it made him beautiful, framing and emphasizing his manhood – the network of veins beneath pale, taut skin, and the darker, thicker one running along the underside of the tip, glossy with tension in the firelight. And the size of it, obviously. Henry had to admit he had imagined it smaller. Perhaps because Hans’ body was slimmer and more graceful than his own, or because the patch of hair around his dick was so thin and sparse it barely covered the pale skin underneath. Whatever the reason, Capon’s cock still stood impressively between his legs. Not like Henry’s. He would never admit that. But he still couldn't tear his eyes away.
Hans was breathing softly in his sleep, peaceful and relaxed. His head was tilted sideways so it could at least partly rest on the pillow – not properly positioned beneath him, but angled parallel to his body. Henry imagined he had turned it that way to pretend someone was beside him – perhaps Henry himself – and something hot twisted in his gut. A different hunger from the one he had hoped to satisfy tonight.
Hans’ right hand lay abandoned on his stomach, occasionally twitching with whatever he was dreaming about. Henry watched, captivated, as every so often the noble clumsily wound a strand of hair around his finger, sighing in his sleep whenever he accidentally brushed his cock.
Henry would have given anything to step into that vision, to see through Hans’ eyes whatever played behind those closed lids. He quickly dismissed the most obvious idea – that some curvy maid was starring in the nobleman’s wet dream, pleasing him with skills learned from years working in the bathhouses.
After what had happened at the Den, after what Henry himself had done deliberately at Ruthard Palace, the thought of Hans Capon lying there hard because, in those irrational dreams conjured by his sleeping mind, it was his squire fucking him senseless made Henry tremble with raw desire.
He swallowed hard around the saliva lodged in his throat. He could not tell whether the fireplace had suddenly grown hotter or whether he had started sweating for an entirely different reason. What he understood perfectly well, however, was that his trousers had certainly not shrunk in size in the short time he had spent shamelessly staring at his lord’s cock. The fabric clung tightly to his thighs, outlining the generous shape of his own shaft, trapped against his leg. When he noticed the small darker stain at the tip, Henry flushed hot and rubbed the damp fabric with his thumb, only smudging the wet patch wider and further stimulating his hardness, already slick with anticipation.
For a moment, he considered forgetting about the food and running back to his room to relieve the ache swelling inside his trousers. But then he remembered he had already jerked off thinking about his lord. Probably the best jerk-off of his life, but one that had required considerable imagination. And he was way too tired now, too worn down by a siege dragging on far longer than he had hoped or expected. There was no point in returning to his room empty-handed only to invent some elaborate fantasy to fill those same hands with his own prick, when the source of all his inspiration was lying right there, legs spread wide for the delight of his eyes, not even bothering to get dressed.
He tugged his breeches down just far enough to free his shamefully hard cock and began to stroke himself.
It was the perfect situation, really, because he won twice over. He could pleasure himself while staring at the object of his deepest desire, and on top of that he could finally get revenge. Hans’ pillow was covered in a fine green-and-gold pillowcase, worlds apart from the one the nobleman had defiled back at the Den. Henry intended to repay him in kind. He could already picture the expression on Hans’ face the next morning when he woke up clutching a pillow stained with somebody else’s cum.
He slid his hand upward, watching the small bead of precum gathering at the tip. He smeared it with his thumb, trying to spread it along his cock, but it was not enough. Those long days spent fighting in rough leather and steel gloves had left his hands cracked raw, and the friction of his calloused fingers wrapped around his shaft was starting to verge on painful.
He spat into his palm to ease the drag and went back to working himself. He imagined it was Hans’ saliva, that it was his warm mouth wrapped around him instead of his own fist. It had to feel good, getting sucked off by someone. If he ever made it out of there alive, he would pay one of the bathhouse girls to give him that pleasure. It would be exciting. The heat of a pair of lips tightening around his cock, the tip rubbing against the inside of his cheek—
He swallowed a thick, almost solid lump of saliva, when he realized his eyes were fixed on Hans’ noble cock, and that his thoughts had taken a strange turn. Because the idea of getting a taste of it did not displease him. He struggled to imagine what kind of flavour it would leave on his tongue, yet the longer he stared at it, the more he could almost feel it forcing his lips apart to push inside.
He drew a deep breath, trying to smother the urge simmering low in his gut – the one whispering lazily into his ear that, if he was truly that curious about what Capon's cock tasted like, he could always bend down and start sucking it.
The room was thick with the sharp scent of burning wood. It filled his nostrils and crept up, burrowing into his brain until it left him light-headed, intoxicated. He envied Hans, who had gotten to jack off in his bed, with his face buried in Henry’s pillow, breathing him in, wrapped in sheets that carried his scent.
He tried to imagine what fragrance could cling to that dark green fabric tangled around Hans’ ankles. Trying to grasp the shape of a smell, however, was not easy at all. It was far different from recreating behind closed eyelids the image of Hans bending down to suck him off, for example. Or those big blue eyes staring up at him from below, lips wrapped around his cock. Or whatever else his mind was desperately trying to conjure to drag him closer and closer to the edge.
From the corner of his eye, he caught the gleam of something golden discarded on a stool beside the bed, and his gaze drifted toward it. Hans’ pourpoint reflected the firelight like a freshly polished blade. Beneath it peeked one of the red, gold-trimmed leaves of his chaperon.
Henry acted before thinking.
With his free hand, he tugged it out from beneath the doublet and brought it to his face, greedily inhaling the sharp scent still lingering on the fabric. It smelled of perfumed oils – lavender, perhaps, and chamomile. It must have held onto the fragrance of his freshly washed hair, one indulgence Hans had never once considered giving up, not even during a siege.
Henry buried his nose in the cloth and inhaled viciously while continuing to thrust his hips forward, pushing into his fist. He picked up the pace. His eyes had fallen shut, lulled by the softness of the red fabric, and he was imagining his face pressed against Hans’ nape while he fucked him from behind when he felt the nobleman stir.
Except this was real.
Not some feverish haze of arousal.
He froze where he stood, horrified, as he heard him mumble, “Mmh… Henry? What are you doing?”
His heart skipped a beat and the chaperon nearly slipped from his fingers. He immediately glanced down, convinced he was about to find himself face to face with the stunned, disgusted expression of a freshly awakened Hans Capon, sleep-heavy eyes slowly widening only to find his squire standing there, with a hard cock in hand a few inches from his face.
“I’m a married man…”
Fucking bastard, he cursed in a fractured breath of relief when he realized Hans’ eyelids were still shut, his usual idiotic expression of bliss untouched, while Henry himself had just lost ten years of his life in the span of ten seconds. But the terror and panic that had driven his mind to scramble together a thousand different excuses for what he was doing – all equally pathetic – soon melted into a deep, overwhelming rush of pleasure when he realized something else.
Hans had called him by name.
Which meant that, unless another Henry had somehow entered his life without Capon bothering to mention it, Hans truly was dreaming about him. And judging by the way his hand had immediately drifted down in search of his cock, he was dreaming about him in the exact way Henry wanted to be dreamed about.
He hesitated only another moment, basking in that sweet satisfaction, before jerking himself off again with renewed fervor, finally letting loose all the fantasies he had still been trying to keep bridled as he pictured the way their bodies must have been sliding together in Hans’ dream, slick and tangled against each other.
It was that night that it first occurred to him there were other ways to fuck besides the one he had always assumed was the only method. Up until then, he had only ever pictured himself in one role – with his cock buried deep between the stretched muscles of Hans’ ass. But with Capon's manhood standing right there in front of him, it suddenly became painfully obvious that Hans was a man too and perhaps, in his fantasies, he was the one on top. Maybe, just like Henry, he had always pictured himself as the one doing the fucking rather than the one being fucked. Nothing seemed more likely. Hans was the lord; Henry the obedient squire. And that was when Henry realized that maybe it would not be so bad. After enough practice, of course. As long as it stayed in his mind, it was simple; effortless. But even a peasant like him could understand that, when it came down to it, fucking a man wasn’t as easy as fucking a woman, that an ass was tighter than a wench’s wet flesh and did not slick itself open on its own.
It would take some practice. At first, he would probably ache for days afterward, and every time he sat down, his ass would remind him of what it had welcomed only a few nights before.
In any case, they could always take turns. Henry was curious to find out what it felt like to be the one taking it, but he also wanted to know just how tight Hans’ arse really was. Or maybe, once he had gotten a taste of Capon’s cock between his cheeks, he would like it so much he would want it that way every time.
He focused on the nobleman’s shaft, forcing himself to imagine what it would feel like to take it inside him. It was big enough that it would hurt. Still, he wanted it desperately. Hungry for something new, he longed to know what it felt like to take another man’s cock, because he could not begin to imagine what sort of sensation it would give him. He had never felt anything remotely like it before; he had no point of reference to even vaguely picture it. He had never even tried sticking one or two fingers inside himself – though he had certainly been thinking about it – and he knew that pitiful attempt at imitating a proper fuck would never compare to a real, warm cock. One the size of Hans’, least of all.
All he knew was that his prick throbbed like hell every time he imagined Hans’ dick pressing against his ass. He had no idea what his body looked like down there, whether the skin was pale, flushed, or darker, but he still tried to picture the tense muscles of his hole slowly being forced apart by Hans’ wet cock as it pushed its way inside. It barely took any effort to imagine it with Hans lying right there in front of him. While his fist slid up and down over his spit-slick length, Henry figured himself moving along Hans’ cock in the same rhythm, wrapping around it and then letting it slip free, only for it to sink back into the heat of him, his flesh clenching around it every time Hans pushed it all the way in.
He had not settled on one precise position for them. He could have been on top, riding his lord, rocking his hips back and forth while bending down over him, his own manhood trapped and squeezed between their bodies until it finally spilled across their stomachs pressed together. His mind wandered through that and a hundred other ways they could twist around each other like snakes. If he had been given the choice, though, Henry would have wanted to be on his knees, on all fours, with Hans fucking him from behind, the curly blond hair at the base of his cock brushing against his ass while Hans held his cheeks spread open with both hands so he could drive deeper.
He wet his lips, savoring the image the way a starving man would savor a plate of fragrant roast meat.
By then, the crackling of the fire had vanished from his ears. All he could hear was the sound of Hans’ hips slamming against his ass at a steady pace; their groins slapping together hard enough it almost hurt.
He filled his lungs once again with the sweet scent of the red liripipe, already teetering on the verge of orgasm. He drove into his fist a couple more times, chasing release, which came with the force he had been hoping for – a wave rising violently from the depths of his gut. It hit him, overwhelming, a heartbeat before he could properly connect mind and hand and aim to spill over Hans’ pillow.
With half-lidded eyes, pressed into the fabric of the chaperon, he released his load across Hans’ chest, then over his stomach. Gasping, he kept working himself in his hand so that the last drops of seed would dribble over Hans’ naked body.
Fuck… He felt like shit. But just for a second.
His heart began to quiet down, and the sense of panic over what he had just done – the one that had immediately clenched his guts – loosened its grip, making room for something entirely different. A pleasant warmth spread through his chest. He didn’t want to call it pride, but it wasn’t far off, as he looked with something close to admiration at his seed scattered across Hans’ stomach, unable to stop himself from feeling satisfied with his work – how he had, by accident, carried out an even sweeter revenge.
Fuck, he thought again, this time with a completely different weight. I should have aimed higher and painted over that smile on his face.
He wiped the remaining seed that was still running down the tip – now boneless – across the chaperon, then tossed it onto the stool, quickly shoving his cock back into his trousers.
An eye for an eye, you fucking bastard.
The following morning, Hans woke up with utter reluctance. He had spent most of the night dreaming about him and Henry fucking on that very same bed he was now lying in – much to his misfortune, alone – and it took a serious act of will to rub his eyes, chase the sleep away with a loud yawn, and resist the urge to roll onto his stomach and drift back off, hoping to dream again of Henry’s cock plunging into his ass.
He stretched lazily and hauled himself upright to start getting dressed.
Still half-drunk on sleep, he pulled on his trousers and his golden doublet and began fastening the endless line of buttons, when he noticed something was off.
What the fuck…? He pulled his hand back, his fingers sticky with something viscous that was starting to dry on his chest.
Even the expensive fabric of his pourpoint was now irreparably stained with the same substance. He stripped it off with a curse, his face flushed with equal parts of rage and shame. Because he knew precisely what had happened there.
Dreaming about Henry and his peasant cock had felt so good he’d ended up spending himself in his sleep. Spectacularly, judging by the stain now decorating his chest and stomach.
Irritated, and painfully aware that the doublet was the only clean garment he had left, aside from his heavy battle gambeson, he wiped the cum off his skin using the red chaperon he was meant to wear over it.
He turned over, lifting the mattress with a frustrated huff, and fished out from beneath the sheets a pear and a piece of bread he had stolen, along with other supplies, when he had started sensing famine in the air.
He bit into the fruit with nervous impatience and swallowed the chunk of bread in a few quick gulps. Then he retrieved his doublet and chaperon, already rehearsing in his mind the performance he would have to put on for the bathhouse girls to beg them to wash his clothes, pretending he had no idea what they were stained with. Just as if those wenches weren't familiar with that substance all too well.
He took a long breath, smoothed his expression into his most charming smile, and – dressed in nothing but his trousers – prepared himself to begin the longest day of his life.