by Shannon West
At first, he’d been able to justify it to himself. As soon as the boy had turned up outside his feasting hall, he had made subtle inquiries and had discovered that King Davos and his consort were both missing too. That left Mikos in charge, and the Bloody Prince was the last person in the universe he wanted to deal with in any way, shape or form. He still considered the man his enemy, for one thing, and he didn’t trust him. He despised him, in fact.
Janos’s hatred for Tygerians was well known. In fact, on the day he’d left that planet, Janos had vowed revenge on the Davos, his son Mikos and Davos’s entire line, so there was no way Mikos would believe he hadn’t been involved with the kidnapping. He simply wasn’t as reasonable as his father. All things considered, he’d rather deal with Davos, so he decided to wait and see if and when he turned back up. And three long years had passed while he waited.
He had been taken to the king’s court to appear before him and his son straight from the prison just before he’d been released. His memories were vague because he was in such bad shape by then. He was half dead by then, really. The guards had cleaned him up and put his old clothes on him. Clothes that hung off his gaunt frame. He was starved and so weak and sick he could barely stand in front of them. The king had the gall to express his “concern” over his condition and ask if he’d been ill. Ill? As if he hadn’t known exactly what had been done to him. He had been in a haze of fury that day and told the king and his son that not only would he not sign their damn peace treaty, but that one day he’d find a way to avenge his father’s death and his own treatment at their hands. He told the king he better watch his back because he’d find a way to make him pay for all he’d done. He’d expected to be sent right back to Beatik, and had been surprised when they had looked at each other, conferred briefly and put him on a ship for home.
He neither wanted nor needed their pity, and though his body had healed, his mind was still little removed from that pathetic, pitiful creature they’d kept in their filthy prison. So he’d waited and tried to figure out how to approach the damn Bloody Prince and tell him he had his younger brother, who had been given to him as a slave. He’d waited and waited and then he’d waited some more. Until three years had passed. They’d flown by, actually, and now too much time was gone. King Davos had finally returned in the meantime and he would never believe he didn’t know who the boy was. Not with the near constant alerts and reminders and lookouts being blasted around the universe and the boy’s picture posted on all the official correspondence. Janos had known who he probably was the moment he’d seen him in his palace all that time ago, and it had been confirmed when he’d studied the alerts with his full description and images of him.
At first, he’d been confused and angry, wondering exactly what his brother was playing at and wondering if he’d been the one to hire the Farlians to kidnap the young prince. If he had, there might be nothing he could do to save him when Davos and his son Mikos found out, because only a few of the other young men who’d been kidnapped at the same time had ever been recovered. The blame for that would fall on him and his royal house.
He just hadn’t been able to figure out why Tibiel had done it. Janos knew all too well how Tibiel felt about him and how much he resented it when Janos had come home to reclaim his throne. But Tibiel was still his brother. He had promised their father just before that last battle that if anything happened to him, Janos would watch out for him and the gods knew he’d tried. But Tibiel had been young when he went off to war, and he and Janos had never been close. When he returned, Tibiel had hated him. He wasn’t sure how he could protect Tibiel if he, as Janos suspected, had actually had a hand in kidnapping that ship full of young boys. He wasn’t even sure if he should try, considering the horror their lives had turned into. He had tried to get the information on the other buyers, intending to save them if he could, but the Farlian had left Laltana with his crew and the man and his crew had subsequently all been killed.
Janos ran a hand over his face. The young Tygerian reminded him greatly of his older brother, Prince Mikos. He had the same striking good looks, the same muscular body. Earlier that day, when the young man had held him in his arms and carried him to safety, he’d felt so much attraction and confusion and anger all wrapped together in one confusing and confounding tangle that he’d been ready to pass out in his arms. Their naked bodies had been pressed together in an intimate embrace—he pressed his hands to his cheeks at the memory and wondered if the Tygerian had felt his erection growing between them as he walked him back to shore? Janos had certainly felt the growing hardness beneath his ass. The question was, what should he do about it now?
How had he even been able to stand a Tygerian male being so close to him? The memories flooded back into his mind so quickly he almost staggered. The guard he’d fallen in love with in prison had been older than Janos and a former soldier, he’d told him. He’d been handsome, like so many of the Tygerians and had shown Janos a bit of kindness that Janos had foolishly mistaken for interest and even affection on his part.
One night he had stopped by Janos’s cell to give him some of his leftover supper—a small piece of meat that was more fat and gristle than anything else. Yet when he turned to leave, Janos had kissed him. It was an innocent, even sweet kiss on Janos’s part, meant to show his gratitude, but it seemed to open the floodgates of the other man’s lust. He had thrown Janos up against a wall, torn off his ragged clothing and brutally raped him, despite his pleas. He hadn’t bothered with any kind of preparation or lubrication other than to spit in his hand and rub it over himself to ease his way. Janos’s screams brought no help of any kind, only jeering from the other guards, and when the Tygerian left him bleeding and torn on the floor of his cell, Janos had wanted to die.
Over the course of the next few weeks, the Tygerian had returned and brought some of his friends with him. The abuse didn’t stop until the commandant saw Janos pass out in the exercise yard one afternoon. He made them stop then because of Janos’s royal status, laughingly remarking that if the king of Laltana were to be “fucked to death” in his facility, there might be awkward questions. After that, they left him mostly alone. He had just turned sixteen years old.
Janos sighed and shook his head to dispel the old, bitter memories. His uncle was right—he had to reward the men who saved him in some way. To ignore what they had done would be churlish and would reflect badly on him and his royal house. There was no help for it—he had to swallow his pride and invite them to his tent to thank them personally. He had to open up a few kegs of wine to celebrate. The men would enjoy that, and so would the camp followers. They were still about a week away from the border so this might be the last chance they had to cut loose. He sighed and went to the flap of his tent to tell one of his aides to make the arrangements.
Chapter Eight
Later that evening, Janos felt exhausted but yet too restless to sleep. His camp bed was piled high with soft furs, yet he couldn’t seem to sleep, and instead tossed and turned, plagued by vague discomforts from his misadventures earlier the day before—a bruise on his heel from stepping on a rock, an ache in his leg, where a branch struck him as it swept him from the sand bar, and a lingering feeling of horror at the idea that he had actually wrapped his nearly naked body around the Tygerian’s large frame as the boy carried him to safety. Carried him, like he was an invalid or helpless child. His face burned with embarrassment. Gods help him, he could still feel the hardness of his cock as it bumped against his ass. He had very nearly humiliated himself when his own member grew larger with each brush of that cock against him. Giving up on sleep, he threw the light covers off and strode over to the tent flap, loosening it to let in a cool breeze.
He stood there for a moment, letting the night air waft across his skin. From a distance, he could still hear the sounds of a few raised, drunken voices from the soldiers, and the occasional female voice from one of the camp followers. It was just after midnight, so those still imbibing at this point would have
sore heads in the morning, which would come all too early in camp.
The two young men, the young man who called himself Bastion and the human whose name was Luc, had come to stand in front of his tent that evening, just after supper. His uncle had been there and given a short speech to the men who were assembled, praising those who had risked their own lives to save the king and his aides. It was a short speech, but the men all cheered and clapped the slaves on their backs. They cheered even harder when Janos allowed them to approach and kneel in front of him, briefly, as he gave them each a gold coin as a reward. Then his uncle announced the opening of some wine kegs and the cheers became deafening.
He had watched the Tygerian carefully for any sign of a smirk on his face when he came to kneel in front of him, but there hadn’t been anything inappropriate. His face held no expression whatsoever and he had inclined his head most properly and gracefully dropped to one knee, as if he’d seen it done a thousand times before—which of course, he probably had as people in the Tygerian court must have knelt before him and his family in the past.
The reminder of the boy’s royalty made him uneasy again and he slipped outside the stifling tent and contemplated taking a walk in the moonlight. Unbidden, an image came to him of that beautiful young man on one knee, his head bowed and the glint of his gold collar and cuffs—marks of his slavery—shining in the candlelight. Gods, what was he going to do about the boy? Every day he waited only made things worse. Suddenly, the walls of the tent seemed to close in on him again and he had to step outside and let the fresh night air surround him.
Once outside, he looked up at the night sky. Laltana had three small moons, which were all in different lunar phases. One of them was a full moon, while the other two were in last quarter and somewhere near last respectively. The one that was full was the farthest away, though, so the moonlight reaching Laltana was dim and just enough to show Janos a trail that led down to the river. He slipped on some soft shoes near the flap of the tent and headed that way, trying to keep close to the shadows so no one would notice him. Privacy was a commodity hard to come by and if any of his aides saw him, they’d insist on rousing enough of the others on his staff to “properly” attend him. He hated all that, and was glad for a few moments alone so he could clear his mind and think.
As it had for the past few days, ever since he’d passed the boy as he rode in his LV and spied him and the human walking down the road toward Athelon, his mind went back to the problem of the Tygerian prince he had acting as his slave and a common foot soldier. No, he had to be honest. What had been occupying his mind the most was the sight of that young, muscular body, almost literally naked except for his boots and the tiny teruga, which barely covered his groin in front as he walked down the dusty dirt road. His body was gleaming brown with exotic black stripes barely showing under the skin and that hair—that beautiful red-gold hair cascading to his shoulders. Janos had made the mistake of glancing into those amber eyes as they passed, and the look he saw there—a look of haughty disdain—had almost made him gasp. His bearing was so regal that there was no mistaking who he was and who he knew himself to be. And there was no mistaking the stormy emotions he seemed to feel for Janos either. But then what could he expect after the way Janos had treated him since that first time they’d seen each other in the palace?
Janos shivered as a strong breeze came out of the north, sweeping over him. Perhaps he should have taken a cloak when he left the tent. Nights were cool on his planet. On some planets, like Tygeria, with its dense cloud covers, the heat the planet assimilated during the daytime reflected back from the clouds at night, but on Laltana, there were never many clouds to speak of. Less clouds meant less reflected heat, so things cooled down quickly at night. He thought perhaps he should turn back, but his feet still kept moving toward the river, as he played out the scene from earlier again and again in his mind, thinking of how warm the Tygerian’s skin had been and how his muscular body felt under his hands as he clung to him. It had been a long time since he’d lain with anyone. After his experiences on Tygeria, he’d vowed to remain celibate for the rest of his life, but it seemed his body had other plans. How could he feel so attracted? And to a Tygerian? He must be insane.
He reached the river and stood staring down into it, as the rapid current swept past him, throwing little whitecaps at the rocks. His gaze picked out the sand bar where he and his aides had perched to bathe, and he wondered why he’d allowed himself to be trapped there to start with. Had his subconscious mind sent him to a place that was precarious at best in the strong current, considering that none of his party could swim? Surely his brain hadn’t somehow engineered the need to be rescued by Bastion—had it? He had felt the boy’s gaze on him when he walked past him, and he’d deliberately put an extra bit of twist in his walk. What in the world had he been thinking trying to entice the boy that way?
Or was he only calling Bastion a boy just so he could further distance himself from him? The Tygerian stood much taller than he and his muscular frame certainly looked like that of a man fully grown. He’d be eighteen now. Still perilously young, but not necessarily for Tygerians, who routinely went to war while they were in their teens and even started their families while they were quite young, by most planets’ standards. The boy’s brother Mikos, for example, had already been a legend at the age of nineteen.
His bruised leg began to ache a little, so he thought he might sit down for a while and rest before he started back to his tent. He spotted a rock a little way down the bank and headed for it, only to have the soft shoes he was wearing slip on some loose gravel, and one foot slid quickly out from under him. He flailed his arms to get his balance and then he felt strong arms wrap around him from behind.
“Seems like it’s my job today to rescue you today, Your Majesty,” a soft voice said by his ear.
He whirled around in the man’s arms and found himself looking up into Bastion’s shining amber eyes. He tried to wrench himself away and only managed to slide farther down the bank so he had to clutch at Bastion again for balance. Bastion steadied him and smiled down at him.
“Be careful, Majesty. I don’t want to have to fish you out of the water again.”
Breathlessly—and when had that happened—he looked up into the handsome face again. “No, I-I can manage,” he said and promptly stepped on a rock with his bare foot.
“Ow!” he cried out, hopping a little and stumbling backward, losing his balance on the steep bank again.
Instantly, Bastion was there, catching him around the waist to steady him. “Let me see,” he said, and eased Janos down to sit on the bank. He reached down and took Janos’s bare foot in his hand. They both looked down at it, gleaming short and pale and strangely delicate looking in the moonlight in Bastion’s big hand. Janos’s feet had always been small for a man’s, and he found himself feeling embarrassed by them and wanting to hide them from this muscular specimen of a man.
Gently, Bastion felt over his foot, searching for injuries. “It seems fine. Maybe a stone bruise.”
“Yes, that must be it,” Janos said, trying to pull away. Bastion held onto his foot, covering it with his hands.
“You’re cold.”
“A little, yes. I-it seems I do need some help. Can you assist me up the bank, please?”
“My pleasure,” Bastion murmured and then bent to sweep him up in his arms. Janos gasped and looked directly into his eyes again, feeling startled.
“I-I can walk.”
“I don’t want you to fall again. The ground is tricky here, and you with only that one little shoe. I think you lost the other one, actually. Should I try to get it for you?”
“No, no, it’s all right. It’s too dark to be sliding around this bank. Leave it.”
Bastion nodded and turned to climb back up the bank. When he reached the top, he set Janos back on his feet next to a large tree and took a small step back. Instantly, Janos found himself missing his warmth, and he shivered.
“You are
cold. Should I go find one of your aides to bring your cloak to you?”
“No, I don’t want to bother them. It’s late.” He looked up at Bastion and then gestured back toward the camp. “Did you enjoy your celebration tonight?”
Bastion leaned against the tree and smiled down at him. “Very much. Not as much as my friend Luc, I think, who single-handedly tried to drink an entire cask of wine.” He laughed at his own remark and Janos even smiled because the laugh was so infectious. “But I did have a good time,” he said.
“I see. You don’t drink then?”
“I had a little wine. It was good, but when I was younger, I attended a lot of feasts, and there was always plenty to drink. Have you ever heard of Visu Punch?”
“No, I don’t think so. Is it some drink from your-your home?”
“Yes, and it’s pretty potent. My brother told me that he once got so drunk on the stuff that he lay insensible for two days afterward. His friends had to hold a mirror to his mouth to make sure he was still breathing.” Bastion threw back his head laughing again and his white teeth gleamed in the moonlight. “I had another brother who got so drunk one night that he accidentally had sex with a pirate and imprinted on him.”
“A pirate?” Janos replied, laughing with him. “How did that happen?”
“In the usual way, I suppose,” he said, trying out a silly leer that made Janos laugh again. “Luckily it was a pirate king and my fathers didn’t kill him, though it was a close thing, I think.”
Janos shook his head, charmed by his silly stories. “But at another feast that included a lot of punch drinking and some wine drinking one night,” Bastion continued. “My family was…attacked. Well, me and two of my brothers, anyway. My youngest brother was almost killed, and was sick for a long time. It caused a great deal of trouble all the way around, and after all that I decided drinking too much just wasn’t a good idea. Or at least drinking enough to make you not know what you’re doing, like my brother with his pirate. I drink now, but just enough to feel good.” He leaned in closer, so close his mouth was almost touching Janos’s cheek. “And you, Sire? Do you enjoy…wine?”