Was Hektor upset about the Spectacle? Lucan could not help being put in the first set of bouts. His division was close to the Diversions, true, but the odds-makers had billed it as a real Spectacle.
Hektor’s shadow fell across him, and then his hand clamped heavily on the nape of Lucan’s neck. The forcefulness jolted Lucan, made him remember the rough handling of that morning. His body stiffened of its own accord, remembering the way Hektor had bent him over, his large body blanketing Lucan’s. The way he had caressed his hole and then shoved into him with a grunt.
Lucan wanted more, and he wanted it now.
Almost more than he wanted to prove his worth in the theatre.
A low moan of need escaped him. He turned, caught Hektor’s gaze. Would Hektor fuck Lucan before his first Spectacle? Lucan hoped so. The seed of a veteran fighter was a potent brew. To go to his first Spectacle buzzing and pleasantly sore, and with Hektor’s cum deep inside him… Lucan would be sure to win.
If they left now, they could get away with it. Lucan moaned just thinking about it. Hektor plowing him in the sand of the side arena.
And then Hektor was on him.
Twin impacts to Lucan’s back knocked the wind and the desire out of him. He rolled, trying to get away, but Hektor was faster. He stomped on Lucan’s hand, not hard enough to break it but hard enough to pin him helpless to the sand.
Lucan fought. His trident had fallen only a foot away. He reached. Hektor kicked it away, and his sword tip pressed down on Lucan’s throat.
“I yield.” Lucan went still.
All around them, a smattering of applause from the other novices at Hektor’s speed, his skill. One by one, they turned back to their own practices.
But Hektor did not back off. His gaze was focused on Lucan’s pectoral muscle, darkness flooding his face. Shame festooned within Lucan. He resisted the urge to cover his skin, though the mark remained invisible. Can he see it? And with that thought, the Ebon awoke anew. Now the burn ached inside him, like a wound beneath the skin, worrying at his muscles.
Slowly, Hektor took his sword away. Lucan rubbed at the raw spot on his throat, and it blossomed into a trickle of blood. He looked incredulously at Hektor. What in the Doomsayer’s Abyss…? Had Hektor been really trying to hurt him before his first Spectacle?
But the primus palus only toed at Lucan’s trident and then kicked it up into his hand. He flipped it and held it out to Lucan, hilt first. “Don’t lose.”
Lucan’s hand trembled, his fury building inside him. How dare Hektor treat him like a child? He took the weapon, careful of the prongs, careful not to slice his mentor’s hand. I ought to cut him. It would serve him true.
But his heart ached just thinking of that. He could not harm Hektor. Well, at least that makes one of us. For a moment, he stood staring at the man, and then he strode off toward the stairwells that would lead him to the vomitoria.
His long strides took him quickly. He barely heard Hektor behind him, his sandals casually slapping the stones as though they dallied through a field of daisies. Lucan’s heart raced and his mouth was suddenly as dry as his hands were sweaty.
He tried not to think, tried only to move, until he found himself before the long hallway that led to the barrier, the Gates of Death. And beyond, the Empress’s Theatre. The roar of the crowd thundered all around, rattling his bones, his teeth, his nerves. His limbs shook, his trident felt heavy in his hand.
Hektor’s hand fell to Lucan’s shoulder. “Remember to size him up before dashing in. Don’t waste energy. The heat will fatigue you; it will sap your strength. Fatigue is the true enemy. Fatigue and fear.”
Lucan bit back his scoff, and only because Hektor could kick his ass. He didn’t need Hektor’s help right now. Damned man. Why did he have to be so gorgeous, so unattainable? Lucan couldn’t even glance at him. Instead, he looked down at his feet.
“Lucan.”
“What?”
“May Lady Luck Viltheleon bless you with victory.”
He couldn’t answer.
Walking down into the darkness by himself only enhanced his loneliness. For a time, he felt Hektor’s gaze on his back, and then he knew the dimness swallowed him. Dust rained down from above, and the sounds of the crowd grew deafening as out on the field the herald began to announce the bouts.
If only Hektor had taken him, had shown him one inch of desire.
And then the barriers broke, the grates rattled up, and the Gates of Death opened before him.
* * * *
Lucan was losing, and it was all Hektor’s fault.
Hektor cursed himself as he watched the other novice—the one they called Jackal Smile—corner Lucan, nearly driving him into the glittering blades of the Hail. Only Lucan’s fast footwork and lithe agility kept him from being skewered. The masses shrieked and roared bloodthirsty approval.
At least someone approves.
Jackal Smile circled, that ever-present grin on his dark face. He taunted and danced, making passes with his blade, keeping his flank guarded with that rectangle shield. But it was all in good cheer, as though he knew a secret no one else did. On Lucan’s best day, he could have defeated Jackal.
But today was not Lucan’s best day.
Hektor swore under his breath. What was I thinking? Working him so hard? Stepping on his hand? Novices died in the Spectacles. The least trained, they wore no armor and had the highest rate of attrition. I may have just sent him to his death.
If only Lucan hadn’t rushed in.
If only…
Jackal’s sword was as quick as his grin. He slashed Lucan a good one across his shins, and blood painted the sand. Lucan was flagging. The wound, the heat, the fatigue, the stress of the roaring crowd…
He rushed in to spite you. Hektor’s guilt rose within him. If Lucan died—
No. Hektor would not think about that.
Jackal struck again, knocking Lucan to the sand, dazing him. The crowd railed wildly, the plebes standing up. Hektor knew the odds-makers would be watching shrewdly, wondering if they had twice misjudged Lucan of House Vulpinius.
Come on, come on, Hektor chanted silently.
Shaking off the stupor, Lucan scrambled to his feet. He parried, but it came too slow. Jackal struck him again, a blow to the shoulder that rocked Lucan. He stumbled, lost his trident. Hektor watched as the golden weapon fell forgotten in the sand.
Lucan was on his knees.
The masses screamed for blood. Jackal Smile dashed in for the kill.
But Lucan rose up, his hand going for the pugio dagger at his belt, and swiped across the boy’s stomach. At the last second, Jackal danced back, and instead of spilling his guts, Lucan opened him to the whites. His face paled, and he grabbed his stomach as blood poured over his hands. He collapsed forward.
And now the crowd’s cheer changed. “Golden! Golden! Golden!”
If there was one thing they enjoyed, it was a good reversal.
And Lucan stood over his fallen foe for the first time, the death-dagger in his hands, and looked to the Empress’s balcony.
She had come out today, a day with a perfect cerulean-blue sky. And she stared down with her blind eyes upon the Arena. She closed them, perhaps taking in all the cheers and jeers, the shouts and catcalls. The crowd was wild for blood.
She gave them blood.
Her palm turned upward. To the sky. The sign of death. There would be no mercy for Jackal Smile, no Victor’s Claim.
Lucan paled, his face stricken as he saw her decree.
Do it, Hektor urged him silently. Lucan’s first kill. He had never taken a life. Hektor’s heart sank when the boy threw down his gladius.
The Empress closed her fist, and the praetorian guard rushed in.
Chapter Eight
PUNISHMENTS
Every crime in Arena
Had its punishment
Arbitrary, it was decided daily
By the Empress herself
—Nefertari Amon Ankh of House Actaeon, th
e Warriors
It was to be the whipping post, and there would be no spectators.
Of all Arena’s punishments, Lucan had never suffered this one.
At this time of evening, the Empress’s Theatre was silent, the sand slashed crimson with blood and gore, the stench of death thick in the air—the remnants of the day’s Spectacle. Discarded bone and clay tickets lay broken on the sand, and the hot breeze chased a small cluster of ribbons—some woman’s favor, once bestowed in amorous emotion, now lost as the day went down in the west. Like dragging fingers, the sun pulled back over the tiers of the Grand Palestra, cloaking the warrens in shadow, then the lower houses, the last light glinting off the golden accents of House Zaerus and flaring off the Bronze Gates of the amphitheatre.
One day, Lucan promised himself as he stumbled out onto the sand. One day, I will walk out of here. A free man.
The praetorian guard marched him in chains to the center of the arena. He looked up, gaze searching the empty stands. Only hours ago the masses had thronged those benches and screamed his name.
Now, only the Empress herself witnessed this spectacle. The thought of it twisted Lucan’s gut. What kind of woman wanted to behold one man whip another? Granted, Her Imperial Majesty could not see in the manner of mortal women, but it was well known that she had her own unique ways to enjoy her Spectacles. Every crack of the whip against Lucan’s flesh, every scream he loosed, every creak of the ropes that bound him would be hers to take pleasure in.
He glanced up as he was prodded forward. The sand was cooler than it had been earlier—a comfort that was both strange and short-lived. For, in the center of the arena, a wooden structure loomed in the sand, its crossed beams casting an X-shaped shadow across Lucan’s body as the moon rose.
His legs trembled as they dragged him closer. The wood was old, splintered from the force of so many blows. Leather straps were nailed into each end, well worn and bloodied. Supplicants had pulled on them, the bonds cutting into their flesh.
Lucan imagined how many lashes it would take before he bloodied himself trying to get free.
The lead praetorian prodded him forward.
Lucan tried to envision it was someone else being pushed toward his doom. But then a dark figure stepped from beneath the far portico and strode toward them, and Lucan’s will began to crack.
Hektor.
Hektor with his grim face, his full lips set into an angry line. The flogger dangled from his fingers. He looked to the praetorian guard and gave a nod.
“Hekt—”
Unceremoniously, they shoved Lucan face-first onto the cross and wrenched his arms up to the two cruxes. He could not help the cry that was torn from him as they lashed the leather tight around his wrists. It was cold and cracked, rough against his skin.
“Bind him tighter,” Hektor said gruffly.
Lucan tried to think that there was regret in Hektor’s voice, that he would not like this, that he would rail against it. He’d imagined that Hektor would stand up to the praetorian, to House Vulpinius, to the Empress—everyone—for him.
But, no, Hektor was just a slave like everyone else.
The praetorian finished securing him and stepped back. Lucan cast a glance over his shoulder, watching as they vanished into shadow and night.
And then he was alone with Hektor.
He tried hard not to struggle. “Hektor, please.”
“Quiet.”
“Pleas—”
A stinging lash weltered down on Lucan’s shoulder, stealing his breath. He writhed and fought, but the straps held him fast.
Gasping, tears in his eyes, he struggled to catch his breath. A second lash cut into him, the pain white-hot and immediate.
He had no breath.
The scream caught in his throat, strangling him, building up inside him with nowhere to go. Each lash rushed him through with agony, until tears streaked his face and his entire body shuddered from the force of Hektor’s flogging. Lucan tried to count, but the anticipation of the lash stole his reason, his senses and sensibilities.
Only the pain of the flogger was real.
The sweaty slide of blood down his back, the welts on his flesh. Somehow the pain began to make him feel more pure.
He looked up. The Empress’s white curtains were closed. She had “seen” enough.
Hektor’s blows were coming slower now, with less force. And a fire began to burn low in Lucan’s belly. The pain had receded to some faraway place in the back of his mind, and all he felt was a white-hot purity. As though he had entered the sun and come out the other side, cleansed.
Dimly, he felt Hektor’s hands on his back, something jellylike and cooling on his flesh. A chill numbness settled into him, but it did nothing to quench the fire inside.
Moaning softly, Lucan pumped his hips back, his cock suddenly hard. With delicious slowness, Hektor dragged the flogger along his student’s flesh, teasing it over his ass and between his thighs, nudging Lucan’s shaft with the knob.
Pleasure struck Lucan low in the belly. He writhed and rocked back. He strained at his bonds, but they held, their rusted nails groaning. Desperate, he jutted his hips back, away from the wood, trying to push his ass against the flogger. A gasp escaped him as Hektor wrapped the leather straps around Lucan’s cock and with slow intensity, started jerking him.
With each stroke, Lucan jolted, and then Hektor stepped in, his hard chest against Lucan’s back, and began to ride against him, thrusting impotently, humping at his ass.
Every thrust shoved Lucan against the cross, where he panted and writhed, moaning like a whore. He wanted to spread his legs wider, but he was already spread out on the X like a delicious feast.
Hektor must have though so too, for he dropped to his knees and tongued at Lucan’s hole, getting him wet, prodding into him. Lucan sobbed, the friction of leather flogging straps on his dick painfully pleasurable.
Groaning deep into Lucan’s cleft, Hektor licked and lapped at him, working his hole.
Lucan’s mind whirled. Hektor was going to fuck him. Out here, in the open.
And then Hektor fit the flogger knob against Lucan’s anal star and pushed. Lucan cried out as the whip handle entered him. Hektor was gentle, pushing it in, pulling it back, stretching the boy’s hole. Once Lucan was open good and wide, Hektor removed the handle and inserted his fingers, scissoring them.
“Please,” Lucan begged. “Fuck me.”
He did not care that they were in the open arena, that anyone might secretly defy the Empress’s decree and spy on the goings-on in the theatre. The darkness nearly had them now, the only light from the guttering of a few torches along the Hail. The blades glinting wickedly.
Hektor and Lucan were thrown in shadow and moonlight, but anyone who stole a secret glance down from one of the house balconies might see two figures in rut.
And they would know.
Still, Lucan’s desire proved stronger than his decorum, stronger than his fear of being found out or misused. He wanted Hektor inside him, cock buried deep, coming as he claimed every inch of him. “Please,” he gasped.
But Hektor wanted to work him, and work him he did, licking and laving at Lucan’s sopping hole, driving the boy to seething frustration in his bonds. Lucan twisted, the welts on his back sweltering in the heat. If not for the cooling unguent, he would be in agony. Sweat poured off him, down his back, stinging his wounds, down his thighs, where his cock wept with precum.
A flare of fire across his chest sent panic like a lightning bolt through him. The Ebon was rising, the blur beneath his skin darkening into its circular pattern. Soon, it would bleed through, and Hektor would see it again.
Lucan was desperate to cover it, and yet he could not. Not stretched out here like a trophy before his lover.
With one more tormenting lick, Hektor left off and rose to his feet behind Lucan. The feel of his slick chest warm and hard against Lucan’s back drove all concerns from his mind. A soft whisper came, Hektor’s tunic hitting the gro
und. Lucan could imagine the gladiator, bare-assed, his heavy cock like a divining rod. Lucan wanted it deep inside him.
“Fuck me,” he begged again.
This time, Hektor seemed ready to oblige, blanketing Lucan’s body with his own. The heat of skin caressed and soothed the welts on Lucan’s back. The sharp prod of his cock-tip against Lucan’s hole made everything else trivial, meaningless.
“Yes,” he whispered. “Please.”
He glanced up at the Empress’s curtain. It remained close. They were here in the arena alone, except for the praetorian guards lurking in the shadows. The idea of being fucked while the stoic guards looked on excited Lucan, thrilled him.
When Hektor grabbed Lucan’s hair and yanked his head back, sinking savage teeth into his nape, Lucan gasped with the pleasure of it. In the next moment, Hektor’s cock breached his ass, and he sank deep, seating himself in Lucan’s tight passage.
The sudden invasion thrust Lucan forward onto the cross, his restraints biting deep into his wrists. He cried out, his first reaction to tense up, but he made himself relax as Hektor pulled out and then ground back into him, tunneling his way in, demanding entry into the deepest parts of Lucan’s body.
Hektor’s hands were on Lucan’s shoulders, steadying him, holding him still as he drew out to the tip and then pushed back in slowly, deliberately, letting his student feel his hardness one inch at a time.
Again, he did this, pulling to the length and then driving in. Again. And again, building a slow burn of ecstasy with Lucan’s body.
And just as Lucan thought he would go mad with desire, with need, Hektor grasped his hips, gripped tight, and began to thrust in earnest.
Lucan cried out as Hektor pounded his ass, giving him the fucking he wanted, he needed. His passage burned, but he ached, bereft, every time Hektor pulled out. Lucan didn’t care that they were in the open arena, that they were making their own Spectacle, that the Ebon burned on his flesh, searing through to the surface.
In His Arena 1: Slave Eternal Page 12