All that mattered was Hektor.
“Please, please…” It became a mantra. The dark mark burning through Lucan’s skin, searing him, branding him even as Hektor claimed him with hard, heady thrusts.
Sweat from Hektor’s hair dripped onto Lucan’s back and shoulders. Whimpering, moaning, he strained against his bonds. He wished he were not tied. He wished he could turn, see Hektor’s blue eyes as he fucked him, hear him say “I love you.”
What? Lucan’s self-admission stilled him, and as he did, Hektor rammed in to the hilt and spurted his seed deep within him. A triumphant shout, his hand clamped onto the back of Lucan’s neck, he rode his student hard, as though trying to work his cum in deeper.
Lucan fought, but the gladiator was bigger, stronger. Being used was delicious, and he moaned through it all, twitching as Hektor spurted again and then once more, crying out to the falling night.
HEKTOR COULD NOT stop. He kept pumping Lucan harder and harder. His cock was softening, but he forced himself into the boy’s needy hole. He laved Lucan’s neck with his tongue and reached around to pinch his nipples. Lucan was still hard, so Hektor ran his hands down over those rippling abs and gripped his cock.
With a cry, Lucan surged to full, pounding hardness. Hektor, too, stiffened again as he worked his student, stroking the shaft with one hand, teasing the head with his other. He dipped his fingertips into the silky precum and swirled it around Lucan’s cock-tip. Then he lifted his fingers and tasted it.
Salty spunk. He wanted to taste it all. He wanted Lucan to come in his mouth. Hektor slipped his cock from Lucan’s quivering hole. Quickly, his hands went to the leather restraints, fingers flying over the buckles then letting them fall.
He had already punished Lucan as the Empress had decreed. There was no rule against pleasuring him.
Before Lucan could fall, the gladiator spun him about, shoving him back against the cross. Lucan panted, his eyes wild with need. Hektor met his gaze for only a brief moment and then fixated on Lucan’s cock, slender and stiff, his balls drawn up tight.
Hektor could not stop looking at it. Beautiful. He sank to his knees and gave it a long lick.
Lucan shuddered, cried out. He pistoned his hips forward, and Hektor let him spear his mouth. Lucan sank in three inches, and the gladiator grabbed his ass, forcing him all the way in. The feel of Lucan ramming down into the clasp of Hektor’s throat was heady, intoxicating. He forced himself to breathe through his nose and began to suck and lick, to stroke Lucan off with his mouth, running his tongue along the shaft.
He pulled out and pursed his lips over the swollen head, sucking down the precum as it leaked from Lucan’s weeping slit. He licked and tongued. Lucan moaned, and Hektor dragged his fingernails down the tops of his student’s thighs.
Lucan bucked. He thrust once more. Hektor took him down all the way. He sucked and mouth-fucked his man. My man? When did Lucan get to be…
He glanced up. Lucan watched him with those golden eyes, his lust, the crisis upon him, twisting his angelic face into a mask of need and want. Hektor saw only those eyes, that face—Lucan’s features burned onto his mind’s eye. He shuddered as Lucan’s hands came down, tangling in Hektor’s hair, and he moaned, arching his back.
The rising moonlight struck Lucan, making him a golden statue. A golden statue with one black mark. On his pectoral, carved…
The Ebon.
The sight of it nearly choked Hektor. He had tried to forget that morning, sinking so deep, so right into Lucan’s ass, taking him in the darkness of the Claim. But now…
Horror overtaking him, the gladiator pulled away, but Lucan grabbed him, forcing him back onto his surging pole. Hektor was weak from seeing the Ebon, and Lucan used him for long moment, stuffing his mouth full of hard cock.
The Ebon. The Ebon… It rocked Hektor to the core.
Lucan was someone’s slave. No, not someone’s. Stratos’s.
Panic lit Hektor’s heart, but the pleasure, the burn of that beautiful cock down his throat… He could not help his lust. He could not stop. He grabbed Lucan’s ass and sucked him down deeper. Reaching between his student’s legs, Hektor cupped Lucan’s taut, silky-smooth balls and held them, tickling them with his fingers, lifting and weighing them.
Moans of pleasure echoed out over the amphitheatre, as grotesque and obscene as the slap and slurp of Lucan’s cock surging into the mouth of the primus palus. The funk of blood and death washed away in the sultry scent of cum and sweat and musk.
Lucan’s hands were heavy on Hektor’s head, fingers curled into all that dark hair as he shoved his length deep. For a moment, Hektor wished Lucan was driving that gorgeous cock into his ass, stretching him, pounding him good and deep. Shame lit his cheeks. Not since Leander…
Yet he wanted.
And to the hellish Abyss with the Ebon.
Lucan shouted, a hoarse and winding cry. He tensed, his thighs going rigid. And then he shot his sweltering load into Hektor’s mouth. Lustful and eager, Hektor swallowed in gasping gulps, Lucan still pumping his slick pole deep. Cum dribbled from Hektor’s lips. He wanted to lick it, but he forced himself to swallow Lucan’s load, milking him until the last jets splashed down his throat.
And then he pulled back, looking at Lucan, drunk on lust. He claimed his novice’s mouth in a searing kiss, forcing his taste back upon him. He grabbed Lucan by the back of the neck, filled with a sudden fierce passion. Filled with…
Love.
His gaze caught the Ebon burning black on Lucan’s chest—an indelible mark, a taint he could never wash away. Again, reality struck Hektor a vicious blow. The guilt, the pain, Leander looking up at him in those final moments…
Hektor slapped a hand to the back of his neck, the memory of his own pain, the burning of his own dark mark scorching his pleasure to ash and cinder. He backed away, looking at Lucan in horror.
Lucan’s face crumpled. He reached out.
He does not understand. A different pain ripped through Hektor’s chest, a pain that pulled and constricted his heart. He had to get free, had to stop it.
“Hektor…”
Hektor broke and ran.
* * * *
Stratos finished first. He always did, pumping his cum into whatever slave he chose to assign Alession’s face to that night. Tonight, he had wanted a pounding, but the slave hadn’t understood. He’d thought simply fucking Stratos would be enough. Clearly, he didn’t realize that Stratos needed to be bent over and taken, held down by the back of the neck while a hard, implacable cock ravaged his ass.
Instead, the slave had tried to be tender with him. The beating and bruises would pay the fool back for that. He still bled from the mouth where Stratos had slapped him.
Now Stratos licked the wound, sucking it until it bruised as he fucked the slave in the ass.
Stratos’s chambers filled with the squelching sounds of his cock pushing into a tight, willing hole, the slide and grind of sweaty flesh, his balls smacking the slave’s ass cheeks, the two of them grunting like animals, rutting hard in a bid to come before the other.
“Take it,” Stratos growled angrily. And yet, he wanted to be taken. Taken, possessed, and then cared for. The way Alession had once promised him. The way Alession had once fucked him, coming so hard inside Stratos that he’d seen stars and then cleaning him up and kissing him tenderly.
Stratos wanted all that. He wanted it back. But here he was, having to pretend he was the one getting fucked, getting ravaged.
This slave did not know how easy he had it.
Grabbing the man’s shoulders to steady himself, Stratos pounded harder. “Take it, bitch-boy.”
“Yes, mas—”
Stratos’s sharp smack cut his words off. “I didn’t tell you to speak.” He jammed his cock in, stabbing the slave’s hole in his fury. Pressure built up inside his sac, his balls drawing up tight to his body. Shouting, he thrust hard, pushing in without regard to his partner’s pleasure. With a grunt, he came again, spurting inside the man, spilling
his seed into the useless body of a slave.
It should be Alession. Him and me. Ruling each other. Ruling Arena.
Savagely, Stratos pulled out and stroked himself hard, jetting the last of his cum onto the slave’s belly. He grabbed the man by the hair and yanked him off the reclining couch onto his knees. “Kneel before me. Clean me up.”
Obediently the slave lapped at the quaestor’s softening shaft. Stratos closed his eyes and imagined Alession, the dark hair, those ice-blue eyes, Alession’s lips pursed around his cock.
It was enough. For now, it was enough.
Soon, the Empress would be dead.
And then Alession and I will rule. As lovers.
Chapter Nine
TRAINING & TRUST
The Grand Melee
The biggest bout in Arena
A Spectacle of blood and death
Seen in no other place on Arden
—Jocasta Priassin, House Priassin, the Architects
Lucan hunched over the bench, working hard at his task. Half the rack already shone from his efforts, and in his lap, a gladius gleamed and glinted, its edge glistening wet from his care. He took a cloth and rubbed it dry.
Once, he’d hated the chore, when Hektor had first assigned him to clean and sharpen every sword in the Vulpinius training hall.
Hektor. It had been two days since Lucan had seen the champion gladiator. He winced as the welts healing on his back reminded him of their lovemaking. Love. It wasn’t like the plowing Hektor gave him could even be called that.
And yet, that last look Hektor had given him… He’d been about to say something, to admit his love, perhaps? And then—
A searing pain stabbed deep into Lucan’s left pectoral. He ground his fingers into the flesh. The Ebon. Hektor had seen it.
And he had fled.
He’s seen it before. Lucan could not shake that notion, the idea that the brand bore some other, darker significance. He would have put denarii to it if he’d had any. But what did that matter? Alession branded his gladiators. So what? They were all slaves, even Hektor.
But Lucan sensed there was something more to this, to the Ebon. He clenched his hand over it, cupping the brand as if proof against its searing hot pain. Shame blossomed across his cheeks.
Perhaps Hektor knew that Alession had used him.
Lucan rose and set the gladius in its place on the rack, took down the next one in line. Hektor shouldn’t care about that. It was before we even met, by the Doomsayer’s Abyss!
And if anyone had cruelly used Lucan, it was Hektor.
Picking up the whetstone, Lucan began to burnish the notches from the weapon. He’d been so infatuated with the veteran gladiator. Hektor Actaeon, the great primus palus. Hektor had taken Lucan’s adoration and used him—used his mouth, his ass. The look on Hektor’s face before he’d fled had told more truth than any of his words.
He did not love Lucan. He had merely used him.
The Ebon blazed with Lucan’s rising anger, the blackness bleeding through his skin—a circle with two slashes like fangs digging into him. House Vulpinius. House of Wolves.
And yet no one in House Vulpinius asked anything of him beyond a good showing in the arena. Lucan had barely glimpsed Alession since that morning, and even Stratos…
Truth be told, Lucan disliked the man. Stratos’s smile was unctuous, too easy, his vim too slick and sly. Lucan saw the way Hektor looked at Stratos, like a man who found a snake coiled around his ankle.
Lucan ran his whetstone across the gladius, reveling in the sharp shing of stone on blade. This was simple. Sharpen, clean, polish. Oil the leather straps on his grandguard so he could move his arm and shoulder without encumbrance. He wanted only to think of what he needed in the arena.
The next Spectacle was coming up soon. He wanted to be ready.
Agony flared again across his chest, stabbing deep into his heart, bending him double. His breath went out, the gladius clattered to the floor, a bucket of water spilling. The flow raced across the wood and washed over sandaled feet.
A calloused hand reached down and took up the gladius. “Fine work, here.” The voice was smarmy-smooth, and Lucan cringed even before he met Stratos’s eyes.
“Thank you.” He inclined his head but did not reach for the weapon. Such an act could be seen as aggressive. A slave waited until the master offered.
A glint in his green eyes, Stratos offered the weapon blade first. Lucan met his gaze and held out a steady hand. Hektor would kill him for doing this, reaching for a weapon pointed at his chest.
But what did it matter? Stratos already controlled Lucan, already owned him. If the quaestor wanted to kill a slave, he need only give the word. Lucan closed his fingers carefully over the blade.
Stratos held the weapon a moment longer and then, with a dark chuckle, let Lucan ease it from his grip. A frisson of foreboding crawled down Lucan’s spine as Stratos deliberately shifted his hand so their fingers touched briefly. Stratos was studying him with that lean, hungry look.
Suddenly, Lucan felt exposed, his tunic pulled down to his waist, his loincloth wet and clinging to his thighs. He resisted the urge to cover himself. Hektor should be here. He should be here!
But no, Hektor was two days’ absent. Cursing his mentor, Lucan bent to clean the water. He expected Stratos would beat him for spilling so much.
Stratos waved him off. “Let it be. It will dry on its own.” He paced back and forth before the rack, taking in the weapons. “You care for all these?”
Lucan nodded, then, realizing Stratos wasn’t looking at him, spoke. “Yes. It was Hektor’s idea.”
“Hektor’s idea.” Stratos repeated it as though it were somehow amusing. He touched his bottom lip with two fingers. A flash of poison-green eyes. “What do you know of the Grand Melee?”
The question startled Lucan. Everyone knew of the Grand Melee. Arena’s most prestigious Spectacle, it occurred once every three years. It was the only way a gladiator could earn his freedom. Aside from death. Only the most prestigious gladiators were chosen to compete—the primus pali, the champions, the men who had gained the notice of the odds-makers. Unnamed novices like Lucan had no chance. He risked a sidelong glance at Stratos. What game was the man playing?
Lucan felt stupid reciting what every person from the lowliest plebes to the highest Citizen in Arena knew, but he dared not anger Stratos. “The gladiator who wins is set free. He is crowned with laurels from the Empress herself. And at her behest, the Bronze Gates open wide, and he walks out a free man.” He sounded as though he were reciting. “His house is heaped in riches and laurels, and they are honored for the three years after.”
Stratos’s grin was smug. “And do you know who House Actaeon will be choosing as their champion?”
Of course Lucan knew. Like all the others, House Actaeon would send many fighters into the arena that day, but they could name only one as their champion.
Hektor Actaeon was the most seasoned, the most famous. Not a Spectacle went by where he was not given laurels and accolades. It was a risk—the Melee was sans mercy—but Hektor was likely enough to win.
Lucan’s heart constricted as he wondered what it would be like to watch from the sidelines as the man he loved vied for his freedom. Uncomfortably, he toed the stained stone where he’d spilled the water. What if Hektor lost? Worse. What if he won? Lucan hated himself for the guilt he felt, but the idea of Hektor winning his freedom, walking out the Bronze Gates…
Leaving me.
Strangling on fear and guilt, Lucan remembered Stratos was staring at him. He squirmed inside his skin. “I would imagine they would choose Hektor.”
Stratos’s face betrayed no expression as he nodded, his gaze shrewd on Lucan.
Lucan strove to keep his face blank as well. He was not as good at it as his master.
“And do you know who will be the champion of House Vulpinius?”
At once, Lucan thought of all the Wolves he knew. Agrippa, the myrmidon with his tw
in maces, his corded muscles, sleek and fast, ruthless. Kaius, master of net and trident. Nikos. With his golden bow, he never missed a shot.
“You.”
Lucan nearly choked on the very idea. “Me?”
It was a jest, the worst kind. Lucan had nowhere near the skill level needed to win in the Grand Melee. He might do fine at the beginning, when all fifty competitors were released. Houses tended to group together, and Lucan didn’t doubt his ability to fight house-against-house. Even against the free men and mercenaries, against the noxii criminals and Thranish assassins, Lucan felt he could hold his own, even Unnamed as he was.
But once those numbers dwindled… Him? Alone against the likes of Agrippa and Nikos and Kaius? Against Hektor Actaeon?
Lucan shuddered. His bowels threatened to turn to water. He needed to sit. He leaned against the rack, flinching when two swords clattered to the floor.
Stratos smiled, not unkindly, and went to pick them up. “Now,” he said gently, though his eyes were the dead eyes of a sand shark. “You have Hektor for the remainder of the month. He will see you trained.”
Pain and love washed over Lucan and formed a heady mixture in his gut, in his heart. He could not keep the stricken look from his face. He grabbed the rack for support. “Hektor?”
“Oh, dear,” Stratos said in a way that let Lucan know he was not in the least bit concerned. “Now I’ve done it. You haven’t seen him, have you?”
“Not in two days.” Lucan looked down at his hands and began to twist his cleaning rag into bits.
“Blessed Doomsayer in UnderRealm.” Stratos’s smile only grew wider. “That is a shame. Well, I can inquire about him at House Actaeon, and since we are paying him a stipend to train you, I shall have to see about that. I am surprised that he would abandon you.” Stratos’s gaze went to Lucan’s chest.
The Ebon had faded in these past days, seeming to wane in the face of Lucan’s pain and guilt. Even so, he could not help but touch it. Stratos chuckled darkly, and Lucan realized he was digging at the flesh. He stopped, though the burn only increased, leaving him more and more breathless the longer Stratos remained in the room.
In His Arena 1: Slave Eternal Page 13