by Cooper Davis
“You’re being incautious.” Arend’s hand cupped Julian’s erection, squeezing and rubbing it through his front placket. “You . . . you warned me that we must be discreet.”
“We are in a hedge. What could be more discreet?”
“I can think of many locales that would better fit the definition.” Julian groaned out the words, tantalized by Arend’s provocative caressing. If they weren’t careful, his trousers would become stained. “You must stop, sire. Or I will surely leak.”
“You weep for me?” Arend found Julian’s tip, encircling it through the soft fabric of his britches.
“Soon I shall, if you don’t desist. Then those men”—Julian’s voice had turned over-delicate—“all of them will know what we’ve been doing here. What I am to you.”
“And what are you?” Arend’s tone was teasing yet backed with iron. He wanted to hear it. Needed to have Julian reinforce their bond.
“I am your concubine, Your Majesty.”
“Yes,” Arend murmured, brushing hair off Julian’s nape. He gave a light love bit, nibbling and sucking. Thank God, he was hiding the mark. Julian became more intensely aroused, the need inside him spiraling, growing. Arend slipped a hand further between Julian’s thighs, squeezing his bollocks.
“Arend, please,” he hissed, gasping for air. Jules could feel the slight dampness already forming within his smallclothes.
“Ah, he begs now. My bed slave begs and pleads. Too bad Lord Vincent can’t hear you.” Now two gloved hands, regal and fine, moved between his thighs outlining the bulge in his now too-tight trousers.
Julian forced Arend’s hand away from his groin. “Lord Vincent is not a concern between us.” The ache between Julian’s thighs only intensified, now that Arend’s caresses had ceased.
“No, you’re wrong on that count,” Arend insisted. “Lord Vincent clearly believes he can have you.” Arend pulled Julian tighter against him, manacling him in that embrace.
“I’ve led him to believe no such thing, my lord.” He added the honorific to stress respect, subservience. Submission. Hoping—praying really—that it would settle his king’s insecurities.
“But you allowed him to pander after you, to pursue and flirt.” Arend’s other arm encircled Julian’s waist, fastening him firmly near.
Jules squeezed his eyes shut, wriggling for freedom, but Arend tightened his iron grip. Julian gasped, his chest tightening, an effect of a lifelong lung ailment that occasionally bothered him—especially when overwrought. “I allowed his attentions for but one reason. Because I—I must protect you.”
“But that is not your task,” Arend murmured in his ear, the sound husky-low and damning. His hold becoming gentler now. “You’re under my royal protection. Not vice versa.” Arend smoothed a lock of loose hair against Julian’s nape, the gesture tender. Treasuring.
“How am I to dissuade him, hmm? I can’t proclaim that I’m your concubine, tethered to House Tollemach. So, how can I?” Julian’s voice was breathy, as upward-lilted as it ever became. His accent much thicker, too. For a moment, he lapsed into Agadirian because his thoughts raced too wildly to be coherent otherwise.
“I understand the predicament,” Arend murmured. “But you’ve no reason to fear a fop like Blaine.”
Jules wheezed. A vise was tightening about him, squeezing all the air from his lungs, and he could feel the old familiar weakness settling over him. The terrifying weakness, fighting panic as his breathing gave out. “You can’t protect me from him. Nor other men like him,” he wheezed. “Because men like that always exist, everywhere, for men like me.”
Arend spun him, planting hands on Julian’s shoulders. “Did he harm you, love? I can’t see how he had time—”
“Not remotely.” He couldn’t admit the trepidation he’d experienced only moments before in this same hedge.
Arend traced a finger along his jaw, grey-blue eyes narrowing. “You’re a very paltry liar.”
Jules noted the dangerous flare in his lover’s eyes. “He hardly had time to touch me. Really.”
“Otherwise, he might have?” Arend spun him once more, until Arend’s cock stiffened behind Jules’s buttocks. “He shan’t pursue you. Nor touch you. I won’t allow it.”
The imperious tone rankled Julian. What he most needed was reassurance, not proprietary handling. “It’s one thing when a fellow like Lord Vincent behaves as if I’m promiscuous just because I’m beautiful,” he said breathily. “Quite another when my own lover treats me that way.”
Arend sighed, his hold loosening. “My apologies, Julian. Truly.” He pressed a kiss to Julian’s nape. “I did warn you that this party would be unendurable for me. The absurd pretense of it. But it’s proving far worse than I imagined. All of this . . . hiding the truth of you, what you’re coming to mean to me. I beg you, Julian, please have some compassion, even if I don’t deserve it.”
“I would never wound you intentionally. But please . . . just don’t imagine that I’m craving attention from that . . . that—”
“Airy little arse?” Arend offered, rubbing a soothing thumb at Julian’s nape.
“Not when yours is the only notice I desire.”
“My notice?” Arend shot back playfully, “or my arse?”
Rather than answer, Jules gave a slow smile and turned to face Arend. As he gazed up into the king’s light eyes and studied the fine shape of his nose and the patrician cheekbones, once more his breath threatened to give out—only this time the cause was no physical ailment, but one of the heart.
Jules studied his lover’s face. With Arend’s spoilt handsomeness, his widow’s peak—that raven hair and aquiline nose and impressive height, Arend was—
Bloody hell. Julian realized it then, the truth of his predicament, clear as if he’d been slapped across the face.
He’d gone and done the one thing that Temple Sapphor and his handler had expressly advised against–the one thing he’d been taught for years to avoid.
Julian had fallen fully, desperately in love—and not in love with any average male, for that matter, but the king. Ruler of the Western Provinces.
His heart was fluttering in his chest, his breath unable to catch, a situation worsened by Arend suddenly cupping his jaw as if the meant to kiss Julian. Now. Right now, in the hedgerow, when any might happen upon them.
“Arend. Arend.” He gasped the name, unsteady in his boots. “Arend, please, any moment and—”
Arend silenced him by capturing Julian’s mouth. The kiss was a brand, scalding his lips, as that gloved hand suddenly slid betwixt his legs. Such intimacy was pure folly, madness of the most abject kind, but then Arend was not himself: aroused and jealous, he appeared determined to behave as recklessly as he possibly could.
Julian had to protect him. At all costs, impertinence be damned. Especially because he truly did love the man, as he had just now realized in truth.
Stilling Arend’s hand against his own now-throbbing cock, Julian stared up into his king’s eyes. “My darling, any moment and Lord Vincent is going to traipse after, not just his ball, but me.” Julian nodded toward the other side of the dense hedgerow. “He’s likely lined up the shot already. He is most determined, that lord. As you can plainly see, so don’t give him fodder to scandalize you, Arend. I may not have invited his interest, but it is there, nonetheless. As you’ve more than seen for yourself.”
Arend’s face, shadowed by overhanging branches and dense greenery, appeared intensely desperate. “Is Vincent to paw after you the entire party, then?” Only when Arend cupped his jaw did Julian realize that his king was trembling. Hard. “I . . . I’d not realized how potently it would affect me. Other men displaying interest in you. Endeavoring to entice you, liaison with you. How could I not have realized how intolerable this would be? What a bloody, naïve fool I am! A middle-aged fool.”
Ah, the royal vanity. Jules had hardly thought to take that into account, but perhaps he should have. Matters were growing worse by the moment. “You’re
neither a fool nor middle-aged,” he implored.
“I am nearly two and forty, Julian. I’m the oldest gentleman on that croquet field. Likely the oldest you’ve ever bedded.”
Arend was correct on that count, but Julian wasn’t about to reveal as much. Not with the king’s prickly insecurity so on display at present.
“Am I?” Arend asked softly, expression turning vulnerable. “The oldest male you’ve ever bedded?”
Julian gave him an intentionally seductive glance. “I adore seasoned gentlemen. Haven’t I mentioned that my peers at the temple teased me about it? That my tastes particularly ran toward mature males?”
Wrong, wrong answer. Jules knew it the moment the words were out of his mouth.
“So, you have indeed been with other men like me. Seasoned men, as you put it.” Arend’s hands moved down Julian’s shoulders, clutching him as he might a treasured belonging. “You’re mine.” The words were a rumbled growl. Threatening. His hold on Julian turning punishingly possessive. “By rights, by concubinage, by—”
Julian lowered his eyes. “You are king and everything you want is ever yours, sire.” Then, more softly: “But at present, I am a danger to you.”
Arend stared down at him, expression trapped somewhere between turmoil and blind lust. “Am I to endure this from other men, as well? Throughout our twelve-month? Our concubinage?”
It rankled a bit, being objectified and downright marked as the king’s property. But there was time to discuss that much later. Besides, it always made Jules feel wanted, desperately needed, even if he didn’t care for how domineering Arend was being just now.
“Arend, you must understand,” he explained carefully. “I simply have this effect on the masculine gender, even though it’s not my intention. It’s utterly beyond my control, but it’s nonetheless to be . . . expected.” The admission caused Julian’s cheeks to scald. It was humiliating, how thoroughly his temple had cultivated his sensuality. How he’d been groomed, molded until he never even noticed his own eroticism: merely that other men reacted to him. At least, if they were attracted to other males—and sometimes even when they ordinarily were not.
Arend was staring at him very oddly, his jaw ticking. Was it with rage? More jealousy? Jules shifted on his booted feet, anxious. When Arend did not respond, he reiterated his point. “It’s very much to be expected.”
“Yes, I do believe I heard you clearly the first time.” The king’s face blanched, then reddened. Jules watched a vein pulse wildly at his lover’s brow.
Julian studied his boots, worrying at his lip. “Because of who I am. What I am, Your Majesty, because I—”
“Arend,” his lover corrected, tone stern. “Now that we’ve lain together and . . .” The king let his voice trail off. “Well, you can bloody well call me Arend after all that. You already did whilst explaining how you’re such a bloody hothouse flower that men flutter to you like bumble bees in heat.”
Julian’s patience was turning threadbare. Whyever hadn’t the temple explained more thoroughly about how unbiddable kings could be.
“Arend,” Jules began evenly, “because of what I am, men respond. They react . . . in the way that they react, no matter how much or how little effort I make to invite it.” Julian glanced up finally, surprised that Arend was trembling very nearly as much as he “In this case,” Jules added, “I certainly don’t mean to invite it.”
“It,” Arend repeated, voice eerily calm. “You don’t mean to invite it.” Then, “And what is it precisely, this thing that you’re so damned busy not inviting? Hmm?”
“The reaction. From other men. I don’t seek it out, but . . . but I am a bed slave.” Jules turned from his master, looking off into the thicket beyond them. “This is hardly a revelation to you, my king.”
“Yet you were overlooked at your temple for nearly a decade?” Arend growled, palming Julian’s cheek. He forced Jules to gaze up at him, not into the distance.
“That’s hardly a revelation, either.” Julian blinked, eyes stinging. “And Lord Vincent shan’t be the last.” The words were quiet, like acid on Julian’s tongue. “I . . . the temple paid my brother handsomely, you know. I was a valuable commodity, and they set about transforming my natural appeal. Once they were finished, I no longer realized when I was inviting attention nor how. I had become precisely what they paid me to be: a sensual creature.”
Arend’s mulish expression softened, became vulnerable. Softly he asked, “Can’t you employ that strong knee of yours, the one you once bragged to me about? Dispatch the bastard like some brigand at your temple gates with barely more than a glance and an exhalation?”
“Were I to discourage him too bluntly, he might suppose me otherwise attached—perhaps even guess that I am spoken for. By you.”
“More than spoken for. I own you for the next year.”
Julian’s breath caught; Arend’s expression froze. “Julian, I didn’t mean—”
“They never mean it, either.” Julian heaved a frustrated sigh, picking at the thorns caught in his glove. He was in no position to correct his master or his coarse words. “The gentlemen who bring men like me home to their beds.”
“Lower your voice, Julian,” Arend cautioned him sharply.
Only then did Julian realize how loudly he had begun speaking. All he wanted was to protect Arend, to shield him from any disgrace; yet in the carelessness of his emotion, Jules might very well bring about just that.
“You own me, true.” Julian spoke more quietly but made no effort to correct his aggrieved tone. Arend had hurt him, treating him like a whore—and the worst was that the king seemed not to realize he’d been doing so. “But that hardly means I can dissuade Lord Vincent. And even if I were successful in rebuffing all his most ardent attentions, in the process he might indeed realize his grave error in pawing at me”—here he made quotation marks in the air—“‘Lord Julian,’ exclusive property of His Majesty King Arend Tollemach. Owned by the realm’s sovereign.” Jules studied Arend. “But by the time he realized that, of course, we would have new and larger problems to consider.”
“I did not mean it thusly, Julian.” Arend’s expression had softened, his tone much gentler.
The change in temperament only made Julian’s eyes burn unexpectedly. He cast his gaze downward, whispering, “Twelve months and I’ve no real say in my own destiny. To you I’m naught but a bauble. Something lovely and precious and expensive you don’t wish others to behold. Or perhaps you do, and that’s the heart of the matter. It galls you that none of these visitors know I am your special jewel, imported from Agadir, bought for a premium at my temple’s public viewing. That I’m Tollemach property.”
Arend exclaimed, but not in response to Julian’s taunt. “Your temple is not a slave market!” Arend exclaimed. “I’d never support such a thing, nor patronize the establishment.”
Julian smiled sadly. “I am a pleasure servant. What difference is there, really?”
“My . . . attachment to you, namely. My fondness.”
Jules snapped his gaze upward, meeting Arend’s stare. “Ah, so you do admit you are fond of me? Fond of the crown jewel, the latest addition to the Tollemach fortunes—”
Arend seized his shoulders, and only then did Julian realize just how badly his king was trembling. “Julian. Desist at once.”
“I can hardly proclaim my position in your life.” Julian cast him a tentative glance. “Nor can you own what I mean to you—neither in private, nor even during a simple croquet game. Which gives me very little recourse with Lord Vincent or any other male who pursues me.” Julian squared his shoulders, lifting his chin proudly. “Thus, as I say, such reactions are to be expected.”
What Julian expected was for Arend to quiet him. To sooth him. To reassure with words of devotion, proclaiming that but one thing that mattered—Julian was the king’s concubine.
Instead, with a bloodless and strained expression, Arend bent down, swept up Julian’s ball, and said, “As for my toleranc
e of such behavior? You should not expect that.”
With that, Arend Tollemach walked out of the hedge, never even gracing Jules with a backward glance.
With that, Arend Tollemach walked out of the hedge, never even gracing Jules with a backward glance.
Compassion. Dear God, Jules was going to need to delve deep to find even a measure of that. What he most wanted was to chase down his master and thrash him, until he grew reasonable and less jealous. With a sigh, Jules straightened the front of his waistcoat and strode toward the croquet lawn. His pulse skittered wildly as he prepared to face Lord Vincent anew. He could only pray that the lordling would behave, given how temperamental Arend was at present.
If not? Jules feared that something disastrous might befall them. Something that would threaten not only his concubinage with Arend, but the king’s very throne.
Chapter Five
Arend sank back into his dining chair, grateful for Sam’s fine wine. He’d need a good portion to survive this miserable luncheon, much less the remaining house party.
Across the table, Julian conversed congenially with Alistair, and it was bloody difficult not to gaze at his lover. Arend longed to catch Julian’s eye to silently apologize for his boorish behavior in the hedgerow. There’d been no excuse whatsoever. Not even his pathetic jealousy. Yet for all his subtle attempts, Julian only glanced at him briefly, offering vague, unimpeachable smiles each time.
And then there was Lord Vincent Blaine, the dandy, with his too-fashionable frockcoat and blond ringlets, and those britches. Blaine’s valet must have poured him into those unmentionables like melted wax. Apparently, the wax had hardened, because not one scrap of the man’s figure was left to imagination. The whole bloody thing was unmentionable, not just his britches.
“I say, Your Majesty,” Sam announced suddenly, dragging Arend back to the moment. “When was the last time you saw Lord Harcourt?”
“The Earl of Harcourt?” Arend repeated, blinking uncertainly. He’d been lost in his woolgathering and hadn’t the foggiest why that earl had come up.