A King Awakened

by Cooper Davis

  Yearn to be buggered. Arend trembled, recoiling in horrified arousal. He could barely find words, much less his breath. “Y-you are wrong about me,” Arend stammered hoarsely. “Just as Cordelia was.” Julian watched him, expression softly pained. “It’s what you need. What will set you free, if you’d just submit.”

  “Y-you can’t bugger me.” Arend backed away again, colliding with the shrub behind him. “I’m your king.”

  His own father, the late monarch, had been repelled by Arend’s inclinations. Once, he’d even overheard his sire deriding his son’s predilections to none other than Cordelia: “He indulged his male lusts at too young an age,” the old king confided, “He became utterly inflamed.”

  Arend had wanted to rush into that great hall and shout, “I never once even kissed a man! This was not my choice!” Instead, he’d walked away quivering, and it was the first time he imagined a visit to Temple Sapphor. Even if for but one night, he’d thought, then quickly shuttered that dream away.

  “I never can,” he whispered hoarsely to Julian now. “I . . . you don’t understand. I won’t yield to you that way.”

  “Because you refuse emotional attachment. I know, Arend.” Julian walked away from him, hands poised at his hips as he kicked at the pebbled path. A few rocks went flying, then he glanced back at Arend. “It was in the concubinary papers, your mandate. No emotional involvement.”

  “Yes, jolly that,” Arend said dejectedly. “We’ve both managed to breach that codicil.”

  Slowly, Jules pivoted to face him. “Then why not give yourself over to me? I’d be so gentle.”

  At once, Arend’s mind became flooded with images, things he daredn’t speak aloud. Of himself prone beneath his lover, of being claimed. . . Arend’s head thrown back as cries of ecstasy were ripped from his throat. And then another, of Arend spread up against the wall of his boudoir, legs spread, Julian’s hips pinioned against his own.

  With a gasp, he shook off the forbidden vision, palming the shrub behind him. He stood there, breathless, hands splayed helplessly against that hedge.

  And Julian must have seen something in his expression, because suddenly the man was right upon Arend, palms braced at either side of Arend’s face.

  Instinctively, Arend moved his own hands to Julian’s waist, clutching hard. His concubine’s mouth pressed to his ear, the man’s large body engulfing Arend’s own. “What,” Julian whispered hotly, “if I paid for the honor?” Then he did a truly wicked thing: he licked Arend’s shaven cheek, a swift lap of tongue that was downright erotic. “If I were the one who paid, perhaps then you’d surrender completely, yes? Cede over that tremulous control you barely cling to, even now.” Julian pressed lips to Arend’s ear and whispered hotly, “If I paid, you’d grant me full dominion.”

  Arend pressed palms against Julian’s chest, flattening them, struggling to push him away. He shoved again—grappling physically, even as he secretly prayed Julian would unshackle his deepest needs. “You’ve taken unthinkable liberties with those words.”

  Julian backed away, open hands extended. “I don’t understand you, Arend.” He shook his head ruefully. “You come close, then you retreat. Just when I think I have a part of you, you shove me away. Or give me away, as you did at luncheon, in the space of a moment.” Then, very quietly, Julian asked, “Why did you do it, Arend?”

  “Because,” he answered hoarsely. “You stared at my foster brother in the same way you gaze at me. The precise fashion. I was convinced you must have been pretending with me all along, too.” Arend trembled, averting his gaze. “I believed myself a fool, to think you aroused by a middle-aged man like me.”

  Julian stared at him, dumbfounded, and moved much closer. “This,” Julian said evenly, “is why I honestly wonder if I shouldn’t pay you. Turn this arrangement upon its head.” He dragged Arend’s hand to his own groin, his own rigid cock. “Privately. Only between ourselves.”

  “What . . . what are you . . . .” Arend gulped. Beneath his palm, Julian’s thick cock surged. “ . . . Suggesting?”

  “That behind boudoir doors, you become concubine,” Julian said, “and I . . . your master.”

  Chapter Eight

  Arend couldn’t breathe; he’d gone lightheaded. Those words were nearly an echo of Cordelia’s long-ago sneer. Perhaps I should be king and you my queen.

  But Julian gazed at him almost demurely, the blush on his cheeks intensifying. “With you my slave, I’d be the one who finally tamed you . . . harnessed all your forbidden lusts. Only we would know, and you’d be assured of safety in my arms. I’d be gentle. Tutor you in submission, slowly.”

  “I’m not bloody well suited to anything of the sort,” Arend snapped. “You’re the one who spent a decade training for amorous service—not I!” He seized Julian’s shoulders, pushing him back into the shrub until their chests pressed tightly. “These are treasonous words, bed slave. You’d make me—King of the Western Provinces—your bed slave?” Arend hissed, breathless with arousal. “You do not command me.” He pinioned Julian’s hands over his head. “You do not take dominion over your own bloody king.”

  Julian’s eyes became heavy-lidded as Arend tightened his hold on the man’s wrists. “My sole task is to pleasure you, sire,” he said. “’Tis the only reason I would suggest the idea. You came for me, hired me, for this very reason: that I might awaken and indulge you.” Julian blinked slowly. “I have merely put voice to the things you can’t articulate, sire. That you daren’t.”

  Arend blinked, unmanned by the truth of the words. He stretched Julian’s hands higher above his head, forcing the man’s body into a posture of submission.

  “I shall guide you,” Julian continued softly, his gaze unwavering. “As you come under my tutelage. I’ll make it safe.”

  “Make . . . what safe?” Arend asked, voice barely recognizable even to himself.

  “Complete and total”—Julian eyed him significantly—“submission.”

  Arend drew in a sharp breath. Julian was plainly saying, not just that he’d bugger Arend, but how he’d do it.

  Arend pressed his forehead to Julian’s own. “Don’t ask for what I cannot give.” He rubbed a thumb down the masculine column of his concubine’s throat and felt the fluttering movement of his pulse. He kept his gloved hand there, caressing. “I cannot allow you that privilege. I’m unable, Julian. Surely . . . surely you understand.”

  Oh, Julian understood. He slid a palm between their closely pinioned hips, stroking Arend. “Then let me pleasure you. Here and now,” he said huskily. “We are deep within this garden, wholly secluded. Finley’s to meet me, but not just yet.”

  “An assignation?” Arend pulled back sharply, staring at Julian.

  “No,” Julian answered evenly. “To discuss the luncheon fiasco. That pesky business of a queen, no?”

  Arend stepped away, relinquishing his hold on Julian. “I’m appalled by my behavior, my idiotic jealousy. All of it.” He turned and began walking ahead, face burning from need and shame.

  “Then make it right.” Julian fell into step beside him. “Before Finley happens upon us.” He clasped Arend’s arm, halting him. “Whilst we’re still alone, make things right. Do you understand, sire?”

  He bloody well understood. Julian had all the control, was directing Arend as to what he should do—and how he should do it.

  And it was fucking delicious, all of it.

  “You’ll make things right, Arend.” Arend. Even the commands themselves were becoming more personal, less deferential.

  “Yes, my Julian. As you wish.” Arend’s blood ran hot, and his cock tightened at his own willing capitulation.

  He tugged Jules’s gloved hand, all but dragging him deeper into the box hedge maze. They strode down one green corridor and then another and another, and when they reached the maze’s center, Arend spun Julian into his arms. “Now what?” he asked, breathless and unstrung. “What shall I do now, Julian?”

  Giving Arend’s jaw a considering
stroke, Julian studied him. One gloved fingertip trailed down to his mouth, and Jules teased the corner of his lips. “Kiss me again, Arend. Against the shrub, as before.” Julian’s gaze traveled behind him, to the high hedge.

  Eager to play this game, Arend didn’t hesitate. He back-stepped Julian until he was against the bush.

  “How shall I?” Arend pinioned the man’s arms above his head, as before. “Instruct me how to kiss you.”

  “You decide,” Julian gasped as Arend stretched his arms overhead, manacling them together with his one large hand of his own. “Whatever you wish for, take it.” There it was again—the command. The tutelage.

  Arend released his hold on Julian and began unfastening his own front flap. “This is what I wish, concubine.”

  “Then your pleasure it shall be,” Julian said with a compliant nod.

  Arend groaned in agonized desire, finishing off the buttons of his front flap. The fabric fell open, revealing the laces of Arend’s smallclothes. Julian swiftly unfastened those bindings and moved a gloved hand inside Arend’s drawers.

  Arend panted, savoring that sensation of softest kidskin against his own turgid flesh. “You’ll stain the glove,” he cautioned, even as he surged into Julian’s hand.

  “So?” Julian asked absentmindedly, preoccupied with giving pleasure to his lover.

  “So,” Arend managed to say, “your valet will know about us.”

  Julian drew a damning thumb across his slit. “No, the best conclusion anyone could draw would be that a man had spilled his seed there—but as to what sort of man it was, well, you’d not be most people’s first guess.” He thought for a moment. “And with this announcement today, well, anyone would reason that it’s Finley’s seed, not your own.”

  “And that’s . . . better? Dear God.”

  Julian answered by stroking him again, and Arend lost himself in his lover’s skilled caresses. Jules knew every touch that would most arouse him. It was in the way he lingered at Arend’s tip, then stroked him root to head. And in how he fingered Arend’s slit, making his manhood dampen.

  A button at the edge of Julian’s glove caught against the head of Arend’s cock, creating a wicked spike of pleasured pain. He wanted that again, but daredn’t ask. Once again, though, Julian intuited his desires. “You may either remove my glove with your teeth,” Julian suggested huskily, “or risk my buttons catching against your tip again. Your choice, sire.”

  Julian stilled, hand about Arend’s prick, lips against Arend’s ear. The decision hung in the balance betwixt them. Was it to be gentlemanly pleasure or risqué pain?

  The pain was merely a twinge, a flirtation with something more damning.

  Arend cradled Julian’s palm against his own flesh, forcing that button to flick against his slit—and his tip—repeatedly. And then Julian pressed Arend’s guiding hand aside and took over with far more skill than even Arend could have predicted.

  Jules moved Arend’s undergarments down over his hips. His buckskins pooled about his boots, and a brush of spring air caressed his erect manhood. Julian rolled his bollocks with one skillful hand, and with the other worked him aggressively from tip to root.

  Then Julian dropped to his knees and knelt before him, worshipful. When he glanced up, his velvet-lashed eyes were hooded and dark with arousal. “Sire, might I remind you that Finley is likely to happen upon us soon?”

  Arend squeezed his eyes shut. “Don’t. Care.” He drew in a shuddering breath. “Take me as you wilt.”

  Julian pressed his mouth against Arend’s tip, lapping at the light seed that had begun to seep from his slit. Then, suddenly, Arend’s cock was fully engulfed by that mouth, Julian taking him deep—full hilt—as he seized Arend’s buttocks, canting his hips forward.

  Julian sucked him harder, but a muffled laugh vibrated through the man, across Arend’s drawn cock. Arend’s need spiraled upward, cresting, breaking on the rocks of his own vulnerability. He felt a shudder begin, spiral-tight, unfurling.

  That was when a stern—and much too familiar—voice broke his reverie. “The pair of you are fools.”

  Arend squeezed his eyes closed, unable to stop the release that was surging through him.

  “Hack-brained fools,” the voice said now, breaking Arend’s reverie.

  “Fin!” He choked his brother’s name out, but was helpless to stop the crescendo, his unraveling. “Alistair, don’t . . . ”

  Julian didn’t pull off. He cupped a hand about Arend’s groin, lovingly sheltering him from Alistair’s view. He’d had no choice: Jules could not pull off now without Arend’s seed splashing all over them both. But Arend was already losing control, his hips rolling fast and desperate. With a bark, he spurted hot, thick seed down Julian’s throat, his thrusting hips riding the release to completion. He couldn’t help crying out at the release, even with his brother as audience, and as he finally spent himself down Julian’s gullet, he finally dared glance up. Ashamed and unmoored and gasping for breath.

  He found Alistair—his shy, spinster brother—standing there, red-faced and appalled, glancing painfully away.

  Julian stood to his feet again, his own erection wilting under the watchful eye of one Mr. Alistair Finley. The gentleman regarded both Jules and Arend from ten paces away, projecting his utter exasperation at the spectacle they’d just made of themselves. Sighing. Muttering. Cursing them. And muttering more, about how—if Alistair didn’t mind them constantly—they’d bring down House Tollemach completely.

  “I shan’t ever recover my honor,” Finley growled, “much less your own.”

  Arend rolled his eyes and shoved shirttails into his britches, scrabbling at his trouser buttons. His master’s hands shook. Badly. Intimacy was still so very new to the king.

  Julian stepped closer, reaching to help. “Here, darling,” he said, fastening off the man’s buckskins easily.

  “I’m unnerved that you’re so deft whilst under duress,” Arend whispered appreciatively, cupping Julian’s cheek.

  Which earned them both even more sighing and exasperation from Finley. “I’ve no doubt that Julian is quite adept at post-coital valet work.” He folded arms over his broad chest, glowering at them so hard that Jules nearly withered beneath the secretary’s flinty regard.

  Arend buttoned his frockcoat and strode toward him. “Alistair, my sincerest apologies. You weren’t meant to stumble upon, urm”—he coughed—“the precipitous event.”

  Finley reared back. “Precipitous, sire? Don’t bother with euphemisms. At least call the blasted encounter what it was.”

  “A proper sucking off?” Arend folded arms over his own chest, squaring off with his foster brother.

  Finley’s face first drained of color, then swiftly turned deepest russet. “Hardly proper.” He sniffed, setting his lips in a disapproving line. “In a garden, in daylight?”

  “Would midnight have suited you better?” Arend fired right back.

  It was comforting to realize that Finley couldn’t bring Arend into obeisance, not any more than Julian could.

  “And you”—Finley swept a cutting glance at Julian—“you, Lord Julian, clearly had no intention of remedying our king’s predicament at all. Otherwise, you’d not have played the part of . . . of obliging—”

  “Do not say it.” Arend cut the man off, his warning startlingly sharp.

  A look of mortification seized Alistair’s face. “I was merely remarking upon—”

  “I mean it, Alistair.” Arend’s eyes narrowed, grey irises turning a darker, stormy hue. “If you finish that statement, I’ll be forced to call you out.”

  “It’s all right, sire.” Jules turned to Alistair and held his glance without flinching. “I’m sure Mr. Finley was about to admonish me for playing the only part I’m truly suited for. That of obliging whore.”

  Finley sighed, his eyes closing briefly. “The part of obliging lover, Julian. Lover was what I meant to say. Had I been allowed to finish.” The gentleman’s long-lashed, midnight eyes op
ened, and he fixed an onyx stare upon his foster brother. “See, Your Highness? No need to call your stodgy secretary out—the fellow so prim, he finds afternoon assigs scandalous.” He looked Arend up and down. “Especially when accompanied by the dropping of kingly drawers.”

  “Careful,” Arend said silkily, “I might call you out yet.” Then he jerked his head significantly in Julian’s direction, widening his eyes in silent communication with Finley.

  Finley nodded subtly and turned to Julian with a gentlemanly bow. “My sincerest apologies, Julian. I would never have spoken of you—nor the part you play in our king’s life—so coarsely.”

  “But it’s not a part I play, Mr. Finley,” Jules responded. “It’s what I am, who I am—His Majesty’s lover.”

  “Quite right.” Alistair swiped an errant lock of glossy black hair away from his brow. “Fully consummated, the concubinary contract is by now. Quite right.” The man’s gaze went distant for a moment. “Which means it can no longer be nullified.”

  “Actually, it can be,” Julian countered, a pang of heartache welling inside. “His Majesty ensured that the termination codicil was iron-clad.”

  Finley stood there, frowning down at the pebbled path between them, then removed his spectacles. “All the same,” he said, “per our oldest laws, a concubinage is legitimized once consummated. Those laws take precedence over your codicils.” The secretary glanced significantly at Arend. “Which I would have clarified, had you sought me out before drafting those papers, sire.”

  Arend’s expression turned churlish, rebelling against his advisor’s rebuke. “How the devil would anyone prove our consummation?” the king laughed, but the reaction conveyed a hint of nervousness. “None should be the wiser about such intimacies.”

  “Unless, perchance, they witnessed His Majesty receiving a proper afternoon sucking off. The royal treatment, in a garden no less.” Finley gave them each a reproachful glance.