by T M Chris
Thoros grinned the grin Dalin had come to know too well and said, “Enjoy it while you can.”
Dalin didn’t know what he was meant to be enjoying, so he kept his head up and refused to follow Thoros with his eyes as he moved around the small cottage. Whatever torture session Thoros had in mind, Dalin would endure it.
“Arms out,” Thoros ordered. “Palms up.” When Dalin complied, Thoros placed a chalice on each hand. Full, based on the weight. “Spill so much as a drop, and you lose.”
The chalices weren’t light, but they weren’t heavy either. Dalin snorted at the idea that he wouldn’t be able to support them.
“Now, up on your toes.”
Carefully, so as not to jiggle the chalices, he tried to comply, remembering as his knees straightened why he’d had them bent. The thong pulled his balls down as Thoros prodded him higher until Dalin was up on his toes, gasping from the strain of inflicting such tearing pain on himself.
Two new points of pain flared on his chest. He looked down to see that Thoros had fastened a twist of metal around each of his nipples, cinching them tight to squeeze his pulsing buds. The devilish contraptions were joined by a chain that stretched up over his head. Dalin was familiar with the bolt to which they connected. He’d been strung up to it before, but never by the tender flesh of his nipples.
“There you go,” Thoros said. “You can bend your knees again if you like.”
But he couldn’t, of course, not without pulling on the clamps. The lower he sank, the more searing the pain in his nipples. The higher he rose, the stronger the throb in his balls. And meanwhile …
Meanwhile, there were two full chalices balanced on his palms, heavier than they’d seemed at first and growing heavier by the moment. He couldn’t decide which hurt worse—his nipples, his balls, his arms, or the dull, unsatisfied ache of denial that never left his cock—but every shift brought fresh agony.
Dalin closed his eyes, breathing through the pain, allowing it to own him. He could endure. He would.
“You’re so hard.” A rough hand teased his cock, sliding along his shaft with a punishing grip.
“Because you won’t let me touch myself.”
“It’s my cock now. Not for you to touch. When you learn that, I won’t have to restrain you at night. You’ll keep your hands off yourself because you’ll know to whom your cock belongs.”
“That’s never going to happen.”
Warm breath blew over the back of Dalin’s neck, startling him enough that the chalices shook.
“It’ll happen,” Thoros said evenly as he continued to fondle Dalin’s cock with one hand while stroking down through the cleft of his ass with the other. “Careful with those chalices.”
“Then stop distracting me.”
Thoros laughed. “Pretty thing, I haven’t even started distracting you.”
How could a chalice be so heavy? Did he not raise one every time he took a drink? Thoros’s hand squeezing his cock felt so good. He tried to concentrate only on that, on the rush of pleasure that cut through the growing numbness in his arms and the red hot points of pain that were his nipples and the deep, abiding ache in his balls. It’d been so long since he’d come. Days already. He could almost pretend it was all that mattered—that if Thoros would give him this, then he could bear the rest.
“How long?” he asked. His calves had started to cramp in addition to his other host of miseries, but when he lowered his heels to relieve the strain on them, relief came at the cost of a renewed flare of pain in his nipples. “How long do I have to stay like this?”
“That depends. How fast can you make me come?”
Fuck, he’d gladly make Thoros come if it would release him from this torture, especially if Thoros would make him come in return, but, “How am I supposed to do that?” His mouth was a little high off the ground for Thoros to take his pleasure in it, and his hands were fully occupied.
The sudden intrusion of a greased finger into his ass answered that question. Dalin reacted with a jerk, going higher on his toes which gave his balls a hearty yank. The chalices wavered. He sucked in his breath, waiting to see if they’d topple.
“Balance,” Thoros reminded him. “There’s no room for reaction. Every motion controlled, coordinated.”
Easy for Thoros to say. He didn’t have a cock nudging at him, thick and unwieldy and demanding entrance where a couple of weeks ago Dalin had never permitted entry. Thoros wasn’t balancing on the balls of his feet either, unable to move more than a few inches either up or down, paying for even those small movements with self-inflicted flashes of pain.
Dalin held himself still nevertheless until Thoros had seated himself fully, his cock not as foreign as it’d been that first time. The burn in Dalin’s ass was almost welcome in the sea of other sensations. All he had to do was keep his balance while Thoros fucked him and it would be over. He could lower his arms, lower his heels, maybe get a hand on himself while Thoros’s back was turned to relieve the pressure in his balls.
But once buried, Thoros remained there—as still as Dalin, just his breath fluttering against Dalin’s ear and his fingers sliding surprisingly lightly along his shaft.
“Well?” Dalin asked. “I thought you were going to fuck me.” It wasn’t that he wanted to be fucked, though he didn’t hate it exactly. It was just that he wanted this over with.
“No, I said you were going to make me come. So get to it. Or don’t. I like where I am fine enough to stay awhile.” Thoros nuzzled into his neck, one of those unsettling gestures of tenderness that Dalin hated more than anything, but the tenderness of the gesture contrasted with the sadistic intent of his words. Dalin was supposed to make Thoros come? Without hands, without mouth, with only a few inches of play—every inch of which was painful? How the fuck was he supposed to do that?
But he wouldn’t ask, wouldn’t give Thoros the satisfaction of knowing he’d set an impossible task. He squeezed his ass muscles as tight as he could and flushed with triumph at Thoros’s answering groan. He would milk the man. Milk him and … yes, fuck him.
He rose up higher on his toes, ignoring the answering scream from his balls, then sank all the way down on his heels, allowing the resulting flash of pain in his nipples to spur him, squeezing his ass all the while. Up and down. Carefully, slowly, the chalices at first shaky but growing steadier as he found his balance, found his rhythm.
“Fuck, Dalin. Fuck me.”
He would. He would fuck Thoros—fuck Thoros like Thoros had fucked him. Relentlessly, ruthlessly, taking his own pleasure because there—that was what he needed. His next shift caused the head of Thoros’s cock to brush over the spot inside him that craved it. Thoros’s hand was light around his shaft, but it was enough.
He was dimly aware as he moved that he was speaking, throwing curses out to the man behind him and maybe, almost, pleading. He choked back those words, swallowing them into the fury and the frenzy, until the words became sobs and he came in a burst of agonized pleasure, his cock gushing over Thoros’s hand, feeling the hot wetness inside him that meant Thoros had come too.
And then he was crying, turning his head into his shoulder to try to disguise his sobs but only crying the harder when Thoros slipped the clamps from his nipples and took the chalices from his hands and blessed relief coursed through him so strongly he almost fell, but Thoros was there with an arm around him to guide him down into a chair.
“Drink. This one first.” Thoros lifted one of those cursed chalices to Dalin’s lips and he drank without taking hold of the chalice himself. His arms were as limp as his dick, as tired as his calves, as languorous as his quiet mind.
The chalice held water, cool and wet, and Dalin drank it in slow sips as Thoros had taught him. Then Thoros lifted the second chalice, and this one held wine—warmer, headier—and he drank it even more slowly, barely noticing when Thoros took a swallow himself.
“You don’t mind if we share a cup, do you?”
Dalin burst into a laugh too raucous
to be fully sane. “Don’t mind if we share a cup,” he repeated with a shake of his head, unable to stop laughing at it. It was the funniest thing he’d ever heard somehow, and he wondered if he could be drunk from those few swallows of wine or if he was only drunk on pain and relief and the pure glory of that orgasm.
“You’re going to do well,” Thoros said affectionately as he unbraided Dalin’s hair and fluffed it out into waves across his shoulders. “There will be no other man there who can take what you can take.”
Dalin stifled the giggles that still threatened to erupt out of him with every soothing touch of Thoros’s hands. He felt so oddly euphoric, as though he’d never been so happy, and really, had he ever been happy? Life was suffering. Life with Thoros was also suffering, but suffering with a purpose. Suffering with a payoff. It was different here with Thoros, in his stone cottage with his demands and his punishments and his hands that were both hard and gentle.
“You think I’ll win?”
“I expect you to.” Thoros smacked his shoulder, which was the only part of him that didn’t ache. He sat down in the other chair and raised the chalice of wine to his mouth.
Dalin watched Thoros’s lips part, his eyes glued to the red liquid that ran through them, thirsting. He licked his own lips, wondering what Thoros’s would feel like against them. He’d seen people kissing before, but he’d never understood the allure.
“I worry about Rory,” Thoros said as he lowered the chalice back to the table.
Dalin turned it so that the spot he’d drunk from faced him and raised it to his own mouth. “Why Rory?”
“He’s tough, but wiry. Tenacious, but malleable. Like you, only more so and less so. Better suited for Atalanta, perhaps.”
“I’m not malleable.” He pushed the chalice across the table and suppressed a grin when Thoros likewise rotated it to find the spot from which he’d drunk.
“You will be,” Thoros said in that darkly predictive tone that made Dalin’s nerves thrum. Why did Dalin want to be malleable for him?
“And if I win, then what? I’m a slave to Atalanta?” He’d expected freedom.
“A slave to Atalanta, but a prince to the world. Fair trade?”
“I don’t know.” He’d have thought so once. Every asshole on the street had the right to order him around now. To have only one master would be a step up, but still. To have even one master ... Mistress, he corrected himself. The thought made him uneasy.
“I’d better not see you playing to lose,” Thoros warned him.
Dalin snorted. As if he’d ever lose intentionally. Whether he wanted the prize or not, he’d give his all to win it.
Thoros
The contestants stood on only one leg, but at least that leg was flat-footed. And the cups balanced on their hands were delicate, certainly weighing less than the heavy metal of Thoros’s own drinking vessels. Other than that, he’d guessed well. Balance, poise, stillness. All the traits he’d drilled into Dalin for the last week were being tested as the contestants stood at attention with their arms spread wide in perfect formation.
It didn’t take more than a few minutes before the first cup fell. Thoros grinned when one of the more muscle-bound, cocky contestants gave it up with a groan—one cup then the other splashing their contents on the ground as the large man tipped heavily over onto both feet. Big muscles handled big tasks, but the littler muscles? Those so seldom got worked when large weights were thrown around with graceless force. Men who’d done well in the chariot-pulling contest struggled with simple stillness.
Once the less-graceful had been eliminated, Atalanta sent her minions out to fell the rest of the field. A bevy of giggling young women approached the contestants with feathers and fingernails, tickling and tweaking, rubbing their breasts up against them. One man after another was taken down by their distraction—sneezing from a feather beneath the nose or wincing at pinch. Or just letting the cups drop in resignation, unable to hold them another moment.
But not Dalin. He stood rock still, eyes forward, paying no mind to the women or to the crash of cups as one competitor after another dropped out until only he and Rory remained, a mere handbreadth separating their extended fingertips.
Well, they’d known Rory would be competition. He’d finished well in the chariot race considering his smaller size, and here he was vying for the win again today. The girls tired of playing their games under the midday sun and returned to the canopy from which Atalanta watched. It was a waiting game now.
Thoros, seated cross-legged in the sand nearby, heard Rory complain about the flies teasing at his nipples. Fuck, what Thoros had done to Dalin’s nipples in the last week. He would love to be one of those flies flitting about him now—flicking and licking, teasing out Dalin’s pleasure and pain with his cock buried deep in Dalin’s velvety grip.
Flies would be nothing to Dalin, so Thoros was amused when Dalin responded. “I just shake them off when they get at me.”
Rory snorted disbelievingly. “You’re not going to get me to try to shake anything off.”
“No, really. Watch.” Dalin, balancing easily on a single leg, went up on his toes then lowered himself back down. “See? Chases them right away.” He did it again, repeatedly, up and down, making Thoros thicken beneath his skirt as he remembered how Dalin had worked his cock with his inner muscles as he’d raised and lowered himself with increasing urgency.
He bunched the leather of his skirt up to give Dalin a peek at the effect he was having, urging him to go on because Rory, perhaps desperate for relief from the flies or perhaps wanting to demonstrate his own balance, had started to emulate him. Slowly, Rory rose onto the toes of his supporting leg and then, haltingly, he lowered himself again.
“You have to go a bit faster,” Dalin said, and Thoros nearly groaned to see those calf muscles work, remembering, remembering. His hand inched up his thigh until he couldn’t stop himself from digging beneath his skirt to give himself a hearty squeeze.
Later, he promised Dalin with his eyes. Later, he would pay Dalin back for this tease.
Rory twisted, caught off balance when he tried to rise on his toes again. He flailed, arms windmilling in an attempt to keep the cups upright, but he couldn’t recover. First one cup, then the other, splashed its contents onto the ground while Dalin remained perfectly balanced, perfectly still once again, not even a smile of victory marring the smooth symmetry of the lines of his body.
Atalanta wound down the stairs to inspect Dalin’s winning poise more closely. “I’m surprised that one so strong can be so still. How long could he stay like this, I wonder.” She trailed an appreciative hand over the globes of Dalin’s ass which weren’t well covered by the skimpy loincloth in which Thoros had dressed him that morning.
“For as long as you required, Princess. Dalin,” he ordered, “Yang short form.”
Dalin launched into one of the routines Thoros had trained him in, never allowing the cups to drop as he flowed smoothly from posture to posture.
“Impressive,” Atalanta said as Dalin stretched towards her, balanced on one leg with the other horizontal behind him forming a straight line with his spine. “How flexible is he?”
“Flexible enough to mold himself into anything you him ask to be.” Thoros saw Dalin’s mouth twitch at the idea of fitting himself to serve the princess, but no other muscle moved. He remained in the pose called warrior three. A true warrior.
“We shall see.” She drew away to dismiss the other competitors, sending another handful home for good. Of the ten who remained, Dalin would be the obvious favorite.
Thoros took the cups from Dalin’s palms and nodded at him to stand. He saw the wince Dalin tried to hide, and offered his hand, but Dalin shook it off, following him without comment out of the arena and down the long road that led to home. It wasn’t until they reached the edge of town that Dalin collapsed into the dust along the side of the road to grab at the calf that’d borne his weight for so long.
Dalin
The
cramp was sheer agony, different from the erotic torture to which Thoros daily subjected him. This was nothing but a blinding ball of pain.
“There, there. Let me.” Thoros climbed on top of him to stretch the cramped limb straight again, massaging the muscle with strong fingers as Dalin tried not to howl. Thoros’s manipulations were therapeutic, he knew, but it hurt, it hurt. He panted into the dust, his eyes wet with the ignominy of falling apart now, when it was all over. He’d won. Again. And again it was Thoros’s cruel training that had given him the upper hand.
“I wasn’t expecting she’d have you on one foot,” Thoros said as his thumbs stripped down his leg, kneading the last of the pain from it. “Could’ve trained you for it better.”
“You trained me perfectly.” The admission came hard but felt good once made.
“Yeah?” Thoros’s voice contained a hint of amusement. He slapped Dalin on the thigh and got back to his feet. “Going to stick with me then?”
“You haven’t heard me complaining, have you?” He rose likewise, testing his leg gingerly, hopping a step forward when it threatened to cramp again.
“No, you never complain.” Thoros watched him with amused eyes. “Beg sometimes.”
“I don’t beg.”
“It’s a lot like begging, the way you same my name over and over while I’m fucking you. Ah, ah, ah. Thoros, fuck, Thoros. What’s that?”
“It’s not begging. I’ve never said please.”
“Not yet. You will though.”
Dalin didn’t bother to answer. He wouldn’t beg. He wouldn’t quit. He wouldn’t say please.
“Come on, hop up.” Thoros turned his back and offered it to him.
“You’re not seriously going to carry me?”