Welcome to The Prince’s Boy by Cecilia Tan, a tale of a prince and his whipping boy ensnared in a plot of dark erotic magic. Warning: explores themes of dubious consent and situations of sexual jeopardy. NSFW.

A new chapter appears every Wednesday. This week is Chapter Thirty: Jorin

30: Jorin

When I came to, I was still bound, but this time my hands were in front of me and I was not blindfolded. I was lying on a blanket that smelled of horse and I appeared to be in a small tent.

My head felt like metalsmiths with hammers were shaping it from the inside and my mouth was as dry as if they had gagged me with cloth. I winced as someone pulled aside the flap of the tent and the brightness felt like needles in my eyes.

“Ah, poor thing. Here you go.”

Kan. He crouched to enter the low tent and knelt by my head. I heard the sound of a flask being unscrewed. He tipped my mouth upward and poured a mouthful of something intensely bitter onto my tongue, but I swallowed it. He let go and already the pain had eased slightly. “I told you you’d feel like this. The tingle-tingle bush in full bloom? I’m not sure if you were lucky or unlucky there, my friend.”

“Kan,” I tried to say but it just came out a croak.

“One thing at a time,” he said, putting a finger to my lips to quiet me. He gave me water next, then went back out of the tent. I did not hear his footsteps, but when he came back in, I had the impression he had circled the tent. “All right. Quietly now. I say lucky because if you’d been awake like the other soldiers you probably would have ended with an arrow in your back. And if you hadn’t been hallucinating and talking aloud, I wouldn’t have realized who you were before I slit your throat, either, Jorin Weltskin.”

He knew who I was! I lay quiet and still for a few moments, thinking over how close I had come to being killed but nonetheless amused by his new name for me. Perhaps the part of the dream where Kenet had been checking over my scars wasn’t completely a dream after all. The water eased the burning in my throat and I tried again to speak. “You say you won’t harm the prince.” Yes, I could speak. “But how can I join you if you fight the crown? Kenet has my loyalty and my goal is to return to him. You must… you must let me go.”

He sat cross-legged next to me. “And where would you go? Weren’t you exiled from the castle?”

Well, yes. What else did he know? My cheeks burned hot, but I was stubborn. “I will find a way to get him a message.”

“And then what? Spirit him away? Actually, Weltskin, that is an excellent plan. We would have long ago kidnapped him if we had thought we had any hope of being successful.” He shook his head slowly. “There’s no getting through the defenses of that bastard Seroi.”

I could not help it. I jerked upright at the sound of that name and made myself dizzy and had to lie down again, waiting for the nausea and vertigo to pass. But once they did, I said, “It was Seroi who separated me from the prince. Who had me banished.”

Kan’s hand was warm and solid on my upper arm as he helped me to sit up again. “Is that so? You may have to tell that tale to the others to convince them of the trueness of your heart.”

“And are you convinced, Kan?” I asked.

He grinned. “You will have your opportunity to prove it to me. Joining our band is not a trivial step. Your loyalty and resolve will be put to the test. I cannot predict, though, how exactly the others will want to test you…”

I shook my head. “No one should doubt the lengths I will go to for Kenet.”

Kan’s hand slid over my bare back. “Indeed, if these marks are the testimony of it.”

“You seem to know about me,” I said then. “If so, you know I have been by his side, and receiving these welts on his behalf, since he was a very young child.”

“As were you,” Kan said, standing then. “If you are who you say you are, of course. As I said, you’ll have to convince the others.” He threw open the tentflap then and whistled. Gresh and a man I hadn’t seen before lifted me from the blanket and carried me out into the summer sun, then into the trees. They stopped in a small dell, and Gresh held me still while the other lashed my bound wrists above my head to a long rope suspended between two trees.

I sighed in resignation. “Let me guess. You have a pulley somewhere so if you like, you can lift me in the air to hang like a puppet.”

Kan took a swallow from a bottle that Gresh handed him. “Just so.”

“Been strung up like this before?” Gresh asked, his frown making his brow protrude like a cliff. “How many times did you desert the army?”

“What are you talking about? Only the once, when you found me.”

He snorted. “The looks of the marks on your back say you’ve been whipped plenty of times.”

As he spoke I was aware of others coming into the clearing, though they were standing behind me. “Of course I have,” I said. “I’m Prince Kenet’s ladra’an. The king himself put those marks on my skin.”

Laughter. I tried to turn my head to see the men behind me, but Gresh seized my chin. “Tut tut. Can’t have you looking at them who don’t wish to be seen.” He wrapped a cloth around my eyes and tied it with a snug knot.

“Listen, it’s true. Kenet picked me out of an orphanage when I was small. When we were both small. The only reason I’m not with him now is because the Lord High Mage wanted to get rid of me.”

A hand pulled at my hair, forcing my head back. “Can you prove it?”

“What, that I lived in the palace until just a few days ago? Have any of you ever been there?”

“No,” came the reply from more than one of them.

“Then what can I tell you that would prove so?” I sighed again. “This whole conversation will be more satisfying to you all, I can see, after you’ve beaten me. So why not just get on with that?”

The hand holding me disappeared as if the man couldn’t stand to touch me, then, and he hissed as if burned.

I pulled at the rope. “Go on. You wouldn’t bother to truss me up like this if you didn’t intend to. Which of you is a bigger sadist than the king himself? Go on. I would like to find out. Perhaps there is one among you who hits even harder than Seroi. You can re-open the bleeding wounds he left.”

“Kan,” one of them said, as if asking their leader for help in shutting me up.

There was no reply. “Please, gentlemen,” I went on. “I hate boredom more than I despise pain, and every minute we waste, Kenet is in danger, in the clutches of that mage. I can smell the horses even if I have not seen one. Who among you has a riding whip? My skin is not so tough as a horse’s hide. I will scream.”

I do not know where this bravado came from, honestly. But the more I said, the more unnerved they became, that much I could feel in the air. Just because I was the one tied and blindfolded did not mean I had no power at all.

“What about you, Gresh? You seem more like the barehanded type. Give me a good jaw-rattling slap. Will I spit blood? Or use your knuckles. It can’t be worse than fight practice with the castle guard, or the bruises King Korl himself left me with…”

Then I heard Kan chuckling. “Well, men? Ah, I see. I’m sorry Weltskin, they are waiting for me to go first.”

I shivered as his hand ran down my back. “I told you. I don’t care what you do to me if you help me return to Kenet’s side.”

One of the others spoke. “I won’t be goaded into dealing pain. If that’s what the prisoner wants, we shouldn’t give it to him. How do we know he isn’t a spy of Seroi’s anyway, who might have some spell on him that would bring us harm if we harm him?”

Kan chuckled again. “Good thinking, Merrl, but if you’re going to be thinking, why not consider this? Look at him. I’d say there are only three possibilities here. One, as Gresh thinks, he’s a soldier who has been beaten within an inch of his life each time he’s tried to desert the army, two, he’s an escaped slave who either had a true pain-dealer for a master or he was so uppity and rebellious he deserved every one of the scars…”

“Or both,” someone chimed in.

“Or both,” Kan allowed. “Or three, he really is the prince’s whipping boy, in which case he could be an ally more powerful than any we’ve encountered yet since crossing the Serde.”

I heard Gresh growl. “I say it’s still too great a risk. We are still not in a position to attack Seroi. He won’t be of any use to us until then.”

I growled back. “I want to join you, you milksucking bastard. If your aim is bringing down Seroi, we have a common enemy. And I can fight! Do you think I’m some court-raised tiptoe dancer?”

I heard the sound of the blade going through the rope before I felt my hands come free, but before I could get the blindfold loose, someone was tackling me to the ground. Whoever it was couldn’t have made a worse mistake. I couldn’t see, but with him trying to wrestle me, I didn’t have to. His clothes also hindered him while my nudity made me hard to grab onto. I had him pinned in under a minute, and pressed my forearm against his throat.

“Do you yield?” I insisted. “Or do the Night Riders not honor such concepts?”

I could hear Gresh’s heavy footfalls as he charged toward me, but he stopped before reaching us. My guess was that Kan held him back.

“We have our own kind of honor,” Kan said. “Men, if he lets Derget go, will you accept what he says?”

Gresh grunted. “I still say it’s too dangerous to just trust him.”

Kan laughed. “All the more reason to bind him as a Night Rider.”

Gresh didn’t sound happy, but he agreed. “Fine. If that’s what it’ll take, I’m sure I can muster the milk.”

Kan came closer to me and the man who was now wheezing some in my grip, Derget. “All right, Jorin Weltskin. If you truly want to join the Night Riders, this will make you one of us truly.”

“I told you,” I said. “For Kenet, I would do anything. You may flay the skin from my body if that’s what it takes. And if you fight Seroi, I will fight with you.”

“Your promises will not be necessary because our intention is to bind you using Night Magic. Your loyalty will be ensured. But it is not our way to force such a bond, which is why I ask. If you are willing, let go of Derget, and we will begin the ritual immediately.”

“I will be compelled to be loyal, you say,” I asked, easing up on Derget a little but not letting him free yet. “But are you compelled to be loyal to me in return?”

Kan laughed. “A very good question. Yes, yes there is a mutual component to the binding.”

“Keep him blindfolded and don’t let him know which of us holds his leash,” Gresh said. “That way there can’t be any accidents.”

“But how could I harm you if I’m loyal to you?”

“Magic is a tricky thing,” Kan answered. “Usually this spell binds slave to master, but we have modified it to ensure mutual loyalty through the group. Without a single man holding your leash, we won’t leave you the temptation of trying to engineer your freedom subconsciously, or, for that matter, the temptation of fixating on any of us.”

Fixating? I still didn’t know what they were talking about exactly, but I let Derget free and reached for the blindfold.

Kan’s hands stopped mine. “I thought we just agreed to leave that. We really are going to start right now.”

I thought I heard a distant roll of thunder. “All right,” I said. “What should I do?”

“I want him tied,” Gresh said.

“You can’t go first,” Derget complained. “You’re too enormous.”

Kan laughed. “Smallest to largest, then? Derget, does that mean you are first?”

Derget stammered at the insult and I suddenly understood what they were going to do and what they were speaking of. They were going to fuck me.

Kan must have felt the ripple of comprehension moving through me. His fingers held my wrists, but loosely. “You did say ‘anything.’”

“I am not objecting,” I answered, though my heart was beating wildly and I felt like the ground was moving beneath my feet.

And then they were lifting me, settling me on my back on a blanket. I half-expected them to tie me down, limbs spread, but then I remembered he had used the word willing. My hands and voice shook, though, as I reached up blindly, saying, “Who is first? Come come.”

A man’s mouth met mine roughly, teeth knocking against my lips as his eagerness bore him down. I could feel his cock against my belly, already hard.

Kan was chanting in a quiet voice, but not so quiet I couldn’t make out that the words were in the old tongue. The pungent scent of incense reached me then, while the man between my legs slid his hand down between my cheeks. His fingers were greased and I wondered if one of the others held a pot of it close by?

Then he sank a finger into me and I let out a groan, fragments of my dream of Kenet dancing in front of my closed eyes. The man began to pump and I met each push of his finger with a motion of my hips, suddenly needy for more, and making his cock rub against my belly with each thrust.

He cried out suddenly, his voice young-sounding in his dismay as hot milk spurted across my stomach.

There was quite a bit of chuckling, though they were careful as they ribbed him not to say his name. I had no trouble telling who took his place though: Kan himself.

He slipped a finger into me. “This will be your first time?”

“Yes,” I admitted.

“And yet you agreed to take all of us, if necessary? Weltskin, as you may have gathered by now, we have to each take a turn.”

“I am no more at your mercy now than I was when I was strung up and expecting you to flay me,” I pointed out. “Isn’t that part of the point? I’m willing no matter what you do.”

“We need to each spill some milk inside you. Inside,” he repeated, and the others laughed good-naturedly at the one who had spilled too soon. “That means, well, it means not just a ritual penetration.”

“I told you, I’m willing,” I repeated.

“I know that, I’m merely apologizing,” he replied. “I dislike dealing pain unintentionally.”

Gresh snorted. “Is it all right if I intend to?”

“Later, Gresh,” Kan said. “I, at least, don’t.” And with that, he added another finger to the first, and they made a squelching sound as he pressed them into me.

I soon found my breaths coming and going in time with the motion of his hand, and then he shifted to lie between my legs and I felt the hot, blunt end of him rubbing between my cheeks.

His mouth was at my ear though, nibbling and breathing warm, moist pleasure down my neck. “Think of Kenet,” he whispered, as his cock pushed into me.

My cry caught in my throat, the pain completely unlike anything I’d felt before. I struggled reflexively, trying to push him out, anything to ease the sharp, sudden discomfort, but he only pushed further in, making it worse.

Then his hand wrapped around my cock and stroked, and miraculously, it took only a few strokes before everything eased. His whispers continued and they were like what you say to a spooked horse, murmurs of encouragement that I didn’t have to understand the words of to be calmed by.

He moved faster as I relaxed more and as the motion of him inside me felt better and better. Then he let go my cock and just concentrated on fucking me.

When he was drawing close to his release, he spoke again. “I will leave you as you are,” he said, “so that the ease you felt from your cock being touched will still be possible with the others. I know, you might be more relaxed and looser after you spill, but… you won’t thank me if I do that to you now. Trust me.”

“All right.” I squeezed tight as if trying to hold my own release in and succeeded in gripping his cock with my body so well that he began to spill then. His kiss was surprisingly sweet and eager as he rode out his release into my body.

All too quickly, he was gone, replaced by another. Derget? Whoever he was, he was of similar size to Kan, both in his body and his cock. He fucked with a ferocity that felt like revenge, though, and so I guessed it was Derget, who hadn’t enjoyed being bested. He did not touch my cock—in fact he shifted my position onto all fours so that my cock swung untouched under me while he ploughed me from behind. When he came, he howled.

The next also came from behind, and this time I reached under myself to stroke as he worked himself into me. Larger. This cock was larger and it took much longer for him to come. I couldn’t touch myself for very long without coming dangerously close to spilling. When he came at last, he pulled out so quickly I felt droplets of his milk all over my back, as well, but as long as some had gone inside, I supposed it was all right.

There were six all told, and the last of them all was Gresh. Somehow I had known it would be. I felt the tug on my wrist as he brought my hands behind my back and tied them together. Then I felt his finger probing at my now well-fucked hole, and it felt nearly like it might be too big to fit. He was almost as big as Bear, I thought.

Then he rubbed his cock up and down in the slick crack and I trembled. Definitely too large. I tried to relax but it was impossible.

I felt Gresh’s meaty hands on my hips, pulling me into place as his impossibly large cock pushed at my hole but did not actually make it through the opening. Then some other hand stroked my cock.

Kan. “Come on, Weltskin. You can do it. And if you can’t… well, I have some healing potions you can take.”

At that Gresh gave a mighty push and it felt like he tore me open. I know now that he hadn’t, but at the time I didn’t know whether that was possible or not, and it felt like he had. That would mean that the hot liquid running down my legs was blood?

But no, it was milk. Apparently all it took was one stroke inside me to get Gresh to spill. He smacked me hard on the arsecheek as he pumped his hips back and forth a few times, then pulled out.

“There, we’re almost done,” Kan said, rolling me onto my side and then taking me in his arms, my wrists still bound behind my back. “Well, technically the spell is done. But I should like to see you spill now.”

“You’re kind,” I said, as he stroked my cock for me.

“And cruel, too,” he said in reply. “Night Magic requires it. Night Magic requires both pleasure and pain. Something tells me you’ve seen too much of one lately and not enough of the other. Come for me now, Jorin Weltskin. And be one of us.”

I do not know if it was merely that I was ready to spill, or if there was something in the spell that made it happen, but as he commanded me to come, milk fountained out of me in heavy spurts. Each stroke of his hand brought forth more.

And then he kissed me again. A sob caught in my chest then, and I stifled it. He did still remind me of Kenet, enough to sharpen the longing I felt. Or maybe it was the other way around, that I longed for Kenet so much, that I could almost imagine that this was him in my desperation.

They freed me of bonds and blindfold then, and I learned there were actually twenty Night Riders in all, twelve present at the camp at the time. Each of the twelve came and kissed me on the cheeks and welcomed me to the group, and they all seemed sincere, even Gresh, whose hand lingered a moment on my cheek. And then Kan took me back to the tent and made me drink a healing tincture of some kind which made me sleepy.

“When can we go to save Kenet?” I asked, as my eyes were trying to close of their own accord.

“Sleep now, strategy later,” Kan said. “I was going to put some clothes on you first, but I don’t think you can lift your head.”

“Of course I can,” I said, but I failed to prove it, falling asleep a moment later.

* * *

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About the author: Cecilia Tan is the award-winning author of many erotic books and stories and the founder of Circlet Press.