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 Seventy-Two: Jorin

72: Jorin

I must have lost consciousness, for I do not remember Sergetten dismounting me, and when I woke, I was in a low tent in pitch darkness, wrapped in something warm. I could hear the wind rustling the trees overhead and making the fabric of the tent whisper. I shifted my weight to roll onto my back and realized I was between two warm bodies. As I came to rest, a familiar hand settled on my chest, Sergetten’s.

But another hand slid up my thigh then, and a wet mouth found mine for a quick kiss. Kan. “Welcome back,” he murmured. His hand slid further up my leg, toward my milksacks, but he drew his hand back suddenly, as if burned.

I heard Sergetten chuckle. “Do not put my boy in a compromising position, Kan.”

“Tcha. I want no ownership of him, just a little bedplay, if he’ll have me.”

“You mean if I’ll allow it.”

“You said he wanted me for a lover again. Do you mean to deny him?”

“Don’t twist my words. He needs someone to practice with, and of all available candidates he has been most intimate with you.”

I put a hand onto each of them. “Stop. Don’t bicker. And don’t talk about me like I’m not here.”

Sergetten shifted beside me and pressed a kiss to my bare shoulder. “I do not do it to demean you, Jorin,” he said. “Speak for yourself then, but know I am jealous when it comes to sharing you.”

“I am only seeking another partner at your insistence,” I pointed out. “Kan, are you willing? I don’t wish to presume…”

Kan chuckled. “Oh, I’d be happy to be your practice doll, and so would a handful of others, you know. Has Sergetten been filling your head with some kind of nonsense about receptivity versus masculine power?”

“What? No…”

“If anything, Kan, you and yours are the ones who gave him the idea he could never be on top,” Sergetten cut in wryly. “Not one of you spread your legs for him! Hard to believe.”

Kan let out a disbelieving noise himself, but said nothing.

I rolled onto my side, spooning Sergetten around me like a cloak. He was at least partially clothed. Neither of them said anything more, and I drifted back to sleep, wondering how many hours it had been since our arrival. There were so many things I wanted to say and do, but sleep dragged me down into darkness.

When next I woke it was to the sound of shouting. I was alone in the tent, and there were several voices shouting, and one growling and wailing like a trapped animal. I rushed out to find several Night Riders pinning a much larger man to the ground.

“Bear!” I called out as I ran over to them. Kenet’s old guard from the castle was struggling to throw off the others. For a moment I thought he must have stumbled into the camp and been caught. “It’s all right,” I said to Gresh, who was standing aside watching to see if his help would be needed. “He’s on our side, on Kenet’s side. Bear!”

This time when I called his name, Bear looked up and saw me, and the fight seemed to go out of him. The others let out groans of relief. “Jorin. Thunder’s roll. I never thought I’d see you alive again.” For a moment a light came into his eyes and they allowed him to sit up.

Then Sergetten came up behind me, putting a cloak over my shoulders. I was wearing nothing, but I had not given it a second thought. “Bear has been in camp for several days,” he said to me. “He made his escape from the castle shortly after we did.”

Bear got to his feet. He was fully clothed for a mountain ride and brushed leaves and moss from his sleeves. “Aye. Not shortly enough, though,” he said darkly.

I paid the others no heed, running up to him and hugging him, as I’m sure Kenet would have were he there. “I never thought I’d live this long myself,” I said. “But you taught me well.”

That produced a bark of laughter from Kan. “Oho! Bear, are you responsible for training this hellcat? When we plucked him from the river he was itching to fight. Gave every man here a challenge, let me tell you.”

Bear tousled my hair. “Aye. He was to be by the prince’s side after me.” He smiled wanly, even a bit sadly, then patted me on the shoulder and walked away.

They all watched him, but none chased him. The Riders exchanged looks. I raised a questioning eyebrow at Kan.

He put a hand on my shoulder and spoke quietly in my ear. “After you escaped, he was questioned. Tortured. The mage… broke him. He wants to die, but we haven’t let him.”

I shuddered to imagine the things Seroi could have done to him. I had experienced some of the extremes of Night Magic… and at the hand of someone who loved me. It could only be worse at the hands of an enemy. There was nothing I could say to that but, “Oh.”

“You need breakfast,” Kan said. “Come on.”

He did not speak again until I had put my trousers on and had some waybread in me. “I meant what I said last night about Sergetten,” he said, while casually picking dirt from under his nails. “Or what I was trying to say before he turned it around on me.”

“What was that?” I asked.

“He’s the one who will never turn the tables. In Sergetten’s world, slaves always get fucked, masters always do the fucking, even when it’s just for pleasure or love and not for the sake of Night Magic.” He examined his fingers and I had the feeling he was much bitterer about this fact than he had hoped to let on. “I’ll happily spread my legs for you, Weltskin, and it will be no reflection on my masculinity or my ability to lead. It will be a pleasure.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I… that’s good to know.”

Kan stood abruptly then, as if hurrying off to something urgent, though I doubted there was any danger or he would have said.

I went back to the tent he and I and Sergetten had shared in the night to find I could hear the voices coming from inside it. Sergetten was arguing with someone by the sound of it, someone other than Kan.

I knew I should not eavesdrop, but I stood there just too long to be innocent, and then I realized it was Willim. Willim who had been Sergetten’s lover or trainee or maybe just patient—I wasn’t quite sure.

“It aches constantly now, though!” Willim was protesting.

“I know. But all I can do is give you more of the salve. You have no shortage of willing hands to…”

“I don’t believe you! How can Jorin fuck Kan if he wants, when he’s the slave, and you’re the one who can’t fuck who you want?”

“Willim, please. I’m trying to explain. The bond I have with Jorin is very strong. Think of it like this. I have many strings pulling on my heart. In the past I could use a few of them to entangle you, a few to entangle Kan, a few for my apprentice, and so on. But now all the strands have been braided together into a single strong rope around him.” I could hear impatience in his voice, but also concern. “I could fuck you, Willim. I could bring pleasure to your body just as one man to another. But I cannot work magic on you and I cannot make your leg any better than it is. If you insist, I will fuck you for pleasure alone, but we have much to do…”

“No. I don’t need your charity! The others can satisfy me perfectly well.”

A moment later Willim burst from the tent and strode off, paying me no heed at all.

I peeked through the tent flap. “Sergetten?”

He looked up at me with his eyes hooded and tired-looking. “I know you heard at least some of that; there’s no use trying to lie.”

I crawled in and sat cross-legged next to him. “I wasn’t planning to. But is that how it works?”

He sighed. “It is far more complicated than that. And no two ownership bonds are the same. Each master and each slave make something unique. The Night Riders are bound together, each to Kan, but also each to each in a great braided ring or web. But as you know, when they tried to bind you in the web, it did not work as expected.”

It was dim in the tent, and his hair hung over his face as he spoke. I reached up to brush it back. “And when you bound me… was all as you expected?”

His answer seemed to require him to kiss me first, quite bruisingly. His voice was rough with anger when he said, “It was not and you know it. Do not play coy for favors with me.”

“Hush, hush,” I whispered, rubbing my thumbs along his jaw and feeling the stubble of our traveling there. “I did not mean to fish for compliments. I merely wondered…” My as yet unvoiced thought formed in my head then, and I was unsure I could voice it now without raising his ire more. Well, receiving his ire was part of my role, was it not? “I have been wondering,” I went on in a low but calm voice, “if perhaps you are more attached to me than you had planned to be. And if there is anything I can do to… to help you.”

He stiffened, but I could read him better now than when we had first met. This was not Sergetten taking offense, but him mastering his own emotions. Beating them down mercilessly, one might even say. “No,” he finally croaked, then cleared his throat. “No, indeed I am helpless. You will not remind me of it again.”

“No, sir,” I whispered. I could feel the pain coming off him like heat. “Never.”

He made as if to leave the tent then, but while crouched in the entrance, turned back to me to say one more thing. “You will never forget it, however. Never forget the sacrifices others have made for you and for the crown. And make sure Kenet never forgets them, either. That is one of the translations from the old tongue for ladra’an, you know. ‘Conscience.'”

And then he was gone.

Later he acted as if we had never had the conversation, and so did I, but I could not ignore now that when we parted, if all went well, it would be because I would be reuniting with the man I loved more than anyone in the world. Whereas the man Sergetten loved most had already called him a traitor and put a price on his head.

When night fell, it was time for me to practice the binding ritual. There was much more joking around, of course, than there had been the night Sergetten had bound me. Sergetten surmised that because Seroi had started the spell with all his gradual shaping of Kenet’s will, that all it would take at this point was full penetration to trigger the magic to seize us both.

We never spoke aloud the possibility that someone else might have bonded to him first. I wouldn’t allow myself to even think it. Having refused Seroi, Sergetten said, perhaps Kenet intended to refuse all comers if he could. I wanted to believe that had been his plan, to give himself to me that fateful night when Seroi had finally made his move, having me removed from the castle and sent to a sure death.

Torchlight made Kan’s skin look bronze and his hair and short beard flicker with hints of gold. There was no unbinding to be done as with me, so instead, as a prelude, we wrestled.

It seemed only fitting. I took him down upon the oiled skin but he put up a fair fight. Were it a true even match, with the outcome in question, I do not know which of us would have won two out of three.

As it was, though, it was a forgone conclusion that he would yield to me. We slid against each other, fighting for dominance, cock against hip, against tailbone, sliding across a taut stomach. It was not against the rules, of course, to grasp one’s opponent there, either, and at one point I had him face down, my cock grinding against his backside. As he tried to turn us onto our sides, I slid my hand down to grip his erection, stroking him…

That was what it took to make him yield, and he did with a groan, not going limp in my hold but instead pushing back eagerly against me now, begging me to do what my body wanted so much to do. I remembered what Sergetten had said, about spearing him with one full thrust. I flattened him under me and pushed, and the harder I pushed the more my cock throbbed, until suddenly everything slid and I spilled with a cry.

Kan’s shoulders shook with laughter, and so did the others’, as it became clear my first attempt had missed the mark. My milk was pooled on the oiled hide between Kan’s legs. Even I had to laugh at that, spent and shaking and sated even if I had not done the deed. I gave way as they wiped up the mess and Kan called for another challenger, his own cock still eager for its own sake.

Kan found another tent to bed in that night, leaving me to sleep exhausted in Sergetten’s arms. Sergetten said nothing about the performance, no advice, no berating me… and I wondered if perhaps he was secretly glad of my failure. He never let go the entire night

* * *

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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.