In His Arena 1: Slave Eternal (16 page)

Hektor.

Hektor with his grim face, his full lips set into an angry line. The flogger dangled from his fingers. He looked to the praetorian guard and gave a nod.

“Hekt—”

Unceremoniously, they shoved Lucan face-first onto the cross and wrenched his arms up to the two cruxes. He could not help the cry that was torn from him as they lashed the leather tight around his wrists. It was cold and cracked, rough against his skin.

“Bind him tighter,” Hektor said gruffly.

Lucan tried to think that there was regret in Hektor’s voice, that he would not like this, that he would rail against it. He’d imagined that Hektor would stand up to the praetorian, to House Vulpinius, to the Empress—everyone—for him.

But, no, Hektor was just a slave like everyone else.

The praetorian finished securing him and stepped back. Lucan cast a glance over his shoulder, watching as they vanished into shadow and night.

And then he was alone with Hektor.

He tried hard not to struggle. “Hektor, please.”

“Quiet.”

“Pleas—”

A stinging lash weltered down on Lucan’s shoulder, stealing his breath. He writhed and fought, but the straps held him fast.

Gasping, tears in his eyes, he struggled to catch his breath. A second lash cut into him, the pain white-hot and immediate.

He had no breath.

The scream caught in his throat, strangling him, building up inside him with nowhere to go. Each lash rushed him through with agony, until tears streaked his face and his entire body shuddered from the force of Hektor’s flogging. Lucan tried to count, but the anticipation of the lash stole his reason, his senses and sensibilities.

Only the pain of the flogger was real.

The sweaty slide of blood down his back, the welts on his flesh. Somehow the pain began to make him feel more pure.

He looked up. The Empress’s white curtains were closed. She had “seen” enough.

Hektor’s blows were coming slower now, with less force. And a fire began to burn low in Lucan’s belly. The pain had receded to some faraway place in the back of his mind, and all he felt was a white-hot purity. As though he had entered the sun and come out the other side, cleansed.

Dimly, he felt Hektor’s hands on his back, something jellylike and cooling on his flesh. A chill numbness settled into him, but it did nothing to quench the fire inside.

Moaning softly, Lucan pumped his hips back, his cock suddenly hard. With delicious slowness, Hektor dragged the flogger along his student’s flesh, teasing it over his ass and between his thighs, nudging Lucan’s shaft with the knob.

Pleasure struck Lucan low in the belly. He writhed and rocked back. He strained at his bonds, but they held, their rusted nails groaning. Desperate, he jutted his hips back, away from the wood, trying to push his ass against the flogger. A gasp escaped him as Hektor wrapped the leather straps around Lucan’s cock and with slow intensity, started jerking him.

With each stroke, Lucan jolted, and then Hektor stepped in, his hard chest against Lucan’s back, and began to ride against him, thrusting impotently, humping at his ass.

Every thrust shoved Lucan against the cross, where he panted and writhed, moaning like a whore. He wanted to spread his legs wider, but he was already spread out on the X like a delicious feast.

Hektor must have though so too, for he dropped to his knees and tongued at Lucan’s hole, getting him wet, prodding into him. Lucan sobbed, the friction of leather flogging straps on his dick painfully pleasurable.

Groaning deep into Lucan’s cleft, Hektor licked and lapped at him, working his hole.

Lucan’s mind whirled. Hektor was going to fuck him. Out here, in the open.

And then Hektor fit the flogger knob against Lucan’s anal star and pushed. Lucan cried out as the whip handle entered him. Hektor was gentle, pushing it in, pulling it back, stretching the boy’s hole. Once Lucan was open good and wide, Hektor removed the handle and inserted his fingers, scissoring them.

“Please,” Lucan begged. “Fuck me.”

He did not care that they were in the open arena, that anyone might secretly defy the Empress’s decree and spy on the goings-on in the theatre. The darkness nearly had them now, the only light from the guttering of a few torches along the Hail. The blades glinting wickedly.

Hektor and Lucan were thrown in shadow and moonlight, but anyone who stole a secret glance down from one of the house balconies might see two figures in rut.

And they would know.

Still, Lucan’s desire proved stronger than his decorum, stronger than his fear of being found out or misused. He wanted Hektor inside him, cock buried deep, coming as he claimed every inch of him. “Please,” he gasped.

But Hektor wanted to work him, and work him he did, licking and laving at Lucan’s sopping hole, driving the boy to seething frustration in his bonds. Lucan twisted, the welts on his back sweltering in the heat. If not for the cooling unguent, he would be in agony. Sweat poured off him, down his back, stinging his wounds, down his thighs, where his cock wept with precum.

A flare of fire across his chest sent panic like a lightning bolt through him. The Ebon was rising, the blur beneath his skin darkening into its circular pattern. Soon, it would bleed through, and Hektor would see it again.

Lucan was desperate to cover it, and yet he could not. Not stretched out here like a trophy before his lover.

With one more tormenting lick, Hektor left off and rose to his feet behind Lucan. The feel of his slick chest warm and hard against Lucan’s back drove all concerns from his mind. A soft whisper came, Hektor’s tunic hitting the ground. Lucan could imagine the gladiator, bare-assed, his heavy cock like a divining rod. Lucan wanted it deep inside him.

“Fuck me,” he begged again.

This time, Hektor seemed ready to oblige, blanketing Lucan’s body with his own. The heat of skin caressed and soothed the welts on Lucan’s back. The sharp prod of his cock-tip against Lucan’s hole made everything else trivial, meaningless.

“Yes,” he whispered. “Please.”

He glanced up at the Empress’s curtain. It remained close. They were here in the arena alone, except for the praetorian guards lurking in the shadows. The idea of being fucked while the stoic guards looked on excited Lucan, thrilled him.

When Hektor grabbed Lucan’s hair and yanked his head back, sinking savage teeth into his nape, Lucan gasped with the pleasure of it. In the next moment, Hektor’s cock breached his ass, and he sank deep, seating himself in Lucan’s tight passage.

The sudden invasion thrust Lucan forward onto the cross, his restraints biting deep into his wrists. He cried out, his first reaction to tense up, but he made himself relax as Hektor pulled out and then ground back into him, tunneling his way in, demanding entry into the deepest parts of Lucan’s body.

Hektor’s hands were on Lucan’s shoulders, steadying him, holding him still as he drew out to the tip and then pushed back in slowly, deliberately, letting his student feel his hardness one inch at a time.

Again, he did this, pulling to the length and then driving in. Again. And again, building a slow burn of ecstasy with Lucan’s body.

And just as Lucan thought he would go mad with desire, with need, Hektor grasped his hips, gripped tight, and began to thrust in earnest.

Lucan cried out as Hektor pounded his ass, giving him the fucking he wanted, he needed. His passage burned, but he ached, bereft, every time Hektor pulled out. Lucan didn’t care that they were in the open arena, that they were making their own Spectacle, that the Ebon burned on his flesh, searing through to the surface.

All that mattered was Hektor.

“Please, please…” It became a mantra. The dark mark burning through Lucan’s skin, searing him, branding him even as Hektor claimed him with hard, heady thrusts.

Sweat from Hektor’s hair dripped onto Lucan’s back and shoulders. Whimpering, moaning, he strained against his bonds. He wished he were not tied. He wished he could turn, see Hektor’s blue eyes as he fucked him, hear him say “I love you.”

What?
Lucan’s self-admission stilled him, and as he did, Hektor rammed in to the hilt and spurted his seed deep within him. A triumphant shout, his hand clamped onto the back of Lucan’s neck, he rode his student hard, as though trying to work his cum in deeper.

Lucan fought, but the gladiator was bigger, stronger. Being used was delicious, and he moaned through it all, twitching as Hektor spurted again and then once more, crying out to the falling night.

HEKTOR COULD NOT stop. He kept pumping Lucan harder and harder. His cock was softening, but he forced himself into the boy’s needy hole. He laved Lucan’s neck with his tongue and reached around to pinch his nipples. Lucan was still hard, so Hektor ran his hands down over those rippling abs and gripped his cock.

With a cry, Lucan surged to full, pounding hardness. Hektor, too, stiffened again as he worked his student, stroking the shaft with one hand, teasing the head with his other. He dipped his fingertips into the silky precum and swirled it around Lucan’s cock-tip. Then he lifted his fingers and tasted it.

Salty spunk. He wanted to taste it all. He wanted Lucan to come in his mouth. Hektor slipped his cock from Lucan’s quivering hole. Quickly, his hands went to the leather restraints, fingers flying over the buckles then letting them fall.

He had already punished Lucan as the Empress had decreed. There was no rule against pleasuring him.

Before Lucan could fall, the gladiator spun him about, shoving him back against the cross. Lucan panted, his eyes wild with need. Hektor met his gaze for only a brief moment and then fixated on Lucan’s cock, slender and stiff, his balls drawn up tight.

Hektor could not stop looking at it.
Beautiful.
He sank to his knees and gave it a long lick.

Lucan shuddered, cried out. He pistoned his hips forward, and Hektor let him spear his mouth. Lucan sank in three inches, and the gladiator grabbed his ass, forcing him all the way in. The feel of Lucan ramming down into the clasp of Hektor’s throat was heady, intoxicating. He forced himself to breathe through his nose and began to suck and lick, to stroke Lucan off with his mouth, running his tongue along the shaft.

He pulled out and pursed his lips over the swollen head, sucking down the precum as it leaked from Lucan’s weeping slit. He licked and tongued. Lucan moaned, and Hektor dragged his fingernails down the tops of his student’s thighs.

Lucan bucked. He thrust once more. Hektor took him down all the way. He sucked and mouth-fucked his man.
My man? When did Lucan get to be…

He glanced up. Lucan watched him with those golden eyes, his lust, the crisis upon him, twisting his angelic face into a mask of need and want. Hektor saw only those eyes, that face—Lucan’s features burned onto his mind’s eye. He shuddered as Lucan’s hands came down, tangling in Hektor’s hair, and he moaned, arching his back.

The rising moonlight struck Lucan, making him a golden statue. A golden statue with one black mark. On his pectoral, carved…

The Ebon.

The sight of it nearly choked Hektor. He had tried to forget that morning, sinking so deep, so right into Lucan’s ass, taking him in the darkness of the Claim. But now…

Horror overtaking him, the gladiator pulled away, but Lucan grabbed him, forcing him back onto his surging pole. Hektor was weak from seeing the Ebon, and Lucan used him for long moment, stuffing his mouth full of hard cock.

The Ebon. The Ebon
… It rocked Hektor to the core.

Lucan was someone’s slave. No, not someone’s.
Stratos’s.

Panic lit Hektor’s heart, but the pleasure, the burn of that beautiful cock down his throat… He could not help his lust. He could not stop. He grabbed Lucan’s ass and sucked him down deeper. Reaching between his student’s legs, Hektor cupped Lucan’s taut, silky-smooth balls and held them, tickling them with his fingers, lifting and weighing them.

Moans of pleasure echoed out over the amphitheatre, as grotesque and obscene as the slap and slurp of Lucan’s cock surging into the mouth of the primus palus. The funk of blood and death washed away in the sultry scent of cum and sweat and musk.

Lucan’s hands were heavy on Hektor’s head, fingers curled into all that dark hair as he shoved his length deep. For a moment, Hektor wished Lucan was driving that gorgeous cock into his ass, stretching him, pounding him good and deep. Shame lit his cheeks. Not since Leander…

Yet he
wanted.

And to the hellish Abyss with the Ebon.

Lucan shouted, a hoarse and winding cry. He tensed, his thighs going rigid. And then he shot his sweltering load into Hektor’s mouth. Lustful and eager, Hektor swallowed in gasping gulps, Lucan still pumping his slick pole deep. Cum dribbled from Hektor’s lips. He wanted to lick it, but he forced himself to swallow Lucan’s load, milking him until the last jets splashed down his throat.

And then he pulled back, looking at Lucan, drunk on lust. He claimed his novice’s mouth in a searing kiss, forcing his taste back upon him. He grabbed Lucan by the back of the neck, filled with a sudden fierce passion. Filled with…

Love.

His gaze caught the Ebon burning black on Lucan’s chest—an indelible mark, a taint he could never wash away. Again, reality struck Hektor a vicious blow. The guilt, the pain, Leander looking up at him in those final moments…

Hektor slapped a hand to the back of his neck, the memory of his own pain, the burning of his own dark mark scorching his pleasure to ash and cinder. He backed away, looking at Lucan in horror.

Lucan’s face crumpled. He reached out.

He does not understand.
A different pain ripped through Hektor’s chest, a pain that pulled and constricted his heart. He had to get free, had to stop it.

“Hektor…”

Hektor broke and ran.

* * * *

Stratos finished first. He always did, pumping his cum into whatever slave he chose to assign Alession’s face to that night. Tonight, he had wanted a pounding, but the slave hadn’t understood. He’d thought simply fucking Stratos would be enough. Clearly, he didn’t realize that Stratos needed to be bent over and taken, held down by the back of the neck while a hard, implacable cock ravaged his ass.