Trained Read online

  Trained

  Copyright © 2018 by Tanya Chris (www.tanyachris.com)

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author.

  Table of Contents

  The Choosing

  Speed

  Balance

  Flexibility

  Grace

  Endurance

  Victory

  Thank You!

  The Choosing

  Thoros

  Only a handful of people had turned out to watch the choosing. Women mostly, tittering behind the fans they fluttered languorously in the already rising heat. There were more contestants than spectators, though that would change once the real contests began. Nothing much would happen today. But today meant everything to Thoros. Today was the day he’d choose his fighter, the man he would train personally, the one who would bring him victory with its accompanying cash purse.

  But more than that.

  Nineteen other trainers waited with Thoros on one of the lower tiers of the stadium—high enough to get an overview of the men arrayed for their consideration, low enough to see some detail—but Thoros would need to get closer before he could choose his fighter. Would need to get very close indeed.

  Glancing upward, he picked out Princess Atalanta in the royal box flanked by men with ostrich feathers plying her with cooling breezes. She was much too high up for him to guess at her expression, but he could imagine she had as much anticipation as he did. One of the men milling around the stadium would win the right to become her husband, and Thoros intended to make sure it was the one he trained.

  He tapped his palm against his knee-length skirt, enjoying the slap of leather against flesh even if it was only his own flesh, impatient for the preliminaries to be over so his work could begin. He had as little interest in pageantry as Atalanta.

  They shared other tastes too, tastes he’d learned about from their mutual attendance at private parties of a certain nature to which the Princess came heavily masked but unmistakable. So he knew what Atalanta wanted in a man. Knew it because he wanted it himself.

  He would train her the perfect slave, then turn him over to her in exchange for a hefty purse and the satisfaction of having won. And if Thoros enjoyed himself along the way … well, only he and Atalanta needed to know that.

  The contest had attracted men from every walk of life, nobility mingling with plebeians and bondservants, rags next to riches, more than a hundred, of whom only twenty would be chosen to compete. Even from this distance, Thoros had been able to narrow his prospects down to a handful of candidates—men strong enough to bear up under the training regime he had in mind, men handsome enough to call out the sadist in him. What he couldn’t judge from a distance was their fire. Or their pliability. He needed a very specific combination of both.

  One man in particular attracted his eye. Barely dressed in a ragged tunic marking his low birth, the man kept to himself, not mingling with his fellow contestants. His proud bearing contrasted to his rude dress. His dark hair was long enough to be tied up in a knot at the back of his head, and he had the clean-shaven jaw of a house servant. He stood solidly, taller than most of the men around him, slender as if he hadn’t been fed well but better built than the average house servant, a separate pillar in the teeming mass. Physically, the man was perfect, but whether he had the right temperament remained to be seen.

  Finally, the King’s Chancellor gave the order Thoros had been waiting for.

  “Strip.”

  Dalin

  “Strip.”

  Around Dalin, a confused rumble rose from the mass of men who were to be his competitors, while up in the stands the scattered crowd gave a murmur of anticipation. Dalin removed his tunic with a single jerk, not sorry to be free of the filthy, tattered cloth that marked him as little more than a slave.

  The noblemen in their finery complied more slowly as Dalin stood tall and naked under the heat of the morning sun. He tossed his head, letting the breeze take his hair from its knot, feeling freer already. Naked, he was the equal of any man. More than equal. Fuck the caste system that told him he’d been born lesser, born to serve at the whim of some weak and cowardly man with more money than brains and his whiny, spoiled wife and children.

  Dalin knew his worth, and he would show it here, in this stadium. The King had decreed that any man, regardless of his birth, might compete for his daughter’s hand in marriage, and though Dalin’s employer would no doubt make him pay for abandoning his duties if he lost, he didn’t intend to lose. And once married to Atalanta, Dalin would show his former-owner his own brand of mercy. Would show all of them.

  “On your feet,” came an exasperated clarification.

  Dalin smirked at the men who’d been sitting. They’d be beaten easily enough. He had no idea what this competition would entail, but a man like him, one accustomed to working rather than sitting, would have an advantage in any contest.

  He stood straight, spreading his feet wide and clasping his hands behind his back to thrust his chest out. His cock hung heavy between his thighs, enjoying the sun and the light breeze, not minding the avid glances of the spectators or the jealous glares of his competitors. He was a fine specimen, and he knew it. He tilted his chin up higher, regal in his naked nobility. Once Atalanta got an eyeful of him, the contest would be over before it began.

  A file of men wound down from the stands, sturdy men in gladiator garb with military bearing. They filtered through the ranks of contestants, some of whom stood at attention as he did while others slouched in disinterest or fidgeted with nerves.

  “When do you think they’ll get to it?” a soft body near Dalin muttered to the man next to him. “Too hot to be standing around in the altogether.”

  “I suppose the girl’s got to get a look at the goods,” his companion answered with a sly sideways glance. The soft body had a soft cock, small and hooded by a wrinkled foreskin.

  “The girl can come and look for herself then,” the first one said. “I’ll give her a taste of it.” He grabbed his dick and pulled on it in a suggestive manner. His buddy laughed appreciatively.

  Dalin remained at attention, not even relaxing his face enough to smile at the thought of how quickly those two would be eliminated. Something told him that the gladiators circling among them were the ones to impress. And that the two soft bodies slouched into disrespectful attitudes were failing at it.

  One of the gladiators approached. He cast a dismissive glance at the two jokers who didn’t bother to notice him back before coming to a stop in front of Dalin. Dalin kept his eyes level, holding his breath to keep his chest fully inflated and his abs strong and tight.

  His assessor circled him in consideration. A large man with a firm barrel of a chest beneath the leather straps that crossed it, bearded with tightly-shorn dark hair. Dalin couldn’t discern any more than that without allowing his eyes to wander, but he felt the bulk and warmth of the man, felt the weight of his evaluation.

  A hand clasped over the swell of Dalin’s right ass cheek. He willed himself into stillness.

  “I thought we were competing for a woman,” one of the two men next to him joked with a braying laugh. “Seems this chap has something else in mind.” His companion chortled, and the gladiator lifted his hand from Dalin’s ass long enough to snap his fingers. A guard appeared to usher the two away.

  “Now, wait,” one of them protested as he was led out, “those are my clothes back there.”

  And then a sort of silence descended. Dimly, Dalin was aware that the stadium teemed with competitors and gladiators and spectators, but he allowed his consciousness to narrow to the bubble of quiet surrounding him and his own personal evaluator.

  The hand c
ame back to his ass—cupping, squeezing, jiggling as though assessing it for ripeness. Then the hand slipped around to weigh his cock and tug at his foreskin. The hand was rough, hardened from years of handling weaponry, large and hot and not making any attempt to be tender. Dalin’s cock plumped in response. He might have come to the stadium to win a bride, but he’d always preferred the touch of a man, and competitiveness had adrenalin rushing through his veins.

  “Legs wider.” The voice that issued the command was deep, uncultured, gutturally accented.

  Dalin complied, separating his feet another six inches as guided by the gladiator’s prompting hands. Fingers traced down his cleft and thrust into his channel. Dry, harsh fingers—wide and calloused. Dalin rose up onto his toes with the motion, stifling the gasp of shock at the sudden violation.

  The gladiator chuckled as he twisted his fingers deeper. “Mine aren’t the first fingers to breech this passage, are they?”

  Dalin resisted the impulse to drop his head. A man or two had tried their entry there, but Dalin had never allowed it to go further than a single seeking finger, for which he would not be ashamed.

  “Answer me. Are my fingers the first to be inside you?”

  “No.”

  The man thrust deeper, surprising a squeak from him. Dalin’s cock hardened, foolishly enjoying the rough treatment. The gladiator’s other hand wrapped around his balls and fondled them gently before pulling them down hard enough to make him scream.

  Except he didn’t. He sucked in a lungful of air and held it as the pressure and pain continued, front and back—the sharp, almost nauseating tug on his balls and the deep, intrusive wrench of seeking fingers in his ass. He was up on his toes, his calves aching, his back bent as he struggled to maintain posture, his head still resolutely forward, chin up, eyes unseeing against the flood of sensation swamping him.

  All touch stopped at once, dropping him back down on his heels, dizzy and unsteady without the bracing body at his back, but he kept his feet, pulling himself up to full height and steadying his chin forward again, taking shallow breaths in through his nose to find his balance.

  The gladiator came to stand in front of him, intruding into his narrow slice of awareness.

  “On your knees.”

  Relieved more than shamed, Dalin lowered himself to his knees where he gulped in a few stabilizing breaths. Then, needing to see his tormentor, he raised his head until he met the eyes of the man in front of him. Brown eyes, deeply lined, beneath heavy dark eyebrows, a jaw like an anvil, and a wide mouth marred by a thick scar that ran up to his ear—a warrior’s badge. The man grinned with teeth that gleamed against the bronze of his sun-worn skin.

  “What’ve you got here, Thoros?” Another gladiator appeared in front of Dalin, similarly dressed but without as much bulk or beard.

  “Pretty thing,” Thoros answered.

  “Good looking enough,” the other gladiator agreed. “Think appearance will win out though? No idea what the Princess has got in her head.”

  “Who can say?” Thoros answered, but there was something in the way he considered Dalin that made Dalin feel like he knew more than his friend did. “You pick one out yet, Samas?”

  “Haven’t looked at all of them, but this is the best one so far. Strong, handsome, got a build lean enough for running but heavy enough for wrestling. Without knowing what kind of contests we’ll be competing in, I like my odds with an all-around candidate. Lowborn too, unless I miss my guess. He’ll take orders.”

  Dalin squared his chin, angry at the suggestion that he’d take orders so easily because of the unlucky accident of his birth. He’d take whatever orders would win this contest for him, then let them see if he’d ever take another order again.

  “That’s about what I was thinking,” Thoros said. “We can’t both choose him though. I’ll take a spin around.” Thoros shifted as if to walk away.

  “No!” Dalin closed his mouth, which had so unexpectedly opened.

  “No?” Thoros challenged.

  Dalin didn’t answer, horrified that he’d spoken out. He might chase off both of the gladiators and end up not being chosen at all. It seemed the first competition was this—to be chosen by one of these men. Did it matter which?

  Thoros dropped down into a crouch in front of him, his thighs like pillars of granite splayed wide, his skirt gaping to allow a peek at the cock and balls dangling beneath it. Dalin breathed lightly, dizzy again from the mountain of man so menacingly close to him.

  “No?” Thoros repeated.

  “I want …” he couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence. He didn’t know what kind of games this competition would involve, didn’t know how Thoros could help him win them. He just knew what he wanted. “You.”

  Thoros tangled a hand through the hair at the back of his neck and yanked his head sharply back.

  “Don’t break him before you’ve bought him,” Samas complained.

  “I will break you,” Thoros promised Dalin. “I’ll hurt you, and I’ll enjoy it.” Thoros tugged his head back farther—so far that his neck ached—and leaned into him, brushing the warmth of his burnished skin all over him. “There’ll be nothing left of you when I’m done. Nothing but pain and longing.”

  “But I’ll win.”

  “Yeah.” Thoros released him to rock back on his heels. “I think we can win.”

  “Then I choose you.”

  “It’s not your place to choose,” Samas protested.

  Thoros rose to his feet. “He’s mine, Samas.” And Dalin knew it was over. He’d been chosen. The game had begun.

  Thoros

  Thoros chafed at the wait as the other trainers dallied longer in their choosing. Dalin stood by his side, a leather cuff around his neck leading to the strap in Thoros’s hand, his head held high as if he weren’t on a leash like the least trustworthy of pets.

  They hadn’t spoken since Thoros’s single word command—come—and Dalin had made sure to keep up with him as they’d threaded their way through the hopeful contestants, never drifting far enough away to feel the tug of the leash, alert and almost haughty, if a naked man on a leash could ever be presumed to be haughty.

  He could have his pride for now. This one would be fun to break. Thoros twitched the leather strap, passing the time by allowing the tail to snap against the back of Dalin’s calves.

  One by one, other trainers joined him with their chosen competitors. None of the other competitors had been leashed—some had even been allowed to re-dress—but Dalin didn’t complain about his state any more than he complained about the slap of leather against his legs. He simply stared forward, his jaw set in a hard line.

  Twenty men had been chosen. All of them good looking, though in different ways, most of them shapely, some sturdier than others, some taller, none who caused Thoros to second-guess his choice. He’d been the first to choose, but he’d chosen wisely.

  The Chancellor led Atalanta on a stately procession across the stadium. She paused as she strolled past the contestants, the length of her hesitation telegraphing her interest. When she reached Dalin, her eyes flickered with amusement to the leather thong wrapped around his neck, but she moved on without comment.

  “He’s bulky,” Samas said when the crowd broke. “I’m glad I let you have that one. This one will do better, I think.” He had his own fighter, barely old enough to be called a man, naked but unleashed. “Rory here is more the princess’s type. She likes them lean, I’ve observed.”

  Samas wasn’t wrong about that. The men Atalanta allowed to serve in her chambers were closer in appearance to Rory than Dalin—younger, frailer, inclined more to a symmetrical beauty than a brutish strength—Thoros had perhaps chosen to his own tastes in that regard—but he was counting on what he knew that Samas didn’t to provide the princess with the best match.

  “He doesn’t look very fast either,” Samas observed.

  “I can train for speed.” Thoros gave the leash a jerk. Dalin turned to him with a glare that
had him grinning. What he couldn’t train for was that—that wildness, the fierce, unbroken spirit that—once broken—would produce a submission more delicious for its reluctance. Too easily won was too easily forgotten.

  Yes, Dalin would be fun to break. Even if Thoros didn’t take home the purse, he expected to enjoy the contest.

  Speed

  Dalin

  Thoros led him through town by that damned strap. Meanwhile, Dalin’s cock and balls swung freely for all to see. Thoros wanted Dalin to ask him for something—a bit of cloth to wear or for the freedom to walk with dignity— but Dalin refused to give him the satisfaction, so he only followed where Thoros led, silent and quick.

  I can train for speed, Thoros had said. He would show Thoros he could move plenty fast enough, trotting right up on his heels, never letting Thoros get far enough ahead to tug on the leash, though Thoros kept shortening it, winding it yet one more wrap around his hand until Dalin had no choice but to heel or be choked.

  Thoros’s stone cottage on the outskirts of town was no more than a single room, rough-hewn stone inside and out, a dirt floor beneath the wood plank table and a straw-tick mattress nestled into a corner by the hearth. There was only the one pile of bedding, not large enough for two even if Dalin cared to sleep with this overlarge mass of rudeness towing him around by the neck.

  The floor then. He’d spent more than one night with nothing but the dirt to call mattress and the stars to call blanket and his own dirty arm as a pillow. He wouldn’t beg for anything more. But Thoros walked him through the cottage and out the back door to a barn, more lean-to really, hardly big enough for the pair of goats inhabiting it.

  “Moxie and Loxie,” Thoros said by way of introduction as he wrapped Dalin’s leash around a post. “See that you get along with them. They mean more to me than you do.” He pumped water into the trough that ran along the outer rail of the lean-to and looked at Dalin significantly.

  “Fine then,” he said when Dalin didn’t respond. “You’ll drink when you’re thirsty, you’ll sleep when you’re tired. I’ll no more monitor your habits than I do theirs.” And with that he disappeared back into the house, leaving Dalin with Moxie and Loxie, a trough full of tepid water, and a pile of hay to which the goats had already laid claim.